This sermon was preached for Sunday, June 25 at St. Mark's Episcopal. The texts for this sermon were: Genesis 21:8-21, Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17, and Matthew 10:24-39.
So this is a rough Gospel. Not my favorite. When I read Jesus’ words about the sword, about setting family members against each other, about giving up one’s life for the Gospel, though, it helps me to think of how precious those words must have been to early church martyrs like Perpetua.
Perpetua was a recently married noblewoman in Carthage in modern-day Tunisia in the first two hundred years after the death of Christ. She was just twenty-two years old and a new mother when she was condemned to public execution for refusing to make a sacrifice for the welfare of the Emperor. Her account of martyrdom is dramatic and told in first person, full of visions of dragons and battling the devil. One climax comes when her father begs Perpetua to recant her faith. She recounts:
“While we were still under arrest my father out of love for me was trying to persuade me and shake my resolution. “Father,” said I, “do you see this vase here, for example, or waterpot or whatever?” “Yes I do,” said he. And I told him: “Could it be called by any other name than what it is?” And he said: “No.” “Well, so too I cannot be called anything other than what I am, a Christian.””
When her father continually appeals to her love of her family, fretting about the loss of reputation and status her parents and siblings would have to endure, Perpetua makes the depressing comment that only her father would actually be unhappy to see her suffer. So she offers her father words of comfort, “It will all happen…as God wills, for you may be sure that we are not left to ourselves but are all in his power.”
Her words echo Jesus’s, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
Jesus begins this passage by warning the disciples that the world will treat them even worse than they treat Jesus. Look around at this world, Jesus observes. This is not a world that believes, as Jesus teaches, that the greatest among you is the one who serves. So Jesus warns, “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!”
And yet still he says to his followers, “Have no fear of them.” Know who you are, know your worth. Your worth is grounded in your belovedness to God. After all, even when the economy tells us, the sparrow is only worth two a penny, to God the sparrow is worth so much more. You, too, are worth more than this world would have you believe.
For many people, family is where we first learn our value in life. It’s where we receive a taste of the unconditional love God has for each of us. Where we can return to be built up and strengthened. But that’s not true for everyone, is it? Sometimes family is a place where love gets twisted. Where people are continually reminded that they are worth less - that their perspectives, desires, and even their needs don’t matter - that their suffering is nothing at all. Sometimes it’s where you are taught, intimately and painfully, that some people are entitled to obedience and getting their own way while others are made to serve and submit.
In that sort of household - so common in Jesus’ day and still too common in our own - any behavior is justifiable if it teaches someone their proper place. It doesn’t matter if those people are one's own wife and children, servants and slaves, royal subjects, or customer service representatives. Violence, insults, and belittlement can even be framed as for a person’s own good - the way frightening and literally beating one’s children, students, wives, and servants into submission was justified for generations.
It is this sort of household and these sorts of relationships that Jesus comes to disrupt. Peace is achieved in that sort of household only when everyone accepts their place and comparative worth - where children submit to being treated as if they are worth less than their parents, daughters less than sons, slaves less than their masters, wives less than their husband, subjects less than their emperors. But following Jesus means refusing to accept that you are worth less - it means an end to the peace that wasn’t really peace at all. It means exposing the violence that was already there, underneath it all.
…nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.
We can guess that is the sort of household Perpetua was raised in, based on her comment about her family not caring about her suffering. And we know for certain it is the nature of the society that condemns her. Perpetua is a symbol of Christian courage because she refused to be put in her place. Perpetua would not deny who and what she was. She stepped out from under the natural order of the day: daughter's obedience to her father and a royal subject's obedience to an emperor, and declared that her obedience was to Christ alone. Are we surprised that her world responded with violence?
In the face of those threats to her bodily safety and her life, Perpetua was not afraid, sure in her own belovedness. She was certain that God had her in his eye.
Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
In Abraham’s household, Hagar the slave-girl’s status as less than Sarah the wife is continually reinforced through violence and abuse. When Hagar’s lot in life seems to improve a bit because she bears Abraham a son, Sarah crushes the slave-girl down again with violence and cruelty - and finally, exile into the deadly wilderness. Out there again, on the verge of losing everything Hagar has ever known and the only person Hagar has ever loved, God comes to Hagar to tell her: your story is not over yet and neither is your son's. At the very moment of total loss, Hagar gains it all: her freedom, her dignity, and her life. In God’s eyes, Hagar's value and worth is beyond what any person has ever told her. Recall hat Hagar is the only human person in scripture to give God a name, El-Roi, God who sees.
I sing because I'm happy, I sing because I'm free. His eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me.
Perpetua had courage in the face of death because she knew there are things worse than death. Greater things to lose than one's life. She trusted that on the other side of death, lies a love greater than we could ever know here, in this life.
Perpetua was given a choice - recant, step back inside the household, get back in your place - and she refused. Hagar had no choice in her exile. But each woman drew courage in the face of death from the same source: God's reassurance in their belovedness.
There's a lot in this life that offers us a sense of value and self-worth. But how many of them are dependent on us comparing ourselves to others? Have you ever known the pain of sharing a bit of good news with someone who usually supports you only to have them cut you down in some snide and subtle way? Have you ever found it hard to be genuinely happy for someone else - even a sibling or a friend - because their good fortune, new relationship, or recent success has left you filled with anxious doubt about your own life? When we allow the world to determine our self-worth, we can fall into the trap that Sarah does: feeling threatened any time someone else’s star is rising. We justify cruelty, violence, or even just everyday impatience and contempt because we can only feel certain in our own worth when we are standing above someone else.
Jesus offers us another choice: to ground our identity in him. Following him does not mean you won't face danger, sacrifice, loss, or conflict - it may even mean you must endure more. But in face of all that, grounding yourself in Christ means knowing that nothing, no force on this earth, no loss of reputation or relationship or wealth or even your life, can make you matter any less to God.
Do not be afraid, says the God who sees to the slave-girl who has lost it all. I am with you to the end and beyond.
And for Hagar, for all of us, this is just the beginning.
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