The First Steps: Read: Matthew 10
Focus Verse: “And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” Matthew 10:30-31
Meditation: Indestructible Worth
At my ordination, my pastor from internship preached a sermon I will never forget. He had with him a perfect baseball card and a crisp one hundred dollar bill. He held up the baseball card and told us that it was worth $100. He held up the hundred dollar bill and said the same thing. This is worth $100.00. The card could be traded in for $100.00 worth of merchandise. The cash could too.
“But here is the difference,” he said as he crumpled up the $100. “This bill is still worth $100. Tattered and even torn, this cash still retains its worth. However...if I were to do the same to this baseball card, it would become worthless! No one would want it torn up and dirty!”
Jesus reminds us that we are God’s currency with indestructible worth in today’s reading from Matthew. On first glance, this reading sounds rather depressing. It’s the exact opposite of the “prosperity gospel” preached by so many today. Instead of promising wealth, health, and happiness, as Joel Osteem and others might want to preach, Christ preaches about suffering, hardship, persecution, and stress.
“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves...”(10:16)
“Be on your guard against men...”(10:17)
“Brother will betray brother to death and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. All men will hate you because of me...” (10:21-22a)
“If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household!” (10:26)
“I have not come to bring peace, but a sword...”
“I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law–a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.”(10:35-36)
Nowhere in any of these texts does Christ promise prosperity and wealth and happiness. He doesn’t even promise that we’ll live happy lives with our family surrounding us or that we’ll live a long time. What Christ does promise, if we put ourselves in the apostles’ shoes, is a hard life. A life of pain and suffering. A life where what we believe may separate us from the people closest to us. A life where everyone will NOT love us, but will hate us and arrest us and harm us.
And yet, among all these depressing promises, Christ tells us something profound: “So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.”(10:31)
It’s almost like the bright light of dawn after a hard night of stormy weather. They are words of hope. Words that touch us deep inside. Words that speak to our hearts.
These words remind us that our worth to God has nothing to do with what others think of us. Even our families! It has nothing to do with how much money we do or do not make, how well we’ve taken care of our bodies, or how well-adjusted our families are. Our worth to God has nothing to do with how little we’ve been scarred, how few mistakes we’ve made in our lives, or how morally perfect we’ve kept ourselves.
Our worth is dependant upon Christ. Just like the $100.00 bill which retains its worth no matter how crinkled up, tattered, and torn it is, we too are worth “...more than many sparrows’ no matter how torn up, abused, betrayed, worried, poor, arrested, beaten, afraid, or lost we may be. In fact, it seems, Christ seems to relish in our scar marks. Maybe because Christ himself emerges from this world beaten and scarred and through His scars, in his hands and feet, his side and his heart, we are saved.
“You are worth more than many sparrows!” May that assurance comfort and sustain you when life is at its best and at its worse. When people are praising you and when they’re criticizing you. When your family is together and when they’ve been torn apart. You are worth Christ’s blood on the cross. And He loves you...no matter what! Amen!
Questions to Ponder...
1) If you had a herd of disciples that you were sending out, what would be your “pep-talk”? Is Jesus words here “peppy” enough? Or are they just a tad depressing?
2) Think of other things that are worth something no matter what condition they’re in. Where does something like that become worthless?
3) What persecutions have you faced for the sake of Christ? Have they been inside the church mostly or outside the church?
A Prayer to Pray...Lord Jesus, we find ourselves among your apostles as you send them out, two by two, into the world of lions and wolves. Make us wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Give us eyes to see that, even when live is at its worse, we are still worth the world to you. In Your Holy Name we pray. Amen.
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