A week or two ago, an image that I was involved in initiating featured in Church Times. The Blind Jesus (No-one belongs here more than you) is an image in charcoal of the Last Supper which includes the central character of a visually impaired Jesus, surrounded by twelve people of differing ages, backgrounds and abilities. At the table, an empty chair invites the viewer to find themselves at the table.
This image was commissioned by Celia Webster, Co-Founder of Wave (We’re All Valued Equally), as part of a project in which it seeds other images of the Last Supper that are truly for everyone and is displayed by churches alongside selections of these additional images. Schools, churches and community groups are being invited as part of this project to create their own Last Supper images. I hope we can show the image here in future.
Celia writes: “The wounded Jesus reassures me that He is never a distant God and like any loving parent experiences His children’s hurt and suffering as his own. Jesus is the friend of the overlooked and those on the edge. We are shown in this picture that our true identity is found in Jesus who just wants us to be close to him and love him and allow him to love and transform us!”
Revd John Beauchamp, Diocesan Disability Ministry Enabler for the Diocese of London, writes that: “In this Last Supper, the marginalised and excluded and devalued are invited to the table. Invited to be with Jesus. To sit and eat with him. To find themselves with him and recognise themselves in him.”
The good news that the disciples were asked to proclaim, as we heard in our Gospel reading (Matthew 10:1-7), was that the kingdom of God had come near to those that they visited. Our mission, if we will accept it, is the same, to proclaim that the kingdom of God has come near to the people of Wickford and Runwell. To understand what that means and what it is we are to do, we need to understand what it meant for the first disciples. The disciples were the heralds for Jesus’ imminent arrival in the places to which they travelled, so that phrase would certainly have meant Jesus is coming and the Kingdom of God arrives where he arrives.
The kingdom of God comes near to us when Jesus comes near because Jesus is God with us. That is what the incarnation, the crucifixion and the resurrection are all about. The Gospel of Matthew begins with the angel's promise that the Messiah will be called Emmanuel - God with us. The Gospel ends with Jesus's promise to his disciples, "Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." In between we get Jesus's promise to the church, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there with them." … And, perhaps most significantly of all, the Gospel of John says "The Word was made flesh and dwelt with us." Jesus's ministry is about being with us, in pain and glory, in sorrow and in joy, in quiet and in conflict, in death and in life. God is with us when Jesus comes near, which is, in reality, all the time. That is our witness as Christians and it is also our ministry. If the heart of the Gospel is that God is with us in every circumstance and into eternity, then our task is to be with others in order that they experience God with them.
Because the disciples were living out their faith in practice, as those bringing peace and healing into the communities they visited, it also meant that the Kingdom of God could be seen in their lives and examples too. That can still be true for us today as well. Doing good, for Christians, is not about our salvation – it’s not about earning God’s love – instead it is a consequence of our salvation; because God has loved us so much, we then want to love others and, as we do, the Kingdom of God comes close to those we love, help and heal.
The kingdom of God has come near means that in our relationships, sharing and mutuality we experience together a taste of heaven. That is not something that we have brought or something that only we can offer to others. Instead, it is about real communion, a real sharing, a mutual sharing of selves that is welcoming and inclusive one of the other. After all, in heaven there is only relationship with God, with ourselves, with one another and with the whole creation. So, it is only as we enter into real and deepening relationships that we anticipate heaven in the present and live God's future now.
That is the relational mission to which Jesus called his disciples when sending out the 70 and to which he calls each one of us. It's not a guilt inducing call that makes the salvation of others reliant on our response. It's a relationship affirming call to live in community, to form partnerships, to deepen relationships, to experience communion, and to live God's future now. As Rachel Held Evans once said, “This is what God's kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there's always room for more.”
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Ho Wai-On - Blessed.
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