Title: “The Count of Conflict”
Scripture: Matthew 10:34-39
6/19/05 Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A
Rev. Joy R. Haertig
Matthew 10: 34 reads: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
What a cherry thought for this morning!
As one commentary writer put it, our Prince of Peace is also the Count of Conflict!
And then we hear the next line, “for I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother…” More good news for this Father's Day! Maybe we should have all gone fishing instead!
But here we are and this is the lectionary for today, so let's take a look together.
In the Mediterranean region of the world in the first century, power and human value are hierarchical both in the family and in politics. Roles were well defined as well as the importance of those roles. For example the father was the head of the household and the mother was valued for the children she would bear, in particular, the male children.
Scripture tells us that Jesus, through his relationship with God, understood power and worth differently. Jesus' vision of God's Kin-dom is that there is no hierarchy, no one but God is at the top, and the power we do have must be formed and used in light of our love for God. Jesus shows us that in God's vision for the world, no person has more value than any other person does; we are cared and valued by God equally, no matter our age, gender or economic status.
Now imagine a daughter or a son discovering Jesus and his world-view and in turn a new sense of self-worth. The son returns home to challenge the father's power when he abuses it, the daughter demands to be as valued as the son, I suspect it would not be peaceful in that home any longer! They could face being thrown out onto the streets for challenging their parent's authority.
Scholars believe that Jesus did not seek to destroy the family but that he fought against human designed institutions and relationships that misused power in the name of tradition, culture, or for that matter, in the name of God.
The people of Jesus' day were very attached to their kinship and political systems - as most of us are - they give society a clear sense of order, identity and security. There is nothing wrong with that up to a point, but in our attachment we can lose sight of the ethical and moral impact of those institutions, judgements and behavior that are easily abused by those in authority.
In today's reading from Matthew Jesus is informing his disciples that if they want to follow him and his view of God's vision of the Kingdom, they would no doubt find themselves in conflict with many (if not all!) of their familiar attachments, beliefs and assumptions.
Simply put, putting God first is not easy! It can rock your world.
When we study scripture we find that there are ethical implications to what Jesus tells us about God that touches on every part of our lives! Our use of possessions and economic justice, our understanding of power and authority, and our relationships with others
When you let God in, everything is up for discussion! When you let God in, everything is touched, impacted and seen through the lenses of that primary relationship. If we take our faith journey seriously and allow it to form how we look at our world and how we act in it, it becomes very personal, this is part of why it can be difficult to talk about faith with others. Yet if we do not talk about it, our faith is no more than a quiet little corner of our individual existence. (Remember the Cinderella song? “In my own little corner, in my own little house”) When we share our faith journeys, our doubts and beliefs with others (and allow it to impact our actions) it is then that it becomes a truly lived faith.
But it is challenging because we have unique filtering systems which means we will not always agree on what a lived faith looks like.
It is ironic to me that faith, at its deepest place, is a matter of the heart, yet for many of us faith and how it is understood and lived out never gets past the head where our personal hot buttons, ego and pride live too. When we try to talk with one another we end up on the defensive or accusatory, yet we need to talk about it. What can we learn from Jesus' way of talking about and living his faith with others?
Jesus lived from his God-centered heart; his faith was not purely an intellectual exercise. Through his relationship with God he saw some eternal truths that made him less prideful and self-righteous - he knew in his heart that God's love was the only SURE thing and that everything else was temporary. (Everything!)
This knowledge gave him the freedom to focus more on relationship and less on being right or better or more powerful. He was able to recognize when traditions or human institutions were no longer building community but were instead, tearing it down. It gave him the freedom to be more accepting of change rather than afraid of it.
Through his God-centered heart Jesus knew that the relationship between family members was more important than a hierarchical system that was tearing people apart.
If Jesus can come to this understanding, then I believe we can too.
As we grow in our relationship with God it is possible for us to learn how to extend God's love more and more broadly. As we grow in our relationship with God we come to understand how that primary relationship impacts everything we believe and do and we recognize that life is a schoolhouse for EVERYONE; we begin to debate less and listen more.
In one of the sessions on multiculturalism in the leadership program at Seattle University, we were given the opportunity to participate in a conversation in such a way that we were to be aware of how power was shared or not shared. The professor explained to us prior to the “game” that for power to be shared in a conversation it would mean that some people who talk a lot would need to listen more and those that don't talk up, needed to speak up and share their perspective. (And the topic was racism!!) Believe it or not - even with that introduction and the knowledge that we would only have to actually do it for 30 minutes as opposed to a lifetime commitment, our class of 23 did not share power very well. Here we were, a bunch of clergy and religious lay leaders and we were unable to even pretend to share power more equally! I would say it was even a disaster.
Why? Because we approached the situation from our heads and not our hearts. We forgot to lower the drawbridge of our brains to listen with our hearts. Our egos, pride, past memories and hot buttons were flying around like a bunch of bees looking for someone to sting.
Choosing God as our primary relationship impacts all aspects of our life if we take it seriously, (even the parts that we think are set in stone like family roles!). It can trigger doubts and questions as much as it can bring us hope and a new understanding. It can help us learn how to love one another the way that God loves us. May we risk sharing our journeys with one another - sharing and listening from the heart, knowing that differences will abound and that change is inevitable, but does not need to divide us, one from the other.