Those of you who have attended of Holy Wisdom’s Sunday Assembly for any length of time will know that your homilists do not choose which biblical passages will be assigned to us for any given Sunday. Instead, for each Sunday we face a trio of readings identified by the Revised Common Lectionary. The third of these readings, taken from one of the four gospels, carries the most weight. I tell you this to remind you that the choice to speak on this passage from the tenth chapter of Matthew’s gospel was not mine. Faced by the call somehow to unwrap the meaning of this text, I have been tempted to resort to the great theological statement, “I don’t know,” or in this case “I really don’t know.”
The answer, of course, when anything seems hopeless, is to pray. Having done that, I settled finally on a single sentence that seemed to speak to me personally if only to amuse me: “And even the hairs of your head are all counted.” The number of hairs on my head is, of course, far fewer than it once was as a graduate student in California in the late sixties and early seventies. In those days I had hair. Lots of it. But the idea that some massive heavenly computer was at every moment keeping track of the changing number of hairs on my head is too bizarre to take literally. God has better things to do than to spend eternity (or at least my lifetime or your lifetime) recording the precise number of greying hairs on our heads.
A more profitable approach, it seems to me, is to begin by paying attention to the broader context in which this puzzling sentence was spoken. Earlier in the same chapter, Jesus had warned the disciples of the persecution they would certainly face. He loved his disciples dearly and wanted to give them a strong “heads up” so they would be forewarned and not side swiped when persecution came. Jesus wanted them and us to know that He is not unaware of the trials and tribulations that we face. He knows, understands, and he cares deeply. Just like with His disciples, He may not remove the hardships but will be with us and never leave us. INSERT THE “I will NEVER leave nor forsake you” verse.
If God is aware of a sparrow falling to the ground, how much more is God aware of our troubles. We are worth far more than a sparrow. (Mourning dove illustration???)
Here, then, we may ask how Jesus’s earlier assurance that “even the hairs of your head are all counted” can offer comfort in a time of confusion and pain. The immediate cause of such pain and confusion will vary from one person to another. Some in the Middle East suffer even now from intense military violence. Others, in our own country and elsewhere, suffer from callous government hostility. Some of us may struggle with family disfunctions, from tense marriages, from children who are stumbling through life, or from serious illness, to name just a few of the ways in which our peace and more general well-being are threatened. Take a moment now to reflect on your current struggles that weigh on your heart. (PAUSE)
We wish Jesus would put it all right without further delay. Sometimes miracles do happen and answers to prayer can amaze us. But not always. At such times, perhaps, we are sobered by Jesus’s warning not to expect everything to be just as we want it. We can be tempted to ask if Jesus really cares for us, if God has any real idea of what we’re facing. It is to this understandable doubt, I suggest, that Jesus offers his bizarre assurance: “And even the hairs of your head are all counted.” Taking this literally would leave us not comforted but puzzled. But if we take this assurance as a figure of speech or a metaphor, then we can understand Jesus to be saying that the God who loves us knows every last detail of who we are and how we feel and what comforts or frightens us.
When we face trouble, sickness, loss, grief, hopelessness, or danger, we tend to want more than anything else to enjoy the presence of the one whom we know most loves us. If I am sick or anxious or afraid, the person I most want to have with me is my dear wife Ann. When I suffered a heart attack a couple of years ago, Ann spent all of four nights and four days in my hospital room at St. Mary’s. She slept on the couch in my room, she ate hospital meals with me (high-quality hospital meals), she held my hand, she helped me make medical decisions, she prayed with me before I was taken in for surgery. She was there when I was taken back to my room. Bless her, she didn’t go home until she could take me with her. Knowing me well after 52 years of marriage, she knew everything and exactly what I needed when I wasn’t in surgery itself. She knew (and still knows) me well enough to be able to reassure me with something similar to “even the hairs of your head are all counted.” She knows me that well.
There was one other blessed friend in that hospital room. The risen Christ, too, knows me far better than I know myself. In times of trouble, which sometimes feel far too frequent, Christ’s knowledge of every detail of my being is both full and loving. “Even the hairs of my head are all counted.” God knows me … God knows each of us that well. God is with us, calling us to draw on His strength, wisdom and great love daily. Draw near.