13
Pentecost 2013
Father Adam Trambley
August 18, 2013, St. John’s
Sharon
The Discipleship Arm Dance – Part
8:
He sent them out.
Last
week for the Discipleship Arm Dance.
Let’s all do it together.
Jesus
was baptized by John.
He came
up out of the water.
He
received the Holy Spirit.
He
heard the voice of God, “You are my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
He went
into the wilderness.
He
defeated the devil.
He came
out of the wilderness.
He
announced his purpose.
He
chose four others.
He
taught them everything they needed to know.
He sent
them out.
He sent
them out. One of the most common things
Jesus does in scripture is send people out.
The
first thing we notice about Jesus’ sending people out, is that he sends them
out in accordance with his purpose.
Jesus’ purpose was bringing people into the Kingdom of God that is
coming near. He teaching, his healing,
his feeding, and his passion, death and resurrection all stemmed from this
purpose. When he sends people out he
sends them to prepare people for Kingdom of God, in word and deed.
We
remember the Great Commission, when Jesus, after his resurrection as he is
about to ascend into heaven, tells his disciples to “make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” (Note how this final instruction of Jesus
commends his disciples and us to do much of what we have been talking about –
baptizing, announcing his purpose, teaching everything needed to know, sending
them out).
Earlier,
Jesus has told the seventy and the twelve to go and proclaim the good news that
the Kingdom of God has come near. They
are to proclaim peace and heal the sick and cast out demons. They are sent out to do what they have seen
Jesus do and been taught by him to do.
We would assume that the four, Peter, Andrew, James, and John, who have
experienced more of Jesus’ life and have been taught more closely by him, would
be better prepared. But everyone is sent
out to do what they can to contribute to Jesus’ purpose.
We see
Jesus sending all sorts of people out to do as much as they have experienced
him doing, even if they are only prepared at that time to contribute to a
single part of his overall purpose. The
list of those Jesus sends out is long, but here are some:
- After casting a legion of demons out of the Gerasene demoniac, Jesus says, “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you."
- The woman with a hemorrhage who has undergone physical and emotional hardship for twelve years is healed and told by Jesus, “Go in peace.”
- The woman caught in adultery is not judged by Jesus and has learned forgiveness from him and defeated the devil in the wilderness of her near-death experience. Jesus sends her out, “Go, and sin no more.”
- Remember what Jesus says to the lawyer at the end of the Good Samaritan story? “Who was the neighbor to the man set upon by robbers?” The lawyer has learned something from Jesus: “The one who showed mercy.” Jesus sends him out saying, “Go and do likewise.” Go and show mercy.
- Think about the resurrected Jesus coming out of the tomb. Mary Magdalene sees him. She is the first witness to the power of the resurrection which brings the Kingdom of God nearer to us than any other act in history. After experiencing her risen Lord, Jesus immediately sends her out, “Go and tell my brothers that I’m going to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.”
Everything we do in here is
designed to prepare us to go out there effectively. The call of St. John’s, or any church is to
help us work through all the steps leading up to “He sent them out.” We are baptized and turn our lives over to
God in this local church. We commit to
going forward into the new life God has in store for us. We receive the Holy Spirit and encounter
God’s love. We are led into the
wilderness where we can defeat the devil in our lives. We discover our purpose and learn everything
we need to know. We learn how to choose
others to assist us with our purpose. We
gather in church to do all of these essential and difficult things so that we
can be sent out by Jesus to bring the good news to those outside of the
church. We are not here to take care of
ourselves. We worship God, care for
people and grow as Christians to witness the coming Kingdom of God in the
world.
Being sent out can take a number of
forms. Some folks are just sent out of
here. As school starts, we know some of
our college students are in this position.
They are being sent out to live as witnesses in new places and we aren’t
going to see them here again regularly for a while, if ever. They have had their preparation and it’s time
to announce the Kingdom in other cities and towns. Other people may move due to a job change or
other reason, and they are sent with a commission to follow their particular aspect
of Jesus’ purpose.
But for most of us, we are going to
be back here next week – some of us even tomorrow. We aren’t going anywhere, at least nowhere
requiring a U.S. Post Office notification.
Our sending out has two components.
The first is to actually go outside the church to family members,
friends, co-workers, neighbors, or whoever we meet and share the good news with
them in word and deed. Sometimes that is
actually telling them the good news of what God has done for us (and we should
all be doing that more than we are). Other
times sharing that good news means letting them experience God’s love, grace,
power and life by meeting their needs in some way. An important part of the individual purpose
of every one of us is letting people know the good news that the Kingdom of God
is at hand and preparing them to live as its citizens.
Once we have been out there
proclaiming the Kingdom, we may also undertake God’s purpose in the
church. But we are called to do that by
turning the church inside-out, if you will.
The church, even the physical church building, is doing its work not
when we are focused on those of us already inside, but when we are focused
outside. We can’t ever do that if we
aren’t living as disciples outside because we won’t know what the world
needs. But if we are connected outside,
we can take our worship, we can take our buildings, we can take our
programming, and we can make the church the place people from outside want to
come to in order to experience life in the Kingdom of God. If we are doing our work outside, then not
only will we see fruit outside the church, but people will want to come here
for lunch, and people will want to hold birthday parties here and learn guitar
here and have AA meetings here, and people will want to encounter God in
worship here. People from outside will
only want to be here, though, as we care less about what we want in favor of a
Christ-like concern for what other people need.
Then, when people come here they,
too, will learn how to be baptized and come up out of the water and receive the
Holy Spirit and defeat the devil and find their purpose and choose others to
pass that purpose on to and learn everything they need to know. But that increase in disciples will only
happen in an inside-out kind of church.
As soon as people experience
something of the Kingdom in this inside-out church, they can share it. We see people at the lunch after they have
been served helping serve others by clearing tables. People who have been prayed for and received
healing start praying for other people.
Those who experience God’s presence in worship invite others into that presence
by bringing them to worship, too. Just
like Jesus sent people out to share whatever they had learned, we too can send
people out quickly to spread the Kingdom.
Let’s face it, none of us ever
fully understand God or are entirely living out a Kingdom lifestyle
ourselves. Each of us is doing the best
we can, at least I hope so. We can share
what we know, and as we learn more, we share more completely. And everyone we share the good news with can
share what they know, even if they don’t end up coming to St. John’s or any
other church, even if they don’t have a complete sense of Christian creeds or
dogmas or even ethics, even if they wouldn’t really consider themselves
Christians. But they recognize the
Kingdom of God breaking into their lives and they want to share it. Then the Kingdom of God is built up in places
we wouldn’t even have imagined. And this
spread of the Kingdom is what we are here for.
We worship God, care for people and grow as Christians to help the whole
world know that the Kingdom of God is coming near. We succeed in that purpose
not only as we go out, but as we send all manner of others out, as well.
If we ever forget what we are here
for, we can pay attention to the last piece of our liturgy. The deacon or priest says: “Go in peace to
love and serve the Lord,” and the people all say, “Thanks be to God.” We don’t say “Thanks be to God” because we
are glad church is over, at least I hope not.
We say “Thanks be to God” as an affirmation to the call to go out and do
what Jesus has sent us out to do.
So
let’s do the Discipleship Arm Dance together, recognizing the commission given
to us in the last line.
Jesus
was baptized by John.
He came
up out of the water.
He
received the Holy Spirit.
He
heard the voice of God, “You are my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
He went
into the wilderness.
He
defeated the devil.
He came
out of the wilderness.
He
announced his purpose.
He
chose four others.
He
taught them everything they needed to know.
He sent
them out.
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