Tag: Matthew

When we travel, the majority of us like to pack for every possible eventuality. Every climatic variation has to be catered for; every imaginable financial and medical crisis has to be anticipated and prepared for.

This means, for so many, that the preparation before travelling, coupled with the act of moving from home to our destination, leaves us exhausted and incapable of fully engaging with the true purpose of our journey. And then, when we return home, we realize that we used almost none of the ‘stuff’ we took with us.

In today’s reading, Jesus is charging his apostles to adopt a very different attitude. As we read yesterday, they are being sent out to take the good news of Jesus’ exciting new message to the Jewish nation.

Firstly, they are empowered to Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. They are being told to do everything they have seen Jesus do. With such an enormous responsibility being laid upon their shoulders, their first reaction must have been to rush to gather all those ‘things’ – just in case …

But … Jesus was ready for this very human reaction. He told them not to take any money, or spare clothes and shoes, or even their trusty walking poles. Jesus is charging his apostles to go out trusting solely in God’s good grace to support them.

And … Jesus is not just talking to them about their packing. Jesus is giving them very specific instructions about what they are to do when they arrive in unfamiliar communities. And these instructions serve to emphasize the enormity of the task that is being laid upon their shoulders.

Jesus charges the apostles to bring his greeting and peace to all they visit. He does realize that some will not be prepared to accept that greeting and peace, but their first duty is to freely offer Christian love to all.

And therein lies Jesus’ challenge to us today.

We, like those first disciples, are being charged to put aside the clutter and the distractions and to share the love and peace of God with all.

We are called to stop hiding behind all those ‘possible’ crises of our imaginations and trust in that we are walking the Road, the Way, of Jesus Christ – in his name.

Are we able to do that, or are we rushing for all those extra cases? 

Today’s reading is about our call to go out onto that road and to live the life of true apostles.

In this account of the sending out of the twelve men first chosen and called by Jesus we are hearing Jesus’ call to us as well.

Incidentally, we should note that Matthew does call them ‘apostles’, which means those who are ‘sent out’. There is absolutely no doubt what Jesus expects of them, and us.

The end of our reading may seem a little strange because Jesus seems to be very exclusive in the mission he is laying before those twelve chosen men. He tells them to go only to the Jewish community, and not to those who are gentiles, that is those who reject the Jewish faith.

This is, of course, not where the Christian message was meant to stop, but it was where the prophecies of the Old Testament suggested that it should begin. Jesus’ coming to earth, the coming of the Anointed One of God, was the fulfilment of the promises of God to the Jewish nation. It was right and proper that they should hear the news first. But, as we know, the majority of the Jews were to reject the fulfilling of God’s promise and to go on to execute him in the cruellest of ways.

This is just the beginning, though. At the end of Matthew’s gospel we will encounter Jesus’ Great Commission to all who would profess the Christian faith, which in the earliest days of the Church was known as The Way. In that Great Commission Jesus commissioned his remaining eleven apostles, and us, to 

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.  And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Jesus is calling us, as his faithful apostles, to go out and live the apostolic life, even though we can never predict where that road may lead us.

Are we ready to be true, joyful and faithful apostles of our Lord and our God, and step out on to the Road he has prepared for us to walk in his name?

As we come to the end of the ninth chapter of St Matthew’s gospel we see a Jesus who has taught a whole new way of living and who has brought healing to many.

• He has challenged the practices and presumptions of the religious authorities.
• He has already introduced us to the possibility of a new, more intimate relationship with God, his and our heavenly Father.
• In modern terms, Jesus has become something of a ‘celebrity’.

This must have been very difficult for the Jewish leaders to either understand or accept!

They sought an explanation for Jesus’ success, and they came up with the only explanation that made sense to them: he must be a double agent – he speaks of God, but he is really in league with the devil!

Matthew will give Jesus’ reply to this accusation later in the gospel narrative.

After two chapters of healing miracles, Jesus is about to send out his disciples to share in his healing ministry in their own right. If they say that the leader works for the devil, what will they say about his followers?

Today’s message is simple:

Jesus is getting us ready for the call to discipleship.

We live in, what is often described as, an increasingly secular society. Those who profess the Christian faith are often criticized and condemned. Jesus is urging us to follow him in standing firm in the knowledge that God wants us to serve him, no matter what others might say or do to stop us.

Jesus reminds us that the harvest is plentiful, no matter what the most vocal might say, and he calls us to be his labourers in the field, working to bring that harvest home – just think of all those people who have engaged with the Church during our period of lockdown!

Are we up for that challenge?

No one needs to be reminded that we are living through extraordinary times, but how many, I wonder, realize how directly today’s reading is speaking to us as we journey through these complicated days? 

In our sophisticated world we take health care for granted – so much so that we have even had to be regularly reminded how to wash our hands.

In earlier times, before the wonders of modern medicine, it was essential that people followed strict codes of hygiene, and of who could and could not be touched. The adherence to such codes could be a matter of life and death.

Does that sound familiar?

Today we encounter Jesus breaching those rules in spectacular style: he is touched by a woman who had been suffering from uncontrolled haemorrhages for many years, and then he touches a dead body.

Jesus’ largely Jewish audience would not have missed the point – he was touched by and touching the ritually unclean thus, according to Jewish law, making himself unclean.

In these actions Jesus is not saying: Ignore the guidelines and the regulations that are put in place to protect us. Rather, Jesus is urging us to live with hope in our hearts.

Jesus is showing that God’s love and God’s power to heal are all around us.

Of course, we have to play our part. We cannot trick God or demote him into some sort of cheap conjuror by ignoring our role in keeping well.

We have to live as responsible members of society, we have to hold firm in our faith, we have to live as the leader of the synagogue and the woman suffering from haemorrhages lived – in the certainty that Jesus holds us all in his loving embrace, no matter what trials we are called to face and endure.

Let us pray for that strength of faith as we live through whatever lies before us.

I wonder what you make of today’s reading? It begins with Jesus being asked a straightforward question about fasting. Jesus, however, responds with three confusing word pictures. So often, in my experience, this passage is glossed over as something that is ‘just there’ in scripture, something to be skipped over until we move on to another more accessible part of the narrative.

In Jesus’ time, fasting was an essential practice within the Jewish faith. All of those fasts commemorated the many tragic things that had happened in Jewish history. John’s followers were devout Jews and, like the mainstream of their faith, they fasted because they were waiting for a new day to dawn. Jesus did not feel the need to dwell on past tragedies, and neither did he feel the need to mark a period of waiting. Jesus did not fast because the sun had already risen on that new day. The Pharisees lit candles to remind themselves of the light of earlier times; Jesus threw open the curtains to let in the light of the new day that had dawned in him and was already shining brightly on the world.

The three pictures in this reading illustrate this point admirably. Weddings and funerals cannot be combined. Jesus (the bridegroom) is in the world to celebrate. At such a great celebration there is no room for mourning and misery.

Then we are cautioned against just making do and paying lip service to the old ways. If we have an old coat that is in need of repair, we need a patch that is already seasoned. If not, the patch will react in a different way and a gaping hole will result where there should have been something that revels in new life.

Similarly, new wine needs new wine skins. Ignoring this necessity will result in an explosion that will waste the new wine. Similarly, if we follow the new ways that Jesus represents, we cannot do so under the guise of the old religious practices. We need to allow ourselves to be poured into new minds and bodies that have been shaped and crafted by Jesus.

Today’s reading is a real message for our times. For more than three months we have heard talk of the ‘new normal’. For many this phrase has become annoying and irritating. For those people, the ‘new’ normal needs to be a reinstitution of the old ways. But … that is not where we are, either as a nation or, indeed, as a world. Things have changed and, for once, we have no choice but to change with them.

At the recent Diocesan Clergy Conference one of the speakers asked this: Is 2020 the year we have been waiting for? We have often spoken of change, well here we are having to change … what are we going to do to make things better?

The same speaker went on to say: Things are not as they should be, nor are they as they will be. That is exactly the message Jesus is giving us in today’s reading.

May we find the courage to bathe in the new light that is shining all around us, in Jesus’ name.

‘Authority’ is a difficult word.

For many people it goes hand-in-hand with the more negative issues that dog human society. People who are associated with authority are often seen as stern and solemn, uncompromising and unfeeling in their rigidity. This negative view of authority is, of course, about the abuse of power and strength; it is about intimidation and coercion, rather than enhancement, enrichment and protection.

Today’s reading shows us how authority can be used for good.

No one can doubt that Jesus has authority. Jesus teaches with authority, heals with authority, brings calm and order with authority, expels demons with authority.

And … today … we encounter something else. Jesus shows he has authority to do what God does … he has the authority to forgive sins, that is, to change a person’s life from the inside out.

To accept Jesus’ authority to forgive sins demands faith.

For the religious leaders, Jesus’ claim to share in God’s authority was a challenge.

Their physical and political strength would appear to win as they nailed him on a cross.

But … of course … Jesus’ divine authority would ultimately overcome all that abuse of human authority as he conquered sin and death in his glorious resurrection.

The paralysed man had faith in Jesus’ authority and he was forgiven and healed.

Do we share in that simple but sincere faith, or are we too caught up in the human take on authority?

Are we ready to lay our shortcomings and sins before Jesus and ask that we may know the unspeakable joy of his healing touch?

When they saw him, they begged him to leave their neighbourhood.

During our time of enforced lockdown, we are told that many people are suffering from increased levels of mental illness. Even in our modern world, people speak of those who are afflicted in this way as ‘wrestling with their demons’. Such people might be seen as having the storm in yesterday’s reading raging within them, rather than battering the physical world in which they live.

Today, Jesus encounters two stricken souls who are definitely wrestling with the demons that are making them feared outcasts from their own local community.

As we might well expect, Jesus demonstrates his power over such malign forces. He cleanses those who are afflicted, sending them symbolically into the ritually unclean pigs that were grazing on the hillside. 

In a very few steps, we have seen Jesus moving from his authoritative teaching on the hillside to his demonstrations of divine authority over all that destroys the calm of our God-given lives.

Just imagine what it was like. This itinerant preacher comes into town with a whole new message. Alongside his preaching and his teaching, he demonstrates the power and the love of God by healing those who are fearful and diseased. Wouldn’t we, like most who encountered the human Jesus at this stage in his ministry, want him to stay and guide us to happier and more fulfilled lives?

Or … is it more probable that we would be like the people of Gadara? Isn’t it more likely, in our sophisticated modern way, that we would view him with fear and suspicion, with doubt and scepticism? 

What Jesus did on that hillside, was to bring his healing touch to a gentile (that is, non-Jewish) community. He was uncompromising in the way he used the ‘unclean’ pigs as a vehicle for removing that which was causing so much harm. But … he did bring miraculous healing into their midst.

But … their fear, and perhaps their anger at the destruction of a herd of pigs, overtook their sense of awe and wonder.

Those people of Gadara made their decision. They decided that, they could not cope with facing the challenge of having Jesus in their midst. They saw him and then they begged him to leave.

Where are we in this story? We know the truth of Jesus. But … are we in reality constantly asking him to leave us alone, instead of facing up to the challenge he presents in his unfailing loyalty to both God and us?

In 1998, the Christian composer, Margaret Rizza, set some simple words by the priest and author, David Adams, to music. That hymn has the prayer-like quality that we more commonly associate with the chants of the southern French community of Taizé.

At the beginning of the music, we are not offered the more normal speed direction of ‘allegro’ or ‘andante’; instead the single word ‘tranquil’ is offered.

The hymn is written to be repeated ad lib … we are being told to repeat it as many or as few times as we might want … or need.

David Adams’ words are these:

Calm me, Lord, as you calmed the storm;
still me, Lord, keep me from harm.
Let all the tumult within me cease;
enfold me, Lord, in your peace.

In November 2018, I went on the Diocesan Pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Towards the end of our pilgrimage we were taken on a boat trip across the Sea of Galilee. With no warning at all, a strong wind blew across the land-locked lake. Suddenly the boat rocked and water splashed over the sides. For the briefest of moments we knew a fraction of the uncertainty that manifested itself as fear in the disciples.

As quickly as the wind gained strength, so it abated and calmed. The sun came out again and we saw the jetty where we would soon land.

There are many times in our lives when the wind suddenly gains strength and all of our certainty and confidence drains from us. It is in those times that we need words like those of David Adams to help us focus on the certainty of Christ’s power to bring calm and equilibrium back into our lives.

Sometimes the squalls pass quickly … perhaps, in those moments, the instruction to repeat ad lib will only involve four, five or six repetitions of those calming words.

At other times, the squalls quickly turn into storms, and may even escalate into hurricanes or tornados. Then we need that instruction to repeat ad lib, perhaps for days and days.

Whatever strategies we feel we may have to cope with the storms of life, too often we forget that Jesus is there with us.

So … why don’t you join me in memorising these simple words?

Then, when the storm strikes, we have a powerful tool for keeping us focused on the one who loves us and will always be with us, Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour.

So, Jesus has sat on the mountain and taught, outlining a new way of relating to God and our fellow human beings. Jesus has come down from the mountain, like Moses, bringing God’s love and power into our midst. Jesus has healed a member of the Jewish community. Today we read of Jesus healing a gentile. Not just a gentile, but a Roman, one of the greatest enemies of first-century Jews. If the crowds were shocked at Jesus touching the Jewish leper, how much more profound must their shock have been when the same divine healing power was extended to a Roman officer?

For me, there are two key words in today’s reading: faith and authority.

No one can doubt the faith of the Roman centurion. How many of us have ever been able to demonstrate even half as much faith? We live in a modern ‘rational’ age where the simplicity of faith is constantly being challenged by the laws of science. We want to believe with a blind and trusting faith, but we constantly pull back from the cliff’s edge, and we constantly allow questions to get in the way. Just as we struggle with praying, so we struggle with following God in a spirit of blind and humble obedience, even though we may want to with our whole hearts.

And why should we try to let go and place ourselves in God’s hands? Because God created us in his own image and God loves us. It is as simple as that. We need to learn that all authority in heaven and on earth rests with God. 

The problem with managing our way in and out of lockdown, or coping with isolation and shielding, or planning for the uncertain nature of the days to come, lies solely in our inability to trust God. We want to manage, cope and plan, but we want to do those things on our own terms. Yes, we want our churches to re-open and we want to gather in prayer and praise, but we want to do that on our own terms. Are we ready for God to say to us, Let’s just re-think that and see how it fits in my plan?’

As we continue our journey through Matthew’s gospel in the coming weeks we are going to be presented with many such challenges. Let us all pause now, pray to God and ask for his strength to trust in his teaching, in his power to restore and renew us, and in his power to lead us on new paths.