What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, July 25, 2010

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 17C)
Genesis 18:20-32 • Psalm 138 • Colossians 2:6-19 • Luke 11:1-13

[Jesus] was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples." He said to them, "When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial." And he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.' And he answers from within, 'Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.' I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. "So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

Prayer can be a challenge—one of the most challenging practices of our faith. It’s something we’re always learning to do, and always trying to figure out. When the disciples see Jesus praying, they ask him for some help. “Lord, teach us to pray!” (Lk 11:11)

Earlier this year during Lent our church offered the Catechumenate during Lent, a formal time of study, prayer and preparation for candidates who wanted to be baptized or to affirm their baptism. One of our topics was prayer, and I can remember asking the group, “what do you pray for?” One person said, “For my family.” Another, “For myself…but I know I should pray more for other people…” Another said, “To be protected.” It was a brief moment reminding us how easily we turn our prayers inwards on ourselves…how easy it is for us to ask God for what we want, what we need, what we may even feel we deserve…

“Lord, teach us to pray…” It seems like not only do we have trouble with limiting the scope of our prayer to the world as we see it—or want it to be—but we also can get stuck in how we see our relationship with God working through prayer. One of the traps that’s so easy for us to fall in, and that we all do—including me!—is to equate our prayers with a down payment on a service God will provide for us. We so easily start bargaining with God about our prayers: “I prayed for it, God, so why didn’t you give it to me?!” or “I prayed for a good outcome to the surgery, God, why didn’t God heal me?” or “I came to church every day for four weeks to pray that she wouldn’t die…but she still died. Why?” or “God, I pray so hard that life will turn out o.k….so why is my life such a mess?”

Jesus teaches the disciples to pray, giving them the Lord’s Prayer, the form that came into use from the earliest days of Christian practice all the way up until now that we say in worship at the table of Holy Communion. But quite helpfully, in addition, Jesus gives the disciples a parable that illustrates God’s attitude towards us as we pray this Lord’s Prayer. Jesus says our prayers come to God as if someone is coming in need to a friend in the middle of the night, needing bread to put on the table of an unexpected guest. And even though the door has already been locked, the children are in bed, and the door is bolted shut for the night, the friend will open the door to give him what he needs. “Knock, and the door will be opened for you”, Jesus says. OK, great, so all we have to do then is ask and God will eagerly give it to us? Not quite! The door that’s opened to us so readily, so easily…a door that Jesus lodges open with his cross that can never be shut, is the doorway to the unending, ever-living giftedness of who God is to us in Christ: loving, faithful, gracious, merciful, forgiving, dynamic, true and kind. Jesus says no matter how many prayers we offer, no matter how many times we knock on that door, no matter how much bargaining we may do with God…God responds to us not based on anything we do. God responds because of our neediness… God responds in proportion to our brokenness, our pain and our fear…not for how hard or how many times we knock on God’s door. God’s free gifts come through any closed door trying to keep us apart, to share those gifts of God that sustain our relationship with God. Jesus opens the door to provisioning our lives with gifts that turn out to be more than our prayers could ever have bargained for: deliverance from being condemned, from ever being alone, from ever being separated from the love of God revealed to us in Christ!

Martin Luther, in his Small Catechism, a small little book that is in the back portion of our ELW hymnals in the pew, provides a few helpful words in explaining the freedom God has in choosing to be so gracious to us, regardless of what we do, when he explains the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Your kingdom come.” He says, “In fact, God’s kingdom comes on its own, without our prayer…but we ask in this [petition] that [God’s kingdom] may also come to us.” Prayer, then, may also be the doorway not just of opening us to God, but also of God opening up to us, inviting us to be about the work of God that is happening all around us. God’s daily provision given to us never comes only for our own self—but is always given for the building up of the kingdom.

And God gives us more than what we need to build that kingdom right in our own little corner of the world, brothers and sisters. Recently I was reminded of this on a podcast interview on the program Speaking of Faith, a show I highly recommend to everyone—it’s on Sunday mornings on public radio, 91.5 FM, from 7a.m.-8a.m., or, if that’s too early, you can listen online at speakingoffaith.org… The host, Krista Tippett, was interviewing Shane Claiborne, a young Christian who lives in a small intentional community in inner-city Philadelphia that serves the poor there. Mr. Claiborne said:

"I can remember a comic in Philadelphia that was in the paper. [This] one guy said, 'You know, I wonder why God allows all this poverty and pain and hurting in the world?' And his friend says, 'Well, why don't you ask God that?' And the guy says, 'Well, I guess I'm scared.' And he says, 'What are you scared of?' He says, 'I guess I'm scared that God will ask me the same question.' It says if God has been throwing it back [to us] and going, 'Hey, you're my body. You are my hands and my feet.' And, you know, that this is something that we are entrusted with. And I think, probably, one of the most difficult things that Jesus ever did was sort of leave this idea of transforming the world or the kingdom of God…in the hands of such a ragtag bunch of people that goof it up over and over.

We all are goof-ups, indeed. Every one of us. There is no amount of bargaining prayer we can offer to God that can forgive us, save us, or rescue us from our brokenness. But God already satisfies our hunger for the provision we need to be the body of Christ, and to build his kingdom; provisions of daily bread, forgiveness, and guidance.

This past week our presiding bishop Mark Hanson was leading the worldwide assembly of the Lutheran World Federation—the worldwide communion of churches—in Stuttgart, Germany. The theme for the assembly was “Give Us this Day Our Daily Bread”, and in a press conference this week he named a truth about our role in building up God’s kingdom with the provisions of God…he said: “Hunger is not God's fault, it's our fault…If people lack what they need for daily life, it is because we have failed to ensure that the good things of God's creation are justly and equitably distributed to all.” We have a role to play, and it’s to be bearers of the Holy Spirit that Jesus says God promises to give a Holy Spirit that loves not with a love that loves not just some, that loves not only ourselves, love that avoids the needs of a fragile, sick, hungry and violent world… But Jesus opens the door to us for a Holy Spirit that equips us to draw shamelessly near to meet the needs of the suffering, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant it may seem.

One of the most common table prayers we say before meals to give thanks to God is “Come Lord Jesus be our guest, let these gifts to us be blessed.” I encourage you to add another petition on to that prayer as a reminder that the gifts of God, never bargained for, but always freely given, are given to spread what’s at the table for all: “Come Lord Jesus be our guest, let these gifts to us be blessed; blessed be God who is our bread, may all the world be clothed and fed.”

That prayer is prayed not for God to clothe and feed the world, but for God to clothe and feed the world through us. Prayer equips us with God’s gifts, opened through the doorway of Christ, coming to us freely to advance the building up of God’s kingdom: a place that we get to build together, a place that will be more than we could have ever bargained with God for! Amen.

What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, July 4th, 2010

The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 14)
Isaiah 66:10-14 • Psalm 66:1-9 • Galatians 6:(1-6), 7-16 • Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said 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. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace to this house!' And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.' But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 'Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.' "Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me." The seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!" He said to them, "I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."

It seems pretty self-evident that today’s Gospel is about mission. There is a lot that we could say about mission from this text. There is even more we could learn about mission from one another—from our own experiences in traveling, in other cultures we’ve visited, in mission and service trips we’ve taken. We could even talk with John Halvorson, a member of our congregation and a Lutheran pastor who has served in international contexts. But even with all this experience and wisdom in this place, and with all of Jesus’ instructions to the seventy in this text, we could unpack the question of “how” mission can be done quite extensively. However there is one profound truth that permeates throughout this text that I’d like us to explore this morning which gets at something deeper: Why are we sent to be Jesus’ missional people? In all of what Jesus has to say both before he sends out the seventy out and after they return, there is this profoundly truthful, saving message that Jesus gives to them, and to us, that speaks to why Christian mission is so important for us.

Jesus recognizes that as he commissions us to go where “he himself intends to go”, we can want to believe our carrying out the mission Jesus’ sends us on is a mission that depends completely on us. After all, isn’t Jesus asking us to do what he does…save the world? After all, when we think of the word mission itself we seem to imply that we have something to bring to others that they don’t already have. As great and wonderful as our country we celebrate today is, we can’t deny our country’s history of harming others by imposing our will upon them, even if we have the best of intentions.

But Jesus has an underlying message for those he commissions:

Jesus empties us of all the baggage we carry around that runs counter to his mission of appointing us to share and receive his love and mercy.

Baggage. Notice Jesus asks us not to carry any of it! Jesus says “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals…” There’s no backpacks, no briefcases, no luggage required. This is traveling light—ultra-light! Little is needed in the mission field of Jesus, a field that looks quite simple: a community sharing a greeting of peace that is returned, gathering around a meal, healing one another, and listening to the proclamation of the gospel. No trips to stock up supplies, no extra gear is required. Jesus takes all that baggage off of our minds and hearts.

What baggage do we come with needing to be set free from today? What are we carrying around that keeps Jesus from sending us out two by two to share his mission? Is it attachment to stuff, attachment to “keeping up with the Jonses”, attachment to our own self-preservation, and resisting stepping out to take a risk? When Jesus sends us out, none of that baggage, none of it, weighs us down any longer. He comes to set us free for the sake of building relationships that form the foundation of his gospel kingdom.

Jesus’ freedom from all that is not essential to his mission has profound implications for us and our mission at United Lutheran. What are they? What does Jesus’ freedom from bringing baggage imply for the short-term servant trips that our youth take every summer—such last year to hurricane ravaged New Orleans, and this August to flood damaged Cedar Rapids? What does carrying no baggage mean for the service projects we do in the community on an ongoing basis, like PADS and cluster tutoring? What does this mean for our daily lives of service carried out in our vocations at home, at work, and at play…and even wherever summer vacation travel may take us?

The first implication: we’re always the guests. When Jesus sends out the seventy, they are always the guests of those they serve. Without any baggage, Jesus gives us what we need through the hospitality of those we serve. Participants in service trips most routinely say that what affects them most profoundly on their trips is not how much they accomplished—how many homes were rebuilt or water wells were dug or how many people were fed. Often there is not much we can accomplish in the short amount of time we have with those we serve. What stays with participants even longer is getting to know their hosts, enjoying their hospitality, hearing their stories and witnessing the vitality of their faith. When we are sent on the lightweight mission of Jesus, we are always the guests because Jesus is always the host when strangers meet.

The second implication: it’s all about mutual relationships. Christian mission is not for our entertainment, for observation, for ogle-ing. We come at the invitation of those we serve. We come not to achieve as we want but as they need. Without any baggage, we will not be able to stay very long without getting to know those we are serving. Without any baggage to bring other than ourselves, what we are able to bring is ourselves, and our investment in the people we seek to serve. Notice that Jesus commands the seventy to not move about from house to house. (10:7) He sends them to go to one house, and not to move around, but to stay there a while. When we come in and try to serve others without staying to get to know them, our efforts will stay on the surface level and can even cause more damage than good. At United Lutheran, and in our communities there are many, many opportunities for mission-oriented service. Perhaps we could each consider focusing on one ongoing service project site, rather than trying to do several different kinds of service projects at once, in order to focus on building reciprocal relationships with those we serve. And we could also consider returning to a mission site once again, rather than going from one exotic location to another. Mutual relationship, where we can give without any baggage attached, allows us to be changed by those we serve, which is the very heart of the mission Jesus sends us on.

The third implication: reflection is an essential part of mission. Mission changes us, it transforms us. We are enriched and changed by those we meet—they end up feeding us. Twice, Jesus tells the seventy to eat and drink whatever is provided in the homes they enter. (10:7, 8) We can move on…complete our work and go our separate ways, knowing our core convictions have been challenged, and our faith has been disturbed from its status quo and not reflect on it. When Jesus sends us out without baggage, we return back to him with our hearts and minds filled with stories, images, new friends, new hopes, new insights, and new questions. We cannot assume that integration of what we bring back with us will happen automatically. We can take time to ruminate, ponder and relate how it is we have been changed by those we have met, and how we’ve seen that Jesus has opened up to us a world that is more wonderful than we have dared to imagine. Jesus empties us so that his mission can transform us.

And as exciting as missional service can be, as fun as it is when we see the power of Jesus’ love changing people’s lives, our excitement at what we have done is tempered. The seventy return saying “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” (10:17) Jesus does give us incredible power to break down barriers that try to separate us, and seeing them crumble is indeed amazing. But it’s not our power that does it…it’s Jesus’ power, given to us. Rejoice, Jesus says, not at what you have seen me do, but rejoice that you have been chosen as witnesses to the power of God’s love and mercy to heal, restore and reconcile the whole world.

Jesus comes on a mission to reach out to us at his table today. We put this mission into practice this morning. We are continually invited to come to this table, without any baggage, or cost, or price to be paid, and to eat and drink what is set before us. This is the place where the evil powers and prejudices that seek to separate us from each other submit to the power of Jesus, who brings us together around his table to build relationships, to be his guests, to share in his peace.

Why are we sent out to serve strangers? Why is this mission central to our Christian witness? Because Jesus sends us…to be guests, to build lasting mutual relationships, and to be tranformed. Jesus promises to continue to strengthen us at this table with all that we need for his mission of both be-ing received at the table, and in sharing his mercy for all of God’s children. We can go on our way living in that promise, rejoicing in the power of Jesus to write our names, and the names of those we serve, in heaven. Amen.