A Jewish liturgy professor I knew used to tell a funny story.
He lived in New York City, and at one time he seemed to be listed on every door-to-door, Bible-believing, evangelist’s list of potential converts. One day he responded to the Bible-thumper at the door like this:
“Your Jesus — he was a Jew, right?
The man responded, “Yes he was a Jew.”
“He was a good Jew, right?”
“Yes, he was a good Jew.”
“He lived and died as a Jew, right?”
“Yes, he lived and died as a Jew.”
“Well, if it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me!”
And he hasn’t been bothered since.
Our Gospel reading for today lends itself much too easily, I think, to exhortations to go out and make more believers, and that was probably the exact message of many homilies and sermons in the past. One-on-one recruiters for anything, really, can be boring and eventually annoying. You just know that he or she doesn’t really care about you personally. You’re just another soul to be saved from eternal damnation, another member to be enrolled, another click on the success tabulation sheet. Or not.
So what do we do with a passage that moves from compassion for helpless people as sheep without shepherds, to a change in metaphor urging prayer for labourers to harvest them, followed by a list of names, twelve men to be precise, sent out with instructions as to how to save them?
Notice that Jesus doesn’t tell his followers to go out and recruit people, certainly not by arguing them into compliance. Jesus responds to their needs. Mission doesn’t start with the individuals sent out, it begins from the lived needs of the people right in front of them: a point possibly overlooked by the door-to-door Jesus salespersons today.
Most readers of this Reflection know that the twelve Apostles (and this is the only place in Matthew’s Gospel where they are called by this name, which means “those sent out”) deliberately parallels the twelve tribes of Israel. Jewish Christians would see the analogy right away, as well as the instructions to start with their own people. And most know that the whole image of “harvest” and “labourers” is an implied reference, not to recruiting new believers in the here and now, but as a warning about the age to come, the end-of-times, the eschatological age. The apostles were being sent to cast out “unclean spirits,” evidence that God’s presence was taking hold in the world and driving out the domination of oppression and evil. Matthew’s people undoubtedly knew what they were hearing. They lived under military occupation by a ruthless international empire, and evil was all around.
What are we hearing? Let’s tug on a thread from the First Reading, the line “You shall be for me a priestly kingdom/kin-dom and a holy nation.” Aspiring to holiness is nothing we can accomplish on our own, any more than we can “cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, [and] cast out demons” just by our own willpower. The apostles are sent out empowered by the gift of faith that was given to them, and anything they do, any good they can accomplish, is a concrete manifestation of that faith.
A priestly people does not need to perform gee-whiz-wow miracles to give insight, hope, and in a sense, new life to those who need it most. A holy people, when they work to heal wounds and push to eradicate any form of injustice, lets holiness radiate outward. Transformation can start small. And where better to start than at home?
© Susan K. Roll
*Revised from the Reflection of June 18, 2023.
Susan Roll retired from the Faculty of Theology at Saint Paul University, Ottawa, in 2018, where she served as Director of the Sophia Research Centre. Her research and publications are centred in the fields of liturgy, sacraments, and feminist theology. She holds a Ph.D. from the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain), Belgium, and has been involved with international academic societies in liturgy and theology, as well as university chaplaincy, Indigenous ministry and church reform projects.
