As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.

Matthew 10:7, 8

The Twelve, we must admit, were a mixed group, to say the least.  All of them were from Galilee, the place often referred to as “Galilee of the Nations,” except one whose home is in ancient Judea, Judas Iscariot. The fact that there was but one from Judea that was the very heart of Israel, where the Temple was located, must have played a part in the dissension that ultimately revealed itself among the 12, leading to Jesus’ apprehension and crucifixion.  Judas of Iscariot was at the center of that betrayal.

That is a couple of years away.  Now Jesus sends them out with a message and a ministry. They fan out across the land as proclaimers of the new day.  The message was the declaration that the Kingdom of Heaven is come.  It is a kingdom quite unlike any other.  It is new, a fulfillment of the prophecies, an entirely new way to envision the purposes of God.  It is not an earthly kingdom at all. The Messiah has come, the promised King of king and Lord of lords.

The disciples could not say much more than that the kingdom of God is among them.  For the children of Israel, a king is a monarch, a political ruler.  Jesus was nothing of the sort, but it was a declaration that stirred the imagination of the Jews.

Accompanying the announcement of the arrival of the promised kingdom, Jesus gave them extraordinary power to upset the works of Satan.  They had power to “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons.”  Their ministry was to announce the arrival of the Kingdom and to heal and cast out demons as an expression of the power of God among mankind.  If people could not grasp the truth about the Kingdom, they certainly could see power released, power, not over others, but power over Satan and his kingdom of rebels.

I have been thinking about the expansion of Christ’s Kingdom these days and find that these twin facts blend, the fact that the Kingdom of Christ is here and the fact that those in the Kingdom are healers of the nations, like Jesus. We need to hold these two together, in word and deed.