by Rev. Dr John Evans
Being a Christian, a person of faith, can be a rugged business.
Around the world Christians today are praying for Zimbabwe; that once glorious, but now troubled land. Violence there is escalating in the lead up to the run off presidential election. The Church – all of the churches there – have been at the forefront in opposition to human rights violations and calling for fair and transparent elections. And they have suffered – beatings are common, even murder. Churches have been burned.
Even from within our own congregation we can hear of trauma for those who believe in and follow Jesus. Indonesia has had a terrible history of communal violence in recent years. There were indeed troubling reports just this week past from West Papua (the old Irian Jaya) where the International Crisis Group is fearing the emergence of very severe communal violence. These are clashes between the Melanesian indigenous people of Papua – who are by and large Christian – and those who have transmigrated from other parts of the country. These new arrivals are basically Muslim – and backed by the army.
Also just last week Tony gave to me a computer disk and websites showing an upswing in violence against Christians in his native Egypt. Again, extremist Muslim groups have been responsible; but generally the place of the sizeable Christian minority in Egypt is problematic and at best, difficult. Finally, to complete this picture that being a Christian can be a rugged business, and that it is all rather close to home in our own Church of All Nations, we have the experience of a convert to Christianity who has experienced personal hardship and exclusion – within the family for that decision to follow Christ. All of this taking place within a country, Nepal – that has undergone a bloody political revolution over many years and it is still working through what the place of the Christian faith might be in all of that.
Humbling, isn’t it?
The teaching we have from Jesus in Matthew’s gospel – perhaps appropriately on the anniversary of the Uniting Church in Australia – is about facing hardship in proclaiming the gospel. As one of my commentaries blithely says, these words will “seem strange to many modern Christians, even fanatical.” But that is the confronting thing. The words are not strange. In this world of ours, they are very real. Real even for us as we look at the stories of our brothers and sisters worshipping with us.
Last week, in looking at our wonderful banner, we heard that Jesus felt the crowd was like sheep without a shepherd – so he had compassion on them; the harvest was great – so at this moment of mission: he sent out his disciples. Instructions were given and out they went.
Today Jesus continues in his reflections on what it means to be a disciple. But his talk takes on a decidedly dangerous or troubling edge. There is a clear undercurrent here – you are going to find this task difficult; threatening. Do not be afraid. Three times Jesus says to his disciples ‘do not be afraid’.
So, Jesus says -
Have no fear of them – verse 26
Do not fear those who kill the body – verse 28
Do not be afraid – verse 31
And then he goes on in rather gruesome language about not bringing peace, but a sword; and that there will be division within families – and so “whoever does not take up the cross and follow me – is not worthy of me”.
Heavy and difficult words. What can we say?
First of all, it generally is accepted Jesus is not actually addressing what his disciples then and there were likely to experience as they travelled around Galilee. These were words of Jesus, but really for St Matthew’s own community some 50 years later – as they needed to cope with being a new religious group, in a volatile context. For the readers of the gospel, they needed to hear the message, that they need not be afraid. Their persecution was real – but they should hold fast to their faith.
We have presented here a very concentrated form of what the Christian life essentially is about. It involves:
- confession of God’s action in Jesus;
- living towards that time when God’s will; God’s kingdom will be fulfilled;
- it will involve being engaged in mission during that time;
- it will mean letting go of material possessions and fear about what others might think about us or what they might do to us;
- it means placing loyalty to Christ above other loyalties – or, as the Basis of Union says – it means going forward together in sole loyalty to Christ the living head of the Church – and that means the deepest loyalties of family life may be challenged
- a life of non-violent resistance,
- a life of trust in God’s future.
And Jesus is saying it will not necessarily be pretty. Why would you want to do that and how would one find the courage to do that? Why would you not be afraid?
First of all, for Matthew’s community (who you must remember have just seen the temple at Jerusalem, and Jerusalem, itself destroyed by the Romans), there certainly was a view that the end of the age was close; the end of human history was nigh; the time was close when God would be all in all. And so this had several consequences.
In comparison to what happens at the end time – these threats to yourself become inconsequential and trivial. Judgement on the body – cannot kill the soul. The soul, the resurrected body – will survive at the end of the age – is what the scripture says. A sort of spiritual version of sticks and stone will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.
Moreover, Jesus is saying, keeping one’s faith private was futile – everything would be blown open and public in this new age. Indeed faith is a public matter. This is what that rather strange verse means: “for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing that is secret that will not become known” is all about. What is heard in darkness (possibly heard in night time meetings) will be out in the open. Faith, and following Jesus by this account, leads to the critical view that discipleship, indeed the whole Christian faith, is very public. There could be other reasons than just imminent end of the age why this is so – however, this public nature of the faith is a challenge to us in our own culture.
To begin with it’s one of the bases of our current church-state settlement in Australia – and other western nations. Faith, religion, and for that matter your own private life – is just that – private. It is not meant to be publicly spoken about – or have people enquire about it. In that way the state can be the state, and the potentially divisive matters of religion can be put off the agenda. Faith goes off the agenda. We could spend a lot of time reflecting on this approach, and how it has become muddled, especially in the United States – where the religious, typically fundamentalist, lobby wishes to see religious matters (prayers in schools, for example) legislated for by the State. However, it has meant that faith or God-talk is not out there; we are terribly private.
I still remember, as a young minister in my first placement visiting a man in hospital who was obviously dying; obviously troubled; and saying to me “I do not talk about religion and politics – that’s private.” He died the next day – and I was asked to take the funeral. At one level it was easier that way – we don’t get into disputes and conflicts; but are we then true to ourselves, are we really open to spiritual matters, and doesn’t our following Jesus become very truncated if we can’t talk about it?
We see this particularly in families. And so Jesus highlights that discord can arise within families over faith issues. It certainly does happen – bitter disputes over religion do happen in families; and keeping one’s faith private is an obvious solution to such discord. However, there is also another way we can look at his passage about families. The discord that Jesus mentions here, and other similar passages in the gospels, is between the generations: a man against his father; a daughter against her mother; daughter-in-law against mother-in-law – and so on. Families – extended families, clans, tribes if you like – were how societies were run. They were power structures.
That rather troubling passage from Genesis about Abraham and Hagar is really about the patriarchy of Abraham in relation to his wife and the harem. God in this instance intervenes and saves Hagar and her child. The vision of Jesus here is not anti-family as such; but challenges the strength of the intergenerational power of the elders over the next generation – and the way society was organised. Simply Jesus is affirming all are children in God’s sight; there is a new fellowship of believers in Christ, there is no social or communal division. The first shall be last, the last shall be first; children show us how to enter the kingdom of God, and so on. The new humanity Jesus offers will challenge the old power structures – even those that exist in families. People will object.
Daunting stuff – but God is the faithful creator who ultimately, through Christ, loves us deeply. He loves us more than the sparrows – who were hunted, killed and sold in the marketplace to the poor as food. God after all knows even the number of the hairs on our head – easy if we are bald, but more difficult for most of us. God from creation – and God at the end of the age – is there, and will embrace us. That is the assurance Jesus offers to those who are afraid.
We need to remember those this day – those who are facing hostility.
And perhaps for us, on this our 31st anniversary as the UCA – all of this talk of violence and fear, will force us, in our own comfortable setting, to examine our version of Christianity, and ask whether we have made the Christian faith to our own tastes; have we domesticated it and made it just private? We have become too comfortable and have become afraid ourselves of speaking about our faith. Of course we face the peculiar situation that we will speak out in a world where no one seems to care, rather than face open hostility to religion and the Christian religion. We still must do it. . . at the very least to stand beside our brothers and sisters who do the same and suffer for it. Mission in the name of God, in the name of Christ is a public thing – and we need to do this for the sake of the world – knowing we are not alone, God is with us.
