Just Ask

Luke 11:1-13

Please Click Here For Sermon Video

I first started learning to play the guitar back when I was 10 or 11.  One of my early influences was my grandfather.  There would be times back then when visiting my grandparents that I would get tired of watching TV and get the urge to go upstairs and jam on Granddaddy’s guitar.  There was only one problem—I had to ask him if I could play it and that created a huge internal dilemma for me.  I would sit there and sit there for what seemed an eternity, trying to get up the nerve just to ask.  It was agony.  My heart would race, my mind would say “just ask him,” but I just couldn’t do it.  I would get to the point of almost blurting it out, but…I just couldn’t do it.  Something just kept me from asking and it didn’t make sense.  So frustrating!  Well, occasionally I did get the words out and he’d answer, “Why sure.  Help yourself.”  I’d go on up and ten minutes or so later he’d come up and try to teach me a song he played when he was young – The Boogie Woogie usually.  Those were special times for my grandfather and me.  We were the only ones in the family that played.  

I don’t know why I had such a hard time just asking Granddaddy if I could play his guitar.  I knew he’d say yes.  I just couldn’t ask.  I was just a shy kid who had a hard time saying what he wanted, I guess.  I couldn’t get beyond myself enough to stop and think who it was I was asking and how willing he would be to share not only his guitar but his time and his memories with me, that he might actually want that special time with me.

Why is it so hard sometimes to ask for what we want especially when we know it comes from someone who cares infinitely about us and who won’t say no?  Why is it?  That’s one of the greatest mysteries of life, I guess.  But it boils down to that we just get so caught up in our own irrationalities (it’s actually shame) that we forget who it is that we’re asking.  It doesn’t make sense.

I think this problem affects how we pray as well.  We get so caught up in our own mess that we forget to whom it is that we pray.  I think this is part of why Jesus when instructing his disciples on how to pray, begins with the reminder of exactly to whom it is we pray: “Our Father in heaven”. The first lesson that Jesus gives to us on how to pray is that when we pray, we pray to our Father in heaven.

Calling God Father changes the way we relate to God.  Some may have an understandable problem with understanding God as Father for reasons of it being patriarchal, sexist, or their own father was abusive.  I understand but, before we through the baby out with the bathwater, there’s something we need to understand about the name “Father” from a biblical perspective; more so the role of a father.  We should think about what an honourable father was supposed to be and do for his family.  Abraham and Job are good examples here.  Along with a good wife whom he honours and cherishes, a father brings a family into existence.  The father provides a safe home and all that the family needs.  He is faithful to and truly cares for the well-being of everyone in the family.  He defends the family and publicly conducts himself so that the family name is respected.  He looks after the spiritual needs of the family.  He provides an inheritance for the family thus providing for the future of the family.  He blesses and is a blessing to the family.  As the children grow up the father includes them in the responsibilities of the family work and listens to their opinions.  The family respects the father and honours what he wants for the family.  You see, the honourable father wants only what God wants for his family and strives for that. Underneath it all is a bond of love in the family.  

So, we are to have all that in mind when we pray to the Creator of this beautiful universe and rest assured that this Creator considers us his beloved children, his family, and invites us to consider him our Father.  This Father in heaven loves and cherishes us and only wants the best for us and can and will make it happen.  So, if calling God “Father” is difficult, let’s just still take to heart this fatherly nature of God when we pray.  There’s motherly nature to God as well.  That’s a good way to think about the work of the Holy Spirit.  There’s also a sibling nature to God with Brother Jesus.  There is a profound family-like nature to God the Trinity.  Regardless, it is important when we pray that we consider the nature of the one to whom we pray, that there is a love there that’s family-like, that will not hurt us the way family can in this broken world.  It’s important that we put aside our own irrationalities and shame and come to the God who loves us in prayer.

About prayer, prayer takes place in our spirit as it communions with God.  I like to think of our spirit in its simplest terms as that part of us that relates to God, to others and to our self.  So, prayer is a relationship.  Prayer takes place in the bond of love that we have with God.  Prayer is not making requests to an aloof deity that says he’ll hear our prayers on account of some human sacrifice years ago.  Prayer is kind of like me sitting in a chair across the room from my grandfather stressing out over whether he’ll let me play his guitar except putting all that stressing out stuff aside and rather listening to that part of me that knew Grandaddy’s love for me and that there was nothing that he wouldn’t do for me so long as it was in my best interest.  My grandfather was true to that love to the tee and that’s what prayer is like.  Prayer is sitting in the presence of our loving Father in heaven in communion with him and brother Jesus and the Holy Spirit present with a sense of God’s presence gluing us all together, our spirit with the Holy Spirit, and knowing that what we ask will be granted if it is according to his will and care for us.  

So, what to pray?  In the prayer that Jesus gives us which we should pray frequently throughout the day, we ask for God’s Kingdom to come and God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Praying this leads to our desiring it which leads to our striving for the coming of God’s Kingdom to earth.  We ask for God to provide for what we need each day.  That should always have us questioning do we need more than that.  We ask God to forgive us in accordance with how we feel others owe us something.  Thinking that somebody owes us something is the root of what a grudge is and that’s a sermon for another day.  There’s also the not bringing us into the time of trial thing that has to do with evil deciding to test your faith.  That’s also a sermon for another day.  The Lord’s Prayer is a prayer to have frequently running through your mind throughout the day.

But, what about specific things we need to pray about: the hurts, the illnesses, the grieving, hurting relationships, and so forth.  Well, Jesus begins by saying be persistent.  Don’t think you’re inconveniencing God or don’t deserve anything special from God.  Even friends will do what we ask if we bother them enough.  Won’t our father in heaven do all the more.  But the fact that it takes persistence means that things take time.  We don’t know what all is involved in God answering a prayer for us.  Prayer is not a magic wand and there’s none of this “just believe you’ll get it” stuff that TV preachers push.  Placing things that are beyond our control into the hands of God is a difficult task.  Asking, seeking, and knocking on the door are things we must do.  There are no overnight solutions to anything, but waiting on God changes us.  Waiting creates humility, patience, compassion, kindness, faith, gentleness, and self-control.  

Jesus finishes with inviting us to pray for the Holy Spirit; praying for God’s felt, life-transforming presence with and in us.  The Holy Spirit nurtures us with the felt faithful love of God to be more like Jesus is his nature of unconditional love.   There is nothing greater in this life that we can pray for than a healthy dose of knowing God, knowing God is present with us, knowing we are beloved by God, knowing and feeling that God’s faithful love surrounds us.  God is very generous when the prayer request is “God, give us yourself.” Or “God, let me know your faithful love.”  Be persistent.  The Holy Spirit will make himself known to you particularly by the way he changes you which will be noticeable.  Just ask.  Amen.

The One Thing Needed

Luke 10:38-42

Please Click Here For Sermon Video

Ernie Carpenter was the last in a long family tradition of fiddlers in central West Virginia reaching back five generations into the 1700’s.  His ancestors were among the first European settlers in West Virginia.  For most of his life he lived in the house built by his grandfather on the plot of land his family originally settled.  In the late ‘50’s, the US government condemned his house and took his ancestral land in order to create Sutton Lake and gave him very little in compensation.  He was practically left with nothing except his music.  He had this to say about music:

“Music was a great gift, one of the greatest, I think, that anybody can have because it’s something that nobody can take away from you.  No way can they touch it.  They can’t take a note away.  It don’t make no difference if you’re a tramp or how low down you are, if you play music you can still keep it.  It’s about the only thing left that the politicians can’t get in on.  So, they can’t take it away from you.  They can’t touch it and money can’t buy it.  You can’t even give it away yourself, that is to turn it over to somebody.  You could learn it to somebody, but you can’t just turn it over.  It’s a very precious gift.”

For Mr. Carpenter, his family’s music, the tradition that it embodied was all he had and it was quite sacred to him.  He taught it to many people free of charge.  Ernie was the last of the Carpenter Family line of fiddlers.  It is debatable who outside the family studied him enough to be considered the inheritor of it.  Fortunately, most of the songs he knew were recorded before he died.  So, his family’s musical legacy is not gone forever but continues on through young fiddlers who are drawn to it and who take the time to listen and learn from the recordings and from those who are still around who sat at Ernie’s feet, so to speak.

Music, like reading and writing and art and any kind of knowledge, it gets inside you and it can’t be taken away.  This is what Jesus has to say about Mary’s relationship to him.  Her devotion to Jesus, her friendship with him, her knowing him, and some would even say her feelings of love for him couldn’t be taken away.  She was personally devoted to Jesus in a special kind of way and that could not be taken from her.  

Mary’s sitting there at Jesus’ feet learning is something we really need to note.  In that time rabbis did not allow women to sit at the feet as students and listen to their teachings as a man would.  This is an incredibly unheard-of equalization of the status of men and women.  Women were supposed to do what Martha was doing in offering hospitality.  

So also, Martha’s work of showing hospitality by offering her home and feeding Jesus and his disciples is not something we should downplay.  We diminish the meaning of this story if we do what has so often been done to Martha in belittling her “busyness”.  Extravagant hospitality is crucial for the way of life for a disciple of Jesus and core to the ministry of congregations.  Afterall, didn’t we just read the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  Indiscriminate and unconditional hospitality is core to how we show “mercy” to others, to how we let our lives be a healing balm for others.  So, let us not belittle Martha for her supposed busyness.  The world needs more people and more churches like her.

But back to Mary, her abandoning of the traditional “Woman’s Work” of showing hospitality and taking the risk of sitting at Jesus’ feet to learn with the men really needs our attention.  She could have easily been cast out by the men for being presumptuous or even be accused of being a little on the flirty side.  So, why would she take this risk?  Well, I presume she felt she could trust Jesus that she would be welcome there.  She wouldn’t be the first woman Jesus welcomed fully into the fold and entrusted with ministry.  His circle already had several women in it.   

But, let’s not just leave it at Mary trusted she would be welcome in the circle.  We should highlight that she also wanted to learn from Jesus.  She wanted to learn his teachings.  Be his disciple.  She, like the others, sensed who he was as the Messiah and was on board with his Kingdom of God Come to Earth ministry.  

But, I still think there is more to this picture than Mary just wanted to learn and trusted she would be welcome in the circle.  There’s a personal devotion there, a sense of deep friendship we would do well to consider.  Jesus was Mary’s friend and she wanted to be close to him.  In John’s Gospel, this Mary was the one who poured the bottle of expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet to anoint his body for burial making her the only one to understand that he was actually going to die and she was moved deeply with grief at this reality.  Lazarus, the young man whom Jesus raised from the dead, was her brother.  Mary had a strong emotional attachment to Jesus such that she simply wanted to be in his presence.  And, there was something a bit more to being in the presence of Jesus than just being with a friend.  I think that she and the other disciples had the sense that to be in the presence of Jesus was somehow being in the presence of God.  When Jesus was around it was becoming on Earth as it is in Heaven.  Around Jesus the veil between Heaven and Earth grew thin.  

Have you ever heard of “thin places”?  In Celtic Christianity they speak of “thin places”, places where one gets a sense that the barrier or veil between Heaven and Earth is thin and the presence of God is more readily sensed.  In the Celtic tradition thin places are special places like particular cathedrals that people would go on pilgrimage to like the Iona community in Scotland.  Places where you can go on retreat and it seems easier to hear God speak to you.  There were places also out in the wood.  Places where God speaks and healing happens.  Thin places.

Yet, a thin place isn’t something we need to go to Scotland to find.  We probably have had moments in particular places where we just get the sense that this place, this moment is sacred.  We feel we must take off our shoes like Moses before the burning bush.  Places we would go back to because we feel like God visited us there in some way.

Well, let me fill you in on a little secret.  We each are a thin place.  There are several places throughout the New Testament where Paul refers to us as individual temples of God in whom the Holy Spirit dwells.  We don’t need to go somewhere to cultivate a thin place.  God, the Holy Spirit, is with us and in us giving us the sense that Jesus is present with us.  To find our thin place we must simply find time and place to “Be still and know that I am God” as the song goes.  That’s also Psalm 46:10 in case you wondered.

You may have heard of “mindfulness” where you stop to take note of the sounds you hear, the details in the things you look at, the smells, how your body feels; just trying be aware.  That’s a good place to start, but not necessary.  From there, give the Lord a place to be within your awareness like an empty chair across the table from you.   Get your Bible and read.  I really appreciate the Psalms.  You’ll find you have a lot in common with them.  Be mindful as you read as if you were sitting at Jesus feet listening to him.  You will have moments when you feel you have been spoken to.  In time, over time you will start to develop a friendship with this absently present friend.  In times of crisis this friend will neither leave you nor forsake you.  Nothing can take this friendship away from you.  It is the one thing we need in the midst of life’s worries and business.  The thin place of this friendship with Jesus in the Spirit is the one thing we all need, the better part that cannot be taken away.  Amen.

 

Neighbours of Mercy

Luke 10:25-37

Please Click Here For Sermon Video

There’s a saying that goes, “You can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends.”  Similarly, this applies to neighbours.  To a large extent we can’t choose our neighbours either, but like family we can have a unique relationship with our neighbours that’s like no other.  Sadly, in the world in which we live people typically don’t know their neighbours all that well if at all so we could say what does it matter whether we can choose them or not.  Well, it does matter.  I’m sure that there has been a wealth of studies done that demonstrate that having good relationships with your neighbours improves one’s own quality of life.  So also, the adverse of that.  If we don’t have a good relationship with even just one of our neighbours it diminishes our sense of quality of life.  Life is not good if you have an enemy next door.  Good neighbours make for a greater sense of community in the neighbourhood.  Knowing who your neighbours are makes the neighbourhood a safer place.  Whereas not knowing your neighbours opens the door to crime in a neighbourhood.  Good neighbours look after your place when you’re not there, help you out, lend you stuff, and there’s always a laugh over the fence.  It’s just plain good to know your neighbours and to know them well.  They actually can become like family in many ways.  

Looking at our passage here in Luke, it’s not uncanny that Jesus would use the example of being a very good “neighbour” as an example of how to have a life full of the presence of God if I can make that stretch.  Let’s have a look. 

A lawyer stands up to test Jesus wanting to know what he had to do to inherit eternal life and it is interesting that Jesus ties it to one’s conduct as a neighbour.  Let’s first look at the question the lawyer asked.  Off the bat, to our Modern ears it seems an odd question to ask because to us an inheritance is not earned.  You don’t typically do something to get an inheritance.  For us an inheritance is bestowed, given usually on the simple basis of a family tie. 

But, that’s not the framework this lawyer was operating with as he was a Jew who lived in the First Century.  In his mind the idea of inheritance had a specific referent in the promise God made to Abraham to give his descendants the land of Israel and make them a great and numerous nation.  The fulfillment of that promise was the inheritance every Jew would receive from God, but they all realized that receiving this inheritance wasn’t necessarily a given.  Receiving that inheritance first of all hinged-on Abraham’s faithfulness to God, which he was.  But for his descendants to receive it, they must also remain exclusively faithful to the God of Abraham (no idols) and also observe the Law of Moses or they could lose the land and cease to be a nation.  They could get themselves written out of the will, so to speak, as they did when God sent them into exile in Babylon for their idolatry and not keeping the Law; particularly the parts of the Law that required them to take care of the poor, widows and orphans, and foreigners in their midst.  

So, in this lawyer’s thinking there was something the Jewish people must do to inherit the fulfillment of the promise God made to Abraham – worship God alone and keep the Law.  This is the framework in which the lawyer places his test question.  It is a test question.  The lawyer is looking to catch Jesus on something in order to bring him up on charges.  The lawyer is likely asking that since for the Jewish people the inheritance of the land and being a great and numerous nation hinged-on exclusive faithfulness to God and keeping the Law of Moses, does this apply to eternal life as well for the Jewish people?  The test is whether Jesus will deviate from the established framework.  Does inheriting eternal life require something other than exclusive faithfulness to God and keeping the Law of Moses?  If it does, then to the mind of the this expert in the Law there’s false teaching involved.

Well, Jesus had been calling people to follow him.  Would he answer that receiving the inheritance of eternal life was contingent on having faith in and following him?  That would likely get him into trouble with the lawyer for it would place Jesus in the place of God and his way of life in place of the Law of Moses.  But, we would say, “Umm.  Isn’t that what Jesus says in John 3:16? ‘Whosoever believes in me shall not perish, but shall have eternal life.’”

Uh, brief excursion.  Please don’t think of eternal life as going to heaven when we die.  The lawyer was not asking what he had to do to go to heaven when he died.  That was a question made popular by the medieval Church.  Nowhere in the writings of First Century Jews or earlier do we find them asking that question.  For most Jews and Christians back then, eternal life would have meant either our present life filled with the presence of God or the new age soon to come when the Messiah arrived and established the Kingdom of God here on earth or a mixture of both: experiencing the presence and reigning of God in one’s life now as a foretaste of what it will be in the coming age.  And with reference to John 3:16, Jesus defines eternal life at John 17:3 as knowing the Father and the Son whom he has sent.  Even in the Gospel of John eternal life does not mean going to heaven when we die.  So…chew on that.

Getting back on track, Jesus realizes that he’s talking to an expert in the Law of Moses who is trying to trap him so he employs this expert device of rhetoric known as “Make the dude answer his own question”. “What’s the Law say?” Jesus asks.  That’s a big question.  How does one sum up the first five books of the Bible?  Surprisingly, the Lawyer does very well.  He gives the perfect summary of the Law; one Jesus himself used: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.”  Jesus tells him that he has answered correctly and if he does that he will “live”.  The omission of the word eternal there likely means having the type of life now that will be in the age to come – life full of the presence and reigning of God.

Well, I suspect the lawyer just realized he’d been outwitted.  I suspect he has realized that he was not able to love God the way the Law required nor love his neighbour.  I mean, how does one show love for God?  According to this lawyer’s summary, we love God in concordance to how we love our neighbour which is related to how we love ourselves.  Well, apparently this lawyer has some limits as to what love of neighbour looks like.  So, he seeks to justify himself by wanting to define who is and who is not his neighbour.  “And who is my neighbour?” He asks.

We know the story from there.  A man is robbed and left for dead by the side of the road.  Who’s going to help him?  Not the priest.  The man looks dead.  If he goes to find out and accidentally touches a corpse, well, according to the Law, he can’t enter the temple where he lives and works for seven days because he has made himself unclean.  So also, the Levite who also would have worked at the temple.  Then along comes the Samaritan.  

There’s some history you need to know.  Samaritans and Judeans, though both groups were Jews, children of Abraham, and their lands neighboured each other, they were long-time enemies.  The Samaritans saw themselves as true-Jews for they observed only the first five books of the Bible which contained the Law.  But they were also of mixed lineage dating back nearly 700 years from when the Assyrians invaded the northern part of Israel and intermarried with them.  Still, they considered themselves Jews and, moreover, their ancestors never went into the Babylonian Exile as did the ancestors of the Judeans.  God never kicked the Samaritans off of the land.  Similarly, the Judeans also saw themselves as true Jews because their lineage was pure and included the priesthood and their region housed the Temple, the place where God himself chose to dwell.  So, this common disdain was both religious and racial.  They weren’t good neighbours to each other. It is interesting that Jesus chose to use a Samaritan as an example of a neighbour in his parable to this Judean expert in the Law.

Back to the parable.  Unlike the priest and the Levite, this Samaritan didn’t think about the consequences to himself if the man happened to be dead.  Instead, he was moved with compassion and was concerned with what might happen to the man if the man were still alive and he didn’t stop to help.  Like a neighbour ought, he checked to see if the man was still alive regardless of the Law saying that he too would be unclean for seven days if he touched the man or even just came in contact with his blood.  

Compassion must override religious legalism.  That’s the spirit of the Law.  The Samaritan fulfilled the Law even though he didn’t keep the letter of the Law.  He was very generous with the man.  Put him on his mule.  Took him to an inn and cared for him and then had the man’s care looked after when he couldn’t do it himself.  Unconditional love, sacrificial generosity, above and beyond hospitality all in the name of compassion.  That’s what it is to be a neighbour.  Do that and live.

When Jesus asked the legal expert who was a neighbour to this man who had been robbed and left for dead out in the middle of nowhere where there were no neighbours, the man answered, “The one who showed him mercy.”  Mercy.  That’s an interesting word.  We typically misunderstand it to mean the leniency of a judge.  But in the Greek, the word means to show kindness to someone in dire need.  If you get yourself a nice bottle of Greek olive oil, you’ll find the Greek word for mercy on it because the words for olive oil and mercy come from the same word family.  Olive oil is like mercy.  Not only was it an important source of nourishment, but it was also a healing balm.  The Samaritan man likely would have put olive oil on the man’s wounds to heal him.

So, to be a neighbour is to show healing compassion to others indiscriminate of who they are which includes unconditional love, sacrificial generosity, and extending above and beyond hospitality especially to those with dire need.  It is to let your life be a healing balm to the lives of others whatever the cost.  Being this kind of a neighbour is what it is to have eternal life.  Do this and you will live.  The presence of God will permeate your life with a sense of your own belovedness to God and a sense of everyone’s belovedness.  Mercy is applying God’s beauty, which looks like indiscriminate compassion, to the situations in life that are terrible to behold so that healing might occur and sacred beauty abound.  Do this and you will live.  Amen. 

  

The Harvest's Waiting

Luke 10:1-11,16-24

Please Click Here For Sermon Video

A serious problem that most smaller and rural communities are facing is a shortage of skilled tradespeople – welders, electricians, mechanics, plumbers, carpenters, heavy equipment operators, groundskeepers, farmhands, and the list could go own – people who do stuff.  At present, people of the Baby Boomer generation are doing most of these skilled trades.  They are beginning to retire in droves and there are few trained younger people to step into their places.  A shortage of tradespeople means that it will become more expensive to build and renovate homes, build and maintain automobiles, plant and harvest crops.  Need I scare you more?  This is a problem of apocalyptic proportion. Young people who would like to make a career of dependable, good paying job would be wise to consider a learning a trade.  The harvest is waiting, but the labourers are few.

Another shortage we have is in the area of volunteers.  In another ten years there is likely to be no one to help us find our way around our local hospital, no civic clubs raising funds for necessary projects, and there will be fewer community events like Summer Folk.  Younger people (50’s and younger) are not volunteering or joining service groups anymore.  The basic need for people just to simply help each other is a ripe field and the workers are very few. 

Then there is the shortages the world has always had; the shortage of peace, the shortage of justice, the shortage of health, the shortage of everybody having enough, the shortage of humanity yielding to the abundance of God’s love.  Ourselves, we have it quite comfortable.  On a whole we as a nation are in that top 20% of the global population that has plenty, that has more than enough.  Yet and likely as a result, we suffer the ills of apathy, isolation, and rampant individualism that is rapidly turning into narcissism.  Our need to reconnect with the land, with community, with neighbour, with God is a huge harvest waiting to be reaped.  Yet, the workers are few and they – US – we are tired.  The need that all of humanity has for the Kingdom of God to come is the ripest field anyone has ever seen, but who will go and bear the scythe to reap?

Jesus offers a solution to the labour shortage. He tells his motley crew, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few; therefore, ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.”  Could it really be that easy? Have a prayer meeting?  It’s worked in the past.  The disciples were gathered together in Jerusalem praying when Pentecost happened.  Ever since, every great revival, renewal, or mission sending movement in the history of Christianity has begun with people gathering to pray.  Could it really be that easy?

Well, we won’t know unless we try, but be warned: look at whom Jesus sends.  He called forth the labourers from among the little crowd of people gathered around him and sent them.  This means that if we are going to pray to the Lord for the purpose of sending out workers into his harvest, then each and every one of us needs to accept that it might be “me” that he wants to send.  Are we each prepared to say, “Yes”?

Another thing we need to note is that he sends these folks out, OUT, out into the world ahead of himself like lambs among wolves.  He doesn’t say go into the crowd here and come up with creative ways to make the crowd look more friendly and welcoming and alive.  He doesn’t tell them to polish the rocks the people are sitting on and add pillows, or to plant more shade trees along the road for air conditioning, or to sing catchy camp-fire songs, or to play fun games so even children will want to come and be a part of the crowd making that arduous walk to Jerusalem (in cardboard shoes).  Jesus doesn’t send the workers to do Attractional Ministry. Rather, he’s got in mind what’s come to be known as Missional Ministry or Incarnational Ministry – the ministry of going about out there doing the things that he does or says.

Jesus does Sending Out Ministry.  Do you remember what Jesus said to his disciples when he appeared to them on Easter evening as they cowered in fear behind locked doors? He said, “Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  This is ministry that happens as we are about our way – as we go visiting with friends and family, as we go to work, as we go to the places we go and from the sound of it, it seems to require that we be good guests in the lives of others rather than us requiring people to be good guests when they come here.  

Jesus tells his disciples to travel light and to accept the hospitality of others as they welcome us into their lives.  We seem to instinctively prefer that people come to us, and become like us, so that we don’t have to change.  Yet, the ministry Jesus calls us to requires we leave behind our security blanket of the expectations we have that people be just like us.  Yet, if we travel without those expectations, we are less likely to judge and more likely to listen and learn from others.

Jesus sends his disciples out to bring peace to people along the way.  Jesus said to his disciples in John’s Gospel, “Peace I leave you; my peace I give to you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”  Jesus’ peace is his presence, the Holy Spirit, with us.  Because the Holy Spirit abides with us we have a peace that the world does not have and so we can give peace and make peace.  One way that we can give peace is that we can be a non-anxious presence in the lives of others.  Sometimes people step into the lives of others and cause worry, create conflict, or make problems seem bigger than they are.  But, by the peace that Jesus has given to us we can step into the lives of others and listen, and encourage and help others to forgive and to mend broken relationships.  We can step into the lives of others and bring hope rather than further despair.

Similar to bringing peace Jesus sends his disciples to cure the sick.  A ministry of healing is something all churches should have.  This looks like designated worship services that people can come to and be prayed for.  This looks like visiting your neighbours when they are ill and praying for their healing.  Healing ministries take a lot of courage to make happen, but healing does happen whether it be in the form of tumours disappearing or people simply becoming able to accept the inevitable because God is with them.   

Finally, Jesus sends his disciples out to be living testimonies to the reality that the Kingdom of God is at hand.  This was the Gospel that Jesus himself proclaimed.  Everywhere he went through everything he did and said the Kingdom of God, the Reigning power of God, shown forth and took effect.  And so it is that he sends us forth.  

We are the labourers who have to go and reap the harvest.  The harvest waits wherever we go.  We cannot expect that people today are just simply going to out of the blue up and decide to come to church to find Jesus and his Kingdom.  The harvest is out there.  We are the workers.  Jesus sends us.  He sends us with nothing more than what he has given us: peace and prayers of healing.  Let us go.  Amen.