He has not come to be the God who keeps your agendas running, who makes your worldly dreams come true. No, He has come like someone carrying a sword into battle, knowing that He is the only true and lasting life.
This week, the lectionary concludes the missionary discourse of Jesus in Matthew, and we wrap up our sermon series on the Lord of the Harvest. In this series, we have learned how Jesus opens our eyes to see and our hearts to trust. Today, we meditate on how the Lord of the Harvest opens our lives to love.
The beginning of our text is shocking. Jesus says, “Do not think I have come to bring peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (10:34). To those who are accustomed to a gentle Jesus, meek and mild, our Lord shatters such misconceptions. Yes, Jesus can be gentle. He can be meek. You can and should leave your children with Him. But He is also mighty. He is the Lord of hosts, with thousands of angel armies awaiting His command. And He has not come to be the God who keeps your agendas running, who makes your worldly dreams come true. No, He has come like someone carrying a sword into battle, knowing that He is the only true and lasting life. His sword destroys and protects. It kills and it saves. What is left when He is done will last forever.
And when Jesus comes, you are confronted with a crossroads. “Whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me... whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (10:37-39). The choice is stark: Save your life or lose it. Confrontational in its clarity. Scary in its simplicity.
We can seek to save our lives, use God’s name to pursue our ambitions, and stock our closets full of clothing and our fridges full of food. But we will die.
Or we can lose everything. Unclench our hands and let it all fall away, our carefully curated ambitions, our ideal families, our pious hopes, our hollow dreams, and we will live.
Why? Because when we stand there before God, with nothing in our hands, with our lives finally empty and painfully open, that is when we receive life as a gift. It is God’s gift to us in Jesus Christ. This is not a life we can earn. It is not a life we can create. No, it is life that comes to us only as a gift, a gift from our Savior who gave His life for us.
In this life, sins are forgiven because of the self-sacrificial death of our King. Rather than hiding our sins, or overlooking them, or minimizing them by comparing them to the world, we confess our sins and experience forgiveness. In this life, love for God and neighbor overflow because our Lord conquered death and ascended into Heaven and now rules through His people in love.
Losing your life is not easy. It is not pleasant. But the Lord of the Harvest gathers those who have lost their lives and opens their lives to love. It is love received from Him in forgiveness and love offered to others in His name.
Losing your life is not easy. It is not pleasant. But the Lord of the Harvest gathers those who have lost their lives and opens their lives to love.
The Lord of the Harvest opens our lives, but not always gently. Not like a mother unfolding a blanket to see her newborn child. No, more like a farmer breaking the earth open with the sharp edge of a plow. The field does not like the blade. We have forgotten how dry the ground truly is. The torn earth looks more like a wound or a scar than a safe place for seeds.
But Jesus has warned us. He will divide houses. He will fracture families. He will swing swords. He will break the earth open. Because love, real love, His love, divine love, does not sit quietly on a shelf, like a photo from the past. No, it hangs on a tree in the middle of darkness, revealing the end of sin, and it rises from the grave, early in the morning, making way for the outpouring of the Spirit and of love. This is love breaking forth like life in the desert, love pouring forth like springs of water from the rocks.
When the Lord of the Harvest opens our lives to love, suddenly, the Kingdom of Heaven is hidden in the smallest of things. “Whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward” (10:42).
A cup of cold water. A spare room. A shared table. These small moments and gestures are the stuff of the Kingdom of God.
A high school basketball star suddenly realizes that forgiveness is holier than social media posts labeling her former friend a backstabbing traitor. A wealthy woman at a dinner party can no longer laugh at a cruel joke but speaks up for the marginalized and the suffering. A man driving home from work pulls over beside an ambulance and, for the first time in twenty years, says a prayer for a stranger. Suddenly, a nurse with swollen fingers laces up a patient’s shoes, a teenager stays beside his friend when his dad starts drinking again, an old man unfolds extra chairs for strangers at a bible study, and a paramedic carries someone’s mother through the doorway standing between fear and hope.
The world may call these things small. But the Lord of all calls them love. Not the kind of love celebrated on billboards and displayed in the pages of bridal magazines, but the kind of love that contributes to a kingdom, God’s Kingdom. That never ends. It is small and personal, like the people who live in it. But it is powerful and eternal, like its Lord.
Why? Because Jesus is the Lord of the Harvest who calls into His Kingdom the littlest people whose lives have been opened to the largest of loves.
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Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out 1517’s resources on Matthew 10:34-42.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you in preaching Matthew 10:34-42.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
The Pastor’s Workshop-Check out all the great preaching resources from our friends at the Pastor’s Workshop!
