The Gospel verses we just heard present an important shift in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ life. Prior to our verses, information focused on how Jesus established his ministry through his teaching and his healing activities. Then, like in a conversation when someone says, “enough about me, how about you?”, the writer’s focus shifts to those who follow and work with Jesus and what they receive as their missionary imperative. In Biblical studies, this section is called the missionary discourse.
So, today on the 3rd Sunday of Pentecost, it feels like as good of a time as any to explore some of the guidance Scripture offers – as well as some of the potentially hurtful issues -associated with Christian mission work.
As a starting point, I need to acknowledge that there are a broad range of examples of the strengths and pitfalls of mission work. It is true that some missionaries provided wonderfully life changing ministries and opportunities for people in need, and it is also true that other missionaries may have been a wee bit misguided but had good intentions. However, it was much more often the case that heavy-handed efforts to create conversions and the colonization of indigenous people contributed to atrocities and disastrous results that bear no resemblance to the work initiated by Jesus of Nazareth.
One of my most informative encounters with Christian missionary efforts unfolded on the beaches of Ft. Lauderdale during the spring break of my senior year of college, just months before I entered Seminary. To be honest, I don’t really remember why I agreed to go on this trip, but I am thinking it may have been at the suggestion of a friend and the appeal of a less expensive way to get out of the cold.
After a grueling trip in vans from the chilly environs of Iowa to the warm beaches of Florida, we were given pamphlets that outlined 4 spiritual laws and then prepped on how to share the process of following those steps to assure the eternal salvation of the college students we encountered.
Briefly, the steps are:1. God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life, enabling an abundant life. (that is a pretty good starting place) 2. But … we are sinful and separated from God, meaning we cannot know or experience that love and plan. 3. Jesus Christ is God’s only way to cross the gap to receive the love and plan. 4. And … Jesus Christ will do that work if/when we individually receive Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior and pray the prayer at the end of the pamphlet, thus enabling us to know God personally and experience God’s love, which was the carrot dangled out in step one.
With a few more years of theological reflection, study and dare I say, maturity, I can now see why I was the only person on the trip who failed to reach the fourth step with anyone that spring break. On some level, my 21-year-old self rebelled (albeit quietly and internally) against the rigidity and agenda driven nature of the required scripted exchange. I knew in my shaky, tender-hearted faith, that that approach didn’t feel consistent with the grace I had come to rely on from my experiences growing up in my home Presbyterian congregation. The foundational grace that grounded me is described in our Romans 5 reading when Paul reminds us that we are justified through our faith, that no matter what happens, God proves God’s love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. And then later in Roman’s 8, that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Fast forward many years later, my spiritual teacher from the Living School, James Finley, would describe this foundation with the words, “God is hopelessly in love with us.”
At this point, I’d like to make something very clear: I believe that we encounter God in very many ways. I am sure there were people who may have grown in their faith on both sides of those conversations on the Ft. Lauderdale beaches. Those earnest young people, with whom I traveled couldn’t do what they did without firmly believing they were serving their God. And some of you may have encountered similar conversations as a doorway into your spiritual journey. So, again, I whole-heartedly and humbly believe not any one among us should claim certainty about exactly when or how God may access someone’s heart.
But… or, and … from my experience and vantage point, then and even more so now, despite having single verses of scripture cut and pasted on to each of the four laws, that approach doesn’t reflect the overarching spirit of the Gospel message, nor the example of how Jesus encouraged followers to live in and share God’s love. Further, over many years of ministry I have witnessed too many times how Scripture was used as a weapon in the hands of the ultra-certain.
So, what might be our response to this missionary discourse we encountered in Matthew?
We get some guidance from the words describing Jesus in chapter 9:36 when it says: “When he (Jesus) saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
Scripture reveals that Jesus responds to the needs of the people, embodying a leadership that is deeply relational and motivated by compassion. Which is quite different energy from jumping into an exchange with a fix or formula. The Greek word used for “compassion,” splagchnizomai (pronounced splangkh-NEE-zom-ahee) indicates a physical, visceral reaction. It conveys that when Jesus saw the crowds harassed and helpless, he did not just feel a distant, casual pity; he felt their suffering deeply in his core. In the Gospels, when this word is used, it is almost always followed immediately by a miracle, teaching, or a powerful action. It is an empathetic response so profound that it demands relief for the sufferer.
If the starting place for missionary work is full hearted, gut centered compassion – that changes everything about how we move into the world as his followers, doesn’t it? Frankly, offering a packaged product may be easier than feeling a connection to the pain of another so deeply you’re your only recourse is to do something to help. But so be it. That is the nature of the work we are called to do.
The verses that continue in Matthew reveal that the disciples’ mission is deeply restorative and very active. They are sent to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with leprosy, and drive out demons (10:8).
Jesus’s commissioning of the Twelve challenges modern disciples to see faith as active participation in God’s mission. The work of healing, restoration, and justice is not confined to Jesus alone; it is entrusted to his followers. A quote attributed to Theresa of Avila puts this concisely,
“Christ has no body now but yours, No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.”
Our mission, our compassion are important and meaningful responses to a loving and gracious God. In faith we draw close to the triune God, and God’s love and grace enables us to serve. We need no bridge to access this love, no formula to unlock this grace, they are gifts. As Paul reminds in the opening verse from Romans 5: “Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we[a] have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access[b] to this grace in which we stand…”
So, let us stand before this Table. Let us stand with one another and be encouraged and strengthened by this community of believers who share this sacred calling. Then, and this part is important friends, then, empowered by the grace of God, resisting the pressures to be perfect in our work, or to have agendas and expectations about how those we serve should respond, then, let us stumble, and trip, and love our way into deep-hearted responses to the places and people who show up along our paths of discipleship. Always, always relying on God who is hopelessly in love with us.
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