Year A - Proper 7, June 25, 2023
The Way of Christ
To honor the Glorious Trinity: God, Messiah, and Holy Spirit.
There is a decades old marketing trend of identifying polite, comfortable, and uncontroversial activities as Christian Family appropriate. Upsetting news stories, nuanced debates about vital issues, or actions that challenge our status quo are forbidden. Over the course of my children’s lifetime, Christian family music, toys, and other entertainment have also eliminated conversations of death, poverty, and pain. When Veggie Tales became too edgy, well, Christian Family restrictions became ridiculous.
Read the Gospel accounts. Jesus of Nazareth was not safe, rarely polite, and always controversial. He offered unconditional, abiding love for all people and showed profound compassion to heal and reach out to everyone in his presence, but he was committed only to the truth of God. The social acceptability of his message was irrelevant.
In today’s gospel passage Jesus says unsettling things. He warns that we will be maligned and possibly killed for being disciples. He tells us he brings a sword to the world, not peace. He even promises conflict in our family relationships. It is a picture of society rent asunder and turbulent lives.
At the end of the passage, Jesus details the commitment of true disciples: “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.” (Matt 10) Sorry Christian Family entertainment machine, Jesus doesn’t fit your marketing standard.
Raising kids steeped in the Episcopal Church, inoculates them from the Christian Family version of Jesus. With Sunday School formation based in our baptismal covenant, church camps about Creation care, Sunday morning hymns steeped in Anglican theology, and parenting that reflects a complex, loving, and nuanced faith, our kids see the shallow theology presented in these products.
We have to nurture their faith with conversation and bringing them to Church. If watered down Christianity is the only version of Christianity they hear, it drives them out of Church. Kids pay attention. We must be clear that values associated with positions antithetical to the teachings of Jesus, are not Christian values. Adults, Jesus knows the Way to enliven our young people: we must lead lives worthy of Jesus Christ.
If this passage is accurate, though, how can I be worthy of Christ and maintain family cohesion? Must I seek martyrdom, in death or torture? No, thanks be to God.
If everyone was called to blood martyrdom most early disciples were unworthy of Christ. The Jesus Movement would have died with a small clutch of Messianic Jews 2000 years ago.
Loving Christ above my father or mother, does not mean I deny love to my family or become haughty and disrespectful. It means I place Christ’s demands first, I live the example of Jesus. We know not all parents walk in the Way of Christ – the flimsy Christian Family entertainment couldn’t survive. We must walk with Jesus alongside people in poverty, and sickness, and affliction. It is where we must lead our children.
Those paths may bring conflict to our close relationships. Follow that path anyway trusting in the clarity of Christ’s Way of Love. Our call is to side with God and nurture others in bravery for the Gospel. Jesus tells us today: “What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.” (Matt 10:27)
Our word and actions, especially in the presence of our children, must reflect Jesus. Living deeply as a Christian will require gentle behavior that comforts children because Christ calls us to shelter the vulnerable. We are to always be compassionate, but a Christian is not always polite.
Once we begin to hold the identity of a disciple of Jesus as our preeminent trait, relationships are transformed – some beautifully, some with pain. As Rite I declares, we offer our selves – souls and bodies – to God without restraint. That is how we lose our life for Jesus.
It is not a sacrifice of misery, but joyful courage. Jesus asks for devotion, not death. He asks that our heart is oriented toward a just world for all people. When we give our minds and hearts and bodies over to Christ’s purposes without thought to the cost, we have chosen our cross. Amen.
Dean Vanessa Clark+