Romans 6. 1b – 11
Matthew 10. 24 – 39
Fr Alex
Today’s Gospel continues the instructions that Jesus gives to his disciples after sending them out ahead of him.
We heard last week of how he called them together – and that it was a kind of turning point for them in their journey with Jesus. Having followed him and learned from him, he now sends them out to share his good news with all they meet.
But it doesn’t sound much like good news, does it. Jesus starts by saying, “You’ve seen how badly they treat me; imagine how they’re going to treat you.”
And it gets worse towards the end of the passage. “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” He then describes the strife that even close families will experience on account of this good news: sons against fathers, daughters against mothers, and so on.
I wonder how you feel, hearing those words this morning? Perhaps you have some experience of faith causing a division within your family. Do Jesus’ words today comfort you, or unsettle you?
There are no easy answers in our faith, of course. But as a way in to Jesus’ difficult words today, I’d like to encourage us to put ourselves, as far as we can, into the minds of those who would’ve heard St Matthew’s Gospel for the first time.
It’s important to remember that these Gospels were written in response to the lived experience of the first Christians. In other words, the New Testament is an account of the faith of the early Church. The stories and sayings of Jesus were collected and shared and heard by people who already had long experience of living the faith together; perhaps a couple of generations.
In fact the earliest Christian writings are some of the epistles, and remarkably they occasionally deal with things like church structure, and the proper ordering of the Eucharist. It’s surprising to think that instructions about the organisation of the Church actually predate the gospel biographies of Jesus.
It’s important because when we consider Matthew’s community sitting down and hearing this Gospel in the 80s or 90s AD, they’re not hearing Jesus’ words about splitting families as a warning of terrible things to come; they’re hearing them having already experienced that very thing.
Matthew’s community still had close ties to the wider Jewish community around them. No doubt many new Christians had indeed experienced terrible strife with their closest family members, as they left one faith for another.
I’m put in mind of the Iranian asylum seekers I worked with in Gateshead. Many had amazing stories of faith to tell. Some had simply had a dream of Jesus calling them, and had got up, joined an underground church, and left everything to flee to safety.
Nearly all had left parents and siblings behind. And it’s not just a few people; I read the other day that they reckon there are more than a million secret Christians in underground churches in Iran alone. That’s quite a bit more than the entire Sunday attendance of the Church of England!
What keeps them going through such hardship? What fascinated me was that they heard passages like this not as awkward and unsettling, as we might; but rather as an encouragement that God was with them, even when their closest family members were against them. And that what God had given them in calling them, was infinitely precious. And that’s how I think Matthew’s community must have heard it too.
Given their ties to the Jewish community, Matthew’s listeners would probably have known that this passage about family strife is a quotation from the prophecy of Micah. In chapter seven, Micah bewails the godlessness of the people. People lie in wait for each other; judges and officials take bribes; the powerful do what they like.
“Put no trust in a friend,” Micah says, “have no confidence in a loved one… for the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; your enemies are members of your own household.”
“But,” Micah goes on in the very next verse… “But as for me, I will look to the Lord, I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.”
Micah looked and waited for the salvation that would put right the injustices and divisions all around him, trusting that God would not forsake him.
Matthew recorded these same words about division and strife, confident that that trust had been rewarded; confident in the knowledge that salvation from God had now come, in the person of Jesus Christ.
This salvation comes from a God who makes difficult calls on us; who expects us to put the kingdom ahead even of those who are closest to us. From a God who will judge whether we have truly carried our cross, or laid it down.
But also from a God who knows and cares for us so deeply that he counts every hair on our heads; who is with us, through every trial. Who sees and cares when even a sparrow falls to the ground; and who esteems us infinitely more highly than many sparrows.
And from a God who sent his only Son into the world as one of us, so that he might make each one of us his children; and brothers and sisters with each other.
When Jesus took up his cross all the way to Gethsemane, in his death he brought to birth a new Christian family: he sees his mother and his beloved disciple standing there and says, “woman, here is your son.” And in that moment, he invites all who follow him to join this divine family.
It was the invitation into this universal family that gave my Iranian friends hope. It was the encouragement that in accepting that invitation, they were accepting nothing more than life itself.
And it’s what also has encouraged me, that God chooses to work through people like me – people like us – to make that invitation. He calls all of us, and sends us out to share the good news.
Many will reject it. They might even be people we care about. But we must be encouraged to keep on making that invitation to life, empowered by the new life we ourselves have received, baptised into Christ’s resurrection, and filled with God’s Holy Spirit. Amen.