Mighty Deep

12^th Sunday Ordinary Time A

Matthew 10:24-39

Tough texts today

 

 

All week I heard this voice in my head saying: 
What do I know?

What do I know about fear?

Fear of violence?

Fear of persecution?

 

Even though the text offers 3x “don’t be afraid”

I’m afraid

What does ‘take up my cross’ even mean for me

…this text makes me a little uneasy;)

 

So…I approach today’s Gospel with necessary humility

Humility…And a lot of questions

I have a few thoughts…but you might have to complete this homily on your own

 

This part of Matthews Gospel is called the Mission Discourse

Jesus is sending the disciples out

Earlier in the discourse, Jesus promised the disciples power

Power to 

HEAL, RAISE, CLEANSE, and CASTOUT demons

They are being sent to do and say 

what they have experienced Jesus doing and saying. 

 

In today’s text, after preparing them with power

He prepares them for struggle, rejection…maybe worse.

I don’t know about you…But it seems clear to me

…they have every reason to be afraid!

 

What challenge…what advice 
does Jesus have for them in the face of what lies ahead?

In the bit about the two sparrows and all the hairs on their heads

I hear Jesus saying to the disciples:

KNOW YOUR VALUE…
Know it deep down
DIG DEEP

REAL DEEP

THAT’S WHERE YOU NEED TO PLANT YOUR FAITH AND TRUST

DEEP DOWN WHERE IT CANNOT BE KILLED

 

And even though we can’t relate to the context of the disciples 1^st century fear

Even though we are a far cry 

from waking up afraid that we will be tortured/ostracized/ridiculed for our faith

 

Still…this is a call for us too.

 

This call to plant our faith in a God who also sends US

To heal, raise, cleanse, 

and cast out hate in Jesus’ name

This serious call just might be exactly what will take us through to the end

 

The metaphor of planting eventually falls apart

Using agricultural metaphors among some of you farmers is dangerous!

I don’t think farmers keep returning to dig the seed down deeper!

 

But that’s the image stuck in my head

 

 

I came across a more modern story to help us.

…the story of Clarence Jordan.

Jordan’s story is a story about what a deeply planted faith can sustain in a life.

 

This is a real HERO story
An absolute Christian HERO story
The story of Clarence Jordan.

 

Clarence Jordan

A rural Georgia boy

Was From a Prominent family in a small Georgia town 

He was always troubled by the racial and economic injustice he saw all around him

Got an agriculture degree from University of Georgia

Hoping to improve the welfare of sharecropping families of his region.

Later he sensed the need to add a spiritual dimension to the fight against poverty and injustice 

And so went to seminary becoming a scholar of New Testament Greek

So he was a farming NT Greek Scholar
it is said that he only read the scriptures in Greek

…translating as he went.

 

His main legacy is the Koinonia Farm he began in 1942
with his wife and another committed couple
you may know of it as the community that gave birth to Habit for Humanity

It was/still is a community where, 

like we read in the Acts of the Apostles,

everything is held in common.

The vision grew around commitments and beliefs:

The Equality of persons

Ecological stewardship

Ending cycles of revenge

Forgiving

Rejection of violence

(but to be clear…he wanted more than non-violence…he wanted pro-active good will)

 

All was fairly Peaceful…for a while

As the civil rights movement heated up

…The community was mixed race you see…

The threats began

They were thrown out of the local Baptist Church
They were the target of devastating economic boycott

Clarence was a wonderful storyteller and he had a beautiful and quick sense of humor

Humor with a bit of a dagger at the end 

The community sold peanuts at a roadside stand
The KKK bombed it
the community rebuilt it
The KKK bombed it again 
They rebuilt it again
Another bomb and finally they chose mail-order

Jordan’s ad said:

“Help us ship the nuts out of Georgia”

 

 

There is much to be inspired by in the story of Clarence Jordan and the Koinonia Farm

I share it because it offers a bit of an answer to the “where do I go from here” question in the face of today’s Gospel:

 

 

I quote from Rev. James Howell:
Clarence Jordan, 

founder of Koinonia Farms 

and creator of the Cotton Patch Version of the Bible, 

was a bold, no-holds-barred Christian, 

one of those once in a generation believers 

radical enough to dare to do what’s in the Bible. 

 

One Sunday he preached at a gilded, high steeple church in Atlanta. 

After the service, the pastor asked him for some advice. 

The church custodian had eight children, and earned a mere $80 per week. 

The concerned minister claimed he tried to get the man a raise, 

but with no success. 

Jordan considered this for a minute, 

and then said, “Why don’t you just swap salaries with the janitor? 

That wouldn’t require any extra money in the budget.”

 

Jesus was like the child who can’t stop asking questions

Like the child who sees a homeless person by the road 

and asks Mommy, can’t he live at our house?

 

Maybe that church leader can’t pull off the salary swap

And maybe I’m not quite ready to invite the homeless man to live in my spare room

 

 

But I do have two thoughts to share

First: 
It takes a MIGHTY conversion

To trust God enough to live like Jesus did.

A MIGHTY conversion

And Second:
Being here

Struggling together
Is honest momentum

 

 

I am and perhaps I will always 

Be wondering where I land on that conversion spectrum

With Mighty deep over here at one end

And Skin deep over here at this end

 

But honest momentum will surely be leaning me toward the MIGHTY.

 

Thanks to you 

and 

Thanks be to God