Why are truth-speakers persecuted?

Sunday 11A             18^th June 2023

[Matthew 10:1-20]

The gospel assigned for this Sunday shows us Jesus deeply moved by people’s suffering, and selecting twelve followers to send to help them. At first they go to local towns, but at the end of Matthew’s gospel their mission will be extended to the whole world. These messengers are given powers to heal the sick, cast out demons and even to raise the dead. Peter is recorded as giving this unusual assistance to the recently deceased Tabitha, (Acts 9:36-42), just as Jesus himself had revived Jairus’ daughter (Luke 8:42ff); a youth at Nain (Luke 7:11-17) and his friend Lazarus (John 11). Unless we have been deceived by materialism and are blind to all evidence, we will know that such healing powers do exist. The apostles would have been welcomed into villages with joy and gratitude, for in first-century Palestine poverty was extreme and diseases like leprosy were a life-sentence.

But this text raises a question: why did Jesus need to warn his messengers that they will sometimes be violently opposed, flogged and even killed? “Be prepared for people to hand you over to assemblies and scourge you in their synagogues… you will be dragged before governors and kings…” (Matthew 10:9-18)

We can find the answer in many places throughout history. For example nineteen centuries later, the states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and others had passed laws prohibiting slaves from learning to read and write. Anyone who dared teach them could be heavily fined or jailed for up to a year. The unfortunate Black learner would have an index finger cut off or be whipped. Slave-owners wrote such cruel laws because slaves who could read might learn about the world beyond their prison-plantation, and gain a little more power against those who otherwise had total control over them. They might even join with others to revolt.

We are all tempted, by selfish greed and lust, to dominate and control others even in small ways. But Jesus announced the kingdom of God, and brought it about. God’s love for all people now empowers us to overcome  domination. Every exploited person who seeks justice and equality is blessed by God. “Blessed are the poor… who hunger for righteousness” (Matthew 5:3-11)

We might wonder why some of Jesus’ words are omitted from the Sunday readings: his instructions that the apostles should be poor like those they are helping; and the grim warning that in announcing the kingdom they will be strongly opposed (Matthew 10:9-10, 17-18)? Could this be another example of the church having lost its way in the centuries after Jesus? Did its leaders forgot that they were meant to be poor and suffer hardship in teaching God’s kingdom of equality? Is it because church leaders, around the fourth century, became wealthy and set up a very unequal hierarchy, imagining that the institution they lead is the perfect kingdom of God?

Today many followers of Jesus are persecuted and killed for defending the rights of the poor against those who would steal their land or ravage it by industrial pollution. But church leaders, sadly, are often in the other camp. Bishops who lead the institution often sympathise with dictators and join with governments and corporations who crush the poor.

When slavery was socially acceptable, some bishops and religious orders themselves owned slaves. Today church leaders often put property and investments above the needs and rights of the poor, particularly by failing to compensate children sexually abused by church leaders. Should not the church challenge governments about their cruel treatment of refugees and prophetic whistle-blowers, or obscene military spending? Where is their study or crusade to find and change the reasons why most people are kept in poverty, even in wealthy countries?

Some Christians hide behind the absurd slogan that we must not mix religion and politics, but Jesus’ basic teaching is that God is centrally concerned with the poor. Jesus identifies the most wretched with himself (Matthew 25: 34 ff). Is it surprising that he warned his disciples that they would be opposed and flogged in religious establishments which ought to be calling for equality and justice?

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