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Jesus, the Family, and the Summons
of the Kingdom
Matthew 10.34-39
[A sermon preached on June 26, 2005 at St. Paul UMC in Muskogee,
Oklahoma. Posted here 7/6/05. Published in Encounter, vol. 67,
no. 2 [Spring 2006] pp. 199-206.]
This passage from the Gospel according to Matthew must surely strike us
as strange and shocking. At the very least it must challenge some of the
loose and careless assumptions that seem to be rife in the life of the
church today.
One of those assumptions is that the Bible is easy to read and accessible
in its meaning to any earnest individual. To be sure, much of our Holy
Scripture is quite transparent in its meaning, but so too there are many
passages that remain obscure to any facile interpretation.
For those who think the whole Bible must be interpreted ‘literally,’
this passage is a stumbling block. Are we to believe that Jesus—who
is represented elsewhere in Matthew and all the other gospels as blessing
peacemakers and bringing peace to his followers—has now changed
his mind and is literally saying he “has not come to bring peace
to the earth;” rather he has come to bring “a sword”?
Are we to believe that Jesus is literally advocating the sword and the
dismemberment of the family, as a condition for being his followers?
We will explore these questions in this sermon today. We will worry about
the practice, often performed by Christian interpreters, of taking Bible
passages out of context and as sentences that can stand alone with clear
meanings.
Another of those easy assumptions in the life of the church is that the
care and nurture of family is first and foremost for the disciple of Jesus.
There is a whole movement today that seems to emphasize what it calls
“family values” as being at the heart of Christian faith.
But this passage in Matthew does seem to raise the question of just what
is the relation between following Jesus and being a member of a family.
If this passage is supposed to be literally transparent in meaning, then
where does it leave us in our understanding of discipleship to Jesus and
our assumed responsibilities to our families? In our time many church
folk do talk as though they believe that family obligations are front
and center in Christian faith and practice.
In light of these consternations arising from this passage, I propose
that we aim to work our way through them and thereby hopefully discern
what divine Word there might be for us amidst the complexities of this
scriptural passage.
First, let us say something about the Gospel of Matthew as a whole. It
is generally agreed among scholars of the church that Matthew’s
Jesus is wrestling with God’s summons to prepare for the coming
of God’s Kingdom in the midst of a Judaism that was itself under
continual assault from it’s surrounding and dominating Gentile world.
Jews were striving to be faithful to their God, who had covenanted with
them and given the commandments by which they were to live.
In this gospel, Jesus stands before us as a Jew in the prophetic tradition
of Israel, who is bringing the life of Israel under prophetic critique.
Something is profoundly amiss in Israel’s life as God’s elected
people. Jesus is himself summoning the people of Israel to respond to
what God is doing in bringing a new Kingdom to birth in Jesus’ own
time and in his own work and preaching in the midst of Israel. While
the coming of God’s Kingdom is a blessing for the people, it also
demands new commitments to the Kingdom’s radical character. The
whole of this gospel is about discipleship to Jesus as the One who is
bringing God’s kingdom.
There are, therefore, repeated occasions in Matthew in which Jesus the
Jew is in conflict with other Jews over what it means to be the people
of God. It is clear that Jesus is not attacking the Jewish belief that
God has elected Israel and has given special commandments to Israel. But
sometimes Jesus is challenging the way those commandments have been interpreted
in Israel, and sometimes he makes the commandments even more strict and
severe than many other rabbis would make them.
With these general remarks in our minds, let us look closely at our passage
for today. Matthew represents Jesus as saying:
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 daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law
It might appear, then, that Jesus is setting himself over against the
fifth commandment in the Ten Commandments, namely, “Honor your father
and mother.” [Ex 20.12] In the life of Israel, honoring father and
mother was part of a social system in which fathers and mothers and children
had kinfolk who made up an extended family, who then also made up a clan
and then a tribe and then a nation bound together by family loyalties.
These familial relationships were crucial to Israel’s sense of solidarity
and identity. When this familial system is undermined, the very life and
identity of Israel is distorted and damaged.
We should also note that Israel’s family system was decidedly patriarchal
in character in which the male was the dominant authority and decision-maker
in and for the family.
So we must ask, “Is Jesus really demanding that this familial system
be dismantled?” Most of us want to rush in and say, “Of course
not; families are important to Jesus.” And indeed in Matthew 15.4,
Jesus explicitly affirms the commandment to honor father and mother.
But we must also look at another passage in Matthew 12.46-50 in which
Jesus himself raises the question of who really is his “mother”
and “brothers.” Then Jesus points to his disciples and says,
“Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does
the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
It should be evident to us that something extraordinary
is being conveyed by Jesus about the ordinary ways in
which Jews—and we might add, most cultural family systems—have
talked about the priority of ethnic family and kinship. So, why is Jesus
deliberately distancing himself from this priority of
family obligations and systems?
Is it too much to suggest that Jesus, in all four gospels, is consistently
drawing attention to those given assumptions and practices in human societies
that often are the sources of rivalry, enmity, violence, and armed conflict?
Is it not true that Jesus knows that much violence is perpetrated
in the name of protecting one’s family and nation from an alien
enemy that is outside the family? Does Jesus correctly discern
that family pride and honor are repeatedly at the root of the revenge
and retaliation that literally populate the whole of human history?
Perhaps Jesus is aware of a dark side to family relationships
that might thwart and stand in the way of a family member becoming a disciple
of Jesus?
As a good Jew, Jesus would have been acquainted with the fragility and
volatility of family life as seen in the Hebrew Scriptures: in the primordial
family of Adam and Eve, Cain slays brother Abel; Jacob deceives brother
Esau out of his inheritance; in a jealous rage, Joseph’s brothers
sell him into slavery and lie to their father, Jacob; King David and Absalom
his son become rivals with fatal consequences. In Jesus’ own parable
of the prodigal son, the elder brother is consumed with jealous rivalry
about the father’s extravagant welcome home to the prodigal brother.
Even in our own time it is empirically evident that an overwhelming percentage
of murders in America occur in domestic situations fraught with rivalry,
anger, and conflict. Family intimacies and estrangements can be a terrible
breeding ground for violence and the disfigurement of human life.
Now with regard to Jesus’ apparent bringing of a sword, we must
proceed with caution and care. Consider this: we simply cannot read Matthew’s
account in chapters 5,6, and 7 of what we call the “Sermon on the
Mount” and still believe that Jesus is intent on finding ways to
justify violence of the sword within the family, or against folk who offend
family honor and pride or find ways to justify violence against those
who would harm family and tribe! While we—the people of the church
down through the centuries—have continually tried to find ways to
justify violence against some people whom we think deserve to die, there
is nothing in Matthew’s Jesus or the rest of the NT to suggest that
the Kingdom of God that Jesus is proclaiming and enacting is one that
initiates, inspires, and justifies violence against folk who resist the
Kingdom.
Surely it is too much to suggest, however, that Jesus is out to dismantle
the natural family and bring it to an end. But surely it is also too much
to suggest that Jesus gives absolute priority to familial loyalties, relationships,
and traditions.
The issue for Jesus is that following him in response to the impinging
of God’s Kingdom is the first priority in the life
of the disciple. No other loyalty should intervene, delay, or
undermine one’s loyalty to God’s Kingdom. Hence,
there is an incessant urgency in how we are to respond to Jesus and his
proclamation of the Kingdom. All other urgencies and loyalties are to
be ordered to the priority of God’s Kingdom summons.
This same urgency and priority is expressed by Jesus in Matthew 8.21-22
in which Jesus responds to the request by a would-be-disciple to delay
following Jesus in order to go bury his father. To that request, Jesus
says, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.” This
is a tough saying for those of us who could not think of a more pressing
priority than burying a dead parent.
Let us pause here, as I can feel a chill wind settling
over us as we grapple with Jesus’ words about family relationships
and the Kingdom of God. Maybe we are afraid that Jesus is calling us to
a policy of forgetting about family, of abandoning the
family, of refusing to bury the dead, of refusing to honor mother and
father.
Certainly we should not conclude that Jesus is advocating an anti-family
policy, but we must understand—as folk who think of ourselves as
being disciples of Jesus—that such discipleship is not simply a
reinforcement of society’s mores and relationships. Jesus
is bringing in something new, something that will turn the world upside
down, that will reorient who we call brother and sister and who we are
called to love. This new Kingdom will bring great tension and
suffering into the world’s ordinary arrangements of powers and loyalties.
To follow Jesus is to travel soberly down a narrow path
that is not gladly endorsed by the powers of the world. The Kingdom
of God is like a new household, a new family, a family of reconciliation
and peace that is not under the control of the given and ordinary familial
authorities and rulers of the world.
So, has Jesus undermined the family? It depends on the family system about
which you are talking. Jesus certainly does subordinate the family, with
its systems of obligations, to the priorities of discipleship and the
Kingdom of God. It is within the priorities of the Kingdom of
God that the disciple is to discover and enact what it means to be a good
father or a good mother or a good son or a good daughter.
Listen again to Jesus’ further words in our passage for today:
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.
Remember, this taking-up-the-cross is not a symbol for
bravely bearing the various and miscellaneous miseries and sufferings
of ordinary and everyday human life. Rather, the cross is the brutal symbol
of the Roman world’s power and dominance. Jesus was strung upon
a cross as a sign that Rome is in charge and that this Jesus is a political
offense against the authority and sensibilities of the Roman
world and of some Jewish leaders.
In this passage in Matthew, Jesus is warning the would-be-disciple
that following him might well bring one into conflict with the established
political and religious orders that intend to control human life and dictate
what is the good and acceptable order. The disciple must expect a collision
with the world—and possibly with one’s family—that will
bring suffering for the disciple. That collision might well set a son
against his father to the extent the father expects the son to order his
life to the father’s authority and control. To take up the cross
of discipleship to Jesus is to be willing to bear the costs of
the suffering that may well befall the disciple as he encounters
the ruling powers in the world and in the family.
Even so, discipleship to Jesus and its consequent cross-bearing is not
to be understood as a punishing burden. Rather, cross-bearing
is a blessing to the disciple insofar as it is teaching the disciple
how to truly live before God and with family, with neighbors,
with strangers, and with enemies and therewith to receive and gain her
life. The world—and often the world of the family—would
have the family member believe that a true and meaningful life is only
accessible through those social networks that reward familial status and
inheritance and achievement and honor.
Listen carefully to Jesus: the logic of losing and gaining life
is different for the disciple from the logic of the world.
Perhaps we can put the priority of discipleship and the Kingdom in this
way:
Follow Jesus, and, in so following, love your parents and your
children and your family.
Follow Jesus, and, in so following, bury the dead.
Follow Jesus, and, in so following, refuse the instruments of violence
and do not return evil for evil.
Follow Jesus, and, in so following, love the enemy and be a peacemaker.
Follow Jesus, and, in so following, you will learn how to live boldy under
the grace of God’s impinging Kingdom.
Follow Jesus, and, in so following, you may well experience the suffering
that will come upon you when the world—with its familial and political
loyalties—realizes that your following Jesus undermines your loyalty
to the world’s priorities, politics, and loyalties.
The peace Jesus is bringing is not a peace that will
preserve the disciple from harm or suffering or death; it is not a peace
that will leave the disciple and her world undisturbed; it is not a peace
that encourages passivity and complacency.
The sword Jesus is bringing is not a sword for violently
slaying the evildoer; it is the metaphorical sword that reminds the disciple
that her discipleship will displace and reorient the previous loyalties
of her life.
Narrow is the way of the Kingdom but glorious is the blessing
that it bestows.
May those who have ears to hear and eyes to see be blessed by these words.
All this I have dared to preach in the name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God, Mother of us all. Amen.
Copyright© Joe R. Jones
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