18 June 2023 Pentecost 3
Exodus 19:2-8a; Psalm 100; Romans 5:1-11; Matthew 9:35-10:8
In his book, Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief, former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, tells the story of a young Jewish woman named Etty Hillesum. She was in her early twenties when the Germans occupied Holland. She would not have called herself a religious person, but between the years of 1941 and 1943, as she watched her world descend into nightmare, she is said to have become deeply aware of God’s hand on her life. Imprisoned in the transit camp at Westerbork, before she was sent to Auschwitz, Etty wrote these words: “There must be someone to live through it all and bear witness to the fact that God lived, even in these times. And why should I not be that witness?” Rowan Williams describes her commitment this way: She decided to occupy a certain place in the world, a place where others could somehow connect with God through her. She took responsibility for making God credible in the world. She took responsibility for God’s believability.
As we look at the world around us today, at those things which ‘make the news’; how hard is it to ‘make God credible’ in the light of those news stories. In our Gospel Jesus commissions the twelve disciples to go and liberate and enliven the ‘harassed and helpless’. These ‘sheep without a shepherd’ are being mistreated, they are some of the ‘forgotten’ people of society, they are powerless against those who hold the power. And Jesus is moved by their plight and sends the disciples to proclaim the good news, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. He sends them to touch, heal, resurrect, make peace. But there is an interesting point in this commissioning. Jesus sends them only ‘to the lost sheep of Israel’. Near the end of Matthew’s gospel in the ‘great commission’ the disciples are sent ‘into the world’, but here, today, they are only sent to their own community.
And this commissioning is for us too. We are sent by Jesus to find what is dying within our community, look for what is sick in the lives of those around us, consider what needs to be ‘cast out’ for life to be once more possible. Jesus is asking us to proclaim the kingdom of God within our own community, and when we have done that, then we can go and proclaim it elsewhere. And we are warned the task will not be an easy one. Jesus tells us plainly – you received without payment, give without payment. So be prepared to do this ‘without backup’; lead humbly, quietly, gently. Remember, power has been given to you for one reason and one reason only – so you can give it away. This is a very confrontational gospel. But our question today is – how do we respond to it? Jesus is asking us, today, to make the gospel credible to a community and a world that is writhing in pain. If we read on from where the gospel finished, we see the difficulties Jesus is warning us we will have, he is telling us to be prepared to go against cultural norms; to be prepared for an uphill battle; and to be prepared to speak truth to power.
On this Commitment Sunday, we hear Jesus call for us to go to those ‘in our community’ who need to hear the good news. Share your faith with those here. Our mission is not always to far away places, God’s biggest mission field for us is ‘where you are’, in your own back yard. And Jesus warns us, if we think we are doing this for our own eternal security, think again. Discipleship will disorient and disrupt us. We will be seen as ‘outsiders’ in our community, as people who act ‘against the social norm’, and it will humble us to our knees.
And, as Paul tells us in his letter to Rome, suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us. Human nature often wants us to jump from suffering straight to hope and sit down and be comforted by the promise it offers us. But hope has no value unless it is undergirded by justice. Paul gives us the trajectory – suffering, endurance, character, then hope. Because the fact that our salvation is free does not mean it is cheap.
In order for us to make God believable here and now we need to stand in the center of the world’s pain, the nation’s pain, our community’s pain. It is not enough for us to ‘glance’ at it with ‘cautious attention’ and then retreat to the safety of our own circle, we need to ‘live’ there, ‘sleep there’, ‘eat there’. It is only in identifying ourselves completely with the aching, weeping and dying that we have any chance of making God believable to those who are aching, weeping and dying.
And we may ask why Jesus is asking so much of us. Because he gave us so much. “You received without payment, now give without payment”. Jesus is calling us only to what we were created for. And Jesus knows that as we go into the world, in his name, healing what is diseased; casting out what is evil; resurrecting what is dead; we will be participating in the transformation of our own souls.
Etty Hillesum took responsibility for making God credible in the world. Today, on this Commitment Sunday, we will all place our commitment cards in the basket, but that is not the end of our commitment to our parish, to the church, to our community. We are called to go and proclaim healing, and life for all.