Mt 10: 26-33
Dear Friends,
Today’s gospel selection has Jesus sending the disciples out on their first missionary venture. Jesus is counseling them to cast off any fear. He is telling them of the Father’s constant providence.
Jesus’ message has a three-fold approach against fear. His first statement against fear is they will have the liberating power of his teachings. This point had been hidden but is now revealed. Secondly, Jesus had earlier told them they would be like sheep among the wolves. (Mt 10:16) Nevertheless, they need to move ahead without fear. Finally, the third declaration against fear is based on God’s loving and compassionate care. Jesus uses the examples of the sparrows and the hairs on our heads.
In the time of Jesus, the sparrows were sold two for a penny and five for two cents. Yet, God knows their every movement. The hairs on the average person’s head are more than one hundred thousand. If God can keep track of these two obscure and almost frivolous items, infinitely more forceful will be God’s loving care of us. This loving providence of the Father is the central truth of today’s teaching. All other elements need to be understood in this testimony.
There are two kinds of fear. The first is actually helpful and reasonable. Jesus is talking about the second fear that is rooted in ignorance and illusion. This fear is a crippling force that grips the frightened person. This fear distorts reality to the detriment of one’s responsibilities and relationships. This is a fear that stunts growth and deceives reason. This pathological fear destroys hope and freedom. Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke of this fear in his famous Inaugural address: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
We all find ourselves these days in the double crisis of the pandemic and racial unrest. We all have to come face-to-face with fear. The wrong kind of fear often is damaging to our effort to live the gospel. We are drawn to an ordinary and mediocre effort devoid of the gospel’s challenge and new horizons. Do we fear the honest power of the gospel that will show us the deception of our cultural customs so removed from Jesus’ teachings? We all have to ask ourselves: what kind of fear is motivating us? Is it calling us forward into the new world of the teaching of Jesus or is it crippling us in the captivity of our comfortable but often rigid world that blinds us to our own mortality and concern for our neighbor? Is it building fences or bridges? Is it drawing us deeper into the inclusion of all others as the gospel teaches or into the isolation of our prejudices?
The vision of Jesus in today’s gospel is clear and forthright. What we truly need to fear is the final separation from the source of all life, our gracious and loving God. All else, even the destruction of the body in death, rests in the hands of our loving Father who is always calling us to life.
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