That sword though
A sermon for St Michael’s Kelburn, 25 June 2017
Texts: Romans 6:1b–11, Matthew 10:24–39
Kia ora koutou!
Jesus explosion
I like how in Anglican-land we’re compelled by the liturgy to say “Thanks be to God” and “Praise to Christ, the Word” after the Bible readings every Sunday. How often have you followed along with a reading and said “Thanks be to God” with a wince?
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. Wince! Thanks be to God.
Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Wince! Praise to Christ, the Word.
Like our old vicar used to say, the great thing about the Bible is that there’s something in there to offend everyone. It’s not made in our image; a giant projection of our wishes or ourselves. But where else are we going to go to find the words of life?
Soon after that very fierce language of our Gospel reading, just one chapter later he says Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. That’s more like it! But the Bible’s not made in our image, and neither is Jesus. He blows through our categories. Unless we really squint, he won’t straightforwardly underwrite our agendas — left, right, green, whatever.
I love the way GK Chesterton said it:
Instead of looking at books and pictures about the New Testament I looked at the New Testament. There I found an account, not in the least of a person with his hair parted in the middle or his hands clasped in appeal, but of an extraordinary being with lips of thunder and acts of lurid decision, flinging down tables, casting out devils, passing with the wild secrecy of the wind from mountain isolation to a sort of dreadful demagogy; a being who often acted like an angry god — and always like a god. Christ had even a literary style of his own, not to be found, I think, elsewhere; it consists of an almost furious use of the a fortiori. His ‘how much more’ is piled one upon another like castle upon castle in the clouds. The diction used ABOUT Christ has been, and perhaps wisely, sweet and submissive. But the diction used by Christ is quite curiously gigantesque; it is full of camels leaping through needles and mountains hurled into the sea. Morally it is equally terrific; he called himself a sword of slaughter, and told men to buy swords if they sold their coats for them. That he used other even wilder words on the side of non-resistance greatly increases the mystery; but it also, if anything, rather increases the violence. … The one explanation of the Gospel language that does explain it, is that it is the survey of one who from some supernatural height beholds some more startling synthesis.’
Reading a good chunk of Matthew over the last couple of weeks to get the sweep of the text, I was confronted anew by this Jesus — he really was either a megalomaniac, or someone much more interesting. Matthew chapter 12: I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. … something greater than Jonah [the prophet] is here … something greater than Solomon is here. What’s Jesus saying? I’m more important than your most important religious symbol (the temple); I’m greater than the prophets; I’m wiser than the wisest king you ever had.
I struggled to come up with similar symbols in our context. How about: something more beautiful than the beach is here; someone fiercer than Te Rauparaha; someone cleverer than Elon Musk?
But what’s Jesus up to in our reading? The whole of this chapter of Matthew is taken up with Jesus calling ‘the twelve’ and sending them as his emissaries to storm about occupied Israel (and Israel alone) announcing the kingdom, a terrible impending judgment, like John the Baptiser announces at the start of Matthew’s Gospel: The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
Jesus’ words about turning a man against his father, a daughter against her mother etc are a quotation from the prophet Micah. In that context the covenant people of God are in an unjust mess; no one can be trusted; justice has vanished from society and the rich and powerful oppress the rest. Micah is announcing that the people of God are about to be ‘visited’ by God’s judgement … and Jesus picks up that language.
And of course terrible destruction was not far away from Israel. It was just a generation later, in AD70, that the Roman general Titus crushed a Jewish uprising, destroying Jerusalem and the Temple. That was the end of the Jewish state until 1948.
I understand the Gospel of Matthew was likely written around 80 or 90AD, some 50 or 60 years after Jesus’ ministry. It makes me wonder why did the author of this Gospel keep this material in there? Material addressed to ‘the twelve’. Maybe he wanted to help the early Christian churches understand their Jewish origins, and make sense of the continuities and discontinuities between Judaism and the Church. But maybe perhaps the Gospel writer wants to pass on the amazing theme in Jesus’ teaching that also comes through in this passage, which I want to call ‘identification with Christ’.
Identification with Christ
Jesus talks about it here negatively: The student is not above the teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for students to be like their teachers, and servants like their masters. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebul, how much more the members of his household!
Another thing I appreciate about the Anglican way of doing things is the lectionary — the three-year cycle of readings that take us through the great themes of the Bible, and helps protect parishes against preacher’s pet passages. Sometimes the lectionary sets little puzzles — like what’s the connection? What’s the connection between the passage from Matthew 10 and St Paul’s words in Romans 6?
On reflection I think the heart of the connection is this idea of identification with Christ. The Apostle Paul talks about it more positively. He sees our whole life story as patterned on Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
In talking this way Paul wants to inspire his readers to ‘be what they are’. We were all caught up in the old system, ‘slaves to sin’, children of Adam, the walking dead. But by hitching our waka to Christ, we’re in a whole new system: ‘new creation’, the abundant life, life eternal… Paul says we’ve died to all that though; in fact not just died but We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with — so In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Paul’s invitation is for us, together, to participate in the divine life. To have our desires transformed, to share God’s desires (like Romans 8:5b — those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires). To be caught up in God’s own life. This is a theme throughout Paul’s writings, and in the Apostle Peter and elsewhere in the New Testament too.
Back to the sword
This identification/participation is demanding, though! The King of Creation has turned up. The Truth has arrived, and He turns things upside down. He’s surprising; an explosion; a rupture in the ‘natural’ order of things.
The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, himself an atheist, but fascinated by Christianity (and mad keen on the afore-quoted GK Chesterton), reads Jesus words — “I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law…” — not as a way of saying “Make sure you love God more than mum”, but instead these natural relations father–son, mother–daughter etc are a way of talking about the established order of society. Žižek sees’ Jesus’ movement as unplugging people from those structures and building instead a horizontal order where Jesus is present in the love the members of the community have for each other.
So St Paul can say in his letter to the Christians at Galatia: There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Paul is inviting his readers to find their identity in Christ. This is deep stuff: it affects how we identify ourselves; what groups we identify with; how we signal who we’re ‘in’ with…
It makes me think about my own identity, the groups I identify with, the circles I’m in. I have our immediate family; my family of origin; our Playcentre whanau; our Te Aro school community; my workplace; this church community. The circles overlap a bit, and they all have their various demands and protocols; they structure my life. It makes me wonder, have I domesticated Christ, fit him into a box that suits me?
What would it mean for me to more thoroughly identify with Christ? Would I lose some friends? Would I lose some status?
I’ve been noticing in recent months hearing people at St Mic’s talk about their feelings of bashfulness about ‘coming out’ as Christian, in this secularising milieu. I feel it myself. So I can’t help but wince at: Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.
If Jesus was who he said he was, what do I have to lose? Not one sparrow will fall to the ground outside our Father’s care.
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
