Ordinary 11 Year A

Sermon Based on:
Genesis 18:1-15,
Psalm 116: 1, 10-17,
Romans 5:1-8,
Matthew 9:35-10:8

May I speak in the name of God, Creator, Redeemer and Giver of Life. Amen.

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After our detours through the wonderful feasts of Pentecost and Trinity, we’re picking up the thread again of Matthew’s gospel. Introducing a new part of his story, Matthew writes,      

           “Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness.”

Jesus’ public ministry is suddenly taking off. Matthew has already told us several stories of Jesus healing people, and now Jesus is healing and preaching in ‘all the cities and villages’ – God’s reign is abundant, dynamic, running wild in the world, attracting attention – for better or worse. And then Matthew tells us something important: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” 

Jesus is the Messiah here and his compassion is for God’s people – they are like ‘harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.’ Jesus sees his own people in their distress… before he teaches, before he sets about healing, before he sends anyone out in mission. He sees them as they are.

I think it’s that act of seeing which connects this gospel with our reading today from Genesis, the story of Abraham welcoming the three strangers at Mamre. 

Abraham is sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day when he looks up and notices three strangers approaching. This story – so pivotal to Israel’s history – begins not with a theological insight or some miraculous event; it begins with attention. Abraham sees them. 

And having seen the strangers, he runs to greet them. He offers water to wash their feet; he invites them to rest in the shade; he tells Sarah to bake bread. A calf is prepared, and curds and milk are brought for their refreshment. The hospitality is extravagant, but also, something essential to the ancient nomadic cultures of the Middle East.

Abraham doesn’t yet know who these strangers are – he doesn’t ask whether they deserve his generosity. He doesn’t know where they’ve come from, what they believe, or whether they might offer him anything in return. He simply welcomes them, and what’s his becomes theirs.

Only gradually does it become clear that something holy is taking place. Abraham thought he was welcoming strangers, but it turns out he was welcoming the presence of God.

Christians have reflected on this story from the Hebrew tradition for centuries. Some of you will know that it’s the story behind the beautiful icon painted by the Russian monk Andrei Rublev – we have a reproduction hanging here at St Luke’s. It depicts Abraham’s three visitors seated around a low table under the oak trees of Mamre. 

Over time, Christians have woven our own interpretation of Abraham’s story, seeing in the three mysterious figures the Trinity. As in Rublev’s icon, though of course the story wasn’t originally written as a doctrinal statement of the Trinity, we’ve come to see in it something profound about the nature of God. 

In the icon, the three figures are turned towards one another in mutual love and hospitality; even visually, they echo one another’s postures and gestures. At the centre of the icon there is space at the table, a fourth place left open, as though inviting us to join them. The icon suggests that at the heart of reality is not isolation but relationship; not competition but communion; not exclusion but welcome. These are profound Christian values that we must hold to in our world today.

Our God’s very life and nature is hospitality. 

I think that helps us understand something of what Jesus is doing in today’s gospel reading. ‘When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them.’ 

The word Matthew uses for compassion is a powerful one – it’s not an expression of polite concern or distant sympathy. It’s a gut word – a visceral response; Jesus is moved in the deepest part of himself by the suffering he is seeing around him. The people – his people – are harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. (Remember they are living under oppression, under an occupying military force…)

In response to this distress, what does Jesus do? He gathers others into his work. ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.’ Jesus now summons the twelve and gives them authority to act in his name.

One of the most obvious and beautiful things that always resonates for me in this passage is that Matthew names them all for us. Listen again: 

10:2 These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John;

10:3 Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus;

10:4 Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

They are named one by one. It’s a very human list – you know Zebedee’s boy, and then Jack’s little brother… This immense mission – to proclaim and demonstrate the reign of God to Jesus’ own people – is given to these twelve people to share and support one another. They’re not heroes, and not the most successful or impressive people in Galilee. They were simply the ones Jesus called. 

And this is so good for us to hear because it gives us a sense of the practical, concrete way in which the reign of God is worked out in the world. Not by heroes, not by Hollywood figures, nor by people who travel from afar, but by these 12 ordinary people who were invited into Jesus’ mission to their own people – they were sons, brothers, friends – tax collectors, fishermen, a betrayer. 

They were not the most popular, the smartest, the most charismatic or holy, though our church now remembers them as holy. They didn’t expect to be welcomed or liked everywhere they went – they would have discouraging days, hard days, tiring days.  They were ordinary people doing extraordinary things faithfully together, and they found strength and courage and care in each other’s company. This is what the reign of God looked like, along with healing and transformation: it looked like friendship, shared endeavour, community.

Thousands of years before this, Abraham offered food and shelter to strangers, a practice of hospitality that has become deeply formative in Middle Eastern culture. 

In Jesus’ time, the disciples travel together, depending on that same practice of hospitality and welcome, bringing healing and proclaiming hope. 

The reign of God appears in acts of welcome, friendship, generosity, healing, and shared labour. Perhaps this is something our world needs to see and hear.

We live in a time when many people are lonely; our culture often encourages us to withdraw into our own concerns, our own circles, our own carefully managed lives. 

Hospitality can seem like a small thing, but it is profoundly countercultural. A conversation we open up; a shared meal; a smile and a word of welcome; making room at the table. Paying attention to – seeing – someone whom others overlook. Yet the scriptures we’ve heard today suggest that this is often how the reign of God draws near – it often arrives disguised as acts of healing, generosity, and hospitality. 

Abraham welcomed strangers and discovered the presence of God; Jesus saw the crowds and responded with compassion, and invited the twelve to join in that same work. 

And we are invited too. Not necessarily to become apostles, but to notice – to see – to welcome – to make room for the stranger. To create a community where people discover that they are seen, known, and loved. 

Because the reign of God comes near whenever people are welcomed, fed, healed, befriended, and loved. That is still how God most often works: through ordinary people doing extraordinary things together. 

Amen.