Sent with the Mercy and Message of the Kingdom

Last week, as we opened up the first half of this passage, we thought together about what it means to call this place that becomes home for each of us. Not just as a city we live near, or a parish we drive into, or streets we pass through on the way to something better or near; rather as the place where God is writing our story as part of his story: Where he has placed us to live, serve, pray, and worship as we make known the hope of Christ by making home. We thought about that beauty in the ordinariness of where God has called us to incarnate the Kingdom of God, amid normal places and ordinary streets, as people try to navigate this thing that we call life. The very same ordinariness we saw in the Gospel of Matthew as Jesus went about his public ministry of making known the hope of God in the places that would least expect to receive someone with his mandate and mission. Why did he do it this way? Because he was demonstrating not just the power of the King, but the ethos and way of his Kingdom; it will be made known in the places of power or influence, but amid the places the world might pass-by and history forget – there is no ordinary place that does not deserve the Good news:, no forgotten village outside the concern of his Kingdom, no street too wounded, no home too hidden, no person too harassed or helpless for his compassion and our call into the ordinary. Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching, proclaiming, healing, seeing, and feeling in the depths of his being the lostness of people who were like sheep without a shepherd. That was the point at which we would find our rest and challenge: with Christ’s compassion, with the plentiful harvest, and with his command to pray to the Lord of the harvest for workers to the harvest.

And that might be a nice way to end a challenging passage, with a call to pray for the work of the Harvest, something which we are probably already doing and as we pray for it, the hope that Jesus might send someone to answer. Yet, as the pages of the Gospel flow, we are not really left with the option to pray from a safe distance or space. Jesus has not gone through these ordinary places and done extraordinary things simply so that people might know God is on the move and the age of Redemption has begun; there is more to it because, as Christ has his disciples with him, his eye is also on their learning and mission. Thus, Christ’s compassion does not leave the disciples standing on the edge of the field and praying for workers to get into it; the ordinary prayer is met with an extraordinary answer as they are moved from observation to participation. The Lord who tells us to pray for workers is the Lord who then turns to his workers by the Spirit’s powers. As we live out our call as disciples, it is natural that we are moved to the fields Christ himself cared for. Jesus, who saw the crowd and had compassion on them in their ordinariness, now sends his ordinary people among them to do the work of the Kingdom. Thus, if last week we said, “This is our home,” then perhaps this week we are being nudged to consider: “What is our call to our home?” That is the question before us as we come to Matthew 10:1–8. As we pray for the harvest and are moved into the harvest, it means contemplating what it means to be a people called by Christ, sent by Christ, and empowered by the Spirit to make known the Glory and goodness of God amid our ordinary. To live in a way shaped by the very Mercy we have received; mercy that meets us in our normal moves us from it and to it so that the love of God might be made known among people who bear his image. The harvest is not somewhere else; it is here in the ordinary places where home is known, and lives are lived. And this is the norm, Jesus sends his ordinary disciples into even with all their mess. Jesus does not wait until they have perfected their craft; he sends them when they are willing because he is the one who makes our work perfect by his Spirit. Simply put: He sends those who have freely received, so that by his Spirit and for his glory, they might freely give. He sends you and me.

1. Called to Christ (Matthew 10:1–4)

Isn’t it fascinating that in this Kingdom call to go, the first movement is towards Jesus rather than from him. The disciples will be sent into the harvest field to get on with this work, but before they get stuck in the mud, they must be received by the one who calls and sends. We must arrive before we are sent, we must abide before we can bear fruit, we must wait before we get stuck into the work of the Kingdom. The harvest might be plentiful and the workers few, the situation might be desperate, but the Lord who calls us to his fields in an answer to prayer first calls us to himself in relationship. We cannot go for him unless we have come to him; we cannot speak of him unless we first know him. So before Christ even sends us into the ordinary of our city and moment to make known his love in word and deed, he first calls our name as he calls us to himself.

We cannot do the work of the Kingdom unless we know the King. Before he calls us to something, he calls us to himself, so as we consider the missional life of the disciple and the church, we have to consider ourselves and where we stand with God and before him. Our work in the harvest field does not begin with anxiety about the severity of the task, or activity to try and make up for lost time, nor does it even begin with grand ideas about our own self-importance, because we are called to this work that others are not. No, the work of the Harvest field, our call to our home first begins by being called to Christ and then embracing our communion with Christ by the Spirit for the Glory of God.

1.1 Mission begins with communion

The mission of this harvest field first begins by abiding with the one who calls us. It seems like an upside-down idea that goes against our way of thinking and seeing the world: there is work to be done and urgency for it to be done, so we want to get on with the work! Yet, the Kingdom of Heaven does not unfold or outwork in the ways the world might expect it; it goes at its own pace and in its own way, in places and through people that the world would never see or notice, because then the Glory belongs to God. Thus, if the unfolding is upside down to the ways of the world, why would the timing and beginning of our work within it be any different from before the disciples are sent into the harvest, they are gathered by and around the Lord of the Harvest.

We can only go faithfully into the ordinary places of our age and context if we first come to the one who sends us. Why? Because only by going to Him in the Spirit and faith can we avoid the temptation to do this spiritual work on human strength, to make the gospel and growth of the Kingdom dependent on us. The harvest is plentiful, and the workers might be few; but the Lord of the Harvest can do the work of the harvest if he wants to; yet, we have the delight and privilege of joining Him in this task.

Are you tired of the work of the Harvest? Perhaps the thought of the need makes you weary and anxious? Perhaps as you think about the city God has called us to serve in, the ordinary we try to reach the load seems too much and great even to know where to begin. This first move of the harvest to abide before we being is deeply encouraging for those of us who have been in the field’s and those who might be about to begin, because it reminds us of the truth of the Gospel – it is all about Jesus; and by the strength of Jesus.We don’t need to manufacture strength or confidence or some sense of being spiritually ready – we don’t need to knuckle down and get on with the work. We first abide in him, and as we abide, we receive from Him that which we need for the task that God has called us to in our ordinary.

1.2 Jesus sends ordinary people with his authority

Who does Jesus call to abide with him before going with him? Ordinary people! Notice how Matthew now names the 12 who will become the fathers of the Church – bar Judas the traitor – why does it matter? Because there is nothing special about them; they are people the world would not choose for an urgent task, they are unpolished, rough, stumblers who Jesus calls and sends into the ordinary. Why? Because they are not sent on their own strength, they are sent on his. They are messes! But they are His mess, and in Spirit as they stumble, they are willing to go; Peter will deny him before others, Thomas was a bit slow to understand and believe, Matthew was a Tax collector (traitor of the people), Simon a former terrorist, and Judas the betrayer – they were all messed up. Yet, God still used them in this passage to do the work of the Kingdom and make known the King, because God does not call us when we are ready; he makes us ready in the Spirit by our call and only in his strength. The first step is abiding, and the second is going; but as we go, he goes before us and with us and unites us as his body for his work.

It should not be lost on us that Matthew is named as a Tax collector and Simon a Zealot; these are people the world would never bring together, nor could even envisage working together, they are too different politically and socially. Yet, in responding to the call of Christ and the truth of Christ as they come to him, God did something extraordinary in them to begin to do in them as he would send them into the harvest fields. They might not have belonged together, but in Christ, they found a unity in something beyond this world that would transform this world as they were transformed by the culture of the Kingdom and abiding with the King. Thus, as they abide in Him and go from Him and not in their own strength, we see it most clearly because as He calls them to Himself, He gives them the authority to act against the Spirits of Darkness and heal sickness as they make known the Kingdom of God. Authority, confidence, and power come from Christ, and because it comes from Christ in the work of Christ, we are humbled as we go into the field, and into the ordinary, because as individuals and a church family, we don’t need to impress the world we need to depend on Christ to get on with the work God is calling us to amid our ordinary. He is speaking your name. Can you hear him?

2. Sent to Our Neighbours (Matthew 10:5–6)

It must have been a surreal moment, as they had barely gathered with Jesus in such a short space of time and watched him do some amazing things. They had heard about this mission field and the urgency of the work that was being hindered by a lack of workers, of which they were to pray for; and then suddenly, Jesus is prepping them to go. Specifically, they will go to the lost sheep of Israel; those upon whom Jesus has been ministering and had compassion on, now the compassion extends and expands by sending the disciples to them, because that is what mission is. This mission has specific beginnings; they are to go to the people of Israel because that is what the Scriptures prophesied about the unfolding order of Salvation in the world. Yet, imagine what it must have been like for them at that moment, we read as if they are being sent into a new nation – they were being sent among their ordinary, their friends and family – mission begins somewhere, mission begins at home.

2.1 Mission begins somewhere

Mission begins somewhere, and indeed, for the disciples, it began the moment they heard the voice of Jesus calling their name and joined him. The mission that God calls us to is not something optional for the life of the Christian; He is already at work in the world. When we enter his presence, we enter his mission. The mission of God begins the moment we abide with God, and wherever that abiding starts. Thus, our mission begins at home because that is where God meets us – where we are – and where God will us us! What the disciples are sent into at this point, with specific instructions and limitations, is not the limits of the mission nor the end of its beginning. The instructions Jesus gives are not about exclusion from the work of God in the world, or the Grace on offer; they are about clarity of thought in this moment. The Disciples must know who they are to reach, and they are to reach who they must know because that is the culture and context they understand. Indeed, when they are finally ready, Jesus sends them once more at the end of Matthew’s Gospel account as the risen Christ sends his disciples to the nations.

What we watch is something more beautiful, not the beginning of the mission of God in the world; rather their beginning in this ongoing mission. And, how beautifully it begins with real people, in normal places and deep needs. Needs they have watched Jesus minister to and then point to God, as he has healed every disease, as he has taught in the Synagogues and then proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom. Jesus has been showing them what home mission will look like, and now he calls them to step up and take their place in this ongoing work, and as they take their places they are to trust in God’s provision for it, they won’t need a satchel; and they are to accept the hospitality that might been offered “because those who work deserve to be fed.” Yet, isn’t it amazing to stop and consider that one of the greatest movements the world has ever known began in the most ordinary of places, with the most ordinary of people sent back among their neighbours and friends to be trained under the tutelage of Christ as Jesus clarifies their focus not with ethical limitations but missional particularity. Thus, as we deepen in our abiding and sense of God’s mission among us we will also have a clarity and focus about who God might be moving us to reach, and that is okay because God does not send us into vague ideas or abstract causes, he sends us to real people: neighbours, friends, colleagues, those who have just moved among us; he sends us among the streets we know with all their wounds and pains. Why? Because we know it and understand it – God has shaped us for a specific call with all our gifts and abilities, and when we come to abide in Christ, he reshapes those things for his purpose.

2.2 The harvest is here

Thus, we don’t have a theoretical mission field in some far-off corner of the city or world that we will reach when we come to Christ. Mission begins at home, in this parish, among these streets and across this city, because this is our home. The people you might be thinking of right now are the people that God will use you to reach in the most normal of ways. Our mission is simply living out the life of faith where God has placed us and modelling the missional ways of Jesus in a way that is contextual to our time and place. Jesus taught and proclaimed the truths of God; we make the word of God a priority in our lives and living. Jesus healed the sick in his place and sent the disciples out to do the same – he had compassion on their physical needs. For the Glory of God and in the power of the Spirit, we pray for the sick that they might be healed, and we live out the Grace of God in practical and tangible ways as I minister to practical needs, not so that people think we are great. But, that they see God – we get stuck into the mess that is “normal” around us, because we are not called to love this city from a safe distance; this is our harvest field and the Spirit is moving us into the mud to get on with the work of the Kingdom among these neighbours, streets and places – so that the lost sheep of this city might find the Shepherd they have been loving for. This is our call, and this is the call of Christ because this good news is too good to keep to ourselves, as his mercy was for all people, his mission is to all people in this city our home regardless of their political beliefs or place of birth; they gospel will meet them where they are at and bring them by faith to where they need to be, but only if we go. Christ came to us in our lostness, and in Grace moves us towards others with the same Mercy we have received.

3. Given the Kingdom to Give Away (Matthew 10:7–8)

Thus, as Jesus sends his ordinary people into the ordinary places of their life and world, he does not send them helpless or clueless! He gives us both the message and means, and the mercy of the Kingdom. The mission of God is not about being nice people in hard places; nor is it about morality in an immoral world; speaking when it feels safe and hoping that someone might be listening. They are sent with something to announce; and something to incarnate amid their ordinary: with words to speak and mercy to show, with truth that confronts and grace that heals, and a gospel that will save. It is the unfolding of God’s Grace in the world because that is his mission – like the wave of the ripple moving over still water, as first Jesus went, now the disciples move in the same way. Jesus, who moved through the towns and villages teaching, proclaiming, and healing, now sends his disciples to do the same in his name and by his authority. The same Jesus who calls us to abide moves us in abiding to join in his mission, and that matters today because home is not a place we need to forget; it is where God has placed us. Thus, mission in our ordinary is not simply being busy or doing good things; it’s the beautiful life of faith and mercy amid the ordinary, as in the Spirit we get on with making known the Kingdom of heaven in word and deed right where we are so that lost sheep might find the grace of Mercy that has already met us.

3.1 The message is the Kingdom

Beautifully, the clearest instructions that Jesus gives the disciples on this practice run are around the message: “As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’” Something so simple, yet not small; something that seems so short and somehow carries eternity and the fullness of God with it. Thus, the disciples are not sent to declare they have come, nor with a specifically contextual or cultural message about politics, philosophy or religious truth; they are sent with the Kingdom of God, because the King has come near. The good news of the Kingdom is good news because Jesus himself is that very news! He is the King who stepped amid our mess and ordinary that was sin to redeem it; He took on our flesh, he walked our streets, he saw our brokenness and had compassion about it; he knows our sorrow, he knows the pains of death, and as he walked among our ordinary and helpless state, he walked towards the Cross to do what only he could do. The Kingdom began as he started to proclaim, but it became truly known when he took his throne – the Cross. He has come not to observe from a distance but to redeem, restore, reconcile, and reign; the Cross would be his throne and our salvation. Today, our message must never become less than Christ: we are not sent into a harrowed city to say calm down and be kind; nor because God favours one political vision over another; nor to speak of only an earthly peace (even though we long for it). Kingdom living is not simply being useful in places of need, respectable, or community-minded in an individualistic and isolated world (even though those things matter, but they are all part of the means they are not the message). We are sent to say that in Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of heaven has come near, and now the King demands a response. That in His Kingdom there is not room for dual allegiances because his power and Glory expose every lesser thing we look to: fear, tribes, ethnic boundaries, class, nation, grievance, bitterness, and the most common of all, self. All of them that only Christ can bring, so in Love Jesus calls us fully from them to abide in him. The message of the Kingdom is the means by which mercy meets us, and the means by which he sends us.

That is why this message is so urgent and so beautiful for our ordinary, because true peace is never simply the absence of noise on the streets or the return of everything to what we call normal or what felt like normal before. It is not wrong to pray for those things or long for them – quiet streets, restraint, safety, justice, and mercy; but the message of the Kingdom and its reality in our hearts is so much deeper. The peace our city is only that which Christ can bring; and it begins when sinners are reconciled to God through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and mercy is made known. Peace that turns hearts of Stone into living hearts of Grace through faith. The message of the Kingdom is the peace our city needs; to a place where we have been discipled by fear and have learned contempt for one another; Mercy brings healing by allowing us to meet at the Cross as those who are lost hear the voice of the Shepherd and come home.

This is why the message of the Kingdom must be spoken with clarity, conviction and compassion in spite of the circumstances, because it is not our idea for making people nice to one another again. It comes with the weight of eternity, and it is God’s announcement that Christ is King, that mercy is possible, and that sin can be forgiven for all who come to him. That is the message Christ came with and sends us into the ordinary, so that those places known they are not forgotten but claimed by the Lord who made them and loves them.

3.2 The mercy is freely given

Yet, the message of the Kingdom is not one of only words; the truth of God always goes out with the power of God, the compassion of God. Notice how Jesus tells them to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with leprosy, and drive out demons – because the Kingdom is not only announced in words but displayed in mercy, compassion, restoration, and power. It is not enough to proclaim the truth each Sunday; we must live it and make it known on Monday – that is as much getting into the field as preaching and teaching. We cannot separate what Jesus holds together – our Church must never become all words with no embodied compassion, as if the gospel can be shouted across the road but never carried across it, freely we have received, and so freely we must give in the ways that Christ gives. Yet, equally, we must find the balance: we cannot become all action with no proclamation; as if people only need help in the moment but not hope for eternity, that is cheap grace. Jesus sends his people with both word and deed to make known the Kingdom: we teach and we proclaim; yet, we must show the love of God and his mercy by joining in the suffering of our area: we welcome the stranger, and we comfort the fearful, we challenge hatred, and we stand with the wounded, we minister to the needs of our normal out of love while always pointing beyond ourselves to Christ. Because we have been sent by the One who can make all things new and who has chosen, in his strange and beautiful grace, to make his Kingdom known through ordinary disciples in ordinary places doing ordinary things in the power of the Spirit.

Then Jesus gives the line that keeps all our mission humble and all our mercy gospel-shaped: “Freely you have received; freely give.” That is the heart of it, and the reminder that we never go because we are better or superior, because we are needed or some sort of hero. We go as those who have received mercy. We go as those who were lost and have been found; who were once harassed and helpless sheep whom the shepherd found. This is the shape of the Cross in our lives and living; because Christ moved towards us when we were not deserving but helpless in our sin and unable to save ourselves – he called us by name and by his grace we have received freely – So now we freely give. We welcome all people because Christ welcomed us; we give compassion because Christ had compassion on us. We give truth because Christ has spoken truth to us – this is the kingdom life, because death has been defeated, we can live freely and give freely. We give hospitality, patience, kindness, and gospel hope because all of it has first been given to us in Him. This is our call to our home: to make known the Kingdom in the way that Christ makes known the Kingdom; to move towards it with the mercy and message of the Kingdom because freely we have received, and freely we give.

This is our Call (Conclusion)

So this is our home, and this is our call to our home: We are called to Christ before we are sent for Christ. That is our delight and privilege to come to him before we go for him; to abide before we ever need to bear fruit -we receive before we give. And then, having been called by name and gathered around the Lord of the harvest, when he needs us to join this urgent work, he sends us back into the ordinary places where home is known, and lives are lived. Our mission begins among the friends we love, the neighbours we do community with, and the life we live – not in some far-off fields, but at home. To people who are afraid, angry, wounded, weary, searching, guilty, forgotten, new to the city, long in the city, like us, unlike us, easy to love and hard to love. All people everywhere because freely we have received and now we are free to give. Beautifully, the mercy of Christ is not narrow, and the mission of Christ is not small: He came to the lost sheep, he sent his disciples to the lost sheep, and by his death and resurrection, the call of the Kingdom has gone out to the nations, to the ends of the earth, and, wonderfully, mysteriously, graciously, to the ordinary streets around us so that all might know the beauty of God and comfort of his presence.

This is what makes the Kingdom so beautiful, so marvellous; and its mission so world-altering: It is not the first grand platforms or impressive programmes, nor even powerful positions used (though God may use them); it is ordinary disciples doing extraordinary things in normal places by abiding in Christ and living out the power of the Spirit. Normal people giving away what they have freely received. It is the Kingdom of heaven coming near in ordinary conversations, ordinary prayers, ordinary courage, ordinary compassion, and ordinary faithfulness, where God has planted us. The hope of our cities is not in our strength, our buildings, our respectability, or our resources. The hope of our cities is Christ and what he freely offers through faith by the Cross. That is the Christ who comes near, has compassion, calls us to abide and then sends us into the harvest fields in his spirit to live and work to his praise and Glory by the Cross. Therefore, because this is our home and this is our call to our home, we go into the ordinary places where home is known, and lives are lived, with the mercy of Christ and proclaim that the Kingdom of Heaven has come near; we go and give freely because we have received freely to all people, because it is only reconciled hearts that will bring the true peace this world desperately longs for.