The kingdom of heaven is the interconnection of earth
Matthew 9:35-10:8
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. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.’
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. 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; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax-collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.
These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: ‘Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.
By Frank Vincentz - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77078914
Whenever I prepare to pray, to bring before God the needs of the world, I find myself trying to create some kind of order out of a seemingly overwhelming chaos. Especially when praying with others, I want what I say to make some kind of sense, to represent focused intentions as opposed to the experience of being tossed about on the waves of the world's suffering.
This process of focusing my mind on one part of the world's suffering has felt much more difficult since lockdown started. Both mainstream and social media seem to have reflected waves of collective obsession with a single issue: the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the NHS and supermarkets, the behaviour of Neil Ferguson and Dominic Cummings, the most recent comments on Twitter by JK Rowling around menstruation, and the murder of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests in the US and the UK - to name a few!
Each time one of these issues has arisen it seems to have dominated the news as a whole, making it difficult to maintain any kind of overarching perspective. Perhaps this is due to the isolating effects of lockdown - as we are physically separated from each other, with terms such as 'social distancing' and 'bubbles' becoming commonplace, the disconnect in our lives seems reflected in a wider state of disconnection of the world. We seem unable to sense, for example, that the protests around racism and police brutality are connected with the disproportionate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on minority ethnic communities both in the UK and around the world. Not only that, but the monopoly each of these stories seems to have had on our collective consciousness has obscured many other stories of suffering which are crying out for our attention. Protests continue in Hong Kong, new modelling on climate change questions even our previous worst-case scenarios and COVID-19 continues to have dire implications for many countries in the global south.
In describing each of these stories, perhaps I've made them sound essentially separate from each other - I certainly think they are often presented in this way, both in our media and in our lives of prayer and service as Christians. Most of our endeavours as church (although they are often beautiful, kind and generous acts) seem to focus on one issue at the time, perhaps reflecting the way secular culture often approaches these issues. And yet, we know that this image of a plethora of separate issues is an illusion. The kingdom of heaven comes near to us in our connectedness - and as we draw closer together we share more in the various sufferings of the world as well as its joys, exploring the ways in which even these are woven together in the tapestry of life. As disciples today, following in the footsteps of the twelve who Jesus sends out in Matthew's Gospel, one of our most important tasks in proclaiming the Good News is to demonstrate the connectedness of our world. We must continue to show people, through our lives as well as our words, that things which have been thought of as separate are actually deeply interlinked. This is a gradual process of revealing that what we perceive as two is actually one.
In the recent Black Lives Matter protest, the boxer Anthony Joshua used language to demonstrate interconnection in a beautiful way, when he gave a speech about the virus of racism. This virus is endemic, and yet there is hope: "You are the vaccine and I am the vaccine". Contrary to appearances, we can cure this virus. We can raise a society that seems to have died of this virus back to life. That resurrection miracle is possible in our midst - a recovery of the fullness of life to which we are all called. But this fullness of life can only come from being with the world in such a deep way as to truly see the interconnectedness of our lives and of the whole earth. If we can live from a deep knowledge of this connection at the ground of our being, and resist the many narratives of separation and isolation which surround us, we will know that the kingdom of heaven is indeed very near. It has actually been around us all along, and is calling the lost sheep of Israel with the still small voice of love, which calls us to live with and for one another.
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. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.’
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. 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; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax-collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.
These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: ‘Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.
By Frank Vincentz - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77078914
Whenever I prepare to pray, to bring before God the needs of the world, I find myself trying to create some kind of order out of a seemingly overwhelming chaos. Especially when praying with others, I want what I say to make some kind of sense, to represent focused intentions as opposed to the experience of being tossed about on the waves of the world's suffering.
This process of focusing my mind on one part of the world's suffering has felt much more difficult since lockdown started. Both mainstream and social media seem to have reflected waves of collective obsession with a single issue: the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the NHS and supermarkets, the behaviour of Neil Ferguson and Dominic Cummings, the most recent comments on Twitter by JK Rowling around menstruation, and the murder of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests in the US and the UK - to name a few!
Each time one of these issues has arisen it seems to have dominated the news as a whole, making it difficult to maintain any kind of overarching perspective. Perhaps this is due to the isolating effects of lockdown - as we are physically separated from each other, with terms such as 'social distancing' and 'bubbles' becoming commonplace, the disconnect in our lives seems reflected in a wider state of disconnection of the world. We seem unable to sense, for example, that the protests around racism and police brutality are connected with the disproportionate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on minority ethnic communities both in the UK and around the world. Not only that, but the monopoly each of these stories seems to have had on our collective consciousness has obscured many other stories of suffering which are crying out for our attention. Protests continue in Hong Kong, new modelling on climate change questions even our previous worst-case scenarios and COVID-19 continues to have dire implications for many countries in the global south.
In describing each of these stories, perhaps I've made them sound essentially separate from each other - I certainly think they are often presented in this way, both in our media and in our lives of prayer and service as Christians. Most of our endeavours as church (although they are often beautiful, kind and generous acts) seem to focus on one issue at the time, perhaps reflecting the way secular culture often approaches these issues. And yet, we know that this image of a plethora of separate issues is an illusion. The kingdom of heaven comes near to us in our connectedness - and as we draw closer together we share more in the various sufferings of the world as well as its joys, exploring the ways in which even these are woven together in the tapestry of life. As disciples today, following in the footsteps of the twelve who Jesus sends out in Matthew's Gospel, one of our most important tasks in proclaiming the Good News is to demonstrate the connectedness of our world. We must continue to show people, through our lives as well as our words, that things which have been thought of as separate are actually deeply interlinked. This is a gradual process of revealing that what we perceive as two is actually one.
In the recent Black Lives Matter protest, the boxer Anthony Joshua used language to demonstrate interconnection in a beautiful way, when he gave a speech about the virus of racism. This virus is endemic, and yet there is hope: "You are the vaccine and I am the vaccine". Contrary to appearances, we can cure this virus. We can raise a society that seems to have died of this virus back to life. That resurrection miracle is possible in our midst - a recovery of the fullness of life to which we are all called. But this fullness of life can only come from being with the world in such a deep way as to truly see the interconnectedness of our lives and of the whole earth. If we can live from a deep knowledge of this connection at the ground of our being, and resist the many narratives of separation and isolation which surround us, we will know that the kingdom of heaven is indeed very near. It has actually been around us all along, and is calling the lost sheep of Israel with the still small voice of love, which calls us to live with and for one another.
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