Love Jesus More Than My Kids-Matthew 10

What‘s the core and crux of Christianity? What are the basics–the ABCs–of bring Christian? How do you know if you’re truly a Christian? (Disciple/Christ follower–is what a Christian is) What’s the most important question to ask yourself? Shouldn’t it be: “What do I love the most?”

Jesus gives a clear unambiguous answer: “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10:37). Similarly, Jesus says,”If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters–yes, even their own life–such a person cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26). How do Christians apply such verses? Jesus then states two non-negotiable prerequisites for being Christian: take up your cross (Mt 10:38; Lk 14:27) and lose your life (Mt 10:39; 16:25). If you’re not doing so, are you a Christian? It’s like “if you don’t pass the GED you can’t go to grad school”…only with eternal consequences.

Jesus calls an undistinguished group. Jesus summons the disciples and gives them authority over unclean spirits and the power to cure illness (Mt 10:1). The names of the twelve apostles begins with the first called Simon, who will be called Peter, and ends with Judas Iscariot, who will betray Jesus (Mt 10:2-4). We know little about them, but we know that they’re not a distinguished group. They are people of “little faith” (Mt 8:26; 14:31), but they are who Jesus called. We’ll learn more about Peter and Judas, but the more we learn doesn’t increase our confidence in them. In different ways Peter and Judas both betray Jesus.

Personally learn how we might be tempted to betray Jesus. That Judas will betray Jesus (Mt 10:4) indicates that the dramatic tension of the gospel doesn’t involve “what’s going to happen to Jesus.” By reporting the opposition to Jesus Matthew assumes that the basic outline of the story is known. Thus, “knowing the story” is not sufficient to make one a faithful disciple. We must learn how we, like the disciples, would be tempted to betray Jesus and from that lesson discover what it means to be a faithful church.

Continuity with Israel constituted by twelve tribes is why Jesus calls twelve disciples to be this new community. The twelve are charged to go only to Israel (Mt 10:6) rather than to the Gentiles and the Samaritans (Mt 10:5). Jesus has been sent to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” to fulfill the prophecy that Israel is God’s beloved, called to be a light to the nations (Isa 49:6). Some Gentiles are ready to respond to Jesus’ call, believing that the kingdom is present through Jesus’ life and work. The Gentiles who respond to his call for repentance are grafted into God’s promise to Israel. But Israel is not to be left behind—Jesus has come to call her to repentance. Thus, Jesus sends the disciples to the people of Israel to insure that they will not be lost amid the nations. Only after Jesus’s resurrection will the disciples be sent to all the nations (Mt 28:19).

Asked to do what Jesus has done. An apostle is a messenger and witness to Christ. Jesus calls the disciples to preach, as he and John the Baptist had done, that “the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Mt 10:7; 3:2; 4:17). Jesus charges the apostles to “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons” (Mt 10:8). He asks them and us to do what he has done. We must see before we can do. Thus, the church depends on witnesses through the centuries who exemplify what Jesus taught his disciples to do. The undistinguished character of the disciples is a sign of hope for us who inherit their task, for the church stands in the tradition of the apostles.

Christianity is not a philosophy that can be learned separate from EMBODYING it. If the truth that is Christ were a truth that could be known “in principle” we won’t need apostles. But the way the gospel is known is by one person being for another person the story of Christ. By summoning the disciples to him, they become for us the witnesses who make it possible for us to be messengers of the kingdom. The disciples are not impressive people, but neither are we. Their mission, as well as ours, is not to call attention to ourselves but to Jesus and the kingdom.

Detailed instructions given (Mt 10:5a). The disciples/apostles are not to receive money for their work, travel light with little money and clothes (Mt 10:9-10), stay only in towns where they’ve been received and bestow the peace of God on those who provide hospitality (Mt 10:13a). But they’re not to tarry with those who won’t provide hospitality or are unwilling to listen to them (Mt 10:13b-14). This is what it means for apostles/messengers not to judge (Mt 7:1). They don’t need to judge because they’ve become God’s judgment on those who refuse to welcome them or listen to them (Mt 10:15). That they’re God’s judgment is the reason Jesus needs to prepare them to face persecution (Mt 10:22-23).

Check yourself first. The apostles are to abandon the “unworthy,” those who reject their message (Mt 10:14). Be careful because such judgment can easily lead to self-righteousness. We’re tempted to believe that if our witness is rejected, those who refuse to listen are perverse. But before any judgment is made about those to whom we witness, first ask if we‘re adequate witnesses. The gospel is not the gospel until it’s received. Rejection may be a sign that the gospel has not been faithfully embodied. The character of the one witnessing must be consistent with their message. The disciples are given strict rules concerning how their message is to be exemplified.

Nothing but Jesus. Jesus’ command that the disciples travel light (Mt 10:9-10) is necessary to manifest that they have nothing to commend other than Jesus himself. To be a follower of Jesus has not made them wealthy, powerful, or secure. They’re charged to have nothing at their disposal other than the authority that they’ve been given by Jesus (Mt 10:1). Nothing should get in the way of their witness to the gospel. They can’t promise that Jesus will make his followers well-off, worry free, successful, etc. Rather, the promise is life in the kingdom of God, a kingdom no longer determined by the power of death.

The joy of monasticism. We should not be surprised that monasticism remains a most effective form of Christian witness, for monks and nuns must learn to travel light, to offer and receive hospitality, to trust one another to live. Monasticism was not founded as a form of witness to non-Christians, but the attractive character of monastic life makes monks and nuns witnesses to strangers almost in spite of themselves, for the joy that radiates from truthful worship of God proves to be an irresistible witness to those who have not yet been confronted by Jesus’ summons. All people are created for such joy.

Not size or status but faithfulness. Jesus’ instructions for the disciples’ mission is true for any Christian evangelism. Too often concern for the status of the church tempts us to employ desperate measures to insure that the church grows larger or is socially significant. But the church is not called to be significant or large, but to be apostolic. Faithfulness, not numbers or status, should be what characterizes the witness of the church. It may well be that God is unburdening the church so that we can again travel light.

Move on. The disciples must, like Jesus, remain on the move (Mt 10:11-12). If they are rejected they must, as Paul does in Acts, move to the next house or town (Mt 10:13-14). The kingdom grows through rejection. Success is not a sign of faithfulness. Yet, Jesus tells them that their rejection by a town will entail judgment not unlike the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah (Mt 10:15). The men of Sodom and Gomorrah betrayed hospitality by subjecting Lot, his wife, and his daughters to treachery, and God destroyed them. The kingdom unleashed by Jesus is the kingdom of hospitality. To reject him and those who represent him is to call down judgment on ourselves.

Jesus prepares his disciples for rejection and persecution like sheep sent into the midst of wolves (Mt 10:16a). But it doesn’t mean that they’re called to be stupid. Rather, they are to be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves (Mt 10:16b). Wisdom and innocence are not often paired. To have wisdom often requires the loss of innocence, but the innocence that the apostles are to embody, like the Beatitudes commending the poor, meek, and mournful (Mt 5:3-5), is not something achieved through effort. Rather, innocence names the unavoidable vulnerability of those sent into the world who will challenge the worldly powers with the weapons of the Spirit.

Without violence or coercion. Stalin famously asked how many divisions the pope had—a question indicating the assumption that history is made by the violent. Yet the church has endured without an army. Christians have often approved the use of violence by those not officially identified by the church. Christian witness—if a witness to the kingdom made present in Christ—is most transparent in those who will not kill. The church denies its apostolicity when it uses coercion to further the witness of Christ’s peace.

Tell the truth. Jesus tells the disciples—anticipating later treatment of him—that the synagogue leaders will drag them before governing authorities to have them beaten (Mt 10:17-18). When this happens, they’re not to worry about what they’ll say, but rather truthful speech will be given to them by the Spirit (Mt 10:19-20). To be told not to prepare speeches in their defense is an extraordinary demand. But it reflects Jesus’ training the disciples to confront the powers in a manner that the violence of governors and kings is challenged. Governors and kings understand those who would violently overthrow them. What they can’t face is the power of a people who refuse to fear them because they rightly fear God (Prov 29:25). The fear of God makes truthful speech possible. The speech given by the Spirit is the speech made possible by the very vulnerability that the witness to the kingdom requires. No force is more powerful against oppression than truthful speech.

An alternate kingdom. The kingdom brought by Jesus, the kingdom that the disciples are charged to preach, has come near (Mt 10:7). It’s the kingdom that is the alternative to all the kingdoms created by death. Jesus tells his disciples that, just as Mic 7:6–7 predicted, brother will kill brother, fathers will betray children, and children will seek to destroy their parents (Mt 10:21); and all those so captured by the kingdom of death will hate the disciples who witness to the name of Jesus (Mt 10:22a). This is the result for preaching the kingdom of God, and Jesus instructs the disciples to expect such a response (Mt 10:23). The kingdoms of death, the kingdoms that rule through violence legitimated by the fear of death, are challenged by this one who has come to put an end to the rule of death.

Apocalyptic time. Jesus tells his disciples that if they are persecuted in one town they are to flee to the next (Mt 10:23a). They are to do so because they will not have the time to make it “through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes” (Mt 10:23b)—a stark reminder that this is apocalyptic time. The Son of Man has come, but his work, his life, will be consummated through cross and resurrection. The time in between is constituted by a patient witness.

Not force but patient endurance. Today we live in apocalyptic time awaiting the return of the Son of Man. Jesus reminds the disciples and us that to faithfully witness to his peace there is always time to be patient. So the church, like the disciples, has the task to flee from one town to another so that the world may know there is time enough to live at peace with one another, for Jesus tells us our task is not to force the kingdom into existence, but to “endure” (Mt 10:22). To endure turns out to be the only way we can be witnesses to Christ’s kingdom.

Expect disparagement. Jesus also tells us that the disciples are not expected to be him, but rather we are to be “like the teacher” (Mt 10:25a). That likeness insures that we will be maligned (Mt 10:25b), but being maligned can be endured because Jesus has gone before us as the pioneer of the faith. What he has told us in the dark, in secret, we can proclaim from the housetops (Mt 10:27). We can do so because he has called us to a ministry that cannot be defeated by death, for the fear of those who can kill the body is now countered by the confidence born of the fear of the one who alone determines life and death (Mt 10:28).

Right fear fears not. Christians rightly should fear, but they do not fear death: they fear the one who has made it possible to live courageously in the face of death. Thomas Aquinas calls the kind of fear produced by charity—the friendship that God establishes with us—filial fear (1981, part II-II Q. 19). God’s love makes possible a confidence that drives out the fear that those who kill use to compel obedience to their will. Jesus tells his disciples, therefore, not to be afraid, because they are of more value than the sparrows (Mt 10:29). That God loves us, those he has called through his Son, more than he loves the sparrows does not mean that the sparrows are not loved as sparrows should be loved.

Not peace but a sword is what Jesus says he came to bring (Mt 10:34). Often the family is the first place that the divisions occasioned by Jesus will be apparent (Mt 10:21). Not only will governors and kings hate and persecute the apostles (Mt 10:18), but the family will be fractured by loyalty to him. The separation Jesus comes to enact results from the disciples’ mission. The sword he brings–the sword that is an alternative to the peace of the world–is the sword of the cross. Bonhoeffer puts it this way: “The cross is God’s sword on this earth. It creates division. The son against the father, the daughter against the mother, the household against its head, and all that for the sake of God’s kingdom and its peace—that is the work of Christ on earth! No wonder the world accuses him, who brought the love of God to the people, of hatred toward human beings! Who dares to speak about a father’s love and a mother’s love to a son or daughter in such a way, if not either the destroyer of all life or the creator of a new life? Who can claim the people’s love and sacrifice so exclusively, if not the enemy of humanity or the savior of humanity? Who will carry the sword into their houses, if not the devil or Christ, the Prince of Peace? God’s love for the people and human love for their kind are utterly different. God’s love for the people brings the cross and discipleship, but these, in turn, mean life and resurrection. “Anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.” This affirmation is given by the one who has the power over death, the Son of God, who goes to the cross and to resurrection and takes those who are his with him.” (Bonhoeffer 2001, 197)

The only weapon. That Christians carry no sword other than the cross doesn’t mean that we are sent into the world defenseless. Hebrews says that the word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing the soul and laying bare all before the eyes of God (Heb 4:12–13). Scripture is the weapon of truth that enables those who follow Jesus to disarm the powers by exposing their lies and deceit. Christians are not without defense, having been given God’s word to shield us from our delusions that are the source of our violence.

Attempts to secure our lives through the means offered by the world are doomed to failure. If we’re to find our lives, we must be prepared to lose it (Mt 10:39; 16:25; Mk 8:35; Lk 9:24). This is not a general recommendation to learn unselfishness—even unselfishness that may cost our lives—for the life we must be willing to lose is the life lost “for my sake” –for Jesus. Self-sacrifice, often justified in the name of family or country, can easily be tyrannical. The language of sacrifice is often used by those in power for perverse ends. Jesus doesn’t commend the loss of self as a good in and of itself. He demands that we follow him because he alone has the right to ask for our lives.

Disciples/church not blood relations are your family. Too often Christianity is justified as a way of life that leads to stability and order. “The family that prays together stays together”—such sentiments lead to an idolatry of the family. “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” (Mt 10:37) is a hard saying. But Jesus is preparing the disciples for persecution. Our fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, are now found among the disciples and not among blood relations. Let that be preached from the pulpits of America and see if those preachers will live free of persecution. Not a little is at stake. The violence of nations is often justified in the name of protecting our loves—our way of life. Yet it is exactly those loyalties that Jesus calls into question as he instructs his disciples.

Christian or American first? In a book dealing with the power of the American flag to motivate people to sacrifice themselves in war, the observation is made: “In the religiously plural society of the United States, sectarian faith is optional for citizens, as everyone knows. Americans have rarely bled, sacrificed or died for Christianity or any other sectarian faith. Americans have often bled, sacrificed and died for their country. This fact is an important clue to its religious power. Though denominations are permitted to exist in the United States, they are not permitted to kill, for their beliefs are not officially true. What is really true in any society is what is worth killing for, and what citizens may be compelled to sacrifice their lives for. (Marvin and Ingle 1999, 9)

Jesus challenges those who would kill in the name of protecting their family / nation. It’s often thought that what Christians believe has become hard to believe because of modern science. But the fundamental challenge to the truthfulness of Christian convictions resides in Christian accommodation to loyalties not determined by Jesus. Jesus won’t let his followers kill; but he does demand that they be willing to die. That’s why Christian truth is an alternative to the truth of the U.S. Often representatives of nonviolence are asked, “What would you do if . . . ?” …with scenarios that’d require us to come to the aid of our spouse or our child who is being threatened by someone who may take their life. Such situations may confront those who follow Jesus, but Jesus’ claim that we must learn to love him > we love father, mother, son, or daughter (Mt 10:37) means the answer to “What would you do if . . . ?” is not as obvious as is often assumed. To follow Jesus, to love Jesus, may mean that we and those we love cannot be spared death—a harsh and dreadful love, but a love disciplined by the love of Christ who makes life itself possible. To be sure, if the Father is not the Father of Jesus then to contemplate the death of those we love is immoral. But the Father is the Father of Jesus and Jesus is the Son of the Father.

Welcome prophets. Jesus concludes his instructions to the disciples by assuring them that whoever welcomes them welcomes him as well as the one who has sent him (Mt 10:40). Jesus has been sent, and now he sends the disciples. Those who welcome these messengers will be rewarded as a righteous person is rightly rewarded (Mt 10:41). It seems that welcoming a prophet matters for the kind of life we will live with God. What we do and do not do affects our relationship with God. This is not unconditional acceptance. Jesus tells the disciples that whoever acknowledges him before others he will acknowledge to his Father (Mt 10:32). It is also the case that if we deny him he will deny us before the Father (Mt 10:33).

Given work by Jesus is our salvation. We rightly fear betraying him. To deny him is to deny our very destiny, and there is no deeper sin than to deny the one who makes it possible for us to confess our sin. The disciples and we have been summoned by Jesus and given good work to do (Mt 10:5, 23). In that work lies our salvation, our reward, our righteousness. Later, Jesus will tell us that if we have taken the time to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, visit those in prison, we will have served him (Mt 25:31–46). In like manner, those who give “a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple” (Mt 10:42) will have their reward. Indeed it may well be that one of the major tasks of the church is to welcome those called to be prophets (Mt 10:41).

Christians hesitate to use the language of punishment and reward that animates these texts (Mt 10:13-15, 32-33, 41-42). This language suggests that our relation with God is subject to a crude exchange—if we are good then God must reward us. Quite understandably many Christians are repelled by such a view of God. Instead of a God who punishes, we want a God who only loves us. The problem with such a view is not only that the language of reward and punishment is clearly central to what Jesus says concerning those who receive prophets (Mt 10:41), but such a view denies the good news that Jesus has summoned us to be participants in the kingdom of God. What the Father has done by sending the Son cannot be undone by our unfaithfulness, but the good news is that our faithfulness matters to the Father. Salvation is a life-and-death matter. Our response to Jesus’ invitation to be part of the kingdom, to be a disciple, will determine our destiny before God. We are invited to take up the cross, and that is the “reward.” God’s reward makes possible a life freed from the fear of death and those who use our fear of death to “save” us. To be saved from the salvation offered by the world surely is what it means to be made righteous.

Not success but faithfulness. We do not learn how the disciples fared on the mission to Israel. Rather, we are told that after Jesus had finished instructing the disciples he went on to proclaim his message “in their cities” (Mt 11:1), in the same cities to which he had sent the disciples. That we do not learn how successful or unsuccessful the disciples may have been indicates that the task is not one determined by success. Rather, to do what we have been told to do by Jesus and to do what we have been told to do in the manner he has instructed is what is important. Our responsibility is to be faithful to the task God has given us. The result is God’s doing.   Reference:

1. Hauerwas, Stanley. Matthew. Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible. Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, MI, 2006. MATTHEW 10: The Sending.
2. Hauerwas, Stanley. Cross-Shattered Christ. Meditations on the Seven Last Words. Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, MI, 2004.
3. Hauerwas, Stanley; Willimon, William. Where Resident Aliens Live. Exercises for Christian Practice. Abingdon Press, Nashville, TN, 1996.

To be sure, no one follows Jesus in order to “get ours,” but to follow Jesus means that we discover an “ours” that we could not have otherwise imagined.