Understanding the Risks

Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. (The full readings can be found here.)

In the name of the Living God, who is creating, redeeming, and sustaining us.

Well good morning, good morning. You know, when I was a young man, growing up in West Texas, I always wanted to be a cowboy. My father had been a cowboy and rode a horse to school every morning. And every year, my father would take my brothers and me to the rodeo. And I loved it; I loved the clowns, and the barrel racers, and the calf-roping. But the event that really caught my eye, which fascinated me, was the bull riding.

I couldn’t have been more than 6 or 7 years old one year, and the bull riding competition began. And I saw the violence and the rage and the strength of that mammoth animal. And I looked up at my father and said, “Dad, you know who I’d like to meet? I’d like to meet the first man who decided it would be a good idea to crawl on top of an angry bull and ride it.” Well, my father thought about this for a while and then he said, “Yes, son. It would be interesting to meet that first man who rode a bull. But the guy I want to meet is the second man who thought that would be a good idea.”

My father was a wise man, and he had a good point. The more you understand the risks involved in what you’re about to do, the higher the level of commitment you are required to make. And I think that story is related to our gospel for this morning.

So, what are we to do with this challenging passage this morning? How are we to reconcile this Jesus, who frankly seems a little cranky, with the Prince of Peace, who told his disciple to put away his sword because to live that way meant that you would die that way. I think Jesus is talking to his disciples, trying to explain the risks of following him. I’m almost certain that Matthew was trying to help his community understand the risks of the Christian way of life.

We think Matthew’s gospel was written somewhere between 85 A.D. and 130 A.D., possibly in Antioch or somewhere in Syria. If that’s so, it puts Matthew’s gospel, and Matthew’s community, squarely within the onset of the persecutions of Christians. We happen to know a good deal about these persecutions, in part due to the diary of a woman named Perpetua. Now, Perpetua was martyred in 203, so within 70 years or so of Matthew’s gospel. I suspect Matthew’s community was intimately familiar with stories like hers. And hers is a story about the risks of following Jesus.

Now, Perpetua was the daughter of a very prosperous family in Carthage, and the mother of an infant son. Perpetua and four of her friends were all catechumens, that is, candidates for baptism. Unfortunately, the Roman emperor had forbidden conversion to Christianity or Judaism, so Perpetua and her companions were arrested and imprisoned.

At that time, Christians were essentially treated as traitors, which meant not only that you would suffer the death penalty, but also that your family’s wealth and property were subject to seizure. Perpetua’s father became one of her tormentors. He came to visit her in jail and begged her to denounce her faith. When she refused, he flew into a rage and beat her. He returned again to visit her. “Have pity on your father,” he said, “if I am worthy for you to call me father. Don’t make me a subject of scorn. Think about your son too. He can’t live without you.” 

At her trial, when she refused to denounce her Christianity, the procurator ordered that she be beaten with rods and her father carried out that sentence himself. On the birthday of the emperor’s son, she was thrown into the arena with wild beasts. Because their brutal attack did not quite manage to kill her, ultimately a young gladiator killed her with a sword. So, when Matthew wrote about the gospel tearing families apart, I think he was describing the experience of his own community. I think their experience of the resurrected Christ taught them about the risks of following Jesus and taught them that death was not something they should fear. For those who believe in Jesus, who follow Jesus, there are far worse things that can happen to us than dying. By the way, Perpetua’s diary was read aloud in those secret churches in the Empire for many years.

I want to contrast her story with the story of another man, a man named Jakob Wendel. He was only 19 when he fell in with a bad crowd, a crowd of wicked and cruel and sinful men. Now, he may not have done any actual killing, but he stood guard while these men engaged in torture and murder. And when he was brought to trial, he argued that he didn’t have any choice. If he hadn’t done it, they would have killed him. Oh, I forgot to mention that Jakob was a guard in the tower of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. And from that tower, he would have seen the smoke of the crematoria, and seen the trucks pull in with tanks of Zyklon B gas. I suppose in one sense, he saved his life by working at that camp. But in other, much more profound sense, he lost his life.

And I’m in no position to judge him, because Lord knows the worst mistakes I’ve ever made in my life I made because I was afraid. But I think for those of us who follow Jesus, there are far worse things that can happen to us than dying. I’m much more afraid of becoming callous to human suffering, or turning away from it, or living in a world where cruelty is the norm, than I am of dying. The Christian life is not easy, and every day we have to make a choice, and that choice involves a risk, and it involves a struggle. We may not all be called to be martyrs, but we are all called to struggle with the question of who we are going to follow.

Every day, I struggle with that question. There are parts of me that want to follow Jesus. And there are other parts of me that want to follow James. The parts that want to follow James come much easier. They allow me to loose that sharp tongue I inherited from my mother, to decide who is worthy of love, and sometimes, to tell the Almighty Immortal Creator of all that is how the situation down here could be a whole lot better. It doesn’t require nearly as much effort as following Jesus, which asks me to practice forgiveness and grace and compassion. All of these challenge us, and require us to take a risk. There is nothing easy about this Christianity thing.

You know, when we baptize a baby, we give his family a candle, and when we confirm those baptismal promises, we give that person a bible. And those are fine gifts, fine gifts. But sometimes I think if we really wanted to prepare people for the Christian life we would give them seatbelts and a crash helmet, because this walk of faith we are taking with Jesus, it can be a bumpy road.

But we don’t have to be afraid. Just like God told Hagar in the wilderness, just like Jesus told his disciples, just like he’s telling you and me, we don’t have to be afraid. The God who knows even the number of the hairs of our head will not leave us—no matter how dark the times, no matter how difficult the road, no matter how painful the situation. We will never wander so far that we escape the notice or the love of God. Never. So, we don’t have to be afraid anymore. We really don’t.

Amen.
James R. Dennis, O.P. © 2022