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First
Reading
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Psalm |
Epistle |
Gospel |
| Jeremiah 20:7–13
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Romans 6:1b–11 |
Matthew 10:24–39
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This past Wednesday the cartoon strip “Non Sequitur” in the Ithaca Journal showed an older couple walking past an announcement sign in front of a church that read “Sunday’s Sermon” won’t have any political implications.” The woman turns to the man and remarks, “There was a time when you usually assumed that.” Now I know that cartoon strips are not meant to be conveyors of profound wisdom, and we should not take them too seriously, and yet I suspect the strip does reflect a common and long standing misperception about Christianity, a misperception that today’s Gospel tries to emphatically correct.
Jesus knew full well that discipleship was not simply a personal matter with no serious implications and effects on others. Discipleship was not simply confined to one’s inner thoughts or compartmentalized in a closed off section of one’s life. Jesus’ words, “ Do not think I have come to bring peace to the earth.... I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, one’s own foes will be members of one’s own household....” are pretty sharp. They reflect the early church’s troubling experience that as people began to be identified as Christians, they were isolated from the synagogue community and began to be separated from many in their own family as well. The early followers of Jesus often lost the only family they ever knew, and were forced to find or form a new one.
Hence Christians of any age have to learn right from the start that baptism into the Body of Christ may be interpreted by the world as a stigma. A serious reading of the Gospel doesn’t permit us to fool ourselves. If the Gospel doesn’t pinch us in some way in our relationships with co-workers, schoolmates and neighbors, strangers and close relatives, as well as societies’ larger institutions, we had better examine our relationship with Christ. If we never stumble and wrestle over obstacles on the road of discipleship, if we never feel a stone in our shoe, we are apt to be on the wrong road or wearing a pair of too easy shoes. “I believe” license plates and “Christian” theme parks, like the old “honk if you love Jesus” bumper stickers may be pleasant peripheral accouterments of a regional culture, but never will serve as indications of thoughtful discipleship.
Narrowly partisan is one thing, but political is another. The Gospel is not of the world, but it is quite definitely in the world and is concerned about the fate of humanity. Humanity is the church’s business. This past week Pastor Davenport from one of the few operating parishes in the seventh ward of New Orleans visited Ithaca to thank us for the support we have given the people there. He made it painfully obvious that government at all levels continues to ignore and fail the people who are poor and powerless, and that it is the churches and the volunteers who come from all over to help that are providing the hope and support necessary for the residents there to rebuild. That’s a political reality that we rightfully should be aware of.
This week Congress began hearings on the use of torture by our government on prisoners considered terrorists. The Gospel calls us to be very wary of arguments to justify torture on others just because the others are our enemies. Interrogation is one thing; torture is another. This is not a partisan concern, for it speaks to how we treat others, even our enemies who wish to harm us. Needless to say people across party lines and across religions have strongly condemned the techniques of torture that have been justified and used in recent years by our own government.
All of which is to say that if what we hear and say in here doesn’t affect what happens outside theses doors, it may be that we are not saying and hearing the words of Jesus. Some of the best tent revival preachers used to remind their hearers that the cross is not a single pole, running up and down between God and us, but is on an axis, crossing in the middle and going across distance and barriers between all of us. If the Gospel is taken seriously, inevitably it has political implications, cartoon strips notwithstanding. That’s part and parcel of the hard work of discipleship.
And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.
