A Parting of Ways--June 15, 2020

A Parting of Ways--June 15, 2020

[Jesus said:] "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.  

For I have come to set a man against his father,

    and a daughter against her mother,

    and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;

    and one's foes will be members of one's own household.

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. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." [Matthew 10:34-39]

It's easy to say, "Love your enemies" if you don't have any; but Jesus teaches his followers to love their enemies while at the same time telling them that following him will earn them lots of hatred from folks they used to be close to.

The hostility that will come because of Jesus isn't because he is unfriendly or cruel; it's because Jesus says and does things that shake our old commitments, question our old certainties, and force us to see unpleasant truths in ourselves.  And once we actually start listening to Jesus, we are going to have to decide if we would rather have our old comfortable ways or let him go overturning tables in our lives.  And because there are always people who would rather keep their lives and their world unchanged than let Jesus rearrange their mental furniture, just the mere fact of Jesus' presence in the world will cause division.  Jesus is never a jerk to other people, but other people often decide they can't live with Jesus' truth-telling, system-challenging, all-embracing, hypocrisy-exposing way in the world... and so they part ways.

I am reminded of a line from the graphic novel/movie V for Vendetta from a few years back.  I don't often recommend taking life lessons from vigilantes wearing Guy Fawkes masks, but in this case, I'll make an exception, because the protagonist of the story offers this truth: "Fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words--they are perspectives."  And I think that's just the issue.  Jesus talks in more than glittering generalities, and once he actually gets specific, that's when things start to make us squirm.  When we see what Jesus actually means when he talks about showing love, or who counts as our neighbor, or the blessing of God, it makes us uncomfortable, because Jesus insists on reorienting the way we see and think about everything.

At first, it's hard to see why Jesus could ever be controversial--isn't he all about loving people and kindness and goodness and light?  Well, yes, of course he is. But Jesus doesn't just offer those words as empty vessels you can fill with whatever definition you like.  Jesus pushes our buttons with the specific thrust of his understanding of love... or our neighbor... or even of God.  That's what I mean with the line from V for Vendetta:  as long as all we ever say is, "We are pro-love!" that's easy for people to nod their head to.  But then Jesus pushes us, and he compels us to understand love, not simply as a warm and fuzzy feeling for people I like, but the commitment to doing good even to those who are different from us... or with whom we disagree... or who hate us, well, that starts to rub us the wrong way. 

Or think about Jesus' radical understanding of neighborliness: everyone can support the idea of caring for your "neighbor," as long as that's a fixed (and small) circle of people who are close enough to me geographically or similar enough to me in demographics.  That way loving my neighbor is really just a matter of protecting my own interests--you know,  because looking out for the people who look like me, live near me, or think like me will come back to benefit me in the end.  But Jesus doesn't stop there: and he won't let us stop with a "Me and My Group First" mentality of neighborliness.  When Jesus talks about neighbors, he insists on crossing the boundaries that separate "us" from "them," making hated Samaritans into the heroes of his stories and coming to the help of foreigners (you know, folks from the "wrong" racial, cultural, ethnic, and religious groups) time and time again.  That started to upset people.

And when Jesus starts talking about "blessing" and "blessedness," my goodness, that overturned the apple cart for people.  Everybody likes the idea of "blessing," right?  But when Jesus starts getting specific, declaring things like, "Blessed are the poor," or "Blessed are the peacemakers," or "Blessed are those who get into trouble for doing the right thing," that started to rile folks up. It's easy--and basically meaningless--to just say as a generic statement, "All people are blessed!" But when Jesus calls attention to God's particular concern for those who are regarded as least, last, and left behind, that made Jesus enemies.  That caused division.

If we only look at Jesus from a distance, before we can discern any detail, we can imagine him to be and to say whatever we like.  But if we actually let him get close enough to show us his perspective, we are going to run into times where his view of God's world runs counter to ours. And at that point, we will have to decide which is more important to us, keeping our comfortable ways, or being on Jesus' way.  Jesus is just honest that there will be folks who would rather keep their "Me and My Group First" mindset than his vision of the Reign of God.

And Jesus is honest, too, that no matter what we have to lose when others get upset with us for following the way of Jesus, we will really be more fully alive than we have ever been before.  He doesn't pretend that following him, learning to be like him, and coming to see the world through his perspective rather than with mere empty generalities, won't come without a price.  It will.  Others will be upset by our willingness to surrender the old comfortable routines and rotten systems, because our willingness to let go of them will force them to think twice about their own commitments.  Others will choose to stick with greed, or hatred, or apathy, or indifference, or "me-and-my-group-first," and when that happens, they may be offended or irritated or put off.  We have to decide if we can bear that, or whether we would rather part ways with Jesus, too.

But to be sure, the life Jesus offers us, even when it brings into focus the differences between Jesus' ways and the perspectives of the world around us, is worth it.  It is worth losing everything else for the sake of being a part of his kind of life.  After all, it is the sort of life spent where he is... and "wherever Jesus is" is the best possible place to be.

Lord Jesus, help us to take honest looks at ourselves and our lives to see the world from your perspective, even when it is difficult or costs us the illusion of fragile niceness.