Romans 5.1-8, Matthew 9.35-10.23
The First Sunday after Trinity, 18 June 2017
Corton Denham, West Camel, Weston Bampfylde
Jesus sent out the twelve disciples, charging them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand’, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.
What a task. What a challenging, joyful, task he gave them.
It was challenging, from our perspective, because the idea of going out as his disciples and healing and casting out evil spirits and preaching the kingdom of heaven, in Jesus name, is something which I imagine most of us would feel ill-equipped to do. Doubtless that rag-tag bunch of fishermen and shady characters who made up the twelve disciples would have felt exactly the same.
And it was especially challenging for them, I think, for this reason - that Jesus specifically told them not to go and do something glamorous like becoming missionaries to the Gentiles, or something headline-catching like becoming peacemakers with the despised Samaritans. No, instead he told them, “go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”. In other words, go home - talk to the people who you know best because they’re our people. Knowing full well that when Jesus himself had done this the home town crowd at Nazareth had tried to throw him over a cliff; being keenly aware that the lost sheep of Israel wouldn’t take kindly to being called ‘lost sheep’ by one of their own. [1]
And you know, that’s a very keen challenge for us also, today. If we see ourselves as disciples of Jesus, wanting to walk his way through this world; if we feel that as followers of Jesus we should be out there sharing him with others, then we inherit the task he gave them - to go to the lost sheep of Somerset with the good news of the kingdom of heaven, to heal them, revive them, tend their deepest needs, exorcise their demons. What a task. What a challenging, joyful, task he gives us.
How to we begin to go about it? I suggest, by opening our eyes and our imagination to see where God is working in the world today, those places and situations where the kingdom of heaven is showing itself and growing. And then by offering who we are and what we have to share in that work and contribute to that growth. Let me illustrate what I mean with a line from one of my favourite poems.
“Let no-one steal your dreams,” says the performance poet Paul Cookson to his audiences at school assemblies and family festivals. “Let no-one tear apart / The burning of ambition / That fires the drive inside your heart.” [2]
Paul’s poem recognises that the dreams which we encourage children to have can so easily be dashed in the hard, competitive, sometimes cruel, so-called ‘grown-up’ world. He wants to give children self-confidence and encourage in them the determination to keep moving forward in a positive spirit.
“Let no-one steal your dreams”. I want to pay tribute to the young people who have displayed this positive spirit in the face of terror and loss, in our society of late. I want to applaud the 23-year-old musician Ariana Grande whose response to the suicide bombing at the end of her Manchester Arena concert on May 22nd, was to swiftly return to the city to host a star-studded concert for the families of the victims and all affected, under the banner, ‘One Love Manchester’. That triumph of logistics and creativity on June 4th raised over £10 million for the British Red Cross but more importantly it brought people together - young people particularly, but supportive older ones too - in a spirit not of maudlin sentimentality but of genuine desire to respond to hate with love; to respond to fear with unity. Addressing the 50,000 people from the One Love Manchester stage (and the global live television audience) Ariana Grande said, “The kind of love and unity you’re displaying is the medicine the world really needs right now.” [3]
It’s not lost on me that the One Love concert took place at Pentecost (festival of liberation for the Jewish people, which Christians celebrate as a time when the Holy Spirit came to the disparate crowds in Jerusalem, bringing unity through mutual understanding). It’s keenly impressed on me that the entire period between the Arena bombing and the One Love concert coincided exactly with the international ‘wave of prayer’ promoted by our Anglican archbishops and embraced by people everywhere, including in our little village churches here, under the banner ‘Thy Kingdom Come’. Notable also that the Muslim community were also turning to prayer, fasting and good works in that period of time, coinciding with the month of Ramadan. Could these all be connected? Is the spirit of love and unity demonstrated by Manchester’s young people in some way an outworking of the prayers of all people for the rule, the ‘kingdom’, of goodness, right relationships and peace, to come into the world?
Maybe this is fanciful but I think it’s worth embracing - it’s a dream I will not let anyone steal from me. For I think that the task of all praying people, all people of goodwill, in response to acts of terror, is to work - young and old together - to find ways to strengthen and deepen “the kind of love and unity” displayed in Manchester, to help each church, mosque, school, village hall, to become ‘One Love workshops’ where we learn how to turn this present spirit into a rooted way of life. [4]
I suggest that it is in this sort of way that we share in the good news of the kingdom of heaven today.
In her official birthday message yesterday The Queen said it is "difficult to escape a very sombre national mood" following the tragedies in London and Manchester in recent weeks.
But the The Queen's message also recognised that parallel with this sombre mood was the keen sense that "Put to the test, the United Kingdom has been resolute in the face of adversity.” Recognising “the immediate inclination of people throughout the country to offer comfort and support to those in desperate need”, The Queen added: "United in our sadness, we are equally determined, without fear or favour, to support all those rebuilding lives so horribly affected by injury and loss.” [5]
Rather than merely look over our Israel and lament the lostness of its sheep, many have rallied, and gone out to help them.
That famous old anti-Christian philosopher of the 20th Century, who spoke so much disturbing truth, Friedrich Nietzsche, once wrote, ‘He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.’ [6]
When we are trying to work out what One Love might look like, applied in our world today, when we’re searching for signs of the kingdom of heaven among the lost sheep of Somerset, we have to train ourselves to remove our gaze from the terror and the torment and look instead to Jesus, learn the ways of the kingdom, follow the inclinations of the Spirit; we’re called to imitate the twelve disciples in healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing lepers, casting out demons:
Healing the sick - for most of us means caring for those we know who are unwell, tending their physical and emotional needs, aiding their recovery;
Raising the dead - translated for us is about working to bring life out of dead-end situations. Where hope has gone, helping to restore hope. And this can be by practically helping people in need, those lacking food, or family support; it can be by supporting charities who rescue people from dangerous situations and set them up for stability and security - like The Big Issue Foundation, for homeless people, or The Children’s Society for vulnerable runaways and children in care.
Cleansing lepers - well, if we take cleansing to mean physically stooping down to apply clean water to those open skin wounds, then we might see ourselves serving suffering people by tending to their deepest needs; if we remember that lepers were outcasts in Jesus’ day, abandoned outside the city gates, then cleansing lepers for us might mean going to the outcasts of our society and befriending them - the Travellers, the refugees, those marginalised for their colour or faith or sexuality.
And casting out demons - well, we’re not all called to be exorcists, though I myself do from time to time get called in to people’s homes to pray over problems with bad spirits, and if you ever encounter anything of that sort I or any minister would be happy to help or advise. But consider the mental health of our society. Consider especially our addictions - to consumer goods, to the competitive pursuit of individual wealth and happiness, to endless economic growth. And consider the torment each of these addictions brings us, and the ruin being visited on planet earth itself as a consequence.
We might use the word ‘demonic’ to describe this. So for us casting out demons could mean beating those addictions in our own lives and challenging them in society. And we can have fun with this: teaching grandchildren how to grow and cook their own veg; we can find release in this: downsizing; we can make friends doing this, as some people are doing this weekend at events under the banner of The Great Get Together, a celebration of neighbourliness in memory of Jo Cox MP for whom unity was a great goal and means of overcoming the demonic in our society. [7]
Jesus says, “Go to the lost sheep of Somerset, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand’; heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.”
A challenging task. But a joyful one. One we’re already involved in, when we stop to consider the things we do in our community. And a task for which God has equipped us, each with our own gifts and characters, a task which God delights in helping us to continue with, joyfully, imaginatively, creatively.
Notes
[1] Luke 4.16-30.
[2] Paul Cookson, Let No-One Steal Your Dreams: performed by Hythe Primary School Choir.
[3] Wikipedia: One Love Manchester; Elle Hunt, Manchester uplifted by Ariana Grande's colossal empathy, Guardian 5 June 2017.
[4] For a development of this theme see Pete Ward, Resisting the terrorists with love: Was One Love Manchester an answer to the Thy Kingdom Come wave of prayer, Church Times, 9 June 2017 and my responding Letter to the Editor under the heading Responses to terrorism: One Love, and the command to love enemies, Church Times, 16 June 2017.
[5] London fire: Queen reflects on 'sombre national mood’, BBC News, 17 June 2017.
[6] Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
[7] The Great Get Together, 17/18 June 2017. Jo Cox was MP for Batley and Spen. In her first speech in Parliament she famously said,“We are far more united, and have far more in common than that which divides us.”
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