Father's Day Sermon  - Matthew 10:28-31

Our Gospel reading today contains some of the most comforting words Jesus ever spoke, and at first reading some of the most troubling.

Three times in the wider passage Jesus says: "Do not be afraid."  Yet in the middle of those reassurances comes the difficult verse: In Verse 28 "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell." The implication seems to suggest we should fear God who can destroy both body and soul in hell.  What are we to make of that we might ask?

But it is important to begin by noticing the larger context. The dominant note of this passage is not fear but trust. Jesus speaks of sparrows reminding us us that not one of them falls to the ground apart from God's care. He says that even the hairs of our head are numbered, suggesting a love so great that every hair on our heads is treasured.  And then Jesus says again: "So do not be afraid”. 

The God Jesus speaks of here is not a distant ruler watching from afar. He speaks of God as a loving Father whose care extends to every person and to every corner of creation. And perhaps that is especially appropriate on Father's Day.

Not everyone has had an easy relationship with their earthly father. Yet at its best, fatherhood points beyond itself to a deeper reality: the steady, infinite love of the Divine that holds, protects, guides and encourages life.

A good father does not seek to possess his children. He does not try to make them smaller so that he can remain bigger. Rather, he delights in helping them become fully themselves. He encourages them to discover their gifts, to find their own voice, and to grow into the people they were created to be, fulfilling their true inner potential.

Perhaps that is one reason why Jesus so often speaks of God as Father. The Divine Father is not a rival or a threat to our human flourishing but its source. The desire of the Infinite Mind and the Great Heart is not to diminish us but to awaken us to our deepest identity. The spiritual journey is not about becoming something we are not; it is about becoming what we truly are.

From a spiritual perspective, our deepest self is rooted in God. Beneath all the labels we carry, beneath our successes and failures, beneath our fears and ambitions, there is a deeper life that comes from God and remains held within God.  Jesus invites us to trust that behind the universe there is such a love.

But what then do we make of verse 28?

Many Christians have understood it as a warning about eternal punishment. Others have understood it differently – as a reminder that we cannot live with impunity,  that God’s purifying and corrective love can be experienced as painful, even if it’s ultimate intention is loving. Yet whatever interpretation we take, we should notice that Jesus contrasts what human beings can do with what belongs only to God.

Human beings can harm the body. Human beings can threaten, intimidate and even kill.  But they cannot touch the deepest reality of who we are.

From a deeper spiritual perspective, the soul represents the deeper dimension of our being, while our spirit participates in the life of God itself.

The great spiritual traditions remind us that beneath our differences there is a deeper unity. As St Paul says elsewhere, "In him we live and move and have our being." The perennial wisdom found in many traditions suggests that God is not merely one being among other beings, but the One Life in which all life participates, the great Ocean of Being from which every wave arises, the deeper consciousness in which all things exist. God is therefore the underlying intelligence and unity that binds all creation together.

And if that is true, then love is not merely a moral command. Love is the recognition of the underlying Unity-of-Reality itself... That all of us are connected to God/The Divine at the deepest  level of spirit and therefore connected also to one-another, even those we would choose not to associate with. 

Love is therefore a seeing through the illusion of separateness and a perception of that deeper inner connectedness. Love is recognising that the life in me and the life in you arise from the same divine source. Love is awakening to our common participation in the One and that therefore, you are my other-self. 

Perhaps then we can hear Jesus' warning in a fresh way.

What harms or destroys the soul?

Not God acting out of vengeful anger, but living in opposition to, out of harmony with, reality itself.

Whenever we live from hatred, greed, selfishness, violence or indifference, we move against the grain of the universe. We move against the underlying unity of all things.

And when we do that, suffering follows. We suffer because we are acting contrary to the truth of our own being.

Perhaps this helps us understand why those who have witnessed or participated in violence and warfare are often left carrying deep psychological and spiritual wounds. Beyond the physical destruction, there can be what some have called a moral or spiritual injury. Something within us recognises that life is sacred, that we belong to one another, and that the harming of another human being leaves scars not only on the victim but also on the one who inflicts the harm.

At the deepest level of soul and spirit, we recognise our connectedness. We know, even if only dimly, that I cannot wound you without also wounding something within myself. I cannot diminish your humanity without diminishing my own.

Perhaps this is part of what Jesus is pointing toward. The real danger is not merely what can happen to the body. The deeper danger is becoming separated from love, from compassion, from the truth of who we are in God.

And so we experience something of what Jesus calls Gehenna. On the one hand it is the suffering that comes from living out of alignment with the Oneness of Reality.   Gehenna, often translated as Hell in English was the name for the fire in the Valley of Hinom outside of Jerusalem where the rubbish from the city was taken to be burned. Gehenna is metaphorically the fire that burns away the rubbish of our lives —not necessarily as a place in the next world, but as the painful consequence of separation in this life and the purification that brings us back in alignment with the truth of reality. 

Whenever we forget our connection to God, to one another and to creation, suffering follows. The fire is real, but perhaps its deepest purpose is not destruction for its own sake. It is the burning away of the illusion of the false separate self, the ego's insistence that it stands alone, the mistaken belief that we are separate from the Love that gave us birth.

Yet even here we should be careful. If this passage is read on its own, we might imagine that separation has the final word. But the wider witness of Scripture points us in another direction. St Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:22 "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive."

The Christian story begins with humanity's original unity with God. It then speaks of the experience of separation, but in the end the Christian story it moves toward reconciliation. It begins in original goodness which is then lost in fear and estrangement, but ends again in love and communion.

And so the deepest truth about us is not that we are lost. The deepest truth is that we belong. We belong to one another. We belong to creation. But above all, we belong to the One from whom we came and in whom we live and move and have our being. There is a love that brought us into being, and there is a love that will eventually bring us home again, no matter how far we have strayed in between. 

And perhaps that is what the best fathers teach us. They teach us that we do not need to live in fear. 
They teach us that mistakes, however painful and disruptive, are not the end of the story. They teach us that courage grows when we know we are loved. They teach us that we are part of something larger than ourselves.

And the Divine Father, revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus, teaches the same truth on an infinite scale: that beneath all our fears, beneath all our struggles, beneath all our apparent separateness, we are held within a Love that will never let us go.  As Huston Smith once said:  “You cannot fall out of the Infinite” for God the Infinite contains and embraces everything and everyone.  

And so perhaps the invitation of this Gospel is not to be frightened of God, but to trust God deeply enough to live truthfully and courageously.

Do not be afraid of those who can only touch the surface of life. Do not be afraid of loss, rejection, or even death itself.  Rather, awaken to the deeper reality that lies beneath all things. Trust the Love that holds the sparrows – even when they fall to the ground. Trust the love that knows your name. Trust the love from which nothing can ultimately separate us, and then live from that love.

For whenever we do, we discover that the kingdom of God is not far away. It is already within us and among us.  As we read in the The Gospel of Thomas – a book of profound sayings was never included in the Bible: 

Vs 113 - His disciples said to him: On what day will the kingdom come? Jesus said: It will not come while people watch for it; they will not say: Look, here it is, or: Look, there it is; but the Kingdom of the Father is spread out over the earth, and people  do not see it. 

May we be given eyes to see it. Amen.

The Life-Saving Station – Sheep without a Shepherd
Matthew 9:35-10:8-23 & Romans 5:1-8​

Many years ago, so the story goes, there was a small life-saving station on a dangerous stretch of coastline. The building was little more than a hut. The equipment was basic. The volunteers were ordinary people. But they were devoted to one thing: rescuing those whose boats had been wrecked on the rocks offshore. Whenever a distress call came, they would launch their boats and head out into the storm. Many lives were saved.

As time passed, the station became well known. People admired the work that was being done. Donations increased. The hut became a larger building. Comfortable furniture was added. The facilities improved. Before long, members began using the station as a social gathering place. It became a pleasant club.

Meanwhile, shipwrecks still occurred. Occasionally survivors were brought in, cold, wet, frightened, and exhausted. But some members felt uncomfortable. These rescued people made the place untidy. They got in the way.

Eventually a debate arose. Some wanted the station to continue its life-saving mission. Others argued that rescue work was messy and distracting from the real purpose of the organisation.

A separate life-saving station was established down the coast. But over time the same thing happened. And so another was established, and then another.

The story concludes by observing that if you visit that coastline today, you will find many exclusive clubs, but very few life-saving stations.

It is a powerful parable because it asks a searching question of every church: Are we a club, or are we a life-saving station?

That question brings us directly to today's Gospel reading. Matthew tells us that Jesus travelled through the towns and villages, teaching, proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom, and healing. Jesus is involved in the work of life-saving — rescuing people from the holes they find themselves in, giving them new purpose and meaning. Then something significant happens. The mission of Jesus becomes the mission of the disciples.

This is one of the great turning points in Matthew's Gospel. Up to now the disciples have been watching, listening, learning and following. Now Jesus invites them to become participants. The work that he has been doing becomes their work. His mission becomes their mission.

But before he sends them out, Matthew tells us something important.

"When he saw the crowds, Jesus had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd."

Everything that follows grows out of that compassion. Jesus sees people. He sees their confusion. He sees their burdens. He sees their loneliness. He sees their longing. And he is moved with compassion for them.

The phrase "sheep without a shepherd" echoes the Hebrew Scriptures, where the people suffer because their leaders have failed to care for them properly. Matthew wants us to understand that Jesus looks upon the people and sees lives that are spiritually adrift. The structures are there. The institutions are there. The traditions are there. But something vital is missing. Life-giving leadership. Compassionate guidance. A vision capable of nourishing the human spirit.

The people are hungry, and Jesus sees it and is moved with compassion from the depth of his being.

Now, a great deal of Christianity has fallen into the habit of dividing the world into the Good Guys and the Bad Guys. Religion then becomes a matter of social respectability. We are the good people. We are the faithful people. We are the ones who have things sorted out.

Yet according to St Paul, that is not how God sees the world.

In last week's Gospel reading Jesus said, "I came not for the righteous but for sinners." And in today's Epistle reading Paul writes: "While we were yet sinners Christ died for us."

Notice what Paul does not say. He does not say Christ died for the good guys. He does not say Christ died for the respectable, the religious, or the morally successful. He says Christ died for sinners. Christ died for those who fall short. Christ died for those who fail. Christ died for those whom others may dismiss as beyond redemption.

Indeed, if we follow Paul's argument in Romans, we discover something deeply unsettling and deeply liberating. According to Paul, here are ultimately no good guys. There are simply various kinds of sinners whom God loves and for whom Christ died.

Some sin is obvious. Some is hidden. Some forms of brokenness are condemned by society. Others are often admired. Pride can wear a very respectable face. Self-righteousness can sit comfortably in a church pew. Greed can hide behind success. Indifference can masquerade as virtue.

According to Paul, all of us fall short of the Divine Love in one way or another – that Love we see shining from the face and life of Jesus.  The question therefore is not: "Am I one of the good guys?"

The real question is: "What is my own besetting sin? Where do I still fall short of Love?"

And alongside that comes another question: "Can I see others, even in their weakness and failure, as people loved by God? Can I see them – using St Paul’s language - as someone for whom Christ died?"

Perhaps that is what Jesus sees when he looks upon the crowds with compassion. He does not see good people and bad people. He sees human beings. Wounded people. Lost people. Searching people. Sheep without a shepherd. Various kinds of sinners – some obvious, others respectable and socially acceptable. 

And if a church is to be a true life-saving station, it must learn to see people in the same way.

For the moment we begin thinking of ourselves as the good guys, we cease to be rescuers and become a club. But when we recognise that we too live by and infinite grace, our hearts become open to others. We become less judgemental and more compassionate. Less interested in defending boundaries and more interested in helping people find healing, hope and belonging.

And that brings us back to the question: What kind of life-saving station are we called to be?

As Non-Subscribing Presbyterians, we stand within a tradition that has long valued freedom of conscience, openness of mind and generosity of spirit. We trust people to think, to question, to seek and to grow. We recognise that faith is a journey and that no creed or doctrine can ever fully contain the mystery of God. That may be one of the most important gifts we have to offer in our time.

For there are many lost sheep in Banbridge and Dromore. Some have been wounded by religion. Some carry questions they have never felt free to ask. Some sense there is a spiritual dimension to life but cannot connect with the forms in which faith has often been presented. Some struggle with loneliness, grief, anxiety, or simply a feeling that something important is missing.

Perhaps our calling is to create a place where questions are welcomed rather than feared. A place where people can seek truth without coercion. A place where compassion matters more than conformity. A place where people can be their real selves and need not pretend to be something they are not. A place where they can discover friendship, meaning, purpose, belonging and hope. A place where they can encounter something of the welcoming spirit of Christ.

Because the deepest need in our society may not be for more certainty. It may be for more wisdom.

Certainty insists that the answers are already known and must never be questioned. Wisdom on the other hand invites humility. Wisdom keeps learning. Wisdom remains open to growth, to fresh insight, and to the possibility that the mystery of God is always greater than our understanding.

Those are gifts that Non-Subscribing Presbyterians can offer.

And so we are left with a question:  Will we simply become a club?  Or do we have a deeper purpose and mission for the people in this area?

Will we be a place of judgement or a place of grace? A place of exclusion or a place of welcome? A place where people are expected to have everything sorted out, or a place where ordinary human beings can come with their questions, their struggles and their hopes, and discover that they are loved by God?

For that is how Jesus saw the crowds: not as good people or bad people, but as sheep without a shepherd. And it is still through such compassion that Christ continues his work in the world today.

Amen.

Who Belongs in the Kingdom?  Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26   

Our Gospel reading today is made up of at least three separate encounters with Jesus. First, Jesus calls Matthew the tax collector.  Second, he shares a meal with tax collectors and sinners, provoking criticism from the Pharisees. Third, while on his way to help the dying daughter of a synagogue leader, he encounters a woman who has suffered from a flow of blood for twelve years.

At first glance these stories may seem quite different. Yet Matthew has deliberately placed them together, inviting us to see a common thread running through them. In each case, the focus falls on people who occupy the margins of society. Matthew is a tax collector, a collaborator with Rome, viewed by many as morally compromised and religiously suspect.

The "tax collectors and sinners" gathered around the table are people whose lives place them outside the boundaries of respectable society.  The woman suffering from haemorrhages is doubly marginalised. As a woman in a patriarchal society she possesses little status, and her condition would have rendered her perpetually ritually unclean, excluding her from much of normal social and religious life.

Even the synagogue leader who approaches Jesus is, despite his position, utterly powerless before the reality of his daughter's impending death. They are different people in different circumstances and yet all share a common experience of vulnerability. Each stands in a place where the usual structures of status, respectability, power, or religious certainty offer little help. And it is precisely here that Jesus is found.

This should not surprise us, it is one of Matthew's great themes.

At the beginning of the Gospel, Jesus is called Immanuel, God with us. The question throughout Matthew's narrative is: What does "God with us" actually look like?

The answer is found repeatedly in scenes like these. God with us looks like Jesus sitting at a table with people others avoid. God with us looks like Jesus stopping for a woman everyone else overlooks. God with us looks like Jesus responding to those whom society regards as insignificant, unclean, or beyond hope.

One of the most striking features of this passage is the call of Matthew himself. Jesus sees Matthew sitting at the tax booth and simply says, "Follow me." Nothing more. No examination of his beliefs, no demand that he first put his life in order. No requirement to prove his worthiness. Just an invitation. And Matthew responds as he rises and follows.

For Matthew, discipleship is one of the central themes of the Gospel. Yet discipleship always begins not with human achievement but with divine initiative. Jesus calls first, then the response follows. This pattern appears throughout the Gospel: fishermen, tax collectors, women, foreigners, children, the poor, the sick - all are invited into God's kingdom. The kingdom is not built upon human qualifications. It is built upon grace.

This explains the meal that follows. When the Pharisees ask why Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus responds with words that reveal the very heart of Matthew's Gospel "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." The quotation comes from the prophet Hosea, but Matthew gives it special prominence. In fact, Matthew alone among the Gospel writers records Jesus using this text twice. This is significant.

For Matthew, true religion is not primarily about ritual correctness, status, or boundary-keeping. It is about mercy. Not that worship and devotion are unimportant. Matthew values both deeply. But when religious observance becomes disconnected from compassion, something essential has been lost.

And so while the Pharisees see categories, Jesus sees people. While the Pharisees see who belongs and who does not, Jesus sees human beings loved by God. While the Pharisees focus on religious purity Jesus focuses on healing.

The challenge of this passage is not confined to the first century. Every generation creates its own categories of insiders and outsiders. Every society develops subtle ways of deciding who matters and who does not. But Jesus in the Gospel stories continually invites us to examine our own assumptions.

Who are the people we instinctively avoid? Whose stories do we dismiss? Whom do we regard as beyond redemption?  The answer to those questions often reveals where we most need to hear Jesus' words: "I desire mercy, not sacrifice."

The story of the woman with the haemorrhage deepens this theme even further. For twelve years she has lived with her condition, meaning twelve years of exclusion, twelve years of disappointment, twelve years of being defined by a problem she cannot solve. Yet in the story she approaches Jesus with remarkable courage (or is it desperation. Or does desperation call forth courage within us?).

Matthew's account of the story is much shorter than Mark's, but he preserves the heart of the story. She reaches out in faith and touches the fringe of his cloak. And what follows is remarkable. Jesus does not simply heal her, he addresses her as "daughter." In a Gospel where names and titles carry great significance, this is significant. Her illness has isolated her, but  Jesus restores not only her health but her dignity and belonging. The healing is not only physical, but it is also relational and spiritual. She is no longer defined by her condition. In the eyes of Jesus she is recognised as a beloved child of God. And even more than that, Jesus affirms her faith – that she has been a participant in her own healing. Jesus has inspired her to find a faith and a strength that she didn’t know she had within her. 

There is profound symbolic significance here  Within Matthew's world, she represents all those excluded by social, religious, or cultural boundaries. Within our world, she continues to represent all those who feel unseen, unheard, or forgotten. This Gospel story proclaims that no one is invisible to God. No wound is beyond God's compassion. No human being is reducible to a diagnosis, a failure, a label, or a social category.

We should not overlook the third person at the centre of this story: the ruler's daughter. Ironically, although her father occupies a position of status and influence, the girl herself possesses very little status in the eyes of her society. She is both a child and a female, belonging to two groups that held little social power in the ancient world. And now she has died, placing her beyond the reach of all human help.

Just as the woman's condition rendered her ritually unclean, so too contact with a dead body brought ritual impurity. Yet once again Jesus moves towards what others would avoid. He enters the house, takes the girl by the hand, and she rises.

Matthew's account is strikingly brief, but its symbolism is powerful. Throughout the Gospel, Jesus is continually raising people into a new way of life. Tax collectors leave their old identities behind and become disciples. Sinners discover that they are welcomed rather than rejected. The excluded are restored to community, the fearful find courage, the lost are found.

The raising of the girl becomes a vivid picture of what happens whenever a person encounters the life-giving presence of Christ. Something that seemed lifeless comes alive. Something that seemed finished receives a new beginning. Something that appeared beyond hope is touched by grace and transformed.

In Matthew's world, this story points towards the renewing power of God's kingdom – the transforming Presence of the Divine at the heart of life that we are all invited to tap into. In our world, it continues to speak wherever people feel trapped by despair, failure, grief, addiction, loneliness, cynicism, or fear. The Gospel's claim is that God's life-giving power is always greater than the forces that diminish life.

The girl's rising therefore becomes more than a miracle story. It becomes a sign of resurrection in its broadest sense: God's ability to awaken new life where none seems possible.

Seen together, Matthew the tax collector, the woman with the haemorrhage, and the young girl each represent different forms of human brokenness and exclusion. One is morally suspect. One is ritually excluded. One is overcome by death itself. Yet all three are met by the same compassion, the same mercy, and the same life-giving presence.

Nothing - not failure, not exclusion, not suffering, not even death - lies beyond the reach of the Kingdom that Jesus proclaims.

Taken together, these stories offer a vision of what discipleship looks like  To follow Jesus is not simply to believe certain things about him. It is to learn to see as he sees: to notice those whom others overlook, to value those whom society devalues, to practise mercy rather than judgement, to move towards suffering rather than away from it, to recognise the image of God in every person.

And perhaps that is the deepest thread connecting all three encounters. Each person is encountered by a love that sees beyond labels. A love that sees beyond social status. A love that sees beyond failure. A love that sees the possibility of transformation where others see only limitation.

In the end, that is what Matthew's Gospel is about. The Kingdom of Heaven is not reserved for the worthy It is a community of grace where the excluded are welcomed, the wounded are healed, the lost are found, and ordinary people are called to become disciples.

This is why these stories remain so powerful. Matthew the tax collector symbolises those who believe their past disqualifies them. The woman symbolises those who carry wounds, burdens, or exclusions that seem to define their lives. The young girl symbolises all those situations that appear beyond hope, beyond healing, beyond renewal. To each of them, Jesus offers the same thing: presence, mercy, healing, and invitation.

In the end, that is what Matthew's Gospel is about. The Kingdom of Heaven is not reserved for the worthy, it is a community of grace where the excluded are welcomed, the wounded are healed, the lost are found, and ordinary people are called to become disciples.

And the invitation that came to Matthew beside his tax booth is extended to us again: "Follow me." What might it mean for us to respond to that invitation today?