The Call To Walk A Different Way!

This passage from Matthew can be difficult to grasp and absorb, so we must look at it very carefully.  It requires short history lesson to help us understand.   But before we get to the history lesson let’s review the story.  Matthew’s story portrays Jesus walking out of the temple with his disciples and commenting that a time was soon coming when not one stone of the temple would be left standing.    

Shortly thereafter Jesus is sitting on the Mount of Olives, across the Kidron Valley from the Temple Mount, and before him rose up the great city of Jerusalem and the magnificent temple. The view from that vantage point was awesome with the grandiose temple standing in all of its glory.  I've sat on the Mount of Olives twice, and I know what an incredible view it is today, and I can only imagine what it must have been back then when the temple was standing!   The temple was one of the wonders of the ancient world.

A disciple commented on the temple’s awesome splendor, and Jesus seized it as an opportunity to discuss coming events.  He said that a time of great turmoil lay ahead for them; a day when not one stone of that magnificent place would be left standing; a time of persecution; a time of the emergence of rivals and adversaries who would come and claim to possess the real truth; a time so filled with discord and conflict that the very earth itself would shake from the tension.

NOW THE HISTORY LESSON:  In the year 66, 3½ decades after Jesus, the beginning of a series of violent Jewish armed revolts broke out against Rome.  Jerusalem and even the temple became a base of operations and a den of collaboration for Jewish freedom fighters and insurgents against Rome.  It took Rome about four years to crush the rebellion, culminating in the year 70 when the temple was reduced to rubble – a Roman act of extreme destruction meant to crush the heart and spirit of the Jewish nation.  It took another several years after that for the Romans to flush out and destroy the freedom fighters that had fled to the great fortress of Masada near the Dead Sea. 

This whole period was a time of great suffering for Jews, including Jewish Christians.  In and around the Jewish homeland significant Jewish populations were persecuted and even massacred.  Some historians estimate that as many Jews, percentage-wise, perished as in the holocaust under Hitler.  In a very real and literal sense the events described in Matthew 24 came to pass.  (Mk 13; Lk 21)

My point is, the early followers of Jesus found themselves caught between a rock and hard place.  On the one side, they were Jews living under the crushing weight of the rock of the unjust and oppressive Roman imperial system.  On the other side, they were up against the hard place of the Jewish resistance movement that had chosen armed conflict as a way to drive out the despised Roman oppressors..

Matthew comes along and writes his gospel to this very community of Jesus followers in the 8^th decade after the temple’s destruction.  And by the manner Matthew tells the story he lays out a path for them to follow in the midst of such a terrible conflict.   Matthew’s conviction was that Jesus’ core message of the “Kingdom of God” meant an alternative course of action and life-style in the face of their dilemma.  For Matthew, following Jesus and the “Kingdom of God” called them to a different way; placed them on an alternate path.   For Matthew, his experience of the risen Jesus called him to non-violence as a way of resisting the evil of Roman oppression.  It was a call for the early followers of Jesus to be both anti-Roman-oppression (and all that the Romans stood for), but yet non-violent as the Lord Jesus himself had modeled in his life.

What’s really fascinating to me is that Jesus calls all these events and happenings “birth pangs” and “good news.”  Verse 8: “All of this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”  Verse 14: “And this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world…”

 “Birth pangs” seems a strange and paradoxical way to describe a time of pain and persecution. How can that be?  But if we follow the metaphor of “birth pangs”, it takes us to the place of the pain of a mother’s labor from which comes the greatest of all wonders and miracles, the birth of a new human life - the creation of something totally new!

I believe Matthew’s message, for his community as well as our community, is that whenever the Kingdom of God takes expression in the world, it will always meet resistance and require risk and sacrifice of the part of the follower.  We should not be surprised by that.  We should expect it.  It’s a pervasive and repetitive gospel theme.  Dozens of times in the gospels when Jesus, in some way, advanced the way of the Kingdom of God he faced serious resistance and hostility. 

The gospels frequently portray a disdainful response by the so-called righteous and religious towards Jesus when he forgave sins; or had fellowship with those considered outcasts, marginal and second-class; or stepped across rigid and strict religious, ethnic, social and gender boundaries that were considered immutable.

Luke tells of the time when Jesus went to his home town, and his home town friends became so enraged with him when he suggested that God was a boundary buster and sometimes worked outside the parameters of the faith of Israel, that they drove him out of town and tried to throw him off a cliff!  (Luke 4)

The gospels tell us when he rode into Jerusalem for the last time riding on a colt, a gesture that was an affront to Roman imperial power, he ended up on a cross a few days later executed by those same Romans. 

“Birth Pangs” Jesus called it - the intense pain of labor from which new life emerges.  Whenever the Kingdom of God is born into the world or emerges in whatever way, there are always legions of adversaries who are going to resist and try to abort the birth of the Kingdom of God - and, if we are honest, sometimes we are among the kingdom’s greatest adversaries.

Let's face it, Jesus painted a dismal picture for his disciples, and then had the gall to name it “good news.”  He didn't promise success, popularity, power, status, wealth, security, or any of the things by which we normally measure “good news” and happiness in our self-indulgent culture.  However, lurking in the shadows of his bleak prognosis is the hidden gospel-truth about "birth pangs."  There is a promise hidden in the pain.  It's the promise that the struggle that they would experience as his disciples, the different way he called them to walk upon, would lead to the emergence of God in the world; the birth of God in their lives, and it would be worth the cost.   It would be good news!

I believe that for any disciple of Jesus change and risk for the sake of the inclusive love and social justice of the kingdom of God are unavoidable.  One of the most despairing human cries I ever have to hear as a pastor is, "That's just who I am. I cannot  change."   To me, that is the biggest pile of unmitigated baloney that could ever roll off a disciple's tongue.   For what that attitude is really saying is that God is weak, impotent and powerless to lead your life out of darkness into light; to lead you out of old ways of thinking and being into new life-giving ways of thinking and being; to transform you from an old creation into a new creation.  An attitude like that is nothing more than self-justification to stay stuck in whatever you are stuck in!  

The late Mother Teresa was 38 years old and teaching geography in a convent school for the Loretta Sisters in Calcutta when she perceived a new call from God in her soul.  It wasn't that teaching hadn't also been God's call, but she perceived a call to a new thing that would require greater risk, greater sacrifice, and yes, even greater pain!  On September 10, 1946 while riding a train on her way to an annual retreat she suddenly knew to what the call was.  She writes, "I realized I had a call to care for the sick, the dying and the homeless; to be God's love in action to the poorest of the poor."  When she returned she established the "Missionaries of Charity." The rest is history!

At this very moment, I believe God is calling each and every one of us.  Perhaps God is not calling you to Calcutta to care for the poorest of the poor, but who knows - maybe!   Nevertheless, God is calling you, and a part of that call is always a call to walk a different way; a call to change; a call to transformation; and that's where the pain comes in, because we don't always want to change do we?  We’re often too self-assured; or too lazy; or too dogmatic; or too scared!  We'd rather stay stuck. 

Recently I gave someone the gift of a certain book. She looked at it and said, “I can’t read that!”  When I asked “Why not?” she said, “Because if I do, I know I might have to change my mind about some things.”  - a call to walk a different way!

Matthew’s experience of the living Jesus resulted in being called to follow Jesus on a different way – a treacherous path between the powerful forces of Roman oppression and the Jewish armed rebellion of his time; to not passively submit to the Roman yoke of slavery, and to not do violence in the name of Jesus – a call to walk a different way. 

What different way might God be calling you to walk; might God be calling us to walk? 

It may simply be a call to bridge a gap with an estranged friend; but in that call is the invitation to let go of your need to be right, or be in control, or exact revenge. And that may be hard!

It may be a call to step across a boundary of prejudice or fear that you have been living behind, perhaps for a long time, and in that call may come the invitation to take uncomfortable risks that may make you unpopular with friends.

It may be a call to a volunteer job or position in your church or community; to give of yourself in a self-emptying way. A part of you feels the tug of God's call, but yet within that call is perhaps the invitation to risk giving of yourself in a hew way.  

Maybe it's a call to be a different kind of husband or wife or parent or child or employer than you've been thus far. You feel the pull of God's call, but you know that call likely means making an honest personal assessment and entering into a revaluing process.  

I do know God's call is a call to walk a different way; an invitation into transformation - and  it often requires sacrifice and even some pain. But it's not just any kind of pain. It's the pain of "birth pangs" -  the promise that God will emerge in the world through your sacred life.  God makes your life sacred, and that is good news indeed!

The cross of Jesus that stands before us today serves as a ever-constant reminder that the different way the early disciples heeded, and we are called, to heed is always a way of self-giving love through which God emerges in the world – and that what has begun in Jesus will triumph, despite the turmoil and resistance of the world.  Let it triumph in your life and in this community!