“But I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on.”
That’s what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. heard, as he tells the story, at one of his lowest moments, frightened early on in his battle for civil rights and worried for his family’s safety. He was scared and alone, but then he heard Jesus’ words of assurance. “He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No, never alone. No, never alone,” King said. It was for him a profound moment of grace. It kept him going.
These past few Sundays, we’ve followed Matthew’s account of the mission given by Christ to the disciples. From Christ’s pity, from his compassion, comes the command and mission of the apostles. He calls them by name and gives them authority over demons and disease (cf. Mt 9:36–10:4). Jesus tells them where to go and how to go (Mt 10:5-15). He prepares them for conflict, division and persecution (Mt 10:16-36). It’s a daunting job description, to say the least. It’s not a task for the weak.
Staying in control
And, at first, it seems to be a task dangerously isolating. “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10:37). There seems to be something about the call of Jesus fundamentally threatening to the ties that bind — to family, nation and ethnicity. There is indeed something about the call of Jesus that separates us from what’s around us. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus keeps his biological family at bay, pointing to his disciples, saying, “Here are my mother and my brothers” (Mk 3:34). Which seems to be the final test of mission, that to be a true disciple one must give up everything, offer up every tie to Christ. One must make Christ first, and absolutely if one is to carry on the mission of the Gospel at all. Otherwise, it’s merely religion, something other than the advent of the Kingdom of God.
| July 2 – 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time |
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2 Kgs 4:8-11, 14-16 Ps 89:2-3, 16-17, 18-19 Rom 6:3-4, 8-11 Mt 10:37-42 |
But to suggest we should be all in like that makes us nervous today, even the most pious of us. We’ll praise but keep control. We’ll follow but keep one foot in the world just in case. We’ll strive for holiness, but we won’t choose Christ over those who keep pulling us down into sin and sin’s thinking. We won’t give Christ everything. We fear losing what we see and know because of what’s comfortable, even though we know it’s not of God. Because it’s the life we know, we choose it over that life we don’t know. Because we really don’t trust Christ.
‘With you always’
Hence this haunting challenge: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt 10:39). That’s the test, the leap of faith — to let go of the world we know for the freedom we may only see by faith. But to choose Christ over the world we know can feel sometimes like choosing nothing over everything. It can feel like we’re separating ourselves from our friends, our work, our neighbors, all we hold dear and what’s familiar. It can be quite frightening. If it’s a genuine struggle of faith, it probably always will be frightening.
Which is why what Dr. King heard, those words that kept him going, mean so much. Or, at least, I think I understand why they meant so much to him. “No, never alone.” “And I go on in believing that,” he said. Because Jesus’ words mean so much. “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me” (Mt 10:40). “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age” (Mt 28:20). These words are meaningful because they remind us of the promise Jesus himself made to us, that when we leave the world behind, we don’t lose everything, we gain everything. Because Jesus is always with us. And he is “all and in all” (Col 3:11).
