22 June 2014 Matthew 10:24-39 - “You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear”

22 June 2014   Matthew 10:24-39  -   “You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear”

In The Message,  Eugene Peterson’s translation of the Gospel for today is clear, direct and appears to be hard and harsh.  Peterson’s translation reads, “Don’t think I’ve come to make life cozy.  I’ve come to cut – make a sharp knife cut between son and father daughter and mother – cut through these cozy domestic arrangements and free you for God. Well-meaning family members can be your worst enemies… 

These words are hard to hear.  They feel like a bludgeon is being applied to my closely held values of the importance of family.  As I become anxious about the idea that family members can be my worst enemy, I remember the classic song from the Musical “South Pacific” when Lt. Cable sings:

“You've got to be taught To hate and fear, You've got to be taught From year to year, It's got to be drummed In your dear little ear You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made, And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade, You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late, Before you are six or seven or eight, To hate all the people your relatives hate, You've got to be carefully taught!’’

Some of us may, indeed, have been taught to hate.  Most of us have been taught to fear – whether fear uses the word “pity,” “concern,” “careful,” “caution,” or “afraid.”  Fear can bring about avoidance and denial, especially when justice, integrity, wholeness – those qualities characteristic of Jesus’ work among us – might conflict with what we have been taught about “how the world ought to work”.  Fear has a tendency to make us blind.  We do not see that there are systems and structures in place that prevent other folks from enjoying the same quality of life that we enjoy.  Fear can make us both blind and deaf to those who are different from us.  I have experienced servers speaking to me but acting as if my Black friend was invisible – neither seeing nor hearing her -  when out to lunch together.  The biggest complaint of the homeless guys on the Square is that folks treat them as if they were invisible – as if they did not exist.  The Good News in this hard word of Jesus about the gospel inspiring sons and daughters to break from their parents is that Christ has come to break us out of those old and harmful patterns in order that we might experience real love and real justice – finding both God and our true selves in the process.