Twelfth Sunday after PentecostExodus 3:1-15 Romans 12:9-21 Matthew 16:21-28The news story reported that the injuries of the accident victims were “serious but not life threatening.” It struck me that in addition to being a welcome medical diagnosis, that phrase is also a not-so-welcome description of a very prevalent misunderstanding of discipleship. Serious, earnest, studious? Certainly. But life threatening? That’s just not in our frame of reference.
So what of Jesus’ words about crosses and losing our lives? The usual reading strategy, most often unspoken, is to assume that Jesus was “a special case,” or that the things Jesus speaks of in this week’s Gospel passage are either historical relics or are addressed to those who live “way over there” in uncivilized places where fanatics run crazy. Put this interpretation of the Gospel passage with an Epistle reading for the week that one commentary calls “a miscellany of moral exhortations,” and you have a nice little collection of texts suitable for a Sunday in the long sleepy stretch of Ordinary Time.
Craig Hovey will have none of that. He writes profoundly in
To Share in the Body: A Theology of Martyrdom for Today’s Church that every church is meant to be a martyr-church even though not every Christian’s witness will be a martyr-witness. The witness of the martyrs “is not only the business of a select few but the shape of the body in which all Christians share” (14). Hovey argues that since no Christian can know whether she will be killed for her faith until the actual moment of death, martyrdom is an open possibility for every Christian. If we assume that “we” are not a martyr-church, he charges, “we have ceased to live with a proper and appropriate antagonism to the world in attempts to preclude the possibility that we might die the death of Christ,” thus securing “our own fates as nonmartyrs” (18).
(Alan Noble’s “The Evangelical Persecution Complex” at
www.theatlantic.com provides some wise counsel in distinguishing between a Christian’s “proper and appropriate antagonism to the world” from the kinds of antagonism to the world that are not so proper or appropriate).
Hovey reminds us that Jesus’ words to take up one’s cross “are not the consoling words of a gentle pastor” but are more like a rallying cry.
In fact, if it were any other political movement, we would be tempted to call it a call to arms. It is not a call to arms, but only because arms are precluded from playing a role in the revolution of the crosses. But it is no less a revolution for being nonviolent (46-47).
It follows then that “those who want others to die cannot be a Christian martyr” (R. Girard). One of the most chilling examples of how discipleship language can be co-opted along these lines is the letter written by Mohamed Atta, the suspected ringleader of 9/11, which he sent to his co-conspirators on the eve of their mission of murder, a letter discovered soon after the dreadful events of that day. Of course, carefully reading that letter opens one’s eyes to other ways the language of discipleship can be co-opted.
What then does following Jesus look like in this month when the power of death has reached apocalyptic proportions? What is the shape of genuine discipleship given the unspeakably gruesome executions in Mozul, the beheading of photojournalist James Foley, the enormously disproportionate number of casualties in Gaza, the unaccompanied children in the US desert, the depth of racial divide and disparity, the… on and on. Going beyond the ‘serious but not life threatening” barrier, what is our role to play in the revolution of the crosses?
From this angle of vision, this week’s texts strike fire as a Word for such a time as this.
The Bishop who preached at the funeral of James Foley reminded Foley’s parents of the promises and prayers at the time of their eldest son’s baptism, that they would “see hope of eternal life shine on this child.” The Bishop went on to say that James Foley’s desire was to shed light on those suffering in war-torn regions. Because of his work, “we are challenged to see the world through a different lens. To hear the world’s voice as the voices of individual people, children, mothers, fathers. We are challenged to hear the cries that are a world away.”
One hears in this the echo of the God who has “seen…heard…come down” and then says, “So come, I will send you” (Ex. 3).
When read amid the screams and moans in Ferguson, Romans 12:9-21 becomes a startling line-by-line address to the fury there. The message in this passage is a deep well from which to live out the “proper and appropriate antagonism” toward a world in which too many live with, in the words of Michael Brown’s attorney, “three-fifths justice.” That antagonism may be directed toward a “paradigm shift in policing” (Tobias Winright,
www.thechristiancentury.org). Or a refusal to slide back into a comfortable complicity with “the effects of a history and culture that have kept us apart and still keeps us apart” (Tobia Wolff, “Heart of Whiteness,”
The New Yorker, 8/15/14).
Needless to say, there are costs in such ongoing antagonism, costs which reveal the deepest truth of Jesus’ words in the Gospel passage. The “losing by saving,” “the finding by losing,” and the “gaining and forfeiting” of which Jesus speaks is more than a paradox. Hovey says it is more like “the ironic logic of resurrection.” That logic is this: “The way the world kills is not finally allowed to be antithetical to the way that God saves” (36).
“Martyrs are promised that their deaths will be instrumental in the repentance of nations,” concludes Hovey. That same promise should be instrumental in the repentance of a Church accommodated to its host culture. Anything less is life threatening indeed.