An Uncomfortable Truth

 March 5 2023

Matthew 10:1-15

         Today we are beginning the second week of the season that the church traditionally calls Lent. The name comes from the fact that during this time the length of the days is getting continually longer. Lent then is just a shortened version of length. The season of Lent is a forty day period beginning with Ash Wednesday, which was February 22, and ending the Saturday before Easter. During this time in the ancient church those who desired to be baptized in the faith would go through a time of fasting and instruction about this faith that they were going to enter into. It was a very serious decision because for most of the church’s history declaring one’s faith in Jesus Christ meant almost certain hardship, persecution and even death. Thus is the necessity for taking forty days to consider deeply about the gravity of what a decision for Christ meant.

         For me personally, I have always enjoyed this season. As I thought about just why Lent would hold such a special place in my heart, I concluded that it was during this season that the church and its members seemed to wake up and come to life, much like what was happening in the season of spring which occurred at the same time. I mean, after Christmas it seemed like the church didn’t seem to be doing much but then came Ash Wednesday and here we were at church in the middle of the week getting our foreheads smeared with what might as well have been dirt. Such began the season of Lent and all of a sudden there were more out of the ordinary happenings like a Bible study before school. The pastor I only saw on Sunday was suddenly there on Wednesday morning with a box of doughnuts and study books. During this season there was always a sense of urgency, an expectation that we had to get ready for Holy Week. People would consider just what they were going to give up because fasting was and is an important part of the Lenten season. So, do you see, how it is easy to see that just like the world comes back to life during the spring season so also the church begins to show signs of life, a taking on of new things to learn and a giving up of what needs to be let go of.

         As we enter this season of Lent, we are going to continue to journey with Jesus as he travels ever closer to Jerusalem. As he travels, he stops occasionally to speak intently to his disciples. There are five such discourses found throughout the gospel of Matthew. The first of these is the Sermon on the Mount which we have previously covered. So now we are going to see just what happened after Jesus gave his disciples the core teachings of what life in his kingdom is all about. It is important for us to know that once the disciples had been given these teachings they did not stay there upon the mountainside but instead they travelled down into the valleys where these teachings would become for them a way of life.

         Nowhere do we see how these teachings became a way of life than in this second discourse that Jesus gives to his disciples. As this tenth chapter of Matthew begins, Jesus calls to him his twelve disciples. What will soon become evident is that this calling of these disciples is a response to what has been previously recorded at the end of the ninth chapter where, in the thirty-fifth through the thirty-eighth verses, we learn that, “Jesus went throughout all of the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them for 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 pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”. There are few things about what Jesus has said here that we must dig a little deeper into. The first is that when Jesus speaks about the people of Israel being like sheep without a shepherd, this is almost a direct quote from the twenty-seventh chapter of the book of Numbers where Moses selects Joshua to be his successor. In the fifteenth verse of this chapter, Moses speaks to God and asks him. To, “appoint a man over the congregation who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord may not be as sheep that have no shepherd.”. So, Jesus is here connecting himself with the Joshua who came before him. Like the Joshua before him, Jesus would be the one who would lead his people into the life that God had promised to them. Secondly, the reason that such a shepherd was needed was that the sheep were harassed and helpless, at least this is how it is translated. A better description is that the sheep were being attacked as well as being scattered. This is how, I believe we must understand what Jesus is saying here if we are to understand his reference to his disciples that they be on guard from the wolves which such actions suggest. A third point of what Jesus says here in the ninth chapter which bears directly on what happens in the tenth chapter is that he laments that there is such a huge harvest and there are so few workers to bring the harvest home. Jesus asks his disciples to pray for the Lord of the harvests to send out laborers onto his harvest, so we might suppose that these twelve that Jesus selects are not only the result of this prayer but that most likely these very same men might well have been those who had prayed this prayer. It only makes sense that Jesus would select only those whose heart shared his sorrow and concern over the lack of laborers.

         With all of that in mind, then, we take a look at the beginning verses of the tenth chapter. Here we find Jesus calling to himself his twelve disciples, those who were the very answer to the prayer of Jesus. Jesus gives these twelve the authority to do everything that he had previously been doing himself. Through his giving them his authority now these twelve would be able to cast out unclean spirits, and heal every disease and affliction exactly just like Jesus had been doing. So, when we hear that they are called apostles, or sent ones, we must understand that they are not merely being sent out but this term, “apostle”, also means that they go out as ones invested with the same power and authority as Jesus himself. 

         So before Jesus sends his laborers out, he speaks to them about the what and the why of all that they would be doing. The very first thing that Jesus tells them is that they are to go out to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and not to the Samaritans or the people of the nations, and we might just wonder why this is so. The reason, I believe, is found in what they were to proclaim as they went, that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. What does this mean exactly that the kingdom of heaven is at hand? I believe that the apostles knew that the kingdom of heaven was ready to enter upon the scene because this kingdom is what they had learned about during their time with Jesus up there on the mountain side. Jesus had taught them his core teachings, the very teachings that flowed out of the prayer that cryed out for our Father’s kingdom to come, his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Yet even so, we have to wonder why Jesus insisted that his apostles go only to the house of Israel? The answer, I believe, is that it was the people of Israel who had a long history with God unlike any other nation on earth. They alone had experienced the faithfulness of God, how he made promises which could be counted on to be fulfilled. They had benefited from this loyal love of their God who had continued with them no matter what. It was this long history that Israel had with God that had even shown up in the teaching of Jesus up their on the mountain. You see, when Jesus told his disciples that their Heavenly Father makes his sun rise on the evil and the good and that he makes the rain fall on the just and the unjust, Jesus is here referring to the very truth found within the life of the people of Israel. No other nation could even define what is meant by evil or good because good describes only God and evil is that which stands opposed to God and his goodness. So, apart from a relationship with God one could not even know what is good or what is evil. Only the people of Israel could know what is meant by the word, “just’, that it means to live righteously, a way of living that had come down to God’s people from heaven through their being in a relationship with him. This then, is what the people of Israel had experienced and recorded for thousands of years. Through the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, the people of Israel had a God given means which instructed them in the righteous way of living, a way of life that could lead a person to be called a just person. Through living in a God given way the people of Israel could also be considered by God to be good.

         The history of the people of Israel though was about more than being people who diligently did the Law given to them by God, it was also a history of these same people who failed miserably to abide by the righteous lifestyle prescribed by God. Instead of being the good and righteous people they were also known as being unjust and evil. Now, the people of Israel were a people who thought of love as being a transaction whereby if a person did something nice for someone else, that other person could be expected to turn and do something nice right back at them. So the way that they viewed the Law was that if they could perfectly do all the God commanded them they would experience his blessing and if they failed to do all that God commanded them they could expect to be cursed. This mindset is what was carried over from their years of idol worship because this is how idols were worshipped, in a very transactional way. What God did was to use this very way of thinking to reveal to his people what it was that made him holy, wholly different from anyone they had ever known. Israel did fail to do all that God commanded, in fact, they ended up doing just the opposite of what God desired. According to the contract they had made with God, the people of Israel knew that they were cursed. What they deserved is to be sent into exile at the hand of the Babylonians. They were to be taken far from the home God had given to them. They also expected that the God who called them his own had also left them, after all, this is what they deserved. Or so they thought, because there, far away from home, in the pits of Babylon, they found that God had not left them at all, no, he was, in fact, still with them. What the people of Israel were to discover there, far from home, is that their God was different than any idol they had ever known. In spite of failing to hold up their end of the bargain, their God remained loyal and faithful. So, whether they could say that they were evil or good, God still made the sun shine on them. No matter if they were found to be people who were just or whether they were found to be unjust people, God still made it rain upon them. What the people of Israel were to learn is that there was a love beyond the Law, a love which loved beyond the expectations that God had for them. Such a love that God had for them meant that what was most important was not the fulfillment of what was expected but the forgiveness when there was a failure to remain true to what God had asked of them.

         So, this is Israel’s story. No other people, neither the Samaritans nor any people of the nations, had such an experience with God. Only Israel could say that they had a first-hand experience with this holy love of God. And this knowledge of the holy love was also Israel’s biggest problem because if God had loved them with such holy love, a love that loved them for who they were and not for their abilities to fulfill God’s expectations, then this could only mean that the people of Israel must return this love back to God and give such love to those around them. You see, this is, at its most basic form, what the kingdom of God is referring to, a world where people are constrained and compelled by the holy love that God had first shown to us. This holy love of God is a truth that the people of Israel had come to through their dealings with God yet such a revelation was a very uncomfortable truth. Such a truth meant the people of God could no longer treat God as they would any run-of-the-mill idol, believing that if they held up their end of the bargain then God would bless them with whatever they desired. Such an uncomfortable truth also meant that the people of Israel had to love the people around them with this same holy love with which God loved them which meant that if God had loved them when they were his enemies then they too had to do the same to their enemies. Are you beginning to see how very uncomfortable this truth can be? This is the truth that the people of Israel would have rather have just ignored, going about their business as if they were a people like every other people. But they were not a people like any other people because they were a people who had a history with the one, true living, God. 

         So, when Jesus instructed his disciples to go out and declare that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, he was in effect telling them that now was the time for the holy love of God be what ruled the relationships in a person’s life. This is a kingdom of heaven because it is a kingdom which is anchored in the holiness, the wholly otherness of the God who resides in heaven. Just so people might know that heaven has come near, Jesus instructs his disciples that they were to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers of their skin disease and cast out demons. Such acts would declare that the power and life of heaven had invaded into our world so that no more could such a life, lived with such a power, be ignored. Now was the time when the truth of the holy love of our heavenly God had to be acted upon.

         Jesus then gave his disciples some unusual instructions, telling them that as they had as they had freely received they were to freely give. This again spoke to what they were to treasure, not earthly treasures, but instead the treasure they had in heaven, their Heavenly Father. They were then told that they were to acquire no gold, no silver or copper for their belts, no bag for their journey, neither were they to take two coats with them. They were also to take no sandals nor any staff trusting that if they worked for their Heavenly Father they could count on him to take care of them. What is also interesting is that it was commonly understood that when the people of Israel entered the Temple they were to not take with them their wallet and they were to enter without their sandals. In these instructions from Jesus it seems as if he is saying that wherever they go, the ground they are walking on is holy ground. The Temple was thought of as the place where heaven and earth connect, but as the disciples went forth and brought down the very life and power of heaven, wherever they were, this could be said to be the Temple of God, a place where earth and heaven had obviously connected. It is this understanding that heaven was connecting with earth, just as it was thought of to do in the Temple, this is what is behind another strange teaching of Jesus to his disciples. The disciples were told that upon entering a town or village they were to find a person who was worthy in it and they were to stay there until they moved on. This is a rather strange requirement, isn’t it, to search for a person who is worthy to receive the message that the disciples carried with them. This same thoughts of worthiness are found again as the disciples enter the house, and greet those in it, and if the house is found to be worthy, then they were to let their peace come upon that house. What is this worthiness that Jesus speaks about? I believe that this worthiness is a person who is humble, for God gives the gift of his kingdom only to those who come with empty hands to receive it. And when they do receive this gift of his kingdom there again heaven and earth connect as people draw near to God. This is why people are willing to live with the uncomfortable truth of God’s holy love because only this love carries with it the wonderful promise of communion with God. So, in this time of Lent, what will you do with the uncomfortable truth of God’s holy love? Are you willing to receive the message of his kingdom once again and allow the holy love of God to be what is found in all of your relationships? Amen!