Proper 06, Year A: Matthew 9:35-10:8
Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross
June 14, 2020
Jonathan Hanneman
To watch a video of the sermon, please visit this page (about 17:30 in, in case the link doesn’t drop you in the right place).
“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” – Matthew 9:36
God is not tame. Back in 1950, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe tried to remind a complacent Church of this truth. Hundreds of other prophets have proclaimed it in different ways throughout Western history. The Bible lays the theme bare time and time again. God is not someone or something we can control. God isn’t just some sort of cosmic battery that we can plug ourselves into so we can claim the power to do whatever we want. God is not predictable. God is not like us. God does not do what we expect. God does not pick sides—because God is the only side that really matters.
So why do we work so hard to tame the Bible? Why do we try to bridle and restrain what we Christians refer to as “God’s Word”?
The Gospel is a radical message, and it is not what we so often try to turn it into. It is not necessarily the “good news” we want to hear. It doesn’t sit well trapped behind church walls. It does not inherently approve of our perceptions and presuppositions. The Gospel is not designed to support or bring stability to our version of reality or truth. It’s meant to challenge us, to undermine the perceived authority of the present, and to reshape it into God’s image. It’s an announcement of peace and a battle cry rolled into one: comfort for the oppressed and judgment for those of us reckless enough to think that God is on our side.
The way that the Bible’s authors use it, the word “gospel” is a challenge in and of itself. In New Testament times, a gospel was indeed considered good news—for those with power. It was an official, state-level message heralded throughout the Roman Empire. A gospel normally announced things like the birth or crowning of an emperor’s son or the Empire’s victory in war—events everyone was expected to celebrate, even if they were the ones who just lost the battle and were still burying their dead. Normal people did not go around spreading their own gospel. To do so was seditious and would have been viewed as announcing the overthrow of the governing power and the introduction of a new authority.
So what happened that makes us work so hard to tame the Gospel?
Maybe it’s our church’s roots in the British Establishment, or maybe we just want “the good old days” to look much tidier and cleaner than they ever were, but today’s Gospel has become so sanitized that I doubt Matthew himself would recognize it.
When I think about “sheep without a shepherd,” I imagine an idyllic scene set in the rolling hills of rural England. Predators are a rarity; lambs are jumping about, and the flock spends its day munching an endless sea of thick, nutritious grass. My idea of “harassed and helpless” looks like the few moments when a guard dog runs playfully through their midst, causing the animals to briefly scatter before settling back into the green patchwork landscape dotted with white wool. It’s a bother, and the sheep do get upset for a few moments, but if they could just keep their emotions in check, they’d realize they’re quite safe through it all.
That, however, is not what’s happening in our text.
Matthew is not using tidy language here. This isn’t a pastoral image. The quiet, gentle sheep aren’t avoiding a well-intentioned but frisky guard dog on a picturesque hillside. “Harassed and helpless” are much more visceral and graphic in Greek than in English. Matthew isn’t suggesting weakness or commiseration with someone who’s a little bit flustered. This is the language of slaughter. He’s describing animal sacrifice, an image of Temple priests bleeding out the sheep, flaying them, and tossing their carcasses to char, forgotten and lost, on a crowded altar.
And Jesus isn’t intellectually distant as he sees all this. He doesn’t just “have compassion” on the people like one would with a frightened toddler. Matthew’s words reveal that he’s gutted—his stomach churns and aches for his people as they continue to reel under centuries of abuse. He recognizes what has been and continues to happen to this sea of people. He’s been working night and day, teaching, comforting, and healing as fast as he can, but the work is overwhelming. He’s reached his physical limits, and, in a moment of pain, realizes he can’t keeping doing this alone. I hear him turn to his followers, throw up his hands, squeeze his exhausted, teary eyes shut, and cry in desperation, “Look at all this! Plead with God to somehow send help!”
And as is so often the case, when he takes a moment to breathe and looks up after this desperate prayer, he discovers that God already has. The workers were standing there with him the whole time. Like Moses with the seventy elders of Israel in the wilderness, he simply hadn’t seen it. So he summons the apostles into a huddle, grants them the authority they need to act independently and decisively, and commissions them with the same message he announced at his baptism, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Or as we heard it this past January, at the twilight of our familiar ways of life and the dawning our new world:
“THE REIGN OF THE HEAVENS IS IN OUR HANDS!”[1]
What a message! What a gospel! What a cry of hope for the breathless, the disenfranchised, and what challenge for those of us who “just want to go back to the way things were!”
We are living in amazing days. It may not feel like it, but it is a privilege to be alive right now. God is not tame, and the gospel sounds again with new urgency! God has once again begun to shake the heavens and the earth in ways none of us expected. I look around, and it’s like we’ve re-entered the legendary age of gods and monsters. It’s as if we’ve joined the pages of The Last Battle. Good and evil struggle openly in the streets; light and darkness contend for control of the future. Ancient prophecies are tying together their own loose ends, and a new way of living, a new world, is being born under our feet—although the events so far this year are probably just the contractions! Environmental disasters (remember the Australian brush fires way back in January?), financial collapse and uncertainty, genuine pandemic, and global socio-political upheaval: it’s overwhelming—positively terrifying—to look ahead right now. Everything is unknown, so of course everything is frightening. But at the same time, everything is teeming with unbridled potential.
We are witnessing one of those rare historical convergences the Bible’s authors might call “the fullness of time.” These are days when, perhaps more than at any other point over the past several hundred years, the Church has an opportunity not just to fulfill our baptismal covenant but to see it take root across society at large.
“THE REIGN OF THE HEAVENS IS IN OUR HANDS!”
There is no question as to whether or not change is coming. Change has arrived. “The old things [are passing] away; behold, all things [are becoming] new!”[2] The question is how we, as Christians, will participate in this change. “Will [we] persevere in resisting evil, and whenever we fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?” “Will [we] proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?” “Will [we] seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves?” “Will [we] strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”[3]
At each baptism we respond to these questions with the promise, “[We] will, with God’s help.” Every Easter we proclaim again, “[We] will, with God’s help!” Now is an opportunity to genuinely live into that promise. Now is the time to take steps toward realizing God’s peaceable kingdom. Epic change stands within sight for our Church, our society, and even our planet. We don’t have to wait for God’s help: like God did for Jesus in our Gospel reading, if we’re just willing to look around, God has already extended unexpected help to us. Allies and friends may not be who we thought they were, but they’re all around us! And we don’t have to watch for some future opportunity to do good: Christ has already authorized and sent us, his followers, to tend to the weak, rouse the dying, cleanse impurities, and cast out the cruel, demonic divisions and practices of the past. Right now,
“[God is creating] new heavens
and a new earth;”
and soon
“the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.”[4]
As we speak, God is giving us an opportunity to enact the justice, love, and peace of the kingdom of heaven. This is a time to build. This is our moment to see lasting, truly Biblical change both in ourselves and around the world. The future is always unknown, but now is not a moment for fear. Now is an excuse for hope, a chance to imagine what this beautiful world God’s given us can become and then to take action to realize and embody that vision. Now is the time to prove ourselves faithful, and, in obedience to Christ’s command,
“As [we] go, [we] must herald the good news: ‘The reign of the heavens is in our hands!’”[5]
[1] http://www.slouchingdog.com/sermons/2020/1/27/year-a-january-26-2020-epiphany-03
[2] II Corinthians 5:17
[3] The Book of Common Prayer, 1979, pgs. 304-305
[4] Isaiah 65:17
[5] Matthew 10:7—my translation