I speak in the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
So today's gospel reading is the tail end
of a long discourse from Jesus, from which we've
been hearing over the last several weeks.
It's in this discourse that Jesus
addresses his disciples, revealing to them
the nature of the ministry that they
are choosing to embark on.
Jesus knows what lies ahead, and he
wants to make sure his disciples know too.
This discourse, though initially addressed
to Jesus' first few followers, still echoes through the years.
And through it, Jesus speaks to those
who would choose to follow him in any time and place,
including us, some 2,000 years later,
still seeking to take our part in the mission and ministry
of Jesus ongoing in the world.
In this 10th chapter of Matthew, the first followers of Jesus
truly begin to come into focus.
What their ministry will be like, who they are,
the chapter begins with a list of their names, all 12 of them,
the apostles of Christ, called such because they
will be the ones sent directly by Jesus into the world.
In Jesus' name, they will heal, they will cleanse,
they will welcome and share and make whole.
They will proclaim the good news of God's love
and care for a wonderful but wayward people.
Theirs will be a ministry of actions.
They will go into the towns.
They will seek the lost.
They will teach.
And they will share the ministry of Jesus
right in the streets and in the cities
and in the homes of the people of Israel.
And they will remind the people that God is always with them.
This is nothing small that they take up the mission
that they are setting out in.
They are commissioned by Jesus to work directly in his name,
to continue loving and healing and reconciling.
But right from the beginning, the disciples
are told exactly what kind of work
they will be taking up, the shape and the character of it.
Physically, theirs will be a trying ministry.
Theirs will be a ministry without security,
without roots or a place to call home.
They will be called to leave their possessions behind,
to take nothing with them, to accept no payment.
They will be called to truly and deeply rely on God's promise
that God always provides.
And moreover, and perhaps even more difficultly,
they will have to rely on the generosity of the people
around them in order to find food and shelter.
Jesus promises them a life of persecution,
of being dragged before kings and governors,
of being rejected by their own people,
even potentially by their own families,
for taking their part in proclaiming the kingdom of God.
But perhaps even more difficult than facing
a hostile foreign government is the process
of undertaking the arduous process
of ordering their own lives.
This chapter has included some difficult teachings from Jesus
about how the disciples and how we ourselves
should live our lives.
Just last week, we heard that whoever would follow God
and take up this ministry cannot do so
unless they learn to let go of the things in this life
that they cherish most.
Whoever loves father or mother more than me
is not worthy of me.
Whoever loves son or daughter more than me
is not worthy of me.
That's a tough thing to hear.
It's an even tougher task to live into.
Of course, God is not asking us to forsake our families
and our friends, our children, or our parents.
Jesus, though, is reminding his disciples in all places
and in all times that the true work of making God known
in the world starts in our own hearts,
when we truly and deeply learn to place God
at the center of our lives, when we seek and center ourselves
on the love of God, when God becomes
the foundation of everything we do,
only then can we truly love God, neighbor, and self
the way that God intended when God created us
and called us good.
The life of a disciple has and continues
to shake many different shapes over the course of history.
We who live comfortably in first world America
almost certainly take for granted
the ease with which we practice and express our faith,
the breadth in which we are allowed to seek and follow
the Holy Spirit and to live into that as individual churches
and individual members within those churches.
And for certain, it has always been
the case for our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Many even today must still find the courage and bravery
that those first few followers of Christ
needed in order to say yes to this ministry.
But perhaps to those of us who are comfortable,
Jesus' words speak all the more fiercely.
We who have the luxury and blessing
of living in a country where Christianity remains
the dominant religion.
My friends, we are still called to risk.
We are called to dare.
We are called to venture past the safe and comfortable bounds
of our lives in order to bring the good news of God
into the world around us, in order
to be the still working hands and feet of Christ
in a hurting world.
God calls us to seek and to serve,
to find those in the margins of our own cities and towns,
the people who are unloved, unwanted, and unaccepted.
We are still called to preach freedom
to the captive, love to the loveless,
dignity to those who are forgotten,
and worth to those who are deemed unworthy.
We, like those first apostles, still find ourselves
being sent by Jesus.
The ministry of God from the very beginning
has been one of doing and going and seeking.
God calls us out of ourselves and into the world.
God pulls us from the myth of comfort,
from the lure of complacency and into action,
into loving service of those around us.
We are not promised ease.
We are not promised safety.
But in truth, no disciple ever has been.
What we are promised is true joy and deep peace
that passes all understanding, peace that
allows us to dare when we take up this mission
and head out into the world, looking
for those who are lost and hurting around us.
What we are promised is a home in the Lord,
a place to rest from our ministry with God,
a place to renew and revive before heading back out
into the work that has been ongoing since the fall of Adam
and Eve, and work that will continue
until the coming again of Christ.
And my friends, we are promised love, the knowledge
that God is always with us and always for us,
that we do not do this work alone.
That much we have always been promised.
So trust me, my friends, this discourse from Jesus
to any who would call themselves disciples may be difficult.
And it is as difficult for me as it is for anyone.
The lure of security and comfort and contentment
is just as powerful for me as it has been for anyone.
How easy it would be for me to say yes to my own needs
over and over again.
How easy it would be for me to only do God's work when
it was convenient for me, when it
fit into my tightly packed life.
How easy it would be to only go to the places and the people
in which I feel comfortable.
How easy it would be to drown out all of the voices
and write off all the people who don't agree with me.
And how very easy it would be to only love the people
that I actually like.
But to do that would be to miss the still, small, insistent
voice of God, inviting us to step out of our carefully
crafted comfort zones and into the wide, messy world full
of people who need the gifts that you have to share.
And most importantly, full of people
who need to know the knowledge of God's love
and the story of how it has changed and continues
to change your life.
Disciples of Christ through the centuries
have been blessed and challenged by this very same call.
And now we take our part in going out
into God's beloved creation to change it
and to be changed by it.
Amen.