July 8, 2007 – Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
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As a member of the Baby Boom, I enjoy reading articles about my generation, but I really like those surveys that comment on the ideas and ideals of the next generations: the Busters, Gen-Xers and so forth. A few days ago I discovered that the “Number One Fear” in America has been replaced: no longer does public speaking hold the top spot, which it is has for years, even superceding death. Now, the number one fear in America (as expressed by those generations,) is “looking stupid.” I wonder if that is, perhaps, the real reason why public speaking previously held the title for so long, because people were actually afraid of “looking stupid” but were also afraid to admit that fear!
Last Wednesday, I watched the antidote to these fears as I sat on the sidewalk of my neighborhood and watched the annual Stilwell Fourth of July parade. Now if any of you have not attended this “slice of Americana,” I highly recommend it – it’s like watching a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. But what really delighted me was watching the little kids run into the street to retrieve candy, weaving in and out of the parade “floats” having the time of their lives. THEY were not afraid of looking stupid, they were just full of the joy of being a child, the abandonment of a holiday celebration, and the sheer fun of living in the moment. For a moment I thought, “Hey! We’re grown-ups! We should know better!” Because basically, I think it’s not “looking stupid,” but being stupid that is what we really fear. No one likes to be wrong, or foolish, or make a mistake – but maybe we have confused being stupid with looking stupid – and (if I haven’t confused you already let me add) what Christians really need is to LIVE STUPID, or live without the fear of abandoning ourselves to something out of our control.
Let me explain what I mean by using today’s Gospel lesson : How smart was Jesus?
Here is a man who had sent out his 12 apostles a few chapters earlier; they had returned from their mission decrying the fact that they could do no deeds of power. So Jesus sends the 2nd wave: 70 to go out and do what the 12 were unable to do, only this time he sent more people, and he sent them out in pairs. (Of course I will not be able to pass up this opportunity to point out that this is Biblical precedent for clergy couples…) What had worked for God and Noah, would now allow those out on their mission to encourage and support each other when the work became hard, or frustrating, or empty.
Second, Jesus sent them to houses. For the first 10 chapters of Luke we have seen how important hospitality was in homes of the day. In fact, all this time Jesus and his followers have pretty much been eating and drinking and sleeping through the kindness of strangers.
And third, Jesus told them what to say: to open their conversations with the sharing of Peace (in Hebrew, shalom, meaning wholeness, harmony) and “The Kingdom of God has come near…” Just a moment for a sidebar on the Kingdom of God. In Luke’s gospel and, in fact, in all the gospels combined, Jesus speaks about nothing as much as he speaks about the Kingdom of God. It was Jesus’ passion, his mission, to announce that the reign of God was drawing near, and that the rule of the kingdoms that these people were so familiar with - Rome and Jewish rulers – was now to be seen from the perspective of an alternate way of life: life in God’s kingdom, where God has dominion. Jesus spent his life speaking to everyone about it.
We followers of Jesus, often model our own “telling” of this good news from what we call The Great Commission in Matthew 28. You probably learned it as “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” But then came the unfortunate translation in the NRSV which reads, “Go into all the world and make disciples of all peoples…” I don’t know about you, but the idea of making someone be a disciple smacks of the “Do you know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior? Or If you die tonight, do you know you will go to heaven?” school of questioning. Never very effective in my experience. No, we are NOT called to save each other (Jesus already did that.) We are simply instructed to “go.” And perhaps a better reading would be “Go everywhere and disciple everyone…”
In that way we are simply showing people that we are followers of Jesus, and inviting them to follow as well. Because, do not forget the words of the hero, Buckaroo Banzai, “No matter where you go, there you are…” And wherever you are, you can choose: “Will this be about me? Or will this be about God?” Simple Instructions for Christians, from Jesus in the book of Luke – but we’re afraid to go out, afraid to be rude, afraid of looking stupid.
Sometimes I think that we really are not very smart, as followers of Jesus. If Pastor Roger’s retelling of the “Bring a Friend Sunday” debacle last week wasn’t proof enough, (the lowest attendance ever at Advent, because no one wanted to ask a friend to come with them, and thus did not attend themselves so that they wouldn’t look stupid showing up with out a friend!)
We seem to have gotten turned around and heard the “Go therefore” as “drag ‘em all in. Kelly Fryer makes a good argument when she reminds us that Jesus was always going – going to Capernaum, going to the Galilee, going to Jerusalem. He never sat down at the synagogue in Nazareth and said, “Come and see – I’ll have three services every Saturday, youth programs and fellowship events and all kinds of good ministries for you to become involved in.”
Jesus went. Because Jesus knew how to form community long before Paul Tillich said, “Every minister who is proud of his/her smoothly-running or quickly-growing church should ask whether the church is able to make its members aware of their sickness, and give them courage to accept that they are healed.” If that isn’t happening in this place, then this place is just a community center. If Christians are just folks “looking good in the neighborhood,” raising good, moral and responsible kids; working hard to be good productive members of society; living lives to satisfy and fulfill our own happiness, then our “Come and See” becomes “Look at Me” and it will FAIL. Meanwhile, the world goes on as usual, being ruled and run by the powerful, the wealthy, and the violent, while God continues to call us and send us – patiently, ever so patiently, calling and sending and calling and sending…to a world that is so desperate for New Life.
For the Christian Church, the Kingdom of God means that our “Come and See” must take on a different focus: more like the old adage of “one beggar telling another where to find bread.”
How Smart is God to Surprise the World with Foolishness? In First Corinthians 1:27 we read, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise…” God uses each and every one of us, uniquely: because God needs different personalities, different gifts, different stories in different places to connect with all the people in all the places of this world. Author Marcus Borg stated recently in an article in The Lutheran, “Jesus was an activist who challenged the powers that ruled the world and enlisted others to do so…and the combination of religious collusion with imperial power killed him.” Hear that again: the combination of religious collusion with imperial power killed him.” THAT should shake us right to our Christian American core. Especially as we celebrated the 4th of July, when 13 colonies decided to LIVE STUPID, (so to speak,) to look foolish to the rest of the world and to Declare their Independence.
Now, How Smart Would We Be to Model God & Tell Stories? When you go and speak “Peace,” there is always that simple moment when you know you could step in and connect for God… You know, like when a co-worker shares with you that their mother has just died; or a classmate of yours at school is feeling bad because their friends have let them down, or the person you sit next to at the soccer field confides that her husband is an alcoholic – those are the moments when your “peace” is returned. First, you hear their story; then you tell yours – and where it connects with God’s story will be taken care of, because most people in pain will respond to God’s heart in a real person.
And don’t rejoice if they listen; rejoice that you were sent! And remember, the Kingdom of God is near because YOU are near. So I invite you, to go out and “Live Stupid!” For you carry the Kingdom of God into this world. In fact, you ARE the Kingdom of God. Amen.
