Christian Art | Mission Of The Disciples
Matthew 10: 1-7 – Week 14 Ordinary Time, Wednesday | King James Audio Bible KJV
1 AND when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.
2 Now the names of the twelve apostles are these; The first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother;
3 Philip, and Bartholomew; Thomas, and Matthew the publican; James the son of Alphæus, and Lebbæus, whose surname was Thaddæus;
4 Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him.
5 These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not:
6 But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
7 And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Jesus’ great Discourse of the Mission begins in these Gospel verses with the calling together of the twelve disciples and the summative naming of the twelve. These twelve apostles are mandated; they are sent to establish the first foundations of Christ’s Church, and they are empowered by Jesus to exorcise unclean spirits and to heal the sick, to perform the very miracles of Jesus as a sign that the Kingdom of God has come. Through exorcism, the apostles are called to an imitation of Christ, and so in this way to establish the Christian community.
Jesus tells the disciples to confine their mission to the Jews, going nowhere near the Gentiles or the Samaritans. This is to be an exclusively Jewish mission, to call the lost sheep of the people whom God originally chose to be His people. Pearls will not be cast before swine.
As we ask to understand the meaning of this mandate, we are aware of Jesus’ own work with non-Jews, and his journeying to exclusively Gentile territory, and Jesus’ subsequent commandments, including in Matthew’s Gospel, to go and preach the Gospel to all nations, to the whole world. It seems we must relate to one another what might seem contrary injunctions and impulses.
Perhaps we now think of the whole of the Bible, of God’s promises to Abraham, and the long salvation history which followed, as the people of Israel unwittingly moved toward the time when, from them, would come a light for all nations. We might think of the prophets especially, and of the psalms, through which we now are taught how to pray; more broadly, of all the ways in which God spoke in such wise as his words would descend to us. Just as the Old Testament provides the foundation of Christian faith, albeit radically overhauled by Jesus, so the first call of Jesus’ new Church is to the Jewish people.
Beyond this, the call will come for integration. This is one of Matthew’s concerns in relation to his readership, to bring the Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians together, to heal divisions so that all may be one in Christ. Here, distinctions are recognized, while it is also made clear in the Discourse of the Mission that many of the Jewish people will reject Christian teaching. Through this, we are taught to understand that to embrace Christianity raises one to a new reality, in which we transcend such questions of Gentile or Jew.
Concluding Prayer
O God, be gracious and bless us
and let your face shed its light upon us.
So will your ways be known upon earth
and all nations learn your saving help.
Let the people praise you, O God;
let all the people praise you. (Psalm 66/67)
King James Audio Bible | Endnotes
Jesus’ Disciples Are Sent Only To The Jews
Jesus calls his twelve disciples to him and gives them authority to heal the sick and cast out demons. Jesus then sends the twelve out on a mission, but with a specific instruction: ‘Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ (Matthew 10:5-6 KJV)
This passage clearly indicates that Jesus intended his disciples to focus their ministry on the Jews, and not on Gentiles or Samaritans. The term ‘lost sheep’ is a reference to the Jewish people, who were seen as being in need of spiritual guidance and salvation.
Some may wonder why Jesus would limit his disciples’ ministry in this way. One explanation is that the Jews were God’s chosen people, and that they had a special relationship with him that Gentiles did not. As the Apostle Paul explains in Romans 9:4-5, the Jews were the recipients of ‘the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises’. In other words, the Jews had a unique spiritual heritage that required special attention and care.
Additionally, it was important for the disciples to focus on the Jews because they were the ones who would ultimately spread the message of Jesus to the Gentiles. As Jesus explains in Acts 1:8: ‘But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.’ In other words, the disciples needed to start with the Jews in order to prepare for the broader mission of spreading the Gospel to all nations.
Christian leaders have wrestled with the question of why Jesus sent his disciples only to the Jews. Some have argued that this was simply a practical decision, based on the fact that the disciples themselves were Jewish and would be most effective in reaching their own people. Others have suggested that it was a matter of divine providence, and that God had a specific plan for the Jews that required their attention and care.
Saint John Chrysostom, prominent early Christian theologian and Archbishop of Constantinople, argued that Jesus’ decision to focus on the Jews was based on the fact that they were in a state of spiritual darkness and needed to be brought into the light of Christ. He also suggested that the Jews were more receptive to the message of Jesus because of their familiarity with the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament.
Martin Luther, 16th Century Protestant reformer, also had thoughts on the matter. In his commentary on Matthew 10, Luther suggested that Jesus’ instructions to the disciples were primarily intended to teach them humility and obedience. He argued that the disciples needed to learn to follow Jesus’ instructions even when they didn’t fully understand them, in order to build their faith and trust in him.
In more recent times, Pope Benedict XVI has also addressed the question of why Jesus sent his disciples only to the Jews. In his book Jesus Of Nazareth, Pope Benedict argues that Jesus’ ministry was focused on restoring the unity of the people of God, which had been broken by sin. Pope Benedict suggests that by focusing on the Jews, Jesus was working to heal the divisions within the people of Israel and restore them to a right relationship with God.
We process. Glass exhibition cases, old reliquaries. A forearm here; here a nun’s fingertip. In chapel, at a glance, there are the usual faces. But they all stand to attention. Jonathan breaks from the procession to – fire the organ with oomph and dignity: Ride on! ride on in majesty! The angel-squadrons of the sky look down with sad and wondering eyes to see the approaching sacrifice. When we’ve done the readings, the Arch holds that tree in his hands to deliver the homily. He rocks quietly on his feet, some few seconds, as if balance defeated it. A way you might affect as the Spirit moves… Copying. Then he says: ‘Our palm fronds may seem to us today rather dry. I mean this not in a literal sense, but by the standards of those who originally lined the roadways in order to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem, as they proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah, who would be clambering up and ripping their palm branches fresh from off the trees. I think perhaps also our faith is somewhat distant from that of the people there on that highroad into Jerusalem, and something of our sense of the meaning has shifted in vividness from what it was then. And of course the expectation of all those many people is markedly different, but in many important respects the same. There are the same essential qualities to all our faith in God, which springs complete from our humanity, and that is one and the same in value for all of us, and time is consistent on this point. So then, let us renew the fullness of Catholic faith, and let us ask the Lord’s blessing as we embark upon our Holy Week. ‘Our Lord enters into Jerusalem in order to refresh us. He is to die in order that we may have life. There is a living reality here, both spiritual and as entangled in the joy of our daily living. We have Ladies’ Day where I grew up. They still have it, and they close the roads off, and little children parade, dressed-up like spring brides. When I was a boy, there was a May Day festival, and there was a May pole on the field, with the people dancing, like Morris dancers might be one way of visualizing this if you’ve never seen it, with their ribbons tied onto the top of the May pole, and they would weave around each other, dressing the pole, which is what we called it. It was like a dance with red and white and blue ribbons all hung off of the top of the May pole, which stood there all year, only like a telegraph pole, but it was concreted in, and then there was a slide, and swings – one baby-swing and two you could have a go at – terrible health and safety but that’s what it was in those days. ‘There was a round-a-bout – we used to run it round and round to try to get it off its central axis. It were rusty as anything and creaked like mad – on concrete. And climb up where it was all greased up at the top. Ruth, who was big as the next four of us, used to sit there sucking on the lollipops we nicked for her from Raddies, and she’d direct matters. We were trying to destroy it, and get it to dislodge from its central axis, and fly away – roll off into that farmer’s field, which he only ever kept for silage, but we never succeeded. There was a car someone had left there so we spent forever smashing that up, until someone who lived in one of the houses there took exception to our doing that, so he put thick grease under the door handles and gave us a right talking to. ‘It would only be a few stands, hot-dogs and things like that. The man selling the hot dogs would have his records on full blast. There’d be a couple of set-up stalls. Air-rifles – that sort of thing. But we all had them, and we all went shooting, of course, if not with twelve bores then with smaller gauge. Or pay a pound – I have no idea how much it was in actual fact then – it might have only been a few pennies – and we’d get all that time smashing up the crockery the man would put up for us to smash on the dressers. That was my particular favourite thing to do at these festivals, by the way, in case you were wondering. You got a little bucket of so many cricket balls. ‘I dread to think what went into those hot dogs. Probably EE rules would forbid it now. But it was a fair mix in those days. A lot of young people then were C of E. We’ve done a lot to hang onto our young people, which is a tremendous encouragement when you consider how things are, while in recent decades the Church of England hasn’t been so successful. People still want it on feast days and what are essentially now civic celebrations. It’s strange to see, though, how all the little stands there people have are run by the police and people like that along those lines. There’s no May pole. That was a sort of faith that ran and ran beneath all the theoreticals of it in the 1960s and the 1970s and into the 1980s. The May pole isn’t there now in the particular place I’m thinking of. Considering May poles were officially suppressed hundreds of years ago – as a part of the protestant reformation. One or two of you are probably thinking I’m remembering things from that time! ‘I should have liked to say that those processionals were so hardwired into us, that even after the last thirty years, when I became a bishop, they are still with us. They were […]
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