I allowed myself to write at enormous length:
So
far I’ve been very much enjoying re-engaging with Jesus for this Diocesan year
of focus on Matthew’s Gospel. I hope those who have to sit through my sermons
have found it, on the whole, a useful exercise.
I
think it’s possible for us to have just enough religion to inoculate us against
Jesus. We have a vague impression of him from school chapel or assemblies, from
RE lessons, perhaps from Sunday School, or just from the general cultural
milieu. Maybe we have a picture of him in our mind’s eye. We might remember a
story or a saying or two. But it’s always good for us to go back to the sources
– to the four Gospels we have in our New Testament.
For
me it’s endlessly fascinating to engage with the real Jesus of the Bible. Even
after many years of reading and studying the Gospels, I feel that somehow Jesus
still has the ability to surprise me. He seems to surpass categorisation. He
walks off the pages of the Bible afresh to meet us.
It’s
been interesting to look again at Matthew’s Gospel chapters 10 and 11. I try to
ask three questions:
·
Who
is Jesus? What do we learn here about his identity?
·
Why
did he come? What can we tell about his purpose and mission?
·
So
what? What response does Jesus call for? What would it mean to follow this
Jesus as his disciple?
Jesus’
message is radical stuff. For example towards the end of Matthew 10 he said:
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace
to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come
to turn
“‘a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her
mother-in-law—
a man’s enemies will be the members of his own
household.”
Anyone who loves their father or mother more
than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than
me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me
is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses
their life for my sake will find it.
Of
course Jesus wants us to love our families. But he actually demands our first
allegiance. He claimed, in effect, to be God come in the flesh, and so we must
have no other gods before him. If he is not absolutely Lord of all, then he is
not really Lord at all. The real Jesus can’t be a hobby or an interest. Not
really. It is well and good to respect Jesus and so on, but if we are to relate
to the real Jesus of the Bible, it must be on his terms not ours. As the
Lutheran Pastor martyred by the Nazis, Deitrich Bonhoffer, said, “When Christ
calls a person, he bids him come and die.”[1]
That’s
what it means to take up our cross. It was a brutal instrument of humiliating,
agonising execution fit only for slaves and foreigners. And yet we say things
like, “We all have our cross to bear. Poor aunty Mable, she’s a martyr to her
bunions.” I’m not sure these day-to-day trials are really what Jesus
principally has in mind. Perhaps we would get more of a sense Jesus’ meaning if
we imaging him saying, “Who ever would come and follow me must head with me to
the gallows.” Or, “Come follow me, and take up your electric chair.” Making it
unfamiliar helps us to see what a shocking invitation it really is.
Now,
I expect few if any of us in 21st Century England will literally die
for Jesus, although of course many have and will around the world, though
history, today and tomorrow. But Jesus is saying that we must in principle give
up our lives for him and to him. We must give him our all. We must die to sin
and self that we might live for Jesus. Yes, Jesus’ way of the cross is a way of
death. But we also know the end of the story. The cross leads to the
resurrection. The way of the cross is actually the way to life – life with and
for God for ever, which even the grave can’t destroy. Jesus’ call is to death
but also to life, perhaps to suffering, but also to joy and peace, to meaning,
purpose and glory.
Jesus’
call, “Come to me and die”, may not seem very attractive. It reminds me of the
advert which Ernest Shackleton is said
to have used to seek volunteers for his 1914 Endurance expedition,
aiming to cross Antarctica by land:
Men wanted for hazardous journey.
Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of
complete darkness.
Safe return doubtful.
Honour and recognition in event of
success.
He
was said to be overwhelmed with applicants.
In
Matthew Chapter 11, Jesus makes a rather different appeal. He says:
Come to me, all you who are weary and
burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from
me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your
souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Jesus
offers rest. But it is not as if the Christian life is an endless holiday.
Jesus’ yoke implies labour. Is this yoke simply the one which Jesus gives, or
is it also the one Jesus himself wears with us? Does Jesus imagine us strapped
to him, like a team of oxen ploughing a field, walking together?
The
rest of the Bible would tell us that the Christian life is not always exactly
“easy”. The point, I think, is that unlike Satan and Sin, or even self, Jesus
is a good, kind and wise master. Jesus loves and he knows what he’s doing. We
can trust him. His way may not be easy or nice all the time, but it is best.
Perhaps
I might end with two further preachers’ greatest hits quotations. The first is
from C. S. Lewis’, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Aslan, of
course, is the Christ figure.
“Aslan is a lion - the Lion, the great
Lion."
“Ooh" said Susan. "I'd thought he was
a man. Is he - quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a
lion"...
"Safe?" said Mr Beaver ..."Who
said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King,
I tell you.”
And
then from what turned out to be the last ever sermon of the great 19th
Century Baptist preacher, Charles H. Spurgeon:
What I have to say lastly is this: how greatly
I desire that you who are not yet enlisted in my Lord's band would come to him
because you see what a kind and gracious Lord he is! Young men, if you could see our Captain, you
would [go] down on your knees and beg him to let you enter the ranks of those
who follow him. It is heaven to serve Jesus. I am a recruiting sergeant, and I
would fain find a few recruits at this moment. Every man must serve somebody:
we have no choice as to that fact. Those who have no master are slaves to
themselves. Depend upon it, you will either serve Satan or Christ, either self
or the Saviour. You will find sin, self, Satan, and the world to be hard
masters; but if you wear the livery of Christ, you will find him so meek and
lowly of heart that you will find rest unto your souls. He is the most
magnanimous of captains. There never was his like among the choicest of
princes. He is always to be found in the thickest part of the battle. When the
wind blows cold he always takes the bleak side of the hill. The heaviest end of
the cross lies ever on his shoulders. If he bids us carry a burden, he carries
it also. If there is anything that is gracious, generous, kind, and tender, yea
lavish and superabundant in love, you always find it in him. These forty years
and more have I served him, blessed be his name! and I have had nothing but
love from him. I would be glad to continue yet another forty years in the same
dear service here below if so it pleased him. His service is life, peace, joy.
Oh, that you would enter on it at once! God help you to enlist under the banner
of Jesus even this day! Amen.[2]
The Revd Canon Marc
Lloyd
[1] The Cost of Discipleship. Writing around
1937, Bonhoffer actually said “a man” but we know what he meant!
[2] Preached on 7th
June 1891. The Bible text was 1 Samuel 30:21–26.
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