Göttinger Predigten
Göttinger Predigten im Internet hg. von U. Nembach
Pentecost 6, 06/22/2008
Sermon on Matthew 10:24-39, by Luke Bouman
Matthew 10:24 "A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; 25 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! 26 "So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. 27 What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. 28 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. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 And even the hairs of your head are all counted. 31 So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows. 32 "Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; 33 but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven. 34 "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 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; 36 and one's foes will be members of one's own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38 and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."
Alienation
"I hate you!"
The words stung, coming from her daughter as they did. Jane had heard it all before, of course. One teenager had already left home for college, and this language was often part of the repertoire in that relationship as well. No matter what the issue, no matter how calm Jane tried to be, the dramatic alienation declared from daughter to mother was the ultimate escalation. It was as if this emotional reaction was calculated to reverse the unpopular decision not to let her daughter, age 13, date a boy much older. It was as if the affection of the daughter could be restored if Jane would only relent and allow the daughter to do "what she wanted." Jane had not reached the lofty age of 43 without at least some sense of these things. She would hold fast, her daughter would have to learn to love her in spite of her "old-fashioned" ways.
This mild example of alienation in a family might seem almost like something out of an episode of "The Brady Bunch" when compared to the news reports that we hear every day. Children who are violent toward their parents, teachers, others in authority seem to liberally litter the pages of the daily paper. Various sides of arguments seem to have escalated their language about one another to a level not seen in our country for many years. (Here I point no fingers at any one side, all parties seem to bear some guilt.) We seem to have come to a place where we expect that people will not get along unless forced to do so. We have become intolerant of others and their views as different from ours. We have learned to blame others for our problems and our discontent. We know the world is like this.
What we don't expect is to hear Jesus telling us that this is what will happen if we follow him. We expect the church to be the place where there is refuge from the alienation and disunity of the world. We expect there to be peace, if not on earth, then at least in heaven. In so far as we project that our faith communities are a "piece of heaven on earth" we expect them to conform. The rhetoric of our religious media suggests that if we were only more faithful, then our families would be places of idyllic harmony. It is only the "creeping menace of secularism" that causes families to experience the kind of fracture that we see. As a consequence, Jesus' words come to me as more jarring than they might otherwise seem.
Of course another way to talk about alienation, about separation, about the disunity of our world is the use the language of Sin. In one definition, Sin is separation from God, and as a result of that, it is separation from one another. The opposite of this is a person who is in the right relationship with another. This passage does not seem at first to agree with this kind of definition. It suggests that a right relationship with God will mean, at least sometimes, alienation from others. Some have suggested at a minimum the possibility or risk of that alienation.
The Reality of Broken Relationships
Broken relationships are a very real part of our lives, no doubt. But in today's world a failed relationship does not necessarily mean that we are cast out of polite society. Even those who are, have the possibility of picking up and starting over, even if it means moving. In the ancient world people were not ordinarily so mobile. One's family, one's clan, was an important clue to one's identity. This may seem strange to us, post-enlightenment, but then, the first century is often misunderstood because we fail to grasp this basic truth. (For more on this see "A Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels" by Malina and Rohrbaugh.)
To be separated from one's family was to be outside of the protection and largess that the family would provide. For this reason, a person would not normally leave home (like the Prodigal Son). It was the way the culture had of offering protection from one generation to the next. It also provided for the means to keep the younger generations in line. It was part of the greater cultural DNA of that era. Only with the protection and patronage of another would it be possible for a person to leave home. Jesus promises the disciples just that when he says that he will acknowledge before his Father those who acknowledge him (and deny those who deny him).
What Jesus is doing is not asking the disciples to join a cult-like organization that demands ultimate loyalty so much as he is explaining to them the consequence of following Jesus' vision of the Kingdom (Reign) of God. His vision was so radically different than the one widely held in his day (and ours!) that following it would mean a break with family. Holding ideas that are contrary to your parents, after all, would bring dishonor to everyone, and likely get anyone who followed the "new" ideas kicked out of their families. Jesus doesn't demand that people break with their families in order to be with him so much as he warns them that following will probably mean a break with what has, up until now, protected and guided them.
Perhaps this is why, in Matthew, Jesus offers words about God's comfort and protection to the disciples as part of the warning that they may need a new "family" if they follow his radical teaching. God will care for us, Jesus says, indicating that God will act as the clan leader, in the ancient way, providing for all under his protection and patronage. But there is more to God's response to our broken relationships than just protection and providence. There is also the way of the cross, the way that Jesus, at the end of this passage, calls us to follow.
God in the Breach
It is at the cross that we find that our alienation from our families is not just a matter of losing our patronage, nor is it a matter simply of separation from our earthly families to be exchanged for a new spiritual family. Here we find that Jesus, himself, experiences this alienation, even from the God whom he calls "Abba". In fact, on the cross Jesus experiences the ultimate alienation, death itself. Here we discover a deep and terrible truth. God, in entering our existence in Jesus, came to experience our brokenness, our alienation, our death. Paradoxically, in dying and embracing death this way, God has chosen a way out of the alienation that all humanity experiences.
By denying death, avoiding death, trying to preserve our lives no matter the cost, we actually become alienated from life itself (See Kierkegaard, "A Sickness Unto Death," for example). We experience distance from one another and cannot live life as intended, in service to God and others. My father used to tell the story of when he had returned to his parish after a long absence. The family of the congregation's Matriarch was waiting for his return to minister to her as she lay dying. As he arrived at their house, a member of the family greeted him at the door with these words: "Mother is dying, but we haven't told her yet." My father wondered about this, but went into her room to extend the Eucharist to her in her home, which the family did not wish to join in, at the moment. As he entered her room she greeted him with these words: "I'm dying, but I haven't told my children yet." At that point my father realized that the family was living the brokenness of the denial of death, and he proceeded to get them talking to one another again. They had missed a lot of life and relationship hiding death from one another.
God's response to our alienation is to join us in it and lead us through it. While Jesus experiences the pain of separation on the cross ("My God, My God why have you forsaken me!") he experiences the new life of relationship restored in the creative life-giving power of God, evidenced in the resurrection. It follows that we, who are people of the cross, cannot expect to escape brokenness, either of relationship or finally of death. What we can understand is that these things are not the enemy, nor are they the final verdict of God on all humanity, including us! We live in the hope of resurrection beyond death. We live in the hope that God will restore all people to the relationships we were intended to have, even to those alienated from us now. It may be that this final restoration may wait for us in God's future. Or it may be that in the life-giving love of the crosses that we bear, we may see the seeds of reconciliation in the relationships that we pursue now, no matter how imperfect and broken. Faithful living and dying in our brokenness is more than just for the end of life. It is for the dying to sin and rising to new life in our Baptism each day. Out of such love from God springs love even for those who would break with us now over our insistence that giving of self, not preserving the self, is the surest way to be human.