Lord, give us grace not only to hear Your Word with our ears, but also to receive it into our hearts and to reveal it in our lives; for Your love's sake. Amen.
'Jesus went about all the cities and villages... proclaiming the good news of the kingdom'. (Matt. 9:35) Then Jesus sent out His disciples with the instruction: 'As you go, proclaim the good news, "The kingdom of heaven has come near".' (Matt. 10:7)
The New Testament repeats over and over again what Matthew's Gospel tells us here. Namely, that Jesus came to proclaim God's Kingdom and to send others out to do the same. This 'proclamation of the Kingdom' was crucial to Jesus and to His first followers, and so it should be for us as well.
But there's a lot of confusion these days about what it is and how you should do it. It's not politically correct, in our secular society, to proclaim anything that might possibly cause offence to someone who believes something different. It's certainly regarded as outdated and inappropriate even to hint that Christians have 'good news' that others might need to hear, let alone invite anyone to consider distasteful things like 'repentance' and 'conversion'.
Of course, it's always wrong to try to impose what we believe upon others in arrogant, insensitive or patronising ways. But that's not how Jesus went about it, nor how He teaches His followers to do it. Today's Gospel reading says that when Jesus saw the crowds, 'He had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd'. The Greek literally means that Jesus was 'moved in His guts', churned up inside, at the sight of the masses of lost and hurting men, women and children. Jesus proclaimed the good news of the Kingdom because He cared deeply for people, and He longed for His disciples to do likewise.
Our society is full of hurting, hopeless people. People suffering pain through illness, bereavement, broken relationships; people with drug problems, drink problems, debt problems; people who are worried sick about the future of their children or the frailty of their elderly parents. How can it be 'unnecessary' or 'irrelevant' to share the message of a Saviour in such circumstances?
And it's not just individual strands, but the corporate fabric of our society, our communities with their structures and institutions, which are sick and need the wholesome medicine of the Gospel.
Last week a new Report (Moral, But No Compass by academics based at the Von Hugel Institute at Cambridge University) endorsed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York found that there is 'profound religious illiteracy' on the part of the British Government, resulting in real discrimination against Christianity and real harm to community welfare. This Report echoes
statements recently made by the Rt Revd Michael Nazir-Ali, that the decline of Christian values has created a moral and spiritual vacuum in Britain. Dr Nazir-Ali, himself an immigrant from
Pakistan, said that the 'newfangled' doctrine of multiculturalism has left immigrant communities 'segregated, living parallel lives', and the country as a whole defenceless against the rise of radical Islamic extremism. The collapse of Christianity, claims the Bishop of Rochester, is destroying family life, miring people in a doctrine of 'endless self-indulgence' that has brought an explosion in public violence and binge-drinking.
Again, how can it be 'inappropriate' or 'offensive' to proclaim the good news of rescue and release from such a plight?
And it's not only this nation which needs to hear the Gospel.
A glance at world news headlines reminds us of the countless harassed and helpless men, women and children who need to experience the compassion of our Lord and His Church. How can anyone dare to suggest that 'charity begins and ends at home' so we should leave the rest of the world to solve its own problems? Or that Christian mission has passed its sell-by date?
Apart from the Lord's Prayer, Jesus didn't often tell His followers what to pray for. But on this occasion, recorded at the end of Matthew chapter 9 (cf. Luke 10:2), He does. He says: 'Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest'. And, as His followers pray this prayer, the answer comes back alarmingly fast: you are, yourselves, to be the answer to your own prayer. Get out there, says Jesus, and proclaim the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near, very near. This has much the same meaning as the words of the Lord's Prayer, which is also all about God's Kingdom: 'Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as in heaven'. Christians know that the Kingdom of heaven isn't so much a place as a person. It's God; being with God, life lived according to His purposes and in line with His will. Jesus Christ is the incarnation, the en-flesh-ment of God in human form; so the Kingdom of heaven arrives in the Person of Jesus and then in His followers, the people of every generation who embody Christ.
How do we do that? Well, in numerous different ways, according to our giftings and personalities and the areas of concern that God lays particularly on your heart or mine. Here at the Priory, you might be one of our Welcomers - helping to remind our many summer visitors that this place is not just a great building; it's not a museum; it's home to a living community of those who seek to proclaim the Kingdom of God in our Worship, Welcome and Witness. If you're not yet on Angela Martin's rota to do a slot of welcoming in the coming weeks - why not see Angela and sign up soon? Again, working together with fellow Christians from other local churches, you might be actively involved in outreach and witness through events like Music X, Hope 08 or Lifepath; through the Lyttelton Well; through Social Responsibility and Action Group projects; through activities such as the Chernobyl Children Life Line; through support of Christian mission societies in this country and overseas.
And how lovely it is to welcome our new Crosslinks Mission Partners here today: Craig and Claudia Smith, along with Leo and Bethany, preparing to go to Uganda later this summer. What a rich variety of ways there are in which to proclaim the good news of the Kingdom. The things I've mentioned are but a small selection. What matters is that every single one of us who prays the Lord's Prayer here on a Sunday, is involved through the rest of the week in something that proclaims the Kingdom in the Lord's harvest fields.
Bishop Tom Wright says "Think of it like this. Jesus is the medical genius who discovered penicillin; we are doctors, ourselves being cured by the medicine, now applying it to those who need it. Jesus is the musical genius who wrote the greatest oratorio of all time; we are the musicians, captivated by His composition ourselves, who now perform it before a world full of muzak and cacophony. The Kingdom did indeed come with Jesus; but it will fully come when the world is healed, when the whole creation finally joins in the song. But it must be Jesus' medicine; it must be Jesus' music. ...The only way to be sure of that is to pray His prayer...' And that means praying 'make us Kingdom-bearers! make us (in the church) a community of healed healers; make us a retuned orchestra to play the kingdom-music until the world takes up the song.' ('The Lord and His Prayer', © Tom Wright 1996)
When I was an undergraduate at university, I used regularly as a prayer the first verse of the hymn that we'll sing at the end of this service. I've fallen out of that habit, but it is a good prayer for us all to make our own, often:
Forth in the peace of Christ we go;
Christ to the world with joy we bring;
hrist in our minds, Christ on our lips,
Christ in our hearts, the world's true King.
Mary Barr
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