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The Seventh Sunday Of Easter
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Scripture citation(s): Exodus 3:1-12; Matthew 10:24-33, 40-42
A Sermon by
Fr. Spurlock
on
Exodus 3:1-12; Matthew 10:24-33, 40-42
✛
A Pattern of Holiness, Simplicity and Self-Denial
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Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. Mt 16.24
Once, I attended a service of ordination for a priest, where I heard a sermon that likened those sitting in the congregation witnessing the ordination to a crowd watching a man go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. On the one hand, we are fascinated by the sight of a man going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, and on the other hand we are horrified. “Why doesn’t somebody do something to stop this fool?” The image was arresting, but I remember this sermon so well because it would go on to articulate, without cringing, the awe and danger that lay in store for the Christian priest, and by extension, for anyone who desires to take up their cross and follow Jesus Christ.
We understand this better when we hear lessons like we have heard this afternoon, for in them we witness Moses and the apostles undergo something akin to ordination, and experience something akin to death. Moses sees a bush burning in the wilderness that is not consumed by the fire. He cannot help himself, and must draw nearer the flame to see. Knowing how the story ends for Moses, there should be a part of us that says, “Somebody stop this fool. This will not end well.” But there is still a greater part of us that needs him to stop and see because we know what is at stake.
What is at stake is the salvation of a people. The people of Israel are suffering in the most horrible sort of bondage. Their babies are murdered in a state sanctioned effort at population control. Their labor and living conditions are appalling, marked by unrealistic production quotas and a dearth of the resources to meet them. They have neither sufficient food nor drink. These are just their material circumstances. There is a spiritual aspect to their suffering as well. This is a people uniquely promised by God that they would live as free men and women in a land of their own, their offspring would multiply as the stars of the sky, and they would prosper at the hand of the Lord, who would be their God and they his people.
But now they labor under a pharaoh who seeks to be a god to them, keeping them as slaves in his land, exterminating their children, starving the people in every conceivable way. They need someone to deviate from the well-worn patterns of their life and stop and see this thing and take on the mantle of responsibility to help save them.
Out of the bush that burned but was not consumed, God called Moses to take this mantle, to go to Pharaoh and to bring the people out of bondage. Moses asks, who am I that I should go and do this thing? God does not give a conventional answer to that question, nor does he give a comfortable answer, but only promises to be with Moses. That will have to be enough. But Moses cannot go and do as he pleases he must do as God commands, speak as God speaks. He must die first. Before anybody can be saved, he must die to self, and begin living for God.
But if he will die, God will be with him, and that will be enough for the task at hand. And Moses was enough, he was enough for the deliverance a nation, and he was enough to see that nation through the forty years to follow. And they were not an easy forty years. Whatever reward Moses might have thought he would receive if he accepted this mantle of responsibility to stand between God and his people mediating the relationship, it would not be a life of self-indulgence or privilege, entitlement or wealth. But the blessing, by the power of God and Moses’ willingness to die to his own will and to live for God’s was that the people were saved. They passed over into the land of promise.
In our reading from Saint Matthew earlier, we witness an ordination of sorts. What we heard in the reading were parts of the ordination sermon preached by Jesus to twelve men that he called to be his disciples. And in it, our Lord did not cringe from the awe and horror that would come if the Apostle’s accepted this vocation. On the eve of sending them out into the world, like sheep among wolves, Jesus says, he gives them some things for the journey. He gives them his presence in power and authority to preach the gospel, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.
It wasn’t going to be easy out there. Jesus was accused of being in league with the devil, and so he tells the Apostles, if they have accused me of such a thing, how much more do you think they will accuse you of the same because of your association with me? Do not think that you will get off any easier than me. The servant is not above his lord.
And whatever glory and joy the apostles might have imagined they would find under the mantle of their priesthood, in preaching before the people, in exercising their priestly gifts, Jesus dispels with a warning. You will be rejected, but do not be afraid of people and their hardened reception of you, but rather be afraid lest you seek personal gain from their acceptance of you and your message, and do be very afraid of the one who has the power to cast your soul into hell. You must persevere and not shrink back from a bold proclamation; you must not fall back denying me, for if you do deny me, I must also deny you.
Jesus goes on to liken his apostles to sparrows, the cheapest sacrifice offered at the temple. But Jesus says that in God’s eyes, the Apostles’ own self-sacrifice is worth many sparrows. This is to say that his Apostles are a costly and worthy sacrifice. That is a cold comfort, because Jesus does not tell them they won’t be sacrificed, just that their sacrifice is worth much more than the plentiful and cheaper variety near to hand. The priests of Jesus, the followers of Jesus must reconcile themselves to the necessity of self-sacrifice for the sake of Jesus. They must take up their cross and follow him where he leads the way.
Taking up our cross, no matter what shape our vocation takes, hardly means putting up with difficult people, or to live with the trials and tribulations of an average life. It means pressing forward under the weight of the instrument of our own death, death to self, death to having things our own way, and it may be to carry that weight through a jeering mob, who despise you and what you stand for, because they first despise Jesus. If servants can’t expect any more than to be like their master, Christians’ lives are forfeit from the moment they begin following Christ. Those who wish to follow him must understand from the start that they are surrendering their lives to Christ. And those who do not acknowledge Jesus as having the right to demand of them their lives and the submission of their wills, have yet to be truly converted.
To take up our cross is to stop along our way, on the well-worn paths of our lives. It is to die to self, and it is to live for Christ. It means to deny ourselves and our wills as the ruling force within us. It has been said that if hell has a national anthem it is, Frank Sinatra’s, “I did it my way.” Christians are called to think higher thoughts than “What should I like to do?” but “What would the Lord of my life have me do?”
It’s a life we greatly admire in others, in Moses, the prophets, the apostles, saints and patriarchs who throughout the ages have been the lights in their generations. But they don’t shine bright because they had some bright idea. They shine bright, like a candle does, giving light to the world, at the expense of their own substance. Do we have the courage to die now, conforming our lives to a pattern not of our own, but to the pattern of the cross, a pattern of holiness, simplicity and self-denial, for our own sake, for the world’s sake, and for the sake of Christ?
