If you love your father or mother or even your sons and daughters more than me, you are not fit to be my disciples. And unless you are willing to take up your cross and come with me, you are not fit to be my disciples. If you try to save your life, you will lose it. But if you give it up for me, you will surely find it.
Matthew 10:37-39 (Contemporary English Version)
As a teenager I was part of a gospel music group. We’d tour the local churches, singing contemporary folk music, providing the occasional drama and sharing a message. This was the context in which I first learned that I could preach. As a 16 year old I and my peers tried our hand at studying the Bible and finding encouragement and challenge for our listeners.
Every now and then, my mother would tell me I was way out of my depth. “I didn’t know enough to be preaching”. Looking back from where I stand, I didn’t know what I know now. I didn’t see as I see now, with the benefit of experience. But I had enough to start with. I looked at my mother who had spent years reading and studying and yet was reluctant to take on responsibilities beyond her home. I didn’t want to be that person in my fifties.
I imagine that the followers of Jesus had similar experiences. “What do you mean, you’re heading off to heal the sick in strange towns, without a budget?” If people had taken their cues from their families, Jesus may never have had a team to send out.
I still find people who are paralysed by anxiety about the opinions of their families. I find people in their forties who steer away from youth ministry because their grown teenage kids have rejected their values and told them they know nothing. I find teenagers who have limited their horizons because they’re concerned about what their parents or their friends will say.
“What would XX think?” is the resounding mantra – the parent tapes playing in the background. Or “What might I be risking here?”
Jesus here is taking a group of average men and women and taking them to the next level of extraordinary leadership. He’s taking them from concern about ‘reputation and safety’ to entrepreneurial ‘can-do’ vision. And the most crucial step in that move is working out whose opinion really counts at the end of the day, or the end of one’s life.
I think of Shawshank Redemption – Red learning to dream and act beyond his imprisonment. I think of J M Barrie working to make theatre an intergenerational experience. I think of the crazy ones of the Apple Think Different TV ads.
I’m thinking of the sermon I’m preaching tomorrow morning at Stafford Uniting. And whether it really matters what people think of me, or if they are given permission and space to expand their dreams of what God can do through them.
I’m thinking of Crowded House’s song,
“Don’t Dream It’s Over…
Now I’m walking again to the beat of a drum
and I’m counting the steps to the door of your heart
Only shadows ahead
They’ll be clear in the roof
Get to know the feeling of liberation and release
Hey now Hey now don’t dream it’s over
Hey now Hey now when the world comes in
They come, they come to build a wall between us
You know that they won’t win