The only hope for humanity

Here's the reflection I shared during today's lunchtime Eucharist for St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Desmond Tutu is someone whose life has been shaped by Jesus’ teaching to love your enemies as yourself. For Tutu, Christianity is the religion of the downtrodden and dispossessed in which everyone is equal in the eyes of God and those who follow Jesus are exhorted to love our enemies. He has said that, “It wasn’t easy to love your enemy when they were throwing us in prison or murdering us.” It is the most difficult of all doctrines, he says, but it offers the only hope for humanity.

I mention this because our Gospel reading (Matthew 10.34-11.1) seems to show a very different side to Jesus than that highlighted by Desmond Tutu. Here Jesus doesn’t appear to be saying, “love your enemies,” instead he says that he has not come to bring peace but a sword and that he came to make enemies of the members of families. What is going on here? Are we talking about the same person? Is there a contradiction in what Jesus was teaching? Do we have to make some kind of choice between the two? It all seems very confusing.

The important thing to be aware of in understanding these words of Jesus is that he was talking to his disciples about a mission that was specifically to the people of Israel. Jesus began his instructions to his disciples, as recorded in Matthew 10, by saying: “Do not go to any Gentile territory or any Samaritan towns. Instead, you are to go to the lost sheep of the people of Israel.” Everything that Jesus says in this chapter is in the context of that mission and when we understand that it makes a big difference to the way we understand what Jesus was saying here.

Jesus thought of his own people, the Jews, as being lost. They had moved away from God’s plans and purposes because they had not been bringing the light of God to the Gentiles. Instead, they had turned in on themselves and acted as though God was just a national God for themselves. What Jesus was about to do through his death and resurrection would blow that kind of thinking out of the water. As he said to the disciples in verse 18, they would, in future, be telling the Good News to both Jews and Gentiles. But, for now, before his death and resurrection Jesus sent his disciples only to their own people with the message that the kingdom of God – the day when Jews and Gentiles would come together to worship the one true God – was coming near. Jesus’ mission and ministry in Israel before his death was an opportunity for the people of Israel to come on board and be part of the new thing that God was doing in the world. But Jesus was realistic about the way many would react to this opportunity.

He knew that some would respond positively and embrace his message but that others would be violently opposed. His message would, therefore, bring division among the people of Israel. Some would accept and follow and others would be violently opposed. This is what he meant when he spoke about not bringing peace and the members of the family being divided. He was speaking specifically about the effect that his message, life, death and resurrection would have on the people of Israel.

We know from subsequent events that Jesus was right in his assessment of the situation. Jesus himself was violently opposed and killed by those who did not accept his message despite large numbers of Jews hearing and following him. The early Church was persecuted at the same time that it grew rapidly in numbers with both Jews and Gentiles becoming followers of Christ. Finally, Jerusalem itself was overrun by the Romans and the Temple, the focus of the Jewish faith at that time, was destroyed. That act meant that there could no longer be a solely national focus to the Jewish faith and the early Christians spread out from Israel even more widely as a result.

So Jesus, here, is speaking specifically about what would happen within the people of Israel as a result of his message and mission but he was not talking about the content of that message and mission. His message and mission was to bring the light and forgiveness of God to the whole world, both Jews and Gentiles; a message and mission of peace and reconciliation, not of violence and division. The Gentiles were viewed, at that time, as enemies of God’s people but Jesus was saying that God’s people should love their enemies and that God would bring all peoples into his kingdom. 

The good news of Jesus is peace, reconciliation and love for enemies, just as Desmond Tutu claimed and has practised. It is the reverse of violence and division but its effect in the Judaism of Jesus’ time and immediately after was division. Just as Jesus, the early Church and those like Desmond Tutu gave themselves wholeheartedly and peaceably to this mission despite the opposition and violence that they have encountered, so we must do the same as followers of Christ. That is what it means to take up our cross and follow in Jesus’ footsteps by living all out for the peaceful reconciliation of all peoples. As Desmond Tutu has said, to do so offers the only hope for humanity.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

James Whitbourne - A Prayer Of Desmond Tutu.