I’m afraid I cannot resist it. I’ve tried but it is just too tempting. So, here goes: After hearing this morning’s readings I must ask: Do you now all feel suitably seduced and instructed? Well, I think we shall just quietly put to the side the question of seduction. But I do wonder if you feel instructed? You see, this gospel reading forms a set of instructions Jesus gives to the disciples before sending them out on their mission. But I wonder if you feel instructed or just plain scared for there certainly are some difficult things in Jesus’ words today.
These directions are actually a collection of sayings that probably existed originally in other contexts. But together in Matthew they form a body of directives for the mission of the disciples and early Church. There are six units within this passage.
First, Jesus tells his followers that they can expect to face opposition because he, their leader, faced it. To be called a servant of Satan–or Beelzebul– when one is seeking to share the love of God is not casually dismissed. Second, He tells them that what he has told them privately must now be shared publicly, and therefore, dangerously. Third, the saying in verse 28 about with the reference to destroying the body is difficult to understand. This does not seem to be a verse that offers a new theory about hell. The point seems to be that although you will stand before judges who can execute you, you also stand before a God whose power is not physical only or confined to the world only. So, in view of the difference, which will most affect our behavior? Fourth, there is in the midst of all of these hard sayings one so lovely it is incredible: Jesus tells us straight out that God will never, in all that we endure, abandon us. In fact, God is so attentive to our life that even the number of hairs on our heads is known to God. Fifth, there will likely be pressure before tribunals and so on to be silent, to deny Christ and so on. But here we are told that those who stand fast to God will not be let down. Finally, the last point Jesus makes seems hardest of all to contemplate. We are given stern, harsh statements about domestic strife that loyalty to Christ will cause. Yet these words were intended for a group and a church that had already experienced division. In this context the words become words of encouragement rather than a call to alienation from one’s family. These words were addressed to cultures that possessed strong family connections. Whatever religion the head of a household held, all the family and servants embraced the same. For one in the family to become a disciple of Jesus had serious personal, domestic, social, political, and economic consequences.
Why should we endure such complexity, danger and fearfulness in following God? What is it all for? Archbishop Desmond Tutu has a theory. He writes, in his recent book, God has a dream, that we are all a part of a dream God has for the world: “It is a dream of a world whose ugliness and squalor and poverty, its war and hostility, its greed and harsh competitiveness, its alienation and disharmony are changed into their glorious counterparts, when there will be more laughter, joy, and peace, where there will be justice and goodness and compassion and love and caring and sharing. (God) has a dream that swords will be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks, that (God’s) children will know that they are members of one family, the human family, God’s family.”(pp. 19-20).
This sentiment expressed by Archbishop Tutu is what gives us our way of being as Christians. We can endure all that there is to endure as a Christian in the world because we are able, somehow, to see beyond the pain to the larger picture–the picture of us all as members of the same family, and all children of God. As such we receive and treat everyone as if we were receiving the Lord himself. This is all very well to say but you know as well as I do that it isn’t something we practice with relish or with sustained success.
What happens when you run up against a person who is particularly nasty? How can we interact with a person who is wilfully blind, refuses to see their faults, who thinks they are never wrong about anything, or a person who does violence to others, who actively harms and sets out to destroy another, how can we receive them as if we were receiving God? I remember what someone said to me about Cardinal Basil Hume when he died a few years ago. They said that he was a priest and archbishop who was able to hate the sin but love the sinner. There is a clue as to how we can receive offensive people as if we were receiving God. We hate the sin but realise that underneath it lies a human being created by God with a unique and special message for the world. Even though they have long since lost sight of the purpose for their life, they remain a child of God, and therefore, precious in God’s sight.
This ability to hate the sin and love the sinner was a virtue spoken of about Cardinal Hume in such a way as to suggest that it was something extraordinary–that he was able to do, in this attitude of life, what the vast majority of us could not. But that would not be true. All of us, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, have the capacity to hate the sin and love the sinner. What stood out in Cardinal Hume was his way of letting this attitude be one of the ways he showed that practical loving kindness written about in so many places in Scripture.
There are many Christians who find this an impossible thing to do. They hate the sin, but then go on to also hate the sinner; instilling in them the sense that because they sinned they are terribly weak and corrupt people. No. We all sin. We all fall short of God’s love–often. But we are all children of God. We are all continually loved by God. To hate the sin and love the sinner, recognises this. There is also another quality which, when embodied, enables us to have the freedom of spirit to hate the sin, love the sinner, and thereby show practical loving kindness to others.
Every month a disciple faithfully sent his master an account of his spiritual progress. In the first month he wrote, “I feel an expansion of consciousness and experience my oneness with the universe.” The master glanced at the note and threw it away.
The following month this is what he had to say: “I have finally discovered that the divine is present in all things.” The master seemed disappointed.
In his third letter the disciple enthusiastically explained, “The mystery of the One and the many has been revealed to my wondering gaze.” The master yawned.
His next letter said, “No one is born, no one lives, and no one dies, for the self is not.” The master threw his hands up in despair.
After that a month passed by, then two, then five; then a whole year and no letter from his disciple. The master thought it was time to remind the disciple of his duty to keep him informed of his spiritual progress. The disciple wrote back, “What does it matter?” When the master read those words, a look of satisfaction spread over his face. He said, “Thank God, at last he’s got it!”
“What does it matter?” That is the freedom that liberates us. Nothing has a hold on us anymore and so we are free to act from the heart–free to act from the indwelling Holy Spirit. This freedom is a freedom that paradoxically cares deeply about others, but doesn’t cling to them or things or the world’s possessions. It is the freedom to hate the sin, love the sinner, and show practical loving kindness to even the most difficult and obnoxious of people. Terrance Bell