Brad
Sullivan
Proper
7, Year A
June
25, 2017
Emmanuel,
Houston
Genesis
21:8-21
Romans
6:1b-11
Matthew
10:24-39
Come
On, Jesus! You’re Supposed to Be the
Prince of Peace!
Several times last week, someone would ask me what the
Gospel reading is for this Sunday, and every time I told them, their reaction
was, “Oh, yuck, I hate that passage.”
Honestly, that was my reaction too.
“I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her
mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” Come on, Jesus, you’re supposed to be the Prince
of Peace, not the Prince of Jerry Springer.
I could say that Jesus’ talking about family members being
against each other harkens back to Micah 7:6 - “For the son treats the father
with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law.” Obviously
that passage was in Jesus’ mind, but the context was that things had gotten so
bad in Israel, that Micah was describing how things were, families were against
each other, and children were treating their parents with contempt. It would be a little disingenuous, therefore, to
say, Jesus was just trying to remind people of scripture. He didn’t say children were treating their
parents badly. He was saying that
because of him, because of people believing in him and following his teachings,
parents and children were going to turn against each other. Those who didn’t follow him were going to
turn against those who did.
This really isn’t all that surprising to those who have read
the Gospel. Jesus was a polarizing
figure. On the one hand he healed people
and was a champion of the outcast and downtrodden. He had a lot of wonderful teachings which we
love to hear like “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of
Heaven.” On the other hand, Jesus wasn’t
just the easy listening station. There
was a lot of metal in him too, a good bit of raging against the machine of
religious moral superiority coupled with economic and social injustice.
Jesus did not mince words when denouncing religious leaders
who demanded religious perfection from
others and yet did not care for the vulnerable and needy. “Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites, for you devour widow’s houses and for the sake of appearances, say
long prayers.” (Matthew 23:14) Woe to
you, Scribes and Pharisees, because y’all are supposed to be using the money
given to you by faithful Jews to help the vulnerable. You’re supposed to be helping widows and
helping others who have a hard time getting by.
Instead, you’re demanding that they do their religious duty and pay up
in order to beautify the Temple. Do you
really think God will be pleased with a pretty building when his people are
suffering?
If you really want to please God, Jesus taught, then love
God and love people. Love people. Care for them. Help them mightily in their hours of
need. Take up your cross daily, and
follow me. Sacrifice your own safety and
security in order to help people who are vulnerable, needy, down and out,
rejected, and downtrodden. Love God and
love people…and don’t even pretend that you love God if you don’t love
people. There’s no way we can love God
through our religion, if we don’t love people through our daily lives and
actions.
Folks like the Scribes and Pharisees, who dotted the “I”s
and crossed the “T”s of their religious duties, didn’t like hearing that they
actually had to care about people. They
didn’t like hearing that they would actually have to sacrifice some of their
own comfort and security in order to help those less fortunate and (according
to their theology) less deserving people.
“I have what I have because I’m a good, God-fearing person, and I earned
it,” they thought. “Those others would
be better off than they are if they feared God like I do and worked
harder.”
That was pretty well what folks thought of the poor and the
down and out back then, and Jesus was having none of it. “No guys, the kingdom of God belongs to them
too, and the kingdom of God is actualized in this world when you who have
enough and more than enough, do all in your power to make sure that those who
don’t have enough are cared for as well.”
Folks didn’t like hearing that. In
fact, folks killed Jesus for saying things like that.
Jesus was a polarizing figure. Folks who really engaged with Jesus either
loved him or were pretty turned off and scandalized by him. He claimed to be God. He claimed to be the way and the truth and
the life. He upset people’s comfortable
focus on themselves, and forced them to take a hard look at others and their
needs, and he taught folks to take a hard look at their own lives and see how
their lives might be harming others.
Truly taking Jesus seriously today, he is still a polarizing
figure. You can love him, you can be
pretty turned off by him, or you can assume he really didn’t mean or say much
of what he said.
When we do take seriously living as he taught, believing in
Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life, then some people are going to turn
against us. Heck, even grace is going to
turn people against us. Grace is great
for those whom we feel deserve it, but what about when we follow in Jesus’ way
and offer grace for those who don’t really deserve it? That’s going to anger some people, and Jesus
would have us do so anyway, rather than take the easy road and get on the
bandwagon of self-righteousness and condemnation.
“Take up your cross daily,” Jesus said, “and follow me.” Let parts of you die, daily, in order to
offer grace to others. Let some of your
needs die in order to help provide for the needs of others. Be willing to accept the deaths of
relationships that will come when people turn against you for truly taking
Jesus seriously.
A friend and colleague of Kristin’s was at a fundraiser and
raffle to support a girls’ softball team in his community. One of the raffle items was an AR-15, and
this man really doesn’t like guns. So,
he spent thousands of dollars on raffle tickets, won the rifle, and had a
friend help him turn it into gardening tools.
Swords into plowshares. He took
an instrument of death, and turned it into instruments of life, and he has received
death threats for having done so. He’s
lost friends, received thousands of hateful messages, and he’d do it again,
seeking life, rather than the possibility of death.
Jesus’ teaching that he has come to set family members
against each other is still not my favorite passage to hear. It’s not exactly the feel good film of the
summer. The reality of suffering
ridicule, of straining and even losing relationships over taking Jesus
seriously is, however, the way of Jesus.
What Jesus taught in our Gospel passage today is the way of him who is
the truth and the life. Do we dare take
Jesus seriously? Imagine the world if we
do. Imagine the changes in the world
when we and other Christians acknowledge and share our faith in Jesus not
through religious moral superiority while ignoring the problems of others, but
rather through living and sharing our faith in Jesus by daily sacrificing
greatly for the sake of others. That’s life following the way of Jesus, life in
the Jesus movement.
Thinking only about myself, hearing today’s passage leaves
me not wanting to hear Jesus’ words. Thinking
about others, however, I want to hear more of today’s passage. Thinking about others, I find hope and joy in
today’s passage. We get to be part of
the Jesus movement in which we sacrifice some of our own safety and security
for the sake of others, to provide safety and security to those who don’t have
enough. We get to accept grace for all
those times when we don’t follow Jesus all that well, and we get to offer grace
to those who don’t deserve it. We get to
offer grace even to those who would turn against us for taking Jesus seriously
and following him as the way, the truth, and the life. We get to be part of the Jesus movement,
knowing that there will be consequences, and choosing for the love of others, to
follow Jesus.
