FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
15 June 2008

Last week, you may recall, I suggested that the message of the Gospel of the Day could be summed up in three sentences: Jesus calls us, Jesus heals us, and Jesus raises us to new life. And today's readings, it seems to me, are equally open to a similar approach. And their message would be this: God calls us to be his people; he adopts us as his children by the Holy Spirit and forms us into a community to reveal his glory in the world.

God calls us to be his people, just as he called the people of Israel into a special relationship with him in our Old Testament reading today. The people have come out of Egypt, and have arrived at the foot of Mount Sinai, where they will receive the Law. And Moses prepares them for that moment by repeating to them what God has commanded him to say: If you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. And the Old Testament is the story of how the people of Israel tried to live out that vocation, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, but always conscious that they were different from the nations around them.

In this morning’s Epistle, Paul speaks of how God pours his love into our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit, the same Holy Spirit who enables us to call God Father, as Romans chapter 8 reminds us: you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

There is a sense, of course, in which we are all God’s children, because God our Father is Father to all creation; and you’ll recall how Paul in Athens at the altar of the unknown God uses that image. But when we respond to God in obedience and trust, and he gives us his Holy Spirit to help us, we become his children in a special way, adopted if you like into the family of Jesus.

As Jesus himself says, whoever does the will of God is his mother and brother and sister. And Paul speaks of endurance, the endurance that produces hope... the hope that sustains those who respond to God in obedience and trust, and forms in us the character of Jesus.

Today’s Gospel tells us how Jesus commissioned twelve of his disciples with the special title of apostle, a word that means messenger, then sent them on ahead of him. Often we use “apostle” and “disciple” interchangeably, but while the apostles were all disciples, just of each of us is a disciple, a follower of Jesus, it’s clear that Jesus calls the Twelve to a special role of leadership among his followers – a rôle they themselves recognised when they realised how after the Ascension they had to find someone to replace Judas Iscariot, and chose Matthias. What is important in all this is that Jesus doesn’t try to go it alone, as it were, or encourage his followers to go it alone, but forms them into an organised community, giving them detailed instructions for their mission.

Like the people of Israel, we are called to respond to God in obedience and trust, revealing his glory as his special people. The Spirit comes to help us as we try to do God’s will in the world, not alone, but as part of the community founded by Jesus, the community we call the Church, his brothers and sisters by the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes people say, “I can be a Christian without the church”, but that’s not the way of Jesus. We need one another to help us interpret God’s will for us; we need one another as the adopted brothers and sisters of Jesus just as the members of any family need one another; and we need one another as disciples of Jesus because it is the will of Jesus to gather his followers into one community. “No one can call God his Father who does not have the Church as his mother”, said John Calvin, the great Reformation theologian.

But there is another aspect to Jesus’ calling of the apostles we should not overlook: it is a response to need. Jesus has compassion on the crowds because, as Matthew puts it, they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. It is then Jesus calls his apostles and sends them out with his authority, to meet their needs.

There are many people in the world today who are harassed and helpless, lacking direction in their lives. And it is still the task of the Church, the community formed by Jesus to reveal God's glory, to go out with his authority and meet their needs.

Interestingly though, when Mark uses this same expression, like sheep without a shepherd, he follows it in his Gospel not with the call of the apostles, but the story of the feeding of the multitude – a reminder that the Church cannot respond to the spiritual needs of people without also responding to their material needs. It is with the same authority of Jesus that we preach the Gospel and reach out to those in want: they are two sides of the same coin, as Jesus himself makes clear when he tells the apostles not only to proclaim the Good News, but also to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, [and] cast out demons. That's part of our task too.

God calls us to be his people; he adopts us as his children by the Holy Spirit and forms us into a community to reveal his glory in the world. May he keep us faithful in his community and one in his Spirit, and may we always respond to his promptings in obedience and trust.