21 st June: 3 rd Sunday after Pentecost

Nothing is neutral in our world. From politics to religion; from television to movies; from food and drinks to clothing, books, and the teams we support—nothing is neutral. Everything around us bids us to take a stance, to have an opinion or assign value to things we experience, do, and believe.

Perhaps the only exception to the rule are those individuals and occurrences which validate what we already know to be true. But this is dangerous territory; for agreement with that which surrounds us is only a mirage of neutrality. When we assume that the world agrees with us—or ought to agree with us—we tend to foster echo-chambers which protect our beliefs and interests; we risk entering a privileged complacency made in our own images that closes us off to the world in which we live and sends us adrift in the delusion of neutrality, confusing our worldviews and ideals with the ways of the world itself. Save the deceptive neutrality we create for ourselves, reality is filled with tension and with choices. Nothing is neutral in our world.

The same may be said of the Gospel in which we believe. For God’s very self has stooped down from on high in Jesus Christ to redeem and save—to claim our lives and the life of the world. It demands a decision from us, a pledge of allegiance or rejection, a wrestling. Far from validating our existences and enabling our complacent neutrality, it transforms both us and the world we know. It bids us to take up our cross and join in the mischief of redemption that makes all things new. For the Gospel bids us to come and die, to lose our lives and in doing so find ourselves anew. There’s nothing neutral about this Good News. There’s nothing easy about the love which claims us or the grace which reshapes our values and commitments. But even so, we seem to never stop trying to domesticate its claims in order to ease its demands. In truth, we desire a neutral Gospel, one that asks little more than that which we’re willing to give, one that validates our presuppositions about what it means to follow in the ways of Jesus.

Our Gospel text for this Sunday is about discipleship. What is more, it’s about those who follow in the ways of Jesus learning just how difficult the road of faith can be. It seems to me that there are at least two audiences assumed by our text that we would do well to learn from today. The first are those in the story itself: The twelve disciples of Jesus, sent out like sheep amidst wolves to preach the Good News among the lost people of Israel (Mt 10:5–16). If chapters 5–7 of Matthew’s Gospel record the teachings of Jesus and chapters 8–9 describe his ministry, so now in chapter 10 the disciples are sent out to follow in his ways. But just before they embark, Jesus offers a few words of warning and encouragement about the difficult road that lies before them. Like their master, the disciples will not only heal the sick and cast out demons, but they will also be handed over to councils, flogged in the synagogues, and brought before rulers and kings (Mt 10:17–18). The road ahead would be anything but easy; and yet, this is the road to which they were called and now must travel.

The second audience in our text is more implied than specified. It’s comprised of those first-century readers of Matthew’s Gospel who were persecuted for their faith. According to one who comments upon the text, Matthew directs the comforting words of Jesus to ‘disciple-missioners’, who are experiencing rejection and persecution for their faith in the early years of the Christian movement. ¹ Like the disciples in our text, the early Christians reading Matthew’s Gospel know the difficulties of discipleship first hand, and the words of Jesus are designed to give them encouragement and comfort amidst their trials. ‘Have no fear,’ Jesus says—to both them and perhaps also us. For there is more to this world than that which we see and the hardships we face; for our lives belongs to the living God.

However, it seems to me that this raises an unresolvable tension in our text. For though God’s loving care comforts those who are persecuted, it seems to do little by way of relieving their afflictions, raising all sorts of questions about God’s relation to those things which oppress or distort the creation and its creatures. While I’m not sure that I have any good answers to these questions, I might also add that our text today doesn’t pretend to offer any either. Rather, it seeks to encourage those who struggle down faith’s paths by asserting God’s love for them in their times of need. For it is in those moments when our faith in God is perhaps at its weakest that God’s faith in us provides the strength we need to carry on.

And so, what should we do with a passage such as this? A passage that appears out of touch with our twenty-first century western world where the difficulties facing Christians are radically different than those of the first century. How might the plight of those in our text inform the faith of Christians who live in a culture torn apart by allegiances and who all too often seek asylum among those who mostly agree with us? Perhaps it offers us the unambiguous reminder that following in the ways of Jesus begins with the reorientation of all our preconceived ideas and worldviews, that discipleship is never about the validation of our beliefs or actions but their abandonment. For discipleship is about relinquishing our self-made righteousness in order to join in the life-giving rhythms of the Gospel for the world and its people.

Our passage today bids us to abandon our echo-chambers of self-righteousness and join in the righteousness of our Lord, which is categorically different from that of the world. For the Gospel calls into question all our beliefs and assumptions about religion and spirituality, about politics, about what it means to be human and contribute to the good of the world. It invites us to probe the inner parts of lives and allow the radical grace of our Lord to reshape us into Kingdom-seeking disciples who join in the life-giving mischief of the Spirit. There’s no time for complacency; there’s no way for us to hold onto to our worldviews and allegiances while also following in the way of our Lord. For the Gospel is never neutral: it claims, it redeems, it questions us over and again even when we think we’ve grasped all that it has to offer. It refuses to become an instrument of our own bidding, and in turn bids us time and time again to take up our cross anew and tread the path of our Lord in a world longing for mercy and dying for love. May we heed its call in the strength of our Lord and by the grace of the living triune God, confident that all we could ever need to meet the demands of love has already been provided us by the love which has stooped down from on high to save. Thanks be to God.