SERMON ON MATTHEW 10,34-39

By Martin Stoehr

[This sermon is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.jcrelations.net/de/index.php.]

The gospel text is one of Jesus’ severe addresses. I am glad I did not have to interpret it in a sermon in the past – or fled to “more beautiful” texts.

“Do you think that I have come to bring peace on 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 a man’s foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.”

What a scandalous speech in a time when the family disintegrated! Doesn’t it set religious dynamite (the worst possible dynamite) in a fragile structure needing stabilization? Privatistic developments, an egoism of the generations, crumbling generation contracts, unequal distribution between men and women, pressure to perform and time shortage are threatening enough for the family. Training or indoctrination through advertising, consumption and competition is added to the mix.

This speech is scandalous for another reason. The usefulness of religion in reinforcing stereotypes or fueling conflicts instead of creating peace can be seen in many parts of our world. I do not need to name examples. Let us not indulge in any deceptions. What happened in “other” religions is written on the debit side of all religions. One had better not get involved with religion. That is the trend. Could this preacher from Israel be taken seriously in this time as a weapon merchant and not as a peacemaker? Shouldn’t providing bread instead of weapons in all parts of the world be more important? Shouldn’t we learn from the Torah to honor father and mother? Couldn’t those who worship the biblical God bring the messianic hope of the prophet Malachi (4,6) into the life of the present that the heart of fathers might turn to the sons and the heart of sons turn to the fathers? Doesn’t Jesus like his Christendom forget the command of love of the enemy that Matthew handed down a few pages before? Wasn’t Jesus directed against the community rule of the people of Qumran and not against the Hebrew Bible? In Qumran, the children of light were rigorously separated from those of darkness who were to be hated.

Isn’t it an advance of our arduously learned tolerance that no family drama is usually ignited now when the father leaves the church, the mother stays, the stepbrother goes to the anthroposophists, the daughter lives as a Zen Buddhist, the son orients himself in Hare Krishna and the stepfather only believes what can be measured and weighed? If all religions are equally valid legally and politically in modern civil societies, is a peaceful state reached that has its advantages or is that the indifference criticized so sharply and prophetically by Jesus?

A much deeper offensiveness is planted in this gospel text. Whoever takes seriously the commands, stories and messianic hopes of the Bible – and Jews and Christians do this with different understandings – breaks the indifference and passivity in society, family and personal life. Jesus labors that human life does not become lost life, that people gain a life in the full sense of the word, a life that comes to God’s likeness. That is the goal of Jesus’ severe words. If I rely on this, I join in decisions over right and wrong, love and coldness and peace and violence. Then I am not driftwood in the stream of history but share in the course of personal and social history. I stand with the men and women, who according to the biblical history were called by God to his service, to responsibility against cynicism, hope against resignation, forgiveness against guilt, a watchful against a sleepy or corruptible conscience and courage against fear.

If one works so the tear in every person and among people is not pasted over or ignored, that is impossible without resistance in myself and in my environment. Decisions and separations are unavoidable.

This is something different than a fun-society where I am trained for entertainment and consumption and the question what is essential for life is often left out. This is also different than a front between good and evil, pious and godless that we created or is supposedly identifiable for us. God makes the final judgment here. This judgment is surprisingly more humane than our judgments over our fellow persons. There are enough examples in the Bible that God’s co-workers on this earth extend beyond the borders of Israel or the church. Thanks be to God for this!

The sword of which Jesus speaks is the sword of the world judge proclaimed by the prophet Daniel. The full power of the Most High to judge over “the people of all nations and tongues” is given to the Son of man, a messianic figure (Dan 7,9-14). The Christian community sees a messianic understanding of Jesus in this prophetic announcement. The sword of justice serving the search for justice is involved here, not the sword of war. An ultimate seriousness is expressed here. Life and death are at stake, not trivia or insignificant twaddle. The conscience learns to say Yes or No and not act unscrupulously. The conscience can promote life sharply and clearly instead of endangering one’s own life or a neighbor’s life.

The divine constitution – the Decalogue – is interpreted in the Sermon on the Mount in the first part of Matthew’s gospel. Jesus emphasizes (Matt 5,17) not a dot of the Torah, the law, will pass away. “Whoever hears and does these words of mine” builds his life on the foundation of rock. Whoever does not build his life upon the sand. So Jesus ends the Sermon on the Mount. At the end of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus summarizes the standards for a successful life: feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, house the homeless, clothe the naked and do not abandon the sick and imprisoned. He identifies completely with suffering persons. Can his disciples act differently? Jesus joins the basic orientations of his Bible and our Bible into a guide for a fulfilled life and against a forfeited life. He wants every human life to succeed because every human life is divine life. Every person is God’s likeness. This declaration proclaims the unique dignity and human right of every likeness as God’s gift to everybody and also the task of preserving and protecting this fragile gift.

Several verses before our text, the disciples like their master and rabbi healed the sick and combated death so death does not have the last word in human life. Like him, they champion justice. They do what he does. Taking up their cross like Jesus is part of this discipleship. Whoever remains faithful to god and his word must expect martyrdom. This can be the price of God’s discipleship as Jesus’ life and death showed. This insight is often forgotten in satiated societies and appears in the incredible minimization and harmlessness of biblical faith.

In contrast, the Jewish and Christian martyrs of the past and present emphasize the seriousness of our attempts to live as Jews or Christians. The dignity of such a life is expressed in the words: “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect!” This is crucial even if the dignity of discipleship appears in the deepest humiliation – as with the millions of church members who turned their backs on them and demonstrated their incompetence. A martyrdom does not justify any degradation. Perhaps a few Christians more than at that time will learn to practice and hold out the discipleship of Jesus in the daily emergency of blinding prejudices, anti-Semitism, hostility to foreigners and racism, even if important family, friendship or occupational relations break down.

Taking up one’s cross does not mean crawling before any authorities or ingrained conditions. One can learn this from Job and from Jesus. The struggle here is over truth in frightening and in normal times and the struggle is with God. Truth is lived here even in the most repulsive situations. Truth here is not a brief court appearance. Let us engage in investigating concrete truth. This very human process may be long and is certainly arduous.

Pontius Pilate made thousands of Jews like Jesus carry their cross. The governor was a cynic of power. Therefore he asked cynically “What is truth?” His life truth consisted in using and keeping his power for himself. The biblical truth faced him in Jesus. The voice of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob lives for others and not only for itself. In this sense, provost Lichtenberg took up his cross when he prayed for the Jews and was tortured to death for that. In this sense, pastor Paul Schneider offered release from Buchenwald under the condition of his future silence about violence and injustice replied that Weimar would be his pulpit after his release. The answer of the KZ (concentration camp) guard was a deadly silence.

Still a hard question may not be avoided. Doesn’t Jesus justify the hatred of his own toward the Jews with his sharp words? Couldn’t housemates and neighbors become “enemies for his sake” from whom one separates when commanded from above or advancing a career? Aren’t Jesus’ own the “children of the house of Israel”? He lives among them as they wrestle belligerently and peaceably over the true understanding of God’s word and tradition for today’s life. On the other hand, didn’t he say a few verses before “not everyone who says `Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of God” to the most faithful ones who followed him? Didn’t the churches often set dogmatism above just conduct toward Israel? Didn’t God’s living truth often become a frozen waterfall impressive to behold but moving no one any more?

Feelings of superiority, dogmatism, contempt and persecution of Israel arose toward the Jewish people. Jesus was not seen together with his own or understood from his Bible, tradition and community but separated from what is important to him and what characterizes him.

Erich Muhsam who was murdered before Berlin’s gates in Oranienburg in 1934 held a mirror before Christendom since it refused to look self-critically at itself. Christendom could not endure that the same Bible was read and understood differently.

A child from the tribe of Sem
was born in Bethlehem.
To this day
people rejoice
over the one in the crib,
ministers and farmers,
bourgeois and proletarians -
every Aryan rejoices
everywhere at the same time
Christ’s birth in the cattle’s stall
(only the people
prefer to celebrate Chanukah!)

Jesus’ harsh words are marked by love of humanity and the seriousness of God’s word. This is a prophetic address as severe as the addresses of Israel’s prophets. But harsh biblical words are invitations to conversion and a new beginning. This is different from all determinist interpretations of history, many religious and non-religious conceptions of fate or destiny and the common fatalistic refrain “Nothing can be done!” As “world sculptors” (Bertolt Brecht), all kinds of ideologists adjust people to their ideologies. The Greek tragedy drives people inexorably to disaster. The biblical god is an “enraged” God who can hear people and their appeals. For people, this means: It is never too late for conversion and new beginning. The zealot (thief) criminalized by Pontius Pilate and crucified on the cross experienced the openness and changeability of history at the very last moment: “Today you shall be with me in Paradise!”

The harshest prophetic speech is also part of this open inviting side. Jesus often said those who do the will of God are his father, mother, brothers, sisters and relatives (for example, Mt 7,21 and 12,50). God’s sovereignty and human discipleship create new brothers, sisters and communities. For people to have better chances on this earth, the sharp sword of probing questions and courageous decisions is necessary.

Here is an example. The nonviolent bishop Dom Helder Camara once said regarding his poor church district in which thousands of children die of hunger every year: “They call me a Christian when I give bread to children but a communist when I ask why children starve to death.” By furthering both activities, he gained new friends and lost old ones.

After Jesus’ harsh words, the fear of losing relationships did not prevent people from asking about God’s will and attempting to do God’s will. A church must be told this when it often anxiously gazes at the powerful in the economy, media and politics to not lose their favor.