Third Sunday after Trinity
Listen to audio version:
Readings: Romans 6: 1b-11 and Matthew 10: 24-39
“I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” An uncomfortable word from Jesus. It features in this book entitled ‘The Hard Sayings of Jesus’ by F.F. Bruce. The prince of peace comes with a sword. Jesus then goes on to say that he will set family members against each other.
Is Jesus encouraging the use of weapons? After the Last Supper, when it was clear that Jesus and the disciples were in great danger, he said to them ‘The one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one.’ But when Peter threatened violence to those who had come to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Lord firmly told him to put his sword back in its sheath. So there seem to be mixed messages. It’s worth remembering that Jesus was not afraid to use a bit of exaggeration in some of the things he said.
But as always, it’s instructive to look at the context. Most scholars believe Matthew’s gospel to have been written after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in AD 70. This was a time of tribulation when people’s faith was deeply challenged. It was a time when Christians were being persecuted and needed words of encouragement. I don’t believe Jesus was saying he had come to bring violence, but that violence and division would be the result of his message. Families would be divided in their allegiances, and his followers would have to make their minds up as to who they would be true to. If you think Jesus is being very specific when he warns 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, he is in fact quoting from the prophet Micah, phrases which people would have recognised. Micah says that this is what will happen when society becomes corrupt.
And we have another harsh saying of Jesus, ‘Whoever loves father or mother more than me, or son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me.’ Jesus did not get very interested in family relationships; it was the community of the kingdom of God that he was concerned with. The bonds we make in the Christian fellowship transcend the natural ties of the human family. The biblical scholar William Neil, in 1975, wrote “A Christian family based on love and loyalty to one another can be an exclusive and even selfish group within the community, and Jesus points to this danger. He calls on us to recognise our more important membership of the wider fellowship of the servants of God and sisters and brothers of God throughout the world, who seek to do God’s will.”
I remember when Margaret Thatcher appointed a certain Dean of Lincoln Cathedral, she said ‘there will be blood on the carpet.’ Not that the man was going in a spirit of violence, but that because of the fragile state of things there at that time, there would be great divisions, which there were.
Jesus notes that because a disciple is not above the teacher, then if they persecute the teacher, they will come after the disciples, too. And two thousand years down the line, we too must expect ‘to bear the abuse he endured.’ Most of us are probably not going to experience persecution, though there may be verbal assaults and some family divisions, but who is to say that times won’t change, and that we, or the Church as a whole, won’t be mercilessly mocked for the sake of who we are, or that anti-Christian rhetoric isn’t racheted up. In fact, writing in Church Times this week, Cally Hammond remarks, “In our time it has become uncontroversial to hold the view that the Christian religion itself is evil, or at least dangerous, and possibly exploitative.”
It’s preferable to expect some kind of hardship or misfortune in our lives, and perhaps then we won’t be consumed with that oft-asked question ‘Why me?’ when something hits us hard, like illness, unemployment or tragedy. It is fascinating to watch the media, writes Paula Gooder, in the days following a tragedy, searching frantically for explanations of why something happened. If they find one, we breathe a collective sigh of relief. If we can point to an explanation of why something happened, it becomes easier to believe that it won’t happen to us.
So Jesus makes it clear to the disciples that they shouldn’t imagine they will escape the abuse he received. He came full of compassion for those around him; healed them; proclaimed the kingdom of God, and they called him ’Beelzebul’ – one translation of which might be ‘Lord of the dung.!
So if the disciples get this sort of treatment as well, they shouldn’t allow fear of what could happen, but rather be emboldened to go out and spread the good news. Proclaim it from the house-tops! You might as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb. Then comes the paradoxical teaching – “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” I was reminded of those inspiring young airmen of the Battle of Britain, and throughout the Second War, who faced the danger head-on knowing that there was a more than a 50/50 likelihood that they would not survive for many months.
Most of us have not lived lives of extremes, but St. Paul did, experiencing abuse, hunger, shipwreck, flogging, stoning, imprisonment. Thus he talks about understanding that we who have been baptised into Christ Jesus have been baptised into his death. Only by being buried like this can we then walk with him in newness of life. For some of us, our faith journey seems so unspectacular that to talk of being dead and alive seems rather extreme. But Paul invites us into a liberating story where our baptism is not something that happened many years ago, but can be a new experience every day as we wash ourselves in the waters of the new life that Jesus has given us, just as he did to Paul.
So all this calls for a regular evaluation of our individual Christian witness and behaviour. What are our priorities? How much do we trust? Do we really feel that Christ daily gives us newness of life?
One of the great themes of the Bible comes out in Jesus’ words – ‘Do not fear.’ In a world of darkness and trouble it is easy to fear and to lose hope, but we are not left alone. It seems to follow-on from the passage about endurance and hope last week. We can do great things through the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Jesus says – don’t fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But have a proper respect for the Father who has ultimate charge of the world, of body and soul. The Jews well understood that ‘the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom’ – fear there meaning not terror, but awe. And if God notices something apparently as insignificant as a sparrow falling to the ground, he will care for those who fear and love him.
So we pray with the Collect for today: Give us grace to dedicate ourselves to your service, that we and all creation may be brought to the glorious liberty of the children of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.