Year A

Matthew 10:24-39

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

The Sword of Love

So what kind of sword would Jesus have us wield? If this is the good news today, who wants to hear the bad news? I mean when we finish reading this gospel text, many of us just might find ourselves chocking over the liturgical response at the conclusion: “The Gospel of the Lord.” I don’t have any swords or guns. The first time I remember seeing a gun up close that wasn’t on TV or in a museum, in my home was when I was 8 years old and it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. My father, a Captain in the Army sat up all night dressed in his uniform with gun at his side waiting to be called out to war with Russia. I don’t remember ever seeing him again with a gun at home. And even though I know they are necessary to have when needed against those who want to hurt us or our enemies. They have also been used over and over inappropriately to kill the innocent. 

Today, Jeremiah, Paul, and Matthew all speak of divine gun support in situations of danger and especially against enemies. For the prophet Jeremiah, the call of the Lord to service leads to a great deal of trouble for him and yet, he knows that the Lord is present and does not forsake him in those difficult times. He can sing and praise the Lord for the Lord has delivered the life of the poor and needy from the hands of evildoers. Like Jeremiah, Jesus, and later Paul, attracted considerable hostility. In both Matthew’s and Paul’s Christian communities there were believers who misunderstood the implications of the gospel-and thus also the gospel’s meaning.

There were those who thought they could give absolute trust in and loyalty to the God revealed in Jesus Christ yet withhold a radical commitment to living out the ethics of the new community that Jesus revealed in the Sermon on the Mount and the love commandment. They must have presumed that grace makes no demands upon those who receive it. That is as Dietrich Bonhoeffer called it in his book The Cost of Discipleship, “cheap grace.” That is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ. And Paul responds, “Absolutely not!”

And Matthew’s Jesus says: “Don’t think that I’ve come to bring peace to the earth. I haven’t come to bring peace, but a sword,” and then to clarify his point, he says, “Those who don’t pick up their crosses and follow me aren’t worthy of me.”  This passage today continues a discourse Jesus gave to his disciples to prepare them for their mission. Down through the ages this text has been used as a manual as to how we might apply the lessons from the Sermon on the Mount to modern challenges of faith in the Christian community. In this discourse on evangelism, Jesus points out to the disciples that they are not to be intimidated by what is going on in the world.      

He warns them of the troubles they would encounter, both from religious and political groups. He helps them to understand that just as his ministry is the model for theirs, so is his suffering and rejection which they will experience as well. He says, “A disciple is not above the teacher.” Knowing this, they are not to fear the ones who malign them, those who might even kill them. Rather they are to fear the One who has power over life and death. Jesus is taking about God. But his purpose is not to make them afraid of God but to comfort them with the message that they are precious in God’s eyes, and no matter what happens to them, God is still with them and the one in charge.

He reminds them that their faithful witnessing to him, in spite of persecution, will lead him to acknowledge them before “my father” in heaven. He is encouraging his disciples to challenge the world with the sword of the gospel. The gospel shakes up values, rearranges priorities, and reorients goals. There will be times when allegiance to Jesus will cause a crisis of loyalty and force a decision. I’ve seen this in my own life, in my family and among the church community. Yet in spite of this, Jesus invites disciples to witness to a faith that is able to overcome fear or persecution because we know that our fate is in the hands of a loving God. Armed with such an assurance, we have the power to approach the cross in a new way.

We can choose the way of love, generosity, and hopefulness over hate, intolerance, and despair because we have a strength through our baptism that can be known by those who are obedient to the call of Jesus Christ on their lives. Paul reminds us today that at the moment of our baptism, we are so deeply united with Christ that we are “buried” with him. Something new begins and all our sins are killed off through Christ’s death. It doesn’t mean we should continue in sin but now the gospel is loosed, and we are free to live in the love of Jesus. The forgiveness and grace or love of God surrounds us. We can’t earn it; we can only trust it and welcome its power in our lives.         

We are a new creation, raised to live a new life. All the powers that hurt and destroy don’t have any dominion over us anymore. You may have heard the Epiphany poem by T. S. Eliot titled “The Gift of the Magi”? One of the three Wise Men reflects on seeing the newborn Christ child, and he says, “Were we led all that way for birth or death? There was a birth, certainly….and I shall be glad of another death.” When Jesus was born the whole world was changed. Because of the child in that manger, because of the things he has said and done, everything is different. So Eliot puts those words on the Magi’s lips, confessing that he is “no longer at ease in the old way of life.

We are dead to sin and alive to God, because as those baptized we cannot remain in sin without betraying who we have become. We have become those who can take up our cross with the promise of life if we are willing to surrender all that we have and are to God’s mission. Today we are being challenged not to think merely about being a Christian but about our willingness to be spokespersons for God in and to our society that treats Christianity with more disinterest than outright persecution.

Are we willing to risk the people’s response to Jeremiah’s announcement of judgment by our confronting a society more concerned about preserving wealth than protecting our poor? Are we, the church, willing to acknowledge Jesus as Christ and to risk our loyalties, priorities, and values for the sake of the gospel? Are we as Paul urged the congregation in Rome, willing to run against the grain by walking “in newness of life”? Our texts today throw these questions at us, challenging us, the church, to count the costs of discipleship. Paul reassures us that both in and beyond this mortal life God has provided for us and thankfully we have a sword, the sword of the gospel of Jesus Christ and that is the sword we are to wield. It may not always bring peace but when used to further God’s kingdom, it will bring God’s love.