Matthew 10:26-33
June 23, 2002—Contemporary Youth Worship
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
Did you notice last week that I had a haircut? After telling you that people said I had a big head, I thought that if I had my hair cut short, it may look smaller. What do you think?
Did you know that the average woman with a thick head of hair loses up to 100 hairs a day? And the losses are greater if your hair is long and becomes entangled in the brush. That’s the reason why I cut my hair shorter—to stop hair loss!
The average man, shaving every day, removes a beard about one sixty-fourth of an inch in length. This means that between the ages of 20 and 65, he removes 23 feet of beard!
And recently a German scientist discovered that a blonde woman’s head had more hair than a black-hair woman’s head. The fact is blonds have 140,000 hairs and you and I have about 110,000. No wonder blonds have more fun!
Dangerous Mission
Today’s Scripture from Matthew is like a baccalaureate speech given by Jesus before he sends his 12 disciples out on a dangerous mission. Jesus is saying that there’s nothing that the world can do to put down or destroy God’s loving and watchful care over the faithful. The world can forbid you from going out on missions and throw you into jail for witnessing to God. But Jesus said, “nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.”
The world can even kill those who serve the gospel, but the persecutors are not to be ultimately feared. They may have some temporary success over this bodily life, but they have no power over the soul. Only God has that power. Only God is to be feared.
When you go on this dangerous mission, Jesus comforts us by saying that God counts all the hair on our heads and does not fail to let one single sparrow fall. We are so much more valuable in the eyes of God than two sparrows! God knows every one of my 110,000 hairs.
Being Known
One of the greatest needs of human beings is to be known. I like the way Pastor Chris know all your names. I’m going to learn all your names too—so that I will know you. We want to be noticed, to be remembered, to know that we are important to someone.
Even before September 11th, there’s a new science called, “biometrics.” This is the process of identifying people by their unique physical characteristics. For years, we have used fingerprints, now DNA, and in Men in Black, there’s retina or iris eye prints. Now researchers have found that the human face has 80 so-called “landmarks”—including the bridge and the tip of the nose, the size of the mouth and eyes, and the cheekbones.
Investigators are beginning to be able to use this face recognition technology to compare your “landmark features” with a huge database of images at the rate of a million faces a second. Some critics saw biometrics as an invasion of privacy but since last year, airports are rushing to test and deploy this new technology to fight terrorism. You may be in the database!
So you might say, “Finally, somebody is noticing me!” But do you know what? God has been making positive identification of you for years.
Jesus reminds us that we are noticed. God has this face recognition technology, biometrics down cold. In fact, God invented biometrics! God will not forget us, promises Jesus, or fail to recognize us and acknowledge our service.
And Christ himself is involved in this process of recognizing us too. He said, “Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven.” In other words, if we recognize Jesus in public, then Jesus will recognize us in the presence of God.
Publicly Knowing Jesus
During the times when Jesus was preparing for the disciples to go on this mission, it was dangerous. They faced the Roman military and Jesus’ religious opponents. They found people who disagreed with them in their own homes. You can see why Jesus was challenging them to acknowledge him in public. It wasn’t easy.
Today we are fortunate and blessed to have religious freedom in the United States. We can practice our Christian faith openly and freely—coming to worship, going to Sunday school, carrying and reading our Bibles, wearing crosses around our necks, and saying grace before we eat out at MacDonald’s.
Even with all these freedoms, we need to continue to strive forward to know God more deeply and personally. Some of you have been coming to church regularly and faithfully. You may be planning to attend Youth Camp or College Retreat this summer. In all of these opportunities to know God, I pray that you will eventually believe in him as your Lord and Savior.
While we seek the presence of God in our lives, God knows us infinitely more accurately than any of the top-of-the-line face recognition technology. You see, when God spots you, it’s like all the bells in the airport screening machines are going off.
God Knows You
The Lord searches us and knows us, God sees you when you sit down and rise up; he discerns our thoughts from far away. The Lord searches out our paths and our places of rest and is acquainted with all our ways. As Psalm 139 says, God hems us in, behind and before, and lays his hand upon us.
God simply cannot keep his eyes off us—not because he is suspicious that we may be possible terrorists, but because he loves us. The constant surveillance of our Lord is based on steadfast love, not on suspicion. He follows us to the ends of the earth because he wants to protect us, not prosecute us.
There is nothing we can do to make God love us any more. There is nothing we can do to make God love us any less. In the eyes of God, he recognizes us 100 percent of the time. So we are not nameless people who wants to be noticed.
But that’s not all to this passage. Although it’s clear that we are known by God, it is not so clear that God is known by us. Would we recognize God if we saw him? When Jesus came to us, he took on 80 so-called landmarks on his human face too. He made his face publicly known. But are we able to recognize Jesus?
God-Noticing People
In our church, we notice God in the faces of our children. After 10:05 worship when I’m going upstairs to put away my robe and sermon, I meet all these little kids coming down the stairs to play in the playground. I know that some of them maybe here because it’s free child-care for 2 hours. I know that some of them may be coming because of the afternoon snack lunch we provide. But if only one of them stays in our Sunday school year after year and graduates to become like you in junior high or senior high, it’s all worth it. You can see God in their faces.
In the world, we notice God in people we normally don’t think of. There’s a man who occasionally comes to the church for a handout. At first, I believed his story that he was down and out and just need a few dollars. But when I told this story to some of our church members, they told me that I have been taken. I was just one of his newest victims. But you know, I have been “taken” by this same man several more times since. For some reason, I want to believe him—not for his most recent story but in him as a child of God. I notice God in this man.
In creation, we notice God in the rivers, lakes and oceans; out at Golden Gate Park and in our beautiful Bay. We notice God in the air, sky, atmosphere and stars above.
When we notice God in our church, in the world and in creation, we also cannot fail to notice how much we have neglected God by neglecting the needs of so many more children in our community or the many other marginalized, oppressed, and down and out members of our society or how we continue to pollute our rivers and streams and the air we breathe.
When we fail to notice all of God’s creation that he values, the sparrows and even us—all the hairs on our heads, we fail to notice God.
We have a church-noticing God; it’s time now to have a God-noticing church. We have a people-noticing God; it’s time now to have a God-noticing people.
To be a God-noticing people, while it’s dark and dangerous out there we hear what Jesus is telling us and we tell it in the light. We are not afraid when Jesus is whispering to us the Good News. We take the Good News and shout it from the housetops.
Don’t be afraid, our people-noticing God loves you and every strain of hair on your head, go and become a God-noticing people!
Let us pray.
Ever-watching God, in gratitude, we thank you for knowing who we are and how you care for each of us. We dedicate ourselves to go out into the world and to begin noticing the beauty and gifts of this world that you have created. Lead us to work for peace and righteousness in your name for we are not afraid. Amen.