18 th June: 2 nd Sunday after Trinity: Gen 18.1–15 or Exod 19;2–8 a;Rom 5:1–8;Matt 9:35–10:8 [9 –23]

In his book, The Shepherd’s Life, the farmer and writer James Rebanks chronicles the shape of the year farming Herdwick sheep in the uplands of England’s Lake District. He writes with a deep passion and affection for the land and the people and the way of life, but does not romanticise. In one passage he writes of the challenges of staying warm and dry when working out on the hill in bad weather, noting that the pneumonia that results from being never quite dry ‘would once have killed men and women here in their damp little houses’. But, he says, his job is simple—to get round the flocks, care for the sheep and deal with any issues that arise. There are, he notes, three rules of shepherding:

First rule of shepherding: it’s not about you, it’s about the sheep and the land.

Second rule: sometimes you can’t win.

Third rule: shut up and do the work. ¹

These ‘rules’ echo in today’s gospel passage, featuring—like so much of Scripture—images of shepherds and shepherding: the shepherd of Israel who, in Psalm 80 ‘leads Joseph like a flock’, the Lord as shepherd who provides for his people’s every need, the Good Shepherd who knows his flock by name, lays down his life for his sheep, and is also himself the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

The early part of Matthew chapter 9 piles up accounts both of Jesus healing—the paralytic, Jairus’s daughter, the woman with the haemorrhages, the two blind men, and a mute demoniac—and also of rising controversy with the Pharisees who accuse him of blasphemy, eating with tax-collectors and sinners, and then of himself having a demon, ‘By the ruler of demons he casts out the demons.’ (v. 34).

Then, in v. 35, Matthew uses a summary passage to move the narrative on as he tells us of Jesus tour of ‘all the cities and villages’ proclaiming the Kingdom and curing every sickness. Here, John’s Good Shepherd is moved to compassion when he sees the crowds ‘because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd’ (v. 36), just as were the crowds in Mark 6:34 before the feeding of the five thousand. It is seeing the crowds thus that Jesus calls the disciples to him, and tells them, in effect, ‘it’s not about you, it’s about the sheep and the land’—‘the harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few’, and gives them authority to do themselves the work that we have just been told of him doing—to proclaim the kingdom, cure every disease and sickness, cast out unclean spirits. Those whom he had called to him to learn of him, to be his disciples, he now sends out as his apostles. At this stage, they are to ‘go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’, to gather back in those whom God had called already into relationship with him.

And sometimes you can’t win: Jesus sends his apostles out with what is good news, news of promise, healing, and salvation. They are to go bearing greetings of peace. Nevertheless, even as Jesus sends them out he does so with the recognition that there will be people and places who ‘will not welcome [them] or listen to [their] words’ (10:13). Jesus instructs the apostles simply not to waste their time and effort with those who do not wish to listen and receive; ‘shake the dust off your feet’, you’re not going to win. Such an injunction can seem challenging for those of us who value patience and persistence, giving things one more go, but it is—above all—a call to realism. Some people won’t listen; sometimes you can’t win, and there is a grace and a courage in recognising that, and discerning where or what or who should be the focus of attention instead.

And then, finally, to shut up and do the work. As Jesus commissions his disciples to be apostles, as he sends them out to proclaim the Kingdom, he does so with a single-minded focus on the task in hand. The account in Luke 10 of the sending out of the seventy is, in many respects, a close parallel to this text. Among the discrepancies is that the seventy others whom the Lord appointed are sent out ‘ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.’ (Luke 10:1). They go ahead to proclaim the Kingdom, to prepare the way for Jesus himself. Not so in the Matthean account: the Twelve are sent out, perhaps individually or perhaps as a group; and they are sent neither to Gentiles nor to Samaritans but only ‘to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ Stanley Hauerwas draws attention to the way in which this commission places the new community of Kingdom messengers ‘in fundamental continuity with the people of Israel. Israel was constituted of twelve tribes, and Jesus calls twelve disciples.’ ² It is only after the resurrection, in the Great Commission, that the message is to be proclaimed to all nations. Not only is the focus precise, but so too the manner in which they are to go: they are to travel light, with only the bear essentials for the journey; they are to make themselves vulnerable and dependant on the hospitality of those who may or may not receive them, and knowing that as they ‘received without payment’ so they must ‘give without payment’ (10:8). The task of proclaiming the Kingdom is all, and is sufficient in itself, and ‘nothing is allowed to get in the way of the witness they make to the gospel.’ ³ Here, as Hauerwas again notes, is a pattern for the way in which monasticism continues to prove effective as Christian witness, as people radiate the joy that comes, in St Benedict’s phrase, from ‘preferring nothing whatever to Christ.’ ⁴

Jesus sends out the Twelve to proclaim the Kingdom to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, having had compassion on the harassed and helpless crowds, those who were like sheep without a shepherd. The Twelve are sent in what becomes the pattern for Christian mission and ministry—Christ’s gathered people sent out to proclaim the good news, and share in the signs of the Kingdom. Christ the Good Shepherd is the pattern of their calling and their commission. It is this same ministry that we care called to share today—a response of compassion which leads to a ministry of service and proclamation, not about us but about the sheep and the land, sometimes unsuccessful, but which the task is to go and do giving freely of what has been received freely, even grace and life itself.