June 24, 2005
Swords
Pentecost 6/8A
Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have come not to bring peace, but a sword” (Mt 10.34).
Jesus never asked to be worshiped, nor did he seek grandeur. He always pointed beyond himself to God. He taught in those mystifying riddles we call parables because life is a parable as are we who live it, as mystifying a riddle as anybody can possibly conceive and only he has solved.
He taught not to persuade us to believe in him or in God, but to excite our imaginations to take the risk of faithfulness by looking wolves in the teeth, and thus to discover responsible community with new ways to understanding, to true commitment, and to being the people of God.
His gospel is a story, a model of truth and justice, love and reconciliation, inclusiveness and healing, and maybe even more importantly, of civility and good humor. It teaches us less how to live than how to die. Such a course seems always to divide people, even families and churches. And yet, it is inevitably a singularly appropriate owner’s guide for how to live with fear. We’d be masters to be so creatively inventive ourselves.
We cannot remind ourselves often enough that these first apostle/messengers were, as are we, members of the laos, the laity of the church, the people of God. We are commissioned by God’s grace to that same fellowship in our baptism.
Our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers are finally discovering the biblical authority of the laity and demanding of their leaders to match their extensive privileges with an equal responsibility. They reach for something we’ve had all along, but increasingly allow to be depleted by the overwhelming clerical arrogance of some.
Don’t you wonder — more often of late — if there is any way adequately to describe the folly that causes us as a nation, as a world, and most inexcusably as a church, systematically to undo all these great gifts of both Earth and Heaven, Bible and tradition? And don’t you sometimes pause as to why we repeatedly take a pass on our stewardship?
May our calling help us see that fear shrinks us, harms us, and renders us incapable of acting on our own behalf. It exposes us to manipulation by those who attempt to use us to their own glory and deny their responsibility to lead us with vision and selflessness. The church can and must show that the way to counteract such fear is only by love, by striving to be the community Jesus envisioned and commissioned us to be, and by demanding of our leaders and of ourselves the justification of this privilege.
For the moment in these absurd and perilous times, however, we must stay with the irony of peace and sword, and realize that at least, we can embrace the trickster, the buffoon, the miscreant who lives in us all. Then, in the better part of wisdom and innocence, be allowed in love to laugh at evil and, as well, at ourselves. Maybe, after all, it’s not such a bad way to go.