Jesus Must've Known

15^th Week OT(M): Exodus 1.8-14, 22 and Matthew 10.34-11.1
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory


Listen to this homily here

Jesus teaches his apostles that he comes to us wielding a belligerent sword, a great blade of division and strife, setting man against father, daughter against mother. And we must not think that he brings peace! We must not think that the Word of his Good News, spoken from start to finish and through all creation, tranquilizes our discordant human hearts or smooths all the coarse ways we grind up and pit with sin. “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth,” he warns us. Instead, know that I have come to dare you to receive a prophetic charge, a commission to lose your life for my sake, and in so doing, to find your life made worthy of Christ. Refusing this messianic dare is unthinkable, “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.” Our cross—the one cross we all share—is the graced burden of stepping into the world as prophets of a Truth whose light is blinding and razor sword-sharp.

Jesus must have known that at some point in the history of his church, even his most devoted members would no longer be scandalized by his more outlandish teachings. At some point, someone would read the synoptic accounts and John’s gospel and realize what a master rhetorician Jesus was, what a masterful storyteller, a man gifted with the ability to speak memorably. He must have known that at some point, someone would deconstruct the texts of these evangelical memories and untie all the bound pairings—peace/sword, enemies/household, righteous/lost—and once done report back to us that his metaphors of power are really just grabs at establishing a totalitarian religious state or something equally ridiculous. He must have known that our weak human hearts would flail about, grasping at any tool to loosen his grip on our integrity, to pry away our vow of obedience, freeing our souls from his prophetic commission. He must have known, otherwise he would not have spoken the Truth with such blinding clarity, with such slicing strength: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Here’s the kicker, folks: we chose this life! The life described here in Matthew’s memories of his time as an Apostle. We chose this life. Jesus dared us to pick up his prophetic cross—of speaking the Truth of his Good News to the world—he dared us! and we jumped at the chance to die following after him. But we have to ask one another: have we left mom and dad behind? Have we given over every attachment, every clinging bit of need and want? The yearning after a half-lived life of stupored munching, rutting, sleeping, and polluting? We are his disciples if we can receive a single cup of cold water in his name. A single cup! And the one who gives us this water is truly blessed.

He must have known we would come to the point where very few stones littered our paths, where almost nothing stood in the way of carrying our crosses into the world…and yet we flinch at a clear path to our goal? Do we? I do. And often. Saying this life in Christ is not easy doesn’t make it difficult. Nor does it excuse the lack of blisters or bloody feet. Follow after me he says. Pick up that cross…you said you wanted it!...pick it up and follow after me. And make following him the first thing you do. The last thing you do. And everything you do in between. Then mom and dad and child and household and job—all that you have forsaken for his sake—all of it will make the best sense b/c the Good News that you bring to the world (bright as the sun and sharp as a sword) is that God’s mercy, though free, ain’t cheap. And the choice to pick up his cross as your own is a dare worth eternal life. Our reward then is a life—even a life of persecution—a life suffused with enduring glory, a Divine Love that makes all love possible and wholly prophetic.