First Sunday After Trinity

Sermon preached by the Reverend Anna Matthews

Each week we confess in the Creed that we believe in ‘one holy catholic and apostolic church’. Today’s Gospel gives us an insight into what we mean when we affirm that the church is apostolic.

 Firstly, it means that the church throughout history is recognisably the church of the apostles. Aspects of its life may change in different times and cultures, but, animated by the Holy Spirit, the reading of scripture and the faithful preaching of the Word of God, the celebration of the sacraments, and the laying on of hands in ordination are all signs of the  continuity with the church of the apostles.

 But apostolic also means ‘sent’. For the church to be apostolic means to be a church that is sent into the world; to be a community that announces the reality of God’s kingdom and the new life it gives to disciples of Jesus Christ.

In today’s gospel reading we hear about the first sending of the disciples. Later, after the resurrection, they will be sent into all the world, the gift of the Spirit leading them beyond the boundaries of Judaism, beyond the norms and expectations of their society, beyond what they’d been schooled to think of as the limits of holiness, heralds of a kingdom whose borders are far more expansive than they’d dreamed.

But first they are sent to Israel. We know little about some of the apostles. The list begins with Simon, called Peter, whom we know to be impetuous, quicker to engage mouth than brain, so ready to declare his love for Jesus but who, when asked in the darkness of a night already thick with betrayal, denies him. This is the rock on whom Jesus will build his church. And the list ends with Judas, the one who will betray Jesus.

So a further element of confessing the church as apostolic is to be truthful about its imperfections. Through baptism we are made sharers in the task entrusted to the apostles, of announcing good news in Jesus Christ, and like them, we must all know we do that imperfectly. And paradoxically, this is good news, because it reminds us that we are called not because we are perfect but because Christ is; that the church is built on his grace before it is helped along by our efforts; because it means there is room for sin to be confessed, failure to be forgiven, relationships to be restored and new life to be entered into.

And that means that a church that is apostolic will be marked by truthfulness, courage and vulnerability. The sending of the disciples at this point in Matthew’s gospel shows us something of what this means. This isn’t the account of their first calling – that came earlier, when Peter and Andrew and James and John clambered out of their boats to follow him; when Matthew closed the door of his tax booth and didn’t look back. This sending comes at a point when Jesus has sparked the opposition of the Pharisees by eating with sinners and declaring the forgiveness of sins, by healing and casting out demons. His ministry has taken him into Gentile territory but the people react in fear rather than faith. Jesus’ announcement of the kingdom of God, in word and deed, is disruptive. He comes preaching the nearness of God, and by his touch restores creation but often people do not want a God this close who unsettles their religious securities and asks them to enlarge their hearts and their vision. 

Yet the crowds, in today’s gospel, flock to Jesus. And he has compassion on them because they are like sheep without a shepherd. The crowds are hungry – for healing, for justice, for hope and freedom. And so Jesus tells the disciples to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into his harvest. And God answers their prayer by sending them.

And listen to how he sends them: take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff. He sends them out not with the reassuring heft of a full bag that will give them the comfort of knowing that they have enough for a night’s shelter or the next meal, but ready to live in a way that depends on others, and that requires courage and vulnerability. Into a world of wolves already plotting ways to destroy Jesus, he sends his disciples out to do just what he does in proclaiming the good news. 

They are woefully ill-equipped for dealing with the world on its terms. They are pretty much defenceless against a state that uses violence to shore up its power. To those fixated on worldly goods nothing about them will announce that the gospel makes you rich or successful or powerful. In the face of those who will not welcome them they are given perseverance; in the face of the powerful hauling them before councils and governors they are given the promise of the Spirit.

They are to commend the gospel by their lives, by their faithfulness to the one who sent them and by their obedience to the Spirit. Even then, their message will not always be received. ‘If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.’ There is notice here that the gospel will meet in some places with indifference or hostility. But there is also a challenge to us to what it means to proclaim the gospel. Before we rush to decide that lack of reception is the fault of the hearers, we need also to ask how well we have commended the gospel.

Do our lives, and the life of the church, embody the life of Jesus? Is the kingdom that arrives in him, and into which the Spirit continually draws us, visible in us? This Spirit, we remember from celebrating the feast of Pentecost just two weeks ago, is poured out on all flesh, but how many of our communities have yet responded fully to Jesus’ work of reconciliation and the Spirit’s leading to make this real and visible in our communities? The Black Lives Matter protests across the world are sparking an overdue reckoning with the legacy and sin of racism. And this reckoning must include the churches. And that includes St Bene’t’s. 

I don’t know yet how this work will be done. But I know it needs to be done. For me, it starts with the recognition of the ways I am disobedient to Jesus’ instruction to his disciples. I minister in a Church of England that has billions in the bank. I pack my forbidden bag with the stuff that makes me feel secure, from my education and ability to be articulate to the knowledge that my face fits pretty well in an established church – and where, I recognise, others are told their faces do not fit. There is some unpacking of the bag Jesus has told me I shouldn’t even be carrying to be done. And I hope that for others of you who recognise you have similar work to do, we can learn together how best to do it. 

In a moment we will say the Creed. We will confess our belief in one holy catholic and apostolic church. By that we recognise our fellowship in faith with the first disciples. We acknowledge that part of the character of our life as a church is to be sent into the world with the good news of Jesus. We commit ourselves to the apostolic calling to be responsive to the Spirit’s leading, recognising with gratitude that the new creation begun in Christ can begin again in us. Repentance, the pursuit of justice, the building of community are not side issues to the work of the gospel. They are the gospel, for they conform us to Christ and draw us and others into his life. Without Christ’s forgiveness Peter can’t be the rock. Only when he and the church stand upon the grace of God do we stand firm. That’s the only security we need as we are sent out to proclaim the good news of the nearness of God’s kingdom, where people from every tribe and language and nation are drawn together in the worship of God, the creator and redeemer of us all.