The 5^th Sunday after Pentecost

July 4, 2004

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Luke 10:2

“We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.” The Nicene Creed.

“Apostle”, the English transliteration of a Greek word meaning “one who is sent out”

To be an apostolic church is to be a church that is sent out. To be a member of an apostolic church is to be one who is sent out. That is, if you are a member of an apostolic church you are sent out as a laborer in the Lord’s harvest.

In his Epistle to the Church at Galatia, Paul says that we are to “bear one another’s burdens”, and “that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts, but a new creation”.

I have now set up the perfect logical sequence for a sermon on a certain type of evangelism, for ordinations, and missionaries. All of these are valid ministries and callings, but I do not want to go there.

Today, and over the next few weeks that I am preaching, I want to look at the assigned scriptures and to look at us and our ministries in the light of Jesus’ charge to the seventy, the quotes from Paul and other passages as they are read in subsequent weeks.

The earlier sending out of the twelve and the current sending out of the seventy are among the most organized actions taken by Jesus. Yet by most standards, both of his time and ours, both are almost without organization and planning. In both cases, they are to go out two by two. They are to go to places he will be going. They are to take nothing with them. If they are welcomed, they are to stay in one place. If they are not welcomed, they are to move one. Their actions are to heal the sick and their message is simple: “The kingdom of God has drawn near”.

They are not to be alone. They are to be together to support each - thus bearing one another’s burdens. They are to be with one another to help overcome the stress and loneliness that can be a part of witnessing. They are to encourage one another. They are also to help keep each other going, to keep each other true. They are a team in Christ’s ministry. They are not Lone Rangers or heroes coming to the rescue.

There is no pre-arrival support team or P. R. All of the structures that we feel are so necessary are to be missing. They are dependent on their skills and techniques but God’s presence and power.

There is no detailed doctrine or ritual. When Paul says that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts, he reduces to insignificance all of the rites and laws that have given Jews their identity and marked them as the chosen people. By implication, he does the same to those Christian doctrines, practices and rules which we often so cherish much and consider so important. It is being remade by Christ that is important and the basis of our ministry.

There was a simple message. There was only a request for genuine hospitality, and a truly open heart and mind for the reception of God’s peace.

Finally, there was the realization that there would be failure. Those sent out were to move. Failure would not be the end of their ministry.

I do not want to oversimplify and reduce to nothing all of the structures of the church and of ministry, but they are not our ministry. They are but tools.

It is all so simple, and yet it is so profound and deep. It is so easy, and yet impossibly difficult for us. We can do the organizing and the P.R. We can do the “circumcision” and the “uncircumcision” But the new creation and the going out without any of our trappings we find all but impossible. They are about God’s work and presence. They are about trusting God and not ourselves. They are about letting God work through us and not us relying only on our resources.

Two stories illustrate something of what I am thinking. I leave them with you. Listen to them and let them touch you. I think that they are rich.

This story is from Frederick Buechner’s The Clown in the Belfry (HarperCollins, 1992).

“I remember an especially dark time of my life. One of my children was sick, and in my anxiety for her I was in my own way as sick as she was. Then one day the phone rang, and it was a man I didn’t know very well then though he has become a great friend since, a minister from Charlotte, North Carolina, which is about 800 miles or so from where I live in Vermont. I assumed he was calling from home and asked him how things were going down there only to hear him say that no, he wasn’t in Charlotte. He was at an inn about twenty minutes away from my house. He’d known I was having troubles, he said, and he thought maybe it would be handy to have an extra friend around for a day or two. The reason he didn’t tell me in advance that he was coming must have been that he knew I would tell him for Heaven’s sake not to do anything so crazy, so for Heaven’s sake he did something crazier still which was to come those 800 mile without telling me he was coming so that for all he knew I might not even have been there. But as luck had it, I was there, and for a day or two he was there with me. He was there for me. I don’t think anything we found to say to each other amounted to very much or had anything particularly religious about it. I don’t remember even spending much time talking about my troubles with him. We just took a couple of walks, had a meal or two together and smoked our pipes, drove around to see some of the countryside, and that was it.

I have never forgotten how he came all that distance just for that, and I’m sure he has never forgotten it either. I also believe that although as far as I can remember we never so much as mentioned the name of Christ, Christ was as much in the air we breathed those few days as the smoke of our pipes was in the air, or the dappled light of the woods we walked through. I believe that for a little time we both of us touched the hem of Christ’s garment, were both of us, for a little time anyway, healed.”

The second includes a story, but is more than that. I take it from a sermon by the Rev. Dr. H. King Oehmig for he says so well what I am trying to say. I would rather just quote him rather than paraphrase him.

“G. K. Chesterton, the Roman Catholic layman, was asked one day by an interviewer what book he would like to have with him if he were marooned on a desert island. Chesterton thought for a moment. During the wait, the interviewer blurted out, ‘The Bible? Shakespeare?’ Chesterton shook his head. ‘No, I really think I would like to have a book on shipbuilding.’

Wholeheartedness? Yes. Singlemindedness? Yes. But in evangelizing for Christ, don’t forget your humanity. That you, too, are a worldling. That you don’t have all answers. That you take the Kingdom seriously, but not yourself. That God is at the center, not yourself. That you have come not to bring Christ but to discover Christ with them. ‘Cast nets, not stones,” Sam Shoemaker used say, and the best ‘net’ to cast is the simple good news that Jesus has saved (and is till saving) a wretch like me. If you yourself are full of the Gospel, the stream will find a way to overflow to others.”

The Rev. William O. Breedlove II

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Monmouth Junction, NJ