Today’s Gospel has a strange way
of saying it—it sounds kind of threatening doesn’t it? -- but that is the
bottom line: It is a hard time and place to be faithful, and remaining a
faithful follower of Jesus will be hard, even costly, because following Jesus
changes everything but in the Gospel today, Jesus also encourages us to “hang
in there.”
Jesus is telling his disciples
that life as one of his faithful followers will be at times complicated, even
difficult. And the ethical choices one might face—must face— as a follower of
Jesus, will at times put us at odds with other people, even the people closest
to us.
Today’s Gospel lesson is a
strange one, and not only for its tone.
Most of these sayings of Jesus that we hear today, appear in only two of
the Synoptic Gospels… here and in Luke … but they show up in different places
and in different contexts, which is very unusual because most of the time the outlines
of the first three Gospels track each other pretty consistently. Yeah, Matthew,
like Luke, builds out on the outline that Mark gave them, and sometimes each
Gospel has material that is unique to each book… but to have the same sayings
and similar teachings show up in different places and in different contexts
makes my ears perk up.
Besides, the Gospels show us all
the time that following Jesus can upend life as we know it, even in households.
New Testament Scholar Deirdre Goode points out that “household divisions can be
as a result of following Jesus and … this [might one of the] the cost(s) of
discipleship…. (for example), Zebedee is left in the boat when his sons follow
Jesus. Why this happens is left to us to figure out. It might be a decision to
advance the kingdom through a network of fishing people, and (older?) tax
collectors, given the short length of Jesus’ ministry in the Decapolis.”
We know that Peter has a wife,
and that Jesus healed his mother-in-law. Sometimes brothers and sisters joined
Jesus together, while others stayed at home.
Technicalities aside, both
Gospels give us the same two messages: “Following Jesus changes everything” and
“hang in there. Even when it’s hard, hang in there.”
We don’t live in a society or a
culture that actively arrests and persecutes Christians, but more and more we
live in a society that mis-understands and mis-characterizes the nature of
faith. And it is not only secular people who do the misunderstanding. Faithful
people can mangle things up, too.
Which, if you think about it, is
not terribly surprising since many in the culture lump all Christians (and all
faithful people for that matter) into one big, bin of generalities and
prejudices. Don’t believe me? Remember how, after 9/11, many in society lumped
all Muslims together as if they were all like the nine who hijacked and crashed
those aircraft? Some prominent Christian evangelists still do that. And if you
have ever had to preface your faith in Christ by saying something like “I am a
Christian, but I am not like those Christians…” then you know what I
mean.
The fact of the matter is that
being a faithful follower of Jesus sometimes cuts across the grain of how our
culture works. That happens when
following Jesus touches every part of our living and changes everything. And
that can be hard.
But hard as it is, it is the way
of blessing not only for his followers, but for the people they will encounter,
who will be healed, who will be affirmed and blessed, who will be reconciled to
God, each other, and find new community.
In the Gospel Jesus is about to send
his twelve very naïve and inexperienced disciples out to do what Jesus does.
And as he does, gives tells them to “hang in there,” which means persevering in
the face of resistance. And he doesn’t sugarcoat the dangers of the mission; he
gives it to them straight: “Some folks will welcome the Good News, others
won’t. Some will resist the message and the change that comes with it. And
you’ll be the target of their resistance.” Then, like a good pastor, he reminds
them that God is with them and is at once powerful –pronouncing judgments that
yield life or death – and faithful. In resting on the faithfulness of God, the
disciples have what they need in order to endure whatever fear, rejection or
violence they may encounter.
Jesus is also forming their character.
He is showing them who they truly are – children of God-- and what they are
capable of when their lives are aligned with God’s grace. They will become
agents of healing and reconciliation; they will learn to hold on to truth even
when the going gets tough – by remembering God’s character, God’s faithfulness,
God’s goodness. As God will hang in with them, they will learn to hang in with
each other, and even with themselves.
Hanging in there, as Jesus says,
did not come easily for Jesus’ followers. It took years of walking, listening,
and learning with Jesus, eating with him, watching him heal others, speaking
truth to power, listening to his teachings, and overhearing his prayers for
them to become the kind of men and women who were willing to lose their lives
as martyrs, testifying to God’s shalom, God’s peace, in a world still
enraptured by powers and principalities. Christian identity and character
formation are lifelong processes.
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