Reading time: 3 minutes
I’m preaching on Matthew 10:8 in a few weeks, and part of my prep has been to think over the story and muse over how they must have felt.
The chapter 9 day earlier had been ordinary. Ordinary for Jesus, anyway. Crowds. Sick people finding their way to the front. Someone who couldn’t see, seeing. Someone who couldn’t walk, walking. The disciples had watched it all. Again. They were getting used to the astonishing, which is its own kind of miracle. Sometimes you can get just a touch too familiar.
Then came the next morning. There’s always a new day dawning when you walk with Jesus. New for us, anyway. He already knew who would be standing there, what was about to unfold, and every word he was going to say. For the disciples, the morning hadn’t even started yet. Sometime Jesus gets you like that.
These weren’t post-grad polished men. They were young. Probably younger than we picture them in their late twenties. One of them still finishing his breakfast. James and John mid-conversation, not quite paying attention yet. Hair gone rouge. Sandals worn down. Just lads, really, the kind you wouldn’t look twice at in the work place. A modern Matthew would probably be playing Candy Crush on his phone.
And into that ordinary morning, Jesus started choosing. You. You. You…
Being chosen does something to a person. It cuts through every doubt, every background, every reason you might not belong. Whatever quiet tension existed in that group, and there was plenty, fishermen, a tax collector, a zealot who had probably dreamed of killing men like that tax collector, Jesus didn’t address it. He just chose them. All of them. You’re in. You’re his.
The warmth of that moment must have been real.
Then came the task list.
We don’t know how fast He said it, whether there was a pause between each instruction. Did he almost whisper it in a way to make them lean forward and listen, in much the same way as when someone whispers, “apparently…” Unambiguously the instruction came, as it does for you …
“Heal the sick,
raise the dead,
cleanse lepers,
cast out demons.”
No build-up. No training manual. Just the words, landing one after another. Peter glances at John. Someone swallows. The half-eaten bread forgotten. These were things they had watched Jesus do. But watching and doing are not the same country. They’re not even the same continent. Jesus was asking them to do what, on their own, they simply could not do. What they would never have been willing to attempt. Someone almost silently gasped, “Moi?”
You can feel the tension, but there is some good news.
“Freely you have received, freely give.” As always for them and for us, they weren’t being left to their own devices. Jesus wasn’t asking them to generate something from deep inside themselves. He was asking them to release what had already been given. The authority, the power, the ability to bring wholeness to broken lives, none of it originated with them. It came from him.
They were carriers, like camels fully-laden, gliding through the desert, not sources.
What that meant for twelve young men standing in the morning with puzzled expressions and unanswered questions, and what it means for us now is worth thinking about. Perhaps you should just come and hear the sermon.
