Hope for the harassed. A word for our times.

Matthew 9:35-10:8

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.  Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.’
Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax-collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.
These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: ‘Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.

There are three things that I am going to draw out from this passage

A link to the audio of this talk

1. It is about the Kingdom of God

The Kingdom of God is the big message of Jesus

He went about proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom.

He tells his disciples: Proclaim the good news, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven has come near’.

And he teaches them to pray, 'Thy Kingdom come'.

In the Old Testament we are told about this Kingdom of God

Creation will be reordered: the sick are healed, the dead are raised, the unclean restored and evil is cast out. It is a vision of a world healed, of peace and justice. It is very solid: wolves lying down with lambs, children playing with snakes. 

And at the heart of this kingdom there is a king, the Messiah, the Christ. 

And Jesus declares that the Kingdom of God is very near. 

It is near in time. It is coming soon in all its fullness.

But it is also near in space

Why? Because Jesus himself is the King of this Kingdom. He is the Messiah. 

The Kingdom of Heaven is near because they can reach out and touch him. 

2. It is about the compassion of the King.

‘When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd’ (9.36)

Christ healing the sick brought to him in the villages

, 

James Tissot

, 1890

I asked my walking dictionary, Alison, what it means to be harassed. She said, it is like when you don’t know your head from your tail, when you feel stressed about things and you don’t know why you are stressed; when you don’t know which direction to go in. 

That seems to me to be a pretty good description of where many of us are much of the time

Jesus sees our weakness, confusion, fear, defencelessness. He sees how we turn to whatever little god, whatever idol, promises to rescue us: shopping or AI or self-improvement, moving to another place, cosmetic surgery or a drug or alcohol. Perhaps the fact that we are looking at the possibility of a 7th Prime Minister in 10 years says a little about how lost politically we are.

And when we lose our way, Jesus does not despise us or look down on us. He does not say, ‘they have rejected God and made such a mess of their lives – and they deserve it’.

Instead he has deep compassion for us: he sees how we are lost and he wants to gather us, like a farmer gathers the harvest. 

And this King is a king of love.

His words flow from his love. His acts flow from his love.

Twice Jesus speaks about the people being like sheep: ‘sheep without a shepherd’, ‘the lost sheep of the children of Israel’

In our world sheep give their lives for their shepherd. They are bred to be killed so that the shepherd and others can live.

But Jesus is the true good shepherd who gives his life for his sheep. 

He was like the blotting paper that takes the stain into itself. He took into himself, as Matthew 8 tells us, ‘our infirmities’ and he ‘bore our diseases’. He takes into himself our sin, our rebellion against God and our death.

As Paul writes in Romans 5: ‘God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us’.

3. This passage is about the charge and the authority of the citizens of the Kingdom

“Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.” (10:1)

At this stage, in Matthew 10, he gives the twelve the charge to only go to the Jewish people. But after his resurrection, in Matthew 28, the mission goes global. It is about everyone.

To be honest – I struggle with this: the statement of Jesus ‘to cure every disease and every sickness’.

I have seen some healings and some amazing things and I have heard of amazing things, and we need to pray.  But Jesus says ‘cure every disease and sickness’; and at the best – even in those churches which make quite a big thing of prayer for healing, I see only a few healings. 

But I note three things

1. If we are given authority, it means that whatever authority we have is not our own. It comes from him. And to be given authority means that we are under his authority. 

It means we need to do this Jesus’ way. 

It is never about the individual. 

And whatever we do, we do it with deep trust in him and compassion for those who are harassed and helpless

And we exercise ministry, not by standing over people, telling them that they are wrong and I am right, but to do this work on our knees: before God in prayer and before others.

2. When Jesus gives the 12 the charge to preach the Kingdom, and when he gives them authority to do the Kingdom stuff, he is giving that command and that authority to his whole people together, from all times and places – not to each of us as individuals, but to all of us together.

That is why he gives different callings. 

It is why some are evangelists and some are leaders and some are teachers. 

It is why we have different gifts: 

why some are called to works of hospitality and generosity, of prayer for healing, of administration, of creativity, of a passion for justice.

We can’t do it all on our own; we need each other.

3. Jesus command to the twelve, to the whole people of God, will be fulfilled when the whole church is gathered together, at the end of time, when the 12 apostles are seated on 12 thrones and the Kingdom comes in its fullness. 

Then there will be no injustice, no sickness, no death, no evil. 

So how are we to live in the light of this command to the people of God to exercise the authority of Jesus?

We live in the light of the future.

It is as if we are walking backwards into the future. We can only see the past, and each step that we make into the future, each decision we take, is a step of faith, based on what has happened in the past. I know that pews have held me up in the past, so I can sit down with confidence.

But the privilege of the people of God is to walk backwards into the future with a rear-view mirror. We are not just basing the decisions we make on what has happened in the past (which we can see), but on what is there in the future. We can see what the future is. We can see the future of the Kingdom of God, of this world transformed, of peace, shalom, and justice, where there is no sin, no sickness and no death.

So our work is, in the name of Jesus, to anticipate that kingdom, to preach the Kingdom and to cure the sick – through prayer, and through hard work and study and using the gifts God has given us – because we see the future: a creation transformed and renewed by Jesus

So yes, the Kingdom of God is near.

It is close in time. We are talking God’s time here and not our time, but it could be tomorrow or today. We should be living in expectation.

And it is very close in space, because Jesus, the King is very close. All we need to do to become part of the Kingdom is to receive Jesus – to reach out and to touch him, as the woman did in our reading last week. To receive this King of love – as we will do when we come with open hands or bowed heads at communion and ask him to become part of you.

And, with the people of God for the last 2000 years, we pray a prayer that is both personal and cosmic: ‘Your Kingdom come. Come Lord Jesus’.