Saturday, December 3, 2011

Matthew 9:35-10:1, 5a, 6-8

Now that I'm typing out the reference: quite the patched together gospel reading today, isn't it?

So what struck me as I was reading this today is the thought: what kind of person is it, really, who goes out to meet a messiah? Who stumbles after a faith healer, who goes out in the desert away from their homes to hear someone talk and see him cure the sick?

As much as I want to summon the image of the true faithful, together people that fill the established churches on Sunday, it's the cult followers who spring to mind. I can think of events at the church that fit the above description - but those are church-sponsored events. Jesus was kind of the opposite of a synagogue sponsored event.

This reading tells us Jesus had pity on the people who came to Him and I think - yes. That's what we have to people who go stumbling after the hope that someone will sweep in and tell them how the world is supposed to work and give them some scrap of dignity. People who are so thirsty not for righteousness but to feel righteous - to find some ecstasy of religion rather than the kind of sustainable faith you can live your life by. People who want to be told exactly how the world works and how they fit into it and what they need to do in order to have a good life and a good after life. What they need to do to be good people.

Two thousand years ago, they were all luckier than they could ever have dreamed. And now we're meant to be those people, as Jesus sent His disciples out to be: the ones who bring hope to those who are spiritually starving. Who will listen to anyone who promises something better, however flimsy.

We have been blessed with the truth, and there are so many thirsting for it. Why? In some places (Staunton) it seems like there are churches on every street corner (seriously, almost all of them). How do we go out and help them? Why don't they flock to the churches - or do they and don't always get what they need?

Two thousand years ago, in Israel things were bad. Rome was cruel (though less so to the Jews than to many they oppressed), life was hard. They wanted hope, needed hope desperately. They kept having false prophets saying they could lead a rebellion and failing completely. They came out to see a man who cured the sick and preached a kind of world they had never imagined. And often they disagreed when they heard what He had to say - but they came.

And so Jesus sent out His messengers to try to get it to everyone like them in the area. That should be our job too. But I wonder, really, how our tactics need to change. If they do.

Because there are churches on every corner, but so many of them are half-empty.

People want the same things they wanted two thousand years ago so badly they're camping out in parks even after police repeatedly douse them with pepper spray (as they sit quietly, mind you). People want the same things they wanted two thousand years ago so badly they dress up as revolutionary war heroes and elect congressmen and women who refuse to negotiate or compromise even to stop a national crisis.

There's something better out there, that no one even dares hope for. It's our job to bring it - but for the life of me I don't know how.