"Final Peace"

​At the beginning of the tenth chapter of our gospel, Matthew details for us how Jesus gives authority to the disciples.  They are to go into the world healing and teaching, laying hands on folks and casting out demons, taking the Gospel Message to the lost.  Jesus is sending them out with his authority, but they are to go without any expectation of payment.  Nothing in return.  The only thing they might expect is that their basic needs will be taken care of as they go. 

Jesus is offering them a life of hardship, persecution, difficulty, work – and is giving them very little to look forward to along the way.  Not much incentive, you see, because discipleship is expensive.  It’s the giving of yourself.  They are going to be sheep among wolves, he says – they may even lose their lives as they go. 

And that’s where we find ourselves as we continue the story with this morning’s text, we find Jesus continuing to prepare them for their missional work.  Continuing to get them ready for the adversity they will face as their work teams leave the comfort area of Harnett County Raleigh and head out into a world of viruses and political unrest, maybe even protests and rioting. Leave their beds and their families behind without knowing what they will face, or when their work will be done, or when they will return.  Knowing only that they have to tell people about Jesus and the things he has taught them. 
Many of the people around them thought Jesus was a fraud, trying to trick them.  Some thought he was as bad as Satan himself.  So the disciples couldn’t really expect to be treated well by people who believed Jesus was teaching against God, now could they? 

They couldn’t expect it any more than we can expect it.  Our message of Good News is being presented to a nation where being part of a church is no longer the norm.  We are living in a time when things don’t always make sense, in a nation where people think it is ok to stand on our own and not lean on our faith in God. 

But, just like the disciples, we are called to a higher purpose.  We are being sent out into that world that doesn’t want us there – and we are being sent to share information that many folks aren’t interested in hearing much less likely to believe.  And yet, we are still expected to go.  Still required to go.  And there will be no peace until we go – until we want what God has planned for us.  No peace.

This afternoon several of our church staff and friends will meet together – a couple of us in person, mostly by computer – to plan for our first live worship next Sunday. It’s a little overwhelming what goes into such an undertaking!  We have worked so hard on planning and preparing – working to share the message of Jesus Christ with his church.  But it’s not too much!  We are called to be over-the-top.  We are expected to offer the best we can – to offer excellence.  We’ve put in hour after hour to share our faith… and guess what?  We don’t know if anyone is coming!  And unless you have told them about this… they don’t even know we are doing it! 

But our goal is to be prepared.  Our goal is to be faithful in telling the stories.  Our goal is to be the best we can be in every single thing we do.  We have a responsibility to share the stories of Jesus Christ with the world in fabulous ways. 

Now, surely you can see that we’re doing everything we can to make it a little easier for you, but we can’t follow Jesus for you. We can provide opportunities to grow and learn and serve, but no one cannot take those steps for you.  You have to walk in faith on your own.  And you have to go without fear.  Even though people may not show up or you will be rejected or worse, you go without fear knowing that you are protected by God always. What commitment are you willing to make? Will you be in Bible Study, Sunday School, Wednesday night prayer? Will you put it on your Facebook page? Will you tweet it out?

You know, we acknowledge Jesus by deeds as well as by words.  You are here listening and worshiping, and hopefully you are going on our church website and singing the hymns and reading the scriptures and walking your children and grandchildren through their times of learning and worshiping.  But what does that mean if on Monday it is simply back to normal and you haven’t taken any effort to tell someone else about these opportunities? What does it mean if your children and grandchildren aren’t experiencing children’s church and activities and Sunday School from our website? What does it mean if you haven’t funded the church or have no plans to help the Food Pantry this Tuesday on distribution day? What does it mean if we compromise our witness in that way? 

You see, there will be no peace until we live into our commitment to God – until we seek God with all our hearts.  No peace. 

You know, so many pastors and their families are saying their good-byes this week.  So many moving into new communities and new homes and beginning at new churches.  You think preachers aren’t fearful as they bring God’s message to people?  You would be incorrect in that assumption.  We are terrified!  We have every insecurity known to man.  And even in a regular year, if the church were to be packed on our first Sunday, we know not to hold onto that too tightly because the newness will wear off and folks will most likely go back to who they really were before the “new” kicked in.  Other things will come up in people’s lives that will take them away from church, and they will have all kinds of reasons they couldn’t be in worship on Sunday.
And this year, new pastors in new settings aren’t likely to be seeing packed Sanctuaries welcoming them into the community. This year, the people they do see will be wearing masks and keeping their distance. They will not be attending church in person. In some cases, living into one’s commitment to God can be agonizingly difficult.  

We are having worship and Bible study together and committee meetings by Zoom these days, and I’m still hearing from people saying they can’t be a part of things because they are going out of town. This should be the easiest time ever to be engaged in worship. Grab a cup of coffee, sit in your recliner and tune in! But the excuses are amazing. You know, Billy Graham once said, "Jesus spoke about the ox in the ditch on the Sabbath. But if your ox gets in the ditch every Sunday, you should either get rid of the ox or fill up the ditch."
But it’s not all lost – even when we are terrified of the pulpit or saddened that people are playing hooky – again – we do have the assurance that we are under God’s protection.  Always.  Just as you have that same assurance, that same guarantee, that same hope. 

And WITH that hope, comes an undeniable desire to look for Jesus, to be with Jesus, to know Jesus… and to share Jesus.  You can’t just get rid of it. 
When you recognize the hope that Jesus Christ offers, you realize that you have to share it.  And even if it sets us against our friends or our neighbors or even our family members, we are going to love Jesus more than anything else we have ever known.  And until we begin to move in that direction and actively look for Jesus, there will be no peace. 

Jesus says: “Stand up for me against world opinion and I’ll stand up for you before my Father in heaven... but I haven’t come to make life easy.  I didn’t come just so that you can have peace.  Actually, it’s the other way around.  Follow me and you’re likely to have no peace.  You’re likely to plan, and set up, and get excited, and be ready to tell your stories… and no one will come to hear them.  You’re likely to feel rejected at times.  But the call isn’t to be successful – it’s to be faithful.  And when you are faithful, it’s all going to be worth it in the end.  That’s where the peace will be.”  Folks, I just want us to be faithful.  God is going to take care of the rest of it.

 Do you hear the urgency in sharing Jesus with all the people who will cross your path this week? Will you make every effort to invite someone to our live worship next Sunday?  Will you volunteer at the Food Pantry this week? Will you be a voice of reason and calm – a voice of hope – in a hurting and dying and violent world?
 
Will you open your heart to hearing Jesus move you into the world without fear?

"An Unlikely Bunch"

About a year ago, I told a story to some of my church family that resurfaced this week so I thought it might be time to tell it again. Etienne de Grellet, whom (in America) we call Stephen, was born to a wealthy family in France in the mid-1700s, and when the French Revolution began, the family fled France. Stephen, through a series of life events, found himself across the ocean arriving in New York in 1795.

So we are at the end of the 18th century in the newly formed states, and Stephen is continuing to experience some life-changing events. He is reading and immersing himself in learning, and within a year, he meets a Quaker woman whose conversation about Jesus touches his heart… and Stephen becomes a Quaker missionary travelling all over this country as well as Haiti and then back across to Scotland, Ireland, England, Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Greece, Italy and Russia. He meets with rulers and tsars, visits prisons, schools and hospitals, and eventually finds himself back home in America.

Now, by this time, Stephen is a well-known Quaker preacher. It’s the early nineteenth century, and his prayer life is intensely dedicated to discerning God’s will for his life. While he is looking for answers, he remembers a place out in the woods he had visited in the past and he distinctly hears a voice telling him to go preach to the woodcutters working there in the woods. He wrote that the voice said: Go back there and preach to those lonely men.

Well, what else could he do but leave his wife and child at home and head off to the woods feeling extreme happiness all along the way. As he got closer and closer to the place he had remembered, he was jittery and excited – until the camp was in sight. And he realized that the woodcutters had left it days earlier. The camp was empty, and there was no way to know when the workers would be back. It could be weeks.

He was pretty confused because he really believed he had heard the voice of God telling him to come and preach in this place so he went back to praying and asking if he had gotten the message wrong. And, just as he had heard the voice in his heart the first time, he clearly heard the new instructions: Give your message. It is not yours but mine.

Surely he felt silly working himself up to preach to no one, but following what he knew was God’s direction, he entered the main building, walked to the front of the room and began to preach about God’s love in a powerful way like he had never done before. He talked about sin coming between God and men and about how Jesus Christ tears down that barrier. He thought about the woodcutters and his heart was flooded with love for them as he realized that if he could feel that kind of love for those rough old working men, God’s love would be immeasurably more for them – so he began to pray for them out loud.

And when he was finished, he was exhausted, and he looked up to see one dirty cracked mug that had been left behind. The story is that his heart hated that mug. He felt like it was mocking him just sitting there in the silent empty place all broken and dirty – and he remembered how he had grown up surrounded by such fine things. This was a silly errand he was on. He had preached as if there had been hundreds of men in the place knowing all along that he was alone.

But he eventually got up, took the mug outside to wash it in the creek, got himself a drink of water, ate a little bread he had in his pocket and headed home. He said he felt himself surrounded by a sustaining life-giving presence, and on the way home he knew he was not alone.

Now, that’s a pretty good story, but as it turns out, it’s only the beginning. Years later, Stephen was back in London and was walking across London Bridge in a crowd of people. He was wearing his usual Quaker hat and coat so he may have stood out a little bit when someone grabbed him by the arm and said: There you are. I finally found you!

As you can imagine, Stephen was a little startled and said: Friend, I think thou art mistaken.

No, said the man. I am not. When you have sought a man over the face of the globe year after year, you don’t make a mistake when you find him at last.
As it turns out, the man had been one of the woodcutters from the woods years earlier. You see, he had come back to camp that day to get a tool that had been left, and although Stephen never saw him, the man stood outside the building and heard every word Stephen preached and prayed.

He told Stephen how he had been too embarrassed to be found out so he snuck back to the new camp and was miserable for weeks. Well, he eventually got his hands on a Bible and began to read – even though the other woodcutters gave him a pretty hard time about it.

And when he read Jesus’ story of the lost sheep, he didn’t care if they did make fun of him. He started telling them all the stories, and he wouldn’t let it go until every single one of them was – as he said: brought home to God.
Three of them were so changed that they went out to preach to others, and at least a thousand people had been “brought home to God” by one faithful sermon that was preached to nobody.
 
Church, throughout history, God has used absurd circumstances and improbable people. Jesus says the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few, and I’ve always thought he meant there is more work to do than there are faithful people to do it. But what if that’s not what that means?

What if Jesus is saying: I’m going to use just a few of you unlikely bunch to make a huge difference in your world. 

You know, Divine Street may not be one of the mega-churches that we see on TV, but what if the few of us are being called to follow a ridiculous path of saving others in the most absurd ways? Are we willing to look silly for the Kingdom of God? Are we really listening for God’s voice to lead us, and are we ready to be faithful when it might not make sense to us?

Now I know these are difficult virus-driven times when we are struggling to figure out how to even be the church. If we continue down this path we are on, some of our churches may eventually die out. But let’s be honest, we probably weren’t headed down all that great a path before the virus. Church attendance has been on the decline for years as other things have captured our attention. And perhaps that is God’s plan – perhaps we are only here in our communities for a season – but I don’t think so.

As I pray for the church, and dream for the church, and seek God’s will for the church, I am constantly moved to faithfully change course and face what may seem unreasonable. And, as much as I want to be devoted to God’s call, I have to admit that makes me nervous!

I like things comfortable. However… I am convinced that if we plant only for our own benefit, we will harvest devastation from our selfishness. On the other hand, if we plant for the benefit of the Spirit of God, we will harvest eternal life from the Spirit of God.

Paul says: A person will harvest what they plant. So let’s not get tired of doing good, because (if we don’t give up) in time there will be a harvest. So then, let’s work for the good of all whenever we have an opportunity, and especially for those in the household of faith.

Maybe, just maybe, instead of looking around and lamenting who is not engaged in the church, maybe it’s time for us to look around, offer respect to all persons, and rejoice over the people who cross our paths.

YOU are the ones who are going to make a difference in your community. You who ARE committed – who ARE dedicated to making disciples for Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. The key to transforming lives is faithfully seeking to live in God’s will no matter whether we feel equipped to do the work or even if we feel ridiculous preaching to no one. Gracious, I didn’t study pandemic ministry in seminary, and I certainly am not comfortable preaching by myself to a cellphone each week to be spread all over Facebook. But this is what God’s asking me to do these days. And all I can do is try to be faithful to that call.

Being a faithful laborer in God’s field is risky. Now I’m not talking about risking health during the middle of COVID19. I’m talking about risking ego. I am just as human as you are, and I say things the wrong way sometimes. If I say something wrong in a sermon when I’m in the middle of my own community of faith, then I have the reassurance that my church family knows me and will love me at the end of the day. These days, if I say something in the wrong way, social media is going to slaughter me. That is not a comfortable and safe place to be. But God blesses those who are faithful and God provides plenty of everything we need.

Church, there’s plenty of work to be done for the harvest. There’s respect that needs to be offered to others; there’s tension all around us that needs to be healed. We are the unlikely bunch, the improbable people in the middle of absurd circumstances, and Jesus can use every one of us if we are willing to glorify God in our efforts. WE are the plentiful few! 

"Go and Make"
(Be Bold and Be Strong)

In my tradition, the United Methodist tradition, we have people in who fall way far to one side of discussions and people who fall way far to the other side.  And then we have people all over the middle. 

One of the beautiful things about The UMC, is that we are allowed, and even encouraged, to use Scripture as our primary way of seeking God’s will, followed by using our reasoning, our experiences and our traditions.  We work hard to talk through difficult conversations.

It’s like how Bill and I approach our marriage. We have our moments, but divorce is not an option.  We will never agree on everything, but leaving the relationship is off the table. We get frustrated and even angry with one another, but at the end of the day we love one another dearly and remain the best of friends – we live unity to its fullest.  

When I listen to the holy conferencing of the Church, I understand the arguments on both sides of all of these conversations. I know what we are talking about.  The challenge for me is that I often like pieces of both sides of the dialogue. 

I like the social justice aspect of our tradition. I like that we respond to the call of God on our hearts through the work of our hands. I like that we are to make a difference in the world through our mission fields. I like that mission teams are an incredibly Methodist way of thinking. I like that we are empowered by the Church to go. 

At the same time, I like that United Methodists are evangelical. Our own General Board of Discipleship says no ministry of the church is more vital than evangelism. “Evangelism involves several key actions: telling the Good News, announcing the kingdom (reign) of God, and bearing witness.”  We are sent into the world to go and share the message that Jesus Christ has authority universally. 

On Jesus Christ’s authority, we are given the Great Commission which is the number one reason for mission teams going out in the world AND the number one reason for sharing the gospel message out in the world.

This isn’t one or the other – This is “both and.” Working and sharing.  Missional and evangelical. Actually you cannot have one without the other.  It’s ONE call.  Jesus Christ is calling us to be both. 

And that’s where we get a little lost sometimes. We can label ourselves all day long, but for those of us taking a stand only on one side or the other, we are missing the big picture here. Look what Jesus is saying to us: Go therefore – get out of your seat, out of your daily grind, out of your comfort zone, and GO into action. 

Go and make – more action – make disciples – bring more folks into the fold.  Help other people understand what this Christianity, this following Jesus, is all about. And don’t stop there. Tell them what God is doing in your life.  Spend some time thinking of your own personal stories and then tell people those stories.  Live your life as a breathing example of who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing in your life. 

For some of us that means we need practice. For some of us it means watch what comes out of our mouth – or if I am on Facebook, out of my fingers. There are Christian folks who are not always great examples of what Jesus is doing in our lives. We post a lot of talk. We post a lot of things that just really aren’t helpful in making disciples of Jesus Christ. 

Raising awareness of problems in the world is necessary. I will agree with that all day long. We have to keep conversations going about what is needed in the world. We have to talk about injustice and oppression, hunger and poor, sick and hurting, and all the things I just mentioned a moment ago – that’s how we together discern God’s will for God’s people in God’s Church. However, raising awareness without the follow-up action or raising awareness in a way that never mentions Jesus Christ as the key to change is misunderstanding the Great Commission. Talking about the problems in the world isn’t the place we, as Christians, get to land. That’s only the starting point. 

I said that in one of my previous churches, and my office had a line of angry people out the door telling me that I degraded them because they post pictures of their kids on Facebook without mentioning Jesus. That is NOT what I’m saying. I LOVE looking at your kids on Facebook  I do not expect you to invoke the name of Jesus before every sentence you speak. 

I’m talking about identifying a problem and then doing nothing about the problem  I’m talking about leaving Jesus completely out of our equations.  I’m saying that we are called to be people of action!
 
One of my favorite movie characters is named Thumper.  Remember Thumper? The little bunny from the movie Bambi? Thumper was brutally honest in offering his opinion, but he had a way of pointing out the obvious in a very negative light.  When he first met the brand newborn fawn, Bambi, who was trying to get up on his feet for the first time, Thumper didn’t offer helpful reassurance or hints on how to try to stand. He didn’t show Bambi what to do. He didn’t try to prop Bambi up. He didn’t set an example at all  Thumper simply raised awareness of the problem and said: “He doesn’t walk very good does he?” There was nothing encouraging or engaging in his rhetoric. If Thumper had a Facebook page, it would probably resemble some that I have read. And what did Thumper’s parents teach him: “If you can’t say something nice, (pause) don’t say nuffin at all.” You see, there is no action in pointing out the problem. 

Jesus named the problems; that part has already been done. We are always going to have the poor with us, he said – go and help them. Go visit in the prisons. Clothe the naked. Feed the hungry. And in the midst of your actions, tell the people about me and invite them to join you in believing in me. That’s what Jesus said. The two concepts are married. Mission and evangelism.  Evangelism and mission. 

You are to go to the people, and make disciples of the people of all nations. Wesley once said “The world is my parish.” That’s exactly what Jesus is talking about here. 

Go and make disciples of all nations – action that continues in verse 19: “Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Notice the use of the word name. One name. One God. Those who are baptized are brought in under one name and one baptism. Actually it is literally ‘into’ – baptizing them into the name of our one True God. We are baptized into the name of God and therefore belong to God – brought into the promise. 

“And teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” Even more action. Teach, tell, explain. Communicate. And obey. Talk to the people, all people, about the things Jesus Christ has done. That’s evangelism. Evangelism is literally about personal commitment to Jesus. And while you are personally committing and talking to others about personally committing, put some work behind it. That’s mission. 

This is not just an invitation to be nice to each other. Not just an invitation to go out and do good works. This isn’t actually an invitation at all. This is a commission.  A command, a directive, an assignment. Our instructions are to go out into the world and make disciples! 

Come and evangelize; go do mission. The Great Com-mission is both. Your job is to come and go as People of God! 

Be bold and be strong. Banish fear and doubt. For the promise of your God is to bless your coming in and to bless your going out. Rejoice!