Fifth Pentecost, Proper 7, 2005:

You may have heard the marvelous story of the 16^th century mystic and saint, Theresa of Avila.  She came to a stream while traveling to one of her convents.  Something startled the donkey on which she was riding and the donkey bolted.  St. Theresa was thrown into the cold water.  Breathless, shivering, cold, and considerably dismayed, St. Theresa looked up toward heaven and yelled, “Do you always treat your friends like this?”  She waited a moment, heard no answer, and muttered as she dragged herself out of the water, “No wonder you have so few of them.”

And yet, we live in a culture where an overwhelming majority of folks claim to be a friend of God.  Some claim to not only be a friend of God, but a consistent doer of the will of God.  Not only a consistent doer of the will of God, but a channel for the Word of God.  Not only a channel for the Word of God, but a spokesperson to all who will listen.  In all of this we must be very, very careful.

Jesus said that being a friend of God means we become like sheep sent out into the midst of wolves.  Being a friend of God apparently means standing over against the powers and principalities that corrupt and destroy the creatures, and the creation of God.  Doing so will land us in trouble.  Being on God’s side brings about division; always has and always will.  In Melville’s classic Moby Dick, an old sailor says to a young man interested in taking up the whaling trade, “Want to know what whaling is, eh?  Clap an eye on Captain Ahab, young man, and you will find he has only one leg.”  If we want to know what following Jesus costs, we must clap an eye on Jesus himself and see he has the print of nails in his wrists and a spear wound in his side.  Discipleship costs.  That’s because fallen humanity has never been comfortable with a God who will get that close.

Of course one of the ways we deal with all this is to give in to the temptation to compare, compromise with the world, distort, belittle, and rewrite or reinterpret much of what Jesus said and much of the claim God places on our lives.  Ogden Nash wrote, “There are two kinds of people who blow through life like a breeze, and one kind is gossipers, and the other kind is gossipees.”  When we are honest with ourselves and with each other each of us has at one time or another been both gossiper and gossipee.  The degree and nature of our involvement in gossiping will vary, depending on what’s going on in our lives and how well we feel about ourselves.  I confess that the times I have resorted to gossiping have been those when the heat was on me and I needed to divert the attention for a little while.  Whether gossiping is a character trait or personality disposition, we don’t really know.  In fact, little is really known about the psychology of gossiping, why some people seldom gossip and others gossip a great deal, or about the psychological differences between Ogden Nash’s “gossipers” and “gossipees.”

We are all familiar with the common stereotype that brands gossiping as a feminine pastime, but it is unfair.  Men gossip just as much as women.  What is labeled as “gossiping” among women is called “shop talk” or “shooting the breeze” when it is done by men.  One thing is for sure; gossip has been the subject of conversation since human beings acquired the power of speech, whether you are a creationist or an evolutionist.  Gossip breaks down into three main categories.  Informative, mutual entertainment and moralizing are generally the three types.  The first two are relatively harmless and can be positive at times, but the third is a killer, the one that turns evil and malignant.  Moralizing gossip, the kind that feeds on “juicy tidbits” is usually clandestine and low.  That’s the kind Jesus referred to in the Gospel for today when he said, “If they call the master of the house Beelzebub (Lord of dung), how much more will they malign those of his household!”  There’s a dirtiness to it, a baseness that seeks the lowest common denominator.

The word “malus” is the Latin from which we get our word “evil.”  We find it in malpractice, malfeasance, malevolence, malady, and malignancy.  That is the word that appears in Matthew today.  Jesus warns his followers that they are in for some persecution, some criticism, some moralizing gossip from evil-doers, just as he has been.  To “malign” someone is to speak evil of them.  Some gossip he said would be malicious.  Malicious rumors and malicious criticism would follow those who followed him.  In spite of the wonders and joys of the Kingdom, Christians are going to be maligned with rumors, innuendos, defamatory gossip, abusive hearsay, and discrediting criticism.  It would be a lot like modern political campaigns.  It goes with the territory and can be called an occupational hazard.  There are hit-and-run moralists our there, Jesus is saying, and they will try to ruin you with rumors and wound you will words.  Don’t be surprised.

Are you surprised that there is an energy in evil or that we have all been affected by it.  We have been maligned and we have maligned.  The insidiousness of malice is that it exposes an individual to hatred, contempt, or ridicule.  Malice reveals a lack of compassion.  Who among us has not seen a fault in another and then mentally, or even orally, ridiculed it to himself or to others?  Yet ridiculing another’s mental or moral shortcomings is really no different from ridiculing a person with a physical handicap.  It exposes not only a lack of sensitivity, but also a deep-seated hypocrisy that prevents one from seeing one’s own unreformed traits.

The trust of the text, however, is dealing with the malice directed toward the follower of Jesus.  Notice that he offered no defensive tactics, no particular words to say, and no acceptable method of rebutting such malice.  What he did indicate was that persecution must be borne and shrugged off.  Silence is usually the best answer to rumor-mongers and critics.  It was Oliver Wendell Holmes who said, “Whenever God sculpts an artist He gathers the chips that fall, and out of them he sculpts a critic, and that should explain it all.”  Nothing is covered up that shall not be uncovered ultimately and nothing is a secret that will not be known eventually.  What we are to do is acknowledge him before others and he will acknowledge us before the Father.

If we are to take St. Paul at this word that in Christ there is no east or west, no north or south, no male or female, no slave or free; if we accept the Word of God that all come within that saving embrace, then we must stand ready to acknowledge that truth.  In answering God’s call to be the church, we are led to see our lives from God’s point of view.  From that new vista, we see that our lives and every other life is of ultimate worth in Jesus the Christ.  We are assured that God cares intensely about each of us.  We are further assured that God wants each of us to find our way, at last, to complete and intimate union with God and reunion and reconciliation with each other.

By the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus the Christ, we are called to live with confidence.  We are called to walk faithfully, in God’s light, even among the wolves of the world.  We are to walk faithfully, because the light in which we are walking is the cross of Jesus the Christ.  That cross, the symbol of the worst the world can do, is our symbol and our ultimate assurance that God has overcome the world, even the wolves.  Then perhaps God will have more friends in the world.  Amen.