The Relationship Mission: Matthew 9:35-10:23 - 2nd Sunday after Pentecost

Think of a nearby town, suburb, or city that begins with the first letter of your first name…

Once you’ve identified it, ask yourself: how would you feel if Jesus sent you to there?

If this is a place you’ve lived (or want to live in), you may feel totally at ease. On the other hand, if you see that place as populated by pretentious snobs, you may feel intimidated; or, if that place has a reputation being dangerous, may feel scared.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is sending his disciples into the surrounding towns and villages to “seek out the lost sheep of Israel.” Relationship is the goal—because it is in relationship that God’s love is spread.

At the same time, Jesus demands that they travel light, taking nothing extra along for the journey, and instead rely on the hospitality of the persons they will meet. If that wasn’t difficult enough, Jesus is practically guaranteeing that they will face rejection, persecution, and even violence due to their participation in his mission.

So what would motivate a human being to do something so difficult and dangerous with no promise of earthly rewards? Why are these disciples eager to go—and why will they be glad they went?

It feels outrageous to talk of seeking new relationships when we’ve spent the last three months social distancing. The Coronavirus devastated lives and livelihoods, and we are bitterly divided over how we should respond to it. And now we are at war with each other over racism. Given the way things are in the world right now, I’m not feeling eager to seek new relationships, unless they are of the same mind as me.

It’s not nature, as human beings and as Americans, to seek out new relationships with people who are unlike ourselves. We are individualists, and our priority is always the self: personal growth, personal success, living a life that other people envy. When it comes to Jesus, we speak of a personal relationship with a personal savior. We seek relationships and community only to better ourselves. We form cliques and flock to factions, political parties, and every kind of association in order to use the power of numbers to advance exclusive interests.

But I wonder if this habit is one of the why the Christian faith and the Christian church are on the decline in this country—and a reason why our society is so bitterly divided.

For the Christian, your relationships with others and your relationship with God are inter-related.

Right relationships with God lead to right relationships with others. Right relationships with others strengthen right relationships with God. Conversely, broken relationships with God lead to broken relationships with others, and broken relationships with others inhibit relationship with God.

The reason why these disciples were so eager to go on a seemingly impossible mission was not to prove themselves to Jesus. They went because Jesus’s dying love to be in relationship with others was fully alive within them. They went believing that new relationships would increase both their knowledge of God and their experience of his life transforming love.

Bear in mind that the twelve disciples Jesus gathered around himself could not have been more different from one another. Jesus and Judaism were all they had in common. Simon was part of the Zealot movement, which was violently opposed to Roman occupation of the Holy Land. I certainly can’t picture him getting along with Matthew, who collected taxes for Rome. We also know that Peter, James, and John were quite outspoken and boisterous—and likely got on the other disciples’ nerves. And yet, Christ’s love united them in faith and purpose.

Jesus wants nothing less for you than to be able to regard someone who’s different from you in every possible way as a beloved child of God. When you do, Jesus’s gracious love for you becomes powerfully real. To affirm God’s love for someone who’s hard for you to love—particularly in the face of their rejection of you—you can’t get any closer to the heart of Jesus, beating inside your own heart.

God is relationship. That was Bishop Eaton’s message to us last week as we contemplated together the mysteries of our One God in Three Persons. In seeking new relationships to give and receive Christian love, you both seek God and find God. You get a very incomplete knowledge of who Jesus is if your family of faith never grows beyond those who are most unlike yourself.

Yes, our world is divided, and yes, people are afraid. But almost all of us can agree that our broken world needs healing, and we can minister that healing to each other, in Jesus’s name, and find in each other a love that is erases all the bitterness of division. For it is the love of Jesus Christ, poured out at the cross, that gives us life in the midst of death and sends us into the future full of hope.