Jesus said to his apostles: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man’s reward. And whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these little ones to drink because the little one is a disciple–amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.” (Matthew 10.37-42)
On this 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, the scriptures for today continue and complete Jesus’ so-called missionary discourse in the Gospel of Matthew as found in Chapter 10 of that text. It began with Jesus’ giving the twelve disciples “authority over unclean spirits to drive them out and to cure every disease and every illness.” He then sent them out to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” offering instruction to the disciples that they should travel light, taking with them “no sack for the journey, or a second tunic, or sandals, or walking stick.”
Jesus acknowledged that they would face hardships and persecution on the way, admitting that he was sending them out “like sheep in the midst of wolves.” He also forewarned them that they would be “handed over to courts and scourged in synagogues as well as led before governors and kings for his sake.” Having laid bare the hardships that would await them on their journey, he called for them to have courage. “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.”
As we noted last week, he urged the twelve to be bold, telling them that “what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.” They should be fearless and confident as they do the mission that he has assigned to them, trusting in the God above who cares for the sparrows in the skies and cares even more for those who do his will, telling them “do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.”
Our selection today follows on the heels of these words and presupposes our knowledge of the previous words that Jesus had addressed to the apostles. Although the verses that we have before us now appear at first glance to be a smattering of statements from Jesus without any obvious cohesion or glue connecting them, that would be short-sighted on our parts.
I would like to suggest that the connective tissue in these final instructions of Jesus as the Twelve embark on their missionary journey is found in his statement, “Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever receives a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man’s reward.”
In this verse, Jesus is identifying his disciples as prophets and as righteous people and, in so doing, provides us with the key to understanding the whole of this missionary discourse. Once we understand that the Twelve are to be seen as prophets and as righteous men, then everything falls into place, the audience for Jesus’ words being very aware of the role of the prophet in the Hebrew tradition and the place of the righteous man in the same tradition.
Removed as we are from that tradition, we often want to see the word prophet as referring to someone who predicts or foresees the future. Put simply, that undersells the concept because a prophet is very much rooted in the present day and time, assessing it through a particular lens, his sense of right or wrong allowing him to see what others fail to see in the moment.
Any prediction a prophet might make–and the Hebrew scriptures do allow prophets a forward look–is based on the current situation, informing the people around him that if things continue as they are now, then they can expect certain consequences to follow. It is little different from the doctor who predicts to the patient who smokes that he will suffer serious health issues as a result of his smoking if he doesn’t change course.
So, a prophet’s primary focus is not the future, but the present, seeing things that others fail to see, issuing warnings about the present state of things, urging his listeners to change their way of life. And what allows a prophet this special insight? Again, it is found in the fact that he is a righteous man, meaning he is right with God. He looks at things the same way that God looks at things, his vision aligning itself with God’s vision.
Often, it is said that a prophet reads the heart of God and expresses in words what is written in the divine heart. As a result, a prophet has a particular sensitivity towards right and wrong, able to see quickly and with sureness where things are far from God and where things are close to God. Called to voice the concerns of God to a wayward world, the prophet is powerless to stay silent. It is not that he must speak his mind. It is that he must speak the mind of God.
The sixth century B.C. E. Hebrew prophet Jeremiah expresses powerfully his inability to stay silent, stating, “But if I say, ‘I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name,’ his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot” (Jer 20.9). The result, as Jeremiah himself knew from bitter experience, was personal attacks, persecution, and polemical assassination.
Jesus, fully aware of the price that a prophet pays for being the voice of God in a world that is tone deaf to God’s ways, does not sugarcoat the cost of following in his footsteps, stating forthrightly that “if the world hates you, know that it hated me first” (John 15.18). At the same time, he also makes it clear that a failure to faithfully follow him in denouncing the ways of the world is not an option, telling them, as we hear in the scriptures today, “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.”
Here the word worthy can be understood as meaning deserving, suitable, or comparable. Stated another way, anyone who refuses to carry the cross cannot compare himself to Jesus. Likewise, if there is no cross, then there is no honest discipleship because the ways of Jesus fly in the face of the ways of the world, and the world always exacts a cost from those who would point out its wicked and wrong ways.
Put baldly, if we are not suffering some form of persecution for our prophetic stance in the world, then it means we aren’t prophetic. Our voice, which is supposed to echo the voice of the Most High God, is silent, our call to be bold squashed by our cowardice, our prioritizing the ways of God sacrificed on the altar of compromise.
In doing so, we have turned non-negotiables into differences of opinion and have settled for getting along rather than getting it right, resulting in a complacency and a leniency that are anathema to the prophetic stance. The prophet understands that the ways of God cannot be negotiated down, accommodating the ways of the world, meeting evil at some happy mid-point.
Given that reality, we also understand why there are so few prophets, so few voices that speak boldly and bravely the ways of God before a world that has locked God into the safe corners of a church on Sunday morning, but will not allow his voice to be heard on city streets or in corporate boardrooms. While deals are struck in dark and cigar-filled backrooms where greed and power are the poker chips on the table, the voice of God is left to a handful of people who brave the storm, giving that cup of cold water to one of the little ones to drink.
Few are willing to pay the price for being a prophet and so the ranks are peopled by only those who have allowed their hearts to beat in unison with the heart of God. Jesus understood the situation quite well, telling his disciples before he sent them out on mission, “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few.” Nothing has changed in that reality regardless of the years in between then and now.
As a result, not much has changed in the world as a whole. The privileged continue to turn a blind eye to the poor. The powerful take all they can from the powerless. And those in high positions heap more burdens on people who are already heavy-burdened. The wrongness in the world is not only the fault of the wicked. The blame belongs to those who know this is wrong but who lack the constitution and the passion to say it is wrong. They choose apathy rather than prophecy.
In late March 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King called for a second march across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama. The first one, now known as “Bloody Sunday,” had been held two weeks earlier and had seen state troopers rush the protesters with clubs, whips and tear gas. This second March was supposed to be under the protection of the National Guard.
Among the thousands who came to Selma for that march on that March Sunday was Viola Liuzzo. She was a thirty-nine year old white woman, a wife and a mother from Detroit. Her friends said she was a restless and determined young woman who had returned to school to prepare for a career as a medical assistant. She was horrified by the violence of “Bloody Sunday” and immediately decided to go to Selma for the second march.
Knowing her family would try to talk her out of it, Viola did not tell her husband of her plans until the last minute. She drove her Oldsmobile sedan to Selma and called them from the road, begging them to understand that this was something she had to do. “I’m tired of sitting here watching people get beat up,” she told her husband in that conversation.
While the second march was a success, at least in the sense that no one was viciously attacked, that same night when Viola was taking some marchers back to their home in Selma along Highway 80 a car full of Klansmen sped up behind them, firing bullets in the car. Viola was killed instantly, becoming the only white female protester to die in the Civil Rights Movement.
You might think she died a hero, but hate mail was sent to her home, accusing her of being a Communist. Her family lived with threats and crosses were burned in front of their home. Her husband had to hire protective security for his family and her children had to transfer to new schools. The next few years were a nightmare for the whole family.
Even today, there are probably some who think Viola was deranged or fanatical. But she believed in her heart that a bad situation could change for the better and she had the courage to stand on the side of what is right. In this way, she had a prophet’s eye, calling out injustice and wrong where she saw it. It was a cross she felt she had to take up, and she suffered the consequences.
As we listen to Jesus sending out the Twelve on a mission to change the world, calling them to make difficult choices and personal sacrifices, we can safely say that he would consider Viola Liuzzo worthy of him because she was exactly the kind of person he envisioned as following in his footsteps. She embraced the role of the prophet and spoke the truth, not only in words, but with her life.
As a result, her name deserves to be spoken aloud, not whispered, but enshrined alongside all the other prophets through the ages, known and unknown, men and women whose hearts have beat in a terrifying unity with the heart of the Most High God. If we can’t be a Viola, the very least we can do is to say her name as we admire her at a safe distance.
–Jeremy Myers
