Sunday 19th January 2025 – Mission part 1

Mission is nothing less than God’s invitation to all peoples to join in the Divine Dance. So if mission is God’s invitation, what’s our part?

In Matthew’s gospel we read:

When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field.”

He called His twelve disciples to Him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness. These twelve Jesus sent out …                                                                               Matthew 9: 36 – 10: 1,5

Our first part in mission is to recognise that there is a need; a need for people to know the love of God for themselves. Jesus saw the crowds and had compassion on them.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that during COVID many people turned to prayer, praying to an ‘Otherness’, a ‘Universal

Spirit’. We have the privilege of knowing this ‘Otherness’, this ‘Universal Spirit’ as the God who loves us because He loves us because He loves us.

Next, we are to pray. The Message version of the Bible has Jesus saying, ‘On your knees and pray for harvest hands!’ This suggests two possible meanings to ‘hands’. It could mean ‘hands’ as in hired hands, hired workers, which would be lovely as it leaves mission to someone else. Or it could mean that we must be prepared to get our hands dirty and participate in the harvest.

We pray that God would send people out to share His love. But notice that having told the disciples to pray, Jesus sends them out. We have to be ready to be the answer to our prayers! When we pray, God often says, ‘Yes, I hear you. What are you going to do?’ As Jesus said at the feeding of the five thousand, ‘You give them something to eat.’

As we pray, God sends us out.

‘… go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them …, and teaching them…’  Matthew 28:19-20

We are sent out to be witnesses (Acts 1:7), ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20), with beautiful feet (Isaiah 52:7). Teresa of Avila wrote:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes with which Christ looks out His compassion to the world. Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good.

Yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now.

Rev Phil