Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost – Proper 9 Year C (RCL) 2010
2 Kings: 5: 1 - 14; Psalm 30: Galatians 6: 1 – 16; Luke 10: 1 – 11, 16 – 20
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland OR
Sunday, July 4, 2010

WHEN NUMBERS COUNT IN THE KINDOM OF GOD

Let us pray: Loving Jesus, we stand before you amazed that you have entrusted the continuing of your kindom among us to such an unprepared people as ourselves! Yet we are constantly aware that you have no hands in this world but our hands; no passion for justice but our passion – no children to be the daughters and sons of God but our children and our childlike spirits. Fill us with the power you gave to those who came before us so that we might continue the work of your kindom come – here on our earth as it is in your heaven. Grant us your Spirit to help us live out your call to spread the Good News here in this place, and especially outside of it. Amen.

(SUNG) CHILDREN GO WHERE I SEND THEE – HOW SHALL I SEND
THEE? I’M GONNA SEND THEE ONE BY ONE, ONE FOR THE
LITTLE BITTY BABY – BORN, BORN BORN IN BETHLEHEM.

Just a brief reminder that in the gloriously warming 80+ degree-days of July, Christmas is just around the corner! Actually today’s Gospel story of the sending forth of the 70 (or the 72 depending on your Bible translation) is a perfect chance to pick out anyone of dozens of “sending” hymns or songs which could help to illustrate the importance of the call to continue the work of spreading the Good News of God in Christ. This call is also referred to by that word which strikes fear deep into the heart of every good, quiet and decently ordered Episcopalian – EVANGELISM. That word comes from the Greek έϋαγγέλιον (transcribed as “euangelion”) which originally meant a reward for good news given to the messenger. It is also the word given by the Church to the four individuals credited with authorship of the canonical Gospels, i.e. evangelists – though, in reality the names of those evangelists are deeply in question by modern scriptural scholars. Expressed in its simplest form it denotes spreading of the good news – and perhaps in its most formal and frightening sense our vision of one who stands on street corners or travels from door to door with copies of the scriptural texts often used to promote conversion from non-believers and especially in the non-believers of “the one true way” that the particular evangelist subscribes to. A truly inspirational piece of learning that I picked up in my travels this week to the Episcopal Campus Minister’s Conference in Atlanta was a clarification that the keynote speaker, the Rev. Stan ?? highlighted and struck me deeply – especially in light of those who might use the bible and its verses as an instrument of judgment or condemnation; Stan said “the author tells us that the Word became flesh; and this is quite different than what most biblical fundamentalist espouse that the “text became flesh”. The reality is often that this “good news” is misused; and results in our discomfort and distrust of “teleevangelists” and fundamentalist “evangelicals” thus tainting our perceptions of the call to announce that the kindom of God is among us.

The joy and delight of the good news of God’s kindom is often lost in the zealous attempt to “bring the Gospel” to those who have yet to hear it, or for whatever reason have chosen not to accept it or, in fact, openly rejected it. I found the musings, meditations and actual work experiences of Rev. Stan to be deeply motivational and in many ways appropriate to the situation we find ourselves in here at St. Stephen’s in downtown Portland. In the weeks ahead I would like to share some of those thoughts with the vestry, leaders of our different ministries; and perhaps finally with the entire parish community to have a serious conversation of what our future might look like when we come to understand that our Parish is not those of us sitting in the pews here this morning; or even the sometimes full houses that we manage to garner at Christmas and Easter; but rather the city that surrounds us and all of the wounded souls in that city who are yearning for a way to connect on a real level to the good news of God in Christ Jesus, under the progressive vision of The Episcopal Church with all of its messiness and all of its beauty. Many of you, I am sure were caught up short by the visit of Harry the Homeless who arrived in your midst last Sunday to tell you what he might need in order to hear the Gospel as “Good News” in his life and the lives of those like him. This afternoon, as we recognize the birthday of our Nation and the principles to which she once stood – we have to ask the difficult questions around why nearly 60% of young African American Males are incarcerated or living in the deepest levels of poverty and unemployment. We need to ask the difficult questions of how we fix a broken immigration system in our heavily populated border states while honoring the dignity of every human being as we have promised to do in our covenant with God at Baptism. We need to ask the difficult questions of how we survive as a Parish Community in a world changing under our very feet and shifting to a “post Christian” mentality; while honoring the beauty; tradition and history of our beloved sacramental systems of worship. One of the ways we will attempt to do this is gathering later today at the Peace Chant between Clay and Market in the South Park Blocks to join with our neighbors; housed and un-housed; churched and un-churched; poor and wealthy, sick and healthy – a true representation of the Kindom of God made manifest among us, to break bread and share community in a new way. Ecumenical partners will join us, one of our preachers will be a seventy two year old transsexual evangelical Pentecostalist; and some folks will come and be fed; others will come and wander away; others will come looking for a hand out and still others will come looking for the Good News we claim to proclaim. We will try this my friends, and we will try a piece of “Kno” Theater written by our own beloved Deacon as the Liturgy of the Word at the 10:00 Service in two weeks; and we will try many other ideas some that will be a success and some that will not and as sure as God’s Holy Spirit is present among us whenever two or three of us gather in God’s name; that loving and Holy Spirit will show us the way we are to live out the call to spread the good news of the Kindom of God right here, and right now. Jesus, as the fulfillment of the Hebrew prophets – has now set his face toward Jerusalem and its final redemption in the act of supreme sacrifice and death – and ultimate triumph in Resurrection and new life to bring about the reign of God among mortals. It is the reality of this coming of the kindom of God which is at the root of the “evangelism” or good news reward that Jesus extends to those sent out in pairs to every town and place which he himself intended to go.

(SUNG) CHILDREN GO WHERE I SEND THEE, HOW SHALL I SEND
THEE? I’M GONNA SEND THEE TWO BY TWO – TWO FOR
PAUL AND SILAS, ONE FOR THE ITTY BITTY BABY WHO WAS
BORN, BORN BORN IN BETHLEHEM.

So here’s the good news (and trust me, it is good news despite what you might think) about our clear call from today’s Gospel story to be evangelists in Jesus’ name; we don’t have to do it alone; and we are given a clear set of instructions and suggestions for how to deal with success and failure as we meet them along the journey. The number chosen for this mission (seventy or seventy two, depending on sources) was not inconsequential or accidental. Numbers and numerolgy in the scriptural texts have fueled theories and interpretations for as long as humankind has been reading and interpreting them. Consider the propensity of the number 6 in today’s liturgy; The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, the 6th Chapter of Galatians the first through the 16th verses and the 16th verse of the 10th Chapter of the author of Luke/Acts account of the Gospel which reads, “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” In earlier accounts from the Hebrew scriptures (specifically the Book of Numbers) the great prophet Moses appoints 70 elders of Israel who are given a portion of God’s spirit and who, with this spirit, help Moses to lead God’s people. Whether Jesus meant to send out seventy or seventy two, the point is that in all of God’s power Jesus, much like Moses, graciously empowers a body of workers to join with him in ministry. As we know from the story of the Exodus, Moses had all sorts of difficulties with those who were appointed to help. They constantly rebelled, complained, misunderstood, and generally made a mess of things. When Jesus sends out those called in the story today, they “return with joy”. Jesus has dared to commision them to do the very same work that he does and they return filled with excitement and awe saying, “it works”. Truly this is, good news – an encouraging text meant to give a word to all of those who have been enlisted in helping Jesus spread the vision of God’s kindom come among us. We are those sent out with a sense of urgency and empowered by the Spirit to help declare the Good News of God in Christ – the incarnation of God made very flesh in Word and Sacrament, at this time and in this place as surely as it was in Bethlehem of Judea centuries ago. Jesus leads us out of all the captivities that enslave us and all the demons that possess us named conspicuous consumerism, alluring addiction, incipient imperialism greed grabbing capitalism or whatever you will call it.

When Jesus tells us that “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few” and asks us to pray and ask God to send out laborers into the harvest, this is not as was perpetuated in the Church of my youth simply a plea for more ordained priests to carry out the work of the institution. It is rather, a genuine call to each and every one of us here this morning, to carry out the continuation of Jesus’ earthly ministry in our lives, in God’s Church and in our world. Those of us who might be tempted to equate the call to “ministry” which is clearly laid out in the story of the sending of the seventy with “minister” and leaving that responsibility in the hands of the ordained clergy would do well to head the advice of Episcopal priest and noted author of among other titles Leaving Church in which she describes her agonizing decision to leave active parish ministry. Taylor passionately speaks of the need for the church to mean “the ministry of all baptized Christians” when we use the word minister. In her book, The Preaching Life, Taylor recounts an experience she had with a college graduate who spoke to her about his desire to be ordained. She describes an articulate and committed Christian who had been active in campus ministry and deeply influenced by the Episcopal chaplain at his school. She goes on to detail how she was perplexed as the young man described his “call” to ministry. He did not seem interested in serving a church, didn’t think he would like being held accountable to an Episcopal authority or denominational body and found no attraction to a ministry of the sacraments – although he did express an interest in being able to preach once a month or so. Barbara recounts the conversation thusly: “Then why do you want to be ordained? I asked him. He thought a while and finally said, ‘for the identity, I guess. So I could sit down next to someone on a bus who looked troubled and ask them how they were without them thinking I’m trying to hustle them. So I could walk up to someone on the street and do the same thing. So I could be up front about what I believe, in public as well as in private. So I would have the credentials to be the kind of Christian I want to be.’ His honesty was both disarming and disheartening. God help the church if clergy are the only Christians with ‘credentials’, and God help all those troubled people on the bus if they have to wait for an ordained person to come along before anyone speaks to them…In many ways, those who pursue ordination take the easy way out. They choose a prescribed role that seems to meet all the requirements, and take up fulltime residence in the church. They forego the hard work of straddling two different worlds, while those they serve have no such luxury. Those in the pulpit may know where they belong, but the people in the pews hold dual citizenship. Whey they come together as the church that is where they belong – in God’s country which is governed by love. But when they leave that place, they cross the border into another country governed by other, less forgiving laws – and they live there too.”

(SUNG) CHILDREN GO WHERE IS SEND THEE, HOW SHALL I SEND THEE

Hiring me on a half time basis as a professional minister to work among you does not free you from the Gospel imperative to go and live out your ministry in Christ’s name. It simply allows me to ask the difficult questions and help steer you in community to identify the work you already do as ministers of the Gospel and find ways to support you in that work. It allows you to feast at God’s table on Sunday and then carry that full spirit into Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…(well you get the picture). As Barbara Brown Taylor probably knows, and I definitely know – one doesn’t find many ordained clergy riding buses to hear the cries of the troubled and offer them God’s peace and blessing. Jesus has to use you and your ministry to reach all those who clamor for meaning and gospel in their lives and invite them into this place, or into the South Park Blocks where they can be inspired, forgiven, nourished and encouraged to go forth and pass on what they have received. That is how the called are equipped to serve the world as servants of the Gospel, spreading the good news that God’s kindom is among us.

Amen.