An address given At Templederry, St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan on Sunday 22nd June 2014, the 1st after Trinity, year A
When I
first read it I said to myself, ‘Joc, you really can’t preach about this!’ How
could such dark stuff about conflict, violence and death be appropriate for a
lovely summer’s day? A day of joy, as Caleb & Laura Clarke bring their
daughter Amy to Killodiernan to be baptised. And
a day of fond farewells to Bishop Trevor and Joyce this afternoon in the
Cathedral in Limerick .
But then I
re-read it, I thought about it some more, and I realised that I have no choice
in the matter – it is my duty to wrestle with it. That is what the Lectionary
is for – to make preachers like me focus on passages from scripture they might
prefer to avoid. As Jesus said, ‘What I say to
you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from
the housetops’.
First, what is the context of the passage?
Jesus is briefing
his disciples - the Twelve - as he sends them out two by two on a ministry training
exercise. He is sending them out on their own for the first time to imitate his
ministry, to proclaim the good news and to heal the sick. He has just warned
them what they must confront: ‘See, I am
sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and
innocent as doves. Beware of them, for 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’.
Who are
these wolves? Jesus as always is entirely realistic about the world – it is full of
people consumed by evil motives. People like the Pharisees, who Matthew tells
us criticised Jesus for healing the mentally ill, whispering about ‘By the ruler of the demons he casts out
demons’. Beelzebul is the Aramaic name of the ruler of the demons,
the devil. If the Pharisees and people like them attack Jesus and call him
Beelzebul, what will they do to his followers?
So, in the first half of the reading Jesus
seeks to reassure his disciples.
Three times
he tells them not to be afraid of such people – they may kill the body, but
they cannot kill the soul. Instead they should fear God. Now, if we disobey God, if we
blank out our God-given conscience, we lose our soul, we lose our integrity as human
beings made in God’s image. And that is worse than death.
Shakespeare
expresses the same thought in Hamlet, when he puts these words in the mouth of Polonius
as he says farewell to his son Laertes, ‘This above all: to thine own self be true. And it must
follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man’.
Jesus
reminds his disciples that God is like a loving Father who values them. ‘Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of
them will fall to the ground unperceived by your Father. And even the hairs of
your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many
sparrows.’ What a lovely image.
And Jesus
promises solidarity with his disciples in the face of persecution: ‘Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I
also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven’.
Jesus is
surely teaching his disciples – and through them us - an important lesson,
which we must in turn teach our own children. It is this: each one of us must be
fearless in doing what we know is right, because each one of us is loved and
valued by God.
At the Baptism in Killodiernan the address ended with this:
Let us
pray that with the help of Caleb and Laura, and her Godparents, Amy will learn this lesson and learn it
well.
May she and Sarah-Jane, and all the children here, grow up ‘wise as serpents
and innocent as doves’ to overcome the wolves they will encounter in the world!
In the other churches it continued s follows.
But what of the second half of the reading,
with its apocalyptic tone?
Matthew has
already told us that Jesus taught his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount to
turn the other cheek in the face of violence. How then can Jesus now declare: ‘I have not come to bring peace, but a sword’?
Jesus
continues, quoting from the prophet Micah: ‘For I have set a
man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law’; and one’s foes will be members of
one’s own household’. Micah is writing in the 8th
Century BC about the corruption of Jerusalem
No doubt
Jesus’s disciples understood the reference to be to the corruption of their own
time. And they probably realised that for them to be true to the values Jesus
taught them and leave home and family to become itinerant preachers - would
inevitably split their families.
Notice that
Jesus, following Micah, is talking about conflict between generations – sons
against fathers, daughters against mothers. We all know, don't we, that children always
cause their parents grief by their behaviour. And parents are always
scorned by their children for their comfortable hypocrisies. I think Jesus is making
a general point, relevant to every time and place: young people, in order to be
true to their own conscience and to God – to be true to their own selves in
Shakespeare’s sense - are bound to behave in ways that hurt their parents.
And this is
right. Because Jesus claims his disciples for himself before any family ties,
and calls them to follow him no matter what pain and suffering it causes: ‘Whoever
loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son
or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the
cross and follow me is not worthy of me’.
Are we
prepared for this?
We must become so. Loving parents must let their children go
to grow as individuals, informed by their own sense of right and wrong - and
loving children likewise their parents. Our Christian hope is that their
relationship with God through Jesus will deepen and broaden as the Spirit leads
their journey as disciples - because ‘those who find
their life’ – those concerned only for their own life - ‘ will lose it, and those who lose their life for (Jesus)
sake will find it’.
And let us
pray that young and old we may all be ‘wise as serpents
and innocent as doves’ to overcome the wolves we encounter in the world.
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