Emily Schaming
I have to confess that I often find myself enticed by those signs with the pull-off phone numbers that you sometimes see on telephone poles around the city. You know, the ones that say something like, "Earn up to $2000 a week working from home!" The idea of sitting at home, stuffing envelopes for large sums of money certainly has its appeal. I'm sure there is a catch, but I like to believe that someone, somewhere is sitting in a comfy chair, sipping a coffee and raking in the cash.
However, the opposite idea is not so enticing. I wonder how many replies a paper sign proclaiming, "Hard Work: No Pay!" would get. It almost seems crazier than the work from home promises. And yet this seems to be what Jesus is asking of the disciples in today's gospel lesson. He says, "The harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few," adding later that, "You received without payment; give without payment." When you add to this the fact that they are being called to such trifling tasks as healing all sickness and raising the dead, it doesn't seem like a help wanted ad that many people would be replying to. So why would we, today, think this is a job worth checking out? Simply because our gift from God is nothing more or less than the transformation of our lives. And through Jesus, God has blessed us and called us to go out into a hurting world to share that gift of transformation. Martin Luther once said that, "a religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing." We have been given the opportunity to prove to the world that even though living out our faith can be costly, its rewards are without price.
Gifts
Clarence Jordan, the founder of Koinonia farm in Americus, Georgia, was getting a red-carpet tour of another minister's church. With pride the minister pointed to the rich, imported pews and luxurious decoration. As they stepped outside, darkness was falling, and a spotlight shone on a huge cross atop the steeple. "That cross alone cost us ten thousand dollars," the minister said with a satisfied smile. "You got cheated," said Jordan. "Times were when Christians could get them for free."
Not much in life is free. But we have been given a free gift through the grace and life of Jesus' death and resurrection. Romans says that, "we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God." And in Matthew one translation reads, "freely you have received. Freely give." What are the gifts we have been given? Romans says our gifts are peace with God, grace, suffering, endurance and hope and that each gift is a product of the one before it.
The gift of grace is a hard one to accept. In his book, What's so Amazing About Grace?, Philip Yancey says, "Paul harped on about grace because he knew what could happen if we believe we have earned God's love. In the dark times, if perhaps we badly fail God, or if for no good reason we simply feel unloved we would stand on shaky ground. We would fear that God might stop loving us when he discovers the real truth about us. Paul—"the chief of sinners" he once called himself – knew beyond doubt that God loves people because of who God is, not because of who we are." Grace is God's first and most precious gift to us. If we are willing to accept that gift, we open ourselves up to God's love and also the suffering that comes when we decide to live as Jesus taught. But when we accept God's grace in our lives, unimaginable blessings follow.
Blessings
Fred Craddock tells one such story of grace and blessing. He traveled with his wife one summer to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. One night they found a quiet little restaurant where they looked forward to a private meal.
While they were waiting for their meal they noticed a distinguished looking, white-haired man moving from table to table, visiting guests. Craddock whispered to his wife, "I hope he doesn't come over here." He didn't want the man to intrude on their privacy. Of course he did.
"Where you folks from?" he asked amicably.
"Oklahoma."
"Splendid state, I hear, although I've never been there. What do you do for a living?
"I teach homiletics at the graduate seminary of Phillips University."
"Oh, so you teach preachers, do you. Well, I've got a story I want to tell you." And with that he pulled up a chair and sat down at the table.
Dr. Craddock said he groaned inwardly: Oh no, everyone has a preacher story.
The man stuck out his hand. "I'm Ben Hooper. I was born not far from here across the mountains. My mother wasn't married when I was born so I had a hard time. I used to go off by myself at recess and during lunch-time because the taunts of my playmates cut so deeply.
"What was worse was going downtown on Saturday afternoon and feeling every eye burning a hole through you. They were all wondering who my father was.
"When I was about 12 years old a new preacher came to our church. I would always go in late and slip out early. But one day the preacher said the benediction so fast I got caught and had to walk out with the crowd. I could feel every eye in church on me. Just about the time I got to the door I felt a big hand on my shoulder. I looked up and the preacher was looking right at me.
"Who are you, son? Whose boy are you?"
I felt the old weight come on me. Even the preacher was putting me down.
But as he looked down at me, studying my face, he began to smile a big smile of recognition. "Wait a minute," he said, "I know who you are. I see the family resemblance. You are a son of God."
With that he slapped me across the rump and said, "Boy, you've got a great inheritance. Go and claim it."
The old man looked across the table at Fred Craddock and said, "That was the most important single sentence ever said to me." With that he smiled, shook the hands of Craddock and his wife, and moved on to another table to greet old friends.
Suddenly, Fred Craddock recognized the man's name. Ben Hooper was the governor of Tennessee.
We all have the same incredible inheritance as Ben Hooper. In our reading from Exodus, God says to the people, "if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples".
Each of us has been blessed by God as a treasured possession. So we are given the task of treating one another in the same way, as God's treasured possessions, as children of God.
In our time, possibly more than any other, we have become extremely specialized. People specialize in quantum computing theory, in eBay sales of My Little Pony, in creating gaskets for Toyota Corollas. Everyone is a specialist, so a part of what is amazing about church is the blending of our varied lives so that we all specialize in loving God and caring for one another. In this building we have so many specialists, people who work in medicine, law, education, government, child rearing, construction, music and many other areas. Many of us, though we have shared food, visited each other's homes and worship together have no idea what the person beside us does each day, but God has blessed us nonetheless with an opportunity to love one another, pray for one another and care for one another.
Jesus' disciples were just as motley a crew as we are here this morning, tax collectors, revolutionaries and fishermen, and yet they were all called together to be the church, to go forth together and do God's work together. Being the church means obliterating boundaries that divide people so that we can be God's agents of change in the world. It means loving people we never would have met in our day-to-day lives. It means people of all backgrounds, ages and cultures working together for God's kingdom.
We have been given a great inheritance, so how should we go and claim it?
Calling
S. I. McMillen, in his book None of These Diseases, tells a story of a young woman who wanted to go to university, but her heart sank when she read the question on the application that asked, "Are you a leader?" Being conscientious, she wrote, "No," and returned the application, expecting the worst. To her surprise, she received this letter from the university: "Dear Applicant: A study of the application forms reveals that this year our university will have 1,452 new leaders. We are accepting you because we feel it is imperative that they have at least one follower."
Sometimes it is ok to be a follower. But being a follower does not mean passively waiting around for other people to do all the work. Life is not like the PTA barbeque, where if you wait around long enough someone else will volunteer to provide the hotdogs. Life is a gift we have all been given by God to use in God's service. We have all been asked to be followers of Jesus.
In today's gospel lesson Jesus sends out the disciples to work in the world. And he tells them to start at home. He says to bring the word to the people of Israel, to cure every disease and every sickness in their own community.
Today is a day on which we honour fathers and through fathers we honour families. All of us here today are called by God to be healers first within our own families. Among our sons and daughters, our wives and husbands, our cousins, our nephews and nieces and, of course, among our brothers and sisters - our fellow believers. God has given us all this gift for healing. But God has also told us to extend this gift beyond our own walls.
It is not easy to obey God's call to us. Henry Nouwen said, "too often our help remains hanging between our head and our hands." There is a reason for this. Jesus asks us to do hard work. The reading from Romans this morning blends well with the passage from Matthew, highlighting the radical nature of Jesus' commission. The harvest is about how much reconciliation the Body of Christ can create in the world. We are sent not just to those who would support us, but also to those who would wound us. It is hard because reconciliation is only truly necessary in a context of wounds and division.
We must ask ourselves how much we wish to strain against what holds us back from doing God's work. Do we try to reconcile broken relationships? Do we work for peace? Do we protect the most fragile among us? Do we seek forgiveness? Do we help free those held by the demons of addiction and poverty and fear?
The work is not easy, perhaps because it is never truly finished. There will always be illness and suffering; a need for healing and reconciliation. But if we have the courage to begin, we have been promised an abundant harvest. May we answer God's call to grace and blessing with one voice as the people of Israel, saying, "Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do."
1 All quotations of Scripture, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version.