On the move, at the door.

2 Kings 5:1-14
Psalm 30
Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

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 5^th 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.

Wisdom's Well

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67

Psalm 45: 11-18

Romans 7:15-25a

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

The part of the story of Rebekah that always has intrigued me is that moment where her family summons her and asks if she wishes to go away and journey hundreds of miles to a new country to be the wife of a cousin whom she has never met, and she says “I will.”   It’s hard to know what motivates her.  Maybe she is just being obedient.  She is used to going along with what her elders want from her and she’s probably good at anticipating what that might be.   Or maybe she’s made a careful calculation.  After all, her latitude for making choices about her own life is pretty limited.  She knows that her father will be looking for a husband for her anyway, and that everything about her future depends on who she marries.  So when she learns that this Isaac is the sole heir of a wealthy man, and imagines that from now on it will be her servants going to the spring to fetch water, maybe she decides that this is as good an offer as she’s going to get.

 

Or perhaps she listens to the story of Abraham’s determination to find a bride for his son from among his own people, and of his servant’s long journey, and his prayer for a sign, a sign that she unwittingly fulfilled, and something in her own spirit is stirred and she intuits that this is invitation she can trust.  Maybe she senses the awakening of a faith and a hope that she hasn’t known before, a glimpse of the deeper purpose of her life that impels her irresistibly to say “I will” and so take up her part in a great and holy destiny.  The role of wife and mother may be the only one available to her as a woman, but the story of Rebekah makes her out to be a little more than a merely passive object of the desires and agendas of men.  I think we are meant to admire her, and to see her as a worthy choice to be the matriarch of the people of God.

The ideal of femininity that Rebekah represents begins with her generous hospitality to the stranger at the spring, and even to his animals, and goes on to include her clear reckoning with the practicalities of her situation.  She is a good judge of character, is courageous and decisive in the moment of truth, and, if I’m reading the story right, is sensitive to the designs of the spirit, and their claim on her life.  I think it is interesting that in a later development of the biblical tradition, these same characteristics become aspects of a universal religious ideal, called by the proper name of Wisdom.  And the Hebrew sages personified Wisdom as a woman.  The word for “wisdom” in Hebrew, Chokmah, is a feminine noun, as is its Greek counterpart, Sophia. 

So, for that matter, is the Sanskrit Prajña, the Hindu and Buddhist goddess of Wisom.  These very different cultures agree that Wisdom’s generous hospitality, her pragmatism about the social and biological necessities of life, her finely-honed discernment of human nature and the opportunities afforded by a given situation, her skill and versatility in action, all grounded that profound spiritual receptivity that the Hebrew scriptures call “the fear of the Lord”—all belong to the feminine aspect of consciousness, which is itself a manifestation of God in the concrete, embodied, life of the world.

Last week an old friend came to see me.  She wanted to hear what I might to say because she is worried about her son.  I remember him as a young teenager, high-strung, intensely serious, and apparently he’s much the same ten or twelve years later.  My friend described hers son as a young man who holds himself aloof from the conventional values and norms of society and attempts to live by his own, impossibly lofty principles.  He is a scholar of the Spirit, whose interests range from comparative mythology and Jungian psychology, to esoteric Christianity, Taoism, and South American indigenous shamanism.  But he has no idea where to focus, or how to make a living, or what his place is in the world, and he struggles with depression, and wonders at times whether he even wants to live. 

And in her description I recognized a certain classic type.  Usually young men, they are intellectually and spiritually gifted and privileged enough to be able to pursue their interests.  In our time, sacred knowledge from all over the world has uprooted from its traditional contexts and entered the modern marketplace of the internet and the shopping mall.  And if you are into that sort of thing, the upper reaches, outer fringes, and inner secrets of human consciousness hold a lot more interest than washing dishes, and changing diapers, and holding down a job.  A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and a superficial acquaintance with the spiritual world can create in impressionable and idealistic minds the false notion that if we read the right book, or find the right teacher, or do the right practice, we can move to that spiritual world, and leave all this other stuff behind. 

I understand why that young man’s mother came to see me—there was a time in my life when I wasn’t all that different from her son.  But I’m well down the road to recovery now.  And in my experience the best medicine for this condition is wisdom.  For me, it was the wisdom earned by years of manual labor, and of sitting down on a meditation cushion and trying to sit still; the kind learned by living in community, and being close at hand with other people in their joys and agonies, and mine; of seeing them grow into adulthood, or grow old, or get sick and die.  The wisdom that cured me of my restless thirst for spiritual knowledge came from falling in love, and having my heart broken and seeing myself inflict pain on others, and learning by trial and error over years and decades what love really is, and how it is done; it was the kind of wisdom that comes from prayer, from reaching out to God with no other means than my own ordinary body and mind, and the holy name of Jesus Christ, and finding that somehow these are enough, because in that effort God was reaching out to me.

Wisdom accepts that being human means there are limits to what you can know and what you can do.  It means admitting that you are a person like other persons, that you were born into a body, and a family, and a history, and trusting that that’s how you come to be who you are and how you know what part you are to play.  And that’s important, because Wisdom is a worker, engaged in creating the world.    In the Eleventh Chapter of Matthew, Jesus explicitly identifies himself with the work of Sophia, with Wisdom.  His actions, he says, are her deeds, and in them She is vindicated.  People don’t understand why he befriends tax collectors and sinners and eats and drinks with them, but that is because they don’t know wisdom.  They don’t recognize that the Jesus presides at Sophia’s table, extending her hospitality, her invitation to all to join the dance of the new creation at the feast of the Kingdom of God.

 

But this is also the time and the place where Jesus makes the boldest claim that you will find anywhere in the gospels, outside of John, about being the Son of God the Father, the unique possessor of the highest spiritual knowledge.  And this is no accident.  Here Jesus presents himself as the supreme authority, who gives to those he chooses his privileged knowledge of God the Father, and at the same time as the one who offers humble service to the world, in the name of Lady Wisdom.  Here is the perfect integration of the love of God with the love of neighbor, and it is on this that Jesus  bases his call to discipleship.   “Take my yoke upon you,” he says, “and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart.”  Being his disciple is work, the work of Wisdom’s commitment to the practical realities of being human, and of loving one’s neighbor.  But this work is easy, because Christ endows it with his love, the love that knows the full measure of the love of God, who holds our souls in health and life, in whom is rest and refreshment and the peace that passes all understanding. 

         

The mission of the little ones

Genesis 22:1-14
Psalm 13
 Romans 6:12-23
Matthew 10:40-42

In the spring of 1987 I walked across the state of Massachusetts from west to east as a participant in a Lenten pilgrimage for peace in Central America.  And as our little band went from village to village and town to town we received the hospitality of people of faith—mostly Christians-- Methodist, Baptist, Unitarian, Catholic, Congregational or Episcopal, but also Jewish and Buddhist communities where we were invited to share worship, prayer, and conversation, or given a meal, a place to sleep, or just a dry place to rest our feet and a clean bathroom and a drink of water or a cup of tea.    

I could tell many stories about that journey, but the one I’m remembering today took place on a late afternoon as we were walking along Route 9 between Ware and Worcester.  We came to a country crossroads and sat down for a rest, and we hadn’t been there more than about 5 minutes before a convoy of  cars and pickup trucks pulled up,  driven by Trappist monks.  We piled in and were driven up a long road to the top of a high hill looking out over forests and fields, to St. Joseph’s Abbey.  We were taken by twos and threes to rooms in the guest house, where we found snacks, and clean towels and hot showers.  And after we cleaned up we went to the abbey church for vespers.   Now, if you’ve been to a Trappist monastery you know that there is usually an area for visitors and guests off to one side of the church, at some distance from, or even out of sight of, the monks’.  But that wasn’t where we were.  Instead we  were invited  into the  choir,  to sit with the monks and stumble our way through the ancient chants, the psalms, canticles, and responses, with the evening light  streaming  through the  great  rose  window above the altar.

And I’ll never forget the looks of puzzlement on the faces of  the other guests, mostly Irish and Italian families from Boston in their Sunday best, at seeing us  in our parkas and hiking boots coming out of the church after the service with the white-robed monks.   We stood in a big circle out in front of the church as the abbot presented us with the gift of a branch from olive tree in the monastery cloister.  It was a scion of a tree from their sister monastery in the Holy Land, and we promised to carry it with us to our journey’s end at the Statehouse in Boston. 

I tell you this story because, as we leave behind the great experiences of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit, and move into the Season after Pentecost, our Sunday scripture readings turn set us down right in the middle of the practical problems of carrying on.  You see the disciples of Jesus understood that they had been given these experiences to empower them for a mission, to continue Jesus’ work in the world.  To make sense of that mission, they looked back, to the mission of Jesus.  Looking back at the things he did and the things he said from the new vantage point of his death and resurrection, they could see with a new clarity how he’d been preparing them to carry on his work.    And this process of telling and re-telling the stories about Jesus, as a way of understanding  what we’re supposed to do now,  how we’re to live now, that the apostles began, continues to this day.   It is what we mean when we say the word “Gospel.” 

And today’s Gospel lesson is from the 10^th Chapter of Matthew, which is all about mission.  Jesus calls together his Twelve Disciples and gives them spiritual authority and then sends them out on a mission to the villages of Galilee.  They are to announce that the kingdom of heaven is coming near, to cast out unclean spirits, and to heal the sick.  And the key to the success of the mission is the hospitality of the people who receive them.   Because a lot of people don’t.    A lot of people just aren’t interested, and in fact a lot of them are hostile.   So Jesus prepares them for rejection, and there are sayings in this chapter about being thrown out of the synagogues, and dragged before governors to testify to their own defense, about being betrayed by your own brother, and about taking up one’s cross. 

But when we get down to the final verses of the chapter, the part we heard this morning, Jesus also tells his disciples that there will be those who do welcome them, who will want a share in the mission.  But it won’t be because of their charisma, or their fantastic preaching or their healing miracles, or anything else that they do.  The secret X-factor that unlocks people’s hospitality to their mission is God.  "Whoever welcomes you”, Jesus said, “welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”   It is God who opened your minds to the Gospel.  It is God who awakened your hearts, God who gave you hope for peace, confidence in the future, and love for the poor and the oppressed.    It is God’s love working in you that looks at a stranger and sees a brother or a sister.  And the same will be true for those to whom you are sent.

Now you may be thinking to yourself “that is all well and good for them.  They are the twelve Apostles, Jesus’ own hand-picked helpers.   Of course God worked through them.”  But I think we sometimes forget that the disciples weren’t really “all that.” Notice the little twist Jesus throws in at the end: “Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward;”—“Yep.  Prophet. Sure, anybody would welcome a prophet.”  “And whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous;”—“Mm-hmm.  Righteous person.  Check.”   “And whoever gives even a drink of water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple--truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward." —one of these little ones.  Of course there are great spiritual rewards in recognizing a prophet, or a righteous person, and welcoming one of them.   But the same goes for people like you and me, the little disciples of Jesus.  What does the name”disciple” mean except one who is still learning, a student, someone still just struggling down the path.

None of us are too insignificant, too unimpressive or unimportant, too ignorant or spiritually un-enlightened to make a contribution to the mission of God in the world.  We all have something to contribute just by being ourselves, and by making a little effort in the way that seems to us to be pleasing to God.   And we have an impact on the lives of others that we don’t control and we can’t measure, because God works through us in ways we don’t even know about. 

By the same token, none of us are in a position to look at another person and say, “that one doesn’t matter.  I don’t care what that brother over there has to say about things, or what that sister over there thinks is important.  They don’t impress me at all.  They don’t seem well-informed or well-educated.   They don’t have any clout in the community.”  No, we need to welcome everyone, to honor everyone, for God’s sake, because everyone has something to contribute to God’s great reconciling mission in the world.  They may not be doing it very successfully because of poor self-esteem or emotional trauma or errors of judgment of one kind or another, but just because they can’t see their own gifts, and we can’t see them either, doesn’t mean that they’re not there. 

And we will never be able to help anyone do any better, including ourselves, if we don’t begin from a place of welcome, of looking for the common ground and listening for the shared story.  The mission of the Gospel begins with simple gestures of mutual hospitality, of welcoming and being welcomed.  The work of Jesus is founded on the little ones, and the little things, even if it’s only the gift of a cup of cold water on a hot, dusty day.