"What Troubles You?" SALT's Commentary for Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Fourth Week after Pentecost (Year A): Genesis 21:8-21 and Matthew 10:24-39
Big Picture:
1) From now until November, the gospel readings will move chronologically through Matthew. This week’s reading is from the second of five major discourses or teaching sessions Jesus delivers in Matthew (likely an echo of the five books of the Torah). This one is sometimes called the “Missionary Discourse,” since it consists of instructions to the disciples as Jesus commissions them to preach and teach and heal in villages throughout the region.
2) Jesus sends the disciples out in a way that underscores their vulnerability: he tells them to bring no money, no bag, no extra clothes, no sandals, no staff (Matthew 10:9-10). This puts them at the mercy of the hospitality — or hostility — of the people they encounter along the way, and in this week’s reading, Jesus both encourages the disciples and warns them that adversity awaits.
3) This week’s story from Genesis, Abraham’s dismissal and God’s rescue of Hagar and Ishmael, is a kind of parallel companion to the famous, harrowing story in the next chapter, the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22). In both stories, Abraham confronts — and is complicit in — the imminent death of one of his children; and in both stories, at the last moment, God saves the child’s life.
Scripture:
1) As we saw last week, Jesus authorizes and commissions the disciples to do the very work he has been doing; in this sense, he is passing the mantle to the church. Accordingly, he sends them with words of encouragement and comfort: Don’t be afraid; God knows you and loves you better than you know and love yourself, and will be with you all the way along. But in the same breath, Jesus candidly spells out what this “encouragement” implies: their coming adventures will require courage. They will encounter opponents, hostility, threats — even persecution. The powers that be, the death-dealing forces in the world, will not quietly step aside. This is work that will require resolve and perseverance: part-timers need not apply. You’ve got to go all in, or not go at all.
2) Following Jesus, in other words, isn’t for the faint of heart. It means giving things up, even precious things, even things we hold dear. The very fact that Jesus is passing the mantle here is a tacit reference to his coming departure, to the fact that he already is on a pilgrimage down into the valley of the shadow of death. Any who follow him, then, must be willing to do likewise, to “take up the cross and follow me” (Matthew 10:38).
3) But what does “taking up the cross” mean in this context? This is the first reference to “the cross” in Matthew, and Jesus uses it as a metaphor for the difficult work of embracing an unconventional life of intense, generous commitment to God’s mission — a willingness, as Jesus sums it up, to “lose their life” in order to “find it” (Matthew 10:39). According to this ideal picture, following Jesus means making God’s mission of love and justice the first priority in our lives, even above family and livelihood (Matthew 10:35-37; 10:9-10). It means being willing to confront and conflict with death-dealing powers, so much so that — even as genuine peacemaking remains the ultimate goal — it may well initially appear as though we “have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matthew 5:9; 10:34).
4) In brief, discipleship means leaving behind conventional approaches to kinship, career, and social harmony — and that’s not a prospect to be taken lightly. Count the cost before you go. The good news of the Gospel may be for everyone — but discipleship isn’t.
5) That last point — that discipleship isn’t for everyone — may at first be counterintuitive for many Christians today. Isn’t the whole point of Christianity that anyone can become a disciple, and that the goal is to make as many as possible? Well, if Jesus thought so, he had a strange way of showing it. According to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Jesus encountered thousands of people during his ministry — but only called something like fourteen to be disciples. Nor did he send out the twelve disciples to recruit and expand their ranks; rather, he expressly sent them out to heal and liberate and proclaim that “the kingdom of God has come near” (Matthew 10:1,7-8). Likewise, Jesus and his entourage moved through the countryside feeding, healing, and teaching the crowds, but not signing them up as disciples. For the overwhelming majority of the people he met, his signature sign-off wasn’t “Follow me,” but rather: “Your faith has made you well,” or “Return home and declare how much God has done for you,” or “Go on your way, and sin no more,” or “Go in peace.” In short, Jesus comes to save many (indeed the whole world!), but as for disciples, he calls only a few.
6) At Sarah’s request, Abraham dismisses Hagar and Ishmael (the very young son of Abraham and Hagar), sending them out alone into the wilderness. Both Sarah and Abraham show callous prejudice against Hagar in this episode, likely including racial-ethnic prejudice, since Hagar is an Egyptian; Sarah calls her “this slave woman” (Genesis 21:10). Hagar and Ishmael’s meager provisions soon run out, and Hagar, distraught and convinced that her son soon will die, withdraws from him: “Do not let me look on the death of a child” (Genesis 21:16). But at exactly this moment of harrowing despair, God hears the boy’s cries (“Ishmael” means “God hears”) and sends an angel to ask, “What troubles you, Hagar?” (Genesis 21:17). God rescues them both, and Hagar and Ishmael, like Sarah and Isaac, become the ancestors of “a great nation” (Genesis 17:20). But Abraham and Sarah’s actions in this story are nonetheless deeply disturbing — and set up the harrowing story to come, the binding of Isaac, in which Abraham will get a taste of his own medicine (we’ll dive in next week — stay tuned!).
Takeaways:
1) As Jesus commissions his disciples, he warns them of adversity to come — and such struggles continue today. Death-dealing forces come in many forms, of course, but in American life (and beyond!) a prime example is racism, a hateful injustice that will not go quietly when confronted by forces of love and equity. Peacemaking is the ultimate goal, of course, but every unjust status quo has formidable supporters with vested interests (that’s why it’s the status quo!), and so moving toward genuine peace almost always initially involves conflict. Jesus both acknowledges and normalizes this turmoil, counseling us to expect it — and calling us to trust a caring God of love and justice along the way. Likewise, if we take Hagar’s story to heart, we dare not lose hope — even when despair seems most tempting. In our lowest moments, God comes alongside us with loving-kindness, asking, “What troubles you?”
2) The difficult relationship between Sarah, Abraham, and Hagar is a kind of parable or case study for racism in human life. The root of Sarah and Abraham’s decision to exile Hagar and Ishmael seems to be a mindset of fear and scarcity, a jealous concern about sharing God’s blessing: “for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac” (Genesis 21:10). The devastating irony, of course, is that by exiling Hagar and Ishmael, both Sarah and Abraham thereby cut off members of their own family; in the case of Abraham, one of his own children! But God sides with Hagar, the exiled, dehumanized, enslaved woman pushed to the actual margins, out of sight, into the wilderness. Indeed, she’s the only person in the Bible to name God, a powerful act in the ancient world; the name she chooses is “the Living One Who Sees Me” (Genesis 16:13-14). In other words, God sees, loves, and exalts precisely those whom the privileged try to exclude and erase.
3) Building another world — a world where all are seen and honored — requires thoroughgoing commitment, and a willingness to stay engaged when things get dicey. Jesus doesn’t mince words on this point: You are embarking on a struggle; you will meet with trouble, and setbacks, and a long journey ahead. But many have gone before us, many “all in” Christians who have helped show the way: Francis of Assisi and Teresa of Avila; Fannie Lou Hamer and Clarence Jordan; Rosa Parks and Oscar Romero; Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Dorothy Day...
4) In a remarkable sermon on the demands of discipleship, the preacher and author Barbara Brown Taylor once argued that, if we’re honest with ourselves, most of us are less like “disciples” and more like “friends of the disciples.” God does raise up genuine disciples in every generation: the well-known saints and the countless others whose names we may or may not ever know, people who actually did and do, in various ways, put God’s mission of love and justice above conventional priorities of kinship and livelihood. The rest of us are something a good deal more humble than “disciples” in this sense. At our best, Taylor contends, we’re “friends of the disciples” — and like friends, we may extol and support disciples where we can; and like friends, we may be inspired (or haunted, or driven) to follow their examples here and there, in fragments or moments or chapters of our lives.
5) But who knows? The Living One Who Sees Us may yet have another adventure in mind for our itinerary. Jesus’ call to “all in” discipleship remains open and vibrant for everyone. On any given day, even words as challenging as these in Matthew may become a summons personally addressed to you, or to me, or to a particular congregation. In ways large and small, there’s no telling what kind of follower of Jesus we may yet become!