Jesus the Confuser
Genesis 21:8-21 Matthew 10: 24-39
Grace
and peace are already ours for we belong to the family of Jesus the Christ. With
deep awareness of my unworthiness I stand before you to preach my last sermon
here today. However in every weak moment of life I have also experienced the
power of the transforming grace of God. A well-known poet Leonard Cohen said that
“all of us are cracked people, yet it is through these cracks that light
shines. I find comfort in St. Paul’s words that the foolishness of God is
wiser than our wisdom. And the
weakness of God is stronger than our strength. A word of thanks to Pastor
Margaret Scott for the trust she placed on me this past year. Her sense of
collegiality and her warmth and friendliness will always be treasured. My wife
Malar joined me every Sunday here at worship and I never begged or bribed her
to come. She is a member of the Greece United Methodist church and she could
walk to that church from our home. She said the music in this church inspired
her deeply. And this speaks volumes of your various music programs and the performances
of the different choirs. And so to our great music maker of Fairport, Nicole
Camilleri, I say well done and keep up your good work.
Our
closing hymn for today was translated by a person named D.T Niles of Sri Lanka.
He was my mentor and a great theologian of the previous century. In 1968 at the
assassination of the Late Martin Luther King Jr, who was the featured speaker
at the 4th general assembly of the world council of churches in Uppsala
Sweden, Niles was invited to fill in for the preacher. My dissertation for the Master’s
degree was on Niles and it is available in the library of Colgate Rochester
Divinity School. The overarching theme of our closing song today is SARANAM. It is a Tamil word which means “taking
refuge in God”.
The Hebrew scripture today deals with
stories of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac. For Sarah, her greed and jealousy
and bitterness overturns the joy of enjoying the gift of children. ”Whose son
will inherit all our properties?” Will it be Hagar’s or mine? Friends the
innocent little children are forced to lose their innocence today by the
shrewdness and the wickedness and the scheming of some grown up adults. Perhaps
the fear of the future, the fear of someone else going to get our share of
wealth disturbs the harmony and the unity of a loving home. ”Send this slave
woman away along with her son Ishmael. That painful ordeal ends with various twists
and turns and Ishmael becomes an architect of the Islamic faith. And Isaac turns
out to be a great figure in the Jewish religion. Abraham becomes the patriarch
of three religions such as Judaism Islam and Christianity. This story is our
story and just as the senseless demand Sarah made to Abraham to drive away
Hagar and the baby, we create barriers in families and communities with our
inhuman demands. There is a lack of kindness, generosity and faithfulness in the
tone of our demands. “Send that woman away with the child”. I have heard people
saying to me “Pastor Can you send those children to the children worship for
they make noises in our worship? “They distract us. We want the illegal
immigrants to come and work in our farms with no benefits and with little pay.
Then they must go back to Mexico once the summer is over. Jesus often questions
our double standard. A few months ago in a British national daily newspaper a
question was asked at the readers: What does it mean to be British? This was
one of the responses. Being a British is
about driving in a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, and then
traveling home, grabbing an Indian curry and a Turkish kebab and to sit in the
Swedish furniture and with American shows on a Japanese TV and the most British
thing of all is suspicion of anything foreign.
If you have not been
confused by Jesus still you are yet to learn the Christian faith. I have not
come to bring peace on earth, but a sword. Whoever comes to me and does not
hate his father and mother wife and children brothers and sisters yes even life
itself cannot be my disciple. He comes to us as a bearer of discord and dissension.
How can one develop a sermon expounding this passage? Do you really think it is
glamorous to follow this troublemaker ruble rouser and confuser called Jesus?
Sometimes it is dangerous to follow him. Sometimes it is costly. Sometimes it
is adventurous to walk with him. Following
Jesus those days, 2000 thousand years ago was a life and death choice. The
Jesus people were watched under the Roman surveillance camera. He called people
for a new way of living. He called people to fight against exploitation and
corruption and bigotry even if you became unpopular in your community. Jesus
called people to take a stand for the rights of children. This new way of practicing
faith often opposed the view of the parents. It clashed with the values of
their fathers and mothers. Whenever you upset a complacent society which
thrives in falsehood and enjoys pretense you become a heretic. In the name of
justice and in the name of truth when you challenge a system of deceit and foul
play you bring division in a community and set fire on earth.
Matthew 10 actually begins with the call of disciples.
I am pretty sure those twelve felt honored and humbled at the same time that
Jesus had a plan for them. In fact he gave them a detailed job description: Cure
the sick raise the dead, cleanse the lepers and cast out demons. Then he gave
them some words of admonition: I am sending you out like sheep into the midst
of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
Let me close this message with two questions.
No 1. Who is this Jesus? In the words of the hymn writer Brien Wren “we believe
in God, maker of rainbows, spinner of chaos, weaver of stories, and dare devil
gambler. We believe in Jesus Christ: Rabi of the poor, carpenter of new
creation and we believe in the Holy Spirit, nudging discomforter, midwife of
changes. And we believe in the church, as that group of people who have chosen
to believe these outrageous and offensive and wonderful truths.
No 2.where is Jesus today? Some
time back there was a bumper sticker in some of the cars around here which read
WWJD. When I wanted to create something like that I came up with these words:
WIJT, which means where, is Jesus today? Where is he? Is he among the
Christians or people of other religions or among people without any religion?
Is he in the west or in the east? Is he among the straight ones or among the
gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons? Is he among the rich or the
poor persons? Have I excluded Jesus from our closer net working groups and
gatherings? Where is he?