The passage of Matthew’s we have just heard is generally seen as a sort of “turning point” in the Gospel. Until then, Jesus has done all the teaching and all the preaching and all the healing, but now he sends the disciples on a mission to do all these things. You may actually notice a change in vocabulary from verse 10:1 to 10:2. The disciples (“The students”) become “The Apostles”, which literally means: “The sent ones”. And people at Jesus’s time would have known that it was not random that there are 12 Apostles: They represent the 12 tribes of Israel. According to this symbolism, the mission was clear: they were to be the new Israel. That’s also what Jesus means when he says he does not send them to the Gentiles (= the pagans). It’s not a nice way to make their job easier, it means that they have to focus on Israel because they are supposed to restore Israel!
So it’s a bit daunting, of course. One commentator has a nice way to put it. He says:Until now, Jesus has been doing all the driving, now it’s their turn to take the wheel. I really like this image. I don’t know how it was for you the first time you had to take the wheel, but if it is generally exciting, I think it is also intimidating and even a little overwhelming. I remember thinking: I will never be able to think of all those things at the same time! Well, in the same way, we can certainly feel a little overwhelmed when we hear Jesus’s instructions to the Apostles: “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons“, and then, as it wasn’t enough, Jesus tells them to do it all without asking for anything in return and also to go to everyone relying on their hospitality only, even if there are dangerous people: Be wise and yet accept to be vulnerable in the meantime, you will certainly be persecuted, tortured, betrayed, hated and even put to death anyway. So it’s an all other level! It is so difficult to hear that our lectionary offers two options for this Sunday: We could choose to read this passage of the Gospel in its entirety as we have done, or we could have read only up to verse 8, after Jesus asks the Apostles to proclaim the kingdom of God and then cut out all of the difficult stuff that follows. Yet, this very verse helps us also to understand the difficult stuff that comes after: It’s all about proclaiming the kingdom. The raising of the dead as well as enduring the persecutions are a consequence of the Apostles’ proclaiming, but it isn’t their doing per se, notice that the healing is never separated from the preaching and the teaching, which means: It is God’s word that brings wholeness of spirit, body and heart as well as rejection and opposition. The attitude of the Apostles is one of openness, availability, and yes even wise vulnerability, so God can do the work: Jesus actually promises the Apostles that the Spirit will speak through them
So, before we get overwhelmed by all what we should be doing (and aren’t doing) when we compare ourselves to the Apostles (as we certainly don’t fail to do!), the first thing we need to realize is this emphasis Jesus puts on openness, availability and (wise) vulnerability: openness, availability and (wise) vulnerability to others, Jesus sends the Apostles to all in Israel, but even more it’s about openness, availability and (wise) vulnerability to God. There are no good excuses to not let God use us, even if you are in your nineties, as Abraham and Sarah learn in our first reading. Whatever our age or our condition, God is capable of making us fruitful, not necessarily to do all the things we ever dreamt of, rather God makes us fruitful to renew God’s people, if we let God. Jesus observes: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few“
Now we often misunderstand the metaphor: we think that Jesus means that there are a lot of people to “ripe” for the Kingdom of God, which for us often translates like that: There are a lot of people who should go to church but there are not so many Christians willing to go bring them. Well, this is certainly not wrong. Yet more deeply I think we need to understand the image of the harvest as what feeds people: The harvest is all the good things God wants to give to God’s people, we talked about God’s goodness, it’s like God’s heart is this barn overflowing with the wheat to be given away to people who are starving for the bread of heaven, that is the knowledge and the love of God. I think it would change a lot our way of understanding what mission is really about if we could only see ourselves as canals for God to feed spiritually God’s people, to pour out God’s grace, rather than thinking we have an obligation to “bring people to church”or to “convince them of the truth of our religion”. Young, old, sick or in good health, we all have this opportunity to touch other people’s lives and to bring God’s goodness to them. Moreover, it’s something we are all capable of, because it is God’s doing and not our doing. To continue with our first metaphor, I am not sure we do the driving, it’s more like a spiritual cruise control: we have to be at the wheel, we’re not passive in the driver’s seat, but there is a force that moves us that is not our doing. Jesus asks his Apostles to rely only on God as they do their mission, they have to offer themselves to God as they give the gift of their presence to others. Jesus sends them to be with the “lost sheep”. Now that’s another metaphor we usually don‘t understand that well. When people are lost, it’s not so much that they are sinful, lost means lost: alone, not with the rest of the flock, unseen, unloved, un–taken care of.
And so, as we move from bottom to top in this passage of the Gospel, what Matthew tells us first is that, before Jesus sends the Apostles, Jesus sees the people and see their needs. The original text of the Gospel reads something like: Jesus looked at them with “furious compassion” because they were “harassed and exhausted”. Jesus sees the crowd’s anxiety and their pain, and so we understand that, in Matthew’s mind, this is this way of looking at people that’s the origin of all ministry. Again it’s not first about converting people so they stop doing bad things, so they can actually behave and learn to obey the truth, rather mission is born from a desire to comfort, heal and light the path. It’s a desire to give good things, and this is certainly what we can see in our first lesson: God gives a son to Abraham, the promise of an offspring, and in doing so God brings joy, laughter and delight, this is more specifically what we learn today when we hear God make the promise to Sarah. I guess in our world we could all use more joy, delight and laughter, the reading shows us that they also can be holy. At the beginning Sarah laughs because she is incredulous, and yes there is this kind of laughter that is born of disbelief and sometimes cynicism when we have been too often disappointed, but there is also the laughter of joy and delight at God’s goodness. Sarah names the boy “Isaac”, which means he will laugh. (He will laugh = The one who will hear Sarah’s story). Sarah reckons that God has good surprises for us, God has a future for us, brings forth new life – no matters how we feel about ourselves.
And so there is even more to that: Not only does God acts with goodness towards us because God has compassion, but it’s also and mainly because God trusts us. Jesus sends the Apostles on the mission because he feels for the crowds but also because he believes the Apostles are able. God does not look at Abraham and Sarah as if they were “good as dead”, as Paul puts it in the Letter to the Romans (see last week). Rather God sees all the possibilities in them: for life, for faith, for joy. We often says that Abraham is the father of the people of faith, but the story of Sarah completes it nicely in showing us that they are also the people in whom God has faith, in whom God believes. Jesus has pity on people yes, but it’s not just that. He also sees all the things they are capable of with God’s grace. As we come forward today to receive the laying on of hands for healing, may we have this awareness that if God sees our pain, anxiety and limitations, God sees even beyond that all our possibilities and the good things that are to come.