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As you all know, the youth of St. Matt's returned ten days ago from a very successful mission trip to Juarez, in which they refurbished an orphanage and helped to build a church and two houses. Last Sunday at announcement time, Matthew Abrahamson and David Daniel spoke to us about their life-changing trip. Today we will hear from Sarah Neely about hers to Nicaragua. Also today the Junior High group begin their week-long mission doing God's work here in Austin. In a very real sense, these are your trips because they were supported by you--the good people of St. Matthew's. The blessings that such trips bring to a congregation are incalculable. So we plan to build on these successes with other trips, including one for adults and one for families. Stay tuned!
The season of Pentecost-when the Holy Spirit descended to empower Jesus' disciples for ministry--is the perfect time for making and recalling such mission journeys. In the same way, today's gospel reading could not be more timely--because it records Jesus' sending out of the seventy disciples, two by two, to heal and preach the gospel. That event two thousand years ago launched the countless millions of Christian mission trips that have taken place since then, including our own.
Here we are in the tenth chapter of Luke's account. It is one of the decisive moments for the future of the entire Christian enterprise. Jesus' ministry of healing and caring for the least in society has exploded. As he travels around, living out the good news of God's saving grace, crowds numbering 5,000 and more flock to hear him—many more than he and his inner circle can minister to.
At the same time, Jesus knows that his time is running short. He has accepted his destiny as the Messiah, and he has told his closest followers that he will be taken from them and killed. His triumph will not be a fleeting military victory over the Romans, but eternal victory over death itself. He will reign not in one place and time, but for all of time throughout the cosmos. The fulfillment of Jesus' destiny lies in Jerusalem, and--as we heard in last week's gospel--he has set his face toward the Holy city. With death looming near, he must empower and equip many disciples to carry on the work of the kingdom here below, to minister to the thousands who have come and the millions more who will.
"The
harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few". Jesus sees
the situation and acts to empower more laborers for God’s
harvest.
This gospel passage is too long and far too
rich for one small sermon. So I would like to focus on Jesus'
instructions to the seventy, and see how they apply to present-day
disciples such as ourselves. The two large topics that Jesus
addresses are the disciples' provisions and their reception.
First,
provision. Jesus tells the seventy, as he did the twelve when he sent
them out: "Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals." This is
mind-bending, isn't it? When I think of how much stuff I pack into
the car for a simple weekend in the country: clothes for any
occasion, food and drink for every meal, books, work, journal. And I
suspect that some of you are the same. Isn't the point of an SUV to
hold us and our stuff? The bigger the car, the more we lug around
with us. At best, our stuff is harmless enough. But it can be a
shield against solitude and stillness. It can also be our security, a
measure of our independence, our self-sufficiency--though we all
know, deep down, that that is an illusion. Nothing we can buy or
have will shield us against the tragedies of life: illness, failure,
heart-break, the death of one we love. We are ultimately in God's
hands and dependent upon God's grace.
What Jesus
wanted his disciples to do was to cast aside all pretense of
self-sufficiency. Taking no purse, no bag, no sandals made the
disciples keenly aware of their dependence on God's grace for the
essentials of life, for their very food and shelter. It made them
rely on God's provision through the generosity of others. In so doing
it bound them to the communities that received them, knitting them
into that fabric through relationships of hospitality and gratitude.
In short, it obliged them to have faith in God and trust in the
community of the faithful, which would come to be known as the Body
of Christ. Still today, no matter how much stuff or how little we
take, when we travel on mission, we are knitted into the same fabric,
the same living Body of Christ.
I have my own mission/provision story. Many of you will remember dear Robert Woody, whom this congregation raised up and sent to seminary a few years back. Robert was a senior my entering year at seminary. In response to the tragedy of Hurricane Mitch, Robert felt called to go to Honduras to help. Several others felt so called and joined him on that trip in January 1999-including Kay and Jerry Ballard's son Barton, my great friend Posy Jackson, and I.
I blush to recall the volume of provisions that Posy and I laid in for ourselves. In our defense, we had images of the devastation fresh in mind from flood waters that had only receded ten weeks before. And we had no idea where we would be or what we would do. So--in a blitz tour of Academy, HEB, and various camping stores--a real consumer feeding frenzy--we took EVERYTHING we thought we might need. By the grace of God, I can only remember part of the inventory—it’s so embarassing: sleeping mat, pillow, sheets; water purifiers (one apiece-we might well be separated), clothes and shoes for different working conditions, and tons of food stuffs that could be prepared with boiling water.
Needless
to say, the church wouldn't have let us come if we could not be fed
and housed and put to work. When we got to our post in Puerto Cortes,
everything that we needed was there, including what we had
forgotten--dresses to wear to church, and which we bought for a
couple
of dollars at a second hand clothes shop. The only time we
used the water purifiers was trying them out in the hotel in San
Pedro Sula the night we arrived; that comedy of errors--a tale in
itself--showed us how ill prepared we were to rough it in the jungles
of Honduras.
Having just been through the post-flood reality of Houston, I want to point out some parallels--even though the damage was so much greater in Honduras, and much more devastating because the country is so poor. In both places once flood waters receded, clean up and repair began, restoring things like bridges, streets to the appearance of normalcy. But that appearance masks the deep, long-term damage--the internal, individual damage to homes, psyches and lives and that such a traumatic event leaves behind. Mother Nature plays her part in the deception. In Houston, the bayous returned quickly to their normal, harmless levels. Flying into Honduras, we saw the beauty of fresh growth all around San Pedro Sula. It belied the ruin of vast banana plantations and of many people's livelihoods.
Emergency relief work--like all mission work--IS work. I remember at the end of one particularly hard, hot day's labor sorting through donated clothes in the church loft, Posy said: "Now I know why they call it mission work instead of mission play!". We go there to do work and the work matters. But even more important than the things that are built or repaired is the ministry of presence, the living out of God's love, the building and strengthening of the Body of Christ across barriers of class, language, culture. I suspect that is why people who go on mission trips inevitably come back saying that they received much more than they gave. It is true.
The lesson about provision for me in Honduras was well taken. I still may pack too much for the weekend. But I know when I set out to do God's work that only God can provide what I really need, and that God will provide.
Jesus' second theme with the seventy concerns the reception of their ministry. He commanded the disciples to be sensitive to the way in which they were received, and to dwell and share the gospel only with those who were ready to welcome it. Now this may seem to contradict the idea that we are called to proclaim to all God's children. But it doesn't. Indeed we are called to minister to all people, and to proclaim the gospel by that witness of action. But Jesus's words should guide us in our spoken evangelism. We should be sensitive to preach to those who welcome and can receive the Word, leaving those who cannot yet to God's patient care. They will come along--as I did--in God's time, with God's help. This idea of preaching to those who can receive ties back into Jesus' statement about the harvest. Not all crops, not all plants, not all fields ripen on the same schedule. Every person will grow and mature spiritually at a different rate, and at a time known only to God. We are called to recognize those who are ripe and to help them be gathered in the proper time and way.
The
harvest is plentiful, indeed. And Jesus calls all of us—all
people of faith--to be loving and joyous laborers in this field of
glory. Thanks be to God, who empowers us and who provides everything
we need for our labor.
