Finding Our Life

Today’s Gospel reading from the Revised Common Lectionary, this text in Matthew, is a part of what we call the gospel, that is, “the good news,” but it is honestly, a difficult teaching. This is prophetic speech and then some.

These words of Jesus occur in his sending off speech to his disciples. Right before this text, Jesus gathers the twelve and commissions them to preach the message that the Kingdom of God is near. He has commissioned them to “heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and drive out the demons.” This is quite an order!

think we can imagine that the disciples were very excited about this ministry. They had already witnessed Jesus’ own healing and cleansing and preaching; indeed, they could see the nearness of the kingdom of God! And they were so excited to be a part of it!

Then Jesus begins to prepare them for ministry with some reminders about what they might face.
“I am sending you out,” he says,” “like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves.”

Jesus knew people, he knows us. In our scripture for today, we see Jesus reminding the disciples that the ministry of the church is a mixed bag: Being disciples is rapturous delight! It is being a vessel for God’s vision and call –renewal, renovation, healing, loving, and joy! Jesus teaching here doesn’t negate that reality, but it does temporize it a bit. Jesus here is teaching the disciples, and you and I, that being in the service of God, as the Spiritual Community sometimes involves, fear—and the grace to do the right thing despite that fear. It involves conflict—differing visions, differing passions—and the grace to go forward together as one body in Christ. It involves being willing to lose what one thinks one has as “the good life” in order to receive what God understands as the “true life.”

In this scripture, Jesus is care-fully reminding the disciples not to get too caught up in the moment of success, or in the moment of failure and rejection. “Do not be afraid of [governors, kings, arrests, fights,” Jesus says in verse 18. This stuff is going to happen. Human kind is what it is, so even within discipleship, there will be rough times. In the midst of rough times, there is reassurance: Do not be afraid of these things, says Jesus, “Even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth much.”

Do not be afraid of persecution, conflict, disagreements, rejection! It’s just going to happen. But when it happens in the sight of God, in the attempt to do the will of God, in the acknowledgment of the nearness of the kingdom of God and God’s vision, God’s power, God’s love, it will be o.k. “Do not suppose,” says Jesus, “that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For 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 person’s enemies will be the members of his own household.”

That’s not normally how we think of Jesus teaching and life. And yet, Jesus chooses these words (from Micah) to express his understanding that when faced with the good news, when faced with the existential choice that Jesus’ life teaching, death and resurrection requires, --to either follow or not no matter what, it is going to cause conflict.

You see, Jesus’ call requires a commitment of our very selves. It requires our lives. We don’t just believe without action. We don’t just hear without action. We are called to go out and “heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leper, welcome the outcast, and drive out demons.” These are actions. They require commitment.

Jesus knew that any time people make these kind of life-altering choices, things are going to change, sometimes drastically. Sometimes it means giving up the “life” that we have known, for a different life.

If we are living a life that is easy, doesn’t require much, doesn’t challenge us, doesn’t put us right on the edge of the kingdom of God, then we don’t have much of a life. Life in Christ is always on the edge –that’s why Jesus warns his disciples and us: “Be on your guard: you will be handed over to local councils who will flog you (although perhaps these days, not physically). On my account, you will be brought before governors and kings. . .brother will betray brother, and a father his child. . .when you are persecuted. Not if, but when, go on.

I think we don’t have to look very far to see this in action. Those who have clung to the Word of salvation in Christ, haven’t always has easy or what we might think of as “successful lives” by cultural standards. How could they? But they have had rich lives.

The nature of the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ is that it is incredibly re-assuring and comforting and hope giving. The nature of the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ is that it requires a life-altering commitment on our part. A commitment that separates one thing from another. It is, indeed, a sword that cuts, just like a decision cuts between two choices. Even in the midst of this we are not separated from the love of God. God is in it and through it and working all the time.

Let me give you an example. When I was sixteen, my mother and I had a disagreement about whether or not the good news of salvation included people who had a different orientation to marriage. She was so afraid and so hurt, that she told me that I was dead from her. We didn’t speak for several days.

I came to understand her viewpoint: She had made a commitment to her understanding of the good news and she had dreams and visions for me from the moment I was born, and I had just told her that I believed God had created me for something else, and that some of these dreams she would have to give up. So, in the midst of this disagreement, she lost the life that she had planned for me. Indeed, in some ways, I was dead from her. She was faced with a difficult choice: she had to choose, as I did, whether to understand the good news in a new way that embraced my being, or if she was going to let me go.

Likewise, I had to choose whether I was going to follow what I understood the good news to be at the expense of being “dead” to my mother. All because of the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ, my mother and I were having to decide what kind of lives we were called to live and the words “I have come to turn a daughter against her mother” were true in that moment.

It took a while. We slowly learned to understand each other. It was as if we were both gaining a new life. It took several years, in fact, for my mother and I to discover our new life together--and individually--that we had lost. But by the grace of God, we did.

My mom and I became very, very close. She once called the ACLU to defend me in college! That’s a change!

And I worked hard to honour her dreams and visions for me. We had found new life in God’s love, even through this hard time, and I think we both witnessed more strongly to the grace of God because of it.

This teaching in Matthew is real. In churches and in families, in work, and even in play. Jesus’ call requires a commitment of our very selves and this is going to cause some conflicts. And yet, Jesus is our Lord and Savior, who comes to set us free, to give us new life. If we give up our lives FOR THE SAKE OF THE GOOD NEWS OF SALVATION IN JESUS CHRIST, we will find new lives given by God and blessed by the Holy Spirit. Do not be afraid to commit your whole self, your work, your study, your money to God’s kingdom. Yet know also that doing so isn’t so easy (at least not as easy as the media and advertisers would like to make us think it is) there will be those –even in your own house, church, family, team, who will disagree with you. Try to remember that God is our master and we are to be obedient to God. Keep close to God and God’s grace and you will be blessed.

May God add God’s blessing to these words and thoughts.