Far Better Than Evangelism
Proper 6A | Matthew 9:35-10:8(9-23)
After calling some people to be disciples and preaching the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gets his ministry really going with healings and exorcisms. And it is hard to undersell how popular he becomes from all of this.
It often seems easy to assume such popularity is good or innocent. Harder to contend with the truth. That it can be dangerous. People can be desperate. How many start to behave like groupies, following him, pushing people out of the way to get close to him. It isn’t easy being the savior of humanity. Or following him, honestly. Because some of those people are selfish and have sharp elbows.
We saw a little of that last week, when a woman, having suffered for twelve years, just grabs Jesus’s cloak, believing that if she merely touched it, she could be healed. And the crazy part of it was that she was right.
We also see Jesus pushing past people’s expectations of a Messiah, by healing a Gentile, not just Hebrews, commanding the elements to stop a storm, and then, in last week’s gospel, he raises a girl from the dead. An act he diminishes by saying that she was merely sleeping and he just woke her up.
These actions highlight the ongoing tension of following the Messiah. And of being the Messiah the crowds surround.
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