Just recently we have had a new person join our Friday evening Bible Discussion Group. It is always wonderful when new people pluck up the courage to come along to something that will help them deepen their faith, and it’s even more fabulous when that faith is brand new and they are full of joy and enthusiasm for all that there is to learn about the amazing adventure of following Jesus. What could be better than the opportunity to introduce a new Christian to the uplifting and inspiring experience of reading the Bible? What could be better?
Well, it could, potentially, be a just a teeny bit better if the lectionary were to help out a bit more with the whole ‘uplifting and inspiring’ thing, instead of delivering messages like the one that we heard Jesus giving to his disciples last week, when he tells them that ‘they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me’; or like the message of the passage we have just heard, which warns us that Jesus has come not to bring peace but a sword; to set a man against his father and a woman against her mother; that following him means taking up a cross… and no follower of Jesus can be unaware of what that cross means – judgement, scorn, humiliation, agony, death. Uplifting and inspiring it ain’t!
Passages like the one we’ve just heard, or indeed like our Old Testament reading in which we saw Hagar and her son Ishmael banished and left to fend for themselves in the wilderness, raise the question of how we should approach those bits of the Bible that disturb and unsettle us (and there are many that might fit into this category) and about how engaging with them (rather than just skirting over them or pretending they don’t exist), far from discouraging faith and discipleship, might actually build us up in our faith and make us better disciples.
One of the ways in which we can begin to approach ‘difficult’ passages like today’s is by looking at them in context. The stories that the Gospel writers tell about Jesus are precisely that: stories. They are not rule books and they are not collections of mottos or sayings, uplifting or otherwise. They are stories, which go beyond the short passages that we read here in church on a Sunday morning, and which really only make sense when looked at in their entirety.
So let’s put today’s passage in context. It follows on directly from the reading we heard in church last week, in which Jesus chooses his twelve closest followers and sends them out to heal the sick, cast out demons raise the dead, and, above all, to proclaim the good news of the kingdom, to let people know the amazing truth that, in Jesus, God has drawn very close to humankind – so close as to share our very human nature itself. And the episode culminates at the beginning of the next chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, when some of the followers of John the Baptist come to Jesus to ask him if he really is the Messiah: ‘Are you the one who is to come’, they ask, ‘or are we to wait for another?’. ‘What do you think?’, Jesus replies, with barely concealed impatience. ‘Look around you! Blind people see again. Deaf people hear. Lame people walk. Dead people come to life again. Work it out for yourselves!’.
If you’ve caught a train anytime in the past decade or so, you will have heard (probably multiple times!) the slogan ‘See it, say it, sorted’! It’s not, perhaps, the catchiest of messages, but it seems to me that this is precisely what Jesus is saying to John’s disciples: ‘say what you see and you’ll understand who I am – you’ll understand what’s going on here, that God’s kingdom is being realised here and now’. And that is also what Jesus is telling his own disciples in the passages that we have heard today and last week. Let people see what God can do: cure the sick; cast out demons; raise the dead. Say words that speak of God’s truth: the kingdom has come, Jesus is the Messiah. And then? Well, then leave the rest to God. The disciples’ job – and our job – is not to ‘sort it’ for ourselves. No, the really good news is that, if Jesus is the Messiah and the kingdom has come, then God has already sorted it.
That is the truth that Jesus holds up before the disciples of John as proof of his identity. And that is the truth that Jesus sends his disciples out to reveal. Does that make it easy? Well, no. Is their mission a dangerous one? Sure, it is. Jesus is clear about that.But he is also clear that they are not on their own and they are not starting from scratch. And this is emphasised in what I think are the key verses for understanding this passage.
‘Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known’. The disciples’ job, I have said, is one of uncovering, of revelation, of making known that which God has already done. Jesus sends them out as sheep among wolves, to speak truth in the face of deafness, to reveal truth in the face of blindness, to preach peace and love even though he knows that that message will be taken and twisted into the language of division and hatred, to wield that truth like a sword, to carry that truth like a cross, and not to flinch at its weight. He sends them out not to create a better world through their own efforts, not to build God’s kingdom, but simply to reveal it, to point to where God is already active.
And he sends us out too to do this same work, because this work is ongoing. It’s the work of the Church now as much as it was of Jesus’s first followers. It’s the work of all who believe… and not just those who wear a dog-collar, but each and every one of us. And, yes, this is where it gets a bit scary, of course. But Jesus knew that this would be scary. That’s why he tells us not to be afraid. To remember that the God who knit us together in our mothers’ wombs knows and loves and cares about every hair on our heads, knows us better than we know ourselves, and wants to see us flourish and grow, not come to harm. The world may seek to knock us down, but the God who gives flight to the sparrow, and who provides wells of water in the desert, picks us up, holds us fast, nourishes us and quenches our thirst, and, above all, is with us always.
‘Don’t be afraid’, Jesus reassures us. He tells us what to do, how to start on this work of discipleship. And the good news is that it doesn’t necessarily involve leaving home, giving up everything, putting ourselves in the way of danger, healing the sick or raising the dead. No… the first and most important thing that Jesus asks of us is really quite simple. ‘What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light, and what you hear whispered, tell from the rooftops’. The first step in answering Jesus’s call to discipleship is to see what God is doing and to say it, to share it… If you enjoy our service here this morning, tell someone about it. If you’ve heard something about Jesus this morning that has made you think differently about what it means to be a Christian, share that with someone. If you’ve been a churchgoer all your life, so long that you’ve long stopped thinking about why you’re here, have a think right now about how you’d respond to someone who asked why you come? What is it about being a Christian that you’d like to bring out into the light so that others can see it? What is the good news that you’d like to shout from the rooftops? Or are you perhaps someone who still feels as if you’re moving through shadows? Someone to whom God is whispering, perhaps barely audibly, ‘come and see’? If you are, don’t be afraid. Ask someone to show you, to tell you… to help you bring that dimly perceived sense of ‘something’ out into the light, to turn up the volume on that whisper until it starts to make sense.
Don’t be afraid. Yes, Jesus warns his disciples that following him can be costly. But he also reassures them that God has it sorted and that all will ultimately be revealed. In the meantime, he asks us to do two quite simple things: to see it – to bring Jesus into the light – and to say it – to shout what we have seen from the rooftops. And that’s it! Sorted!