⁵These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, . . .

²¹“Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, ²²and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. ²³When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next, for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.

²⁴“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. ²⁵It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household.

²⁶“So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. ²⁷What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. ²⁸And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. ²⁹Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. ³⁰But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. ³¹Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. ³²So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, ³³but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”

Matthew 10: 5a, 21–33; English Standard Version
Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles

THE CHALLENGE

A family visiting New York City caught a downtown subway to the Financial District. They happened to be in the first car and their two sons stared at themselves in a mirror that separated the passengers from the engineer’s cabin. After a few moments, the older boy told his brother that he could see the tracks up ahead in the tunnel. The glass was a two-way mirror.

His younger brother, still making faces in the mirror, could see nothing but himself. „What do you mean?“ he asked. „I don’t see anything.“

His mother spoke up. „Honey, look beyond yourself and you’ll see it.“

He did, and he did, just as we do when we look beyond ourselves: We catch a glimpse of the track ahead and the world around us.

Matthew’s gospel contains long blocks of “teaching” that scholars call the discourses. People tend to be most familiar with the first discourse known as the Sermon on the Mount, but there are four others, each meant to teach followers of Jesus about the Kingdom of God, living together as the church, how to be ready for the end times, and this one, (chapter 10) explaining what discipleship means.

Jesus’ words are a cold, soaking splash as we bask in the warmth of life with God. We hear his instruction and realize that Bonhoeffer was almost too gentle in his phrase the “cost of discipleship.” The full chapter has much more detail, but what we hear today is a strong enough dose: death inflicted among family members, hatred and persecution from neighbors, always being ready to flee, being accused of wickedness and evil.

Would any of us be surprised if the disciples had stood up and said “I quit”?

This moment in Matthew hits hard because it highlights two challenges a Christian must face when he or she begins to face honestly what life with Jesus really means.

The first challenge is recognizing that associating with Jesus is hazardous: hazardous to your health, hazardous to your reputation and relationships, hazardous to your hope and dreams. In that famous book about discipleship’s cost, Bonhoeffer wrote a haunting line: [w]hen Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. In the same paragraph, Bonhoeffer pointed out that the call to follow—which is a call to carry the cross—might mean a death like the apostles of old, or it might mean a death like Luther’s, who left monastic life to reenter the ordinary world. That call, that cross, that death might be epic or daring, perhaps visible to the whole world; it might be quiet, small, visible to none but the Father who (as Matthew reports) sees in secret. Here, we find the real point and power of Luther’s admonition that baptism is daily dying and rising; each day the cross confronts us. We think the problem is out there; that our circumstances and the people that populate our circumstances (including Jesus) are the real difficulty. Yet the problem is in here, in the crack that runs through our hearts, and that problem will not be finally solved until I, you, we are mercifully still, able to afflict others no more, and the promise we each received at baptism is joyously fulfilled.

The promise of baptism points us to the second challenge. Christ has called us to life with him; in baptism we find the call is stronger still—we are called to life in him. There is an intimacy here that we modern people find both difficult to grasp and vaguely threatening—we insist on autonomy, or freedom, or self-actualization or whatever buzz word we might choose, but baptism into Christ will permit none of that. Baptism is echoing the words of John by the Jordan: He must increase, I decrease. It is as Paul declares—we have been exchanged; we have been brought across a chasm or through a wall, made a part of something we could never accomplish ourselves. We belong to Christ! We are His Body! He is at work in us! Notice the obedience of the first disciples: they go at Jesus’ instruction, to fulfil his purpose, to live under God’s care—and their doing what He asks means that they become more fully themselves.

We cannot forget that we are not here to achieve or satisfy our goals and purposes, for we will only be confronted again by the cross that means death to all those things that we would proudly call our own—for as long as our eyes are filled with a vision of ourselves, we will not be able to look beyond ourselves and see the path that Christ, the deathless one, has called us to walk with him. Yet he has called us, made of us a community as he made the Twelve a community long ago, and here we find his gifts, his power, and his love that our hearts might heal, our sight made true and our lives serve as witnesses to him.

Amen.

©David H. Brooks
Pr.Dave.Brooks@zoho.com
Grace Lutheran Church
Durham, NC USA