Mystic Congregational Church, UCC
Mystic, Connecticut

Sermon from June 12, 2005
“Beyond Discipleship 101”
Rev. Patricia L. Liberty
Scriptures:
Romans 5:1-8
Matthew 9:35-10:23

This is MCC’s lost-and-found box.  Currently, it has two pairs of gloves, one sock and a pair of purple doilies.  Everything in this box has been here since I have.  As far as I know, nothing has been added or taken away.  No one has missed or claimed these items.

Most of us know what it’s like to lose something of value, or something we need.  I spend a great deal of time looking for my keys.  Eyeglasses are another frequent culprit of people’s searches and, of course, it’s hard to look for your glasses when you can’t see it because you don’t have your glasses on.

Then there’s the getting lost that comes from reading the road map wrong or taking a wrong turn or running into a one-way street going in the opposite direction of where you want to go.   Most of us know the discomfort of being in a strange place and having no idea where we are or how to get to we are supposed to be going.  One of the challenges to a new interim is always finding my way around. 

While all of those are moderate annoyances in life, there is a deeper, more profound kind of lost that is uniquely horrible—lost in the sense of being left behind.  Have you ever seen a child who has lost her parents in a crowd?  From the moment she realizes her parents are no longer in sight, there is a uniquely inconsolable terror that envelops her. 

That full-bodied lost-ness is in the crowd that surrounds Jesus and he was moved to compassion.  “Harassed and helpless people, like sheep without a shepherd” elicits in Jesus a response of deep compassion and care. 

It is to these folks that Jesus sends his newly-minted disciples with some pretty specific instructions:  Teach, preach, heal, care, touch.  

I can’t help but wonder if they weren’t thinking that maybe they had signed up for more than they bargained for.  Throughout history, prophets and rabbis all had bands of followers who would sit at their feet and learn from the master.  Then, when they had earned the favor of their teacher, they would be sent out themselves to share the knowledge they had gained with others:  a kind of each-one-teach-one philosophy, they were chosen and sent.

Judith Carrick notes that, with Jesus, it was a bit different.  First, the disciples Jesus called were not scholars, nor were they particularly pious.  In truth, we know them to have been a ragtag bunch of fishermen and tax collectors; an unlikely lot called together to witness and be a part of the ministry of this new rabbi, Jesus. 

His was not a ministry in the traditional rabbinic sense.  He didn’t just sit under a tree and teach, at least not often.  He took those disciples on a march from Galilee to Jerusalem and back again, through all the villages and towns, wherever he perceived there was a need for healing and restoration.  He taught them, to be sure, but his words were often accompanied by such actions as raising the dead and healing every manner of sickness and affliction.  The more he did and the further he went, with his disciples right beside him, it became apparent that there was just too much to do, there were too many sheep without a shepherd.  So today we hear Jesus as he asked his disciples to pray for the Lord to send more laborers into this harvest field.  He needed help.

            I am sure you have all heard the saying, “Be careful what you pray for.”  I am sure the disciples, inexperienced and new to this ministry business as they were, had no illusions about their capabilities.  This was all new to them, and they probably would have been perfectly content to continue as they were, just to be with Jesus, to see what he did, to talk to him and to have him talk to them, to walk with him and to pray with him.  But it didn’t work out quite that way. 

They did exactly as Jesus asked.  They prayed for more laborers to go into the harvest and their prayers were answered.  They became the laborers.  They became the ministers, and not assistant ministers either, but just like Jesus.  He gave them power to do all the things that he did.  Just like him, they were to declare that the heavenly kingdom had come near, and then to back up and demonstrate that claim by healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing the lepers, and casting out demons—ministry in action.  Just like Jesus, they were to give away these new gifts and this new power; to give it away as freely as it had been given to them.  That’s why Jesus didn’t want them to take anything with them, no extra clothes or shoes or spending money—none of the world’s baggage that might detract and distract them and others, but simply to present themselves just as they were:   poor in possessions and dependent on others for food and hospitality, but rich in the knowledge and love of God and eager to bring health and restoration by using the gifts that had been given to them. 

Asking no more of them than he did himself, Jesus sent this new community forth to manifest to others the unconditional grace of kingdom love, freely received and freely given.  Chosen and sent, with a twist. At a time when the disciples weren’t quite sure they had it all down pat, they were sent out to do the work.  They were still, in some ways, the lost and they were sent out to do the finding.  There’s something both comforting and challenging about the image.

When Jesus gives them their charge, he tells them to go to the lost sheep of  Israel.  It’s a straight line connection to the inaugurating act of liberation from Egypt when God formed the “lost” of Israel as God’s own people.  Their life story rests in the memory of being freed from bondage.

Now they were lost again for reasons some the same, some different.  The comfort is that God always finds a way to call the people back to relationship; the challenge is in recognizing that it’s necessary.  We are not found once and for all; we get lost over and over again.  It’s one thing that connects us to our ancient forbears.  We are the lost and then found again and again throughout our lives.  God chooses and sends us anyway.

It’s an apt image of discipleship and the church.  We are both the lost and the found.  Like the first disciples, we haven’t figured it all out; yet we are sent into the world to share what we know, what we believe and to be honest about the rest. 

The church has a unique opportunity to be a lost-and-found for humankind, a place of refuge and restoration when we have lost our way, a place of sustenance so we can be strengthened for service with others. 

At its best the church is filled with disciples, not unlike those we met in the reading from Matthew; a ragtag group of saints and sinners through whom the word of God manages to stutter out from time to time.  Like them, we are sent not because we have the answers but because we recognize the importance of the questions.

Like them, we are sent not because we are “found” and everyone else is “lost” but because we have stared hard into the face of our own lost-ness and know something of the joy of finding our way home.  Too often the image of evangelism is that those who have it all together go out and drag those who don’t into the church any way they can.  Little wonder evangelism has such a bad reputation these days.  Evangelism, at its best, is a beautiful thing—the perfect combination of lost and found because it rests in the realization that we are all a bit of both.

A final note about the text:

When Jesus sent the first disciples out, he instructed them to go nowhere among the Gentiles but to go to the lost sheep of Israel; in other words, to people like Jesus.  It’s a little disconcerting because, everywhere else, Jesus talks about how the Kingdom is at hand and it is open to everyone.  Here, he seems to be building a few walls around the promise so we need to take a closer look, lest we reinforce the notion that God’s welcome is only to some and not all.

The key to the passage comes later in the 10^th chapter, after our reading for today concludes.  It is easy to forget that the first century-world hearing these words and traveling with Jesus was deeply divided.  Roman occupation and widespread corruption created unlikely alliances and deeply divided peoples.  Even among the Israelites, there were deep divisions about politics, social issues and what it meant to be faithful. 

Jesus’ words were about reconciliation along those lines of deep political, religious and social division.  He was sending them out to work on the wounds and division that were close to their own hearts.  He sent them out to the lost who didn’t think they were lost and to the found who weren’t as found as they thought.  It was risky business they were to be about.  Still is.  Evangelism isn’t just over there, but right here with the folks we meet every day.

The church at its best is a lost-and-found, where we all can be reunited with things like faith, hope, love, justice, care and grace.