Psalm 69
Romans 6:1-11
Matthew 10:24-39
It sounds to me like the followers of Jesus were being bullied.
By the time these Gospels were written down, much of what was remembered for the record was what was needed for the moment. Matthew’s Gospel is very concerned with fulfilling the prophets, with keeping the law - that’s why there is the great family tree at the beginning of it, and why Jesus rides on two animals, a donkey and a foal, when he enters Jerusalem. Matthew’s Gospel is written for an audience that knows what family division is like, that understands the conflict God can stir up in us when we get too comfortable with the status quo. And we know what that is like, too. Sure, we’re a family church, but we’ve also survived quite a lot of conflict in our history.
Consider that this last week was June 19th, or “Juneteenth,” as it is sometimes called. Did you know that Juneteenth is an actual holiday? Have you read the books, seen the movies, imagined yourself in that pre-emancipation proclamation sort of world, where Bible-thumping churches preached up and down all through the south that slavery was God’s way? If you haven’t seen “12 Years a Slave,” that might give you an idea, or at least the start of an idea. And when the President freed all slaves, back in the day before Facebook and Twitter, word was pretty slow at getting to the slaves that they didn’t belong to their masters any more. Those masters weren’t about to let their slaves know they were free if they could get away with it, so it took a long while before the word of freedom reached every slave. And when it did, it was June 19th. 1865. Two and a half years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Two and a half years, slaves were free and didn’t know it. Can you imagine the arguments over that? The back and forth about making a profit versus following the new law versus recognizing the common humanity between people of any skin color? I’d imagine some households, some fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, in-laws, probably split over how to decide the question of what to do.
Then there was the split only just over forty years ago among the Lutherans of the Missouri Synod. One of their seminaries, in St Louis, MO, split. Faculty, staff, and students walked out when teaching practices were called into question. Some now say it was the issue of ordaining women, some say the renewal of worship materials was the catalyst, some say the historical critical method of reading scripture was. In any case, young new professors, just beginning to build their careers and families, seminarians who depended on their denomination for room and board and tuition and books, all stepped out of their support system because it was counter to the Gospel as they understood it. They put their livelihoods and their futures on the line, some of them in direct opposition to the families that raised them, because their faith told them it was worth it.
I’ve only been to a couple of other parishes that use this particular line for church growth, but I have heard from some churches that being a Christian is easier than it looks. “Just give up one latte a week, or one manicure every so often,” they say, “and use that money for mission instead. It’s easy!”
But if it were that easy, why did Jesus die for this faith? If it were that easy, why were the disciples persecuted, thrown in prison, and killed by their own families? If it were that easy, what about the martyrs and saints? What about the Christians who risked life and limb to bring the news about Jesus to faraway places, or to bring Bibles where Scripture was outlawed?
Jesus knows it’s not going to be easy for his disciples, of any age and time, to follow him. Even if he were no more than a very wise Rabbi, to really live according to his teaching would undo the world as we know it. Indeed, in his time, it already was. Families were turning on each other to maintain their security, to protect themselves, to keep their jobs and homes and futures. Saving themselves by their neighbors’ standards... and losing themselves in the process.
See, we have these systems that tell us how to live. Slavery was one such system. The Roman occupation was another. Keep your head down and don’t cause trouble. That was how you survived in these systems. We’ve still got these systems. Because we’re living in them they’re a bit harder to name, though in my second job I see enough racism and classism one day a week to want to close my eyes and pretend there isn’t a quiet war going on.
I came not to bring peace, Jesus said, but a sword.
One of my very wise friends from college and seminary has said that the sword Jesus brings is one that cuts through our status quo. That the peace people wanted was to keep everything as they had gotten used to it, and to stay as far from conflict as possible. That’s known as ‘peace-keeping,’ but not ‘peace-making.’
Peace-making is the kind of surgery that requires a sword. It’s the kind of reconciliation work that comes through the pain of admitting when we are wrong, or uncertain, or hurting, or floundering. It’s a long and slow process of being remade into the people of God, time and again, failure after failure after getting back up again.
And we fight it. God knows we fight it. We’ve made ourselves a system that works for us, or at least promises it might some day if we work hard enough and shop at the right places and live in the right houses and buy the right cars and go to the right schools... We’ve built this system, and it’s taken a lot of work, and we’re tired from the work, and we want to rest, catch our breath, relax a bit
We’re in the season of the church now. The season of Pentecost, where the Spirit keeps stirring up trouble. First we’re hearing the Word of God in our own language, then the Spirit is moving us out into the world, and now... now God is holding us up. Holding us up and promising care so strong, so in the trenches with us, that God is close enough to count every hair on our heads. Probably even to keep track of the ones we’ve lost over time. God knows about what we hold on to in this world, the care we give to our families and our possessions, and God cares for us even more.
I’ve heard my classmates who are having kids say that they didn’t know it was humanly possible to love as deeply and strongly as they do now that they have seen their children born. New parents who take one look at that minutes-old infant and know they would move heaven and earth to keep that little one safe. And in this world we have made, where we would go so far as to kill a man for telling us to love one another, don’t you think the God and Father of us all knows that sort of overwhelming love for us in the middle of this whole mess?
That’s what I see happening here. In Matthew, in Jeremiah, even in Romans. There is a love and a justice more powerful than all of our failed attempts at making ourselves king of the mountain. There is a God who is so invested in our lives, in our integrity, in our wholeness and humanity, that he would step into it bodily and put his own life and limb at risk from what he very well knows will kill him. There is a God we have come to know in and through the person of Jesus, who is so in love with this world and every living piece of it, that each hair on your head is numbered. A God of so much love that prophets can not keep from speaking of the fire in their bones, that God’s voice of love and justice - which is love in action - will not be put down no matter how we try and stop the onslaught of God’s Spirit bringing justice and love and mercy and grace and hope and life which is bigger than the life we would scrape and scavenge to save for ourselves.
We care so much for our safety, our numbers, our survival. We can’t even see the whole picture, the connections, the possibilities given to us in our freedom. But God can. And God has sent us the Spirit to hold us and guide us through the conflicts and hard decisions and honest peace-making that is gonna hurt a bit first before it gets better. Like taking care of a Heroin addict trying to get clean, we’re in a spot of some work that needs to be done. And if you can’t think of any of that work in your own life, then you can teach and encourage those who have that work in theirs, prepare our kids and youth to stand up to bullies and protect the weak.
This is the season of the church. Of God’s church. We are in good, faithful, and capable hands. Thanks be to God.
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