Sermon for Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, "First Impressions," Luke 10:1-11 (Proper 9, Ordinary 14)

Sermon 7/3/16

Luke 10:1-11

First Impressions

           

It so happens that fairly often, when this scripture from lectionary cycle – a three-year schedule of scripture readings for worship – comes up, it falls on the first Sunday in July, which is also typically the day that United Methodist clergy around the connection are beginning their appointment, starting out in new congregations. It seems a kind of comical coincidence that for many pastors in new pulpits, their very first gospel text, as they make their first impressions and take their first impressions of their new congregation is about journeying to a new place to share the good news, and being prepared to either receive a warm welcome, or to shake the dust from their feet as they get out of town fast if things go poorly! Thankfully, I can tell you that even though it is my first Sunday here, I can already tell you that as I bring you greetings of peace, I’ve already found those eager to share in that peace, from former-Pastor-Beth’s warm words about how much she’s enjoyed her ministry with you, to the hard work of the Staff-Parish Relations Committee to care for the details of transition, to being hosted by the Schuesslers while I wait to move into the parsonage, to folks connecting with me on facebook, to meeting people at Vacation Bible School on Friday. I’ve been blessed by your warm welcome, and I’m ready to share the good news with your help – the kingdom of God has come near!

One of the challenges of reading small snippets of scripture in worship is that we can sometimes lose track of where we are in the larger story. The gospel writers try to help us keep track, if we pay attention to some of the helpful words and phrases they use. Our passage for today opens with the phrase, “After this.” Our first question, then, should be, “after what?” If we flip back to chapter 9, we’ll see that the last thing that happens before today’s passage is that Jesus talks to several people who say that want to follow him – after they do just one more thing. They say, “I want to follow you Jesus, but first” I need to do these other things. Jesus isn’t impressed with their offers though. He says to them, “No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” In other words, if you want to follow Jesus, Jesus wants you to be ready to actually follow him, without reservations. Challenging words! 

So that’s the “after this” where our lesson for today begins. There are apparently at least seventy – seventy beyond the twelve disciples – who are willing to do just what Jesus asked: they’re being sent out. Jesus pairs them up and sends them out to all the places where Jesus plans to go. He says to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Jesus says he sends them out like “lambs into the midst of wolves.” He tells them, “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; greet no one on the road.”

He tells them that when they arrive and find a place to stay, they should enter the home with words of peace. “Peace to this house!” If they find people who share in that peace, good: stay in that house, eat and drink whatever is offered. Don’t go about looking for nicer digs, but stay where you are. Where they are welcomed, do the work of God: heal those who are sick, and announce the good news – the kingdom of God has come near. This good news meant that people could experience God’s way of things, God’s hope and vision for the world right here and right now. But, Jesus said, if there’s no welcome extended, then shake even the dust of that town from your feet as you leave. Nonetheless, they are still to share the news: The kingdom of God has come near.”

So what can we learn from the instructions Jesus gave to these seventy, as he sent them out into the world? Maybe we’re not sent on the exact same kind of mission as this group was. But I do think we are all sent out to share the same message as they were – the message of hope and joy that God’s reign is here, that we can live and work in the world God dreams of right now, that God’s love and grace is offered to us freely right now. And if the message we have to share is the same, maybe we can use the same traveling advice Jesus gives the seventy: Be vulnerable, and travel light.

            When I was in high school, I had the opportunity to travel to Austria with a group of orchestra students, to play some concerts as part of Austria’s millennial celebration. It was a fantastic trip – one of my favorite trips even still. It was my first big trip like that – a little more than two weeks – the first time I’d been away from home for so long. And I tried to think of everything that I might need for such a trip. I was at the age and of the mindset then that one could not possibly repeat an outfit in such a short amount of time – which meant that I needed to have more than 14 changes of clothes with me. Plus, of course, I might need fancier clothes or warmer or cooler clothes or so on. By the time I was done packing, I think I had two large suitcases and a carry on backpack. Nothing had wheels. It was totally unmanageable. And although I had a wonderful trip, I spent the two-plus weeks struggling every time we changed locations to haul around my ridiculous luggage. I couldn’t do it without help. I vowed, then, never again to pack for a trip in such a way that I couldn’t easily manage my own bags.

            Jesus sends out the seventy by telling them to make themselves intentionally vulnerable. All that stuff he doesn’t want them to bring – they might think of it as exactly what would be sensible to be prepared. Who goes traveling without extra money and proper footwear and an extra bag of supplies? Who wouldn’t move to new accommodations if the first place wasn’t satisfactory? Who wouldn’t want to be a little selective about what they ate while they were traveling? But Jesus tells them to be like lambs among wolves – the most vulnerable creatures possible! All of those things that might help them be prepared and protected can also be layers of defense, layers that would keep the disciples from relying on others and relying on God. As much as the idea of being self-reliant might appeal to us, it actually isn’t what Jesus has in mind! These pairs of disciples have each other, and they have what Jesus has taught them, and they have the message Jesus has sent them with: God’s kingdom has come near. Everything else will just weigh them down.

            To really follow Jesus, we have to be ready to be on the move. So we have to look over our lives and ask ourselves what things we’re trying to drag around with us while serving God that are really just keeping us from giving our whole hearts and lives to God. What is it that’s weighing down your suitcase? What fears are you packing in your bags? What priorities that you find yourself putting before your life with God are you trying to tuck into your suitcase? What worries do you insist on taking with you everywhere? What prejudices that keep you from seeing Christ in others are you lugging along with you? What restrictions are you putting on giving your heart to God? Jesus says we don’t need all that stuff with us to go where he’s sending us. It will just slow us down. And our message is too good to keep people waiting on us while we try to manage all of our suitcases. 

            Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” In Tully, New York, not too far from my last congregation, there’s a non-profit farm called the Matthew 25 farm. Based on the text from Matthew’s gospel about feeding Christ when we feed the “least of these”, the Farm grows crops on ten acres of land, and gives all of it to area food pantries. Or, if you need it, you can come and pick food and take it home for yourself, your family, your neighbors. I’ve enjoyed volunteering there from time to time, and I’m on their email list. Occasionally, I’ll get emails saying that they have tons and tons of food ready to be harvested, but they’re having trouble getting people to come and gather in all that good food. If they don’t get enough help with the harvest, all those delicious fresh vegetables will simply rot, unused. What a waste!

            Jesus says that the harvest is plentiful! I’m not sure we always see that – the plentiful harvest. Jesus says that there is a world that is ripe, waiting for some good news. It’s not that the harvest is small – God’s harvest is ever abundant. It’s that the laborers are few. The laborers are few because we’re looking for a safe way of following Jesus, and Jesus is telling us he’s looking for lambs to send out among the wolves! The laborers are few because we’re too busy trying to cram one more thing into our bags before we’re ready to get to work, when Jesus has been trying to tell us we won’t need all that where he’s sending us. We can’t get out into the fields to gather in God’s harvest if we’ve packed everything we own into our suitcases and are trying to drag them through the fields with us!

            The harvest is waiting. Will we be God’s laborers? Over the next weeks, I’m going to be doing a lot of unpacking. And I hope to spend that time reflecting on what else in my life I need to unpack, what I’m carrying with me that’s weighing me down as I try to follow Jesus. I hope you’ll join me in that soul-searching, and then join me in heading out to the harvest. Amen.

Sermon for Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, "Be Thou My Vision"

Sermon 7/11/10, Luke 10:25-37

Be Thou My Vision

            This week we’re turning our attention to the hymn tied for eighth place in our congregation’s list: Be Thou My Vision. It also happens to be my favorite hymn, and so I’m particularly glad to be able to share a bit about this beautiful song with you this morning. Be Thou My Vision, the text, is very, very old, from the sixth century. It was written in Old Irish, and used in the monastic tradition for many centuries before it was put to the music we know today. It is sometimes attributed to Saint Dallan Forchella, an early Irish Christian poet. Dallan is a nickname he was given, meaning, “little blind one,” because he is said to have studied so intensely that he lost his eyesight. He was a scholar of the scriptures and the chief poet of Ireland. The Old Irish text of Be Thou My Vision (stop to listen to it) is called Rop thu mo wall-eh (at least that’s the best pronunciation my non-existent Old Irish allows) and is several verses longer than the short, three-verse hymn we sing today. Each verse, as you can see in your bulletin insert, follows the pattern of the first, which asks that God be our vision. In the following verses, we hear: God, be my vision, my meditation, my speech, my parent, my shield, my dignity, my shelter, my every good, my kingdom, my chief love, my noble estate, and heart of my own heart.       Aside from the beautiful melody with which this text is tied, which I think can in itself make this hymn so moving, I love the message of this hymn. God, be our vision. Let us see with God’s eyes. God, be the heart of our own heart – let your heart be in our heart, be our heart. We think often about trying to be like Jesus, trying to imitate, in our small, faulty ways, the things he did, the way he lived. The scriptures talk about us having the mind of Christ. But what if our heart could be God’s heart? Our sight, God’s vision? If God was our every good, our chief love? Imagine, if we let God be those things for us, how our lives, and our world, could be transformed.

            Let’s keep that question in mind as we look at our gospel lesson for today. It’s a parable you have probably known since you were a child: the parable of the Good Samaritan. Our scene opens when a lawyer stands up after Jesus has been teaching to 'test' him. He wants to know what he needs to do to inherit eternal life. Any student of Mosaic law would already know this answer, as Jesus indicates. The man replies appropriately: Love God and love neighbor. Right, Jesus says, so just do it, and you will live. The man seems unsatisfied. "But who is my neighbor?" Jesus responds by describing a man who is robbed and beaten and left for dead on the roadside. Two religious men - a priest and a Levite - see the men but pass him by on the other side of the road. Finally, a third, a Samaritan, sees the injured man, helps him, provides him shelter, rearranges plans for him, and generally goes out of his way to help this stranger. "Who is the neighbor?" Jesus asks. "The one who showed mercy," the lawyer admits. "Go and do!" Jesus repeats.

You might remember that in May I attended a preaching conference in Nashville called The Festival of Homiletics, where pastors gather to hear preaching and lectures on preaching. It’s really a wonderful event. This year, one speaker was Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, a professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt. Levine is Jewish, and one of her aims in teaching is to help Christians better understand and interpret the scriptures without misconstruing Jews and Judaism in the process. This is the second time I’ve heard her lecture, and she simply transformed the way I think about a couple scripture texts. One of them is the story of The Good Samaritan.

            Typically, you might hear pastors say two things about this story – two things I have said myself when I’ve preached before about this text. First, I’ve always thought of the Samaritans as representing the oppressed people, the underdogs, the ones the Jews viewed as less than themselves. Second, I’ve always understood that the priest and the Levite wouldn’t touch the injured man because it would make them ritually unclean because of Jewish purity laws. So, then, one of the lessons of the story would be about living by the letter of the law, like the priest and the Levite, versus living by the spirit of the law, and truly loving your neighbor, like the poor downtrodden Samaritan shows us. But Dr. Levine cleared up some misconceptions we have about this story.

First, she said, the priest and the Levite would have been able to help the man without breaking the law. The law would have allowed for them to help an injured person. They just didn’t follow the law, didn’t do what they knew they should, like many of us don’t do what we know we should. Martin Luther King once said that the difference between the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan in this story is that while the first two think, “If I stop and help, what happens to me?” the Samaritan thinks, “If I don’t stop, what happens to them?”

Second, Dr. Levine tried to help us understand the significance, the weight it would have had when Jesus said that it was a Samaritan who was the good neighbor in this story. If I said to you “Larry, Curly, and _____,” you would finish the sentence with “Moe,” right? Dr. Levine told us that to Jesus’ hearers, when they heard someone say, “a priest, a Levite, and” the crowds would normally assume that “an Israelite” would come next. Priests, Levites, Israelites – those were the groups, those were the categories to which everyone could find where they belonged. So they would hear Jesus’ story, this parable, and be waiting for the third person to walk by the crime victim to be an Israelite, as most of them would be. But instead, Jesus says: Samaritan. Samaritans weren’t the downtrodden oppressed, the underdog saving the day; Samaritans were enemies. Consider the countries where we’ve been at war, or with whom we’ve been at war: Samaritans were that to Israelites. So for Jesus to call out a Samaritan as the hero, the true neighbor, the one who showed mercy, who the lawyer can’t even name at the end of this story: Dr. Levine said it would be the unexpected equivalent of saying, “Larry, Curly, and Osama bin Laden.” It’s not just that one of these doesn’t belong. It’s that this third category is someone you don’t want to even think about. And Jesus has just shown them in the role of loving neighbor, truly following God’s law. After hearing Dr. Levine open up this text, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to think about this parable in the same way again.

And that’s exactly what Jesus hoped would happen to those who heard his words. What if we didn’t figure out who was good and bad by the labels they carry but instead by the actions of their lives? What if we asked not “If I stop and help, what happens to me?” but, “If I don’t stop, what happens to them?” The story of the Good Samaritan asks us to rethink the labels that we've put on who is good, and who is bad, who is friend, and who is enemy, who is neighbor, and who is stranger. Rev. Richard Fairchild writes, "It has been suggested - and I think rightly so given some of the teachings of the time and the reality of human nature at all times, that the lawyer is really asking Jesus: 'Who is NOT my neighbor? Who is that I am allowed to ignore or to neglect? Perhaps even to hate? What is the minimal thing that I need to do to keep God's law of love - and what can I safely get away with not doing... 'That is a horrifying approach to keeping the law of God isn't it? Who must I love - and who can I get away with not loving..."

I think sometimes we are perhaps guilty of taking this approach with God. Who do we want to get away with not loving? What if, like monks in the sixth century, we made the words of “Be Thou My Vision” our prayer, our meditation. The Samaritan in this parable saw the beaten man with God’s eyes, God’s vision, even though the worldview would have made them enemies. Jesus was trying to show the lawyer how to love with God’s love. Do we seek to be like Jesus? If we do, that will mean loving in the radical way Jesus loved, seeing with his eyes, feeling with his heart. God, be our vision, our meditation, our speech, our parent, our shield, our dignity, our shelter, our every good, our kingdom, our chief love, our noble estate, and heart of our own heart. “Which of these,” Jesus asks, “was a neighbor?” The lawyer answered, “the one who showed mercy.” Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.” Amen.