The Thirteenth Sunday of Year A

Matthew 10:37-42

Is it easy to be a Christian? No it isn’t, and the answer shouldn’t really come as that much of a surprise. To put it simply God asks a lot of us, and this morning’s Gospel is no exception. Do I love my parents and my wife more than Jesus? Well it’s certainly a close run thing! Am I worthy of Jesus? No, the honest answer is that I’m not. But at least I’m honest about it, and I know that I’m not worthy of Him. I don’t deserve to be saved by Him, and I certainly cannot earn it. I do, however, take up my Cross and follow Him, because Jesus tells me to, and it is the right thing to do, as a Christian. We are people of the Cross, we glory in it, because it proclaims God’s love to the world.

We live in a world characterised by spiritual hunger. A world which has turned its back on Christ and His church. A world which sees itself beset by all manner of spiritual ills, and is desperate for answers and solutions. All we can say to those around us is, ‘Come and lose your life for Christ’s sake’, ‘Come and see’, and ‘Follow Him’. While Jesus is preaching the Good News of the Kingdom in Galilee His mind is on the Cross. He knows what His mission entails – the pain, the agony, the isolation. He calls us to follow Him, to be willing to lay down our lives as He did. In countries around the world right now, Christians know what this means, as they face imprisonment, torture and death for believing in Him. Despite persecution the church is growing in many lands. Sadly the culture of indifference we face here in the United Kingdom means that we are far more likely to be ignored or laughed at than killed, but there is nonetheless a great deal of opposition to us Christians and our beliefs.

So what are we to do? To put it simply our life and our actions, as well as our words need to proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom. If people can see Jesus in us, they will follow Him. It will not happen overnight, and there is no magic wand to be waved. All we can do is continue to offer the invitation, ‘Come and See’.

It is not surprising that in this morning’s Gospel Jesus talks about welcome – hospitality, making people feel at home and comfortable is part of who and what we are as Christians. It is at the heart of one of the many paradoxes of our faith – Jesus can make us feel both spiritually uncomfortable and challenged, and yet also comfortable, loved and accepted.

We can hardly be surprised that people may be unwilling to listen to or follow Jesus, as what He offers may be seen as too radical, too life-changing, too troubling. It’s too much of an effort! Few people believe in Hell, or life after death, they don’t believe that they have a soul to save, so they are not interested in how to save it!

Indifference means the denial of the distinction between the true and the false, right and wrong. Confusing charity and tolerance, it gives an equal hearing, for example, to speech which advocates the freedom to murder and to speech which advocates the freedom to live. Indifference is never a stable condition, but passes into polarization.

Fulton Sheen Missions and the World Crisis, Milwaukee 1963: 7

Ours is a polarised world where extravagant emotion lives alongside rampant indifference. The position is inconsistent, and so is modernity. The patient is sick, but perhaps the medicine is too bitter. And yet, God continues, through Christ, to welcome us, even when we don’t welcome Him. This is true generosity, as shown by Our Lord’s last words, ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ The greatest welcome in the world is when God in Christ opens his arms on the Cross to embrace the world through a love which bears our sin, which reconciles us to God and each other. This foolishness and stumbling block is the heart of our faith:

But we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

1 Corinthians 1:23-25 (NRSV)

The love of God, like the hospitality of God, is reckless and foolish, it is extravagant, and it doesn’t make sense. Just like serving the best wine at the Wedding in Cana, or feeding us with His Body and Blood, God did not choose to save his people through logic, non in dialectica complacuit Deum salvum facere populum suum, (Ambrose De Fide 1:5 42). God saves us out of love, not that we deserve it, but so that we might have life in and through Him.

This message of love is ours to live out, and we do that by carrying our cross and following Christ, losing our life so that we may find it in Him. We do it by being welcoming to others, inviting them to ‘Come and See’ that we might share it so that the world may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed, as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now, and forever.