June 28, 2026 - Matthew 10:34-42 - Proper 8

It feels like there are many people today who don’t take the time to think things through to their conclusion. It’s probably always been true, but it seems like it’s gotten worse lately. Maybe it’s just because I’m older and now I have an obligation to berate younger generations for trying to do things without the hard-won wisdom I’ve acquired. It might also be a bit of unhealthy pride on my part.

It’s easy to go through life without digging too deeply into things. You don’t really need to know everything, you just need enough to get you by. As long as your ideas about the world more or less work, then why waste time trying to get more complex than that? Back in his day, Isaac Newton figured out the basic principles of gravity and why the heavenly bodies move the way they do in their orbits and why apples fall to the ground. His principles work and they make sense. Albert Einstein came along many years later and showed that Newton’s ideas were rather simplistic. Gravity is actually a lot more complicated than that. But, most people don’t really know what Einstein said about gravity, wouldn’t be able to understand it even if they did know, and probably don’t need to know. If you work at NASA or some high end physics lab smashing particles together, Einstein’s work might be very important. For the rest of us? It’s just more than we need.

Most people probably treat God the same way. They don’t have a very sophisticated understanding of God or what he’s all about. There are just the bland and generally accepted notions about God that are floating around that many buy into. It could be God, the universe, mother nature, or anything else someone reveres. For many people, the world works with a karma system. If you do good things, good things will happen to you. If you do bad things, bad things will happen to you.

This works pretty well, most of the time. It helps you remember that if you want to do well in life and have good things happen to you, then you need to be doing good things yourself. Don’t be a crook and expect life to go well. Occasionally you’ll run into trouble with this system. You’ll encounter people in your life who are good, give you the shirt off their back, kind of people who just can’t seem to catch a break. You run into other people who are just rotten to the core but who cruise through life without a care in the world. How do you account for this? Well, this karma system gives you a possible answer. Just wait. For the good people, good times are coming. The longer you have to wait, the better the reward will be. Just trust the universe to balance the scales and you won’t be disappointed. For the bad folks, well, just wait. As my Paul would say, “They’ll get their comeuppance.” The universe will balance the scales there too.

There are plenty of things I might encounter in my life that will challenge this worldview. I can find endless examples of good people suffering and bad people prospering, but I don’t really have to deal with all of that unless I want to. I can just keep putting it off and saying that they’ll all get what they deserve at some point, good or bad. That changes when it isn’t out there, it’s right here. I’m no longer looking at other people and seeing where they fall on the karma spectrum. I’m looking at my own life and seeing how unbalanced the scales are.

If I were to pick any part of Jesus’ life as the one people are most likely to know, Christian or non-Christian, it probably isn’t going to Easter or Good Friday. It’s probably Christmas. As commercialized as it has become, the religious foundation for Christmas still peeks through, even outside of the church. Most of the music you hear around Christmas time is Jingle Bells, Winter Wonderland, and that sort of thing, but every so often you’ll still hear Away in a Manger, Silent Night and other familiar hymns like it tell the story of Christmas, of the savior being born into the world. You may not understand what he’s all about, what he’s saving us from, why he had to be born, and all of that, but you’ll probably at least get the idea that he’s here to help good people. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” the angels say. How wonderful! What could be better than that? Here’s someone who is coming to help balance the scales, to ensure good people get the reward they are due.

There are a lot of people who don’t see any major difference between Christianity and other religions of the world because, in their minds, all religions kind of do the same thing. They all follow this same karma type system. Do good, get rewarded. Do evil, get punished. Everything else just makes things more complicated than it needs to be. As I said though, even many who call themselves Christian operate this way too. You can cling to that mindset until you run into a situation that just refuses to follow the rules. For all of the good you’ve done, you can’t seem to catch a break. It ends up being one disaster after another and there’s no indication that will ever change. When the problem is out there, happening to some other person, you can let it slide. You just shrug your shoulders and acknowledge there’s probably more to the situation than you understand. It isn’t your life, so it isn’t really your problem. When it’s your life and your problems are right there in your face every day and they refuse to go away and refuse to follow your simplistic rules, you’re left with two options. Either acknowledge that your system doesn’t work, or start shoving things into your system to make them work.

Jesus, the one Isaiah prophesied as the Prince of Peace, the one angels hailed as the bringer of peace now says some disturbing things. At the beginning of Matthew 10 the Twelve are getting just a taste of what life will be like at Pentecost. Jesus sends them out. They are apostles now, just for a short while. They are able to do some of the same amazing things Jesus does but only because he has given them the authority to do so. They will heal the sick, cleanse lepers, cast out demons, even raise the dead, along with the most important part of the assignment, to proclaim the coming of the kingdom of God. Our Gospel reading for this morning comes as Jesus describes what they should expect as they go out among the towns proclaiming the message. They’ll do wondrous works. They’ll do miracles that could only come from God. They’ll help people in ways no average person ever could. Despite this, people will be hostile. People will attack them and drive them out. These deputized apostles will be doing good things, some of the best things anyone could do for another person and they’ll be hated for it. They’ll suffer for it. Jesus is supposed to bring peace. He’s supposed to forge unity and heal divisions.

Now Jesus is saying all of that is garbage. There’s no loophole here. There’s no translation error. Jesus doesn’t come to bring peace. He comes to bring a sword. He brings division. He says all of that, but in the very next breath it sounds like we’re back to the whole “karma” thing with people getting the reward they deserve. What gives? What is this Jesus guy all about? He can’t reward good people while also bringing violence and divisions. Those things don’t go together. Yet, this is the guidance he gives his followers as he sends them out. This is their first taste of what life will be like for them after his ascension, after Pentecost, after they begin doing his work in earnest. What’s worse, Jesus doesn’t describe this as a temporary situation. This is who he is and this is what he does.

Jesus is addressing one of the oldest questions sinful humans have ever asked. “Why do bad things happen to good people?” If Jesus is supposed to be good, then he can’t be bringing bad things. That doesn’t work. It doesn’t make sense. For many people, some of whom I’ve dealt with myself, there’s no reason to dig any further. Get rid of it. Throw it out. Don’t bother having anything more to do with this Jesus guy. Everything he says is garbage. Why fight this Christianity nonsense? Why waste any more time with God?

We all have the same problem. It’s so much easier to blame someone or something else instead of admitting that we might have been wrong about something. Christians especially seem to suffer, which goes against all of the karma type ideas we have about how everything ought to work. It all seems wrong and I don’t want anything to do with it.

No, it doesn’t make sense, not unless you’re willing to dig a little deeper, not unless you’re willing to look at the world for what it is, and not just the world, but you yourself. Christianity is both a religion of justice, of rewarding the good and righteous, and punishing evildoers. At the same time it is also a religion of profound injustice, bringing suffering to the good and righteous.

The fatal flaw in the karma view of the world is the assumption that we are good and therefore deserving of good things. We downplay sin, both in the world and in ourselves. Jesus doesn’t come to cause division. It is a natural consequence of him being in the world. The world is fundamentally unjust and the good suffer all the time. The world is disordered and chaotic. It is cruel and vengeful. Karma likes Christmas. It likes the peaceful scene of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph gathered together. It likes shepherds and angels. It likes all of that. Karma can’t make sense of Good Friday. The best among us ends up suffering the worst. It doesn’t fit. It doesn’t work. It shouldn’t happen and yet it did. Jesus shows the injustice of the world. He shows the injustice we permit and even support. He shows us what we deserve and where we really rate on the scale.

Where we like to close our eyes to the world and pretend it all works the way we think it should, Jesus shows us the honest and painful reality. The world is broken. We are broken. We are sinful, corrupt, unjust, and cruel. We deserve every punishment that comes our way.

Still, Jesus is the Prince of Peace and the angels that celebrated his birth weren’t confused. Jesus does bring peace, and a sword. As with so many other things Jesus does, things that seem like the should be opposites are somehow brought together. It isn’t logical, but it still is.

Divisions between God’s people and the rest of the world can be seen everywhere, even in a single family. Strife and suffering afflict the godly around the world. The cross of Christ stands before us as the stark message of injustice in the world and the suffering that awaits all of God’s people in this world. It shouldn’t happen, but it does. Sin shouldn’t be here, but it is and we are complicit in the damage it does. Good Friday shows us that all of our notions of rewards and punishments don’t fit the world. It shows us what we really deserve.

Then comes Easter, and there we see a different message entirely. God is a just God. He punishes the evildoer and rewards the righteous. Jesus was righteous and received a righteous person’s reward. He receives eternal life. Yet, here God also has mercy. Mercy and justice are two things that oppose one another as well, but God is both and does both. Where many look at Good Friday and Easter and are confused because it doesn’t fit their system. They reject it because it doesn’t work. We see how Good Friday and Easter take place because God carries out injustice not against us, but for us. Jesus willingly takes the just punishment we deserve. With Jesus, everything is turned upside down. There’s no reason for him to do it. It doesn’t make sense, but that doesn’t stop him. He does what doesn’t make sense and he does it out of love, because in earning a righteous person’s reward, he can then give that reward to all who look to him.

He offers peace. Jesus offers a peace that exists right now. It is a peace that comes from knowing that, despite what I may suffer here, my eternity is assured through Jesus. It is a peace that comes from knowing that I am loved and cared for, that God is in control and that I have truly nothing to worry about. This peace is also an eternal peace. The same peace I have now will continue on into eternity. It’s not just that there’s nothing I need to worry about now, it’s that there’s nothing I need to worry about ever again.

The Twelve will see divisions as they go out sharing the Gospel, and so will we. We are tempted to keep silent and not cause a fuss. We don’t want to bring strife. Jesus says something here we all should take to heart. The divisions are already there. They just don’t become apparent until those who reject God are confronted by his message of grace. Those divisions will be there whether we speak or not. We can’t change that there are divisions, but we can offer the peace of God to those who will receive it. The righteousness isn’t ours. That righteousness is given to us, and with it, the reward for righteousness. Peace with God. Peace with your neighbor. Peace with the world, now and forever.