As I drove to church that morning I had reflected on an article I’d just read that listed the attempts to impose mostly Christian religion upon our educational system. One of those is to take tax money away from public schools and give it to families to pay private (often Christian) school tuition for their kids.
Our preacher summarized Jesus’s orders to his disciples/apostles as he sent them out on his mission into the world (as reported in Matthew 9 and 10) this way: “don’t panic.”
I believe there is a real sense of panic behind the push by many in the Christian family to use public funds and resources to force children to hear and (they hope) respond to a Christian message. That panic sounds more or less like this:
OMG! People in our modern, pluralistic, and secular nation are not paying attention to our message about Jesus the way they should! It’s time to stop playing nice and FORCE them to hear what we have to say. Enough of this separation of church and state MALARKEY! We don’t have time anymore for the niceties of inviting them to believe; we have to use every resource to force them! And who has more resources than those provided by everyone’s taxes? To battle, brothers and sisters, before it’s too late!
That’s panic, plain and simple.
But Jesus says, “don’t panic.”
Here’s a passage from Matthew 9:11-15:
Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. As you enter the house, greet it. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.
Here’s my informal restatement of it:
“So, you go out with my message, and people don’t listen? Let them go in peace, yours and theirs. Shake off your disappointment—you do not need that burden—and look for new opportunities, and speak to those. Someone will hear if you do not panic but just keep marching on, faithful to my instructions to you. And those who don’t listen will get theirs when the time comes.”
That last sentence is a tough one. Because someone does not listen to the disciples turned apostles, they get wiped out by fire and brimstone? What if the fault is the messenger’s? What if they didn’t approach others right, or at the right moment, or whatever? It’s a threat that seems meant to induce panic, in the apostles as well as in their hearers. It certainly points to the urgency of the mission, and says there are consequences if it fails. But worse than Sodom and Gomorrah?
I tend to see God’s judgment as mediated through God’s greater mercy, mercy as simple as time given for reflection and change. We cannot force panic anymore than we can force grace, and it is not ours to try. After all, it is God who will judge as God sees fit; judgment is not in our playbook.
Moreover, if you continue to read through to Matthew 10:23 you will see that things are about to get even more difficult for those who are sent out. They/we are going to be brought before authorities because of what they/we are proclaiming. The powers-that-be will quickly realize that the message of the freely-granted love and justice of God is a threat to their power. And they will hate anyone who tells people that.
If we are that anyone, we need not panic. We will be given the words to say when we need to say them. We must endure faithfully and passionately “to the end,” telling and living the story of Jesus and his love to the world.
Coming back around to where I began: the temptation we must avoid is that of using the world’s power (tax money, for example) to help us tell that story because we’ve panicked by the resistance we meet. To do so is to compromise the liberating message of salvation itself. It may turn out to be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for us on the day of our judgment.
Get back your peace; shake off that dust. Don’t panic. Do what you can as you can. God’s got this.
