Reality Check for Us All Proper 7A

 

Reality Check for Us All

Jesus does not mince words. In Matthew 10:24-39 he lays out the consequences of what it really means to follow Jesus. It’s what is often called “a hard saying.” To be a disciple, to be a faithful Christian, is not for the faint-of-heart. Just ask Dietrich Bonnehoeffer. Just ask Martin Luther King, Jr. Ask Archbishop Oscar Romero and Joan of Arc. Ask the very first martyrs as witnessed in Matthew’s gospel, The Innocent Children of Bethlehem.

 

In his final instructions, Jesus and Matthew introduce some powerful language: Beelzebul, Sword, and here is the first mention in Matthew of the Cross – a reminder that long before it became a symbol of personal piety and a common piece of jewelry, it was a sign of terror, brutality; a sign that the Empire can execute whomever it deems a problem to the pax romana.

 

Evidently ours is not the only era in history in which name-calling has been used to damage the reputation of a perceived opponent. First century Israel was a deeply divided territory before the endless occupations by other middle eastern empires. Rome was just the most recent. Within Israel itself you had the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and various militia-like Zealots which often included their own self-appointed messiahs. And like any other political parties, there were always divisions within these major political and religious parties.

 

Jesus, it seems, had been call Beelzebul – literally, Lord of the Flies. This is not another name for the satan – God’s tester. Nor was Beelzebul a challenge to the God of Israel, but rather a lesser being who is lord of all that plagues humankind, and his flies buzz around the corpses of his victims, and crawl on the faces of hungry children who starve in his famines. A formidable foe for humans, but no match for God. [Swanson, Richard W., Provoking the Gospel of Matthew, p.155] Jesus’s point is that if he is declared demon possessed by either political or ecclesial authorities, so will the members of his “household” – that is, his followers, his disciples, and anyone who dares to call themselves Christians. Sounding like one of God’s messengers, the angels, he tells us to “Fear not!” They can call us names, even kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul, “rather, fear him who can kill both body and soul!” That is, fear only God, and God will protect you. God’s eye is on the sparrow, and he’s watching over you – able to count each hair on your head, for like me, says Jesus, you are God’s Beloved.

 

Perhaps most shocking for modern Christians is Jesus’s announcement that he does not come to bring peace, but a sword. Shocking only because we forget all too soon that the mere mention of the birth of Jesus to be the “king of the Jews,” sets the tyrant Herod, Caesar’s appointed King of the Jews, into a rage, sending his forces into the village of Bethlehem to slaughter all children two years-old and younger. The Slaughter of the Innocents are the first martyrs as a ham-handed attempt to murder the future messiah and king. The sword was swiftly deployed early on, and eliminated a generation of Jesus’s cousins and potential aunts and uncles. It is no metaphor.

 

Indeed, the “sword” appears long after the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord in the treatise titled simply, “Hebrews” where we read: Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. [Hebrews 4:12 nrsvce] As we all remember from Christmas, John’s gospel tells us that Jesus is “the Word of God,” and he himself says he is capable of dividing father from son, mother from daughter, mother-in-law from daughter-in-law, “and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” Lest this strike us as overwrought, let us remember how many Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners have recently been ruined as during the pandemic with squabbling of vaxers and anti-vaxers, or MAGA and anti-Maga, red vs blue, etc. It goes all the way back to slave-holders vs abolitionists, patriots vs loyalists, nativists vs internationalists, and on and on and on it goes. One’s devotion to Jesus also has, and continues to have, the capability of causing such division, even within one’s own household. By the time Matthew is writing such divisions are already a reality.

 

An Important Caution: This text is often manipulated by demagogues and cult leaders who are not at all proclaiming and living the kingdom of God life Jesus encourages. They will tell someone something like this, “Of course your family does not understand us. They do not have the secret knowledge we can give you. Don’t listen to them, and see, Jesus says this is how it will always be for his followers.” I have seen it too many times. And texts like this one in Matthew is all too easily perverted to mean exactly what it does not mean.

 

Jesus is quoting the prophet Micah, a contemporary of Hosea and Isaiah, from chapter seven. The prophet declares that households are falling apart, and the fabric of society is falling apart due to the faithlessness of the people. Which does not mean keeping the appointed sacrifices at the Temple. In chapter six he defines faith like this: He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God? It is important to remember: when Jesus spoke these words, one’s entire identity was with one’s family, clan, and tribe. Any modern notion of “the individual” was a long-way off in the future, so that the very threat of being cut-off from one’s family was in fact tantamount to a kind of death sentence among those early followers of Jesus.

 

Which brings us to the first mention of “the Cross” in Matthew’s gospel: “whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” The cross was not a symbol, nor was it a metaphor. It was an execution device. Roman crosses were to be seen throughout the empire, along roadsides, in important public spaces, as a reminder of the power and brutality of the Empire. But to take up Jesus’s cross is to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. It is to live a life shaped by God’s own mercy, compassion, justice, and forgiveness.

 

He then says those of you who follow me expecting some kind of personal gain, personal glory, or recognition, will as much as lose their life. Those who follow Jesus in giving away God’s mercy, compassion, justice, and forgiveness will gain everlasting life with God in Christ. What  at first sounds like bad news is ultimately good news. For, as he says earlier, “Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven.” Be not afraid. Despite all possible consequences, I have your back. I am with you always, to the end of the age! In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places – there is room for everyone. Not everyone will appreciate what we are doing, but remain faithful to my Father’s mercy, compassion, justice and forgiveness, and I will have your back, just as he has my back. I am with you now. I am with you always. Together we do make a difference in the lives of others, and in the life of the world.  Have no fear. We have this! Amen.

It's About Compassion Proper 6A

 

It’s About Compassion

As we hear Matthew’s account of Jesus appointing the disciples [Matthew 9:35-10:23], giving them a new title, “apostles,” literally “those who are sent,” our opening prayer for this Third Sunday after Pentecost acknowledges that we too, by virtue of our baptism, have also been appointed apostles as well: Keep, O Lord, your household the Church in your steadfast faith and love, that through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness, and minister your justice with compassion; for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ.

 

When I hear that we are to proclaim Christ’s truth with boldness, and minister his justice with compassion, I immediately think of Archbishop Oscar Romero, Fourth Bishop of El Salvador. He was a fearless defender of the human rights of the poor, and who spoke out against poverty, social injustice, and the state of right-wing violence during the escalating Salvadoran Civil War. He was assassinated while celebrating Mass in 1980. Not long before his assassination, Romero made this distinction in his weekly radio-homily broadcast: “The homily is not being “political” when it points out political, social, and economic sins. It is simply the word of God becoming incarnate in our reality, which often reflects not God’s reign, but sin.” - Saint Oscar Romero, the Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, 1979.

 

Matthew’s gospel reflects the archbishop’s clarification in his account of the sending the newly minted apostles to have “authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.” Jesus is inspired to broaden his ministry as he looks out upon the crowds that follow him wherever he is in the region of Galilee. He sees, as Romero did in El Salvador, poor people, mistreated and beaten down by the empire and the collaborating Temple leadership. They are as “sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus views them with “compassion,” as people in deep need of healing and justice. They have been let down by their own leadership, and brutally treated, and stripped of all economic sustenance, by Caesar’s Empire of Rome, who also like it was in El Salvador, deployed death squads for any and all who resisted the military occupation of the land promised to Abraham and his descendants forever. The results of these death squads lined the fabled Roman roadways with those resistors hanging from Roman crosses.

 

As Matthew names the twelve disciples, most are named in pairs of men related as brothers or other family affiliation, with the exception of three names that ought to stand out: Matthew the tax collector, employed by the Empire overcharging citizens for tolls and taxes; Simon the Cananaean, a title that reflects his participation in a group of zealots, Jewish nationalists, who were known to mount insurrections against the Roman occupation; and of course, Judas, “the one who betrayed him,” who played a tragic role in Jesus being rounded up and eventually executed by one of the Empire’s death-squads. The inclusion of both the Roman hireling Matthew and the revolutionary Simon together among the disciples is striking. As one commentator has noted, “The startling juxtaposition of this former Roman-hater [Simon] with Matthew, a former lackey of Rome, shows that the new community of Jesus has embraced and transcended the tensions of the old community of Israel (Long, Thomas, Matthew, p.115).

 

Together, this startling and diverse group is to proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near!” That is the kingdom of God’s Shalom, God’s peace, in which, as it was in the Days of Manna, everyone gets enough, no one gets too much, and if you try to hoard it, it sours; it goes rotten. But that’s not all! They are also to “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons. This is what Peace, what Shalom, is meant to look like: working to provide public health care, reconcile racial and social alienation, and wrestle with the powers of domination and oppression that bleed the life out of a community. But, those twelve men are by no means Jesus. And neither are we who are also commissioned to continue the work Jesus does, and as he says himself, “greater things than these!” How on earth are they, let alone we, to follow through on all of this?

 

The kingdom of heaven, Matthew’s interpretation of the more common “kingdom of God,” embodies the central vision of the Bible: which is that all creation is one, every creature in community with every other living thing, living in harmony, prosperity and security toward the joy and well-being of every other creature. This is the good news that we are all asked to embrace and proclaim. As Jesus looks out at the crowds of people beaten down by the machinations of the dominant and dominating leadership, he recognizes at once the primary need of everyone in front of him is for compassion. Compassion is sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it. That is, the beginning of physical, mental, and emotional healing is to be a presence of compassion for those who suffer for whatever reason.

 

Neither we, nor the disciples, are expected to touch someone and expect one’s cancer suddenly disappears; we cannot shout, “Be gone!” at the raging forces afflicting a diseased mind and expect illness to flee; we are not to go to a funeral and attempt to raise one out of one’s casket. (Long, p.117) But we are expected in all times and in all places to be the living presence of God’s grace in Jesus Christ; to allow Christ’s steadfast faith and love to empower us to proclaim his truth with boldness, and minister his justice with compassion. Compassion. We are to be the living presence of Christ’s compassion to any and all persons, all creatures, and all of creation itself.

 

As Saint Paul writes to the community of Christians in Rome, it is our Christ given powers of compassion which compel us to “boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” [Romans 5:1-8] Acknowledging our own sufferings enables and empowers us to stand with others with Christ-like compassion, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts “through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Given, as gift.

 

Archbishop Oscar Romero says it this way, from one of his radio-broadcast-sermons to the poor poverty stricken and endangered people of El Salvador, when he says: "Each of us has an individual greatness. God would not be our author if we were something worthless. You and I and all of us are worth very much, because we are creatures of God, and God has prodigally given his wonderful gifts to every person." - September 4, 1977.

 

May God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit open our compassionate hearts as you keep your household the Church “in your steadfast faith and love; that through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness, and minister your justice with compassion; for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ” and the spread of God’s Shalom throughout all the world.” Amen.

To Be Mothers of God Proper 5A

 

To Be Mothers of God

“For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” – Hosea 6:6

 

“Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”  - Matthew 9:13

 

Faith. It has been suggested by Frederick Buechner, faith is better understood as a verb than a noun. As a process rather than a possession. “It is on-again, off-again rather than once and for all. Faith is not sure where you are going, but like Abraham, going anyway. A journey without maps. Tillich said that doubt is not the opposite of faith, but rather is an element of faith ... Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.” (Wishful Thinking, (Harpers, San Francisco: 1973 – pp. 20, 27)

 

It is by faith that Hosea suspects there will be a way out of Babylon, and that it will be led by YHWH, and that the people of God will make it back to Jerusalem despite having no Temple in which to make sacrifices. Rather, steadfast love and knowledge of God will suffice.

 

The Psalmist concurs in Psalm 50 since the God of Creation, the God whose intentions are marked by mercy, compassion, and forgiveness desires of us only a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and that we honor our vows, our covenant relationship, with our God.

 

Saint Paul reminds us that God’s promises depend on our faith being like that of Abraham’s which honors and trusts the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist – things beyond even our hope and imaginings!

 

Sin. Look at Jesus who shares a meal around a table of tax collectors and sinners. Sin, as understood in the New Testament, is not about whether we have been naughty or nice, but rather implies those who accept and even participate in systems and structures of oppression, those powers that seek to oppose God’s will that nature be allowed to exist in harmony and abundance; that people be allowed to live with purpose and dignity in joyful communion with others; that people have life, and have it abundantly, all people, everywhere, all the time. Sinners, then, are those who collaborate to exploit nature, deny the dignity of all persons, and who, through systems of greed and acquisition, deny the basic elements of abundant life for others. All others.

 

The tax collectors, and presumably everyone at the table, collaborate with the Roman occupation of Israel, assisting Rome to strip Israel of all its resources, property, and powers of self-determination. The holier-than-thou Pharisees are astonished and ask his disciples “how on earth can your master sit with all these sinners?” Jesus overhears and answers them: “Go back and re-read Hosea, and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” 

 

Suddenly, there is a story of a young girl who is dead, and a woman who has had a flow of blood for twelve long years. Women ranked only a little ahead of children and slaves. Young girls were not considered of much value by their fathers. Yet, surprise, a leader of the synagogue kneels before Jesus and begs Jesus to save his daughter who is dead. As they head to his house, there is an interruption: the woman with the flow of blood, which renders her ritually unclean, unable to participate in the ritual life of her people, and is certainly not expected to touch a man in public, believes if she could touch Jesus she may be healed, restored to life in the community that has rejected her for over a decade. Madeleine L’Engle lets her tell her own story:

The Lightning  

When I pushed through the crowd,

jostled, bumped, elbowed by the curious

who wanted to see what everyone else

was so excited about,

all I could think of was my pain

and that perhaps if I could touch him,

this man who worked miracles,

cured diseases,

even those as foul as mine,

I might find relief.

I was tired from hurting,

exhausted, revolted by my body,

unfit for any man, and yet not let loose

from desire and need. I wanted to rest,

to sleep without pain or filthiness or torment.

I don’t really know why

I thought he could help me

when all the doctors

with all their knowledge

had left me still drained

and bereft of all that makes

a woman’s life worth living.

Well: I’d seen him with some children

and his laughter was quick and merry

and reminded me of when I was young and well,

though he looked tired; and he was as old as I am.

Then there was that leper,

but lepers have been cured before –

No, it wasn’t the leper,

or the man cured of palsy,

or any of the other stories of miracles,

or at any rate that was the least of it;

I had been promised miracles too often.

I saw him ahead of me in the crowd

and there was something in his glance

and in the way his hand rested briefly

on the matted head of a small boy

who was getting in everybody’s way,

and I knew that if only I could get to him,

not to bother him, you understand,

not to interrupt, or to ask him for anything,

not even his attention,

just to get to him and touch him…

I didn’t think he’d mind, and he needn’t even know.

 

I pushed through the crowd

and it seemed that they were deliberately

trying to keep me from him.

I stumbled and fell and someone stepped

on my hand and I cried out

and nobody heard. I crawled to my feet

and pushed on and at last I was close,

so close I could reach out

and touch with my fingers

the hem of his garment.

Have you ever been near

when lightning struck?

I was, once, when I was very small

and a summer storm came without warning

and lightning split the tree

under which I had been playing

and I was flung right across the courtyard.

That’s how it was.

Only this time I was not the child

but the tree

and the lightning filled me.

He asked, “Who touched me?”

and people dragged me away, roughly,

and the men around him were angry at me.

“Who touched me?” he asked.

I said, “I did, Lord.”

So that he might have the lightning back

which I had taken from him when I touched

his garment’s hem.

He looked at me and I knew then

that only he and I knew about the lightning.

He was tired and emptied

but he was not angry.

He looked at me

and the lightning returned to him again,

though not from me, and he smiled at me

and I knew that I was healed.

Then the crowd came between us

and he moved on, taking the lightning with him,

perhaps to strike again.

 

We might notice that Jesus does not do a thing. It is the faith of the woman with the flow of blood that saves the day. When he gets to the leader’s house, the professional mourners are already celebrating the girl’s death. Jesus dismisses them and says she is only sleeping. They laugh and scoff at Jesus’s absurd assertion. Jesus simply takes the girl by the hand and she rises, alive and well. Her father’s faith in Jesus saved the day.

 

These stories are meant to inspire us – to inspire us to examine our own faith, and our own doubts. Are we like the woman, who by faith risks everything, breaks all social codes, and persists in getting to Jesus by any means possible? Are we like the father who kneels before Jesus and begs him to please come home to our house and restore my little girl’s life? Are we like Jesus who willing to sit down with those who collaborate against all freedoms and dignities God wills for all people, and to share a meal, and share ideas and opinions, and listen to one another to reconcile and disperse the power of Sin, capital “s”, that threatens us all? Do we find ourselves among the professional mourners, laughing and scoffing at the power of Christ, the power of God, the powers of mercy, compassion and forgiveness that wait for us all to one day to repent, to turn around and walk in the ways of the Lord? Can we, like Jesus, be as concerned for the outsiders like the sinners, tax collectors, the little girl, and the woman with the flow of blood, as we are for family and friends? Do we value women and children the way Jesus does? When Jesus calls us, do we get up and leave everything and follow him, the way Matthew the tax collector does? For these are just some of the questions we are meant to address in ourselves when we hear these stories read.

 

Mothers of God: Thirteenth Century theologian, philosopher, and Dominican monk, Meister Eckhart once said, “We are all meant to be mothers of God...for God is always needing to be born.” Jesus bore the intentions of God his Father in all that he said and all that he did. Jesus spends time with tax collectors and sinners; stops to recognize a woman who had suffered for twelve years; takes the time to restore the life of a little girl; all of which was endlessly baffling to those who thought they were the arbiters of faith in his day. Just as his mother, Mary of Nazareth, bore the Son of God into this world, so we who are created in the image of God are called to be “Mothers of God,” for God and God’s compassion, mercy, forgiveness and love always needs to be born into the dark corners of this world. This is as true today as the day Meister Eckhart said this. The power of Sin may never have been as prevalent at any other time in history as it is today. These stories, and so many others, call us to be those people who bear God and God’s mercy, forgiveness, compassion, and love to those whom society and leaders of all stripes push aside to the margins of life. God needs to be born today, and tomorrow, and the next day, that lives consigned to endless suffering my one day see the light of faith. That we may become Mothers of God every day, in all that we do and all that we say, may God help us! Amen.