Sermon for 3rd Sunday after Pentecost – Matthew 10:24-39

We’ve got a lot to argue about these days. Do we still have to hunker down at home, or do we start eating out again? Do we have to wear a mask or not? Do we gather for in-person worship or not? What do we really think of the president? What do we believe about the police? Systemic racism? Is it ever ok to bring any of this up in a sermon? At the end of the day, we all make our choices or answer our calls, I suppose. But not without a cost. We’re exhausted from all this fighting. Every day we witness a new worst case scenario that leaves us cynical. We struggle to hang onto some kind of hope for peace and justice even though we can’t see it right now.

So of course we look to Jesus to reassure us that this is only a passing phase. But Jesus doesn’t seem very reassuring today. He 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 man against father, daughter against mother. One’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” That doesn’t sound like peace. That sounds like strife. Like Jesus wants us to be a bunch of Pharisees at each others’ throats in the name of some kind of righteousness. In what universe does this jive with what we know about Jesus as the source of forgiveness and community?

Well, part of what’s so controversial here is that we have this tendency to assume we’re always on Jesus’ side. We want to believe we’re the good guys. Obviously Jesus must be speaking out against our enemies. So Jesus must be commanding us to resist them. To push back. To protest for justice and order and everything we think God wants. Some folks think that means yelling “all lives matter” since obviously that’s supposed to be true. But is it honest? Do we actually live that way? No. We live in a world of profiling and racial disparity and economic injustice. Who could deny that the virus has brought to light all kinds of inequality? The worst statistics fall on those folks who don’t have the privilege of staying home. Folks whose employers haven’t taken safety precautions. People of color underserved by the healthcare industry. Elders neglected by institutions that we entrust to their care. I’m not an expert, but who can truly account for how we got here? If we’re honest, we recognize the failure of bureaucracy and our collective failure to consider our neighbor’s safety. This system leads us to betray each others’ trust, and we all feel that guilt.

And Jesus knows. So he says “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” He’s not calling for protest or strife. He’s talking about himself, because wherever he goes he reveals all this brokenness. We blame these protests for causing chaos and destroying our peace, but Jesus tells the truth that we never really had any peace. It was all an illusion. Just generations of bad peace. Fear keeps us from speaking truth to power because we’re petrified to lose relationships. But what if those relationships were never really real to begin with? Yet Jesus tells us whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. But we see what the cross did to him. It killed him. Are any of us really prepared to go all the way? The virus says no.

But thank God that’s not the last word for you or me. Because Jesus immediately makes a promise. “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Here’s the thing – Jesus isn’t testing us. He’s not talking about martyrdom. He’s talking about the fact that though we die with him on the cross, he raises us with him in the power of his resurrection. Not because of anything we did or didn’t do, not because we asked him to, but because he knows the truth of who we are and chooses to bind us to himself whether we like it or not. This is why he says “the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid.” Jesus means that God has already made a decision for us, and God won’t let anything get in the way of that. In other words, Jesus shows us what true love looks like.

It’s the kind of love that finally drives us to repentance. To face our defects without fear, because now we know there’s a different way. There really is a peace that passes all understanding. But we don’t get there by winning arguments or shaming our enemies. We get there because Jesus fills us with the spirit of compassion. It drives us to show others the same compassion that Jesus has shown us. And they will know we genuinely care for their sake. Sure, we still mess up. We still show our ignorance. But the spirit of humility will teach us by our missteps. Not to make us better people, but to help us serve our neighbors today better than yesterday, and tomorrow better than today. We willingly sacrifice and inconvenience ourselves. Not because we have to. It’s because it’s a joy to live into the reality we desperately hope for, and this is real.

Folks, I know this sounds like a lot of wishful thinking. Our problems seem intractable. God known how much we have to learn. For all his compassion and miracles, Jesus was still hated. At least we know we’re not going to experience anything he didn’t experience. But we don’t have to go looking for a cross. Our cross always finds us. We’re going to speak out for God’s justice. We’re going to get drawn into strife. But this reminds me of something Luther says in his commentary on the Psalms – “A good strife comes in order that a bad peace may be disrupted.” So maybe this is a good strife. Because even if others don’t like us, they still encounter us, and Jesus gives us the perfect disruption for those situations. The word of forgiveness. What could be more disruptive than that? The only word that makes space for the kingdom of God to draw near and make its mark on all of us despite our differences. Those differences that prove it’s unconditional. And at the end of the day, it’s the only way folks will know their lives really do matter. Thanks be to God.