Falling
Jesus is honest about what he’s sending them into.
They will be slandered. He tells them why: people called the master of the house Beelzebul, so the household should expect the same. Whatever they say about him, they will say about you. That is what it means to belong to him.
Then the houses themselves come apart. Son against father, daughter against mother. A man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Jesus is quoting the prophet Micah, describing what the world looks like when God finally moves. The sorting has begun, and it runs through kitchens.
And then he hands them a cross.
Not a pendant. Not yet a metaphor. An instrument of execution, issued like equipment for the road.
Three times in the middle of all this, he says: Do not be afraid.
Not because they will be protected from harm. He has just finished telling them they won’t be.
The reason he gives is smaller than that, and stranger.
Two sparrows sell for a penny. The cheapest life in the market, sold for the smallest coin there is.
And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father.
The sentence does not say the sparrow will not fall.
It falls.
But it does not fall alone. It does not fall apart from your Father. He is there in the falling, closer to the sparrow than the ground it strikes.
And the hairs of your head are all counted. Useless information unless the point is attention. Nobody numbers what they do not love.
This is what Jesus gives his disciples to carry into the slander and the divided houses: not a shield, but a promise. You cannot fall out of the Father’s keeping. The worst thing that can happen to you still happens inside his hands.
The disciples did not yet know where this road was leading. Before they would carry a cross, Jesus would carry one. Before they would be hated, he would be rejected. Before they would fall, he would fall.
And he cried: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
On the third day, the Father answered him.
Which means that for those who belong to him, there is no such thing as a godforsaken fall. There was one. He took it.
Sparrows fall. Disciples fall. Christ himself fell.
Maybe you are afraid of a fall you can see coming. Maybe you are still sore from an old one. Or maybe you are falling right now, quietly, in the dark, and you think no one has noticed.
The Father has. He numbers hairs. And when you land, you land where he fell.
Never apart.
These midweek devotionals aren’t sermons. They’re meant to complement the Sunday homily. I’ll share the sermon below after it’s preached:
Spectacular meditation, Father!
Beautiful