Matthew 10:1-7 - Wednesday Week 14
The theme of Israel as the missionfield of Jesus and the twelve is important to Matthew's story. In 9:36 he uses the descriptor "sheep without a shepherd" a common Hebrew Testament metaphor. Now it is the "twelve" that underscores the theme…Israel as twelve tribes. Twelve is a powerful word. It most certainly had conjuring power to its intended audience…something lost on me even if I read about it in a commentary.
But the twelve also have names. It's not just any twelve, but a particular twelve. I'm believing that the fact of the names, the fact of the particularity and specificity, is more important than their actual names (something that the gospels don't agree on anyway). With names come persons.
My baptism is the sacrament of my being named…particularly and specifically. My body, named Cindy, is incorporated and sent. And my life, then, participates in the continual working out of the Incarnation. God's choice to bodily enter the human condition, as messy as that has proven to be, is the source of being called by name and called into mission.
A person is someone with a mission.
In the fullest sense a person is someone through whom the Word comes into the world.
The twelve are named and sent.
I too, named and sent.
Today…another day to move along that fullness spectrum!
Psalm 47:11 Today's Entrance Antiphon
Your praise, O God, like your name, reaches the ends of the earth
(but not without some incarnational help;)
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