Following the Lead of Jesus in the Neighborhood of God.

 To You Who Are Beloved of our Lord Jesus Christ,                              June 16, 2026

 This Sunday, our Scripture passage is from the Gospel of Matthew,  Matthew 9: 35-10: 8.   

³⁵ Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness. ³⁶ When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. ³⁷ Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; ³⁸ therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

10 Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. ² These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee and his brother John; ³ Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus; ⁴ Simon the Cananaean and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

⁵ These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not take a road leading to gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan town, ⁶ but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ⁷ As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ ⁸ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. 

Jesus taught, He proclaimed, He healed and cured, He did all this in company with His disciples who He was training up to take up His mantle when He returned to heaven.

 When we read about what Jesus has done, when we absorb it into our church community, our souls and psyche, our hearts and minds, when we seek actively to live into Jesus’ statement, “As My Father sent me, so I send you”, what do we see God doing?

We see that God changes ordinary life into abundant living.  But not in the abstract for ‘somebody’ out there, but for us.  And we recognize how Jesus accomplishes it.  These are the ‘how-to’s’, participating in worship, Christian Education, fellowship and service. 

We recognize that the means by which God changes ordinary living into abundant life comes in the creation of communities within our Neighborhood, communities of worship, of learning, of fellowship, and of service.  This pillars, these investments of our Time into the work and worship of the church, these are the ways in which Jesus acted and led His first batch of disciples.

He sent them out to proclaim the Kingdom of Heaven (of which we are a Neighborhood), the proclamation which is at the heart of our services of worship to this day.  He was teaching in the synagogues, while also teaching the disciples in all He did.  He set them up to serve, giving them power to cure all diseases and illnesses (we have healing in our midst, but not usually to THAT scale).  All that was then bound together with the ‘simple’ act of fellowship, simply being with His disciples, being with us, that we may know Him and trust Him and call Him friend (how simple, yet how completing).

As we are Jesus’ disciples in this, our Neighborhood in the Kingdom of Heaven, these ‘how-to’s’ serve us coming and going.  They serve us coming into God’s presence, that we may know our God, in our Lord Jesus Christ, ever more personally and deeply.  They serve us going as well when we dare to be Christ’s witnesses to the world in need.

I always have a hard time believing a famous person who is being employed to be a spokesman for some commercial product or other.  But when someone shares the reality of what has changed their life for the better, when I can see it and experience the change it has made, that’s the hook that draws me in. 

Jesus does not want disciples to ‘sell’ the faith.  He wants disciples to live it, that others will know the blessings we have received, that there is True Love in creation, that there is the Way, the Truth, and the Life to be found in Christ Jesus.

 

Pastor Pete