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Rez is a community where Jesus welcomes, shapes, and sends disciples for the good of our neighborhood. No matter where you are in life, this is a place for you.
Life Together In The Goodness Of God
A show of hands. How many of you are poetry lovers? Poetry, yeah. How many of you like to read poetry on a regular basis? I will admit, I am not a poetry guy. Most poems are just too high-minded for my simple self. The poems I connect with are those that are pretty straightforward, ones that say it plainly. And that brings me to, I actually do have a couple of favorite poems. One of them is called We Wear the Mask by Paul Luntz Dunbar. It was written in 1895, just 30 years after the Civil War. Dunbar wrote this poem to describe the double life black people lived in the late 19th and early 20th century. The first stanza goes, We wear the mask that grins and lies. It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes. This debt we paid a human guile with poor and bleeding hearts. We smile and mouth with myriad subtleties. What the poem describes is how black people had to respond to the dehumanizing degradations they faced every day. And to an extent, what black people still have to deal with today, that we cannot show displeasure lest we be called angry. We cannot use familiar vernacular lest we be called uneducated. We have to know what white people like lest we be called uncultured or uninformed. And though this poem was written over 130 years ago, it still resonates with me today. And for me, I think it resonates with our gospel reading. At the end of Matthew chapter 9 and into chapter 10, Jesus calls us into discipleship and warns us that it will not be easy, but we should be comforted that God is with us and we should wear the mask that God gives us. But before we get to today's passage, I want to take a look at what comes before our reading today, because a lot happens in Matthew chapter 9. The chapter opens with Jesus healing the paralytic man, declaring his sins are forgiven. When the scribes saw and heard this, they accused Jesus of blasphemy, believing that only God can forgive sins. But those scribes misunderstood what Mother Yana and Father Sean have preached for the past couple of weeks is that Jesus is God. Next, we get to the call story of Matthew. Jesus simply says to him, follow me. And he gets up and he follows. Matthew later hosts a dinner at his home, a dinner filled with tax collectors and sinners. When the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day, hear this, they question why this so-called man of God is eating with people they saw as sinners. And Jesus declares that he has come to call not the righteous, but sinners. Jesus has come to us, to save us, all of us. Next, we get Jesus calling himself a bridegroom and the whole new wine going into old wineskins thing. It's kind of confusing to me, but I think he's preaching that he's ushering in a new way, a new covenant, and that we are called to be renewed in him, to not be who we have always been, but to a new life in Jesus and to love as Jesus teaches us to love and shows us how to love. Next, starting in verse 18, Jesus heals the bleeding woman, declaring that her faith has made her well. Then he declares that the daughter of a synagogue leader is not dead, but merely sleeping. He took her hand, she got up. The bleeding woman's faith, the faith of that synagogue leader, brought them new life. Then Jesus heals two blind men because they believe Jesus can heal them and then Jesus casts out the demon for one who was mute and that person speaks. More signs of Jesus acknowledging people's faith in him. So that means what we have so far in chapter nine is Jesus is God who forgives our sins. Jesus has come to save us all, especially we sinners, and Jesus is calling us into a new way of love and faith in him. I bring all this up because I believe we see this all come together in our reading for today. Our reading begins with Jesus and the disciples going around the towns and villages, teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is Lord, the son of God. Jesus offers forgiveness, curing all the sickness and disease put before him, honoring the faith shown in him. In verse 36, though, we get the phrase, when he sees the crowds, he has compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. As Lutheran pastor and theologian Phil Brant points out, the word there translated as compassion is perhaps lacking. You see, the Greek word translated as compassion, I'm not going to try to say it, even though I have it right here, it's long, actually refers to a much deeper feeling, a feeling that you have in your guts, in your bowels. And though we don't have an exact equivalent in English, it would probably be better to say Jesus had a gut wrenching feeling for those he saw. I mentioned that to highlight how moved Jesus was here. He sees these people suffering and he is so moved. He has to do something. We then get a line that we are all familiar with. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, meaning there is so much suffering in the world that no one person, no one group can conquer it. But through faith in the Lord, through faith in Jesus, in the new way Jesus calls us to love, we can all help ease and relieve some of that suffering by showing the love and mercy of God that lives in all of us to everyone whom we encounter. We then get to chapter 10 where Jesus calls all the disciples, all 12, sends them out two by two, giving them power over unclean spirits, commissioning them to cure the sick, raise the dead, and proclaim the good news that the kingdom of God is near. Jesus then offers instructions about how they are to travel and do their work, reminding them to take no payment because they have received without payment. He then offers a warning, the famous, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves, saying that this work will not be easy, that there will be those who will try to persecute and reject you, but he offers assurance that God, all of God, will be with them. He essentially calls them to continue to wear the mask, the mask of God. And man, there's a lot happening there. And I hope you get the picture that there is much work to do in the world. And when you do that work, there will be those who persecute you. You see, when we are doing kingdom work, when we are helping our neighbors better themselves, when we are showing all of humankind the love and grace that God put in us and acknowledging the love and grace God put in them, that is upsetting the status quo. When Jesus gives sight to the blind, relief to the captives, and heals the so-called unclean, he is upsetting the societal norms of the day. And that, that is what he calls us to do. Going back to the beginning of Matthew 9, we are called to a new way of love, the kind of love Jesus showed all his neighbors. And we get that love from the faith we have in all of God, remembering that we too are sinners who are saved by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Remember how Jesus sends us out into the world to show and reflect the love of God in the world, to remind people that the kingdom of God is near. We are being called to follow the commandment Jesus gives us later in Matthew 22, to love God, to love our neighbors, and to love ourselves. The second and third stanzas of Dunbar's poem, We Wear the Mask, are, Why should the world be overwise and counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them see us only while we wear the mask. We smile, but, oh, great Christ, our cries to thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but, oh, the clay is vile beneath our feet, and long the mile. But let the world dream otherwise. We wear the mask. Here Dunbar is imploring us not to show our suffering, to not to show how the systems around us are affecting us. And though I understand the message for that day, for the late 19th century, I want to believe in a better society. But Jesus knows the world he is sending his disciples into. He knows the dangers, the ridicule, the hate they will encounter. But he is telling them to wear the mask, shake off the dust off their feet, and move on. And I believe, Rez, that's what we are called to do. We are being called to do the hard, difficult work of making God's kingdom come near. We are being called to show a radical love that defies all social norms. We are being called to love and serve as Jesus loves and serves. And when we are prosecuted for showing that love, when we are being called to wear the mask with torn and bleeding hearts, we are being called to do the work and to wear the mask. Amen.