06/19/2026
Recording of the June 14th Sermon: https://parishofseaforth.ca/sundays-sermon.html
After Sermon for June 14th, 3rd Pentecost, Matt 9: 35 – 10: 8, Romans 5: 1 – 8, Jesus sends out the apostles with clear instructions. They are to preach the good news, to heal the sick, to wrestle with mortality by raising the dead and to cast out demons. Given my background, when I read these instructions, I immediately want to know what he has done to prepare them for these responsibilities. I suppose the apostles all know Jesus, they have spent time with him, heard him preach and watched him preform miracles. They are all well equipped to preach the good news then, but the other instructions seem a bit more significant. To heal the sick, raise the dead and cast out demons I think one would need specific training for these. Yet the Scripture is not very clear on what kind of training they may have had, so I default to question B, who are these people that Jesus would entrust them with this responsibility? What kind of person has Jesus called to be an Apostle? How familiar are they with disease, mortality and demons? I think they must be pretty familiar with these difficulties, because this needs a certain amount of awareness and sensitivity. It is not like Jesus found twelve teenagers with no life experience and conferred on them superpowers. In such a case, the significance of healing illness, dealing with grief, raising the dead and casting out demons could easily be missed. Suffering produces character and endurance, which brings hope. You have no need for hope if life has always been good, and this is not to say that suffering is a necessary part of their “training,” just that there is some connection between what they have endured and what they can offer. Indeed, and this reminds me of my own call because for the longest time it made no sense to me. I had an idea in my imagination of what a priest was, and what I should be, and I knew I was no where close to that. I could not comprehend how I could ever do what I was called to do, until at some point in my education I realized that there is only one thing I was ever called to do. To offer the grace to others which God had already granted me. There is almost nothing else I could do, and God does not call us to be and offer what we imagine. His call is not an aspiration of what we potentially could do. He calls us to be and offer ourselves. It makes sense that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Everyone needs to hear the good news, that they are loved, especially those who need hope. Everyone needs to be healed and face their fragility and mortality. Everyone needs help with grief and demons. The Apostles were not sent to convert people and nor were they called to be some imagined superheroes. They were called to be themselves and offer sincerely of themselves. Our self is the most mundane thing we experience. We wake up in the morning and there we are. We take every grace and gift we have for granted, as if everyone has them and we imagine we should be something more or better than that self we wake up with. Yet, there is a harvest that needs doing. There are any number of people in this world seeking the exact same graces you have been offered. The only thing God has ever called you do is to learn to sincerely offer yourself to the body of Christ and not to worry about what you imagine that self should be.
