The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 9, 7 July 2013

“How the other half…”

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 9

7 July 2013

The Episcopal Church of Our Savior

Mill Valley, California

Isaiah 66:10-14

Psalm 66:1-8           

Galatians 6:1-16

St. Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

INI

On Being Sent

Two Sundays ago, we heard the story of the Gerasene Demoniac, who having been healed by Jesus urges Jesus to allow him to join him and his disciples.  Jesus sends this man back to his town.  And in that sermon I attempted to emphasize that this was really not a shameful dismissal of this man but rather an sending of the man to an apostolic mission – for in telling the story of his own healing, he would be announcing the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Last Sunday, our good Deacon Annette related the story of Jesus’ “setting his face toward Jerusalem”, in other words, his intentional sending of himself to the place that will hang him on the cross.  Here he is sent and he obeys the command that he go.  Later in the Gospel, someone also wants to go with Jesus, but along with several others makes excuses, “I need to go and bury my father”, or “I need to go say goodbye.”  To these sent ones Jesus says a polite, “Forget it!” and then advises the hearer and reader with: “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

Today we are in a similar situation; only here Jesus actually does send out a number of people to speak the good news, the Gospel.  There are seventy of them, or if you are reading other ancient manuscripts it might be seventy-two of them.  It really doesn’t matter.  The symbolism of the numbers may relate to the Nations of the Earth to which these representatives are being sent – this would really be in alignment with Luke’s program and agenda, or this might be a symbol of being sent to the totality of Israel (six times 12).  What is apparent is that Jesus wants to encounter those around him and to announce good news.  That is the context of this lesson – and now I would hope that we could begin to learn something about our own mission here.  We are, you know, just as sent as these people were.  It is a mission that we share with them, and with all who would follow Jesus.  Thus it is important for us to hear Jesus’ “sending words” as keenly as those who originally heard them.  We are sent as well.  How, then shall we go?

On Urgency

Just this last week Canadian Anglicans and Canadian Lutherans met jointly in Ottawa to do business for their own ecclesiastical bodies, and to share in resolutions that would affect their common ministries.  In the Lutheran Session the National Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, Susan Johnson shared the results of a financial and demographic study of the denomination commissioned by the ELCIC’s Conference of Bishops.

It shows that 54 congregations have closed since the ELCIC was established in 1986, and that individual membership has dropped from more than 262,000 to about 139,000 during the same time period. Future projections are equally grim. The study suggests a further 64 ELCIC congregations will close by 2020.

This situation is not peculiar to the Lutherans, or to the Canadian Anglicans as well.  It is a situation that threatens most mainline churches in this country, including the Episcopal Church.  To listen to presiding bishops and primates in the Northern Hemisphere is to hear a story of declining membership and participation.  Jesus understands.  His sense of urgency was related to the message that he wished to share, and in his urgent sending out of individuals we can detect not only his urgency but his message of hope as well.  It is a message that we need to learn to deliver, not only to ourselves, but to those who live around us as well.

It’s not going to be easy, Jesus says, “like lambs into the midst of wolves.”  And so we leave like Israel from Egypt with only the necessities, “no purse, no bag, no sandals, no polite greetings on the road.”  Jesus sends us out as mendicants, beggars, who carry only the message, and who rely on the world for food and care.  In our urgency, should we share that sense with Jesus, we need to determine what it is that we really need to have?  What could we give up here for the sake of the message?  What is unnecessary to telling Jesus’ story?  What can be left behind?

On knowing those who need the kingdom

Let’s step back a moment and look at what Jesus is asking us to give up – it gives us a clue as to our audience, those who know their need of God.  Are there any among us who have no purse or bag?  Are there any among us who have no clothes or footwear?  Are there any among us who have no one to greet them, or to honor them? 

This is the other part of Luke’s program and agenda.  Luke knew well the people who were without.  He writes about them constantly, and focuses our attention on them in the structuring of the Gospel.  He focuses on the “little ones”, the ones who have nothing, the poor, the widow and the orphan, the ones without hope.  He falls in line with the prophets of Israel who constantly reminded the Chosen People of God about their responsibility to those that had nothing.

Perhaps Jesus’ sending his missioners out without was a way to accomplish their own identification with those “little ones” for whom the Kingdom of God is intended.  Luke reminds us in his version of the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  Thus if we are the sent ones, the ones with the message, the ones who can share hope – to whom can we go to do these good works?

Maybe I need to give up my purse, my bag, my shoes, and my social life so that I can understand those who need.  Maybe I need to be clear about my wealth not just of things, but my wealth of hope.  Perhaps I need to share my joy, my hopefulness in life, my relationship with God to others, and look deeply into the lives of those who do not have these advantages. 

"Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me."

On Giving and Receiving

Some of you may be thinking out there, “Oh, dear, he’s lurching from a sermon on evangelism to a sermon on stewardship.”  Rest easy – that’s not my task this morning.  I think my task is to get us to talk about giving and receiving, and doing this as a focus of our mission as a Christian Church in this community. 

Let me tell you a story.  I had a colleague who was very earnest, and whose views on just about anything, I tended to disregard.  She was very earnest.  One day she came into the sacristy to talk with me.  “Michael, you know how you receive communion at the end of the Communion?”  “Yes,” I responded, “I have a very good reason for that.  Bishop Swing…” She cut me off short.  “I’m not talking about that,” she said.  “I’m talking about how you commune yourself.”  “Yes,” I said, that is my practice.  “Michael,” she said with a motherly look in her eye, “You need to learn to receive.”

“Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, `The kingdom of God has come near to you.'”

“The Kingdom of God has come near to you!”  Receive it.  Perhaps we’re not good in our mission efforts because we haven’t learned how to receive, how to take it in.  For many of us it has been given to us since we were children, or since we came to an understanding about our faith and ourselves.  And here we are now, being sent out – sent out to give.  Perhaps before we go we need to take it all in, understand, and do as Paul says, “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the good news that has been given us.  Receive it.

Once you have received it – in the Eucharist, in the Word of God, in the remembrance of your baptism, in the forgiveness and peace given to you by others, in the love of those around you, in the love of God – once you have received that – then think on the ways that you can share, taking nothing with you but the message.

SDG