Matthew 10:24-39; Romans 6:1-10
In classic church architecture, the sanctuary is often called the nave. This word comes from the Latin word navis which means ship. In the early church a simple line drawing of a ship was the icon for the church, to use a contemporary term. Pews are a modern version of the benches which were the seating arrangement in ancient galleys and triremes where the oarsmen pulled together to propel the ship. The people in the pews pull together to propel the gospel.
I often think of the church as having an armada of ships. There is wor-ship. That would be a fancy cruise ship because most of us just want to sit back and enjoy the ride with everything done for us. Then there’s steward-ship. That must be a battleship with big guns blazing, because everyone hates to see it coming.
There are two more ships of the line in the fleet: apostle-ship and disciple-ship. I think that apostle-ship must be something like the sleek, tall-masted clipper ships of the 19th century which sped across the seas. Discipleship is a cargo ship because it carries the weight laded with containers. Using those images, there is no way that a person can mistake a schooner for a cargo ship or vice versa. Yet people often do confuse apostleship and discipleship.
In A Theological Word Book of the Bible, Alan Richardson defines the two “ships” this way.
- An apostle is one sent forth, a messenger, especially one authorized to act in a particular matter for the one who sends him. In nearly every instance Paul understood himself to have been personally sent by Jesus Christ to the peoples and places his travels took him, including places he hadn’t intended to go, like Macedonia and Malta, where the storm-blown ship landed on his rough imprisoned journey to Rome.
- Disciple is the English form of a Latin word derived from a verb meaning to learn. Hence a disciple is a learner, a scholar, a pupil, and sometimes an apprentice. Richardson notes that in the gospel the twelve are hardly ever unambiguously called “the disciples.” Rather they are “his disciples.” Disciples were primarily students who attached themselves to a mentor or teacher to receive, retain, and pass on the knowledge that the teacher had. So we have John the Baptizer telling some of his disciples that Jesus is a greater teacher than John is. Some left John and went to Jesus. We could say that John exercised apostleship because he sent them to learn from Jesus.
With that as background, we are accosted by the reading in Matthew 10. It is uncomfortable. It chafes. We like passages where Jesus lets others have it (deserving others, we would say). We like Jesus being friendly, caring, compassionate. We don’t find any of those qualities evident in Jesus in this reading. And we feel like we are in his sights as he speaks these words confront us.
The text is not some quirky invitation to delight in family dysfunction. On the contrary, in the words of William Goettler, assistant dean of ministry studies at Yale Divinity School and co-pastor of First Presbyterian Church, New Haven, it is a fine example of the biblical word not saying what, at first glance, it seems to be saying. This is not a proof text for a religious fanatics to divide families. Jesus is actually addressing the faithful who seek to live into their Christian faith while facing conflict and discouragement, and even threats to their physical well-being, because of the gospel’s calling.
Earlier in the chapter Jesus had sent out the twelve with authority to throw out unclean spirits and to heal every disease and sickness. He commissioned them to announce: “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” He told them that the work wasn’t always going to be light and easy and he told them how to respond when they were harassed. Jesus’ words in today’s reading are a follow-up on that.
The easy days of listening to Jesus and meandering around the countryside are over. A warm reception of the gospel won’t always be the case. The disciples will learn what it means to face opposition and struggle. They will ask the questions that every generation of believers has asked: What are we going to do when we can’t do it ourselves? Will our faith survive? Will the church survive?
Apostles send disciples. Discipleship is a journey that includes learning. Learning is not easy. Perhaps you remember trying to learn the multiplication tables or French or the connections of the Plantagenet kings of England or the steps of cell division. Learning is painful. How many scraped knees and elbows did it take before you learned to ride or bicycle or roller skate? Learning never ends. You had first to learn how to dial, yes, rotary dial a phone. Then push buttons came along, followed by cordless phones, flip phones, and now smart phones. The first microwaves only had a dial to turn for so much heating. Now you have to program them.
The over-arching question today’s reading pushes on us has to do with discovering and coming to terms with what Jesus is trying to teach us. Teachers don’t teach us what we already know. I don’t know about you, but I feel like I have wasted my time if I go to a workshop or seminar and only hear what I already know or what I already agree with.
When Jesus talks about a sword that will divide, he is talking about confronting and challenging the things we think we know already, the things that we have been taught from early on in a very prejudicial kind of way. I know that I am not as racist as my parents were. I also know that there is still some of that in me. I know that my children are less racist than I am, they probably have something them that has carried forward.
Jesus is talking about dividing us off from the comfortable certainties that we take for granted, the party lines that we have never questioned critically or researched. He was continually doing that. He challenged a man rich in material goods to think deeply about the things he really needed to have eternal life. He challenged synagogue leaders about their attention to detail that blinded them to the bigger picture of God-given dignity and faithful reliance on God’s providence. He challenged social mentalities that isolated individuals from community and devalued those who were made every bit as much in the image of God as they were.
Jesus talked about freeing those who were imprisoned. And the reality is that we are all prisoners to attitudes, ideas, habits, beliefs that need to be severed from our lives in order to become better learners, more faithful disciples.
We have been sent. You are sent every time you leave this place of worship. You are sent to heal and to cast out unclean spirits. You are sent to proclaim with words and actions the reality of the here and now presence of God at work. But you are sent to learn as you go. Not every thing you want to know or need to know can be learned in class or from reading books or from listening to sermons. It comes from on the job training, from life experience, from the school of hard knocks. Conversely not everything you want to know or need to know is learned in the world. You need to spend time with a challenging teacher wrestling with questions for which you do not yet have responses. You need to develop the skills and resources for struggling to understand how God operates in a complex, often inscrutable world. And the confounding thing about discipleship, about learning, is that the more you learn the more questions and viewpoints arise that seem to joust with what we thought we knew.
When Jesus divides us from all the things that prevent our active, vital discipleship, we are left with the raw reality that we have no option other than to depend on the God whose love for us took on the whole world. The world attempted to destroy him. It didn’t succeed. Not only did he rise from the grave, he breathed the mighty God Spirit into the world to keep on severing the chains of sin, of complacency, of ignorance, of deception, of delusion, of hatred, of arrogance.
The message of Matthew’s passage for us today is that we will survive, that the church will survive. Every time the General Assembly meets there are those who say the church is going to hell in a handbasket and there are those who say that the church is surviving by the wonderful grace of God. It doesn’t matter what the issues are, be it divestment of stock in companies seemingly more interested in war and profits rather than peace and community responsibility, or wrestling with the ways of human relationships in church and state traditionally called marriage, or being faithful in ministry through innovative or antiquated church structures, or speaking peace to a fearful world caught in a spiraling escalation of gun adoration and violence.
We are not called to be apostles of any one narrowly defined and usually God-diminishing view point, however good and true and righteous. We are called to be disciples, listening for God’s word among all the words that assail us on a daily basis. Jesus stilled the storm on the sea. Jesus can and will still the storms that prevent us from serving him in an ever growing discipleship.
Let us pray.
Ever-teaching God, Jesus Christ is the word, the way, the truth, the life that we need. Grant your Spirit to so teach us that as we are buffeted by doubt and rejection, by complacency or controversy, we will grow into the strength of faith that will lose the dross of living and gain the joyous life of our salvation in the risen and reigning Christ. Amen.
Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com.
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.
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