 |
 
|
|
Who We Are - Sermon, Sunday, August 3rd, 2003
Return to the sermon archive.
MARK 6:7-13 as follows —
Calling the Twelve to him, he sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits. These were his instructions: "Take nothing for the journey except a staffÑno bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra tunic. Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them." They went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.
Dear Christians,
Here at Faith we've become quite familiar with with the "calling process." That's our term for how we get "called workers" for our churches and schools. It's our procedure for getting a pastor or a teacher to serve us in what we call the "public ministry." This congregation has gone through that process a number of times in the past dozen years. Since 1991, when I was called to be the pastor, we've also called seven vicars, four teachers, one missionary to serve six months, and an outreach pastor. This year, since March, we've extended no less than five calls for a teacher for our school!
Even for the members who participate in the process, it can still be kind of mysterious or puzzling. Sometimes it's hard for people to distinguish between "calling" and "hiring." We speak of it as a "divine call" and yet there are a lot of human factors involved. We can be surprised by the responses, or frustrated by delays. Yet we continue to believe that the Lord Jesus, the Head of the Church, works through this process to give his church the gospel servants he wants to give. We continue to believe that ultimately, Christ is the Caller.
Our text gives us a look at the call from a slightly different angle than we normally view it. It centers our attention not on the calling but the SENDING, on those who are sent and even more so on the One who sends them. There are some things that the sent ones need to learn in regard to trusting the Sender. They're good things for us all to understand, because we're all involved — whether we are the sent ones (like myself) or the people who are served by them and serve with them (that's you)!
THE SENT ONES LEARN TO TRUST THE SENDER
For a church that's grounded in Scripture as the Word of God, the first lesson is maybe the easiest. For us, there's no confusion or argument about what the church's mission is, nor about the work of the church's ministers. When the Son of God had completed his saving work, when the risen Christ was about to return to heaven, he said, simply: "Preach the Gospel to every creature." "Make disciples of all nations."
It's clear, then, WHAT his gospel servants are to do: Proclaim God's Word, communicate Law and Gospel to the lost so that by the Spirit's power they can be brought to faith in their Savior. Christ also sends his servants, as we heard in Eph. 4, "to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up." His workers are sent also to preach and teach the Word to believers, so they will remain in faith and become mature and serve their Savior faithfully.
But those are pretty broad terms: "preach the good news, make disciples, equip the saints." Some details need to be spelled out, and that's what Jesus did as he prepared to send the Twelve on this training mission. Of course they were already being trained. Just being with Jesus, watching him in action, listening to his Word — that was indispensable training. But they also needed to learn by doing, so he called them together and gave them instructions. First, Jesus defined the ministry they were to do; he spelled out the who, where, what and how of this mission. Who? The Twelve. Where? Only among the Jews. What? Proclaim the kingdom of God; call on sinners to repent and believe in Jesus as the promised Savior. How? Go out there, two by two, and talk to people.
This was truly a "divine call" for the disciples. It came directly from the Lord, and in it he clearly defined their ministry. He does the same today, through his church. He does it through the believers whom he has entrusted with his Word and Sacraments, through the saints whom he has commissioned to go for him into all the world. Our Savior, in the Word, has defined the work in broad terms and gives us the freedom to work out the details. Through his church, the Lord determines the specifics of each call — the who, where, what and how. The callers determine the type of ministry — for example, Outreach Pastor or 5th & 6th grades teacher. But both those the callers and the called have the confidence that it is Christ who sends the workers. And we all learn to trust the Sender to define our ministry, the work we are to do.
The second lesson might be a little more difficult than the first. Those who are sent must also learn to trust the Sender to provide for them as they do his work. Each time we issue a call, we promise to support the worker. Naturally, those who are called are interested in the details of salary, housing, health insurance, moving expenses, etc. When Jesus sent the Twelve, it wasn't quite as complicated as all that. In fact, his instructions may have raised some eyebrows: "Take nothing for the journey," he said. If you have a staff, OK, take it. But no food, no money, no money bag. Sandals, sure, but the ones you have on will do just fine, and don't worry about taking an overcoat.
The natural question ("How are we supposed to survive?") he answered in his next words: "Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town." Some people would receive their message, and would honor the Sender by looking after the sent ones. The Twelve were to accept whatever was offered to them; in fact, Jesus urged them to be content and not go looking around for a better deal. These future apostles would learn by experience to trust the Sender to supply all their needs as they went about his work.
How the Lord does that has not changed, and is a principle set down more than once in Scripture. Paul wrote, "The Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel," and in Galatians we read, "Anyone who receives instruction in the word must share all good things with his instructor." The Lord uses those who are served to provide for those who serve them. Those who are sent indeed learn to trust the Sender. We learn to be confident that he will provide and content with what he does provide. Those who are served by the sent ones and serve with them can have that same confidence! Together we learn to trust that the Sender will indeed supply all that we need to get the job done.
The third and maybe the hardest lesson of the three, is to learn to trust the Sender to bless the ministry of those he sends. You know, Satan is always digging holes for us to fall into, whether we're the sent ones or those who work with them. One is the pit of pride. That's when things are going great and it looks like our ministry is a roaring success. Then we're tempted to take credit for it, to imagine that any success must be due to our brilliant ideas or magnetic personality or just plain hard work...and down we go into the hole!
The other pit is discouragement. That's when things are not going well, and it appears that our ministry is faltering or failing. How easily, then, we get trapped and want to throw up our hands and say, "It's useless! Why bother?" Or, maybe we fall into the pit called "desperation." We start to think that we have to adopt this new method or business model or that gimmick that this other church is using, since it seems llke the plain old Word of God by itself just isn't working any more.
Jesus warned the Twelve about disappointing results, about people who would not listen to them. In those cases, he said, "shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them." When rejected, they were to be satisfied that they had done what he'd sent them to do; they'd gone to those people and preached the Word. That's such a key thing for us to remember, as we work together in the Gospel ministry. The one thing you and I are not responsible for, the one thing we cannot control nor produce, is the results! That is entirely up to the Holy Spirit!
But, dear coworkers in Christ, there is one thing we ARE responsible for, one thing which we CAN control and produce — the effort to serve our Savior faithfully. And what we need to learn is to simply trust the Sender to bless our efforts. Mark tells us that the Twelve just did it; they went and preached that people should repent, and Jesus blessed their ministry with his power. Surely we can expect the same! We go with the authority Christ gives; we are authorized to announce forgiveness of sins in his name. We go with his power; we know that the Gospel is "the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes."
The One who sends us to share that good news with each other and the world is the One who was sent from heaven to be our Savior. God's Son was sent to live and die in our place. Jesus was sent to atone for our sins with his own blood (also our sins of not trusting him as we should, and not serving him faithfully). He's the One who rose from death in victory and sends us to announce that victory. He's the One who still today, as Lord of the Church, calls and sends his gospel servants. And, like the Twelve, we learn to trust him. Whether we are the sent ones or those who work with them in the Gospel ministry, we do indeed learn by experience to trust the Sender. We trust the Lord Jesus Christ to define our ministry, to supply everything we need to get it done, and to bless our faithful efforts. And of course, that is exactly what he does! Amen.