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The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
"Jesus' Ministry; Our Ministry"
The Rev. Stephen Elkins-Williams
Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every infirmity.
This first sentence of today’s Gospel reading is Matthew’s summary statement about Jesus’ identity and ministry. Since we have inherited that ministry, it is a key sentence for us as the Church in understanding who we are and what we are to be about. Let us look closely then, at what Matthew is trying to tell us.
“Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every infirmity.” To understand this summary, which occurs toward the end of the ninth chapter, we need to realize that in the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters(known as the Sermon on the Mount), Matthew portrays Jesus as a teacher – the new Moses on the new Sinai bringing the new teaching (e.g. the Beatitudes, being salt and light for the world, etc). In the eighth and ninth chapters, Matthew groups all of his stories about Jesus as a healer, who delivered people from whatever was hindering them: leprosy, paralysis, fever, blindness, hemorrhages, demons, even death itself.
Then in this opening sentence of today’s Gospel passage, finishing up the ninth chapter, Matthew sums up what Jesus did: he taught the people and healed them. The reason he spent his few years of public life doing this is because of the people’s great need and his great love for them. Matthew goes on to explain, “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus loved the people and felt deeply their need for teaching and for deliverance from various burdens; so he poured himself out for them, providing that instruction and that healing. But he knew that one shepherd cannot do it all; so according to Matthew, Jesus went on to commission the twelve apostles, who are listed by name, to teach and heal as well. Because of the people’s need and his love for them, Jesus entrusted his ministry to others.
Interestingly, in Mark's Gospel, that same sentence about Jesus’ compassion for those who were “like sheep without a shepherd” leads, not to the commissioning of the twelve, but to the feeding of the five thousand. According to Mark, Jesus’ compassion for the people resulted in his teaching them and nourishing them with bread. Matthew, however, intentionally used that same image to introduce a result with a notable difference: because of his compassion for the harassed and the helpless, Jesus sent out the twelve apostles to do what he was doing, i.e. to teach and to heal. They were, in Matthew’s words, “to heal every disease and every infirmity ... and [to] preach... saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” In other words the ministry of the twelve, our ancestors in the faith, because of Jesus’ love and compassion, was to be the same as Jesus' ministry.
Our ministry then, as the Church, is to carry on Jesus’ ministry. We are, out of our compassion for others and our obedience to Jesus’ mandate, to help deliver others from whatever hinders them, and to preach that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Those two tasks are closely linked together; in fact they are two different aspects of the same thing. We are to tell in words of the reality, the immediacy, of God’s kingdom; and we are to show others that reality in deeds that free them from their chains, that they might experience for themselves that kingdom.
To say it another way: we as the Church are to hand on the story of God’s covenant with us, about which we heard in the Old Testament lesson (“You shall be my own possession...”), and of God’s demonstrated love for us, about which we heard in the Epistle (“God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.”); and we are also to live out that love for others, that they might find God in being freed from sin and selfishness, from loneliness, from hunger and poverty, from addiction, from prejudice, from discrimination, from despair.
To grasp that mission, and to see that as baptized Christians we have inherited the ministry of Jesus, is most important. If we do not, church simply becomes for us another social group, where we go to meet our needs, where we meet friends or make connections or perhaps find a quiet moment. But much more than that, church for us is to be the place where we ourselves hear the kingdom of heaven proclaimed and experience deliverance, and where we are strengthened to tell others of that kingdom both in words and in deeds that help them to find freedom and life.
In all of this there is an urgency, an immediacy – “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” It is here, now. Not far off someplace. Not coming later on in my life -- not after I graduate, not when I finish my dissertation, not once I get my promotion, not when my children are grown, not after I retire, not only when I “get to the other side.” “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” at whatever point I am in my life.
That is why at the Chapel of the Cross we put so much effort into having liturgies where people can find and be found by God and can hear God’s word preached and be healed. That is why we work at practicing hospitality –welcoming the stranger and involving the newcomer. That is why we offer Christian Education opportunities for all ages. That is why we help people build houses and volunteer at the community shelter and kitchen and resettle refugees and organize and support mission trips.
That is why ministry on the campus is such an important part of this parish’s life. That is why we open our buildings every day for the student to study and the passer-by to pray in the chapel or on our grounds. That is why we begin new congregations and involve ourselves fully in the diocese. That is why we underwrite the cost of using our facilities for groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and English as a Second Language and the Preschool and IFC training sessions. That is why we plan for the future and take care of our facilities and support our budgets and build up our endowments, so that as a parish we can better carry out Jesus’ ministry as it has been given to us, now and in generations to come.
Matthew’s account of the activity of Jesus and his sending out of the twelve apostles is not just an interesting story that happened once long ago. Rather it communicates to us the reality of our own present call to carry on Jesus’ ministry. As individuals and as this small part of the Church, we are to have compassion on the crowds. We are to teach them and to deliver them from their infirmities. We are to care for them and bring them Good News. Through us they are to know that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Exodus 19:2-8a
Romans 5:1-8
Matthew 9:35-10:8
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