Charlotte
Collins Reed
Christ
Church Episcopal
June 14,
2020
6 Proper A
Twice in the last six years, I have
gone to England to learn about what the Church of England calls Pioneer
Ministry or Fresh Expressions. As a
noun, pioneer means the first to explore or settle a new area. As a verb, the word means to be the first to
use a new method of doing something.
Pioneer ministry in the Church of England seeks to take the church and
the gospel to those outside of the church, to engage the culture and find new
ways of being church in a creative and intentional way. This is where I learned about Pub Theology,
holding office hours in coffee shops, the importance of the church being
present at things like the Memorial Day parade and Ice Cream Social, and hosting
events with topics of relevance to the wider community. This is where I learned about listening to a
community to see what the community actually needs rather than making
assumptions about those needs. This is
where I learned the importance of the church serving as a place to bring people
of all faiths together in times of crisis.
Then, last year, a group of us from Christ Church were part of the
Connecting Communities project that our Diocese sponsored which focused on new
ways of engaging the community. We have
implemented much of what we have learned from these various opportunities at
Christ Church over the last few years.
But had anyone told me that in 2020 we
would need to take all of that learning and adapt to being the church online, working
together to create and grow community in a new non-physical space and a new physically
distanced way due to a pandemic, I would have laughed a deep, loud, ridiculous
belly laugh-the sort where you can’t actually tell if the person is laughing or
crying. I would have laughed the sort of
laugh that I imagine Sarah laughing in the reading from Genesis when she is
told that, at the age of 90, give or take a couple of years, she will bear a
son. Three strangers show up, out of
nowhere for all Abraham and Sarah can tell, and after they eat the meal
prepared for them, they tell Abraham that when they return, Sarah will have had
a son. And Sarah laughs. What the men propose is utterly preposterous,
and biologically impossible. The
prospect of having a child at that age was likely terrifying even if it was
possible. Any way Sarah looked at it,
the only logical response was laughter.
Jesus asks something equally
outrageous of the 12 brand new disciples this morning. Jesus has gone about the cities and villages,
teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the good news, and curing every disease
and sickness. Jesus doesn’t heal just a
few sick people, but he cures every
disease and sickness. When he sees the
magnitude of the work ahead, he calls his 12 disciples, and gives them
authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and
every sickness. In other words, he gives
the 12 disciples the authority to do exactly what he, Jesus, the Messiah, is
doing minus the teaching in the synagogue.
These people are fishermen and tax collectors. I can imagine those 12 people laughing at the
audacity of what Jesus is asking them to do.
Cast out demons? Cure every
disease and every sickness? You have got
to be kidding, Jesus! Us? Ask us to catch some fish or file your taxes!
If we read on past the ending of this morning’s lesson, the task gets even
harder as Jesus tells the disciples that he is sending them out as sheep in the
midst of wolves, and that they will be hated because of Jesus’ name. Suddenly having a baby at the age of 90+
actually sounds pretty reasonable!
If we look through the scriptures, God
rarely asks anyone to do something reasonable.
Noah was asked to build an ark to save the earth’s creatures from
destruction. God asked Abraham to pick
up and move to an unknown place. God
asked Moses, a man on the run from the law, to lead the Hebrew people out of
Egypt. Jesus asks his followers to pick
up their cross and follow him and says that whoever saves his life will lose it
and whoever loses their life will save it.
The list of seemingly unreasonable things God asks of God’s people goes
on and on.
But here’s the catch. God doesn’t ask
any of us to do anything, no matter how unreasonable, alone. Whether we read John’s Gospel where Jesus
leaves us the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, to teach us and lead us, or Matthews’s
gospel where Jesus says “And I am with you always to the end of the age,” we
are promised that we are not alone. And what God asks of us is for the sake of
proclaiming the good news, casting out the demons that strangle God’s people,
like systemic injustice, poverty, division, unequal access to education and
health care, and on and on, healing the sick and proclaiming the Good News, all
of which strengthen the trajectory of the story of God and God’s people. In the midst of a pandemic and civil unrest,
God makes the audacious request of us to be the Church, the body of Christ, to
make a difference in this broken world, and God tells us that we can make a
difference, even when we can’t be together in person. We are called to take the story of God and
God’s people further, just as Sarah did, and the disciples did, and God’s
people everywhere through out the ages have done. In the end, Sarah did have a child, Isaac,
and the story of God and God’s people was furthered. In the end, the disciples did preach, heal,
and cast out demons and Jesus’ work was expanded and continues to this day. In the end, we will continue to learn new
ways to be the Church-to heal, to cast out demons, and to proclaim Good News to
those who need to hear those words and we will do this pandemic or no pandemic,
in-person and online. We can laugh, and
laughter may be the most appropriate response to something this outrageous. And then we will move forward, trusting that
just as God was with Sarah and with the disciples, God will be with us,
and we will be the body of Christ in new
and unanticipated ways, and we will make a gospel difference in the world.
Amen.
