This is a sermon that I preached on Sunday, 06/14/26, at Berkeley Friends Church. The scripture reading for this sermon was:
Matthew 9:35-10:8.
In our reading this morning from the Gospel of Matthew, we get a really profound view into what Jesus’ ministry really consisted of on a day-to-day basis during his three years of ministry in the Judean countryside. We get a sense of his methodology and his program, which from this passage seems to have involved three primary things:
First of all, Jesus moved around a lot. He moved between cities and villages, going directly to where the people were. He didn’t wait for them to come to him. He went personally, even to little villages that no one had heard of. And as we see in our reading this morning, he soon amplifies this tactic by sending out his disciples to other villages, so that they can cover more ground. So, first and foremost, Jesus’ campaign was a popular campaign. He was interested in the people at large, not just the elites.
The second thing that we can notice from Matthew’s description of Jesus’ activity, is that Jesus was very busy teaching and proclaiming the gospel – that “the kingdom of the heavens has come near.” This is important, because we as we’re about to see, Jesus had a very hands-on, practical ministry. But he didn’t neglect the ideological side of things. Jesus did the work to help people understand what was happening, how it fit into their faith, and how God was calling them to respond.
Finally, Jesus did a lot of direct action. Healing. Curing the sick. Raising the dead. Casting out demons and liberating people from bondage that they were experiencing.
So the Jesus Campaign, the God Movement, was an expansive, popular campaign that sought to involve all the people of Roman-occupied Judea, perhaps especially those who were marginal in one way or another – economically, socially, sexually, religiously. This campaign had two major thrusts: Practical social action for healing and transformation, on the one hand. And on the other hand, teaching and formation. The old proverb says, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” Jesus clearly didn’t buy into this sort of dichotomy. He was interested in both giving fish and teaching fishermen.
Matthew also makes it clear what the origin of this campaign was. Jesus’ mission is driven by compassion; translated from a Greek word that implies deep visceral feeling. Jesus sees the crowds and feels for them, intensely. Jesus saw that the common people of his society were beaten down, despairing, and helpless – like sheep without a shepherd. Lost.
This is the point of origin for Jesus’ ministry. He’s driven by a deep love, compassion, and concern for the well-being of the people around him. God has sent him into the thick of the crisis, to bring good news of God’s presence and power. To heal the sick and break down demonic strongholds.
This passage reminds me of the Prologue to John’s Gospel in the sense that it powerfully exposes the world behind the world, the reality that is playing out in the heavenlies, from a God’s-eye perspective. In seeing Jesus’ compassion on the crowds and his response, we get a glimpse into the origin story of the incarnation. We get a sense of how God the Father must have been motivated by this same sort of visceral compassion, hearing the voices of his children crying out, to send Jesus into the world. Jesus feels motherly compassion for his brothers and sisters, just as God felt for the world as he sent his Son to become one of us.
Just as God the Father sent Jesus out of compassion and love, Jesus also sends his disciples into the world, to carry out this same ministry of reconciliation and healing. By imitating his Father, Jesus kicks off a process of incarnational multiplication. Just as the Father gave Jesus authority to go and teach and heal and cast out demons, so Jesus gives his friends authority to continue this process. No one – except the Father – acts under their own authority. First Jesus, and eventually each one of us, comes to act by the authority of the one who sent us.
What we see in Matthew 9 and 10 is both an illustration of the great love that God has for the world and an explanation of the action that God chose to take to express that love. God sent Jesus into the world, to do the work of teaching, proclaiming, healing, and transformation. In turn, Jesus sends his friends out even deeper into the surrounding villages, multiplying the mission. Eventually, these friends send others, making the movement potentially exponential.
Throughout this process, along the way, God continues to send all of us. We’re never operating alone. Even Jesus never moved except as the Spirit guided him. How much more so must we his friends wait on the Spirit’s guidance and depend on Jesus’ authority. Yet God is generous and faithful. The God Movement has expanded through the ongoing inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit, at Pentecost and beyond. We are experiencing it now. We are caught up in it. We are being gathered and sent.
God is so surprising. He’s not the god that I would have made up if I were inventing a religion. If we were relying on my imagination, I’d assume that if there were a problem in the world, God would just fix it. But the God that we know in Jesus is far more profound and mysterious than the god of my imagination. This is the God who didn’t just fix the world and call it a day; instead, he sent his son Jesus into the world, to become one of us. And even Jesus didn’t simply overpower the world with his authority – which surely he could have done – but instead equipped and empowered his brothers and sisters to fully participate in his ministry. Just as the Father sent Jesus, Jesus sends his friends.
This is huge. It’s a really big deal that God hasn’t simply jumped in and fixed our problems for us without involving us in the process. I want us to really grasp what this means for us as human beings: This means that we matter. Our lives and actions are important. The salvation of the world is coming about not merely through the Spirit’s action in the world. God in his wisdom has decided that our world is to be redeemed and transformed by the working of the Holy Spirit in us.
We are invited into the ongoing ministry of Jesus. He is here to teach us himself. He is here to send us himself. He wants to give us authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. The same ministry that Jesus is doing, he wants us to do as well. Not in our own strength or wisdom, but by his authority and empowered by the Holy Spirit.
As followers of Jesus, we are to imitate him in every way. This means, first and foremost, having the same starting place that he does. We are called to be overcome by God’s great compassion for human beings, loving them and seeking their highest good. This holy and visceral compassion opens the door to embracing all parts of Jesus’ ministry:
- Moving between cities (San Francisco and Los Angeles) and villages (Richmond, Berkeley, Albany, Fruitvale, San Leandro, Hayward), teaching and proclaiming the gospel – that the kingdom of God has come near.
- Healing and curing the sick.
- Casting out demons and confronting the powers that keep people in bondage to egotism, greed, selfishness, and sin.
As followers of Jesus, we are called to imitate him, doing the work that he does. An important part of this work is participating in the process of equipping more disciples to join in this mission. This might look like visiting a neighbor in the hospital. It might mean encouraging a coworker who senses there is a deeper meaning to life beyond career and consumption. It might mean using art and music as a way to give glory to God. Or it might mean forgiving someone who has hurt you, and working for their well-being, without expectation.
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
God will send the laborers. God is raising people up all around us. They are already with us – in our families, at our jobs, and in our neighborhoods. Our role is to pray for them and make ourselves present and available in their lives so that we are in a position to equip them to do the work of Jesus in the world.
Just as Jesus raised up the Twelve, each one of us is called to support, equip, and challenge a small group of people in our own tribes and networks. We’re here to help others respond to the call and follow Jesus.
This is how the God Movement works. This is what Christianity is: A chain reaction that explodes out from Jesus and keeps moving throughout all the towns and villages of 21st century America. We are to be yeast – multiplying and growing throughout the loaf of this world, causing a whole new social order to arise. Each one of us is critical to this process. We are being sent by Jesus and upheld by the Holy Spirit to take up this mission, this sending, in our own time and place.
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” There is no shortage of work to do. There is no shortage of good that can be done, of healing that can occur, of good news to be proclaimed, of darkness to be pushed back, lives transformed. The limiting factor is us: The number and faithfulness of the people that God has called into this work of transformation.
This is how the harvest grows – not only through our own labor, but through those we help raise up alongside us. Jesus didn’t carry the mission alone; he invested in twelve people who would carry it further. We are called to do the same.
The story of Christianity is not done. We each have an important part to play. What will be your part?
How will you proclaim the good news to the people in your life? How will healing flow through you? Who are you being sent to, and to what unfamiliar places are you called to go?
The harvest is plentiful. We are the laborers God has sent – and the ones he is raising up more through. Let us go.