Christ the Center of Conflict—Matthew 10:34-11:1

With these verses, Jesus brings to a close his instructions to the twelve disciples as he sends them out to proclaim the kingdom of heaven. He continues to hammer home his main theme: that his people must be willing to face suffering, and must trust that God will reward them in the end. He promises conflict for the whole earth, eternal life for his faithful followers, and his own presence to those who receive his ambassadors.

"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth," Jesus says. "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household." Isaiah the prophet called Jesus the "Prince of Peace," but Jesus' arrival did not bring about an immediate era of peace. Quite the opposite -- the coming of Jesus introduced a new element of conflict into the world. Conflict is nothing new -- ever since sin entered the world, pride, greed, fear, and desire have driven people to strife and violence. But Jesus brings a new cause of discord. He sent his disciples to Israel to tell people to repent and follow Jesus. Some would do so, and others wouldn't. And their relationship with each other would be redefined. Suddenly, a man as his father would not relate to each other, first and foremost, as father and son: they would relate as a follower of Jesus and a rejecter of Jesus. A woman and her mother would no longer relate to each other, primarily, as mother and daughter, but as believer and unbeliever. As for mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law...well, my wife and my mother get along well with each other. Often they communicate more with each other than they do with me, and I'm the last to learn what's going on in the family. Ideally, a mother-in-law becomes like a second mother to her daughter-in-law, and vice versa. But Jesus interferes with this too. He asks to be first in everyone's life, and this becomes a cause of strife between those who can't live with Jesus and those who can't live without him.

He goes on: "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." Jesus sets a high bar for admission to his kingdom. You have to love him more than your father or mother, more than your son or daughter, more than your husband or wife, certainly more than your boyfriend or girlfriend, or your house or your job. In fact you have to love him more than your own life. Ironically, though, it is not the one who loves his life more than he loves Jesus who gets to keep his life. It is the one who loves Jesus so much that he is willing to give up his life, who gets to live forever. And the same is often true in the other relationships. Whoever loves father, mother, son, daughter, or spouse more than Jesus will eventually lose father, mother, son, daughter and spouse forever. But whoever loves Jesus may possibly share eternity with some of those other loved ones, and certainly with new brothers and sisters in the church.

At the end of his instructions, Jesus turns his attention from the disciples themselves to the people they will meet along the way. "Whoever receives you receives me," he says, "and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and the one who receives a righteous person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person's reward. And 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." Why does Jesus spend his time talking about these rewards offered, not to the disciples themselves, but to those who welcome them? I think there are two reasons.

First, Jesus wants his disciples to feel the weight of their mission. In the message they carry, they are bringing nothing less than God himself into the streets and homes and lives of the people to whom they are sent. That is their mission, and that is the reason it is worth dying for: because they are taking God to people who need God. And, as the church, we should always remember this. When we send out a missionary, it is so that people may know God. When we plan a church, it is so that people may have God. When an evangelist goes onto the streets, or onto a college campus, or into a hospital or a prison to share the gospel, those who welcome him and his message have welcomed God into their lives. So it's worth it to face all kinds of trouble on this mission.

The second reason, I think, that Jesus says these things, is not to encourage the disciples but actually to encourage those who may show them hospitality or help them along the way. Whether anyone else was listening at the time, I don't know, but certainly the disciples would pass on his words to others -- in fact, Matthew passes them on to us. And the lesson for us is that those who support Christ's ambassadors will be rewarded in the same way as those ambassadors. Christians often allude to this passage by talking about giving a cup of cold water to people outside the church, and that is a Christlike thing to do, but this passage actually refers to giving a cup of cold water to the disciples themselves. The point is that even those of us who aren't prophets or apostles will be rewarded like the prophets and apostles, if we will play the part that Christ has assigned us. And that ought to encourage us to support our pastors and evangelists and do everything we can to bring the word of God to the lost sheep of the world.

One last question: when Jesus told his disciples that they must take up their cross and follow him, what did they think he meant? Probably they knew that Romans might make a condemned criminal carry his own cross. Almost certainly they thought that Jesus was speaking only metaphorically. And in a sense he was -- not all of his disciples must die on a cross. But he did. He asks us to love him more than life itself, and he loved us more than life itself. He did not bring peace to the earth, but conflict, and he himself entered the very center of that conflict and took the brunt of it.

But now, he has risen from the dead. And the conflict goes on, but it will not go on forever. The day will come when Christ returns, and the Prince of Peace will bring peace at last, perfect peace, everlasting peace. And if we will be willing to lose our lives now, we will find them then.

Pastor Nate Jeffries