Matthew 10:32-33

Posted by DJL on Jul 17, 2014 in Daily Bread | 0 comments

“Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.”

I’ll be honest. I don’t know what to make of this potentially devastating line.

Are these words aimed primarily at Jesus’ twelve disciples who are about to go out on a potentially dangerous mission and need this level of exhortation?

Are they directed to Matthew’s community, reminding them amid their challenges and sorrows to keep the faith?

Should we read them as addressed to us, encouraging us to acknowledge Jesus when so many elements within our culture invite us to let our faith take a back seat to our wealth or accomplishments or worldly dreams of success and happiness?

Or maybe all three. No matter how you construct it, though, there’s an unmistakable sense of threat in these words. And I think that’s what makes me so uncomfortable.

Or maybe it’s not threat, but pain. Maybe Jesus knows what it’s like to have someone not acknowledge you, to disavow you, to have someone disappoint and betray you. I know what that’s like. I’m pretty sure you do, too. And so maybe that’s what prompts these sharp words.

And yet here’s the thing: everyone listening to Jesus in that scene – and everyone who has tried to follow him since – has, in fact, disavowed, disappointed, and betrayed Jesus by not keeping faith with him as he kept faith with us. And yet we believe he still loves us, forgives us, renews us, draws us back to him in mercy and sends us forth again to live by grace.

So maybe this isn’t meant to be an easy passage, one we can interpret and explain to the point of being comfortable. Maybe we must live with the tension of hearing words of threat and pain and yet trusting that, as with our other relationships, forgiveness and renewal are still possible.

Prayer: Dear God, you call us to be faithful and we sometimes are and sometimes are not. Forgive us when we fail you, encourage us to forgive others when they fail us. For above and beyond encouragement and consequences and threats there is only forgiveness, forgiveness that holds all things together. In Jesus’ name, Amen.