Jesus said to the twelve: “Fear no one. Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known. What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light; what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge. Even all the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.” (Matthew 10.26-31)
The name Ranald Slidell Mackenzie may not be a household name, but he was one of General Ulysses S. Grant’s favorite officers during the Civil War. Grant said of him after the war, “I regarded Mackenzie as the most promising young officer in the army.” As a boy, Mackenzie was seen as shy, frail, smallish, and unhealthy. Nevertheless, he entered West Point Academy in 1858 and graduated first in his class of twenty-eight cadets.
When Mackenzie graduated from West Point in 1862, he found himself in the middle of the Civil War. In the course of the next three years, he climbed the ranks with astonishing speed. By the end of the war he held dual ranks: brigadier general of the regular army and major general of the volunteers. Only twenty-four years old at the time, he was the highest-ranking officer in West Point’s class of 1862.
During the three years that he fought in the war, Mackenzie was wounded on six different occasions. At Manassas, he was shot with a .50-plus caliber bullet through both shoulders, a wound that would have killed anybody else. He was thrown to the ground and lay there for a full day before being rescued. He was hit in the leg with an artillery shell and later wounded in the chest by shrapnel. He lost his first two fingers of his right hand by another artillery shell.
Men described young Mackenzie as recklessly brave. A fellow soldier said of Mackenzie, “He galloped over the forty-acre field [at the Battle of Winchester] through a perfect hailstorm of lead and iron with as much impunity as though he had been a ghost.” The men under his charge believed that they had a better chance with him than with any other commander. They saw nobody else with his bravery in battle.
Today, we hear Rabbi Jesus speak of that kind of bravery. We find his words in a brief passage from Matthew’s gospel that goes by the name “the Missionary Discourse” because Rabbi Jesus is preparing his disciples for their mission in the world, offering them lessons and providing them with moral support for the hard work ahead.
He makes clear to them that much will be required of them simply because of what they do. Sugar-coating nothing, Rabbi Jesus makes clear that the road ahead will be long and rough. Although we don’t hear him say it in the shortened passage we’re given today, he says right before this passage that “a disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more those of his household!”
In other words, he tells them that they should expect the same treatment that he has received, namely opposition and persecution. It is the natural consequence of exposing evil. When someone challenges those in power, demands that things change, and undermines the status quo, the net result is a counter-offensive of equal, if not greater magnitude.
Those holding seats of power never cede their place without a fight. The custodians of the status quo never relinquish their dominion without a concerted effort to destroy those calling for change. And those who have amassed a fortune never open their vaults without taking every measure possible to prevent the less fortunate from having any of it.
Simply stated, it is the way of the world. Rabbi Jesus has experienced it for himself, having suffered the sharp arrow of criticism and having put up with the pushback from the powerful. Schooled as he was in the ancient scriptures, he could foresee his own future. It would be the same trajectory as the prophets of old who took a stand against the evil they saw in front of them, who spoke out against the mistreatment of the widow, orphan, and foreigner, and who scolded those in power who persecuted in a multitude of diabolical ways those without power. To a man, these prophets ended up silenced, shunned, and finally assassinated.
So, he prepares his own followers for the same, telling them that no one enters the battle against evil without suffering deep scars, great pain, and, worst-case scenario, death on a cross. This is not the time to shield them from the truth of what lay ahead. Like Churchill who said to the Brits as they faced the evil of the Third Reich, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat,” Rabbi Jesus offers the same to those who take up arms against the evildoers who trample the earth.
And yet, Rabbi Jesus, defiantly and definitely out of the blue, tells his disciples, “Fear no one.” Given everything he has told them that will come their way–not only the Churchillian quadruple–but death as well–it makes no sense for him to say they have no cause to be afraid. And yet, he tells them, “Do not be afraid.” Surely scratching their heads, they’re left to wonder how he could tell them every frightening thing that awaits them and, oddly, now tells them they have nothing to fear.
Well, fortunately, Rabbi Jesus explains the conundrum for them and for us. In fact, he offers three strong arguments for their not being fearful. The first is that “there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known.” With these words, the Rabbi makes the case that darkness may have a temporary hold on the world, but it does not have permanent ownership.
And while bad people seem to thrive and and their dastardly deeds metastasize in the dark, Rabbi Jesus assures his followers that evildoers’ hold on power is only temporary. His Father in heaven will bring to light the evil done by diabolical forces and he will mete out punishment to those who have persecuted the poor, the dispossessed, and the disenfranchised. In due time, he will shine a light into the darkness and those who grew fat on their hidden and hideous deeds will scurry into ratholes where they will rot away.
With that knowledge, his followers who have chosen the path of righteousness should not shy away from “proclaiming on the housetops” the ways of the Most High God. They should speak forcefully and fearlessly, their words shining a light on the wickedness that survives in the shadowland. In time, the Almighty will make right what is wrong and will reveal what has been hidden.
A second reason not to be fearful, says Rabbi Jesus, is because those who persecute the righteous can “kill only the body, but cannot kill the soul.” For some–such as skeptics–this may bring little comfort; for true believers, this will bring consolation because their concern is less with the things of the earth, more with things of heaven. To know that their soul is secure with God allows them the courage to stand in the face of bodily harm, confident that their souls live on even if their bodies suffer torment and die.
In other words, those who can kill the body are simply bringing about the inevitable anyway, since the body dies at some point regardless of the circumstances. Evildoers may hasten the death of the body, but they do not have power over the soul because the soul lives forever. Therefore, only God has control over the soul; evildoers are unable to reach across the great divide to touch the soul. When compared to eternity, the power of evil is both limited and temporary.
And the third reason not to be afraid that is offered by Rabbi Jesus is rooted in the benevolence of Almighty God whose care for the believer is beyond compare. Using the example of “two sparrows that are sold for next to nothing,” Rabbi Jesus suggests that even these littlest of creatures whose value is minimal are important to the Almighty, so important, in fact, that “not one of them falls on the ground apart from your Father’s will.”
If God shows such concern for little creatures, then imagine the concern he has for his sons and daughters who stay on the path of righteousness and who refuse to be conquered by the ways of evil. Using another stark example, Rabbi Jesus emphasizes the same point in saying that the Almighty has “counted even all the hairs of your head,” a metaphor meant to imply something that is innumerable.
The same God who cares for the small birds of the air also cares about the small things in our lives, such as the hairs on our head. Nothing about us is insignificant to him, even a single strand of our hair, so to speak. His concern for us is so encompassing that even the most infinitesimal parts of our bodies are within his embrace, in his sights.
That, of course, is not to suggest that the faithful will not suffer torment or extermination by the hand of evil. Certainly, they will. But it argues that we will not suffer alone and we will not be without the grace of God. Quite the opposite. The most loving God will stay with us through the battle, giving us strength for the day and, should we perish in the fight, his love for us is so great that he will bring us home to him where he will bind up our wounds and restore our life.
Rabbi Jesus tells his followers that these three reasons should give them solace and should provide them with the courage to take on evil, whose hand is overrated and whose reach is underpar. Sustained by the sure knowledge that evil may have its day, but a new day comes when it will be exposed for what it is, we can endure the day because it passes. Likewise, Satan and his minions may inflict mortal harm on our bodies, but they cannot touch our souls, not without our complicity. And, finally, whatever the torments and trepidations, the believer always does battle fortified by the armor of God’s love for those faithful to him.
There is a reason for these words that Rabbi Jesus speaks to his followers in this so-called missionary discourse. When Matthew is writing his text four or more decades after the death of Rabbi Jesus on the cross, the disciples are suffering the very torments that the Rabbi had forewarned them about. Matthew’s text was meant to remind them of Rabbi Jesus’ words and to offer them hope for the hard days ahead.
For us who profess loyalty to the ways and words of Rabbi Jesus, the circumstances and context of our lives may appear different. Certainly, we’re not being fed to the lions and beasts in the coliseum as entertainment for the inhabitants of Rome. Nor are we being sent to the salt mines by wicked emperors who want to rid the world of these pests called Christians.
Our lives and our plights as Christian believers pale in comparison, rendering any fears we might have as minimal, if not non-existent. Of course, that raises a very troublesome question for us to consider. Why aren’t we afraid of being persecuted or put to death for being a Christian? It isn’t that evil and evildoers have vanished from the face of the earth. They have gone nowhere.
Instead, one could argue we aren’t persecuted because we aren’t fighting the good fight anymore. We’ve reached a truce with wickedness, allowing it to do its work so long as it doesn’t disturb our comfortable lives. We may want to give some consideration to that possibility. It is like one hard-nosed fighter for righteousness once said. He suggested that those of us who have become draft dodgers will have to answer to the Almighty for our cowardice when our days are done. And the question he will want answered will be this one–”Where are your scars? Was nothing worth fighting for?”
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 