Lectionary Reflection for Proper 7A on Matthew 10:24-39
WHEN INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION CLASH
I have only ever blocked one person from my Facebook feed. I have long believed that to be intellectually honest and rigorous, I need to listen to my critics and those who disagree with me. I have also tried to practice what I preach about inclusivity and diversity, and so I have resisted blocking anyone who takes the time and energy to engage with my posts. Generally, I enjoy a robust discussion with someone who has done thoughtful, critical work and come to a different conclusion than I have. I learn far more from these conversations than when I talk with people who share my views, and I grow in my ability to communicate my perspectives clearly and calmly.
This year, I finally decided that it was time to close a door on someone whom I believed had become unsafe, not just for me, but for others who engage with my work. This person, who had reconnected with me a year or two ago after years of silence since our schooldays, seems to have decided that he had to make every effort to change what he considered my heretical views and protect my readers from my misguided ideas. For the last few months, he had left a comment on almost every post I published, without ever reading a single one. Then he started messaging me directly, attacking my character, my qualifications, and my ministry. When these attacks continued even after informing him that my wife was in hospital having brain surgery for a malignant tumour, I could no longer allow myself to be a punching bag, and I blocked him.
This was a difficult decision for me, and I probably took far too long to make it. But I can’t shake the conviction that following Jesus is about inclusion. I wholeheartedly agree with Rachel Held Evans’ observation that “what makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out, but who it lets in”.1 I still believe that building walls cannot lead us to a kind and just world. But I also know that I have sometimes been too trusting, too biased toward finding good in everyone, and too naïve about our human capacity to do harm, even in Christ’s name.
In a small way, my experience with my Facebook commentator gave me a taste of what can happen when inclusion and exclusion clash. What are we to do when someone we seek to include insists on excluding others to whom we have extended a welcome? How can a community be indiscriminately inclusive without becoming unsafe for vulnerable, marginalised, and non-conforming people? While it may not seem so, in the Lectionary reading from Matthew 10:24-39 for Proper 7A, Jesus’ teachings contain some rather uncomfortable answers to these questions.
EMBODYING THE WAY OF CHRIST
After travelling from village to village preaching, healing, and liberating those oppressed by demons, Jesus appoints twelve apostles and prepares them to begin doing the work of ministry themselves.2 The teaching in Chapter 10 of Matthew’s Gospel is the second of the writer’s five blocks of teaching (echoing the five books of the Torah in the Hebrew Scriptures) and is known as the ‘Missionary Discourse’. Since this is the first time that the twelve apostles (sent ones) will be flying solo, Jesus wants to prepare them, and so he offers them instructions, encouragements, and warnings.
The warnings are serious enough that they may well have caused these first missionaries to rethink their choice to follow Jesus. But three times in verses 26-31, Jesus inserts the affirmation that they are not to be afraid (10:26, 28, 31).3 Jesus makes no promises that everything will be alright, but he does assure them that their fear can be overcome by holding fast to three key insights.
The first is that Jesus has already experienced whatever insults or attacks they may have to endure. And so, in witnessing how he handled his persecution, the apostles can find ways to handle theirs. Central to their ability to cope will be their knowledge that their antagonists have no power to harm them spiritually or eternally. They do not have to fear the temporary trials they will face because their souls are in the care of the Divine Lover who watches over even the tiniest of creatures.4 And because they belong to the community of God’s reign, of justice and love, they will always have a safe place to which to return and receive care (as Jesus promised in Matt. 6:33).
Secondly, Jesus assures them that “nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known” (10:26). The apostles will now be able to proclaim publicly what they have heard from Jesus in private, and, in so doing, they will reveal the presence and nature of God to their hearers. Additionally, through their ministry and that of Jesus, “truth will out, justice will prevail, and those who have lived with integrity and innocence, despite what the world says about them, will be vindicated”.5 For, as Stanley Saunders puts it, “the gospel proclaimed and lived is the most powerful tool at the disciples’ disposal against the powers of this world”.6
Finally, Jesus highlights the need to make God’s way of loving supreme. The way it is worded in the Gospel sounds as if Jesus is a jealous narcissist who refuses for his disciples to love anyone else. Far too many cult leaders have demanded separation from family and single-minded devotion like this. But for Jesus, his message and mission were never about Jesus. In Matthew 6:33, Jesus’ call is for his followers to seek first God’s reign and justice—not to seek Jesus himself. So when Jesus calls his followers to love him above all, he is not looking for their devotion to him personally. He is calling them to be devoted to the reign of God which he embodies. And when they love God’s reign—God’s values, priorities, and purposes—they will naturally love family, friends, neighbour, stranger, and even enemies far better and more deeply than they ever could on their own. Essentially, once we have embraced God’s reign, our definition of family is expanded beyond our biological relationships to include every God-beloved life.7
But the reality that the apostles had to face was that as they preached and demonstrated God’s inclusive, loving, and just way of being, they would be opposed, sometimes violently. The great paradox of the Gospel of God’s reign is that it is highly divisive.
