St. James PC, Bellingham, WA
May 16, 2007
Presbytery of North Puget Sound
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
“Loosing Members”
I was asked to preach at the November Presbytery meeting in Pt. Townsend, but was unable to get to the meeting because the Keystone Ferry was closed due to stormy weather. Being asked to preach a second time reminds me of those contests where first prize is a week in Dover, DE and second prize is two weeks in Dover, DE. Try to skip out on preaching and they’ll make you do it twice!
SCRIPTURE READING
In Mrs. Hynson’s 10th grade English class I wrote a paper on J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. I got an A—which is only impressive if you count the fact that I didn’t read the book. Twenty-some years later—during the summer of 2005 I finally did read it. In Chapter 14, the main character, Holden Caulfield talks about the Bible and he says in raw honesty: I like Jesus and all, but I don’t care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the disciples, for instance. They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while he was alive, they were about as much use to him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting him down. I like almost anybody in the Bible better than the disciples. If you want to know the truth, the guy I like best in the Bible, next to Jesus, was the lunatic that lived in the tombs and kept cutting himself with stones. I like him ten times as much as the disciples.
He continues: I used to get into quite a few arguments about it, when I was at Whooten School, with this boy that lived down the corridor. He said that because JESUS picked the disciples, you were SUPPOSED to like them. I always said I KNEW he picked them, but that he picked them at RANDOM.
Holden sees through the stained glass glow that has illuminated the disciples down through the centuries and sees them as they first were. Ordinary. Common. Trudging through life—messing up. Arguing with their families. Getting frustrated at work. Fighting with their boss. Making mistakes. Sure, they are called by Jesus and they live life to the best of their ability, but more often than not, they come up lacking.
Or, maybe you want to make a case for defending the disciples. After all, the Bible at least gives us their names. In Luke 10, we read the story of Jesus commissioning the nameless seventy—or seventy-two—it depends on which translation you read. I tend to support the seventy-two version—thinking that would give you a nice biblical number of six groups of twelve—which, if you’ve ever done a capital campaign fund drive in the church using a hired consultant, you will know, IS the biblically required number of subcommittees you’ll need to get the job done.
So there they are—the nameless seventy-two. No PIF credentials. No curriculum vitae. Are they men, women, or some of each? Black, white? Young, old? Rich, poor? I suppose if it really mattered to the story Luke would have told us.
Luke does record the specificity of the instructions Jesus gives to them. Go and work the harvest. Don’t put your slippers in your suitcase. Better yet, leave your suitcase at home. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t lose your focus. Eat what they give you. And most importantly, give them a message from me. Tell them: The kingdom of God is near.
So off they go. They go to labor in the metaphorical fields ready for harvest and find it to be an enriching experience. Returning to base camp they marvel at what they’ve accomplished. Reveling in a power that is not their own, they pass around the high fives—they do the end zone touch down dance and chant the victory cheer. “We are number one! Even the demons submit to us!”
But they miss the point. They’re focused on evaluating the measurable and visible results of their efforts. They’ve missed the proverbial forest because they’re so enamored with the particular tree of demon exorcism that towers in front of them. It’s an all too typical malady of those of us who are called to work the harvest. Or maybe I’m just confessing my own lack of focus and that doesn’t happen to any of you?
The Jesus I hear in my own mind says to me, “Don’t get so uppity about the things you’ve done. Come back to earth. Don’t let your ego run away with you.” And a lot of times, it’s not so bad to have Jesus in my mind disciplining my ego, but what I find so remarkable about this story is that ego-dampening isn’t part of Jesus’ message.
Of course we don’t want to forget from whence comes our power and strength. But we also don’t want to underestimate our efforts. If taking too much credit for the things “we” accomplish swings in a dangerous direction, then so does not valuing our efforts enough—those times when we fail to see how our ministries fit into Jesus’ larger kingdom-building picture.
Maybe the seventy-two miss the real beauty of what they’ve accomplished because they can’t even begin to imagine that Jesus could use people like them. Maybe they seventy-two fear what Holden Caulfield suggests—that they are just a bunch of nobodies gathered together at random. So what can you really expect? Maybe that’s why whomping up a few demons seems so satisfying.
I don’t think we’re so different from the seventy-two. At one level we’re gathered somewhat randomly. One could argue that what holds us together is nothing more than that we all live life in Presbyterian churches in the geographic entity known as North Puget Sound Presbytery. And even that doesn’t bind us particularly close together. We’re big churches, small churches. Theologically conservative, theologically liberal. English speaking, Korean speaking. Evangelical or social justice focused—or, hopefully getting a good balance of each. Urban and rural. Churches on the peninsula and churches on the I-5 corridor.
So couldn’t we be a big gaggle of nobodys too? Gathered together at random? Deep down inside I think we all want to be a part of the coming kingdom of God. We want to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ. But maybe we’ve grown so used to being ordinary that we don’t expect very much from our efforts anymore. So we lower our expectations for what we might accomplish because it is easier that way.
Don’t misunderstand me. We mean well. We try to do meaningful mission together. We try to engage, equip, and encourage ministers and congregations. We try to foster growth in our churches. But then, like ordinary people we get bogged down in the details of what we’re doing. The number of churches in the presbytery goes up—and then it goes down. Fellowships charter and become fledgling churches and other churches move back to fellowship status. We take in 730 new members in a year and lose 571. The Easter peak attendance numbers free fall back to their expected place on the attendance graph. We attend workshops to explore new learning, but they only last a little over an hour. Tierra Nueva in Burlington continues to do great ministry, but once again this month they struggled to make payroll. We’ve formed a task force, but we still haven’t cured the homeless problem. We scratch our heads and look around, painfully aware of how common we really are. And we ask, “Where is the extraordinary in all that?” Jesus sends us out like the seventy-two—like lambs among the wolves—knowing that sometimes the wolf pack that most often bites at our heels is our own lack of imagination and appreciation for what the Spirit is able to accomplish through us. So easily we lose sight of the main thing and we get worked up about the wrong things. We lose sight of God’s purpose. We meet, regroup, rethink, revise, revision, and start again. We submit proposals, studies, and statistics. We sigh and we ask, “Where is the extraordinary in that?”
But Jesus comes into our meetings and our worship services and whispers, “I saw Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning!” WHAT? “I saw Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning!” We reread our reports and double check the numbers. Nothing extraordinary there. But again Jesus says: “I saw Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning!”
And then, by the prompting of the Spirit, we come to understand something we had previously missed. Then we know. Jesus sees something we cannot see. He sees our simple, mundane, everyday efforts through a much larger lens. Jesus is using us—this random group of disciples—he’s using us for something big, something gigantic—COSMIC even! In and through our little ordinary, everyday lives, Jesus is working out the kingdom of God. We look at the church and we see the ordinary—the mundane—the unspectacular—the routine. But Jesus looks and sees heaven and earth being transformed through us. He sees us bringing in the kingdom of God one day at a time. Fellowships started. Candidates certified. Families being fed. Children being taught. Bridges of peace being built. The kingdom of God is nearer than we’ve ever allowed ourselves to dream.
Two weeks ago a letter came across my desk from an agency of our denomination which, for its own protection, shall remain nameless. The letterhead lists it as an entity of the General Assembly Council. The letter’s purpose is to encourage pastors and churches to not get demoralized by shrinking numbers, however, there is an unbelievably glorious typo in the first sentence. It says: “In this era when we hear about our denomination loosing members and churches hunkered down in ‘survival’ mode there is another story to be told and it is a much more positive one.” What could be more positive then our denomination loosing members? Worried about losing members?—that’s ordinary mundane thinking that has lost sight of the big picture. Loosing members? Well, that’s another story entirely—it’s the story of Luke 10. It’s the story of Jesus and the seventy-two. He looses them on the surrounding Judean countryside with astounding results—Satan falls from heaven like a flash of lightning. That’s a story that keeps me from getting demoralized.
Several years ago I got a book for Christmas that has made me laugh and cry—sometimes on the same page. It has encouraged and inspired me. It’s a fictional autobiography of Pastor Dave, a Presbyterian minister in North Haven, Minnesota called, Good News from North Haven, written by Michael Lindvall. Chapter Two [excerpted below] is called, “The Little Things.”
The coming of our fourth winter in North Haven has been for me like a clock striking the hour. One, two, and three made a set, a time-trinity, but this fourth has drifted upon me whispering: “Long time, now, long time.”
[I’m at] a perch from which one is inclined to do some reconnoitering. Forty years lived and four of them in this one place and what difference has it all made? Second Presbyterian Church has a net membership of two fewer souls than four years ago. There are four more children registered in the Sunday school. I have preached 187 sermons here, baptized 8 babies and 1 middle-aged lady. I have married 17 couples and buried 28 people.
At current pace, that means over the next twenty-five years: 1,175 more sermons, 50 more babies, 6 middle-aged ladies, 104 happy couples, and 175 funerals, not counting mine. Is anybody keeping track? And if all this is being tallied in some cosmic computer, will my file be distinguishable from that of a million other well-meaning clergy who worked hard enough and did a pretty good job?
Sunday afternoons, after the peak of morning worship, are usually a spiritual valley, but one was deeper than usual. From it, everything I’d ever done in my ministry was shaded to look like a series of fumbles and small-time blunders. This last one was symbolic of them all. One day I would step across home plate, pass from the field, and in no time drop right out of the world’s memory. Any squeak I had made in history would soon be silenced out. The little wake that trailed my stern would soon smooth over.
I couldn’t abide my office the next Tuesday morning, so I went to get my haircut. The town barber’s name is Harry. He’s about seventy and a chatty type with a repertoire of stale barber jokes. No pension, I suppose, so he keeps cutting hair. He says he’s “R.C.,” but I don’t think he’s been in church for years. He starts every one of my haircuts with “I’m Catholic, but . . .” I think he says that so I won’t ask him to come to church. Harry asked what kinds of things ministers did on the other six days of the week. He wasn’t teasing – it was an honest question. I talked about meetings, hospital visits, and counseling with people who had problems to talk over.
Something I said touched a nerve in Harry and he started to talk. He talked about being a kid and what a pain it was. He started to talk about his father, whom he called “my old man.” This seventy-year-old was calling his father “old man.” My haircut was done; we were alone in the shop. A scissors in one hand and a comb in the other, he was resting them both on my shoulders as he talked. He talked about how his old man mercilessly beat him and his mother most every Saturday night. He talked about how afraid he was, about how much he loved and hated his father. He said he had never told anybody about this before, not in sixty years. His mother, he said, carried the secret to her grave. Nobody had ever guessed. We were both facing the big barbershop mirror. His eyes were reddening. We looked at each other in the mirror in a way we would not have face to face. I reached to my shoulders and held his hands, and said something about when you forgive somebody it doesn’t mean that you are saying that what they did was all right.
That evening I had a meeting at church but got home fairly early. Annie said that the kids were waiting up for me and would be wanting their story and kisses. I was exhausted and would much sooner have dropped myself in front of the television. But I went upstairs and found two little peanuts fighting sleep. They had the book ready, a slip of yellow construction paper marking the spot where we had stopped reading the night before. So I read chapter six of Ramona the Pest. They fell asleep before its end. I kissed them both and sat at the edge of the bed for a moment and said their prayers for them.
And sitting there it came to me that of all the meetings I had attended in the last few days, of all the sermons I’d preached, of all the programs I’d introduced or tried to introduce, the most important things I had done in all my busy-ness were to touch Harry the barber’s hands and to read chapter six of Ramona the Pest. These were important things –not because the other things were unimportant. They were important because the mark a man or a woman makes on this world is most often a trail of faithful love, and quiet mercies, and unknown kindnesses.
Like the seventy-two, like Pastor Dave in North Haven, Jesus commissions us to proclaim, embody, and co-create the kingdom with him. We worry that we’re not doing enough because we fail to see Jesus working within us. And yet, within the ordinary mundane things we do, the kingdom of God is taking shape. Two by two Jesus looses us on the world—to be a sign—a signal—an enactment of the coming kingdom. Satan is losing ground and God’s kingdom is busting out! In us! In our churches, Sessions, communities, families, and mission projects! The kingdom is bursting forth in our worship—the songs we sing, the stories we tell! In our simple, yet not very extraordinary lives.
We look at our congregations and presbytery and see the ordinary. Jesus watches us and proclaims to our utter amazement, “I saw Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning!”