Dear Friends,
With today’s reading, the lectionary returns to what’s called Ordinary Time in the church year. Ordinary Time readings begin with the first Sunday after Epiphany in January, stop for Lent and the season of Eastertide, and then return for the long months until Advent. There are more Sundays in Ordinary Time than in Advent, Christmas, Lent, and the Easter season combined. That said, there is nothing ordinary about the words we study during these weeks, and nothing ordinary about the work of faith we are called to do.
I invite you to read Matthew 9:35-10:23 after praying the following prayer for illumination. May our prayers for insight be magnified by our ministries in the name of Jesus:
God of the harvest, whose all-seeing eye and all-inclusive love embrace many, including those whom we choose not to see, equip us for our labors. Grant us eyes and ears attuned to your compassion and to your children's needs. May we discern in the harassed and helpless an opportunity for discipleship. Keep us alert to the commission you give us today. Amen.
Our reading for today is Jesus’s second long address in Matthew. It begins with words almost identical to Matthew 4:23, the verse that inaugurated the first address, which we know as the Sermon on the Mount. In today’s reading. Matthew offers us a vivid description of the ministry to which Jesus calls us.
As had become rather typical in the preaching life of Jesus, large crowds have gathered in Galilee to hear Jesus teach and receive his healing ministry. Just as they were attuned to this preacher from Nazareth, he, too, was attuned to them. As Matthew 9:36 shares, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
Jesus was entirely focused on the people among whom he walked. His ministry was not to promote himself, nor was it to launch a new religion (though that was the unintended consequence, as we know); it was, rather, to spread his messages of healing and justice. He saw the people in all their suffering humanity. With divine compassion, he also saw that their need was too great to be met effectively by just a single person.
And so, he began to articulate to the disciples what their ministry was to be. Faced with the enormity of need among the people who came to hear his words and receive his healing care, Jesus charged his disciples to help extend his reach, saying to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (9:37-38) He gave the twelve disciples “authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.” (10:1) In giving them authority, Jesus empowered them to help him gather this harvest of needy, hurting people into a renewed and renewing life with God.
Clearly, this was Jesus calling his disciples to the challenges of mission. Before we look more closely at this call in Matthew 9-10, however, I invite you to think back to last Sunday’s reading from Matthew 28. Because it was Trinity Sunday, we focused particularly on the reference there to what we’ve come to understand as the Trinity.
However, the resounding force of this final chapter of Matthew’s gospel is what has come to be called the Great Commission. “And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” (Matthew 28:18-20)
Compare that commission to the charge Jesus gave his disciples in the early years of his ministry, as recounted in this week’s scripture reading. The granting of authority is an essential part of both his Great Commission at the end of Matthew and the call to discipleship outlined in Matthew 10, when Jesus gives his disciples the authority to proclaim the gospel – the good news – of God’s care for all humankind. But the emphasis of his call here is more concrete and immediate: to repair and cure the physical and spiritual woes he sees all around him. Even though this call doesn’t reach the stirring heights of the Great Commission, it’s a profound, demanding call to mission and ministry.
Having authorized them – having empowered them – Jesus teams the disciples into pairs and sends them out into the world. Their charge is to “proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’” (10:7) They are to act on this call by learning the maladies of the people they encounter in order to cure them. They are to empower the people in turn with the good news of God’s love and protection, through which they are able to heal and ease the harassment and helplessness that is their desolate lot.
There is one additional part to this charge: they are to seek hurting people, not sinners. They are not being sent out to hold themselves above those they are called to serve, or to judge them; they are being sent to be compassionate. The compassion of Jesus focused his earthly ministry, and that same compassion led him to call his disciples to mission grounded in humility and grace.
This was true for those disciples who walked with Jesus in Galilee, and it is true for us, disciples who continue to journey with Christ today. We are a “priesthood of all believers,” and our call to this priesthood is the same as the call to the twelve in this reading: to proclaim the good news and heal the wounds of the world.
As Jesus sends us out in mission today, what are the ills that we find? In Matthew 10:8, Jesus named the sick, the dead, the lepers, and the demons. Are things so different now? Racism is a disease; poverty is a sickness; poor education is a breeding ground for unclean spirits; communal and spiritual identity is dying. Two thousand years after Matthew wrote his gospel, we share the same commission from Jesus as the disciples did, and that commission is rooted in compassion.
To be compassionate is to be relational. We must be in relationship with the harassed and the helpless, the sick and the poor, the marginalized of our world. With humility and searching hearts, we must recognize that we, too, are helpless, and that we must look to our faith and certain knowledge of God’s redeeming grace in order that we might be empowered – that we might find the strength to perceive and then accept the challenges to minister where we are needed.
You have heard the term, “Think Globally, Act Locally.” If our ministry of compassion is to be relational, it must begin where we are, and with our immediate neighbors. And so it does, and quite successfully. Though we are currently hamstrung by the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, we continue to serve and to give. Our contributions to the work of our church, even without weekly services in our sanctuary, continue generously. We cast out demons every time we offer solace to one another. Perhaps most empowering is the depth of our prayers, which I know are offered daily. They have more strength and effect than we may ever truly know.
To be compassionate is also to be situational. With compassion in our hearts and eyes, we are called and sent out to assess the societal, cultural, and even religious environments that cause people pain. And then we are called to be about the hard work of curing those injustices. We cannot think of these times of pandemic, economic dislocation, and racial pain without compassion, just as we cannot begin to do the work of healing without compassion.
You might legitimately find it disturbing to read in our passage that Jesus limits the disciples’ mission to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (10:6) Again, remember that this was Jesus in earthly ministry, teaching and empowering his small group of disciples. In a few short years, he, the resurrected Christ, will expand their call to the greater world: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” (Matthew 28:19)
I know how many of us heed this call, responding so faithfully to the words of both Matthew 10 and the Great Commission in Matthew 28. Here at Scottsville Presbyterian Church, we dedicate a very significant and generous 20% of our budget to mission. Our support for programs like the “Help for Neighbors” ministry, the Mobile Food Pantry, Meals on Wheels, the Bread of Life Ministry, the Boys and Girls Club, Habitat for Humanity, the Hospice of the Piedmont, and our welcome and outreach to Discovery School, reflects the depth of our response to Jesus’s call to proclaim the good news and address the ills of our world. And I know there are several individuals among us who quietly support other needs with faithful generosity, energy, and loyalty.
Our generosity and hands-on support for so many crucial ministries belies the size of our church. Like Jesus’s tiny band of twelve disciples, we are small, but we are mighty! What an honor it is to be a part of such a mighty band of disciples.
Thanks be to God who confidently calls us to meet the challenges of our times and equips us with faith and grace to send us out as compassionate disciples of Jesus Christ.
Joys and Concerns:
For those who are in need of a compassionate friend in these days of distancing and isolation.
For graduates, who are beginning their journeys into new lives, study, and callings, even when their starting points are so unclear.
For family and friends who express love in tangible ways.
For those marching and praying for racial justice to flow like a river throughout our nation and the world.
For the prayers whispered daily for healing, solace, comfort, and peace.
From Pentecost Sunday through the first Sunday in September, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry of the Episcopal Church and Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America welcome congregations and individuals to regularly pray “A Prayer for the Power of the Spirit among the People of God.” This prayer – crafted by a team of Lutheran and Episcopal prayer leaders in light of the COVID pandemic – is meant to unite us in common prayer and revive us for common mission, wherever and however we may be gathered.
In a spirit of ecumenical love, let us pray together this prayer for the ills of our world, which is shared with us by our Episcopalian and Lutheran sisters and brothers in faith.
A Prayer for the Power of the Spirit among the People of God
God of all power and love, we give thanks for your unfailing presence and the hope you provide in times of uncertainty and loss. Send your Holy Spirit to enkindle in us your holy fire. Revive us to live as Christ’s body in the world: a people who pray, worship, learn, break bread, share life, heal neighbors, bear good news, seek justice, rest and grow in the Spirit. Wherever and however we gather, unite us in common prayer and send us in common mission, that we and the whole creation might be restored and renewed, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.