For Sunday, June 22, 2014 – Matthew 10:24-39
Jesus tells it to us straight, even when he delivers it slant. In these riddle-like passages, Jesus plays with language, and with us. We are not fluent in his native tongue, so he teaches a full immersion course, submerging us into his way of listening and learning, challenging us to discover sense in what sounds like nonsense. To awaken us to the reason and rhyme of his realm requires more than our usual linear ways of learning. We cannot depend on the same old vocabulary or listen with the same old neural grooves if we hope to discern his meanings. We cannot stand on the platform of old understandings and hope to catch the new trains of thought he is ushering in.
“What I have told you in the dark, speak in the light. Where I whisper, you shout.” Got that? “Have no fear. Nothing covered up will not be uncovered; nothing secret will not become known. Why fear anyone who can do nothing more than kill you?” A funny guy, huh? “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Even the hairs on your head are numbered….” On and on he goes. “You think I have come to bring peace? Think again. I have come to bring division.” Jesus, are you trying to confuse us? Or are you telling it straight, and we hear it crooked, having such limited facility in your language?
All is not lost. Even when the waters of comprehension are murky, we can learn new ways to fish. We can humble ourselves and admit we do not know exactly what Jesus means, or who his God is, or who we are to be, or what it is that God requires. If we don’t confess our lack of understanding, we will continue to be confused. Not by the one in whom there is no confusion, but because we are clinging to old paradigms while pretending to live in the new, pretending to be fully conversant in a tongue we have barely begun to learn. Confusion diminishes as our need to seem smart and capable diminishes, as we allow the mind of Christ to become our mind, his ways to become ours.
