Sometimes I wish our lives only affected ourselves.
As someone who tends to like being alone, to having a quiet space to myself so I can think, the idea that we are all interconnected sort of bothers me.
It intimidates me, to be honest.
The idea that my actions or attitude have repercussions on someone else’s life is a truth I would rather not think about. “You leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone,” is the way I wish things could be.
This past week was the first full week of summer break for our family. The routine that has kept life on track is now gone. All throughout the school year, each life in our little family is interlocked with all the others. The way Nichole’s day begins dictates how my day begins. Which means how our day begins also dictates how our dog Max’s day begins. Nichole’s alarm wakes up Max from his slumbers and reminds him he needs to go outside to pee. So he barks, which gets me up. Since I’m up, I pour the coffee. Nichole and I sit down to groggily suck down caffeine, she with her book and me struggling half-blind and half-awake with my devotional and my Bible. A few minutes into us being awake, Max the dog decides our daughter Ava has slept long enough, too. So he goes down the hallway and barks. If her door is open, he goes inside and jumps on her bed.
We hear Ava yell.
We hear Max bark.
Soon Max is running down the hall back into the living room, where he spins around, grabs his bone, and sits staring at the hallway for Ava to appear. If she does, he starts gnawing on his bone with feverish intent. If she doesn’t, he drops his bone, runs down the hall barking, and tries it all again. By 6am or so, the Ivaska family is up.
But now all this clockwork is gone.
Nichole has been training for some new tasks at the store, which means she’s been heading into work around 4:45. Ava is out of school, and either doesn’t need to wake up at any particular time or isn’t even home, having slept over at a friend’s or family member’s house the previous night. I no longer know when I’m supposed to get up. And Max the dog doesn’t either—though he is certain that Nichole is leaving the house far too early. Max doesn’t bother to bark when she goes. His bladder can wait. My alarm eventually goes off, but it lacks all the urgency it once held. A couple times a week I have to meet someone around 8. But that’s a far cry from needing my alarm to go off at 5 to get Nichole off to work and Ava off to school. Nothing feels quite right anymore. Max and I have lost our routine…
Our passage this morning brings Jesus’ ministry-training lecture for his twelve disciples to a close. He has instructed them not to leave the Jewish community during this trip. He has given them authority over demons, illness, and death. He has told them not to provide for themselves, but to trust in God and to rely on the hospitality of strangers. They are going out like sheep among wolves, Jesus has warned them. They need to be shrewd as the devil himself, but as harmless and gentle as doves.
The message Jesus has given them will divide people, Jesus has warned. Not everyone will like what they say. The way the community has treated Jesus will be the way they treat the disciples, too. But God knows the very hairs of the disciples’ heads. If they stay true to their confession, Jesus will stay true to them. They must not be more attached to their earthly relationships than they are to him. And whatever they lose in the process of being true to him, they will receive back from God’s loving hand.
And then, lastly, Jesus says this: “Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me” (verse 40).
In other words, the disciples’ mission trip won’t be just about them. They will be going out in his name, and the way people react to them will be their reaction to him. More than that, whatever the people’s reaction to him will be their reaction to God. The sending Father has sent the Son, and the sent Son is now sending the disciples. The Son is how the Father is reaching out into the world, and the disciples are now extensions of the Son. “Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever receives a righteous person as a righteous person will be receive a righteous person’s reward.” The disciples are now participants in God. They don’t yet understand God as a Trinity, we can assume, but they are going out as participants in the triune life of God. And more than that, those who respond to their message will become participants, too.
There’s a word that the ancient Latin church used to describe the inner life of God. That word was coinherence. Coinherence means each person of the Trinity is inside both the others. To adhere to something is to be fastened against it. To inhere to something is to be inside it. To coinhere is for it to be inside of you, too. And this, said the early church fathers and mothers, is how the Persons of the Godhead relate to each other. (They got this, of course, from Jesus himself.) God the Father is seen in the face of God the Son, the Bible tells us, and God the Son dwells in the heart of God the Father. The Spirit proceeds from the Father to the Son, and the Son returns the Father’s love by the Spirit. The eastern church used the word perichoresis to describe this same thing, and some modern writers have described it as a “dance.”
But what Jesus is saying in our text this morning is that the mission of God works like this, too. We know from the Scriptures that sin wounds the heart of God, that the Spirit strives with sinful human beings (Genesis 6:3). We know that God could have turned away from his creation but chose not to. In fact, by his Spirit and his Son, God enters into creation. The Spirit grieves at our sin (Ephesians 4:30) and the Son goes to the cross to overcome its power. The coinherence of God means God also enters his creation, and he lets his creation come into him. He strives with the world until it’s created anew—something which has begun to happen in us because of Jesus, and one day will happen for all the world.
Jesus is sending out his disciples with the knowledge that his mission will now become theirs, and their mission will be an extension of his. People’s reactions to them will be their reactions to him. And their reactions to him and to them will also be their reactions to God. But Jesus says more than this. He also says that those who welcome them will be judged participants in their mission. Those who receive them as prophets and good people will be judged by God as prophets and good people themselves. “And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward” (verse 42).
God has made a world that is interconnected. Every hormone and organ and blood vessel in our bodies affects all the others. Every person on this planet affects all the others, and events in one place change the events that go on somewhere else. God himself is a reality that is interconnected—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit coinhering with one another—and it’s his purpose that creation be interconnected like him. The redemption of the world comes from God’s participation in the world and the world’s invitation back into God. In the church, everything that happens in one life has an effect on all the others. In the mission of God, everything is connected.
So this week, as you head out, know that you are a part of what God is doing in the world. Your sin affects this world, but so also does your repentance. Your words affect this world, and so do your actions—and the words and actions of others will also affect you. But God is working all things for your good, and he is working out the events of history for the world’s redemption. This interconnectedness of life in the world and in God should inspire us. God is working all things for the good! We are not isolated monads living only for ourselves. Through Christ and by the Spirit, we are partners and co-laborers in the very workings of God.
Let’s Pray
Mikael Ivaska 