Facing trouble in God's care
Commentary
Object:
Genesis 21:8-21
This portion of scripture for today is primarily about the promises of God to Hagar and Ishmael, and the end of their biblical story. There are several things we may say about it:
* It is an explanatory tale, the point of which is "This is why we (meaning the descendants of Abraham) and the Arabs are constantly at war";
* It is a story that reflects -- backward, as in a mirror -- the relationship between Egypt and Israel over the centuries;
* It is a cautionary tale against the practice of taking sexual advantage of the female slaves in a household, and in our day can be seen to address the situation where a rich couple takes advantage of a poor woman who will offer her womb as a surrogate in order to provide a better material situation for herself and/or her family;
* It is, finally, a story that tells us that, however we may justify what we do, there will be consequences to pay. Paul says it in Galatians 6:7, "Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow." Abraham and Sarah, impatient for God to fulfill his promise that Abraham would be the ancestor of many nations, finally take the situation into their own hands, and the consequences of their actions, the scripture writers warn us, still reverberate in our world today, as it did in theirs.
Genesis 21 is the second telling of the situation in Abraham's household, and how God wound up making a promise to Hagar and Ishmael. The first telling is in Genesis 16 and is attributed to the Yahwist writer [the ancient writer who calls God the unpronounceable YHWH, represented in most English-language Bibles as LORD]. Today's text is from the Elohist writer [the one who names God Elohim]. The different names for Abraham and Sarah come because of the differences between these writers, though we are told by the priestly writer that God changed their names when the covenant was renewed with Abraham just before Sarah became pregnant (17:1-22).
Throughout the varying versions of this story, the basics remain the same. Sarah, who has yet to become pregnant, offers her slave to her husband so that Sarah, as the senior wife, may have a child (in a sort of surrogate arrangement but without the consent of the surrogate). This was a widely accepted solution to a shameful situation: barrenness in the Old Testament is considered a curse from God. As a slave, Hagar had no rights and no recourse. However, when she readily conceives the shift in status is not lost on her, and she evidently begins to swagger in the presence of her mistress. What she does not count on is that Sarah is still the senior wife, with prerogatives that ought not to be infringed upon. When Sarah punishes her, pregnant Hagar runs away (16:1-6).
In the Elohist version, however, it is not that Hagar runs away; she is pushed out of the camp by Sarah, who cannot stand the sight of Hagar's child playing at the celebration of Isaac's weaning. This is tied up in the rights of inheritance, according to verse 10. Despite Sarah's status as first wife, Ishmael is the firstborn son of Abraham and this complicates the rights to the promise God made to Abraham, which will affect her future as well. She tells Abraham to banish Hagar and her son, who must be three or four years old if Isaac has just been weaned (usually about age two to three in that time and place). Abraham is not happy about doing this, but God tells Abraham to comply and that he will take care of Hagar and Ishmael. Isaac will be the son through whom the covenant will be fulfilled. So Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael packing the next morning.
As Hagar is wandering in the desert the water in the skin Abraham had given them runs out, and Hagar puts Ishmael, who has evidently passed out from heat and dehydration, in the shade of a bush and goes far enough away so that she won't hear his wailing if he wakes up. But God intrudes on her weeping. This child will not die, God says; he will survive and become the father of the Arabs of the desert south of Israel. Thus the story explains why the Israelites and Ishmaelites are at constant odds with each other, yet are closely related.
The mirroring of the Hebrew experience in Egypt is like this: Hagar, an Egyptian slave, is mistreated by her owner Sarah who is the mother of the Hebrews. The book of Genesis ends with the grandson and great-grandsons of Abraham going down to Egypt to get food during a famine in their land. Joseph, the son of Jacob (re-named Israel by God) the grandson of Abraham, had been sold as a slave to Ishmaelites traveling through to Egypt by his half-brothers. He had attained a position of power there and so could care for his family. So they settled in Egypt and prospered there until "a new king rose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph" (Exodus 1). At that point they became slaves to the Egyptians, who abused them [same verb as is used to tell us that Sarah abused Hagar]. Thus a perfect circle is formed, in which the free woman's sons become slaves to the Egyptians three generations later.
Many Christians do not realize this family connection between Arabs and Jews. In fact, Christians, Jews, and Muslims are all "People of the Book": we all claim the book of the Hebrew Scriptures (to Christians, "the Old Testament") as our spiritual heritage; to this Christians add the New Testament, and followers of Islam add the Koran. We are related to each other via Abraham. As siblings can, we squabble, even to the point of war and/or terrorist acts (acts of guerilla warfare). The writers of Genesis would say this is all because of this story of Abraham's two sons.
Romans 6:1b-11
This reading is all about justification and sanctification and provides the point of discussion on the function of belief vs. action in the Christian life. The letter is indisputably the last writing we have from the apostle Paul and reflects his mature understanding of our relationship with God.
Before this passage, Paul has been discussing justification by faith as opposed to works. In doing so, he has said (in chapter 5) that since Christ died for us "while we were yet sinners" (5:8), we cannot think that we need to work to accomplish our salvation. God's grace was demonstrated in Jesus, who was willing to die a horrible death so that we might live, even before we realized that we need help in order to escape sin. In fact, Paul says, the more sin there is in the world, the greater God's grace has grown.
Now in chapter 6 Paul takes the next step. Some might say, considering his words in chapter 5, that if God's grace abounds (grows) in relationship to our sin, it would pay to continue in sin, so that God's grace might be multiplied. Actually, this is a "straw man argument" -- a reduction of his argument to the point where it is easily dismissed.
Paul heads off this argument saying that those who have come to be baptized into Christ have actually been baptized into his death. In the first century, in the warm climate of the Mediterranean, it was customary for new believers to be baptized by total immersion in water, as John baptized in the Jordan. Paul says this is mimicking the descent of the body into the grave. Down into the water the new believer went, to be raised up again, in an imitation of the resurrection. In this way, every believer had been "buried with [Christ] by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead... so we too might walk in newness of life" (6:4).
Paul takes his argument one step further: baptism destroys all of our sins, all of our former life. When we come up from the water, our old self is dead and we are no longer slaves to sin as we were before our baptism. If a person is dead, Paul argues, obviously that person can no longer sin. So if the new Christian is a resurrected being, s/he has died as far as sin is concerned and is resurrected (lifted from the water) sin-free.
The trick is to remember that sin no longer has power over us. Temptation will, of course, present itself. But we no longer have to "let sin exercise dominion in [our] mortal bodies."
Let's take an example from our lives today. We go to work and something has gone wrong with whatever we have been working on. We have choices to make. Will we look closely at what has happened so as to find the cause and fix it? Or will we find some place to hide, some excuse to avoid taking responsibility, or a fellow worker to blame? The sinful person we have been will play the same game Adam and Eve played: "Oh, I didn't want to disobey you, but this woman you gave me tempted me and I ate." "It wasn't my fault! The snake made me do it!" But the person who has died to sin and been resurrected to behave rightly will say, "I think this is what we can do to make it right." Or if things cannot be rectified, "I'm sorry that I can't fix this. I take responsibility, because I should have _____ (fill in the blank)."
In a Family Circus cartoon there is a ghost labeled "Not Me" who is responsible for all of the things to which nobody wants to admit. This little ghost knocks over tables, scatters the dog's food, yanks on the curtains, and causes no end of trouble for adults and children alike. We can laugh at this cartoon, but in real life that kind of behavior causes all kinds of trouble, from a fire in the microwave to Mommy falling down stairs because of marbles left on the floor to the tears of a sibling when a favorite toy is found broken.
What's the alternative? For Paul, it is that we ought to be aware that whatever we do will determine our character (5:3-5). If we leave ourselves open to spending our leisure time flirting at the local bar, that behavior shapes our character. That place, that activity, opens us to the possibility of having an extramarital affair. On the other hand, if we spend our time with family, playing with our children, helping friends or family members, these actions will aim us in a different direction. Too often we hear people who have made bad choices say, "I couldn't help myself! It just happened!" But this ignores the fact that there were many junctures at which we could have called on God to give us the strength to call a halt to our actions. This is what Paul is really saying, although he couches what he says in mystical language.
Matthew 10:24-39
This passage brings to mind the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book The Cost of Discipleship as he talks about cheap grace vs. the reality of the cross: "[C]heap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ." We see cheap grace every time we hear Christians talking about forgiveness of sins without making amends with others, without apology and without trying to put things right. For too many, the idea of carrying the cross of Christ means wearing it on a gold chain or just putting up with daily irritations.
In this passage from Matthew, Jesus is trying to prepare his disciples for the suffering they will undergo as his followers. He knows that his end will be to die at the hands of the authorities, because what he preaches goes against their power. He intends that his disciples will take up the work that he has been doing and spread his principles far and wide. In order to strengthen them for this work, he talks to them about the persecutions they will undergo. That warning begins at 10:16 and goes on until the end of the chapter.
Jesus begins with a principle that is evident: "No student (the meaning of disciple) is above the teacher, nor is a slave above the master." If this is not evident, then one has only to read our Old Testament passage for today. When a slave acts superior to his or her owner, retribution swiftly follows so that the slave knows her or his place. This is how power structures operate, wherever we may find them. This relationship is often emphasized by placing chains on the slave as a reminder of the limitations within which s/he must operate. The same is true of students and their teachers, though not so severely. No student gets to sit in the teacher's chair without the teacher's permission.
Jesus is using these examples to lead into a deeper understanding. He has been vilified for his actions specifically for sharing food and drink with tax collectors and other social outcasts. These actions were -- and are today -- a threat to the accepted social order. To share food and drink, then as now, is to build social relationships, and we do not include homeless people or drug dealers at our parties. Many a grandmother has said to us "Lie down with dogs and rise up with fleas" or "Birds of a feather flock together." Both of these sayings reinforce the social principle, adding the understanding that our social status can be brought down by association with the wrong people, those not approved of by our class. But they go against what Jesus wants. In the kingdom of heaven, socializing is undertaken to bring those outcasts closer to God. Jesus says such association does not make the disciple unclean, it makes the outcast cleaner.
But in the Pharisees' eyes, Jesus is tainting himself and his program by this casual association. To them Jesus is an agent of evil when he does not understand the necessity to separate ourselves from those who do wrong, who are lazy, who have suffered God's curse of sickness. So eventually they focus on Jesus' ability to drive out demons (see the healing of the mute and blind man in Matthew 12, or the epileptic in Mark 5 or Luke 8, or the mentally ill man in Luke 9). He is demonstrating the power of God, but the Pharisees accuse him of being in league with Beelzebul ("The Lord of the Flies" and the chief demon). Jesus warns his disciples that they must expect the same accusations and face the same criticisms as he is facing. The world will always be suspicious of those who claim to have powers that expand the boundaries of what we know and what we can control, even today.
The ability to anticipate negative reactions is not a comfort to any of us. We become afraid and are apt to act rashly in order to fend off accusation and punishment. So Jesus tries to strengthen his disciples so they can avoid that kind of reaction in the future. He tells his disciples (and us) not to be afraid to act and speak boldly. He does this in true prophetic fashion, in a series of warnings (woes) and blessings:
Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul [earthly authorities]; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in "Gehenna," i.e., God. This term, Gehenna, is a transliteration from the Hebrew, meaning "The Valley of Ben-Hinnom," the valley to the south of the hill on which Jerusalem stood. In Old Testament times, it was the site on which apostate Jews (including several of the kings of Israel and Judah) worshiped Moloch, the god of the Babylonians, sacrificing their sons and daughters on altars of fire. For this reason, it became a place to be shunned, a place of evil. In Jesus' day, there were tombs carved into the face of the rock descending into the valley, and the lower area was used as the city dump. It sounds as though in Old Testament times this valley had a volcanic vent, for it was considered to be one of the gates of hell, the place of the evil dead and the demons who tormented them. It is not to be equated with Sheol, which was simply "the grave," the place where everyone must go.
(jewishencyclopedia.com)
This is followed by two comforting images (blessings). Two small birds, which sell for a penny -- thus worthless in the marketplace -- are still noticed by God; and "even the hairs of your head are all counted," so there is no need to think you will die without God paying attention. This is intended to soften the threat that is implied in Jesus' first admonition to us of God's power to condemn us to hell, where both soul and body die (v. 28).
This is followed by another threat and blessing: those who have publicly acknowledged Jesus will be acknowledged by him before God. But those who have been cowards will not have his comforting presence.
We may be surprised, in the American church, that there are threats as well as blessings in Jesus' teaching. We don't pay much attention to the Old Testament, dismissing the harsh words of the prophets in favor of a God who loves us so much that we can get away with anything so long as we call ourselves by Christ's name. But Matthew has the Jewish Christians for his audience, and they are used to the idea that God is dangerous as well as loving. Like Aslan in C.S. Lewis' Narnia stories, God is good, but he is not safe.
For those of us who think that the family is the most important thing in God's way of looking at humans, the next section must come as a real shock. Jesus has not come as the Prince of Peace that we imagine. He has come with a sword. Do not think "little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay" -- think the apocalyptic Christ with a sword coming out of his mouth (Revelation 2). As for the idea that the family is the most important thing in God's system, forget it -- there will be a generational split, a war between members of the same household.
How can this be a part of God's plan?
It isn't that God has planned for this dissension. This is a warning that when push comes to shove it is the family, worried about our safety, who can keep us from fulfilling our destiny. Those who love us will try to keep us from living dangerously, will counsel us to keep our heads down and our mouths shut, for fear of the authorities or the neighbors. What will they think if we start arguments about what God expects of us? And do we have any idea how this reflects on them, our mothers, brothers, sisters, fathers? They are simply trying to keep us from "going off the deep end."
These are the very arguments that those we today consider to be the great lights in spirituality had to deal with: Florence Nightingale, who gave up her wealthy family home in Florence and a fiancé to go to the Crimean war; Gandhi, who gave up his personal wealth and confronted the British for the freedom of India and even his own wife over the treatment of the "untouchables"; Albert Schweitzer, who gave up a career as a concert organist and theologian to go to medical school and went to French Equatorial Africa to establish medical care and a constantly growing hospital, and who was, with his wife, interred in a French prisoner of war camp in 1917 for the duration of World War I; and Malala Yousafzai, a school pupil and education activist from Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, who was shot by members of the Taliban for speaking out about the right of girls to have an education. But she has not ceased to speak to whomever will listen about the need to enforce the right of girls to have an education worldwide. All of these people, and thousands more whose names we may never know, have suffered in order to change the world for the better. This is the meaning of "take up your cross and follow me." Each of them was willing to give up whatever it took to accomplish their ends, and each paid dearly for it but found life in abundance because they offered themselves up to accomplish the work of God.
But, we may say, not everyone has this kind of call. Some are called simply to be mothers (and what mother is not willing to lay down her life in defense of her child?) or nurses (and when Katrina hit New Orleans, hundreds of hospital nurses stayed with their patients despite desperate conditions, knowing in doing so they could expect die with them [see the book Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink]) or office workers (who may see practices that are damaging to their fellow workers or the world in general, and need to decide whether or not to be a whistleblower). We live in a place and time where an actor or athlete who publicly thanks God for their abilities can be mocked by the press. Even though we Americans may not be risking our lives for following the principles Jesus lays out, there is still a price for each of us to pay.
So where is the good news in all this? The same place as it always is. God may demand our best, but in every situation God is with us. Even the Egyptian slave girl can encounter God just as she is convinced the end is at hand. God's promises are solid. Jesus also suffered from his family's concern (Mark 3:20), from the accusations of those who did not want to hear what he had to say. But God is not mocked, nor does God turn away from our pain. We are not alone.
This is the most important thing we Christians need to know, because beyond the doors of our churches, beyond the bounds of our congregation's life, is a world that is in serious need of what the Christ has to offer. We can offer a new way of doing things, a way in which real change can occur in a world that seems to have been in a war or on the brink of war for as long as any of us can remember, and where war is being waged on the streets of too many of our cities. This world no longer welcomes the stranger, no longer cares for the poor and dis-enfranchised, sends the widow to work and pays others to care for her children. This world is desperately in need of a good word -- good news -- and if we who call ourselves by the name of Jesus Christ will not risk our comfort, let alone our lives, who will?
This portion of scripture for today is primarily about the promises of God to Hagar and Ishmael, and the end of their biblical story. There are several things we may say about it:
* It is an explanatory tale, the point of which is "This is why we (meaning the descendants of Abraham) and the Arabs are constantly at war";
* It is a story that reflects -- backward, as in a mirror -- the relationship between Egypt and Israel over the centuries;
* It is a cautionary tale against the practice of taking sexual advantage of the female slaves in a household, and in our day can be seen to address the situation where a rich couple takes advantage of a poor woman who will offer her womb as a surrogate in order to provide a better material situation for herself and/or her family;
* It is, finally, a story that tells us that, however we may justify what we do, there will be consequences to pay. Paul says it in Galatians 6:7, "Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow." Abraham and Sarah, impatient for God to fulfill his promise that Abraham would be the ancestor of many nations, finally take the situation into their own hands, and the consequences of their actions, the scripture writers warn us, still reverberate in our world today, as it did in theirs.
Genesis 21 is the second telling of the situation in Abraham's household, and how God wound up making a promise to Hagar and Ishmael. The first telling is in Genesis 16 and is attributed to the Yahwist writer [the ancient writer who calls God the unpronounceable YHWH, represented in most English-language Bibles as LORD]. Today's text is from the Elohist writer [the one who names God Elohim]. The different names for Abraham and Sarah come because of the differences between these writers, though we are told by the priestly writer that God changed their names when the covenant was renewed with Abraham just before Sarah became pregnant (17:1-22).
Throughout the varying versions of this story, the basics remain the same. Sarah, who has yet to become pregnant, offers her slave to her husband so that Sarah, as the senior wife, may have a child (in a sort of surrogate arrangement but without the consent of the surrogate). This was a widely accepted solution to a shameful situation: barrenness in the Old Testament is considered a curse from God. As a slave, Hagar had no rights and no recourse. However, when she readily conceives the shift in status is not lost on her, and she evidently begins to swagger in the presence of her mistress. What she does not count on is that Sarah is still the senior wife, with prerogatives that ought not to be infringed upon. When Sarah punishes her, pregnant Hagar runs away (16:1-6).
In the Elohist version, however, it is not that Hagar runs away; she is pushed out of the camp by Sarah, who cannot stand the sight of Hagar's child playing at the celebration of Isaac's weaning. This is tied up in the rights of inheritance, according to verse 10. Despite Sarah's status as first wife, Ishmael is the firstborn son of Abraham and this complicates the rights to the promise God made to Abraham, which will affect her future as well. She tells Abraham to banish Hagar and her son, who must be three or four years old if Isaac has just been weaned (usually about age two to three in that time and place). Abraham is not happy about doing this, but God tells Abraham to comply and that he will take care of Hagar and Ishmael. Isaac will be the son through whom the covenant will be fulfilled. So Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael packing the next morning.
As Hagar is wandering in the desert the water in the skin Abraham had given them runs out, and Hagar puts Ishmael, who has evidently passed out from heat and dehydration, in the shade of a bush and goes far enough away so that she won't hear his wailing if he wakes up. But God intrudes on her weeping. This child will not die, God says; he will survive and become the father of the Arabs of the desert south of Israel. Thus the story explains why the Israelites and Ishmaelites are at constant odds with each other, yet are closely related.
The mirroring of the Hebrew experience in Egypt is like this: Hagar, an Egyptian slave, is mistreated by her owner Sarah who is the mother of the Hebrews. The book of Genesis ends with the grandson and great-grandsons of Abraham going down to Egypt to get food during a famine in their land. Joseph, the son of Jacob (re-named Israel by God) the grandson of Abraham, had been sold as a slave to Ishmaelites traveling through to Egypt by his half-brothers. He had attained a position of power there and so could care for his family. So they settled in Egypt and prospered there until "a new king rose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph" (Exodus 1). At that point they became slaves to the Egyptians, who abused them [same verb as is used to tell us that Sarah abused Hagar]. Thus a perfect circle is formed, in which the free woman's sons become slaves to the Egyptians three generations later.
Many Christians do not realize this family connection between Arabs and Jews. In fact, Christians, Jews, and Muslims are all "People of the Book": we all claim the book of the Hebrew Scriptures (to Christians, "the Old Testament") as our spiritual heritage; to this Christians add the New Testament, and followers of Islam add the Koran. We are related to each other via Abraham. As siblings can, we squabble, even to the point of war and/or terrorist acts (acts of guerilla warfare). The writers of Genesis would say this is all because of this story of Abraham's two sons.
Romans 6:1b-11
This reading is all about justification and sanctification and provides the point of discussion on the function of belief vs. action in the Christian life. The letter is indisputably the last writing we have from the apostle Paul and reflects his mature understanding of our relationship with God.
Before this passage, Paul has been discussing justification by faith as opposed to works. In doing so, he has said (in chapter 5) that since Christ died for us "while we were yet sinners" (5:8), we cannot think that we need to work to accomplish our salvation. God's grace was demonstrated in Jesus, who was willing to die a horrible death so that we might live, even before we realized that we need help in order to escape sin. In fact, Paul says, the more sin there is in the world, the greater God's grace has grown.
Now in chapter 6 Paul takes the next step. Some might say, considering his words in chapter 5, that if God's grace abounds (grows) in relationship to our sin, it would pay to continue in sin, so that God's grace might be multiplied. Actually, this is a "straw man argument" -- a reduction of his argument to the point where it is easily dismissed.
Paul heads off this argument saying that those who have come to be baptized into Christ have actually been baptized into his death. In the first century, in the warm climate of the Mediterranean, it was customary for new believers to be baptized by total immersion in water, as John baptized in the Jordan. Paul says this is mimicking the descent of the body into the grave. Down into the water the new believer went, to be raised up again, in an imitation of the resurrection. In this way, every believer had been "buried with [Christ] by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead... so we too might walk in newness of life" (6:4).
Paul takes his argument one step further: baptism destroys all of our sins, all of our former life. When we come up from the water, our old self is dead and we are no longer slaves to sin as we were before our baptism. If a person is dead, Paul argues, obviously that person can no longer sin. So if the new Christian is a resurrected being, s/he has died as far as sin is concerned and is resurrected (lifted from the water) sin-free.
The trick is to remember that sin no longer has power over us. Temptation will, of course, present itself. But we no longer have to "let sin exercise dominion in [our] mortal bodies."
Let's take an example from our lives today. We go to work and something has gone wrong with whatever we have been working on. We have choices to make. Will we look closely at what has happened so as to find the cause and fix it? Or will we find some place to hide, some excuse to avoid taking responsibility, or a fellow worker to blame? The sinful person we have been will play the same game Adam and Eve played: "Oh, I didn't want to disobey you, but this woman you gave me tempted me and I ate." "It wasn't my fault! The snake made me do it!" But the person who has died to sin and been resurrected to behave rightly will say, "I think this is what we can do to make it right." Or if things cannot be rectified, "I'm sorry that I can't fix this. I take responsibility, because I should have _____ (fill in the blank)."
In a Family Circus cartoon there is a ghost labeled "Not Me" who is responsible for all of the things to which nobody wants to admit. This little ghost knocks over tables, scatters the dog's food, yanks on the curtains, and causes no end of trouble for adults and children alike. We can laugh at this cartoon, but in real life that kind of behavior causes all kinds of trouble, from a fire in the microwave to Mommy falling down stairs because of marbles left on the floor to the tears of a sibling when a favorite toy is found broken.
What's the alternative? For Paul, it is that we ought to be aware that whatever we do will determine our character (5:3-5). If we leave ourselves open to spending our leisure time flirting at the local bar, that behavior shapes our character. That place, that activity, opens us to the possibility of having an extramarital affair. On the other hand, if we spend our time with family, playing with our children, helping friends or family members, these actions will aim us in a different direction. Too often we hear people who have made bad choices say, "I couldn't help myself! It just happened!" But this ignores the fact that there were many junctures at which we could have called on God to give us the strength to call a halt to our actions. This is what Paul is really saying, although he couches what he says in mystical language.
Matthew 10:24-39
This passage brings to mind the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book The Cost of Discipleship as he talks about cheap grace vs. the reality of the cross: "[C]heap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ." We see cheap grace every time we hear Christians talking about forgiveness of sins without making amends with others, without apology and without trying to put things right. For too many, the idea of carrying the cross of Christ means wearing it on a gold chain or just putting up with daily irritations.
In this passage from Matthew, Jesus is trying to prepare his disciples for the suffering they will undergo as his followers. He knows that his end will be to die at the hands of the authorities, because what he preaches goes against their power. He intends that his disciples will take up the work that he has been doing and spread his principles far and wide. In order to strengthen them for this work, he talks to them about the persecutions they will undergo. That warning begins at 10:16 and goes on until the end of the chapter.
Jesus begins with a principle that is evident: "No student (the meaning of disciple) is above the teacher, nor is a slave above the master." If this is not evident, then one has only to read our Old Testament passage for today. When a slave acts superior to his or her owner, retribution swiftly follows so that the slave knows her or his place. This is how power structures operate, wherever we may find them. This relationship is often emphasized by placing chains on the slave as a reminder of the limitations within which s/he must operate. The same is true of students and their teachers, though not so severely. No student gets to sit in the teacher's chair without the teacher's permission.
Jesus is using these examples to lead into a deeper understanding. He has been vilified for his actions specifically for sharing food and drink with tax collectors and other social outcasts. These actions were -- and are today -- a threat to the accepted social order. To share food and drink, then as now, is to build social relationships, and we do not include homeless people or drug dealers at our parties. Many a grandmother has said to us "Lie down with dogs and rise up with fleas" or "Birds of a feather flock together." Both of these sayings reinforce the social principle, adding the understanding that our social status can be brought down by association with the wrong people, those not approved of by our class. But they go against what Jesus wants. In the kingdom of heaven, socializing is undertaken to bring those outcasts closer to God. Jesus says such association does not make the disciple unclean, it makes the outcast cleaner.
But in the Pharisees' eyes, Jesus is tainting himself and his program by this casual association. To them Jesus is an agent of evil when he does not understand the necessity to separate ourselves from those who do wrong, who are lazy, who have suffered God's curse of sickness. So eventually they focus on Jesus' ability to drive out demons (see the healing of the mute and blind man in Matthew 12, or the epileptic in Mark 5 or Luke 8, or the mentally ill man in Luke 9). He is demonstrating the power of God, but the Pharisees accuse him of being in league with Beelzebul ("The Lord of the Flies" and the chief demon). Jesus warns his disciples that they must expect the same accusations and face the same criticisms as he is facing. The world will always be suspicious of those who claim to have powers that expand the boundaries of what we know and what we can control, even today.
The ability to anticipate negative reactions is not a comfort to any of us. We become afraid and are apt to act rashly in order to fend off accusation and punishment. So Jesus tries to strengthen his disciples so they can avoid that kind of reaction in the future. He tells his disciples (and us) not to be afraid to act and speak boldly. He does this in true prophetic fashion, in a series of warnings (woes) and blessings:
Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul [earthly authorities]; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in "Gehenna," i.e., God. This term, Gehenna, is a transliteration from the Hebrew, meaning "The Valley of Ben-Hinnom," the valley to the south of the hill on which Jerusalem stood. In Old Testament times, it was the site on which apostate Jews (including several of the kings of Israel and Judah) worshiped Moloch, the god of the Babylonians, sacrificing their sons and daughters on altars of fire. For this reason, it became a place to be shunned, a place of evil. In Jesus' day, there were tombs carved into the face of the rock descending into the valley, and the lower area was used as the city dump. It sounds as though in Old Testament times this valley had a volcanic vent, for it was considered to be one of the gates of hell, the place of the evil dead and the demons who tormented them. It is not to be equated with Sheol, which was simply "the grave," the place where everyone must go.
(jewishencyclopedia.com)
This is followed by two comforting images (blessings). Two small birds, which sell for a penny -- thus worthless in the marketplace -- are still noticed by God; and "even the hairs of your head are all counted," so there is no need to think you will die without God paying attention. This is intended to soften the threat that is implied in Jesus' first admonition to us of God's power to condemn us to hell, where both soul and body die (v. 28).
This is followed by another threat and blessing: those who have publicly acknowledged Jesus will be acknowledged by him before God. But those who have been cowards will not have his comforting presence.
We may be surprised, in the American church, that there are threats as well as blessings in Jesus' teaching. We don't pay much attention to the Old Testament, dismissing the harsh words of the prophets in favor of a God who loves us so much that we can get away with anything so long as we call ourselves by Christ's name. But Matthew has the Jewish Christians for his audience, and they are used to the idea that God is dangerous as well as loving. Like Aslan in C.S. Lewis' Narnia stories, God is good, but he is not safe.
For those of us who think that the family is the most important thing in God's way of looking at humans, the next section must come as a real shock. Jesus has not come as the Prince of Peace that we imagine. He has come with a sword. Do not think "little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay" -- think the apocalyptic Christ with a sword coming out of his mouth (Revelation 2). As for the idea that the family is the most important thing in God's system, forget it -- there will be a generational split, a war between members of the same household.
How can this be a part of God's plan?
It isn't that God has planned for this dissension. This is a warning that when push comes to shove it is the family, worried about our safety, who can keep us from fulfilling our destiny. Those who love us will try to keep us from living dangerously, will counsel us to keep our heads down and our mouths shut, for fear of the authorities or the neighbors. What will they think if we start arguments about what God expects of us? And do we have any idea how this reflects on them, our mothers, brothers, sisters, fathers? They are simply trying to keep us from "going off the deep end."
These are the very arguments that those we today consider to be the great lights in spirituality had to deal with: Florence Nightingale, who gave up her wealthy family home in Florence and a fiancé to go to the Crimean war; Gandhi, who gave up his personal wealth and confronted the British for the freedom of India and even his own wife over the treatment of the "untouchables"; Albert Schweitzer, who gave up a career as a concert organist and theologian to go to medical school and went to French Equatorial Africa to establish medical care and a constantly growing hospital, and who was, with his wife, interred in a French prisoner of war camp in 1917 for the duration of World War I; and Malala Yousafzai, a school pupil and education activist from Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, who was shot by members of the Taliban for speaking out about the right of girls to have an education. But she has not ceased to speak to whomever will listen about the need to enforce the right of girls to have an education worldwide. All of these people, and thousands more whose names we may never know, have suffered in order to change the world for the better. This is the meaning of "take up your cross and follow me." Each of them was willing to give up whatever it took to accomplish their ends, and each paid dearly for it but found life in abundance because they offered themselves up to accomplish the work of God.
But, we may say, not everyone has this kind of call. Some are called simply to be mothers (and what mother is not willing to lay down her life in defense of her child?) or nurses (and when Katrina hit New Orleans, hundreds of hospital nurses stayed with their patients despite desperate conditions, knowing in doing so they could expect die with them [see the book Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink]) or office workers (who may see practices that are damaging to their fellow workers or the world in general, and need to decide whether or not to be a whistleblower). We live in a place and time where an actor or athlete who publicly thanks God for their abilities can be mocked by the press. Even though we Americans may not be risking our lives for following the principles Jesus lays out, there is still a price for each of us to pay.
So where is the good news in all this? The same place as it always is. God may demand our best, but in every situation God is with us. Even the Egyptian slave girl can encounter God just as she is convinced the end is at hand. God's promises are solid. Jesus also suffered from his family's concern (Mark 3:20), from the accusations of those who did not want to hear what he had to say. But God is not mocked, nor does God turn away from our pain. We are not alone.
This is the most important thing we Christians need to know, because beyond the doors of our churches, beyond the bounds of our congregation's life, is a world that is in serious need of what the Christ has to offer. We can offer a new way of doing things, a way in which real change can occur in a world that seems to have been in a war or on the brink of war for as long as any of us can remember, and where war is being waged on the streets of too many of our cities. This world no longer welcomes the stranger, no longer cares for the poor and dis-enfranchised, sends the widow to work and pays others to care for her children. This world is desperately in need of a good word -- good news -- and if we who call ourselves by the name of Jesus Christ will not risk our comfort, let alone our lives, who will?
