In last week’s first reading, God told Abram to pack up his household, which included his wives, children, and salves, all his animals, and all his possessions, and move to somewhere God would reveal later. Sounds like a totally foolish thing to do, but Abram was a man of faith, and completely trusting God, he did as he was told. What an undertaking that must have been.
We join him again today, this time sitting out in the heat of the day at the entrance to his tent by the oaks of Mamre. We’ve missed some things that have occurred since last week’s lesson. God has renamed Abram as Abraham, and Sarai as Sarah, and he has promised the 100-year-old Abraham that his 90-year-old wife will bear him a son. As we encounter Abraham today, we do not know why he sat under the trees, but perhaps he needed to think about everything that has happened to him, and the promise God still makes, which will insure that Abraham will be the father of a great nation.
As he sits there in the heat relaxing, recovering from the many trials he has undergone since we last met him, he is undoubtedly thinking of God, and of what God has asked of him and of what God has promised him in return. Just then he looks up, and sees three men.
When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant.”
Abraham is not in the slightest doubt as to who these men are. His response to them demonstrates he sees before him the Divine. As he has been waiting on the Lord, and wondering what will happen next, his answer has arrived.
One of the visitors speaks to Abraham, saying, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son”
Not too surprisingly, the ninety-year-old Sarah laughs when she hears this as she stands inside the tent. And then, “The Lord said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh, and say, “Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?” Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son’”
Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah was 90 when their first child together, Isaac, entered the world. Despite God’s promise to Abraham, that He would make of Abraham a great nation, nothing could have been more unexpected, or more life changing, or more joyful for this elderly couple. Abraham had listened to the Lord, and waited on the Lord for direction and insight. On that day, near the oaks of Mamre, he might have been wondering “What comes next?” And he found out. The conception and birth of Isaac was the manifestation of God’s promise, and of God’s love.
Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness.
And as Jesus has travelled from place to place, His twelve faithful followers have gone with Him. Like Abraham, with complete trust they went where Jesus went, ate where He ate, slept where He slept, followed where He led. He was their Rabbi, their Teacher, and as they listened to His words and watched the miracles and works of compassion He performed, they always tried to take Him at His word, that “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” or to put it another way, live in this day, and don’t fret about the future.
We catch up with this ragtag group today as Jesus speaks in the synagogue. It is another normal day for the disciples. But on this day Jesus says something He may not have said before, He says to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” That was something to ponder, if the disciples had had the time to do so, but they don’t. A huge change it about to occur in their lives. Did you catch the moment it happened?
Jesus summoned His twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: - and their names are listed. But what has happened? Jesus summons His twelve disciples, and then we are given the names of the Apostles. Things have changed.
This is the time of year, here in Everett and environs, when school graduations occur. In today’s Gospel, this reading from Matthew marks the moment when the followers gathered around Jesus “graduated”, when Jesus seems to have decided that they knew enough, were formed and shaped and changed enough, to be sent out to share the mission and ministry with Him.
Unlike our contemporary graduates, it wasn’t that they’d completed a nice, tidy set course, with the required numbers of credit hours and proficiency tests and final papers. Discipleship isn’t as easily marked out and measured as that. It was more a matter of Jesus deciding that He’d taught them about all He could, at least for the moment. And He knew that the world needed their ministry.
Jesus called to Him his closest followers, the ones who’d been with Him longest and who He had observed the most closely, and passed on to them some of His power — the power to name and overcome evil, the power to heal and reconcile, power granted to Him by the heavenly Father, the one, holy and living God. And then he sent them out — commissioned them — with these instructions:
“As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons…Proclaim the Good News, ‘The kingdom of God has come near.’…It is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”
And off they went, to do the work in His name, as disciples now become apostles.
What comes next?
The disciples received their answer that morning. It didn’t tell them exactly what they’d face, whether things would be easy or difficult, whether they’d get it “right” every time, which from the book of Acts we know they didn’t. What it did do was set them on the road, what we sometimes call the Way of the Cross, the road to holiness.
What comes next for us?
First, we must decide if we are merely disciples, sitting in the comfortable pew, listening attentively to the words our Lord has spoken, or are we what Jesus expects us to be, calls us to be, His apostles, actively living His will and doing His work in this modern world. Many denominations, including ours, tend not to use either word, disciple or apostle when speaking of their members, the folks in the pews, preferring instead the word “followers” – but this does not change our responsibility to get out into the world and live our faith to the fullest.
Do any of you remember the old TV show Mission Impossible? Each week a small group of agents were assigned a task, and they were expected to accomplish it no matter what the personal cost. The information was contained on a then very advanced technological device, a reel-to-reel tape, which then self-destructed after the agents had heard it. Just before giving the assignment, the tape always said, “Your mission, should you choose to accept it”.
As Jesus’ apostles we are called to a “mission impossible”: to bring healing, reconciliation, and love to the world, in the power of the grace of God. Each of us has our own places to which we are called — families, homes, workplaces, clubs and groups — wherever there are people hurting, searching, in pain. Our world is as full as Jesus’ world was of people who are “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” And like the Mission Impossible agents, we always have a choice.
If we accept our calling, then, like the first apostles, we won’t be perfect. We’ll make mistakes, miss opportunities, welsh on our word, betray our Lord. But Jesus is endlessly forgiving. And he keeps sending us back out into the world, in His name. The first apostles, our forebears in the faith, turned the world upside down, in the power of God, and we are called to do likewise.
What comes next?
Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to go out from this service, this day, to the world we live in. Name evil and injustice and sleazy practices and work to change them. Touch the sicknesses of the world — fear, rage, racism, people set against people, hopelessness, despair, emptiness, pain — and heal it. Say to the world, “The Kingdom of God has come near.” And don’t worry about how to accomplish it. We are called to live it in our lives, and the words and the ways will come, through the Spirit of God moving through in us. Thus our “Mission Impossible” becomes “mission possible” in the power of God. If we choose3 to accept it, this is our mission. How do you choose?
Let us pray:
Almighty, ever-living God, help us to ever obey you willingly and promptly. Teach us how to serve You with sincere and upright hearts in every sphere of life. Help us to be patient when we wonder “what comes next”, to be open to receiving Your direction, and give us grace to act according to Your will. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.