weighty

 

In the Gospels, we read of Jesus sending out seventy (or seventy-two) of his apprentices, in pairs, ahead of him to every settlement he intended to pass through, to prepare the way. Luke’s account turned up in the Lectionary (the set passages read day by day, and Sunday by Sunday) on Sunday, and Matthew’s account turns up tomorrow.

In Matthew’s account, Jesus instructs them to find out who is worthy. The Greek word translated ‘worthy’ means, ‘who is the same weight as them.’ Not in a literal pounds and ounces or kilogrammes sense, but in a social and relational sense.

An example: imagine a White British grandmother, whose neighbours are a Pakistani Muslim family. She might feel that they have nothing in common, yet might come to find a connection with the Pakistani grandmother, because, despite real cultural differences, at one level a grandmother is a grandmother is a grandmother, and grandmothers might share a bond that no one who is not a grandmother can know.

And the point is not that we cannot build bridges across divides — intergenerational divides, cultural divides, or any difference — but, precisely, that if we are to build such bridges, the best place to start is where we find common ground. Common experience. Someone whose ‘weight’ is equal to our own.

The best place to start proclaiming good news is to find someone worthy, someone of comparable weight, or life experience, to your own. And from there, god news spreads through their connections, to other people whose lives have some common point — some point where their lives balance — with theirs.

So, who do you know who is the same weight as you?

Matthew 10.7-15

‘As you go, proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for labourers deserve their food. Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. As you enter the house, greet it. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgement than for that town.’