The Missionary Way of Jesus

Biblical Text: Matthew 10:5, 21-33

The text for this sermon is often called Jesus’ missionary discourse. The lectionary divides it into three parts, of which this is the 2nd. Although this sermon backs up a bit (as I was on vacation last week and missed part one.) It is the sermon Jesus gives to the 12 as he sends them out. There are a bunch of ways that have been dreamed up to duck this sermon. I’ve heard people say “it was only for the apostles at that time.” And there are some textual things you can point at, but given the great commission that seems odd. I’ve heard people restrict it to just clergy. And again, I there are some textual things that might support it that. Also again, laying all of missions on a special class seems wrong, especially given the general “confess me before me” that closes this section. Basically, the church in most ages just doesn’t want to here this. And that is because this is the summary of the message to me.

The Word of God causes division
You are called to speak it anyway and deal with the resulting division and hatred
The reason you do this are because the Christian must live, walk the way, with eternity in mind.
- There is a necessary element of fear in this. “These men fear God (more than anything in this world”.”
- But the more important part is the love of God for all his creation.

Missions are walking the way through this world. As we walk, we show others the way. And that way is faith. We fear, love and trust in the promise of Jesus, told to us by others who did the same. That is the Missionary Way of Jesus.

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Epiphany’s Journey

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Biblical Text: Luke 9:28-36

The text is the Transfiguration which has become the standard text for the Ending of the Season of Epiphany. As such this sermon is the last in this loosely connected series. The evangelist Luke’s treatment of the Transfiguration is unique. In the parallels it is the Easter before Easter. In Luke it is Epiphany that starts the journey. And it is on the journey that everything we fear we might lose as the epiphany fades, or that we never got because we were sleepy and didn’t see the entire thing, is confirmed in the living. We remember the mountaintop, but that is the symbol for the life. Without the life, the mountaintop loses its meaning.

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Postmodern Ditches & The Narrow Way

Biblical Text: Luke 4:1-13
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The first Sunday in Lent brings the temptation of Jesus as the text. The text is usually turned into a moral lesson about knowing your bible. And there is some of that here. But as I worked through the text and the various inputs this week, that fit less and less easily. Especially given Luke’s text. The temptations come in a slightly different order here, and the Devil and Jesus flip-flop words. Jesus goes from “it is written” to “it is said” when the devil picks up quoting scripture. This is no sword drill bible quoting one-up-man-ship.

The postmodern world tells us that everything is interpretation. There are authoritative interpretations made so by power. There are deviant or subversive interpretations. But, there are no facts; there is no truth. In the first two temptations Jesus clearly refutes that as he both takes as true and binding the Word of God and refutes a power and authority’s ability to assert interpretation against fact. In the third temptation Jesus turns to the opposite problem. Instead of thinking that everything is interpretation, its opposite is often a too great a certainty. When the devil starts quoting scripture the temptation is to put a very precise interpretation on a poetic verse.

Applied to the modern church or would you have both the church that has abandoned the law because they hunger after the approval of the world, and you have the church that is uncomfortable with faith and hope and mystery. The narrow way lies between the two ditches. Letting the secret things be God’s, but claiming surely those things that have been revealed. Deuteronomy 29:29

This is an attempt to preach the text by connecting roots of post-modernism with how we see it playing out in events today. As such, as David Foster Wallace would once quip, I’m attempting to point out the water to the fish (what’s water?). It is preaching directly at a space that is probably never in questioned. As such it might have zoomed right past.

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