Lectio Reflection – Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Matthew 10:37-42 (Year A 2026)
There are some Gospel passages that comfort us immediately, and there are others that unsettle us before they console us. This Sunday’s Gospel is one of the latter. It contains words of Jesus that can sound hard to hear:
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me… 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.”
At first hearing, these are not gentle words. They seem to cut against some of our deepest instincts – loyalty to family, the desire for peace, the natural wish to preserve our lives rather than lose them. Yet the more I sat with this Gospel, the more I felt that its severity is not there to frighten us, but to reveal something fundamental about discipleship: to belong to Christ is to place him at the centre of everything else.
This passage sits within what is often called the mission discourse in Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus is preparing his disciples for the reality of being sent. He is not sending them into an easy religious life. He is sending them into a world where fidelity to him will sometimes create tension, misunderstanding, and opposition. That is why, just before the section proclaimed this Sunday, Jesus speaks of division even within households. He has “not come to bring peace, but a sword” – not because he delights in conflict, but because the truth of the Gospel forces a decision. People will either receive him or resist him, and that decision will sometimes run through the most intimate of human relationships.
The Primacy of Loyalty to Christ
The first thing I think this Gospel asks us to face is the question of loyalty.
In the Old Testament, loyalty to the covenant with God stood above every other allegiance. Family ties were immensely strong in Jewish life, yet even those ties could not replace fidelity to the Lord. Jesus now speaks in that same tradition, but with a startling shift: the loyalty that once belonged to the covenant is now centred on himself.
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.”
Jesus is not dismissing family love. The commandment to honour father and mother remains. What he is doing is making clear that no human relationship, however precious, can take precedence over our relationship with him. If family, social expectation, fear of disapproval, or the desire to keep everyone happy prevents us from following Christ faithfully, then those things have begun to take a place in our hearts that belongs to God alone.
That remains very relevant today. Family can be a great blessing, but it can also become a subtle obstacle if our deepest concern becomes keeping the peace at all costs, avoiding disagreement, or reshaping our faith so that it does not disturb anyone. Sometimes the greatest opposition to discipleship does not come from hostility outside the Church, but from the quiet pressure to compromise what we know to be true.
This is not an invitation to become harsh or argumentative. Quite the opposite. But it is an invitation to ask whether our faith in Christ truly governs our lives, or whether it is quietly governed by something else.
Taking Up the Cross
The next words of Jesus take the matter further:
“Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”
This is the first mention of the cross in Matthew’s Gospel, and it is a sobering one. In the world of Jesus, the cross did not yet function as a decorative religious symbol. It meant public execution, humiliation, suffering, and the total surrender of one’s own life. To take up the cross is to accept that following Christ will cost us something.
That does not necessarily mean dramatic martyrdom. More often it means the daily dying involved in discipleship: the surrender of self-will, the refusal to choose comfort over truth, the willingness to endure misunderstanding, the discipline of remaining faithful when faith is costly.
What is especially important here is the phrase “and follow me.” The cross is not an abstract burden; it is the consequence of walking in the footsteps of Jesus. In Matthew 16 these same words return after Peter objects to Jesus speaking about his coming passion. Peter wants a Messiah without suffering, a path without the cross. Jesus rejects that way of thinking completely. The disciple cannot ask for a road different from the one the Master himself has walked.
I think many of us, if we are honest, would prefer a Christianity of inspiration without sacrifice, belonging without surrender, faith without the painful demands of conversion. But Jesus will not let us settle for that. He tells us plainly that there is no discipleship without the cross.
And yet the cross is not the end of the story. It is the path by which life is found.
Losing Life to Find It
That is why Jesus immediately adds:
“Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
This is one of the great paradoxes of the Gospel. The life we clutch most tightly is often the life we lose. The life we surrender into Christ’s hands is the life that becomes fruitful.
I think what Jesus is exposing here is the illusion of self-preservation. We can spend so much energy trying to secure our own comfort, reputation, control, or independence that we never actually become free. We “save” our lives by keeping everything for ourselves – and in the process we become smaller, more fearful, and less alive.
But when life is given away in love, in fidelity, in service, in obedience to Christ, something new emerges. The very act of surrender becomes the place of discovery. In giving, we receive. In letting go, we are enlarged. In losing life for Christ’s sake, we find the life that really matters.
John Frauenfelder made a beautiful observation in our reflection: sometimes we do not truly possess something until we have given it away. I think there is deep truth in that. Faith, love, generosity, compassion – these do not grow by being hoarded. They become real by being poured out.
Welcoming the One Who Is Sent
The second half of the Gospel shifts in tone:
“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”
Here Jesus returns to the context of mission. The disciples are being sent out as his representatives, and to receive them is to receive Christ himself. This reflects a deeply Jewish understanding of the messenger: the one who is sent carries the authority and presence of the sender.
Matthew then speaks of welcoming a prophet, a righteous person, or even giving a cup of cold water to one of the “little ones.” These “little ones” are best understood here as the disciples themselves – those who belong to Christ and bear his name in the world.
What strikes me about this part of the passage is how ordinary the gestures are. A welcome. Hospitality. Recognition. A cup of cold water.
It reminds us that discipleship is not only measured in dramatic acts of sacrifice. It is also measured in the simple ways we receive Christ through those who belong to him, and in the ways we serve others in his name. The Gospel is uncompromising in its demands, but it is also wonderfully concrete. The kingdom is built not only through heroic acts, but through everyday faithfulness.
A Gospel That Asks for Clarity
As I sat with this Gospel, I found it asking me several uncomfortable but necessary questions.
- What loyalties in my life compete with my loyalty to Christ?
- Where do I still resist the cross?
- Am I preserving my life, or offering it?
- When I experience opposition, is it because I am faithful to the Gospel, or because of my own attitude?
- In the ordinary gestures of welcome, service and generosity, do I recognise Christ?
These are not easy questions, but they are the kind of questions this Gospel wants to awaken in us.
The Christian life cannot remain vague. Sooner or later it asks us to stand somewhere. To say, with our lives rather than merely our words, that Christ comes first. That does not mean we love our families less; it means we love them rightly, within a life ordered around the Lord. It does not mean we seek suffering; it means we do not run from the cost of fidelity. It does not mean we despise ordinary life; it means we allow even ordinary acts of welcome and generosity to become places where Christ is encountered.
Standing in the Light of Truth
The collect for this Sunday prays that we may not be “wrapped in the darkness of error, but always be seen to stand in the bright light of truth.” I think that is a fitting prayer for this Gospel.
The words of Jesus today cut sharply because they are meant to bring clarity. They separate what is central from what is secondary. They expose where our loyalties really lie. And they invite us, once again, to place Christ at the heart of our lives – not sentimentally, not selectively, but wholeheartedly.
That is always costly. But it is also always life-giving.
For in the end, the Gospel does not ask us to lose our lives for nothing. It asks us to lose them for Christ – and therefore to find them in him.
by David Walker