Contrary to the sentiment behind a very popular book from several decades ago, we didn't actually learn everything we need to know in kindergarten. We certainly begin the journey toward a healthy and good life then, but there are plenty of essential lessons that we don't learn until we grow up. Frankly, we are witnessing a world run by people with the maturity of kindergartners, and I think we can agree it's not awesome.

No, the work of acquiring virtue and becoming a whole person is something we pursue all our days. We are "growing up" all our lives, so to speak. And the same is true for discipleship. We may learn the basic principles of the kingdom of God as children, but if we think that we don't need anything beyond those lessons to be a follower of Jesus, we will underestimate the life to which he calls us.

Kingdom work is more controversial and subversive than the conventional kindness that is typically taught to kindergartners. If Jesus' message was merely to be nice and polite all the time, would the ruling powers have felt the need to execute him? The same with his apostles: if following Jesus was limited to "spiritual" matters, and had nothing to do with challenging the practices of the powerful (i.e. politics), why then were nearly all of his closest followers killed by the empire?

It is possible to live in such a way that gives no offense to anyone and yet bears little resemblance to our Lord. True discipleship is the art of seeking the kingdom of God with courageous determination, even when the road is hard and the costs are great and we find ourselves in conflict with the world. That can happen, as it did for the early church, in relationship with the forces of empire, but it can also happen in relationship with the people closest to us.

In the gospel this weekend, Jesus alludes to this possibility. He teaches that he hasn't 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 (Matthew 10:34-36)." This is a hard word to hear, and it would seem to run counter to everything we typically assume about the way of Jesus. Isn't peace the very thing the angels announced that he was bringing when he was born?

What he's doing is reminding us that when we decide to put him at the center of our lives, it will inevitably create conflict with those other relationships that had previously received that loyalty – be they national, tribal, or familial. To give Jesus primacy of place in our hearts is to dislodge others from that position, and sometimes the newly displaced don't accept this quietly. History is replete with the lives of saints whose faithful allegiance to Christ caused painful backlash from those who would not tolerate their relegation.

And yet it would be a mistake to assume that discipleship leads to an endless string of confrontations. We are not hammers in a world of nails. Aggravation and aggressiveness are not fruits of the Spirit, but rather peace, patience, and self-control (Galatians 3:22-23), which is a lesson I wish more of the loudest Christian voices in our society would remember. You show me someone whose practice of faith is mostly about stoking grievances and provoking conflict, and I'll show you someone who has misunderstood the gospel.

This leaves us with the task of discerning how to be steadfastly faithful to the way of Jesus in a world that actively (and all too often angrily) resists it, while not forgetting the thing that is at the heart of his way, and that is love. I don't know about you, but I didn't figure that out at age five. I'm still working it out as best I can, day by day, in the messy complexity of real life. But the longer I live, the more I am coming to understand what Jesus says right after his warning about the costs of discipleship: "Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it (Matt 10:39)."

Casey+