Compassion

Sunday, June 18
Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Focus Theme
Compassion

Focus Prayer
God of the prophets and apostles, you greeted old Abraham and Sarah with news of wonder and life. Send us into the world to preach good news, as Jesus did, heal the sick, resist evil, and bring the outcast home. Amen.

Focus Reading
Matthew 9:35-10:8,(9-23)

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because 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 ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax-collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. (Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for laborers deserve their food. Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. As you enter the house, greet it. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.

“See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Beware of them, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; and you will be dragged before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them and the Gentiles. When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly I tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.”)

All readings for the week
Genesis 18: 1-15,(21:1-7) with Psalm 116:1-2,12-19 or
Exodus 19:2-8a with Psalm 100
Romans 5:1-8
Matthew 9:35-10:8,(9-23)

Focus Questions

1. What are the most important signs Jesus gives about the mission of the church?

2. How can your church best balance having a building and being on the move?

3. In what ways has your life been transformed by your encounter with God, with Jesus, with inclusion in the life of the church?

4. Have you ever witnessed someone else’s life being transformed by the welcome they’ve received in church?

5. Who are the unexpected mission partners who have accompanied you in sharing the good news of Jesus Christ?

Reflection by Kate Matthews

What is the church to be about? In today’s Gospel passage from Matthew, we learn that the church is to be about healing, teaching, and proclaiming the good news. And the church is to be about movement, not static, stay-at-home, preserve-our-level-of-comfort-and-let-them-come-to-us spirituality, but a bold “going-out” into the world that God loves so passionately, sharing what God has given us with those who have not yet heard God speaking to them, or felt the touch of God’s love upon their lives, or have not known how to name either one.

How do we know this is what the church is to be about? To find an answer, we look (as always) at Jesus and what he was about. Matthew reminds us once again that Jesus didn’t sit still but traveled about, curing and teaching and healing, and when he saw the hunger and need and confusion of “the crowds,” he felt profound compassion for them. Jesus both moved and was moved. We are to see the need of the world, its hungers and confusion, and like Jesus, we’re called to respond with compassion and tender care. And it also seems that we are called not to sit still but, like Jesus, to be on the move, open to those we meet along the way.

Our reason for being the church

This has powerful implications for how we see our ministry. It’s tempting for us in the church to see its “reason for being” in meeting the needs of those (of us) who “pay their way,” perhaps like members of a private club. And yet the gospel impels us to interact with the world beyond our walls, right in our own neighborhood, or in places far away, places which our compassion can reach even though we may never physically go there ourselves.

The image of “sheep without a shepherd” calls us to reach out into the world, to see all of God’s children as precious and loved and deserving of our attention, energy, resources, and care. We have perhaps too often interpreted it only as referring to a shortage of pastors for the church, an internal problem “we” need to do something about, like recruiting more students for seminary. But the tender image of sheep without a shepherd more properly, and more poignantly, speaks of a world that is looking to the church, to people of faith, with questions and doubts and real, human needs.

Embodied instructions

Through this story of the way the heart of Jesus responded to the crowds, God is still speaking to the church that is the Body of Christ in this world, today. Jesus, through his compassionate response to the suffering of the crowd, embodies his own instructions to his disciples on how to be the church, “the Body of Christ” in the world. His actions demonstrate his instructions about the work and travel of his disciples, those who follow him and allow God to continue to work through them.

What is the good news that God is still speaking today? It is about more than just proper religious beliefs: right beliefs are just the beginning point, or, perhaps we find our way toward those right beliefs through faithful practices of mercy and compassion, and the lessons we learn along the way. Perhaps right beliefs are really the realizations that arise from our experience of God’s love, as we offer that love and receive it as well.

What is evangelism?

What should evangelists do when they encounter human suffering and need during their travels? Thomas Long says that “Any notion that the church ought to quit getting involved in non-spiritual matters and get back to its ‘real job’ of preaching the gospel and saving souls misses the point.’Preaching the gospel and saving souls’ means grappling with disease and the demonic, with social segregation and the powers of death. It means, therefore, wrestling with issues of public health care, with racial and social alienation, with the powers of domination and oppression that bleed the life out of a community.” Do you think Long’s definition of preaching the gospel matches what most folks today think of as “evangelism”?

As you look over the list of those early disciples, you may notice the several descriptive details given, about Matthew the tax collector and Simon “the Cananaean,” two people who would have been on opposite sides of the Roman controversy, since Matthew was a tool of the empire and Simon would have been a passionate revolutionary opposing it. Yet they both found their lives transformed by their encounter with Jesus. Who are the people in churches who might be surprised to find themselves sharing a pew, sharing communion, sharing their lives, with one another? God still speaks in ways that surprise us, pulling together and planting together and then sending out together the most unexpected of mission partners.

Needed: a change of heart

Boundaries and preconceptions are obliterated by the dream of a church that truly welcomes all, but transformation–a change of heart, or hearts–often needs to happen to make it possible for that dream to become reality. That kind of transformation makes it possible for diverse people to come together and discover, and experience, their shared humanity and graced condition in the eyes of a loving God who sees the “sheep without a shepherd” and responds with compassion and tender care. There are surprises inside and outside the walls of the church, every single day.

It’s God who works through us and through the life of the church, and it’s God who sends the workers who are needed. As you look around–inside and outside the church walls, who are the workers for this harvest, which cannot wait, workers whose ministry needs to be empowered and supported? God is supplying the needs of the church for the harvest in ways that we may not recognize unless we think in fresh, new ways. Who, then, are the unexpected workers, the teachers and apostles (“those sent”), whose “descriptive details” might make them unlikely, but highly effective, bearers of good news in your community? Does your community receive–and send–them that way?

A preaching commentary on this text (with book titles) and an additional reflection are both at http://www.ucc.org/worship_samuel.

The Rev. Kathryn Matthews (matthewsk@ucc.org) is the retired dean of Amistad Chapel at the national offices of the United Church of Christ in Cleveland, Ohio (https://www.facebook.com/AmistadChapel).

You’re invited to share your reflections on this text in the comments on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.

For further reflection

Michael W. Smith, 21st century
“I think if the church did what they were supposed to do we wouldn’t have anyone sleeping on the streets.”

Clarence Jordan, 20th century
“The proof of Easter is not a rolled-away stone but a carried-away church.”

James Forbes, Whose Gospel?, 21st century
“The progressive spirituality I believe in is deeply rooted in the conviction of Dr. King that God’s dream of the Beloved Community sets the agenda for the church.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 20th century
“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”

Mother Teresa, A Gift for God: Prayers and Meditations, 20th century
“I would rather make mistakes in kindness and compassion than work miracles in unkindness and hardness.”

Henri J.M. Nouwen, 20th century
“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless.”

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Weekly Seeds is a resource of the Faith Formation Ministry Team of Local Church Ministries of the United Church of Christ. Bible texts are from the New Revised Standard Version, � 1989 Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The Revised Common Lectionary is � 1992 Consultation on Common Texts. Used by permission.