Proper 7A, 25 June 2023. The Very Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

• Genesis 21:8-21. Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water.
• Romans 6:1b-11. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
• Matthew 10:24-39. I have not come to bring peace but a sword.

O God of love, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may and cost what it will.

May I just say how glad I am that we are not celebrating a baptism today? For two of the last three times I’ve preached on the lessons we just heard, we’ve had special guests in church because of baptisms. These are readings that I’d rather not have read at all in church, and especially not when we have company!

It’s hard for me to listen to this portion of Matthew without thinking, “Gosh, Jesus was so crabby! Where is our tender shepherd? Where are Jesus’ family values? Is Matthew’s Jesus calling for violence?” I think the Apostle Paul would answer, “By no means!” But what is going on here? Our Gospel reading for today is a continuation of the portion of Matthew from last week, in which Jesus summoned twelve disciples (learners or followers) and empowered them to heal diseases and sicknesses and gave them authority over unclean spirits. He sent the authorized disciples out, thereby making them apostles (which means sent out). They were to take their newly-bestowed spiritual power with them along the way, but not their stuff – no money, extra clothing, or food. Jesus assured them that their power to heal, to bring peace, was going to be enough to move people to provide hospitality; and if the people didn’t welcome them, the apostles were to continue on with their peace returned to them, their wellbeing intact. So far so good; it sounds as if everything is going to be all right. 

Except, apparently, it wasn’t all right. We don’t know exactly what the complaints were, but I know what kind of complaints happen in communities of faith when people with diseases, sicknesses, or unclean spirits are invited into those communities for healing, especially when the healing doesn’t happen overnight. There’s disagreement, chaos, fear, resentment, all kind of conflict. Jesus gave his disciples instructions about what to do when they were unwelcome because they were unwelcome. Some people were suggesting that Jesus, the rabbi from Nazareth, was not sent from the Holy One but from Beelzebul. (Beelzebul was a pun on the name of Baal, the Canaanite god, who was considered by the people of Israel to be a leader of evil influences. Beelzebul was “The Lord of the Flies.”) And then it got worse: the disciples weren’t just being called names, they were being tortured and killed. So Jesus assured them that they didn’t need to be afraid when they were being tortured and killed. Yikes! Jesus assured them with the promise that God would see even the number of hairs on their heads and hear the acknowledgements and denials, because Jesus would make sure of it. Matthew’s Jesus was teaching his disciples about being persecuted for their fidelity to him, for their bold fidelity to the truth of Love, for ministering justice with compassion–in other words, for their lovingkindness and for their open and perhaps foolhardy rejection of the oppressive power of the Roman Empire.

Then Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” I don’t understand this to be a call to arms, because that really doesn’t fit with the whole body of Jesus’ teaching. I also do not think that this teaching should be summarily dismissed. For one thing, I don’t want to leave this reading to people who use this passage as a prooftext to justify tyranny and violence in the name of Jesus or God. In Ephesians, the word sword is used as a metaphor for the penetrating power of the Word of God. In Luke, the word is used in Simeon’s blessing of the Holy Family in the Temple, when Jesus was an infant. Simeon says to Mother Mary, “A sword will pierce your heart.” We understand that to indicate excruciating emotional anguish, not how she would be physically killed. I think we can understand Jesus’ instructions to those he is commissioning to include the caution that, “This work can break your hearts, divide your households, and cost your whole lives.”

This passage may not resonate with you if you have never been estranged from your family and friends because of your fidelity to the love of God in Christ Jesus. This passage may not speak to you unless you have been a fool for Christ. These are small examples, but I think of my own dad’s faith-based civil-rights work in the late 1960’s as being a reason that his father stopped speaking to him for a while.  My grandfather thought my dad was foolishly putting his family’s safety in jeopardy. I think of my faith-based involvement twenty years later in the Northern Virginia AIDS ministry, which led my parents to freak out about their perceived risk to my own health. (I countered driving my car on the Washington beltway to work every day put me at greater risk than HIV). I think of the rift in my family after I came out as queer. I think of the Gospel commitments of Emmanuel Church that have put this parish at odds so many times with other parts of the Episcopal Church, some of our neighbors on Newbury Street, and within our own community.

This teaching can provide comfort when any of us (or collectively all of us) make decisions to prioritize our integrity because of faith in God or Jesus over relationships with family or friends, while it also warns us not get too comfortable. I want to caution us about identifying too closely with those who are persecuted, because generally, in our context, we are not persecuted because of our relationship with Jesus or with the Holy One. We are at much greater risk of not being counted among those who are worthy. According to the Gospel of Matthew this is much more frightening than anything a sword can do to us, physically or metaphorically.

The word that gets translated worthy (as in, whoever loves father, mother, son, or daughter more than Jesus is not worthy of him) has to do not with deserving, but with equivalency, as in leveling the beam on a scale. It means comparable or equivalent in physical terms; and figuratively, it means suitable or fit for a task. I don’t think this is about whether one is deserving of love by Jesus or God, because nothing can separate us from the love of God. This is about whether one is up to the task of being an apostle, one sent to represent Jesus. If you are now heaving a big sigh of relief, not so fast, because you are, we are, the Body of Christ, not a social club or a community of convenience. We who receive mercy are obligated to extend it. We who breathe in the love of God must breathe it back out, if we want to live. And it’s not just an obligation; it’s an extraordinary privilege. So let’s do what we can to be like Jesus. Let’s stand with Jesus in awe of the One whose love for us is unconditional. [2]

Remember Adrienne Rich’s poem called “Final Notations”? [3]

it will not be simple, it will not be long
it will take little time, it will take all your thought
it will take all your heart, it will take all your breath
it will be short, it will not be simple 

it will touch through your ribs, it will take all your heart
it will not be long, it will occupy all your thought
as a city is occupied, as a bed is occupied
it will take your flesh, it will not be simple 

You are coming into us who cannot withstand you
you are coming into us who never wanted to withstand you
you are taking parts of us into places never planned
you are going far away with pieces of our lives

it will be short, it will take all your breath
it will not be simple, it will become your will

Whenever we see and proclaim with our actions the power of God to redeem, to re-value all who have been devalued: the least, the last, and the lost, that’s when the going gets tough. That’s when we need even more time for deep listening. “Do not worry about what you are to speak or what you are to say,” Matthew’s Jesus tells us. Don’t be anxiously formulating the next thing you will say. When you are quiet, the Spirit will be able to speak through you; the Spirit will make you a living, breathing, full-bodied expression of divine compassion for the needy people of God. We are not to behave as if we were the proprietors of a system that we alone are licensed to manage or deliver. We who receive compassion and mercy, are obligated to extend it. We are to stand on the sure foundation of God’s lovingkindness. We are to live inspired, courageous, and generous lives, with integrity and commitment to serving others in order to leave the world better than we found it. May it be so.

1. I say this all the time about the Bible in general, but most recently saw this rationale expressed by D. Mark Davis in his blog Left Behind & Loving it
2. Ronald Allen & Clark Williamson, Preaching the Gospels without Blaming the Jews (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), p. 54.
3. Adrienne Rich, “Final Notations,” An Atlas of the Difficult World:  Poems 1988-1991 (New York:  W.W. Norton & Company, 1991), p. 57.