Jesus Causes Division

Jesus Causes Division
Matthew 10.32-42

I was once asked to go and preach at the school which I had attended as a boy. It was one of those annual events that many schools have where we were supposed to remember the great pioneers who had founded the school, developed it, and given it its character.

So that’s what I preached about. But I pointed out that something very odd was going on. Each one of the men and women we were honouring had been innovators. They had been the ones who dared to do things differently, to go in a new direction despite the people who wanted to keep things as they were. But we, by reading out a list of their names in a solemn voice, and by holding them up as our founding figures, were in danger of doing the opposite: of saying that we wanted everything to stay just the way it had always been. Do you honour the memory of an innovator by slavishly following what they did, or by daring to be different in your turn?...

Taken from Matthew for Everyone – by Tom Wright