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This week’s scriptures take us through some murky water. You may believe, like me, that having a relationship with God would make life easier. Yet this week’s lectionary challenges our understanding of what it means to follow Jesus. What does it take to follow Jesus!

In the Old Testament reading, the prophet Jeremiah rails against God. All along he has been doing what God asked of him and it just hasn’t gone well for him. “I have become a laughingstock all day long;everyone mocks me.” He continues to complain saying, “All my close friends are watching for me to stumble.”

Our Psalm is less than comforting – like Jeremiah, another lament, and a plea for God to intervene:

“Surely, for your sake have I suffered reproach, 
     and shame has covered my face.
I have become a stranger to my own kindred, 
     an alien to my mother's children.
Save me from the mire; do not let me sink; 
     let me be rescued from those who hate me
        and out of the deep waters.”

The “Missionary Discourse” in Matthew’s Gospel is challenging at best. The disciples are near Jesus – there to learn in order to carry his message forward. Some rather confusing words come from Jesus’ mouth:

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

Confusion. Cost. Courage is needed. And yet, as we will learn there is hope. Please join me this Sunday as we wrestle with the deeper understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

Faithfully yours,
Deacon Claire