Matthew 9:35-10:8.
Last week we looked at how it is faith alone that, through the great gift at Pentecost of the Holy Spirit, that allows the Lord to use us in the bringing about in the world, the great work of God, as commissioned by Jesus; to go and make disciples, baptising them and teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded.
Our passage from Matthew begins today with the focus firmly on Jesus himself (vv. 35-36). “He saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (v.36).
Then the focus shifts to the disciples with words that echo the great commission: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.” (9:37-38), then the twelve apostles by name and vocation (10:1-8).
If the great commission is to be Christ to others, then the labourers into the harvest are to have the same compassion Christ Jesus has. Yet, we have these very human disciples now named by Jesus as Apostles, and we see just how pale a reflection of Christ the Apostles were, and by extension I am, and we are.
Just look at the makeup of the twelve, the people chosen by God to be his disciples. The "first" apostle Peter will deny the Lord three times and the last apostle Judas will betray him to death, The writer of this gospel, Matthew, was a tax collector who worked for the Romans, while Simon the Cananaean or "zealot" worked against them. The Zealots existed purely to oppose Roman occupation using violence if necessary.
And yet our reading comes full circle with these assorted apostles now entrusted with Jesus' very own work: to proclaim the kingdom of God (10:7), and heal the sick and cast out demons (10:8).
Jesus not only sends them out with power to make real how vet close is the Kingdom of God but to announce it by using the very same words as their teacher: "The kingdom of heaven has come near" (10:7; Jesus says it about himself in Matt 4:17; John 3:2).
So then, to be sent by Jesus is in some sense to be sent as Jesus. Now we bristle at that I think. We are sensitive to the dangers, we hope, thinking we actually become God!
Nevertheless, Matthew does not hold back from reminding us that master and apprentice, while clearly distinct in their roles, inevitably will do similar work over time, as Jesus makes clear a bit later in this chapter: "it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master" (10:25).
I think Jesus’ image of the plentiful harvest with few workers adds a sense of urgency to compassion and says to the disciples, ‘The time is ripe for you to go and show your own compassion.’ Jesus brings them together and “authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness" (10:1).
In this way we recognize that part of Jesus' own mission is to train followers to join the purposes for which his Father sent him. And the apostles' very identity is born in the midst of this movement from Father to Son to world, just as the resurrected Jesus said to his disciples the very day he rose, "as the father sent me, so I send you" (John 20:21).
If we were to represent "kingdom" and "world" in a Venn diagram, the apostles—and we by extension—have been selected and instructed to occupy the overlap. This overlap can be an intense place, as Jesus warns in the verses immediately after today’s passage.
Jesus is sending them like "sheep into the midst of wolves" (10:16). Where the work of God meets the trajectory of the world resistance is greatest—they will be handed over to councils, flogged in synagogues (10:17), dragged before governors and kings (10:18), families will be divided (10:21), and stigmas borne because of Jesus' name (10:22).
And then, like balm on a wound, he says in 10:19-20, "do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say ... for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you" (10:19-20). In the very midst of persecution those obedient to Jesus' mission will be equipped and empowered with God's own presence. "I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (28:20). To participate in the proclamation and healing natures of Jesus’ own mission, is to get caught up in the very life of Jesus, God's Son given to the world.
If, with this passage, we see Jesus in the midst of training disciples for mission, by Gospel's end the scene will have shifted. The instructions on how to be a disciple in mission will, with the backing of the Risen Lord, become instructions on how to make disciples in mission (Matthew 28:18-20).
We don’t have to figure out our own individual ways to be disciples of Jesus and to fulfil our mission on the world. That will be given to us in great detail, just as it was to the twelve. It involves the gifts given to us by God through the Holy Spirit and always in accordance with our very own nature – in ways that we are not only comfortable doing, but in ways that no one else could do, because they are not us.
My friends, some of you might think that you have no power in the world, and that no one listens to you about anything, and that God could not possibly use you as a disciple.
In today’s Genesis reading, Sarah thought that she was too old to be used by God. One of the angels (I personally think they were three angels) said to her “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” (Gen 18:14). The angel was right, she did have a child called Isaac and through his Son Jacob became the ancestor of all believers. Paul tells us later in Romans that that includes all Christians, Sarah is our ancestor because she was sent by God.
Mary, Jesus’ mother, when visited by an Angel who told her she would conceive by being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit also did not think it could at all be possible. She said, “how can this be?” The angle said to her the same thing. “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”
God uses the weak and the powerless, the very young and the very old all through the bible. He does the same thing today with you and with me and uses the gifts he has given us though our skills and personality with the immeasurable power of the Holy Spirit to bring his perfect will to pass, every time, and in every way.
Let me pray…