Pentecost 3a | June 21st, 2020 | The Rev. Deacon Heidi Thorsen

Pentecost 3a

Romans 6:1b-11 / Psalm 69:8-11; 18-20 / Matthew 10:24-39

June 21, 2020

Between the words that I speak, and the words that are heard, may God’s spirit be present. Amen.

Jesus says: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.”

Well, happy Father’s Day to one and all. Yikes. If our readings were not based on the liturgical calendar, but rather on a secular calendar of holidays, our gospel reading for today would never be read on Father’s Day. Or Mother’s Day for that matter. It is bad enough that the text describes family conflict as part and parcel of following the way of Jesus. But beyond that, our reading today begins with another problematic saying, as Jesus says that disciples are not above their teachers, and slaves are not above their masters. I don’t know about you, but these words make me very uncomfortable - especially on this week of Juneteenth, when we remember the delayed emancipation of enslaved people in the United States in 1865. These words make me uncomfortable especially in this month, as our eyes have been opened to the ways that freedom for people of color is still inhibited by racism, both on an interpersonal level and in a bigger, societal sense.

What on earth was Jesus talking about, when he said these words to his disciples roughly two thousand years ago? And what on earth is Jesus saying to us, today?

First, I’d like to spend some time thinking about what Jesus was saying to his disciples - in Galilee, at the beginning of the first millennium. As you’ll remember from last week Jesus has just summoned his twelve disciples and sent them out into the towns to preach the gospel, and to heal. Between last week’s passage and this week’s Gospel reading, Jesus warns the disciples about the likelihood that they will be persecuted for the things they believe in. And this is where our gospel reading picks up today with these challenging words, “A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!”

These words are a part of Jesus’ warning to his disciples that the road ahead is not easy. Using the metaphors of disciple and teacher, slave and master, Jesus recognizes that his followers will be subjected to the same kind of judgement, persecution, and ill-treatment that Jesus has been subject to - perhaps even more so. While giving the disciples this warning, Jesus does another incredible thing. He uses language to level the playing field. Jesus does not say that teachers are better than disciples; or that masters are better than slaves. Instead, Jesus says that it is enough for them to be alike. Jesus honors the risk that the disciples take in following him, and Jesus brings them alongside him as equals. While Jesus’ critics may call him “Beelzebul,” a first century insult of the highest degree, Jesus suggests that his own followers are members of his household. They are no longer lone fishermen in Galilee. They are family - not by blood, but by the bonds of their faith.

This emphasis on family continues through the passage - though, as we already know, it takes a grim turn towards the very end, in a passage that is already very grim. Jesus says that he has not come to bring peace to the earth, but a sword. He says that he has come to set children against fathers and mothers. He says that whoever loves a family member more than Jesus is not worthy to follow him. Again, yikes. When I first read this passage it sounds almost like an ultimatum. Love me, Jesus says, but no one else. And yet that is not what Jesus is saying. Jesus is not telling his disciples not to love. Rather, Jesus is compelling his disciples to imagine a love that is deeper, and broader, and stronger than any love they have known in their living human experience. Jesus is not telling his disciples not  to have family. Rather, Jesus is telling them that they are part of a bigger family. Jesus is telling them that they are a part of something far bigger than the spheres of concern that we draw around our closest family and loved ones.

Given our tricky gospel passage for this week, I thought that it was important to pause, and unpack, and try to put ourselves in the mind of the disciples who gave up everything they had to follow Jesus two thousand years ago. Our lives today are very different from the lives of those disciples. And yet we are inheritors of the same tradition. We are followers of the same Jesus who says, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

I wonder how many of you have ever tried to find your life. How many of you have dreamed about where you might live, who you might love, what you might do for work, what you might do for fun. How many of you have made decisions to make those dreams come a little closer to reality? By these standards, I am willing to bet that all of us have tried to find our lives. All of us have sought, in one way or another - comfort, success, love. It is a very human thing to want to find our lives; to want to fashion our lives into something worth living.

And yet Jesus reminds us that those who find their life will lose it. 

This statement isn’t just the ancient version of the phrase “you can’t take it with you.” Of course, that is part of it. Our lives won’t last forever. The success we’ve found, the comforts we surround ourselves with - we can’t take those things with us in the life to come. Nevertheless Jesus’ statement, that “those who find their life will lose it,” goes deeper and further than that. Jesus reminds us not only that our lives are fragile, lose-able - but that the very act of trying to find our lives prevents us, at times, from truly living the life that God intends us to live. The very act of seeking things we want, or think we should want, keeps us from discovering the things that God intends for us - things that are better than what we could ask for or imagine. God desires for us: a family that is broader than our family of flesh and blood; a love that is deeper and bolder than any love we have ever known.

Jesus says, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

Three months ago all of us - to greater and lesser degrees - lost the life that we had known before the coronavirus pandemic began to hit home. Some of us lost our routines, some of us lost our income, some of us lost our connection to friends and family, some of us lost people that we love. Whatever your situation, we all lost something. And one thing I noticed was how quick I was to try and find it again. After a few weeks of despondency, I kicked into gear. I began a rigid routine including morning prayer and morning walks. I kept track of my work hours on a spreadsheet meticulously. I felt deeply influenced by self-improvement posts on Facebook, and started baking bread with renewed zeal. Now all of these efforts to re-fashion my life in the time of coronavirus were good and productive. But it wasn’t those things that sustained me. It was the unexpected grace of God. It was the moments when my plans backfired, the moments when friends and family called me out of the blue, the moments when I could admit to myself and others how I was feeling. Those are the moments that brought me back to life again.

Jesus says, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

Again, in late May, I lost another piece of life as I had known it when an unarmed black man, George Floyd, lost his life - body and soul - to an act of violence that should not have occurred. During that week I lost some of the comfort and ease with which I, as a white person, can walk through this world. I lost the ignorance that I am all too happy to hold on to, at times, so that I can enjoy my own privilege at the expense of others. And having lost the life I had known I was quick to try and find a new life again - reading articles by people of color about privilege and racism, ordering the right books, listening to podcasts about police reform. And all of these efforts to re-fashion my life in a way that actively confronts and seeks to undo racism - all of these efforts are very good! And yet, once again, none of those things can save me, or any of us, from racism. We need the grace of God - to meet us in prayer and in action, to effect real change and repentance in the way we think and speak and act, to forever broaden our idea of what family can be. It is only by the grace of God that we, together, can overcome the sin of racism.

For as Jesus says, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” 

I am grateful for those occasions, terrifying as they are, when I lose a shred of the life I have built up around me. Because as every shred of that life falls away, I begin to discover the life that God intends me to live. I begin to discover the kingdom that God intends for us to build. Over the past few months we have lost pieces of the lives that we had known previously. In many cases, these losses were not of our own choosing. Even if we didn’t choose these changes, let us choose to dedicate them to God. And ask: How is the kingdom of God being revealed through the cracks in the lives we have built up around ourselves. What is God showing me that I never would have known to look for, in the first place?

Our imaginations are limited, and too often we choose comfort and familiarity over the promise that God extends to us - the promise of a new kind of world order, the kingdom of God. If we must lose our lives anyways, let us choose to lose them for Christ’s sake - in order that we might find a life that is broader, deeper, wider, better, than anything we could ask or imagine. 

Let us pray.

God, we are searching. But we don’t always know what we are looking for. Help us to loosen our tight grip on what our lives should be, what our world should be. And instead, teach us to be open to new possibilities. Help us to see how the light of your kingdom is breaking into this world even now, even today. I ask all these things in the name of God, who is to us Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.