The Work of the Kingdom

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Luke 10:1-20

As you might remember, I went to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada back at the beginning of June. One of the matters we dealt with and probably the most pressing was (and these are my words) the imminent death of this denomination if we do not make some drastic changes right now. We appointed a commission, for once not a committee, that has the authority of the Assembly to act to effect certain changes. The changes appear to be mostly structural and among them will be the establishment of regional resource centers that will help congregations with everything from Sunday School resources to legal advice. I don’t know. Time will tell.

I have some thoughts on the matter if you care to hear them. Jesus and the early church ushered in the inbreaking of the Kingdom or Reign of God. The early Christians met mostly in homes. When they met, they nearly always ate together. They were known for their love, generosity, and how everybody was an equal. The institution we call the Church with its buildings and paid clergy has existed ever since Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the late 300’s AD is indeed largely palliative. It unfortunately has served as the religious impetus of European/North American Imperialism, Colonialism, and Westernization, as well as the Morality Police of Western Culture. We need to remind ourselves that the institution we call the church is very different from the gatherings of the early church. What we call the Church in our culture is not synonymous with the Kingdom of God that we heard about in our reading from Luke. Sometimes the two overlap. Sometimes Kingdom things happen in churches. Sometimes church activities are manifestations of the Kingdom. But, please, do not confuse the two as being the same. Terrible things have happened when we have done that.

At many points over the centuries the Kingdom of God has broken in and the church served it resulting in things such as the civil rights movement, the abolition of slavery, hospitals, public education, worker’s rights, and soup kitchens and food banks for example. The Kingdom of God does not exist as an institution but rather it is embodied by everyday people like us. It manifests in places like the kitchen of my best friend’s mother, Mom Landis, who gave a sense of home to this somewhat orphaned child. The door was always open and there was always something on the stove to eat for whoever stopped in and a Bible not far away giving evidence that she actually read it. Mom Landis went to church but the Kingdom of God could be found at her kitchen table. What we call the Church and the Kingdom of God are not synonymous.

Back to our denomination, we’ve commissioned ten people to come up with how to save a whole denomination from imminent death. We’ve got the commissioning part right. If one interprets what we did in the light of the reading from Luke, commissioning people is a good place to start. The translators used the word “Appointed” here but commissioning is the better word, I think. To commission is to empower to act with the authority of the commissioning body or person. In Greek, the word literally means to make visible. What Jesus did here was to empower his disciples to make his Kingdom visible.

If it were up to me to call the shots for the denomination, I wouldn’t have commissioned just ten people with the authority to tweak the structure of the denomination. I would rather go to every congregation and start commissioning disciples of Jesus to go and make the kingdom visible. And now, to quote Al Pacino’s famous courtroom line from the movie Scent of a Woman, “I’m just getting warmed up.”

Let’s humour Jesus here for a minute and try to imagine doing in our community what he did back then. I would divide you up into groups of two and section off the neighbourhoods of this town into as many sections as there are groups of two. You would leave your homes and go to that neighbourhood with only the clothes on your back, wearing no shoes, and no money. You will be barefoot and hungry and sleep in the street unless someone takes you in. You will look like the poorest of the poor. You will have to rely on the hospitality of the people in the neighbourhood.

While you’re on the street, don’t greet anybody. Don’t say “hi” or “how’re you doing”. Just keep announcing, “The Kingdom of God is at hand. Come and follow and believe this good news.” If people stop to talk to you just ask them what they need prayer for and pray for them. When the prayer is answered, tell them, “The Kingdom of God has come near to you”.

If someone invites you to their house, go with them and when you get there proclaim “Peace be to you”. Peace is rest. It’s the laying down of burdens. It’s well-being. When welcomed into a home, stay in that home. Don’t house hop. Eat what is set before you. In this day of dietary restrictions, food allergies, and overwhelming choice that may be the hardest thing to do. Pray for your hosts particularly for their healing. When they are healed, tell them, “The Kingdom of God has come near to you.” You may be interested to know that in Greek there are two words that can be translated as salvation and both are synonymous with healing. Again, stay in that house. That home may wind up being where the gathering meets.

The idea here is that the Kingdom becomes visible when in loyalty to Jesus we take the risk of being completely reliant on God; when we open ourselves to utterly accepting the hospitality of others and that’s not easy as proud and self-sufficient as we are. The Kingdom of God becomes visible when we pray, especially when we pray for healing. When the Kingdom is present, Peace is felt and people gather.

I realize I probably just scared the socks off of every one of us, myself included. What I just described though not from the twilight zone is definitely beyond the comfort zone. I think I have fairly well described church planting, which is what this denomination really needs to do if we Presbyterians want to be around in 25 years, but we probably don’t have to go to the extreme of living in the street hoping someone will invite us in. Yet, we need to rethink Church planting. The goal isn’t to wind up with a building, or even paid clergy, and certainly not a denomination. The goal should be making Jesus’ Kingdom visible. Work which involves hospitality, gathering, and praying for real needs.

I can think of something that congregations can do that takes advantage of the fact that we have buildings. Something that involves hospitality and gathering, could involve prayer. All our churches have kitchens. Pick a regular night, monthly or weekly, for a potluck or a regular morning for coffee or even breakfast or put a pot of soup on ( a big pot). Get the word out to the surrounding neighbourhood. Just let the church fellowship hall and kitchen be a place the immediate neighborhood can gather and see what comes of it. Southampton’s been doing this for a couple of years now. Cornerstone in Tara has a Friday coffee as well that is doing remarkably well. These things aren’t resulting in new faces in the pews, but new faces come to the kitchens, friendships are made, and Jesus’s Kingdom is there. Amen.

The Harvest's Waiting

Luke 10:1-20
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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 people who do stuff 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 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 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 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 in everything that 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.

The Word of Peace and Works of Healing

Luke 10:1-20

If you were to ask me to put my head in a noose professionally, I would probably do it by saying the church today needs a corrective as to what it is proclaiming as the Gospel.  We have truncated the Gospel that Jesus himself and the early church proclaimed. That Gospel was the proclamation that God has and is saving the entirety of his creation in, through, and as Jesus Christ who was God the Son become human, lived, died, and was raised and ascended to the Father as Lord of all creation.  The Trinity has poured their self and their power to reign upon us in and as the gift of the Holy Spirit, the presence and power who is the bond of love that holds Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in union. 

We have truncated this Good News of God’s Creation-healing gift of himself into a gospel that is concerned simply with me and my sin and my fears about death.  This truncated gospel follows the basic format that God loves you and sent his Son to die for you because your sin has cut you off from him and eternal life in heaven.  You just need to believe that God did that, confess you are a sinner, and invite Jesus into your heart and you won’t have to fear dying, and…maybe…you’ll get to have a born again experience.      

If you are a serious student of the Bible and actually read the thing you will notice that the Gospel that’s in the Bible, that Jesus himself and the early church proclaimed is quite different from this truncation that we are accustomed to hearing.  Luke here gives us a glimpse. The Gospel they proclaimed was that the Kingdom of God, the Reign of God, has come upon us in, through, with, and as Jesus Christ and is coming fully very soon.  Basically, as it is in heaven so shall it be on earth by the being and work Jesus.  The reality of this coming of the Reign of God was demonstrated with works of power as Luke says: a word of peace and works of healing, and even the expulsion of the demonic. 

The content of Jesus’ Gospel augmented a bit after his death, resurrection and ascension to include the proclamation that Jesus has defeated sin, death, and evil and that all things are being made new in Christ Jesus by the gift of the Holy Spirit to us and will be finally put to rights when Jesus returns and God makes all creation new, a new heaven and a new earth where God’s reign is not hindered by sin, death, and evil.  Add to this, we God has adopted us as his beloved children sharing in the relationship that Jesus has with the Father due to our union with Jesus in the Spirit.  The Kingdom, the Reign of God is everywhere that Jesus and his authority are present; Jesus and the loving communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit given to us in the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

To us today this means that the personal presence of Christ Jesus is here with us in our fellowship through the Holy Spirit so that we share in his relationship with God the Father as his brothers and sisters and co-inheritors of the Kingdom.  The King and the Kingdom are with us.  We have some really, really good news to offer that is very historically “real” and that goes beyond saying “you’ve got a problem called sin that you need to take care of so that you don’t die and go to hell and here’s the magic formula.” 

We, gathered right here right now, have a real community of faith in which Jesus himself is present.  Jesus is here; Jesus, the one whom God raised from the dead, the one who sits at the right hand of God and rules the cosmos.  Like those seventy disciples Jesus has granted to us the authority to extend his peace (the loving communion in God) to this town and surrounding community, authority to bring real healing to the difficult and indeed crippling situations of life, and even the authority to dispel evil.  By the gift of his Holy Spirit and by his own Word Jesus Christ has given this authority to us and the power to make evident the good news that his kingdom has come to this town.  People can listen and accept this Good News or reject it.  He has given us the authority to bless with a word of peace, to bring healing, even to cast out evil.

Having said all that I think there is a deeper question we need to ask of ourselves and maybe even of God: “Are we truly offering this community the Good News of the Kingdom of God with us now and coming fully at the end of time through Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit…or…is it some other gospel or maybe even no gospel at all?”  Before I left West Virginia at the last Presbytery meeting I attended, I listened as the chair of the budget and finance committee of the Presbytery announced that the money just wasn’t there to carry out the current operations of the Presbytery.  The provision that God promises along the way for his disciples to live on while they proclaim the Good News wasn’t coming in.  They needed to scale back.  That meant paid staff and the support of certain outreach ministries in the Presbytery were going to have to go.  The chair of the Budget and Finance Committee offered the blunt observation that evangelism or rather the lack there of was the true culprit.  With the exception of a few anomalous congregations the same observation holds true for the Presbyterian Church in Canada.  We are losing more than we are taking in, death being the primary reason.  It should certainly tell us something if those coming to Christ can’t keep up with those going to be with Christ. 

I would push the observation of my friend down in WV a bit further.  He is correct to say that Evangelism or the lack there of is the true culprit, but we have to ask why?  Why are we so reluctant about spreading the very real Good News of the Kingdom of God come and coming in Christ Jesus?  That’s the real question.  Maybe we’re afraid that God won’t keep his end of the bargain.  If that is the case then lack of faith is the true issue.  As faith is what arises when the faithfulness of God meets human fidelity, our ability to trust and be faithful, and the ultimate proof of God’s faithfulness to us is his presence with us.  Maybe it is that our churches suffer from not knowing that Jesus is really with us as he promised to be even unto the end of the age.  Creating faith is God’s work.  It is not something we can do on our own.  But we can certainly humble ourselves and let God out of the box and pray “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.”  We can ask God to let us know him more deeply.

We have a certain set eyeglasses through which we see the church and I think those eyeglasses keep us from having a vision of the Kingdom.  Its time we got a new prescription.  We have our idea, our idol of what church ought to be and we’re a bit reluctant to think and to look outside of that box and catch a glimpse of the Kingdom of God as it is truly in our midst as the presence of Jesus Christ.  We look at the church through our eyeglasses and see Worship done according to this order, Sunday School, Youth Group, picnics, fellowship hour after worship, Bible Study, Session and Committee meetings, being there for each other, and occasionally doing something to help the poor.  But, look at the New Testament and it says the Kingdom is peace, real healing, the casting out of evil, and a fellowship built on serving one another in love.  I hope you’re beginning to see the contrast.  We have our way of doing things and call it church.  Jesus has his way of doing things and calls it the Kingdom of God.  We are very committed to what we call church, and we feel secure in that familiarity.  But shouldn’t we rather be committed to Jesus and his Kingdom and accept the vulnerability of being lambs among wolves and start living and proclaiming him and his kingdom?

Our task is to go forth and proclaim the Kingdom, the Reign of God in Jesus Christ, through Jesus Christ, and as Jesus Christ, the reign of God here on earth as it is in heaven; and to do this until he comes.  Jesus said to first ask the Lord of the Harvest to send forth harvesters and then those whom the Lord sends forth are to go.  As we have all been given the Holy Spirit and thus a share in Christ’s authority, we must all go.  But, we do not go forth saying, “Do you know you’re a sinner and you’re going to hell if you do not accept Christ?”  No!  We go forth with a word of peace.  We go forth saying, “The peace of Christ be with you.”  I do not know of anyone who does not need the peace that comes from knowing that in Christ it is on earth as it is in heaven, that God is putting things to rights.  The amazing thing is that when we give this blessing of peace it is not an empty blessing.  The Kingdom of Christ’s peace is present in it. 

Jesus next told his disciples to cure the sick that are there.  The New Testament word for cure doesn’t mean just healing a sick person.  It is restoring them to meaningful life.  We have been entrusted the power message of Jesus Christ that restores people to meaningful life.
          Blessed are our eyes for we see the Kingdom coming.  We have been given the amazing gift of Jesus’ own authority and power to speak the Word of peace and to do works of healing.  If that doesn’t blow your mind I don’t know what will.  But it is the truth.  Let us go forth in it.  Amen.