Opens Our Ears to Hear

A Sermon Inspired by Matthew 10:26-39

Third Sermon in the "Open Our Eyes" Worship Series

“I’ve come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother.”

“Those who love father or mother more than me aren’t worthy of me.”

Well, Happy Father’s Day, Jesus!

I don’t think it matters when we read these sorts of statements from Jesus. They are always hard to hear. But, especially on a day where we celebrate dads for the gifts and blessings they have been in our lives, these words are hard to hear.

Why? We love to sing songs that proclaim “Jesus is King!” or that “Jesus is the name above all other names!” We will gladly tell others “Jesus is the most important person in my life.” We get that Jesus comes first, and all other things in our life are meant to come second.

But…there is something about hearing these words today, hearing Jesus ask us to really put him above all other loyalties and loves in our lives, that is jarring.

If you are thinking, “Jesus…this sounds hard!” the good news is that you aren’t alone. There are times in the Gospels when Jesus’ teaching gets sounds so hard or difficult to follow that the disciples turn to him and say, “Jesus, don’t talk that way anymore. You’re scaring people! No one is going to want to follow you.”

What is Jesus’ response? Do not be afraid. We hear it twice in today’s Scripture. Do not be afraid. This is often part of my daily prayers, “Lord take away my fear and help me trust in you.”

Now, I’m not talking about the kind of fear we get from a scary movie or standing near the edge of a tall cliff or even the sort of fear we might have experienced during these last few months of pandemic or might be experiencing right now as we experience a scary spike in virus infections locally.

I’m talking about the kind of fear we get deep down in the pit of our stomachs when doing the right thing, doing the gospel thing seems to conflict with our own personal comfort and safety.

Because, if we really hear Jesus today, if our prayer from this sermon series “Open our eyes, Lord” extends today to also become “Open our ears, Lord,” the life of discipleship Jesus is calling us to is scary! If you aren’t frightened just a little bit, then you aren’t really hearing Jesus!

Whenever I find a particular passage of Scripture challenging or difficult to understand, I’ve made it a practice turn to different translations of the Bible to read that same passage in an attempt to better hear Jesus, as I heard his words shared in different ways. As I did that this week with these difficult words from Jesus, I found the Message translation helpful in capturing the heart of Jesus’ teaching. Hear verses 34-39 from the Message:

“Don’t think I’ve come to make life cozy. I’ve come to cut—make a sharp-knife cut between son and father, daughter and mother, bride and mother-in-law—cut through these cozy domestic arrangements and free you for God. Well-meaning family members can be your worst enemies. If you prefer father or mother over me, you don’t deserve me. If you prefer son or daughter over me, you don’t deserve me. If you don’t go all the way with me, through thick and thin, you don’t deserve me. If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me.”

These words don’t get any easier in the Message translation, but—for me—they do get clearer! I can hear Jesus better.

What Jesus is trying to teach us is that we have to be committed to Christ, above all else. That might sound easy on its surface, but as with Jesus’ difficult teaching today, when we really dig into what that means, when we really hear what Jesus is saying…this is hard work!

We might mishear Jesus if we think that the love Jesus calls us to is a competition. Jesus isn’t asking us to take out a measuring stick and prove how much we love him versus other people. Instead, Jesus is saying our love for our family, our love for everybody, is transformed when we put Christ first. Because when we put Christ first, we follow his commands, even when they are difficult. Perhaps one of the most difficult commands Jesus ever gave his disciples was “to love one another I have loved you.” We are called to love like Jesus loved. That is hard work! That is hard work we can only do when we love Jesus first. When we love Jesus first, then we can learn how to truly love others. The love of Christ transforms us so that we can love…even when its hard.

I think sometimes we forget just how hard work loving is really supposed to be. It’s a love that asks us to set aside our own ego. A love that asks us to embrace the people who drive us bonkers. A love that reminds us…we are not in this faith thing for what we get out of it. If you only come to church looking for what you get out of it, then you’ve missed the point. Worship is for God, not us. Christ’s church is for God’s mission in the world, not our comfort and happiness. If we really hear Jesus’ words today, he says loud and clear that the truth of the gospel causes tension. If we’re only comfortable, then we aren’t hearing the gospel. We aren’t hearing Jesus.

How can that be? How can tension be at the heart of the Gospel? Aren’t we all supposed to just get along? Don’t we call Jesus, “Prince of Peace?”

To hear Jesus in his own words today, “Do no think that I’ve come to bring peace to the earth.”

Jesus didn’t come to bring the kind of peace that plasters a thin veneer of wallpaper over the cracks of tension in our families or the injustice of our world and society. Because that isn’t true peace…that’s politeness or niceness on the surface only.

Jesus came to bring a deep and abiding peace, the kind that acknowledges differences while staying engaged with the other, the kind of peace that says, “You matter. I matter. We both matter, so we can’t ignore our differences or pretend they don’t exist or matter either. But we can love Jesus, love one another, and acknowledge our differences all at the same time.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.” True peace, Jesus peace, deep down in your heart peace, deep down in our world peace, this kind of peace calls us to be courageous in our conversations and relationships.

Whenever I need to learn more about how to be truly brave and answer the call of courage, I turn to the work of Brené Brown. Brené is a social worker and research professor at the University of Houston. For over two decades, she has studied courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. She has written five #1 New York Times bestseller books. Brené often talks about the importance of choosing “courage over comfort,” which I think is phrase that really gets to the heart of Jesus’ hard words today.

In her latest book Dare to Lead, Brené talk about our tendency to shy away from difficult conversations under the guise of being “nice and polite.” In relation to our gospel lesson today, Brené is saying that we often chose the wallpaper thin, surface level peace of ignoring differences and disagreements rather than the true peace of engaging with one another even when its hard or when conversations are tough. Basically, Brené says our human tendency to chicken out…to not answer the call to be courageous, and to make ourselves feel better by thinking “Well, I’m just trying to be nice. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I’ll just keep the peace.”

But ignoring differences and dodging difficult conversations isn’t true peace, at least not the kind of peace that the gospel talks about. And, through her extensive research, Brené has learned that avoiding these difficult conversations in our relationships actually leads to diminished trust and increases in problematic behavior (like gossip and passive-agressiveness). Trying to keep the peace actually makes it more difficult to establish true, deep peace.

Brené writes this, “Over the past several years, my team and I have learned something about clarity and the importance of hard conversations that has changed everything from the way we talk to each other to the way we negotiate with external partners. It’s simple and transformative: Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”

She goes on to write, “Feeding people half-truths…to make them feel better (which is almost always about making ourselves feel more comfortable) is unkind. Not getting clear with [another] about your expectations because it feels too hard, yet holding them accountable or blaming them for not delivering is unkind. Talking about people rather than to them is unkind.”

Friends, I think we’ve been so busy trying to be nice that we’ve forgotten how to be kind. I don’t think Jesus is calling us to start fights today. I think he is calling us to get clear and be kind. To get clear that our loyalty, our allegiance is to Christ above all else—family, politics, even church. And when we are clear, we can be kind. We can choose to open our eyes to see ALL of God’s people. We can choose to open our ears to hear ALL of God’s people. We can choose the deep love and the true peace of the gospel. We don’t have to be afraid. With Jesus’ help, we can be courageous!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.