And how we’re still already one
Proper 7A | Matthew 10:24-39

This is nobody’s favorite gospel passage. None of us like it. If I were to ask us for a show of hands, my guess is most of us would put this among our least favorite.

[I suppose it is possible that you like it. You have your reasons. The rest of us don’t understand those reasons, but we’ll love you anyway.]

When we go through the Bible together, this is the kind of story that gives us the biggest headaches. Not because we don’t understand it exactly. But because it doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t sound like Jesus exactly. 

And that confusion gets us questioning what we know.

Jesus straight up claims the mantle of Great Divider. And this feels like a paradox. The Prince of Peace telling his followers he rejects peace. 

Confusing, right?

So then…you know what’s next. Let’s look at the context.

Discipleship

Jesus spent the last two chapters healing lots of people. Tons. 

And the wider context for all of this healing is sympathy. Not merely for each person’s plight. But for the bigger picture; the wider scope of the suffering all of these people are enduring. From individual maladies such as blindness to debilitating chronic pain that others ignored.

Jesus’s sympathy is not merely individualistic and situational: it is broad and communal. He says that the people flocking to him were like sheep without a shepherd. People without a guide and protector because they were helpless to the harassment they were experiencing.

So he takes his students and names them practitioners, apostles. To go out and be Jesus to the wider community. Take Jesus’s love and power to the harassed and helpless and bring peace to them.

And if they don’t want it, keep going.

The context for this difficult teaching is discipleship and apostleship. He’s speaking to the people going out to the harassed masses, saying several things at once. 

• The attacks on Jesus are ridiculous.
• Be honest, authentic, and true to your faith.
• And recognize that division comes with doing good.

Now, you might be thinking:

That division, though.

And that’s a solid problem. This is where Jesus seems to be saying that he brings division. And people do try to swing that into a grand theory of “good division,” quoting this text for that purpose. They also see this as an endorsement of weapons. And an invitation to be abusive, derisive, and reject people they love to call heretics. 

This passage seems to support all of that.

Of course, it doesn’t. But something about that reading sticks with people. And not just because they take it out of context. 

It evokes a kind of broken literalism. 

We want Jesus to be straightforward. So if he says he came to bring a sword, he must be earnest. Even as he says the opposite elsewhere. It doesn’t matter to some. He says it this way here.

Now, we remember that it was just five chapters ago that Jesus said “blessed are the peacemakers” in the Beatitudes. He clearly isn’t advocating violence. Nor should we assume he is suggesting violence is inevitable or just some part of being human. None of this is consistent with the text.

But the reason I called this “broken literalism” is because this interpretation isn’t literal. It only feels literal. He says that he came to bring a sword. So where’s the sword? If he’s endorsing arms, where are they? That’s the literal take. 

And then, if he brings division, then why is he healing people who are oppressed? How is he restoring what is divided?

What he does instead is tell the truth about division.

That we may have to leave some people behind in our following of Jesus. People we love. Like James and John literally leave their dad holding the bag, er, nets. 

We have to leave some people. But not without reason. The ones who won’t join us on the Way. Or the ones who aren’t good for us. Who are toxic, hurtful, or pull us away from the Way of Love.

At the same time, there are those who will create division with us for doing that. Who will despise us for our support for LGBTQ+ persons or housing those experiencing homelessness.

These two aspects of our many divisions are so very common.
They are also connected.

One of these divisions is common in families. And it often comes out in perverse moments: like when a family member actually gets healthy.  

Why? That doesn’t make sense! But it does…when we remember the ones remaining in unhealth. 

They aren’t betrayed, but they feel betrayed. And then they lash out.

The family member who loses weight and the rest who don’t want to face their own problem; their common problem. Or the one who, through therapy, finally stands up to a bullying sibling. And the parents feel threatened by the change in family dynamics. Wanting the younger to go back to just taking it.

Western Culture has so mythologized the family that we can’t tolerate the breaking of these bonds. And I think we hear Jesus’s words from that place of fear. Fear of change. Of loss of control. Of certainty.

And because of that, we miss how life-giving it is to help a teen who is isolated from the people who are closest to them. How life-giving it is to become healthy, renewed, restored. And how that often freaks the rest of the family out.

The other division is more obvious.

And just like the parent who doesn’t want to face the bullying inside the family, we like to paint the victims as a kind of division-perpetrator. When The Episcopal Church began ordaining women fifty years ago, we got uninvited from ecumenical groups. And again when we ordained Gene Robinson as bishop. And again when we began blessing equal marriage.

As much as we like to bothsides such moments and talk about it taking-two-to-tango, we wanted to be there. We tried to be together.

[Now, notice how quickly matters of gender identity, human sexuality, and human rights turn division into a good thing to us. Just a minute ago, we were bemoaning it and suddenly we’re all “they started it!”]

Jesus doesn’t come to divide us. 

We do that well enough on our own.

He comes to free us and expose the ways in which we foster unhealthy relationships for the sake of unity. Or how we use unity to exploit others.

This is our comfort. He is our source.

And not as members of a society. Or members of a church. But as disciple / apostle / saints. As children of God. Health through Christ’s Way of Love is our birthright. Not to exploit in birth or earn over a life of toil, but in joining into the Way. In becoming a source of divine love. 

This is how we receive this uncomfortable passage: it reminds us that we are too comfortable. Not just with our families, systems, and way of life. But our common unhealth. Chronic busyness. Endemic stress. Ongoing pandemics of loneliness, competition, depression, racism.

We are too comfortable with how unhealthy our world is. Too prone to berate those who challenge it. And too eager to comfort those who perpetuate it.

And yet, Jesus loves us anyway.

Not just in our unhealth, but in our seeking to be healthier, happier, hopier [it can be a word]. In our seeking and searching and yearning for how to make this place like it is in heaven. Like we pray daily. Here as in heaven. 

We hope and pray and reach out to comfort, yes, and to console, yes. And also, to love. Even when it’s dark and we don’t see a way forward. When all of the things around us need fixing. Or we feel like our bodies are falling apart and we don’t know what to do. 

We still offer love because we know that love is the key. 

We can’t get out of this prison without it. But it doesn’t only arrive miraculously in our begging. It comes when we realize that we have a key in our pocket. But it goes to another cell. 

Our love, our compassion, our hope for humanity rests on opening another lock. And hoping they will return the favor.

We don’t rejoice in division. And we don’t lionize unity above all. We recognize that wholeness only exists with justice and peace and love and compassion and health. 

I think, then, that the truth we don’t want to confront is that unity may come after division.

When we recognize that there is truly only one people: that’s when we will get there. Not two. One people; separated. Locking each other up. Locking ourselves up. 

Also…

Called to free one another. Love one another. To heal the world. Becoming one. In health, peace, love, and justice. Whole. One. Shalom.