Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. (Amen.)
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
In the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s royal‑ruling words and signs break into our world of sin, sickness, and death (confer Gibbs, ad loc Matthew 9:32-35, p.491)! What Jesus began doing by Himself (for example, Matthew 4:23), Jesus continues doing through those whom He sends. In last Sunday’s Gospel Reading (Matthew 9:9‑13), we heard, in part, Jesus call Matthew from his vocation as a tax collector, and, in today’s Gospel Reading, which picks up some twenty-two verses later, we heard, among other things, Jesus send Matthew and eleven others with Jesus’s own authority to speak and to act on Jesus’s behalf, ultimately for us! Jesus’s own ministry had resulted in some who believed in Him, but most did not believe in Him, and some of those who did not believe in Him violently opposed Him. In sending and instructing His apostles, Jesus essentially told them to expect similar results: some would receive them and listen to their words, but most would not receive them or listen to their words, and some of those who would not receive them or listen to their words would violently oppose them. As Jesus told the apostles some eighteen verses after today’s Gospel Reading, those who receive the apostles receive Jesus and the One Who sent Jesus (Matthew 10:40), so those who do not receive the apostles do not receive Jesus or the One Who sent Jesus. The same is true of those who receive the apostles’ successors, pastors today, they receive Jesus and the Father Who sent Jesus, but those who do not receive the apostles’ successors, pastors today, do not receive Jesus or the One Who sent Jesus. This morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading, directing our thoughts to the theme “Receiving or not receiving Jesus and those whom He sends”.
The Divinely‑inspired St. Matthew said that the crowds that Jesus saw were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Moses, when asking God to appoint a successor for him, referred to the people of Israel “as sheep that have no shepherd” (Numbers 27:17), and the prophet Micaiah, when prophesying the death of king Ahab, also described the people of Israel “as sheep that have no shepherd” (2 Chronicles 18:16). As used by the Spirit through St. Matthew, the description “like sheep without a shepherd” is in part an indictment of the unfaithful Jewish spiritual leaders of Jesus’s day, though the House of Israel was not lost sheep only because of the unfaithful Jewish spiritual leaders. Later Jesus referred to those whom He sends as “sheep”, and in today’s Psalm we called ourselves the sheep of the Lord’s pasture (Psalm 100; antiphon: v.5). We may feel harassed and helpless, maybe even at the hands of some spiritual leaders of our day, but ultimately we each are individually responsible for our own going astray, turning, every one, to his or her own way (Isaiah 53:6). Even when the Lord provides a faithful shepherd to comfort and deliver us, we may not receive him and listen to his words. We may feel vulnerable and leaderless only because we reject the faithful shepherd whom the Lord has given us to preach and administer the means to keep us from being harassed and helpless. For such sins, as for all sins, we deserve both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity.
But, from such sins, as from all sins, our loving Lord calls us to repent! John the Baptizer preached, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2), and Jesus Himself likewise preached, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). So, those whom Jesus sends to preach, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” surely also preach “Repent” (confer Gibbs, ad loc Matthew 9:36-10:4, p.500 n.16, and ad loc Matthew 10:4-15, p.509, including n.13). When, led by the Lord, we are sorry for our sin, trust God to forgive our sin, and want to stop sinning, then God forgives us. God forgives our not receiving Him and those He sends or whatever our sin might be. God forgives our sinful nature and all our sin for Jesus’s sake.
As we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus is the One Who had compassion on the crowds and Who told His disciples to pray to the Lord of the Harvest to send out laborers. That compassion is the gut‑wrenching love and pity that most‑properly belongs to God, and Jesus truly is the Son of God in human flesh. But, in this case, all three Blessed Persons of the one Holy Trinity are in view: the Father sends the Son, and the Spirit of the Father speaks through those whom the Son sends. As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 5:6-15), God shows His love for us in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died on the cross for us, and now we are justified by His blood. While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God the Father by the death of His Son through the power of the Holy Spirit, and, ultimately, we will be saved from the wrath of God by the Son’s life. In the Collect of the Day, we prayed for God to grant us faith to believe His promises that we may receive eternal salvation. We have done nothing to deserve or to be “worthy” of such forgiveness: we are saved through faith only by God’s grace for Jesus’s sake. Those whom Jesus sends speak and effect Jesus’s peace of the forgiveness of sins on those who receive them and listen to their words.
Those whom Jesus sends have Jesus’s own authority to speak His Word and do miraculous signs, or, as we usually call them, Sacraments, which are signs and testimonies of God’s will toward us, intended to awaken and strengthen and confirm faith in those who receive the Sacraments in faith (Augsburg Confession XIII:1-2). Thus, God’s Gospel is applied to individuals with water in Holy Baptism, with the pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, and with bread that is the Body of Christ given for you and wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for you in the Holy Supper. In all of these ways, God forgives those who receive those whom Jesus sends and listen to their words. Those who do not receive those whom Jesus sends or listen to their words may no longer have dust from feet shaken off as a sign to them, but fellowship with them nevertheless should still be cut off.
To be sure, some things were different for the apostles than they are for their successors, pastors today. One difference is that at first the apostles were not to concentrate on the Gentiles, but later Jesus widened their mission to all nations (Matthew 28:19-20), as is the case with pastors today—all people in a specific place. Certainly that universal mission was already in view in today’s Old Testament Reading, as the Lord told Moses that the people of Israel would be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation among all peoples (Exodus 19:2-8). A second difference is that the apostles were to rely on the bed and board and other needs provided by those who received them and believed their teaching, which for parish pastors take the form of salary and benefits (confer Luke 10:7; 1 Timothy 5:18; Scaer, Discourses, p.279). A third difference is that, at the Lord’s direction, the apostles could readily leave a house church or a town that rejected them and the Ones Who sent them, and the apostles could readily move on to the next house church or town (confer Matthew 10:23). But, the Lord through the Church calls parish pastors to one place, until He calls them somewhere else. Perhaps more like Old Testament prophets, such as Ezekiel, parish pastors stay in place and keep warning their people for the Lord, and, if the people do not heed the warning, then the people die in their iniquity, but the parish pastor delivers his own soul (Ezekiel 33:1-9). As one commentator says, “one’s eternal destiny turns on relationship to [Jesus] or even to His emissaries” (Carson, Matthew, 246, cited by Gibbs, ad loc Matthew 10:5-15, p.514 n.24).
With the theme “Receiving or not receiving Jesus and those whom He sends”, this morning we have considered today’s Gospel Reading. The Gospel Reading is appointed by our lectionary series; I do not pick it, but I strive to let the Spirit of the Father speak to you through my faithfully preaching the Gospel Reading to this congregation in this place at this time, as harassed and helpless as we may be. If you have questions or comments about the interpretation and application of the Gospel Reading, please talk to me. For any and all of my failures, with daily contrition and faith, I live in God’s forgiveness of sins, as should we all.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +
