This is a translation of the homily for the Fourth Sunday of Trinity (year III), in Kvinnherad Church, Norway, Sunday 6th July, 2025. This was also held at a outdoor service on an island earlier this afternoon. The readings are as follows: Psalm 22:7-11 (8-12); 1 Thessalonians 2:5-13; Matthew 9:35-38. Unless otherwise noted, when quoting Scripture, I will use the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition (RSV-2CE), corrected to British spelling.
Collect of the day (translated by yours truly):
Let us Pray:
Humle Lord, Jesus Christ, you chose poverty and humiliation. We pray: Lead us into the ways of love, so that we do not seek wealth in the world, but take up our cross and follow you, you who with your Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one true God, world without end. Amen.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus reminds us of something very important; that the Church should engage in mission. Many people think of mission as being about imperialism, and perhaps especially cultural imperialism. And in many cases, unfortunately, that is true. Many mistakes have been made on the mission field, and many things have been removed because they were thought to be pagan, without considering that many of our own cultural traditions do not have their basis in Christian tradition either, but have been allowed to survive in the Church precisely because they are an expression of culture, of the identity of the individual people, and not something that necessarily contradicts the gospel, the good news of Jesus as Lord and Saviour. We must remember that mission is to preach the gospel, into a given culture. And that requires us to be humble. That is where any kind of mission must start. And that applies not only out there in the world, but also here at home. We must also preach the gospel here, into our own society, into our own culture. And that is why it is important that we understand our culture, that we try to understand where people are.
When I was on a study trip to London a little over ten years ago, a pastor told us that Christian preaching is incarnational, which may be difficult to understand. As Christians, we believe in the incarnation, that God became a man of flesh and blood in Jesus (from Lt. carne, “flesh”). It means that God took on human nature, that which is created, earthly. He entered into that which is ours and preached the gospel to us, as one of us. Transferred to us, it means that when the Christian preaching is incarnational, it is always concretised into a given culture. It must be incarnated or inculturated.
We hear in today’s Gospel that Jesus “went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every infirmity.” He had great compassion for the crowds when He saw them, “because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” It was here that he emphasised how important mission is, and how important it is that we preach the gospel, the good news of Jesus as Lord and Saviour: “The harvest is plentiful,” He says, “but the labourers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.”
I myself believe that Jesus would have had many of the same experiences if he had walked around all the cities, towns, and villages here in Norway. Humans probably have not evolved much in the last 2,000 years. We have the same feelings, the same longing for something that gives meaning. But it is probably not easy to admit, that we are lost and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd, just like it probably was at the time of Jesus – perhaps especially those with wealth and position, then and now. But it is true nonetheless. It is a message that is preached again and again in the Bible, both the Old and the New Testaments. As St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18:
Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
The central thing is God, our eternal invisible Lord. The one thing necessary is the One, God, our Creator, Lord and Saviour. The invisible is not something diffuse, it is what lies behind everything, it is God. Our calling is to share in the fullness of God. If we have all the money, power or glory we can, but lack the humility to realise that we are sinners in need of salvation, we lose everything. For all this is but a shadow. We share in something much greater, in the riches of Jesus, in the gospel.
We need the gospel as much as everyone else, and people have no less questions than before. We probably also long for meaning as much as everyone else. Therefore, we must be aware of our calling. As the apostle Peter puts it in 1 Peter 3:15: “Always be prepared to make a defence to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence.” We must share the gospel. Mission is important, but mission should not be imperialism. Mission is meeting people where they are, and preaching the gospel to them, with the willingness to sacrifice everything. It is simply living from the perspective of eternity where it is not the wealth and honour here that are important, but everything we receive from God. And therefore, mission cannot be about manipulation or about the preacher himself, but about opening up to people a world where we encounter the love of God, the eternal, unchanging, invisible, given to us in the gifts of God, the word and the sacraments.
Being a missionary means that we take people seriously, without being relativistic, because we must always speak the truth, but we be “speaking the truth in love,” as St. Paul says in Ephesians 4:15. We must offer the love of God to everyone we meet, without asserting ourselves. As St. Paul says in today’s second reading: “For we never used either words of flattery, as you know, or a cloak for greed, as God is witness; nor did we seek glory from men, whether from you or from others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ.”
The basis for mission is not primarily having a long education or having good knowledge of the Bible, faith, culture, language. Yes, all of those are important for us to reach people. But the most fundamental thing for our mission is that we ourselves are followers of Christ. In today’s second reading, St. Paul writes about the service he and the other Apostles did. They were engaged in missions, they helped people, and they worked so that they would not be a burden to those they served. They allowed themselves to be formed by Jesus, and lived with Him as an example. As we said when I was young, we must ask: “What would Jesus do?” And what is the answer? It is that we must have our eyes fixed on what the eyes of Christ were fixed on, namely God, and not on our wealth, our power, our glory. It is to love God and our neighbour as ourselves. And the way we can love God is first and foremost by going to Him in prayer and praise, and spreading His message to those we meet. But what is praise? It is not primarily about describing God, because that is actually not possible. We cannot capture God in our concepts or categories. Perhaps you have heard the song Indescribable by Laura Story, but which is perhaps best known through Chris Tomlin’s version. The chorus begins with two adjectives that are supposed to describe God, but which at the same time do not describe him at all: “Indescribable, uncontainable.” We can neither describe God nor contain him. He is beyond all thought, beyond being. As St. Paul says in 1 Timothy 6:16, God is the One “who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see.” But, St. Paul says, “to him be honour and eternal dominion.” It starts with praise. And that is why we do not first and foremost talk about God, as we see a tendency for in some praise songs and hymns, as if we can comprehend Him, but to God and with Him. The central thing about the Christian life is thanksgiving and praise, rooted in the works of God, for us. And when we do that, we have our eyes fixed on the right place, on the eternal and unchanging, on Christ. In Him we find the real, when we are conformed to His image. To be a Christian is to be “in Christ” and to become more and more like Him, something which began in baptism.
During the act of baptism, I emphasise that God has given us life and created us for fellowship with Himself, that he receives us in baptism and saves us from sin and death, that we are united with Jesus Christ to a new life and that we are incorporated into the Christian church. Through something concrete, something we can see and feel, God meets us and gives us part in the divine fellowship. Through baptism, we are united with Jesus, and share in his death and resurrection. We become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). And with this as a starting point, we can be more and more formed by and in Jesus, until we reach perfection.
But then we must never forget that this happens only by the grace of God. This is not something we do by our own strength, but something given to us by God, both salvation and new life, as St. Paul says in Ephesians 2:8-10: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
This is the gospel, that everything is grace, that we do not need to fear anything evil, that we only need to accept the love of God in joy. For then we will share in the eternal and unchanging. For we “look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” And that is and must be the starting point of any mission, which is to invite all into the mystery of God in Christ.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, who was, is, and will remain, one true God, world without end. Amen.