Friday, 10^th week in ordinary time – 10^th July 2026 – Matthew 10:16-23

Major religious movements rarely start with a grand blueprint for an institution. Instead, they begin as lived experiences within an existing culture. The early Church experienced a slow, often painful birth, transitioning from an internal Jewish debate to a global religious identity.

St Matthew wrote this Gospel during a period of great hostility between the Jews and the Christians. The Christians had not yet formed a clear identity as a body of people, as we have today. At best, the early Christians were a sect of Judaism that believed that the Messiah was Jesus who had died and had risen. The early Christians still prayed at the synagogues, their prayers were still the prayers that their Jewish brothers and sisters recited, their habits and cultural mannerism were still predominantly Jewish.

But all that changed with the council of Jamnia or Jabneh. After the fall of Jerusalem, (A.D.70) the “Council of Jabneh” was convened. It consisted of a group of Jewish scholars who were granted permission by Rome around the year 90 to meet in Palestine near the Mediterranean Sea in Jabneh (or Jamnia). Here they established a non-authoritative, “reconstituted” Sanhedrin.

These scholars shifted the focal point of Jewish identity from space (the Temple) to text (the Torah). Facing existential erasure, they realized that a community anchored in a shared scriptural canon could survive anywhere in the world, even without a homeland. When the Romans destroyed the Temple of stone, the sages at Jabneh built a temple of text. Jabneh proved that a community anchored in a scripture can survive without a homeland. Among the things they discussed was the status of several questionable writings in the Jewish Bible. They also rejected the Christian writings and made a new translation of the Greek Septuagint.

While scholars’ debate on what happened next, many have accepted that the council of Jabneh decided to expel those who did not adhere to their value system. Such a procedure is described in the Birkat ha-Minim, a ‘Blessing on the heretics’ (actually a curse) and among those cursed were the Jewish apostates whom we would call ‘the early Christians’. This sparked tension between Judaism and Christianity and built up even more in the medieval ages.

When St Matthew was writing the mission discourse, this tension was a lived experience. Today, every Christians would read this text in their own context that they live in. In India, these persecutions are real and fraught with dire threats and bodily harm. The hostile trial rooms of the first century have simply relocated to the police stations of the twenty-first. Anti-conversion laws have turned the act of tending to one’s flock into a criminal conspiracy. It is not uncommon to have right wing groups, attack with impunity, Christian evangelist and Christian institutions; taking the law into their own hands while the law itself looks the other way. The tragedy is not just the vigilante violence, but the official silence that validates it.

So often, those who are charged with enforcing the law, are complicit in harbouring the attackers while filing false charges against Christian evangelists who are just tending to their own flock and institutions. In the hands of the powerful, the law is no longer a shield for the weak, but a sword against the faithful. Matthew’s Mission Discourse is no longer a historical text; in India, it is a daily survival guide.

Social media is abuzz with videos recorded by right wing groups insulting St Teresa, calling for a Hindu nation and blatantly suggesting violence against Christians and other minorities. The very media channels that would scream blue murder at the top of their lungs on prime-time TV are silent to such hate. Yet, should anyone with a surname that sounds remotely from a minority faith dare to even critique the functioning of government, the same media channels would call you anti-national and within hours you would be in some prison on trumped up charges.

 Jesus does not hide the danger that his disciples will face. He does not sugar coat the path ahead. The Gospel does not hide the wolves; it prepares the sheep. “Beware”, he says, “of them.” That “them,” has become for “us” in India, any one from the highest offices in the political class to one who thinks that they are doing a holy task for their faith by attacking a Christian. In India, the threat is systemic: it is voted into high office and executed on local streets.

The description of the persecution that is found in this text, seems like it is happening in real time, here in India. “You will be dragged before governors and kings before me,” said Jesus. While fear will be natural in such a circumstance, the defence of the righteous is the work of the Holy Spirit. The words of our defence will be given, for God will speak through us. But that does not mean that the doors of the prison will be opened by an angel and we will be released, like it did for St Peter. Our lives could end up like St Stephen who was stoned to death. God promises us the words for our defense, not an escape from our cross.

Perhaps the saddest pain that comes from such persecution is not the physical attacks but the pain that comes from those with whom we once lived and loved; our neighbours, colleagues or students who studied and lived in our Christian institutions. The heaviest stones are not thrown by strangers, but by those who once shared our bread. The words of Jesus ring true two thousand years later “brother against brother, father against child, children against parents.” It has not been uncommon for us today in India, to hear and perhaps experience, first hand, our very “brothers and sisters” with whom we took oaths in school, now turn against the very priests and nuns at whose hand they were educated.

The shrill voices on social media accusing Christians as having a single agenda of conversion is fanned with impunity. The loudest lies on social media are treated as gospel, while the true Gospel is treated as a crime. Social Media giants are never asked to take these posts and videos down nor are these pages and sites every banned by government. Tragically, the lies have been told again and again giving rise to fear and falsehood and the victimization of religious minorities. When the state refuses to ban the hate, it implicitly signs the warrant for the attack.

Today, we in India are hated as citizens because we hold Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. Unfortunately, even now, some members of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church refuse to admit the reality of this persecution that is faced on a daily basis. The superscription of the text of today’s Gospel in the RSV Bible reads, “the coming persecution.” For us in India, it is not a matter of coming persecution but a matter of ongoing persecution.

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