The recent protests have caused us to re-consider the nature of famous people in our past. The suitability of having a statue of a person who has made a significant contribution to a place when they have made their fortune through slavery is just one example we have to wrestle with. Even in more mundane matters, we wrestle with the idea of idolising a successful footy player when we find out they have a history of domestic abuse. We can often rationalise this by separating out their public persona with their private one and keeping them separate. What they do on the pitch somehow equals out what they do off the pitch. I wonder if we as Christians separate out parts of Jesus’ life too. We are happy to model the parts of His call that suit us, but what about those parts of His call that don’t suit us?
I am thinking of this division as we come to the end of the Missionary discourse in Matthew’s gospel. Jesus ends His instructions to the apostles warning them that not only will they face opposition in public to their mission, they may also face it in their own families. Their decision to follow Jesus may create opposition from their own families, yet they must still put Jesus first. Going even further, He warns them they will also face internal conflict as they wrestle with how to put Jesus first, ahead of their own comfort and convenience. There will always be other demands on our time and resources, we will often favour our own comfort or convenience. Yet Jesus warns that, even in our private lives, He has to come first.
At times, we can be happier to take on the authority of Jesus and the benefits that come from being a disciple than we are to take on the burdens of being a disciple. Some people make it exceedingly difficult to love them. There are always pressures on our time and resources, a pull to spend them elsewhere. There are always some people who we would rather spend time with because they are more like us, share the same values as we do. There are always those times when we think it would be more political to keep our mouths shut rather than speak out against injustice and unfairness because no one else does There are times it is easier to listen to those who tell us to keep our noses out of things that don’t concern us, like politics, like social justice matters. But if we are happy to assume the authority and blessings of Jesus, we must also be happy to assume His burdens, His cross, and actually be Him to those around us. That means physically going to the hard people, the hard places, and showing them God’s love and grace, not simply saying that we should.