Sunday 18 June 2023

Psalm 100

Background

As Jesus proclaimed the good news and healed all the sicknesses he encountered, he was confronted by the scale of the needs in the crowd, not only their physical ailments, but their lack of direction: they were “like sheep without a shepherd.” (v. 36)

Although most of us in modern Britain are used to sheep grazing in fields or on hillsides without a shepherd in sight, if we imagine a flock of ewes and lambs let loose on a motorway, the picture might give more of a sense of the concern and compassion that Jesus felt for the crowds.

So what did Jesus do in the face of the magnitude of the people's need? First, he told the disciples to pray for more workers to help reach the crowds. Then immediately he set an example of calling in support by giving authority to his core group of followers and sending them out to proclaim the good news and to heal. He gave them a clearly defined and limited mission. We might look at the task with surprise: the 12 were only to go to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel” (v. 6) and even the neighbouring regions were outside the scope of their task. Did Jesus really mean that the message and the work of healing were only to benefit the Jews? Wasn’t God’s love for all people?

By the end of Matthew’s Gospel account, the disciples were being told to take the good news to all nations, so clearly the limitation here was temporary, and might be seen as a case of practical realism. Faced with an enormous task, Jesus set his disciples to focus on one part of it, the part that was most likely to bring results, given that the Jews already had an understanding of God and the basis for receiving the message. The disciples were gaining work experience, and had to learn how to use authority. Perhaps equally important, however, was for them to practise an attitude of generosity and service. Jesus tells them not only what to do, but how to act: “Freely you have received, freely give.”

To Ponder:

• The pattern we see in Jesus here is compassion, prayer, assembling a task force, defining the action, initiating the action. Do you think we would run into difficulties if we tried to follow his example? If so, at what point(s)?
• How do we balance responding to local needs and our commitment to global partners, especially when resources are limited?
• What are you able to give freely?