Göttinger Predigten im Internet
ed. by U. Nembach, J. Neukirch

4 Pentecost (RCL), 12 June 2005
A Sermon on Matthew 9:35-10:8 by Samuel Zumwalt

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Matthew 9:35-10:8

35 Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."

1 Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. 2 These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; 3 Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; 4 Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him. 5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: "Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, 6 but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 7 As you go, proclaim the good news, 'The kingdom of heaven has come near.' 8 Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.

SCATTERED REIGN

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Whether you believe it or not, the Lord Jesus is here this morning as Lord of death and life. You may be here because you want to get somebody you love off your back. You may be here because you play the percentages, and just maybe there is a God whose good side you need to get on. You may be here because you feel better after you set aside a little time for spiritual things. In short, you may be here for every reason other than that you believe that the Lord Jesus is here as Lord of death and life today.

And it really doesn’t matter why you are here. Chalk another one up for the Holy Spirit. He got you up and in the door this morning. Maybe, just maybe, today will be the day God finally gets past your resistance to His good and gracious reign. After all, whether anyone believes it or not, God is the boss. It may take everyone here until they draw their last breath to catch on. I hope not. But God will be God no matter what.

When you come to worship, it’s not about us. The hymns aren’t addressed to us. It doesn’t matter whether we like or dislike the music, whether we are bored or excited, whether we are moved or snoozing. Worship isn’t about us. Worship is what God uses to address us most directly. There is worship that is biblical, and there is worship that is narcissistic. There is worship that is godly, and there is worship that is a big show. If you go to worship, and God doesn’t get done with you what God intends, then you might as well have gone to a combination concert, lecture, and variety show. What a waste!

Some of us routinely misbehave in worship. In a sense, it’s an extension of the misbehaving that goes on in daily life. All that says is that we are walking around with the illusion that everything – not just Christianity – but everything is all about us. And it’s not. It’s about God – the God who loves us so much that He is trying to save us from ourselves!

Left to ourselves we will go on self-destruct. It’s true of every human but in different ways. Have you ever noticed how some people just can’t seem to handle when things are going well? It’s like they get afraid of success, so that just at the last minute they are able to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. People like that will sabotage a wonderful marriage. People like that will sabotage a good job. People like that will sabotage personal growth and improvement. It’s as if they just don’t believe they deserve to have good things happen. And so they sabotage their lives with really dumb choices.

I’ve noticed that when some people are doing well with a recovery from alcoholism they will suddenly start drinking again and blow it all. I’ve noticed that when some people are doing well saying no to really bad relationships they will suddenly slip back into running with the wrong crowd. I’ve noticed that when some people are finally getting their acts together with their career, they suddenly blow it all by making some incredibly stupid choices.

I used to say to one of my kids that this child had an innate ability for making the wrong choice. I would say that if my child ever could figure out how to make the right choice then that child would set the world on fire. In adulthood, I’m relieved to say that that child is finally on the road to success.

God longs for each one of us to become the people that He created us to be, but because of sin, our age old rebellion, we constantly sabotage what God wants us to have.

I’ve met some very bitter people over the years that have never gotten that message. God has been trying to change their hearts and minds all their lives, but instead they are so focused on themselves that they never will shut up long enough to listen to what God has been trying to say. God needs to kill the old rebellious person inside, but they keep rebelling as if it were all about them. It’s sad to watch the on-going sabotage, sad to realize that more and more years are being wasted as the bitterness grows deeper and the rebellion becomes who they are. That’s a snapshot of hell. They could spend eternity in a way of being that God so desperately wants to save them from!

Last year Anthony Hopkins starred in a movie called The Human Stain. His character, a very bright young man, was the son of two light-skinned African American parents. The boy grew up during the worst days of segregation, but because of his own light skin he was able to say that he was white when he left home to join the military. He began to date only white women. He no longer would have anything to do with his parents or siblings. In time, he became a university professor whose wife, whose colleagues, and whose students all thought that he was white. Finally, he was fired from the university where he taught for making a comment that was characterized as racist. The man went to his death never revealing his secret. His whole life was finally built around a lie – around his shame of the person that God had created him to be. A sister that attended his funeral finally revealed the truth about her brother to his younger friend.

The truth about us is that we are creatures of the Most High God. We are mortal, because God was forced to impose limits upon His rebellious creatures that keeping thinking it’s about us and not about God. We will die just like all the other creatures, and we will go to our graves dead in our trespasses if God does not save us from ourselves.

He has sent His only begotten Son to become human with us and for us – to die that we might live – to destroy the power of sin, death, and evil. He longs to baptize us into Jesus’ death and resurrection, longs to transform us from self-absorbed creatures into children of the Most High God. He longs to rescue us from self-sabotage and every snare of the old liar that would draw us further and further from God.

But we need to be silenced from persisting in the same old lie that it’s about us and not about God! We have to be silenced so that God can kill us and make us alive.

We need to be saved from ourselves. That’s what God wants to do with us in worship. But worship has all too often been subverted and perverted from something godly to entertainment, empowerment lectures, and a kind of affirmation for who we are right where we are. In short, worship that does not carry God’s divine speech and action to save us from ourselves is not Christian worship.

Christian worship does two things. It kills and makes alive, first by speaking God’s judgment upon our sin and then by speaking God’s mercy for sinners. Christian worship drowns us in baptismal waters again. Christian worship speaks the clear Word of God from the Holy Scriptures of Israel and the Church. Christian worship grounds us in the faith of the previous generations. Christian worship feeds us with the very body and blood of Christ in bread and wine.

If worship does not carry God’s speaking and acting in that way, it is not Christian worship no matter how many times it says Jesus or God or Holy Spirit and no matter if it has a good beat and you can dance to it.

When the Lord Jesus sent the 12 out to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, he was sending them to bring God’s rule and God’s reign into the lives of those that had forgotten whose they were.

Today the Lord Jesus is sending us out to those that have fallen away from the services of God’s house, those that have fallen away from actively participating in the Christian community. In the European churches, that is an even more daunting task than in the rest of the world precisely because the European churches have become deliverers of service to customers that have paid their taxes. Or the churches have spent their years trying to become relevant – as if it were all about us and not about God!

In the United States, there may be more attending Sunday worship than in Europe, but then our churches either are about trying to be relevant to the wider culture or trying to reflect the cultural values of a particular segment of American society, as in either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party at prayer.

In the Bible the language for Israel and the Church’s God is masculine. God’s proper name is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The proper pronoun is masculine. But our proposed ELCA worship book avoids or offers alternatives to biblical language in order not to offend those that don’t think God should be referred to with masculine language. Again, they miss the point. Worship is not about us. It’s about God. God wants to kill us and make us alive – not entertain us, not butter us up, not affirm us no matter how messed up our lives are.

The European churches are dying, because they have forgotten that it’s about God. The American churches are playing catch up as fast as we can. And left to our own devices, we will succumb to the forces of evil, the devil, and all his empty promises!

I would like to suggest a happier alternative, yes, and a happier forecast for the Church – scattered reign! We need to recognize that God is calling us and sending us to scatter the Good News of God’s reign – God’s rule – to a world that is hell-bent on going to hell.

A number of years ago I heard the story of a country preacher who asked his new little rural congregation to obey the call of Christ Jesus. He gave them all index cards in worship and asked them to write down the names of every family member, every neighbor, and every co-worker they knew that didn’t go to church anywhere. He stopped long enough for them to do just that in worship. When they got through writing, they had identified 1200 names.

Then the preacher asked them to begin to pray for all the people on their card – to place it on the refrigerator or in their Bible as a prominent reminder to pray daily for these people. Then he asked them to invite the people to come to worship, and keep inviting, and keep inviting, and keep inviting. That dying little church suddenly had new life, because the disciples in that little church had been sent to the lost sheep of their community!

The Church is not about us. It’s about God. God wants to save us from ourselves. God knows who among us have been possessed by unclean spirits (somebody is going to all those so-called adult video stores and so-called gentlemen’s clubs; somebody is frequenting those prostitutes that keep getting arrested). God knows who is sick and what’s ailing them. God knows who is dead in their faith and damned near close to death in their bodies. God knows who is a modern-day leper and needs to be healed. God knows what kind of demons have hold of lives, and God wants to save people from hellish lives and from hell itself. And you may have been sleepwalking through worship so long that you don’t know that God cares about all that stuff!

Now you may not think that’s what a church is supposed to be about, and that’s because you’ve probably not been listening very closely to what God has been trying to do with you and with your loved ones and with a world filled with sin-sick souls.

Worship isn’t about singing your favorite songs or hearing your favorite pieces of music being played well or being told that you basically are a pretty good person. Christian worship is about putting to death the old self-absorbed person in you and me. It’s about being transformed into the likeness of God’s servant Son Jesus Christ. We need to die to ourselves. That’s why the crucifix is up in front today. Whoever would save her or his life will lose it. Only God can save us from ourselves, and that’s what He is up to in worship today!

If you have wasted a lot of years of your life thinking it’s all about you, then fall down on your knees at the altar rail and lift up your empty hands to receive the body and blood of Christ. Say: “Come, Lord Jesus, fill me with your life. Change me from the kind of person that thinks it’s all about me. Send me to be the kind of person that others can see that you are working on me and in me. Help me to stop lying to myself and to you. Help me to stop wasting your time on trying to be relevant and trying to fit in to a world that is dying. Good Lord, deliver this Church from the forces of evil, the devil, and all his empty promises!”

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

© Samuel D. Zumwalt
St. Matthew’s Evangelical Lutheran Church
Wilmington , North Carolina USA
szumwalt@bellsouth.net

 

 


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