A dear, dear friend of mine, who is an associate rector in a large west coast parish, called me about three months after she had started her new job. As we talked about our new work and how things were going, she shared that she had already been reprimanded for the way she offered the dismissal at the end of the Holy Eucharist each week. Apparently a number of parishioners had expressed concern that she needed to say those closing words, “LET US GO FORTH IN THE NAME OF CHRIST,” with a little less zeal and enthusiasm. We had just graduated from seminary. She just didn’t quite know how to take the critique. On the one hand, she found the comment kind of ludicrous and on the other, she was really hurt. Here she was, new, trying to do her job well, and she just wasn’t being received by this community that she had gone to serve. In her freshly ordained joy she had turned off people in those pews. They were above such silliness. Church is about restraint, church is about good manners and clothes and listening intently to learn something and then praying quietly with a meditative heart. These people were incensed that she would virtually bounce down the aisle, turn at the last pew, throw her arms up in the air and say, “GO FORTH IN THE NAME OF CHRIST !” She said she had tried to be more sedate in her delivery. The following two weeks after her scolding, as she calls it, she said, “go forth in the name of Christ.” But quickly she realized she couldn’t do it. Slowly her enthusiasm crept back in and she decided that the congregation would just have to adjust. In her mind those six little words are what this business of being a Christian is all about.
What does it mean to gather for prayer, for singing, for renewal, for a glimpse of the kingdom if we aren’t then inspired to take that joy back into the world? What is our faith if it hinges on this one day of week when we gather here if it doesn’t hinge on the other six days going out? Every time we gather for the Great Thanksgiving, for Holy Eucharist, be it every week or just once a month, we are sent forth in the name of Christ and with a resounding reply we say, “thanks be to God.” So after we gather here in this place we are sent out each week into the world and if we don’t go forth then this coming together is lost.
The Gospel lesson from Mark this morning has two parts. The first section shows Jesus returning to His hometown of Nazareth after being on this great journey of teaching and preaching throughout the land. He has done great miracles, like healing, we just heard last week about the hemorrhaging woman and the young girl who was thought to be dead but no indeed, was not. As Jesus arrived from the Temple in Nazareth he has his disciples and others, followers, right there with Him, in tow. As He speaks to the people in that Temple they take offense at this hometown boy who has returned with this absurd notion that He is some kind of prophet, that He is some kind representative of God. Or that He might be the Son of God. They see the disciples gathered around Jesus and it’s clear that He is a respected followed Rabbi. They’ve even heard, through the grapevine, all the great works He’s done, yet in their eyes He is just one of those local kids made good. I mean a noble profession and all, right, the good news of God? But God? Son of God? The Messiah? Not likely, however, it is important to note as we consider the second part of this mornings lesson, Jesus might have left there defeated and deflated, but He didn’t. He left there and went on and continued doing His work, preaching and teaching and healing. That rejection just kept Him going, it didn’t say stop, it said keep on. It’s not about how He was received, it was that He was true to the call to go and do that work.
So in the second half of the Gospel lesson this morning, Jesus is now sending His disciples out, two by two, to carry on this work. It seems a very scary idea to ponder this, being called out. I mean who are the disciples to teach that same message, to heal the sick? Could they possibly have the same powers as Jesus? Could we have those same powers? What does it mean for us to be “sent out” and for us to “go forth” in our lives?
Well, Jesus takes this passage and He sets it by telling the disciples and us four things. First and foremost He gives these disciples the authority to go out, to go out and to heal, to go out and preach, to go out and teach, To be like Him in the world, to be that presence. And each of us through Jesus’ death and resurrection are given that same power to go out that door and into the world, to preach and teach and confess. All of us are given that. In this passage Jesus gives this authority to His disciples and in turn gives this to generations on and on to be that good news.
Second, He sends them in pairs. They are never alone in this work. They go out together. And we too, in this calling to go out each week, are never alone. We have this community that comes together week in and week out and we support each other in that work out and beyond these walls. We support and we hold each other accountable. That’s the role of having a community. We do this Christian work, this call to live the good news, we do this in community, and we do it together. Even when we stand alone, we stand together.
Three, Jesus tells the disciples they gotta shed the extra food, the cloaks, the shoes, and the money. They need to unburden themselves with the heaviness of stuff. They have to leave those things behind that will keep them from focusing on the work that Jesus has sent them to do. The life that Jesus has sent them to live. So we too, in our own life, have to shed some of our baggage before we can really be free to go out. What that baggage is from life to life varies. But it’s that baggage that gives us this security and sense of control of our life of comfort. Is it security of job and wealth? Is it being smart enough to figure it all out by ourselves? Is it just being distracted in all the business to even be able to think about what God is calling us to do? Jesus says we have to leave some of that at the door before we can go out. We bring it in, we offer it up, we offer it up on our prayers, and we say let us leave this here so we can be free and lighter to go out and do this work.
That stuff, be it fear, be it work, be it whatever it is in our life, is a false security. What Jesus asked of those disciples and asks of us, is to trust. Trust that God is going to give us what we need and provide us with the real strength and the real security.
Four, be prepared for some rejection. But, that rejection doesn’t change the power or the importance of this work. Jesus tells the disciples that they too will be rejected as He has been in His own hometown. Yet they’re to dust off their feet, to leave and move on and never look back. Because we are called to go out and do this work, not to bring in the masses and to change hearts, but to change our hearts. And if we are true to that work it will change, people will change but that can’t be our motivation. Some people will love to hear what we have to say and others won’t. But we say it anyway and we live it anyway. We understand the rejection is part of the game. We are called to profess the good news. We are called to go out.
When we go out, we go out rejoicing. If you come here week in and week out and it’s just today and nothing else happens on those other six days, what’s the point? All that conviction, all that love, all that faithfulness sits right in this room. It’s gotta go out, that’s what it’s about.
So, the way we live at work, the way we go to school, the way we meet the person who is not so friendly to us on the street, the way we drive in Boston, the way we stand in line at the airport with the 9,000 other people going on the same flight with you we get to choose how we react and respond and being in this place and understanding that good news gives us perspective. To be and live in the world in a different way. For those six days to mirror and look like the kingdom we experience in this community, in this life here at Trinity and in worship.
So, I want to give a big call out to my friend out in California and say that on this day may we GO FORTH IN THE NAME OF CHRIST. |
