Sunday 22nd June, morning
Matthew 10: 24-39
by Revd Kate Tuckett
‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have no come to bring peace, but a sword.’
Some of you may be familiar with the work of the outspoken Giles Fraser, never one to be shy of challenging the institution of the church. He wrote a piece in the Guardian newspaper last summer about General Synod, the governing council of the national church, and says this: ‘Picture the scene. The summer meeting at the University of York is focused on a large modernist theatre surrounded by a lake. The lake is full of geese who cover the whole place in distinctive pellets of poo. The theatre is often baking hot, encouraging the gathered Anglicans to dress informally, which is often an excuse for shorts, milky white legs and sandals. Lots of people don’t really like one another but, being Christians, they have to pretend they do. It is a golden rule that when two or three Anglicans gather together, there is an extravagant display of niceness.’ I have never been to General Synod but it sounds like a particular form of hell.
Our faith can so easily become reduced to a marshmallow message of basically being nice, as if Jesus were a divine manners monitor, and the church existed to maintain proper social order. The problem is that I’m not sure this leads to a very passionate search for God. And the word nice isn’t found anywhere in the Bible to my knowledge.
The gospel reading from today shows a Jesus that is anything but nice. This is not gentle Jesus, meek and mild. This is Jesus who brings a sword into the heart of all that is respectable and socially sanctioned. Although many of the images we have developed about Jesus are that he was wise and gentle, much of his teaching tells that he was a troublemaker and a rebel.
And his teaching is challenging to say the least. Before he is born, Jesus is heralded as the Prince of Peace. Earlier in Matthew’s gospel he has given the sermon on the mount and taught that those for make for peace are blessed. As he rises from the dead his first gesture is to offer peace to those who have betrayed him and put him to death. But the nature of the peace that he offers is not an easy one. The figure of Jesus is not what we a peaceful one. His very presence stirs up conflict and confrontation, not social harmony. The disciples don’t gather around the campfire singing Kumbaya. They certainly don’t talk about how Jesus gives them a peace that makes them feel good. The story of Jesus is one of conflict, confrontation, judgment, betrayal, tears, torture, violence and death. It is an utterly gruesome story and the unpeaceful character of Jesus is at the centre of it.
It seems that we go about achieving peace is through violence. We even name a missile that is clearly meant for the destruction of humanity a peacekeeper. At least the word is honest – a peace keeper instead of Jesus’ peacemaker. But the peace we are keeping is a false peace.
This seems to be a human instinct. We have been doing it for centuries. There’s a name for the peace which existed between nationalities within the Roman Empire – pax Romana – and this was the backdrop of the context of Jesus. The ancient Romans thought they had peace because they called what was at the centre peace, but the violence had merely been exported to the edges. This peace is the world’s way of seeking control and calling it peace. It is no real peace and it is no different today. The slavery and oppression of all the millions of people who exist around the edge of every empire so that those at the centre can say they have peace remains. There can be no true peace, said Pope Paul VI, without justice.
The peace of Christ is a very different kind of peace. It sacrifices the false gods of power, prestige and possessions. It is a peace that forgives the wrongs committed by the oppressors and the oppressed alike. It is a peace built on God’s justice. This will never become the national policy of any country. Never will such peacemaking be popular. The follower of Jesus is doomed to personal minority status.
The culture of nice does nothing to challenge us to live in a new way, economically, socially and spiritually. It tells us not to rock the boat. We may ask ourselves whether the Christian nations of the world, which are among the greediest and most intent on security of anywhere have any credibility at all; whether we can say ‘thy Kingdom come’ without being prepared to add ‘my kingdom go’; when we can proclaim that Jesus is Lord while go on being the lords of our own lives. A disciple is not above the teacher, as the gospel reading started.
‘Everyone who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknolwdge before my Father in heaven, but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.’ Jesus’ harshest words were aimed at hypocrites, and those who are primarily concerned with possessions. He says over and over again that power, prestige and possession prevent us from recognising and receiving the reign of God. And perhaps this includes people, when we use them as possessions, to make us look better, to give us what we need. When this happens, as we hear in the challenging words of the reading, ‘one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.’ When he says this to good upright people they react with indignation. He is called an unbeliever, an enemy of the law, and finally a devil because they own too many things that they must now defend. It was perhaps inevitable that Jesus would end up being crucified. He wasn’t the Messiah people expected and he wasn’t the saviour they wanted. If you live a life of uncompromising courageous love then you’re bound to upset any number of people.
2000 years of religious photoshopping may have remodelled Jesus almost out of recognition. We’ve added some tints – sure he didn’t speak about homosexuality, but we seem to think we know what he would have said if he said – a blurred edge – he didn’t really mean that we had to sell all we have for the poor – and made him as transparent as possible – put him in the background but not so obvious that we have to look at him. We’ve made him very nice.
And maybe there is a question about whether we can peel back all the layers to get back to the real Jesus of Nazareth. But perhaps rather than focus on who Jesus was we can concentrate on how we can follow him. And the words of gospel writer are clear: it is through taking up our cross that we do this. The gospel is calling us to a place of simplicity, letting go, vulnerability, powerlessness and humility. It’s clear that the way of Jesus is not to be found in what we would term worldly success. To follow Jesus we have to put aside our own illusions of success. To take up our cross means facing our woundedness, our frailty, our sickness, whatever it is that we find most unpalatable in ourselves and the world, and this will be different things for all of us. But whatever it is, it’s unlikely to be something we relish confronting. It won’t be something nice. Our own wounds may make us feel guilty or embarrassed or ashamed, and the wounds of the world may make us feel uncomfortable and implicit.
It was a message that was too hard for people of faith to accept then and not much has changed todayWe want a nice God; we want a nice story; we want a gospel message that won’t really mean we have to change anything. We certainly don’t want to have to lose anything about our lives to have to find them.
As we approach the Eucharist we have the ultimate reminder of the courage, integrity and vulnerability of the way of Jesus. There’s not a lot that’s nice about this story or this action that we share. But this is a story about a love beyond all limit; a God who knows us so well that all the hairs of our head are counted, who begs us over and over again to believe how much worth and value we have. As Christians we know that the cross isn’t where the story ends. So may this be a moment of grace, stillness and reflection. May it strengthen as we leave this place and try in whatever our own clumsy and imperfect ways are, to build a world that looks a little more like the kingdom of God and less like a kingdom of ourselves. And may we respond to the invitation of this strange and subversive figure of Jesus. Give me your weakness, Jesus says, and I will make life out of it. Give me all the embarrassments and humiliations and betrayals of your lives and I will make life out of them. Take up your cross. Follow me. Enter into the divine pattern of promise and transformation that brings hope and healing and beauty into all that is broken and lost.
Notes
This sermon uses material from the following resources:
Rohr, R. (1996), Jesus’ Plan for a New World, Cincinnati: Fransiscan Media, pp139-141
Rohr, R. (1991), Simplicity: The Freedom of Letting Go, Cincinnati: Crossroads Publishin
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2013/jul/10/general-synod-worst-church-of-england
http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/the-mysterious-jesus/2007/04/07/1175366526637.html?page=fullpage
