TAKE NO LUGGAGE

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

            Today’s gospel text is about Jesus sending out workers to announce the gospel of the kingdom of God.  As you hear this text read and reflect on it now, what images come to your mind?  I picture young men dressed in white shirts and black pants and black ties, riding on bicycles, going door to door.  I picture that day years ago when I was home sick.  My face was unshaved.  The dead looked better than I did that day.  Two church workers knocked at my door.  I opened it.  They got a good look at my altered appearance—although it is true enough that they wouldn’t have really known if that was my altered appearance or the way I usually looked.  When I opened the door, they said, “Hi.  How are you doing?”  I said, “I’m home sick today.”  (There!  I don’t usually look like this!)  They went right on with their presentation, ignoring my illness.  If this was evangelism, I found it uncaring and irritating.  When it comes to doing Christ’s mission work in our own context, we may have to overcome negative images and experiences we have endured.

            Still, it remains that we are sent.  We are sent by Christ to serve.  We remind ourselves of that fact every Sunday with the charge.  Every Sunday we hear again “Jesus said to his disciples, ‘As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’”  In today’s gospel lesson, we find Jesus sending out seventy workers in pairs to announce the kingdom of God.  And so, each week, we remind ourselves that we are a missional church.  We say, “I am sent.  We are sent.  We are sent by Christ to serve.”  That last sentence is our missional statement.  It, like our gospel lesson for today, reminds us that we are sent by Christ.  So we are Christ’s agents.  We are Christ’s apostles, that is, the ones who are sent by Christ to carry out his mission in the world.  That implies more than an obligation to serve; it signifies that we carry the authority to speak and act on behalf of our Lord Jesus Christ.  We are sent by Christ to serve.

            Why?  Because the harvest is plentiful.  There are people near us who need to be impacted by the gospel of the kingdom of God.  Right here in our own community there are many people who have not committed their lives to Jesus Christ.  There may be others who have done so, but who have drifted away from that commitment.  The harvest is plentiful.  In his engaging book, The Disciple-Making Church, Glenn McDonald makes the point that ninety-nine percent of a church’s energy is spent on those who are already part of the church.  McDonald suggests that our energy ought to be spend on those not yet connected to the church.  As an experience one time, McDonald sent his session members out for a little field trip.  “You have forty-five minutes,” he told them.  “Please get into your car—no music or radio, please—and drive two miles south of the church.”  He continued, “Park your car outside a restaurant, a store, a mall, or any place that you see people.  Just watch them.  What do you see?  Pray for them.  Ask God what we need to do in order to bring the good news to the people you see tonight.”  If after church you were to drive up to I-20 or to the stores and restaurants along I-35, what do you think you might see?  Here’s what McDonald’s session members saw.  They saw many people who were alone, including children out by themselves.  They agreed to continue doing their people watching at malls, during lunch, or even by watching an hour of MTV.  They did so with this question to God on their minds, “What would it take, and what kind of church would we need to be, to reach those who are just down the street but may know nothing of your love?”  We are sent by Christ to serve because the harvest is plentiful.  After worship today, go see for yourself.

            Funny!  Jesus tells us to travel light.  No luggage.  No cash.  No extra pair of shoes.  Those orders seem strange, don’t they?  They do to me.  I’m the kind of guy that has to be well equipped.  You’ve seen that huge briefcase I carry around.  In it I have a Bible.  What well-equipped pastor wouldn’t have one at all times?  In my briefcase I carry my glasses, my prescription sunglasses, my contact lenses, my non-prescription sunglasses for when I’m wearing a contact lens.  Of course, I carry around several files, including one for sermon preparation and another with containing of your phone numbers.  I tote my cell phone in my briefcase when it isn’t on my person.  I have my PDA, an electronic calendar.  I’ve got to know where I’m supposed to be and when.  I’ve got a little calculator, in case I have to run some numbers.  I have a variety of ID badges, including the one I wear when I’m making hospital visits.  And then, in my trusty briefcase, I have everything from toothpicks to cough drops.  Never let it be said that I’m not ready or any situation, as long as I have my trusty briefcase with me.  Some days, I carry a second bag!  Those are the days when I have a meeting that requires extra materials or when I’m bringing some big books to the church office from my library at home.  Equipped!  That’s me!  I’m nothing if I’m not equipped.  And yet—funny thing—Jesus tells his mission workers being sent out, “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals.”  Imagine going on a business trip and not packing a change of clothes, not carrying your credit cards, not even taking a second pair of shoes.  For Jesus’ first mission workers, he meant what he said literally.  His mission workers in those days were to accept the hospitality of the townspeople where they were serving.  So these mission workers were to travel light.  Of course, things are different today.  We can’t just pop in on strangers in a distant town.  But Jesus’ instructions still speak to those of us who aim to represent him in our daily lives.  Being well-equipped is a good thing.  Having the tools you need for carrying out Christ’s mission simply means that you are prepared to serve.  But what if we rely principally on that stuff to equip us?  To that mentality, Jesus says, “Leave all that stuff behind.  Don’t depend on cash, on gadgets, on anything that you might bring with you.  Rely only on the resources that I give you.  Take no luggage.”  When taking a bunch of stuff with us represents self-reliance, leave it behind.  To the self-reliant, Jesus says, “Take no luggage.”
 

            Something else.  We’ve got to stay focused on the task.  Our minds and our hearts have to remain fixed on being engaged in mission.  Jesus tells his mission workers not to get distracted on the way.  When he said, “. . . greet no one on the road,” he didn’t mean that his mission workers ought to be unfriendly.  Jesus simply wants his mission workers to remain focused.  I may have a different look on my face as I enter the sanctuary to lead worship.  As I enter worship, my attention becomes focused on leading worship and preaching the gospel.  I don’t mean to be unfriendly, but right before worship I may not have a lot of time to talk.  Sometimes information given to me right before worship goes in one ear and out the other.  Why?  Because I become focused on the worship service.  As the head football coach brings his team out on the field for the big game, he has his game face on.  He’s focused.  No time to stop and talk.  You can see when TV sports reporters are allowed to stop coaches to interview them as they come on the field that the coaches don’t like it.  Their faces scream, “Not now!”  Why?  Because they are focused on wining the game.  Jesus wants his mission workers to be focused on doing his mission with that level of concentration.  We are not to allow ourselves to become distracted from our role of being his mission workers.

            Now that we understand that we are sent by Christ to serve as his agents or apostles, now that we understand that the harvest is plentiful and that we are to take no luggage and stay focused, it is time to concentrate on Christ’s mission itself.  What is it we should be doing?  What are we to do to carry on Christ’s mission?  If our model follows Jesus’ instructions to this large group of mission workers, then our task will be threefold:  We are to engage in community building by accepting it when it is offered.  We are to be agents of healing.  And we are to announce the kingdom of God.  Let’s talk about community building.  I remember hearing or reading an account of Christians doing mission work in a remote place in Mexico.  The people there were very poor, but the host of his mission guests was very generous.  He didn’t have fine wine to offer, but he had kept in reserve some Cokes.  They were to him as fine wine is to others.  The host brought out and served those Cokes as a lavish expression of hospitality.  The guests remembered the great generosity offered by their host.  The offering of that lavish gift and its grateful reception were an essential part of building community.  We are to build community.  And we are to be agents of healing.  Bruce Larson tells of time he became ill suddenly at a conference in Bloomington, Illinois.  It felt like the flu, including chills and fever.  He retreated to his bed in the men’s dorm.  “Within the space of an hour,” he later wrote, “six different people heard about my need and came to offer help.  One anointed me with oil for healing—my first experience of this ancient rite of the church.  Another knelt and offered prayer.  The third person was a woman doctor who dosed me with aspirin, took my pulse, and reassured me that, in all probability, I had a twenty-four-hour flu bug.  The fourth person brought me a tray of food, that last thing in the world I wanted at that time!  The fifth just expressed concern, while the sixth, a wonderful Finnish masseuse, came in and sang hymns in her native language while she gave me a massage.”  What happened?  Bruce Larson said, “. . . I was healed within the hour.  I don’t know which one of those people was the channel of God’s healing, but I suspect they were all used.”  We each one have different gifts, we each have some ability to help others to become whole.  Along with building community, it is the task of Jesus’ mission workers to be agents of healing.  And, along with the first two, we are to announce the presence of the kingdom of God.  By word and deed, we are to announce that God’s sovereign and gracious reign is breaking in to human life.  How do we do that?  We announce the presence of God’s kingdom regularly in worship here.  One of the ways to bring that message to the world is to invite people in the world to come and hear the good news and accept the community we are building here.  Social researcher George Barna discovered some interesting things about the behavior of church people in their relation to the unchurched adults in the United States, information retrieved from Glenn McDonald’s book, The Disciple-Making Church.  Here’s what Barna discovered:  Four percent of the unchurched had been invited by a friend to attend church within the previous twelve months, and that four percent responded positively by attending church.  Twenty-three percent were invited to attend church, but they did not.  A whopping seventy-three percent had not been invited by anyone at all!  George Barna wondered, “What does that tell us?  Perhaps the most obvious observation is that most unchurched people are not being pursued by anyone.”  But we can change that.  We can announce the presence of the kingdom of God by simply inviting someone to attend church.  Maybe you noticed.  The three things we are to be doing as Jesus’ mission workers are the same things that he himself did in his ministry:  We are to engage in community building by accepting it when it is offered.  We are to be agents of healing.  And we are to announce the kingdom of God.