Friday afternoon at 3:30 I had a rendezvous here at the
church with two older guys from Indiana named Ron and Dan. They drove a twenty-foot box van full of
sleeping bags and duffels and bicycle repair equipment into the parking lot
behind Cram Hall, and they wore matching t-shirts with a logo that said
DeCycles West Coast 2016. According to
the email I got in April requesting to stay overnight at our church, DeCycles
(like “disciples”—get it?) is an
ecumenical Christian youth program, sponsored by churches, businesses,
service organizations and individuals in Indiana, that has been taking
teenagers on summer bicycle trips since 1969, and giving them the opportunity
to practice kindness, caring, service, and other principles of a
Christ-centered life. This year’s group
is riding down the coast from Seattle to Los Angeles and Ron and Dan were the
advance men, who go to the overnight site ahead of the pack of riders, to get
the lay of the land.
I showed them the parish hall, the library and the nursery
as potential sleeping areas, the kitchen and the bathrooms, the courtyard and
the supply closet, and we discussed the deployment of chairs and tables, and
dining arrangements, and where to lock up seventy-five bicycles. They asked me for the passcode for the
wireless network, assuring me that only selected adults would be using it. While I was at it, I gave them my cell phone
number, in case anything came up after I left.
We finished the tour, and they’d asked me all the questions they could
think of, and no one else had arrived so I invited them to see the church.
Needless to say, they were greatly impressed, especially
with the front door and the stained-glass windows, and Dan kept lamenting that
the craft of making such beautiful things seems to be passing away. We were just coming out, when another,
smaller truck pulled up, with the DeCycles logo on the side of the cargo
box. Ron directed the driver to parking
lot, and another smiling older man got out, and a woman named Liz with a
charming accent I soon found out was Welsh.
This truck was loaded with cooking gear and food. Liz was in charge of meals, and I led her inside
to the kitchen, and when she saw our refrigerator, she practically squealed
with delight.
It was just about this time that the first wave of what
would eventually be 60 bicycle riders, aged 13 to 20, and 15 adult staff, all
in matching black and white DeCycles West Coast 2016 jerseys, rounded the
corner from 5th street onto C, looking for their vans. And for the next hour or so I stood around,
answering questions, giving directions, solving problems, and watching with
amusement as order gradually emerged from chaos. Kids rolled the serving carts from kitchen
down the wheelchair ramp to the food van and brought them back, piled with ice
chests. Someone else found the fans in
the chair storage closet and set them up at either end of the hall. Bowls of trail mix appeared on the coffee
hour food table, and on the other table where we serve the drinks, I piled the letters
and care packages that the mailman had been dropping off in my office all
week.
At one point Ron had to ask me where the supply closet was
again—in all the confusion, he’d forgotten where that was. One young man asked me if there was Wi-Fi
available, and I told him there was, but that only the adults would be using
it. “That’s cool,” he said, as if both the
question and the answer were of complete indifference to him. “It’s like a three-ring circus,” Liz cracked
to me at one point, “with no ringmaster,” and I laughed, because she had it about
right. Still, by the time two-thirds or so of the
kids pedaled off again to the Petaluma Swim Center for the showers and the
pool, and the others rolled out their sleeping bags and lay down for a rest,
they’d sorted out who was sleeping where, and how they would lock up the bikes
for the night, and what would be for dinner.
And when I dropped by the church yesterday afternoon, there was a window
open in the men’s bathroom, and a garbage barrel that is usually in the kitchen
in the parish hall—but other than that, there was no sign that they’d ever been
here.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the story of how Jesus sent
his twelve disciples out, to heal and cast out demons, and announce the Kingdom
of God. But only Luke tells about a
“second wave” of 70 or 72 (the ancient manuscripts differ) whom Jesus sends out
later on the same kind of mission. Luke
is also the only one who says that Jesus sent them on ahead, like Ron and Dan, to
the places where he himself was about to go.
Luke gives other details about the ministry of Jesus as he makes his way
through Galilee and Samaria and Judea that are not found in the other
gospels. A few weeks ago, for instance,
we heard about the women, like Mary Magdalene, who went along with the other
disciples, and provided for their material needs. And, unlike Mark and Matthew, Luke ties his
episodes loosely together into a single story of continuous and purposeful
movement. They are encounters and
teachings that happen on the road to Jerusalem.
Luke’s version also describes a movement in another sense of
the word. All the gospels speak about
the twelve men who form the inner circle around Jesus, who are his conversation
partners, and foils for his teachings, who do what he tells them, and follow
where he goes. They also speak of a much
larger group of followers, known only as “the crowd.” The size and composition of this group is
left undefined, but one has the impression that the crowd shrinks and swells as
new people are drawn to Jesus by need or curiosity, and others decide they’ve
seen enough, or have better things to do, and drift away. But only Luke describes a second, larger
circle of committed disciples, like the women I referred to a moment ago, or
the seventy-two Rons and Dans Jesus sends out in advance of his journey. If we believe Luke, Jesus was not just
drifting, with his little company of twelve, from one random encounter to
another, but was methodically and purposefully building a movement.
This fits with Luke’s over-arching purpose as an evangelist. He (or she) is also the author of the book of
Acts, which tells how this movement continued and spread and became The Church. When we say “the church” we think of
something firmly established, with deep foundations of doctrine and tradition
that change only slowly, if they ever change at all. But experiences like my encounter with the
DeCycles, and stories like the one from Luke today, remind us that at its heart
the church is less an institution than what it was at the beginning—a
movement. The new Presiding Bishop of
the Episcopal Church, The Most Reverend Michael Curry, is fond of point out
this fact, calling us to membership in the “Jesus Movement” as the defining core
of who we are.
Luke says this movement signals the beginning of the end for
the powers of evil and death, and the beginning of the new creation of the
kingdom of God. But the movement is not
itself the kingdom; rather, it exists to point to it, to spread the news that
it is coming near. This communication
cannot take place in a casual encounter on the road—the gospel doesn’t fit on a
bumper-sticker or a tri-fold brochure.
Neither does it spread by armies on the march or demonstrations in the
streets. It moves, instead, by the
formation of new relationships that begin with a greeting at the door. The news of the kingdom travels through the
world through countless risky overtures of peace, and equally vulnerable responses
of hospitality. Everyone in this room
today, from the person who is here for the very first time to the one who’s
been here for sixty years, had at one point to walk up to that big arched door
that impressed Ron from Indiana so much, and come in, hoping to find the desire
for Christ’s peace she carried in her heart in some way reciprocated. And I hope it was, and is, and will be,
because that’s how we know we’re still part of the Jesus movement.
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