Proper 8: Isaiah 2: 10 – 17; Psalm 89: 1 – 4, 15 – 18; Romans 6: 3 – 11; Matthew 10: 34 – 42
A sermon by: The Rev. Gene Tucker. given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, IL; Sunday, June 29th, 2008
Ever think about the major events of your life? You know, the sorts of occurrences that shape us…They might include: school graduations, moves from one town to another, entering the military, getting married, the birth of a child or children, or retirement.
These and many more experiences mold and shape us. They do so because they have a profound effect on our lives, making what follows different from what went before.
I think that’s the definition of a “boundary marker” in life: something that makes what follows an event different from what goes before.
Now, consider the spiritual boundary markers in your life…..
What would those be?
Baptism, perhaps? Certainly, that would be St. Paul’s argument, which we hear in today’s Epistle reading…..(we’ll examine that more closely in a moment).
How about a decision we may have made to follow Christ, or to follow Him more closely. Such a decision may have come as the result of a major crisis in our lives. That was surely the case with my father, who hit “rock bottom” in a hospital in the wee hours of a Sunday morning, when his heart stopped. Following a three hour battle by the doctors and nurses, they were finally able to get his heart restarted, and to keep it going. That following morning, God reached out to my father through the words of his doctor, who said, “Jess, if you want to live, there will have to be some changes.” And changes there were….my dad was a completely different man after his near-death experience. My dad had experienced a “boundary marker”, an event that totally changed what followed from what had preceded his heart attack.
So major crises can evoke such a decision to follow Christ, or to follow Him more closely.
How about a realization that we’re headed in the wrong direction, running away – if you will – as fast as we can from God. Or maybe if we aren’t running, maybe we’re slowly drifting away.
That sort of a realization can prompt a conscious decision to get closer to God.
Keeping in mind this idea of a “boundary marker”, let’s look now at our Gospel reading for today, in which Matthew concludes Jesus’ discourse to the twelve disciples He is about to send out on their first mission trip. (We’ve been following this discourse over the past couple of Sundays.)
Then, let’s see how St. Paul regards the “boundary marker” of baptism, as we look at his explanation of the significance of baptism, which creates a “boundary marker” for our spiritual lives.
Turning now to Matthew’s recalling of Jesus’ discourse, let’s identify the “boundary marker” which constitutes the “rite of passage” for the original twelve disciples, for Matthew’s church (or churches) of the late first century, and for us, modern-day disciples.
That “rite of passage”, the “boundary marker”, is the reference to “taking up one’s cross” and “following me” (verse 38).[1]
Notice the structure of today’s passage:
- All that precedes the reference to the cross has to do with separation and division,
- All that follows has to do with the good works of the Kingdom of heaven.
The cross is the thing that separates the two.
Jesus’ point seems to be that, to become a disciple, one must take up one’s own cross to follow Him.[2] In the process of taking up our own cross, we die to our former lives, to our former relationships (such as family, which are the focus of Our Lord’s comments heard today), and to everything that mattered before our death to those former things. In other words, the cross forms a “boundary marker” which creates a new reality: Life in Christ, in which Christ becomes the center of our lives.
Christ as the central reality is the theme which St. Paul picks up in Romans, chapter six. For Paul says, “We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.”[3]
And what of the new reality which the “boundary marker” of the cross, what is that new reality? It is the resurrected life that we share in with Christ, as we rise out of the waters of baptism. You see, baptism creates the new reality of full and complete and eternal life in Christ. The waters form the boundary between our old, sinful life, in which we lived, separated from God, before we entered the waters of baptism.
But now, we have crossed the river,[4] and those waters form a boundary through which we cannot return to our former lives. Nor would we want to return, given the vitality of this new life in Christ, when compared to the death-spiral we were in before we died to that old life, burying that old life in the waters of baptism.
But, wait a minute….. As we hear this description of the baptismal process, both physical and theological, we might be tempted to say, “But I don’t remember my baptism! I was a only a baby!”
Baptism loses its significance if we don’t follow up with good training by parents, Godparents, and the church itself. After all, we make solemn promises to God to bring up a child who is baptized to come to know the Lord personally…we ask the parents and Godparents this question, “Will you be responsible for seeing that the child you present is brought up in the Christian faith and life?” (Book of Common Prayer, page 302)
We also ask, a little later (page 302), if the parents and Godparents themselves “turn to Jesus Christ, and accept him as their personal Savior.”
Oh. What we are asking, and what we are promising to God, is that we will make Jesus Christ the very center of our lives…more important than family ties, more important than careers or pastimes or any of the many other distractions that can draw us away from God.
We are saying that Jesus Christ will become the central organizing reality of our lives, the reality that creates new life (which is the central point of baptism, and which St. Paul makes abundantly clear in his explication of it in Romans, chapter six). We are saying we will die to all that came before. Only if we do that, will the relationships we enjoy and the work we do take on new meaning and a new perspective.
This morning’s Gospel calls us to reassess all the major events of our lives. Have those events caused us to take God more seriously and to draw closer to Christ, that He might be the central reality of our lives? Or have those events formed a boundary that has gradually separated us from the Lord Jesus Christ?
Reflect with me this Sunday morning.
Where am I? Closer to God, and seeking to make God the center of my life, or further away and separated by boundaries I myself have created.
AMEN.
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[1] Jesus will repeat these words again in Matthew 16: 24 - 25.
[2] It’s worth noting here that this is the first reference in Matthew to the cross. To date, Jesus has not spoken of His death, nor of the means of His death. The first reference we read in Matthew to Jesus’ suffering and death occurs in 16: 21, and the first reference to the Pharisees’ determination to kill Jesus does not occur until 12: 14. Clearly, Matthew and his church are looking backward at Jesus’ death, and are understanding it in terms of its significance for their lives, and for the lives of the saints (they most likely knew that St. Peter had been crucified upside down some years before).
[3] Romans 6: 6
[4] It’s worth recalling here that the early Church often baptized people in rivers or ponds. The candidates were fully immersed in the water, rising out of the water to new life. Then, following their baptism, they were clothed in a white robe (which is the ancestor of the alb which is worn today), and they exited the river or pond by another route, signifying the separating quality of the water.
