What was Jesus talking about?

 

 

So we come to a lengthy series of Jesus’ observations about what it means to be involved in gospel living. And immediately… these strange words of Jesus which on the face of it flies in the face of everything I ever learned as a psychotherapist.

You’ll recall that Jesus has called the small group of learner-followers together and given them some clues about how to do this thing called “living-in-Jesus’-name.”

From what Jesus says it seems that this is no easy thing. This is not going to be easy. This may be the key to today’s reflection

He starts with this cautionary note:

“People will call you names”

Now he doesn’t use that ancient formula that my mother used on several occasions when I think she must have been trying to comfort me as a young child….“Sticks and stones can break your bones but names will never hurt you.”

But that’s what Jesus was talking about. He’s been called names! He’s been called Beelzebub, a name linked to the Canaanite god Baal and used as a name for Satan.

Expect to be berated he said. “Don’t be intimidated”…”Don’t be bluffed into silence by bullies who threaten you”.

And instead of the sticks and stones line he said  something far more defining:

“There’s nothing they can do to your soul – your core being…it’s the Lord who holds your entire life in his hands”(v28)

That’s reassuring even if I can’t ever remember being called names or threatened because I was known as a Christian.

And then in this collection of Jesus’ sayings that Matthew digs into to fashion his gospel we come to these hard words;

“Forget About Yourself”

 

^29-31 “What’s the price of a pet canary? Some loose change, right? And God cares what happens to it even more than you do. He pays even greater attention to you, down to the last detail—even numbering the hairs on your head! So don’t be intimidated by all this bully talk. You’re worth more than a million canaries.

^32-33 “Stand up for me against world opinion and I’ll stand up for you before my Father in heaven. If you turn tail and run, do you think I’ll cover for you?

And then these even stranger words

^34-37 “Don’t think I’ve come to make life cosy. I’ve come to cut—make a sharp knife-cut between son and father, daughter and mother, bride and mother-in-law—cut through these cosy domestic arrangements and free you for God. Well-meaning family members can be your worst enemies. If you prefer father or mother over me, you don’t deserve me. If you prefer son or daughter over me, you don’t deserve me.

^38-39 “If you don’t go all the way with me, through thick and thin, you don’t deserve me.

“You don’t deserve me”.

Three times he says it.

And it all started with those unexpected words “Don’t think I’ve come to make life cosy”

I‘ve always  struggled with these words which I’ve passed over without thinking very much about them. But here they are in today’s reading.

What on earth do they mean?

Doesn’t this talk about ‘deserving’ something make it sound as if I have to achieve something? There’s more than a hint here that there’s something transactional going on;

“Stand up for me against world opinion and I’ll stand up for you

And I have always thought ‘grace’ was free. And I bet you thought that too!

Oh the commentaries have something to say about it…they always do.

But none of it satisfies me. It’s a puzzle.

 

So here’s my best shot at understanding these words.

Jesus was always talking about radical change…a basic upending of the world he lived in.

And he always seemed to be at the centre of this project.

There was nothing he said or did that didn’t cause heads to turn and hearts to be grateful. And a lot of what he said and did upset people…upset them very much.

And this project got him into a lot of trouble for we know that the baby born in the Bethlehem stable, in the end hung and died on a Roman cross on the hill they called Calvary.

The cosy scenes of the young parents and the animals…and the shepherds…

and the wise people who eventually rode in on their camels, exalted in countless nativity scenes turns out to be a seductive and misleading diorama of what this man was all about.

These words in Matthew, were written to a Christian community that was being hassled and  hounded by Jewish authorities. They were in a perilous situation similar to the one  Jesus had lived through almost 60 years earlier.

And now Matthew is reminding these People of the Way that they too might die because of their best efforts to upend the world they live in.

These people knew something that is too easily forgotten. They had the whole of Israelite history behind them and they knew that the name of the game was peaceful and just community.

They knew that Yahweh’s purpose was that people should live together in peace, searching at every turn for the upright solution to the enduring problems of injustice and hopelessness.

And they knew that this was a costly project.

You could very easily lose your life to the whim of the presiding and often persecuting Roman governor and be fed to wild animals.

And here’s the point.

This was a group thing.

They were in it together or they weren’t in it at all.

They stood together or they fell together. They knew that not one of them was safe unless all of them were safe.

So they cared deeply for each other as if the other person was their brother or their sister; their mother or their father.

And now, in Jesus name they were to be for one another as if they were Jesus to one another.

And it must have happened from time to time that these caring, transformative relationships were cut to shreds or blown to pieces.

So Mathew recalls Jesus words

If your first concern is to look after yourself,

you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me.

A clue?

 

So here’s a clue…I wonder, is it the clue to a way of living that transcends…lifts us above the ordinary…into that place where as a community of believers we cannot be ignored by the world around us?

And into a place where we find ourselves by giving ourselves away?

That sounds odd doesn’t it!

But its exactly what Jesus did.

The critical and definitive text here is from Philippians 2: 5-11

^5-8 Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.

And if you look at that carefully you’ll see that this is exactly the same formula that Matthew uses…

If your first concern is to look after yourself,

you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me.

The early Christians got to this point in a very simple and direct way.

It wasn’t clever…

On the face of it, it makes no sense.

It was costly.

As Richard Rohr, the American Franciscan friar points out

“Their agenda for justice was the most foundational and undercutting of all others;

a very simple lifestyle outside the system of production and consumption (the real meaning of the vow of poverty),

plus a conscious identification with those who live on the margins of society (the communion of saints pushed to its outer edge)”

In this position, you do not “do” acts of peace and justice as much as your life itself is peace and justice. You take your small and sufficient place in the great and grand scheme of God”

Be good to yourself. Be kind to yourself.

And then forget yourself; lose yourself in the other.

There’s the key to it all.

 

And in the strangest of all possible ways that’s how you’ll find yourself.

(The paraphrase of the New Testament used throughout is The Message.)