Something for You to Do : Calling, Sending

From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

4 July 2010, am

Rev. Dr. Raymond Pelly

• 2 Kings 5:1-14
• Psalm 30
• Galatians 6
• Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Two weeks ago I ended my sermon by saying: ‘If we are willing (in whatever way) to put our lives into the hands of the living God, we might experience, ‘first a judgment (or a wake-up call); then a grace (some healing & gift of new & surprising life); finally, something for you to do’.

This morning I invite you to explore further that ‘something for you to do’; & this because our Gospel today is about that very thing: the gift of God & the call of God & what that might mean for us personally.

Our Gospel (from Luke 10) is an expansion of what Jesus has already said in Chapter 9: ‘Jesus called the twelve together & gave them power & authority over demons & to cure diseases, & he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God & to heal’ – the proclamation & living of the kingdom, power over evil, & a mandate to heal – an extraordinarily powerful package – what Jesus was all about.

In Luke 10 Jesus’ call to mission is extended to a wider group – this time 70 people – & here we learn more of the characteristic pattern of activity of those called. First, there’s heaps to do & never enough workers, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few’.

Just recently I made a list of some of the urgent tasks facing the Church at the present time. Here’s a cut down version:

• Building Christian Community: good worship/liturgy, preaching, pastoral care; leadership; education; arranging & leading retreats; effective fund-raising.
• How to build teams in ministry & mission which involve clergy & lay working together.
• Christian outreach & service to society in responding to human need & in advocacy/involvement in justice issues.
• Credibility, communication of the Gospel in a secular society; sustained study by clergy & others that addresses the question of credibility.
• Working with people at different stages in life’s journey: children & youth; adults & family; older people.
• Counseling & spiritual direction: identifying & equipping people able to teach & encourage others to pray &/or able to offer professional-standard counseling to the broken & broken-hearted.
• Being able to handle creatively & relate to people who differ from us by class, race, gender or sexual orientation.
• Awareness of one’s own culture – how this can be fostered in the light of the Gospel; ability to relate positively to people of other cultures in Aotearoa/NZ.
• Closely related: ecumenical relations with people (in the local area) of other Christian traditions & other Faiths.
• Becoming involved in action – locally or globally – that relate to effective and informed care of the environment.

Running right through all of this - & if we bring it back to the Gospel – is the proclamation of the Gospel in word or action, the overcoming of evil, & the on-going task of healing ourselves & others, God’s people, God’s world.

The images that come to me as I say this are twofold:

• that the preaching & acting out of the kingdom is like the Karanga or call of welcome at a Powhiri; a call to enjoy (& respect) the welcome & hospitality of a sacred place; but also a call that calls forth a response; the call that comes from the Tangata Whenua, standing on their Turangawaewae, & the answering call of the Manuhiri, the visitors;

• that the Church in this perspective is like a body that breathes; or a group that comes together & scatters; week by week; out there during the week in all the tasks of life & mission; but together on the Lord’s Day, to worship, hear the Gospel afresh, to recover vision, to be refreshed & encouraged

& all this in the knowledge that just as God in Christ is Lord of the Church, this Lordship is no less real in the world (& in every part of it). We’re talking about the kingdom, always more than the Church.

Our Gospel tells us more & in specific detail about what is involved in hearing & responding to God’s call.

It is, first of all, about being as gentle as lambs; & people, moreover, whose life-styles are cut down & simple. The kind of message this would impart to would-be disciples is perhaps this: that the life of the missioner (or the person called & sent) needs to be like that of the sender – Jesus: simple & uncluttered, all about service, not power; about empowering & enabling & supporting people in their life-journeys as they discover their own freedom & personal maturity; about being available – healing in this sense.

Next, there is the message about peace. ‘Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house!”’ Coming back to the image of a welcome onto a Marae, Maraes are wonderful places for making friends, building relationships. Equally, there is, for the Christian disciple, the task of building relationships, relationships that are peaceful in the sense of being communicative, creative, loving, & just; this in our families, in the work-place or wherever people interact. Life is full of conflicts. Are we good at conflict resolution? Or are we part of the problem?

Paul builds on this when he says, ‘All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, & has given us the ministry of reconciliation’ (2 Corinthians 5:18). A true story that brings this home. Your average family: the daughter on OE, making one of her rare phone calls to parents; the father outraged by what he hears she is up to; the conversation getting more & more heated until finally he bangs down the phone & storms out of the house. The mother, naturally upset by all of this, goes over to her neighbour, a good friend, who actually has eight children. ‘How do you cope?’, she asks. ‘Always be the first to love’, comes back the reply.

‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ (Mathew 5:9) says Jesus, clearly reflecting the kind of person he was; out of which comes the integrity of his call to disciples to become just that: peacemakers; often a costly, lonely & difficult task. Again, Paul, ‘Bear one another’s burdens, & so fulfill the law of Christ’ (Galatians 6:2)- the same pattern: from Christ to disciple & back again for forgiveness & empowerment. For how are we to carry other peoples’ burdens if we do not allow our burdens to be carried by our loving & merciful God?

Here Psalm 30 has much to teach us. Listen to the prayer of the one who feels their life being drawn down into the Pit. ‘Hear the voice of my supplication,, am as I cry to you for help’. Not Superman or Superwoman able to take on the world in their own strength, but rather the humble person, the one who knows their need of God & who, out of their own experience of woundedness & healing, can offer healing & wisdom to others.

More important still is the fact that Luke’s account of mission (like Psalm 30), ends on a note of pure joy & rejoicing. ‘At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit & said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven & earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise & intelligent & have revealed them to infants’ (Luke 10:21); & our Psalm with its beautiful eloquence, ‘You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth & clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you & not be silent’.