Jesus' ministry and mission was shifting into high gear. Matthew reports that Jesus had gone about all the cities and villages teaching in their synagogues. But he had not just been preaching the gospel of the kingdom (Matthew 9:35a). It seems that Jesus had compassion on the crowd because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd (Matthew 9:36). Matthew reports that Jesus cured every disease and sickness he encountered (Matthew 9:35b).
Our Lord was clearly trying to make a point about his own mission and that of his followers with these deeds. He called the disciples together after claiming that he needed laborers to bring about a harvest he had planned (Matthew 9:37-38). And then Jesus gave the twelve "authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and sickness" (Matthew 10:1). He did not say a word about preaching and saving souls at this point.
Similar emphases are apparent in what follows in chapter 10. Jesus gives more instructions, and again the focus is caring for those in need. He does get around to telling the disciples to preach the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near. But they are to "cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers" (Matthew 10:7b-8). This is the essence of mission, and at least in these verses, Jesus wants it done close to home, not to be targeting Gentiles or even those half-breed Samaritans, but only for the "lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matthew 10:6).
What is the point of this story? New Testament scholarship has discerned that the context of Matthew's gospel is the experience of persecution, and that such persecution is a sign of the end which is not far away (Matthew 10:23, 7). One of Matthew's main concerns, it has been noted, is that because the earthly Christ and the heavenly Christ are one, time is blurred with the approaching end of the world.1 As a result, it follows that what Matthew reports is intended to paint a picture of our day. Jesus' word in the gospel was addressed to Matthew's contemporaries long after the resurrection, just as it is addressed to us. "Expect persecution," Matthew's version of Jesus says. "It won't be so easy carrying out the mission I have for you. But it is urgent! Don't dawdle, for the end of all time is coming." Mission is a challenge, but let's get to it, church. It's urgent!
The church, if it is to be the church, must be all about mission. Perhaps the greatest, most famous Christian theologian of the last century, a Swiss Reformed Christian named Karl Barth, has written: "The church is either a missionary church or it is no church at all."2
Granted, mission is important. But what is it? The first reaction of most Christians is to think in terms of foreign missions. Mission involves evangelism. It is interesting that the most popular presentations of the faith today also tend to perpetuate this understanding. Best-selling author and megachurch pastor, Rick Warren, sees mission mostly in this way.3 Though to his credit of late, he has begun to immerse himself in a mission to help in the struggle against the AIDS Crisis in Africa, in his best-selling book on purpose-driven living. Warren never expressly talks about mission to the poor, sick, and oppressed that Jesus urges here.4 That is a very problematic omission given the great impact his book has had and is still having on Christians.
Today's gospel lesson account corrects this view of mission so prevalent in many parts of the church. Mission is not about traipsing off to foreign lands. Start "where you're at" is a core message. That's why Matthew has Jesus instruct the twelve to "Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but [to] go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (10:5-6). Of course, Jesus did not preclude a witness to the Gentiles. He sees it happening in the course of the mission to the Hebrews (Matthew 10:18). We may learn from Jesus' instruction in our gospel that mission happens right here in our community, that when missionary activity brings us to foreign shores it needs to happen as an outgrowth of what is happening right here. The real missionaries are not just those in Africa, Asia, and South America. You and I are missionaries right here in this community when we are doing mission as Jesus wants it done!
The gospel lesson for today also makes it clear that mission is not just preaching. Remember the points I was making as I told you the story again. Very little of Jesus' instructions were about preaching and evangelism. The special bias that God has for the poor and hurting is obvious in Jesus' instructions.
Jim Wallis, a well-known Evangelical political activist, wrote a best-selling book titled God's Politics, which pointed out that there are several thousand verses of the Bible which deal with the poor and God's response to injustice. One of every sixteen verses in the New Testament, he contended, is about the poor.5 In view of the weight that the Bible gives this theme, I wonder why we don't have more focus on addressing poverty in American Christianity. I wonder why more talk about this mission is not incorporated in discussions of our purpose. A little of it has to do with the fact that significant segments of American Christianity have gotten more concerned about abortion and homosexuality than with poverty and justice. We have also become more preoccupied with wealth (with attaining prosperity) than with poverty.
Jesus' words in our lesson even provide us with clear and unambiguous evidence for why Christian mission must include, indeed must prioritize, concern for the poor and outcast, why that mission is so wonderful. In chapter 10, verse 8, after urging the twelve to "Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons," Jesus talks about giving away freely to those in need just as the disciples "received without payment." Get the point? Since all that you and I have is given freely by God, it is just logical to engage in a lifestyle of giving away what was never ours. The love of God begets love. How can you and I be stingy with it since God is so generous?
I love the way that the ancient Christian theologian from Africa, Saint Augustine, once put it. In his view, life is best seen as a wayside inn. Christians are people who are then never captive to money and the world, because like travelers in an inn use tables, cups, and couches for the purpose of not remaining but of leaving them behind, that is the way we are to regard money and other things of the world.6
The spiritual father of the Methodist church made an observation in the same sprit in the eighteenth century, one which perhaps better addresses the spirit of modern capitalism. About money, he wrote, "Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can."7
If Christian mission were a matter of something you and I had to do, it wouldn't get done. One of the reason we have so few takers is because we are not making it clear that this is not our work. John Calvin, the Reformer of sixteenth-century Geneva, Switzerland, offered a penetrating observation in response to Jesus' remarks about the disciples receiving freely in order to give freely (Matthew 10:6). He eloquently described the dynamics which make it so difficult to try to alleviate poverty as a mission of Christ.
We know how unwilling every man is to communicate to others what he considers to belong to himself, and how any one who excels the rest of the brethren is apt to despise them all.8
Do you get the point? You and I do not want to see what we have as belonging to God, as belonging to the hotel in which we are staying. What I have is mine! And since you and I have more than the poor, there is a subtle despising and patronizing we feel toward them, even as we undertake or contribute to some project on their behalf. That's what "charity" is; it is not mission. Charity is selfish love. It is selfish because it is giving to the poor on our own terms, giving them what you and I think is really ours.
John Calvin's observations are right in line with the insights of a twenty-first-century French scholar, Alain de Botton. He has done of nice job explaining how contemporary society impedes our generosity. Botton points out how we are driven to succeed in order to attain status in society. We are likely to have anxiety if we do not conform to the ideals of success laid down by society.9 In our context, where the accumulation of money counts for so much, there are all kinds of reasons not to give the impoverished and others in need too much. Not only will it result in less wealth, but the less wealthy I am, the less successful I will seem to be or feel.
How can we get out of this mess? Botton contends that because self-esteem is a matter of both success and pretensions (or expectations), what needs to happen when you experience status anxiety is to change your expectations. In this instance, we need to challenge our society's expectations that you really are not somebody unless you have a fortune. Personally, though, I do not think that you and I have enough gumption on our own to make that happen.
The good news this morning, and every morning, is that we Christians have been changed, have a different set of expectations which allow us to challenge society's expectations of us. It's like our second lesson says, "God's love has been poured into our hearts" through the Holy Spirit, given to us in salvation by grace (Romans 5:5). Our gospel lesson implies this point when Jesus says to the disciples that what they have is from him (salvation has been free, by grace [Matthew 10:8]) and that when they face the harshest challenge imaginable, the Holy Spirit will speak for them (Matthew 10:20). You are not the same anymore, not like what society expects. That is why mission comes easy, is a wonderful opportunity. There is a security in the midst of our insecurity, for you know that the work to be done in mission is not yours, but God's. That is a security that makes mission possible. That is the security and confidence everyone needs in order to do mission.
Doing the works of mission is no burden for Christians. Undertaking a mission to the poor and the needy is not a burden for those of us caught up in God's love in Christ and the Holy Spirit. We are no longer burdened by the dynamics John Calvin and Alain de Botton describe, the hesitancy about sharing what we think belongs to us, because now we have in Christ the assurance that we are already valuable. As a result, you and I no longer need all those commodities to prove anything. We no longer even need to do good deeds to prove to ourselves and others that we are religious. Martin Luther put it so well in one of his 1522 sermon series. He wrote:
... If someone desires from me a service I can render him, I will gladly do it out of goodwill ... All our works should be of such a nature that they flow from pleasure and love ... since for ourselves we need nothing to make us pious.10
Think of it, friends. With the gift of salvation by grace, from a God who gives all the goods we could ever want without payment (Matthew 10:8b), you are probably going to forget about yourself. And when that happens, keep in mind how cutting-edge medical science concerning research on the brain has shown that the front part of your brain gets more active when you forget yourself to concentrate on God and projects bigger than you are, and then the neurochemical dopamine (and the natural "highs" it gives) starts getting secreted.11 Get focused on Jesus, be overwhelmed by God's love, when you get inspired by his compelling love to focus on the opportunities for mission right here in our community, out there in the streets, jails, and hospitals, and you will begin to experience for yourself how wonderful and how much fun doing mission is. Amen.
1. Brevard Childs, The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), pp. 65-69.
2. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol. III, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1976), p. 64.
3. Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life: What On Earth Am I Here For? (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2002), pp. 283-288, 300-302.
4. Ibid, pp. 259-260.
5. Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2005), p. 212.
6. Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of St. John (c. 406/421), XL.10, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 7, ed. Philip Schaff (2nd printing; Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), pp. 228-229.
7. John Wesley, The Use of Money (n.d.), L.III.1, in The Works of John Wesley, Vol. 6 (3rd edition; Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1996), p. 133. See the use of this citation by Warren, p. 259.
8. John Calvin, Commentary On a Harmony of The Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke (1555), in Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. XVI.I, trans. William Pringle (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2005), p. 442.
9. Alain de Botton, Status Anxiety (New York: Pantheon Books, 2004), pp. vii-viii, 36-37.
10. Martin Luther, Sermons On the First Epistle of St. Peter (1522), in Luther's Works, Vol. 30, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1967), pp. 78-79.
11. Ibid, see pages 230-231 as well as nn. 7-8 of that sermon for details.