Fearlessly do what is right

An address given At Templederry, St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan on Sunday 22nd June 2014, the 1st after Trinity, year A

Today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel (10:24Matthew 10:24-39 is strong meat, isn’t it!

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 8^th Century BC about the corruption of Jerusalem, lamenting the collapse of traditional Israelite values and foreseeing the city’s eventual destruction.

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.

Foreigners & Exiles

‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude.’
These words came to my mind as I read today's passage from Luke's Gospel (17:11-19). They come from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, sung by a character who is an exile in the Forest of Ardenne.

Luke tells us that Jesus healed ten lepers, and only one came back to show his gratitude. ‘Were not ten made clean?’, says Jesus, ‘But the other nine, where are they?’

I fear I’m more like the nine ungrateful than the tenth grateful leper – and I dare say you are too. How many of us do not owe an immense debt to someone else? Perhaps to a friend, a teacher, a doctor, who has done something for us that we could not possibly repay. Or to our parents - a week’s neglect on their part would have killed us when we were new born. Yet how often do we forget to express our gratitude, how often do we not even bother to say thank you?

And we are often ungrateful to God as well. He has blessed us with so much: he has given us a wonderful world so perfectly made to meet our needs for food, clothing, shelter and beauty; he has given us the capacity to form deep loving relationships as parents and children, as friends and lovers; and God has even given us his only Son to show us the way to his kingdom, the way of self-sacrifice which leads through the cross. When times are bad we may pray to God with desparate intensity, but when times are good we are inclined to forget to be grateful. On Sundays we recite automatically the words ‘Almighty God, we thank you for feeding us’, but how many of us ever offer even a silent grace before meals, I wonder?

Jesus saw that the one who came back was a Samaritan. ‘Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’, he says.

As an ethnic group the Samaritans were heretics - they did not behave, or believe, or worship as the Jews did – they were ritually unclean. They were disliked and despised by their Jewish neighbours – somewhat as many Irish people dislike and despise immigrants or travellers today. But Jesus teaches his disciples a lesson by drawing their attention to this particular outsider, who was the only one to turn back, praise God for his healing and thank Jesus. And Jesus publicly blessed him, saying, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well’.

Jesus is never dismissive of people who are different in race, culture or faith, and we should not be either, if we are to claim the right to call ourselves Christians. We can have much to learn from those who are different – those of us who were at Monday’s celebration of Creation Flourishing might reflect on the lesson about joy in worship which Suma and Priya from India taught us in their traditional dance of praise and thanksgiving.

Jeremiah (29:1,4-7) gives the exiles in Babylon some good advice in today’s OT reading.
Let me summarise it. Get on with your lives; build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat what they produce, marry and have children. But also, seek the welfare of the city where you find yourself, and pray for it, because in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Others at the time were stirring up the Jewish people to rebel against the Babylonians. But history shows that Jeremiah was wise. It seems the Jews did as he advised, they prospered in Babylon and retained their identity, so that some 70 years later, after Babylon in turn had been overthrown by the Persians, their descendents were able to return to Jerusalem and restore the Temple.

It is good advice for migrants everywhere. It is good advice for the New Irish that we have brought to our country. And it is good advice for the many Irish people who will likely be forced by the economic crash to emigrate over the next few years. Our children and young relatives may well be among them - how heartbreaking it will be for them and for us. But let us pray that they may build good lives in their new communities and work for them to flourish, because if their new communities flourish, so will they.

The majority of us, though, will stay in Ireland to cope with what looks likely to be a long recession. We are shocked and angered by recent revelations of economic mismanagement. The economic landscape has changed. The future will not be one of ever-growing material prosperity as we expected just 2 or 3 years ago. We know much will have to change, but we do not yet see clearly what and how. We are scared by the uncertainty. And we risk falling into a communal psychological depression which would prevent us addressing the real problems we face.

In a way we are like internal exiles in our own country.
Jeremiah’s advice is good for us as well:

• Get on with your lives, he says. We must not look back at what we feel we have lost, but instead look forward.
• Build houses and live in them, he says. Well, we won’t need to build much soon, but what we should do is to seek new uses for the ghost estates, the offices, the commercial properties and factories lying empty all over Ireland. We must adapt them for fruitful purposes.
• Plant gardens and eat what they produce, he says. We are blessed in Ireland with bountiful renewable resources: our land and seas, energy from wind, ocean and geothermal heat, skilled people and vibrant culture. Let us use them productively – they will feed us like gardens.
• Marry and have children, he says. Ordinary human life can and must continue – let us use our capacity for deep loving relationships as parents, children, friends and lovers, to support and care for one another.
• But also, says Jeremiah, seek the welfare of the city where you find yourself, and pray for it, because in its welfare you will find your welfare. Let us strive to build a just and sustainable society for the future, because only in such a society can we all flourish.

And as recovery comes - which it will, thank God - let us behave like the grateful Samaritan and remember to turn back, to praise God, and to give thanks for all he has given us.