Matthew 9:35—10:1, 5-8
Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.
Jesus sent out the twelve with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.
What, actually, is a disciple? The dictionary definition of “disciple” is pretty generic, and goes like this: A person who believes in the ideas and principles of someone famous and tries to live the way that person does or did.
In the more recent past, those who were followed might have been movie stars, or financial wizards who could show you how to become rich in just one month, or strange cult leaders who would lead you to enlightenment. In these days of omnipresent social media we have the interesting phenomenon of “Influencers” – people who have hundreds of followers who want to dress like them, or decorate their homes like them, or just live like them. Folks who try to imitate them, and emulate their lifestyles, to make them their own.
But we are here in church, so it is fairly obvious that we are interested in disciples in the biblical sense – those who lived with Jesus and were taught by him and who followed him – both figuratively, and literally.
When I wanted to find a way to describe Jesus’ disciples, I – of course – went to my default expert on people and things in scripture, Frederick Buechner – a writer who showed us both a person’s theological standing and their simple humanity.
About as ordinary (for their time and place) a group of people as you could hope to find: Peter and Andrew were fisherfolk; James and John were fishers too; Matthew was a tax collector, of all things; Simon the Zealot was a member of a revolutionary sect trying to incite rebellion against the Roman empire (Jesus was not the only revolutionary in the group); and then, of course, there was Judas who would betray him to his death. None of them being rich and famous, none having a shred of earthly power.
Returning to Buechner:
This should be a great comfort to us. Why? Because we are called as well -- called to do many of the same sorts of things – and I don’t know how you feel about your own skills, but I can, as Buechner put it, ”miss the point” right up there with the best of them.
Most of us are no more capable of performing these miracles alone than were any of the long-ago twelve. I’m comfortable enough with the things I know—I can preach and I can teach, I can comfort, and I can feed the hungry—at least some of them—and I can help to clothe the naked. Those things fit comfortably enough in my world.
But to go further than that requires a ton of grace. It would require that I step aside and trust God to be there to work through me. That must be how the disciples felt when Jesus sent them out to do impossible things.
And they did them. They did impossible things--and more. And with faith and love and trust in God’s word, we could do impossible things, too, if those things were in God’s will for us.
With love and faith and trust in God’s word to us we can speak the truth and comfort the grieving and we can change the world for somebody somewhere. Thanks be to God.
In the more recent past, those who were followed might have been movie stars, or financial wizards who could show you how to become rich in just one month, or strange cult leaders who would lead you to enlightenment. In these days of omnipresent social media we have the interesting phenomenon of “Influencers” – people who have hundreds of followers who want to dress like them, or decorate their homes like them, or just live like them. Folks who try to imitate them, and emulate their lifestyles, to make them their own.
But we are here in church, so it is fairly obvious that we are interested in disciples in the biblical sense – those who lived with Jesus and were taught by him and who followed him – both figuratively, and literally.
When I wanted to find a way to describe Jesus’ disciples, I – of course – went to my default expert on people and things in scripture, Frederick Buechner – a writer who showed us both a person’s theological standing and their simple humanity.
- [He tells us] There is no evidence that Jesus chose the first disciples because they were brighter or nicer than other people. In fact the New Testament record suggests that they were continually missing the point, jockeying for position, and, when the chips were down, interested in nothing so much as saving their own skins. Their sole qualification seems to have been their initial willingness to rise to their feet when Jesus said, "Follow me." As Saint Paul would put it later, "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong."
About as ordinary (for their time and place) a group of people as you could hope to find: Peter and Andrew were fisherfolk; James and John were fishers too; Matthew was a tax collector, of all things; Simon the Zealot was a member of a revolutionary sect trying to incite rebellion against the Roman empire (Jesus was not the only revolutionary in the group); and then, of course, there was Judas who would betray him to his death. None of them being rich and famous, none having a shred of earthly power.
Returning to Buechner:
- When Jesus sent the twelve out into the world, his instructions were simple. He told them to preach the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick and wounded, with the implication that to do either of these properly, was in effect to do both. Fortunately for the world in general and the church in particular, the ability to do them is not dependent on either moral character or IQ. What they were told to do was to do these things in the name of Christ, and not by their own wisdom and power.
This should be a great comfort to us. Why? Because we are called as well -- called to do many of the same sorts of things – and I don’t know how you feel about your own skills, but I can, as Buechner put it, ”miss the point” right up there with the best of them.
Most of us are no more capable of performing these miracles alone than were any of the long-ago twelve. I’m comfortable enough with the things I know—I can preach and I can teach, I can comfort, and I can feed the hungry—at least some of them—and I can help to clothe the naked. Those things fit comfortably enough in my world.
But to go further than that requires a ton of grace. It would require that I step aside and trust God to be there to work through me. That must be how the disciples felt when Jesus sent them out to do impossible things.
And they did them. They did impossible things--and more. And with faith and love and trust in God’s word, we could do impossible things, too, if those things were in God’s will for us.
With love and faith and trust in God’s word to us we can speak the truth and comfort the grieving and we can change the world for somebody somewhere. Thanks be to God.
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