June 12, 2005 - Fourth Sunday After Pentecost - Father Andrew Green

FIRST READING: Exodus 19: 2-8a
PSALM: Psalm 100
SECOND READING: Romans 5: 1-8
GOSPEL: Matthew 9: 35 -10:8

We have some famous passages today. Today, we have that passage where Jesus says, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few", and, one of the main things that we do, as Christians, to deal with that, is that we sing, as we will at the end of the service, "Come, Labor On" - send laborers out into the harvest. I have to tell you that, in the history of the Church, it seems like we have done more singing of hymns than sending out laborers. There is still a plentiful harvest, and there are still not enough workers.

The second famous passage is in Romans: "Since we are justified by faith" - listen to this - "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". Now, that is an important statement, and it is an important statement to provide a context for the Gospel. It is an important statement for us to hear the Gospel and respond to it.

First of all, let me have a little excursion about St. Paul. On Monday through Friday, we read Morning Prayer, and there are about seven of us or so that gather together at 7:00 over in the east transept here to say Morning Prayer. For the last week, we have been reading Second Corinthians, and the amusing thing, for those of us that do this, is that, about every day, Paul has been letting people know how he is not going to boast. "I am not going to boast! But I could if I wanted to!" That is generally Paul's response. "I could if I wanted to. After all, you all have done these things, but I am the one who is taking care of you and did not even charge you for it!"

So here, Paul, in his letter to the Romans, is letting the people in Rome, the Christians in Rome, know that they have something that they can boast about, and I believe Paul is letting us know that we have something we can boast about. It is not just our hope in sharing in the Glory of God. There is more to it than that. Paul is talking to those Christians in Rome, who are currently divided. Isn't that odd for a Church? - to have divisions! In this case, they have divisions because there are some that are Greek Christians, and there are some that started out as Jews, who are now Christians. They were not getting along. They didn't always worship together, and they each thought the other should do something different in order to really be a Christian. The Jews thought the Greeks should keep all the Law, and the Greeks thought the Jews should reject a lot of silly things that they were doing. And, so, they didn't get along. Paul is trying to evangelize the rest of the Mediterranean World, and he believed that he needed the support of a unified Church in Rome in order to accomplish it. So, he is really pushing them on this, and he is reminding them that all of them are justified by faith, and all of them stand in the Grace of Jesus Christ, right now. The key to this is the fact that Paul is talking to them, not just in some future tense, not in the sense that, in the sweet by and by, we'll be justified; and not in the world-to-come, we will have to hope, and we will have God's Grace; but the Grace in which we stand now. Paul is talking about a present reality for the Christians in Rome, and he is describing a present reality for us Christians here at St. Paul in the Desert.

There are a lot of times when we sit in Church - and I actually have sat in Church and listened to the sermons, too - and we listen as if we are consumers of religion and consumers of ministry. Paul has a different idea, and I believe Jesus has a different idea. Jesus has just gone about all over Galilee. He has been on the road for a while. I believe there are about ten miracles that have just taken place, the last of which is the raising of that young girl from death, and Jesus is letting them know that, having just come from proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom and doing all this, He sees that He can't get it done by Himself. O.K.? He has been all over Israel, but He realizes that, by Himself, He is not going to get everything done. So, He gives to His disciples the challenge. He tells them, and He gives them authority and asks them to go out into the people of the House of Israel, the lost sheep, to proclaim the Good News, and to cast out demons, heal the sick, and cure every illness.

What's the Good News that He is asking them to preach? Does anybody have a quick thumbnail of what the Good News is that Jesus is asking the disciples to preach? Look for the second to the last line in the Gospel. "As you go, proclaim the Good News, 'The Kingdom of Heaven has come near'" The Kingdom of Heaven has come near - not the Kingdom of Heaven will be here in a week; we're waiting for it! - the Kingdom of Heaven has come near. When those disciples have preached God's Good News - when those disciples have ministered the ministry of compassion and healing; when those disciples have taken the risks that Jesus has taken in His preaching - the Kingdom of Heaven has come near. Jesus is asking His disciples to move from being consumers of ministry to being providers of ministry. Jesus is asking us to shift from being people who come to Church, Sunday by Sunday, hoping we will hear something that gives us comfort and gives us a reason to go back out again and be strong, and changing us to being people who hear a message that inspires us to go out and proclaim the Kingdom when we leave here. Sunday by Sunday, we say at the end of our service, "Go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit; go into the world in the name of Christ". But yet we often leave just kind of reflecting on how good it felt to have been here. This is a substantial and important and crucial change that Jesus now takes, and, instead of saying, "It is all on Me", He has become aware that He can't cover the turf all my Himself, so, to the disciples, who have been with Him and have observed Him casting out demons, healing the sick, and even raising the dead, He tells them, "You go and do the same thing".

Jesus tells us, this morning that those of you who are justified by faith, who stand in the Grace of Jesus Christ; and those of you who hope to boast of being a part of God's glory, you have two things in which you have to boast first.

First, we have to boast of sharing in the ministry of Jesus Christ. That is one of the things that we can start with right now. We need to boast about being participants and providers of the ministry of Jesus Christ.

There is a second thing. We need to be willing to boast that we share in the cost of that ministry, in the suffering of Christ, and in the challenge and risk that Jesus took in order to do all the things that He did. We are invited, likewise, to take those same risks, to share in that same suffering, and to boast of paying, with Christ, that same cost.

So, I would invite you to just think about this one transition - the transition from being consumers of ministry to being providers of ministry. I don't know if you have ever thought of yourselves in that way, but every single one of us here, instead of Jesus sending out 12, think of Jesus today sending out approximately 170 people into this world, and saying to each one of us, "Go out into the world, and, if you run into anybody who is sick, pray for them; if you run into demons, cast them out; if you look at somebody who is waiting for the Kingdom of God, proclaim it and let them know that the Kingdom of Heaven has come near." And I wonder what the world around us would look like next week?

I tell you it was kind of fun at 8:00, having an earthquake come in. "I meant it!" You know?! "I meant it! Don't make me do this again"- kind of thing! I can't guarantee an earthquake every time, but my hope is that there is a quake inside of you - that there is something inside of you that realizes that we have been justified by faith. Our life in this Church is not about, week by week, coming here, just hoping that God will eventually love us; but realizing that, through Christ, we are there, and now God wants us to get on about the business of being the people of God - proclaiming the Good News that the Kingdom of Heaven has come near, casting out the demons, healing the sick, cleansing the lepers, and even raising the dead - shifting us from being just consumers of ministry to being, on behalf of Christ and through the Grace of God, providers of the same ministry that Jesus provided to the people with whom He came into contact.

AMEN