Pentecost 3

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Pentecost 3
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: June 13,1999

TEXT: Matthew 9:35-10:15 - When he (Jesus) 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 laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over the unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.

ISSUE: The passage from Matthew today gives us a real glimpse of the work of the very early community of Jesus, that becomes known as the church. What Jesus saw was so many people like sheep without a shepherd. This was a very large community of disenfranchised people, in a time of rampant disease and disability. Jesus calls together a community of people with compassion to join him in ministry. Our world may well be very different from Jesus', but there is as great a need for compassion and the gospel of love as ever.
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Today's reading from Matthew gives us a good picture of what the very early Christian community was like, how it began its ministry, and what it's purpose and task was. The picture that we have of that early community is given to us through the eyes of Matthew who was writting some 50 years (@80A.D.) after the crucifixion of Jesus. Thus, Matthew was writing and may well have experienced the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalmen by the Romans. This fact would enhance his concern for the great distress of the Jewish people of the time, and influence his writing.
The passage today tells of Jesus going from town to town proclaiming the good news of the kingdom or Empire of God and healing diseases and sickness. Jesus saw that they were greatly harassed and were like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus then selects a band of disciples and forms a faction with a specific purpose. The disciples are listed by name, and there are twelve of them, although there is every indication that Jesus really had more than twelve, but that there were that close inner group. Twelve disciples had special meaning in that they were thought to be respresentative of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, and Matthew's gospel account is largely directed to a Jewish community. In any event these disciples were authorized to do what Jesus himself had been doing. They were to preach good news of the kingdom, and have a healing ministry. Remember that his band of followers is made up of common fishermen, poor people, and a tax collector thrown in, and you know what tax collectors were considered to be from last week.
One of the peculiar aspects of this reading is that the disciples were instructed to go only to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel." This phrase may be an indication that Jesus' early conception of his calling was to the Jewish community alone. It could be that through his own eventual association with Gentiles and Samaritans that he changed and expanded his ministry. It could also be that this early calling and commissioning of the disciples was a training period that was limited to Jewish territory. It's only a peculiarity that I am pointing out, but be clear that the work of the church greatly expanded as St. Paul himself saw himself as missionary or apostle to the Gentile.
The disciples who are sent out are to be totally dependent upon hospitality of the community they visit. In this time travelers were commonly taken in and hospitality extended to them. The disciples are really quite vulnerable as they go taking no money or excess clothing. One tunic was considered quite enough. Tunics incidentally were for carrying supplies of food in the upper pockets. They were protection against the elements and also served as a sleeping bag. But the disciples were largely dependent upon the hosptality of the villages they visited and were to do their work. They were to do their work or to give away the message and healing without pay, just as the message and the healing had been given to them without cost. It was an issue of grace. Grace was given to them by God, undeserved love and assurance of the Kingdom of God was freely given. They were in their ministries an extention of the graciousness of God.
If you were received into a community, and were given appropriate hospitality you did you work of proclamation and healing. I f you were not treated in a hospitable way, you simply shook the dust off of your feet and moved on. Shaking the dust off of your feet was a symbol to these people of having been in impure territory. You left judgment to God.
This passage is essentially about the great compassion of Jesus for a people who had no shepherd, no leader, no guide, no well being or direction. And Jesus forms a community to begin a ministry to go to the lost. It is a very peripapetic community. They walk everywhere and they live with the lost sheep of the house of Israel without much gear, money, and they reside with them and have an intimate relationship with them. All in all these very early disciples were at the mercy of God. They were people who had great trust that God would be with them, and be their guide.
What drives Jesus to such compassion that his life is given to this way. And he calls others to join him because the harvest of lost sheep of Israel is apparently quite significant.
In this period people did not live very long. At the age of 33 or so Jesus was really quite old, and his followers were probably mostly much younger than he. People died young. They suffered from diseases, and mostly from malnutrition. Diseases were caused by lack of sanitation and improper food preparation. Dental care was all but non-existent. Flies were a leading cause of blindness which was a serious problem. We can guess that limited pre-natal was the cause of many of the problems of children, which also may have contributed to deafness, blindness, and other diseases. Leprosy in the Bible is not the kind of Leprosy that we know of as Hansen's disease. Leprosy in the Bible was any kind of skin disorder and scaliness wherein there might be some leaking though of body fluid. Mental disorders, retardation, epilepsy, etc., were usually viewed a demon possession in these days. Illnesses and disease, physical handicaps must have been rampant, and they sometimes considered to be the result of punishment from God. They were dishonorable. Whether punishment or not they were viewed as shameful, polluting, and were a sign of impurity.
From a more social, political, and economic point of view. The large majority of people of the time were economically poor. Many had lost their land, or had it taken from them. Thus, the resorted to tax collection, prostitution, and other disreputable and impure vocations. Barely ten percent of the people could read or write. Life was very hard. The first of the Beatitudes of Jesus are blessed are the poor, because there were so many, and blessed are they that mourn. In this kind of society there was great loss and considerable mourning everywhere. These were a conquered people, and by the time Matthew is writing there is no leadership or direction for the lost sheep of Israel who are like sheep without a shepherd. The people of this kind of world had to be very depressed, very vulnerable to sickness and death, a people without much hope or meaning in their lives.
Thus out of great sensitivity and compassion, the ministry of Jesus takes shape to heal, to reclaim, to liberate these people who were in this lost, least, and last in this kind of predicament. The ministry begins with Jesus entering into that world with great compassion. He brings a reassurance that these people are God's people, and they belong to his Empire, which is very different from the conquering Roman Empire. In the Empire of God they are God's children and brothers and sisters. This Empire is not an Empire of shame. There are no impure people. They are no outcasts, nor marginalized, and no disenfranchised people. They are brothers and sisters of one another. There is no shaming or shunning. This is not the understanding that the world has of Empires. Jesus proclaims another Empire that does not come from this world; it is the Empire founded in the love of God.
To understand healing in Jesus' time it is important to understand that they did not know about viruses, germs, and bacteria. Healing was not a matter of cure as we understand it as it was restoration to community and sense of worth. To be forgiven, to be accepted into the community was what was important. In the Gospel of John 5:2, there is the story of the sick man at the healing pool, but the the sick man has no one to put him into the healing water. The sickness is not nearly the problem for the man as is the fact that he has no one. Being accepted and have people, friends who care, love, forgive, accept is the great healing of this time. To allow people to know that inspite of their sickness, they are loved and worthy was great healing power for this period.
In this passage there is surely considerable compassion for Jesus, and his called disciples to bring restoration, healing, comfort, love, forgiveness, to this mourning, hurting, painful, death ridden world. New dignity was brought to the human condition, and all were restored to dignity in the Empire of God. Healing, love, compassion, mercy, senstitivity, understanding, forgiveness: these were all the ingredients and the way of the Empire of God. For that reason it was good news. And there was on the part of Jesus and to those who responded to him great urgency to get going with the harvest where the laborers were few.
Today's world is somewhat different, although not completely in some ways. We have an understanding of health issues. And many people find cures for their ailments. We know about the importance of sanitation and cleanliness, and many of the childhood diseases that wiped out masses of children and people have been conquered. But still the ailments of loneliness, and alienation persist. The sad ailments of prejudice, assuming we or certain races and countries are better than others and not seeing all of us as brothers and sisters of God still persists. We sometimes find ourselves uncomfortable around the troubled and the upset. The church as a community of concerned disciples for the afflicted and disenfranchised has been somewhat replaced by individuals who look for a place of personal solace and escape from the world. Our sense of mission is often flimsy, short-sighted, scattered, and meagre at best. That early Christian urgency, vitality, and daring is not always what we see in Christian church of today.
This is not a peripatetic world; we drive everywhere, which is actually isolating. We move away from the bad neighborhoods into the suburbs, and isolate ourselves again. Yet around us is human need. Elderly and institutionalized people are often very alone. We find ourselves keeping our distance from the strange, the retarded, the not so emotionally stable. We all know those kinds of uncomfortableness, and our feelings of inadequacy.
Yet, Christ came with great compassion and sensitivity, and called a whole band of totally unskilled people who put their faith and confidence in God. I suppose they knew in their own hearts just how lonely they themselves sometimes felt, and how broken they were at times, and knew deep within thier own shortcomings, failures, pains. Yet through Christ Jesus they were touched, and they dared at his command to persevere. In fact who better can heal the sick, and tell the goodnews better than those who have themselves been sick and broken, and who know the healing love of God through the grace given to them by other caring people and through the message of Christ.
Drop the baggage of excuses and all the things we think we have to have and carry with us. We have received so much through the grace of God without payment. May we give in without payment.