From October 22, 2017
by Rev. Shawn Coons

We’re going to begin this morning with a reading from Philippians 3:1-11. This is a letter believed to be authentically from the Apostle Paul to the church in Philippi. 

In this passage, Paul is addressing the ongoing conflict between some Jewish Christians and some Gentile (non-Jewish) Christians. The argument is about whether Gentiles should be follow Jewish law and traditions, including circumcision. What should be the measure of one’s Christian faith. Is it, as some propose, how closely one follows Jewish law? Paul squarely confronts this issue of measuring faith by contrasting the measurements who used in his own life in the past vs. how he measures his faith now. Listen and see if you can pick out his old standard of measuring vs. his new.

Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is not troublesome to me, and for you it is a safeguard.2Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh! 3For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh—

4even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh. If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 7Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. 8More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

[9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. 10I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.]

Did you hear it? Paul’s old unit of measurement vs. his new one? He recites his credentials as a, in his words, “a Hebrew born of Hebrews.”

circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

That’s the old standard of faith: his Jewish credentials by birth and by practice. Then he says he considers all of that “rubbish.” The Greek word used here is stronger than rubbish. Trash, excrement, filth. And what is his new standard of measurement? The surpassing value of knowing Christ.

Paul addresses this conflict in the church by telling them that how they measure their faith matters. It matters what the standard of measurement is.

Ok, let’s put Paul aside for the moment. And I’m going to give you a pop quiz: what is pictured here? What is the metallic object inside these bell jars?

This is a kilogram. And I don’t mean it weighs a kilogram, although it does. I mean it’s literally a kilogram. It is one of a small number of official kilograms made over the last century and a half.  All of these officials kilograms are copies. Copies of what is affectionately known as “The Big K,” or officially known as the IPK, the International Prototype Kilogram.  The IPK is stored in the outskirts of Paris, at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. It is kept in a safe, in a lower vault, in a basement at this international headquarters.

A kilogram is 1000 grams, and on April 7, 1795, the gram was officially defined as, “the absolute weight of a volume of pure water equal to the cube of the hundredth part of the meter at the temperature of melting ice.” A little unwieldy, eh?  By 1889, others thought so too. So the IPK was manufactured and the official definition of the kilogram was changed. “A kilogram is equal to the mass of an object known as the International Prototype Kilogram.”

There are copies of the IPK in various parts of the world to be used in calibrating tools and scales and other kilogram measurements. But on close scientific examination we’ve found that these kilograms all have slightly different weights!  Due to environmental conditions, various minute amounts of other materials have gathered on these copies, changing their weights ever so slightly.

In other words, the kilogram used by this part of the world may not weigh the same as the one in another part of the world, and so people are using different standards to measure by.  And if the difference is big enough, that can be disastrous.  Take the example of the Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999.

This was a 700 pound robotic satellite sent by Nasa to orbit around Mars.  Unfortunately, after years of planning, tens of thousands of work hours, and hundreds of millions of dollars it made it to Mars but was apparently destroyed in Mars’ atmosphere when it arrived.  It ended up descending too far into the atmosphere because one of the software programs was using U.S. standard measurements while another piece of software was expecting metric measurements.

Because one team in this project used the wrong standard of measurement, the whole mission ended in disaster. The standards we use to measure, matter. And I believe this carries over into our lives as well. If we use the wrong standards to measure our life, the results could be disastrous.

This is what we are going to be talk about over the next three weeks in this series, “How Will You Measure Your Life?”

This is the question asked in a book Clayton Christensen, entitled, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” Christensen is a Harvard Business School Professor and in one particular course he teaches his students about theories they can use in business. These theories offer explanations for why things happen in certain ways, and seek to help predict what the outcomes of various business practices and strategies will be. He instills in them the idea that specific outcomes in business are the result of specific decisions and actions.

But on the last day of the class each semester he asks them to apply this concept beyond the business world, and he asks, “How will you measure your life?” What results do you hope to achieve with the decisions and actions you make.  Christensen feels this is an important question to ask based on his observations of his own life over the years, and also his observations of his classmates.

Christensen went to Harvard and Oxford for his education. He was a smart, hard-working, motivated and accomplished young man with lots of potential after he graduated.  And the men and women he graduated were likewise filled with talent, intelligence and potential.  The schools he attended, Harvard and Oxford, both do a remarkable job of reuniting alumni and classmates, so over the years Christensen often got to see his classmates and friends and learn about their lives and accomplishments.

Early on, there was much for people to be proud of. High paying positions in Fortune 500 companies. New marriages and families. Book deals, big houses, semi-annual trips to Europe.  But as the years went on, Christensen noticed that some of his classmates didn’t seem to be happy with their lives. Other classmates were struggling in their marriages, had gone through multiple divorces, or felt distanced from their children. Some of his colleagues had even ended up in jail for business fraud or embezzling.

Christensen began to wonder how this had happened to so many of these bright, talented and driven people. They had so much potential but so many of them, sometimes including himself, had ended up in places they never intended.

So he began to think in terms of his education in business theory. A business theory seeks to make sense of how certain actions and decisions are translated into specific results. It says that if A and B happen, then the natural results will be C and D, but if E and F happen, then expect G and H to happen.  And what he saw is that many of his classmates had a sound theory for their businesses, but they didn’t apply a sound theory to their life.

They put great thought and effort into a strategy for business, but not into a strategy for life. In his words:

“I know for sure that none of these people graduated with a deliberate strategy to get divorced or lose touch with their children—much less to end up in jail. Yet this is the exact strategy that too many ended up implementing.”

So how did they do this? How do we do this? How do we have the best of intentions? Want the best for our life? But end up choosing a strategy, making decisions, that lead us to different results?

Let’s go back to Paul, and let’s go back to our question for the day, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” A few moments ago I said, if you use the wrong standards to measure your life it would end up being disastrous. Too often we have the best of intentions. To live a generous life, to have a thriving marriage, to be close to our children, to go to bed happy and fulfilled each day. We have the best of intentions, but we choose poor standards of measurement.

And I don’t believe we do this because we are dumb, or because we are short-sighted. Rev. Adam Hamilton, in preaching on this same subject, suggests that the reason we choose the wrong standard of measurement is because some things are easier to measure than others. 

Think about it. If I’m building something with lumber, and I need to cut a piece of wood to a certain length, I’m going to use a tape measure and measure in inches.  If I’m trying to lose weight, I’m going to use a scale and measure in pounds. If I’m cooking at home, I’ll use a measuring spoon and measure in teaspoons.

But what do we use if we are measuring more intangible things?  Can we use a scale or a yardstick to measure how happy someone is? What tool should we use to measure the enjoyment that comes from reading a good book or coming home to your dog?  So when it comes to measuring our life we tend towards measurements that are easier that we can understand, even if they are the wrong measurements.

So what is easy to measure?  How much money you make. Your job title. A promotion. How many hours you work. How big your house is. The clothes you wear. The degrees you hold.

What’s not so easy to measure? How close you are with your spouse. Your presence in the life of your children. Care and compassion for others.

See the difference?  I certainly fall prey to this.  I’m a pastor, and there are multiple standards I could use to measure how our church is doing. But do you know what’s easiest? Nickels and noses. How much money is in the offering plate and how many people are here on Sunday. Do you know what’s a harder standard to measure? If someone came in this morning feeling low, and somehow had their spirits raised enough to get through another day. It’s hard to measure the amount of times one of you is inspired by a song, a sermon, a prayer, a bible study, and shares a word of care or an act of hope with someone you meet. 

But there are times when we can see clearly what is important to measure in life.  For me, one of those times is when someone dies.  I’ve done many funerals over the years, and one of the privileges I have in this role is to meet with the family of the person who died to hear about their lives and who they were.

And without fail, as I sit down with the family, do you know what they tell me first about their loved one?  It’s not how much money they made. It’s not their job title. It’s not what they acquired in life or the degrees they held. It’s statements like:

She loved her family so much.
He was always there for me.
He was so proud of his children.
She was so generous and caring.
He always had time for me.

It is always some form of how much the person loved others and how much the person was loved by others. How we love. Who we love. Those are how you measure a life.  Are you familiar with the song from RENT, “525,600 Minutes?”  The lyrics are:

525,600 minutes. How do you measure a year in the life? How about love? Measure in love.

We measure in love. Chet read from 1 Corinthians 13 a little bit ago. A familiar passage to many, but it speaks to this exact question: “How Do You Measure Your Life?” Allow me to paraphrase:

If I measure my life by being able to speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not measure my life by love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I measure my life by my prophetic powers, and my understanding all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I measure my life by having faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not measure my life by love, I am nothing. 3If I measure my life by giving away all my possessions, but do not measure my life by love, I gain nothing.

So here is your homework for today. Ask yourself “How do I measure my life?” And be honest with your answer.  I would encourage you to make this a conversation with others. Parents, ask your children to answer this question for you. How are you showing them what measurements are important in life. Ask this question of each other at coffee hour after the service, on the way home in the car, at lunch or at dinner. Ask your friends, classmates, co-workers, neighbors.

And if you are unsure of the answer, or unhappy with the answers you get or arrive at. Then you won’t want to miss the next two weeks. Because we will be going deeper into what exactly it looks like to measure your life in love.

“How will you measure your life?”

To the residents and friends of the Butler Tarkington Neighborhood:

As people of faith representing the congregations of our neighborhood, we feel that it is our duty to respond to the racism, hatred, and discrimination that exists and continues to resurface in different ways within our nation and even here at home. We were profoundly troubled to learn of racist comments and an act of racial intimidation in our Butler Tarkington neighborhood.

Collectively we are speaking out against any action, group, or ideology that demeans the unique dignity of every person that lives, travels through, or even visits our neighborhood and beyond. We condemn acts of racial intimidation in any form.

We recognize the systemic injustices that exist against the African American community and have a collective desire to act. We condemn groups like the Ku Klux Klan, all white supremacist groups, and all others that adopt their beliefs, recognizing that their roots are not found in any of our faith traditions. Every faith tradition values every life.

It is our common hope that our faith and goodwill will encourage everyone to seek understanding, peace, and reconciliation among all people. We are committing not only our congregations, but asking all people to join us in praying, if that is your tradition, and certainly acting in love toward others. We look forward to future engagements with the clergy, congregations, and neighborhood and future partnerships with the Butler Tarkington Neighborhood Association. We invite you into this journey of conversation, listening, acting, and supporting one another during this time.

Signed:

Rev. Ronnie Bell, North United Methodist Church
Rev. Jeff Bower, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Rev. Shawn Coons, Fairview Presbyterian Church
Rev. Steve Conger, Meridian Street United Methodist Church
Rev. Sarah Ginolfi, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Fr. Michael Hoyt, St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church
Dr. Philip Karl James, Pastor, Mount Zion Baptist Church
Rev. Matt Landry, Meridian Street United Methodist Church
Pastor Jim Matthies, Common Ground Church
Pastor Jeff Reichanadter, Common Ground Church
Jamie Hinson-Rieger, Worship Leader, Unitarian Universalist Church of Indianapolis
Bethany Scott, Director of Family and Neighborhood Ministries, Meridian Street United Methodist Church
Rev. Darren Cushman-Wood, North United Methodist Church

From October 8, 2017
Rev. Shawn Coons

Indulge me in a little geekiness this morning.  How many of you have heard of an internet service called Napster?  How about BitTorrent?  Ok, not many.  How many of you have heard of BitCoin?  Napster first came to fame a number of years ago as a file-sharing program. What this means is that you would download the Napster program to your computer and then you could share specific files on your computer with another Napster user, and they could do so with you.  And one of the first major uses was to share mp3s, digital versions of songs.

So if you wanted the latest Britney Spears song, you just needed to find another Napster user who had it on their computer, and download it directly from them.  BitTorrent is a similar program, that makes many different types of files shareable directly between users.

It’s kind of like borrowing a cup of sugar from your neighbor instead of going to the grocery to buy it directly from the store. It’s a little bit more sketchy, because many people have used these programs to share copyrighted material illegally. BitCoin is a little bit different, it is a currency system. You can buy BitCoins and then use them to make purchases. But the records BitCoins and their transactions aren’t stored at a bank or with a specific company. The records are distributed and shared among BitCoin users.

All of these are what are called “peer-to-peer” services. They are decentralized, distributed, there isn’t one source which everything flows out of, instead each user contributes, gives and takes as required. Which means that users of the services are dependent on other users to make the service work.

Great, Shawn. What in the world does this have to do with church? And what does it have to do with our current series on loving your neighbor? Well, this series is called Neighboring, God’s plan for taking care of each other, and I want to suggest to you that God’s plan for taking care of each other is “peer to peer.”  There are dozens of examples in the gospels of Jesus taking care of people, showing love to specific individuals.  Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, healing the centurion’s daughter, and casting out demons from the Gerasane man.

But that wasn’t the limit of acts of love and care that we find recorded in the gospels. We can read about thousands of people shown care in the gospels, not by Jesus, but by Jesus’ followers. Where ever Jesus went, once people began to follow him, once they received his care, he turned them into caregivers for others. Care was given “peer to peer,” person to person, not just from Jesus to person.

This continued throughout the rest of the Bible, as the early church spread.  This morning we are going to read about one church where this model of care was practiced.  Modern day Turkey is the site of the city of Ephesus, who’s residents were known as Ephesians in scripture.  As Jesus’ message and movement spread, it got farther and farther away from Israel and the large Jewish population there. So by the time the church spreads through Asia Minor and reaches a city like Ephesus, it is going to places with a large Gentile (non-Jewish) population.

Ephesus was already ancient in the time of the New Testament.  It was a major urban area, with a large (for that time) population of fifty to a hundred and fifty thousand people, with all the diversity of population, trade, religious groups, and social classes that was typical of a Greco-Roman city. Ephesus in particular held an important place as the location of the great temple of Artemis, and the place where great Asian games were held.

We’re going to be reading from Ephesians 2:11-22, a letter to the church in Ephesus, often attributed to Paul, but scholars believe it is more likely a student or follower of Paul based on the textual clues. Listen for the calls for “peer to peer” care among this diverse church of Jews and Gentiles.

So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision” —a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands— remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. 

So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.

There’s a rift in this church, and it seems to be between those who were born Jewish and followed Jesus, and those who came to follow Jesus without being a Jew. There is a conflict here between the Jews and the Gentiles of the church.   Now there really shouldn’t be, this has all been decided. In Acts 15 we read about a council of church leaders that were wrestling with this very issue.

Shortly after the time of Jesus’ resurrection the early church was still solidly connected to Jewish tradition and Jewish law. And it was thought by many that any Gentiles who wanted to follow Jesus would be required to follow Jewish laws and customs. But there were some church leaders, Paul and Barnabas among them, who argued against this. They brought this matter to the apostles and Peter declared that except for a few simple laws, Gentiles did not have to practice Jewish traditions.

So the word has come from the top-down that Gentiles should be welcome to follow Jesus alongside Jews. But the problem was that it was top-down still and not peer to peer.  This had not been embraced by individual members, both Jewish and Gentile, within churches. And it’s peer to peer that matters, because that’s how God intends it.

Notice the imagery that the author of Ephesians uses in the passage.

You are…members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. 

Jesus and the apostles are the foundation of the household of God, Jesus is the cornerstone, but if you think of the rest of us as bricks or stones in the household.  They don’t all touch the cornerstone or the foundation, but each brick is connected to another brick, multiple bricks. We aren’t all directly connected to the cornerstone or the foundation, but we are directly connected to each other, each of us, side by side with others. We are each meant to support the others around us.

And it makes sense, doesn’t it?  Jesus wouldn’t have been able to directly care and nurture every one of his followers, once the church grew the apostles wouldn’t be able to either. Paul, who was instrumental in developing churches, nurturing the faith of many Christians throughout the New Testament. He wouldn’t have been able to provide nurture and care for everyone he introduced to the faith.

This makes for a stronger church. When we are all tasked with providing care and love for one another, than our support network is stronger.  Go with me on a mental journey.  Let’s travel up to the International Space Station. First, imagine you are an astronaut going on a spacewalk, you have to get in your spacesuit and go outside of the station on a mission. How do you breathe?  Well, the suit has oxygen tanks in it. Your air comes from one place – your suit. If something goes wrong with that one source of oxygen, you are in trouble.

Now imagine that you are done with your spacewalk and you are back inside the space station. Or better yet, imagine you are done and back on earth. Now where is your oxygen coming from?  It’s all around you, it surrounds you. You aren’t dependent on just one source for the air you breathe.

Friends, we are oxygen for one another. The love and care we provide for someone is their life support, and so the more sources of that life the better.  If you look around this room, these people should be your life support. You should be able to find multiple sources of love and care and support, and likewise you should be ready to provide love, and care and support for multiple people here.

Now, nobody is expecting you personally to provide direct and personal care for all 150+ members of our Fairview family, that’s not realistic. But each one of us is expected to care about and for as many people as we can, and to make sure that our circle of care is inclusive. Not just of people we know, but we should especially pay attention to the people that we may not know.  We don’t have to know everybody intimately, but we should be aware of people who may not be known, may not be connected to others.

We have many groups of care and support here at Fairvew. There are the formal groups: the chancel choir, the bell choir, weekday Bible studies, Sunday School classes, the Wednesday night pitch-in crowd.  There are relationships and bonds that form within these groups as we get to know each other more personally by meeting week after week together. But there are also more informal groups here at Fairview.  We group ourselves by generations, by how long we’ve been at the church, by where we live or where we used to live, sometimes by political leanings or by how old our children are.

There’s nothing wrong with these groups, but we can’t let our care and support and love be limited to these comfortable groups.  If we only tend to our circle of friends, then we are kind of in the same boat as the church in Ephesus. We may not have a division between Jews and Gentiles here, but if we aren’t careful we can end up with different isolated groups within the church. 

You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God

We are no longer strangers.

The Jews and Gentiles in Ephesus weren’t united by Gentiles becoming like Jews, or Jews becoming like Gentiles, they were united by both becoming like Jesus. Likewise, our unity is not based on how old we are, whether we have children, what we want for the church, who we voted for. Our unity, our love and care for each other, our life support, our love for neighbor is dependent on the God who has called us all here.

So I encourage you, to take this call to unity seriously. Take your part seriously. In the next month or two we will be welcoming a number of new members into the church.  Every time we welcome a new member, and every time we baptize a child, as a congregation we make promises to be there for that person, to be there life support, to be a source of love and care.

Continue to take that promise to heart. Renew that promise today.  Look for someone you don’t know, or someone you know who may need you to be their life support today.  And if you feel your oxygen running low around you, reach out to someone here and let them be your support and comfort.  If we do this, if we continue to live into the people and the church God is calling us to be, then with Christ as our cornerstone, we will indeed “grow into a holy temple in the Lord…built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”

From October 1, 2017
Rev. Shawn Coons

This morning we are continuing with our series on neighboring, which is God’s plan for taking care of each other.  We’ve heard about God’s call to love our neighbors as ourselves, last week we talked about loving our actual neighbors, the people next door to us, by getting to know them by name and by their stories.  Next week, we will talk about what this looks like within our congregation- how we can all be responsible for loving and taking care of our neighbors in this room.

But first, this week, we will be talking about what it looks like for us as Fairview Presbyterian, for us as a congregation, to love our neighbors.  How can our church be a good neighbor?  How can we live this out so much, that when people pass our church they say, “That’s the church that loves their neighbors and shows that love all the time?”

The first step in being a church that loves its neighbors is an easy one.  It’s simply realizing how many neighbors we have. In the passage we are going to read in just a moment, Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”  This is Jesus’ way of saying, there are a lot of people out there who need what we have.

The same is true for Fairview. This church does a great job at offering God’s love, hope, good news, challenge, care, healing, transformation to all who come here.  But here’s a little not-so-secret. The majority of Indianapolis doesn’t go to Fairview. Shocking. I know.  Well, OK but other churches offer God’s love and hope too. Absolutely, they do. But here’s another not so secret, a lot of people don’t go to church.

So, if we are going to define a neighbor, like Jesus did in the parable of the Good Samaritan, that Bill read a moment ago. That is, we define our neighbor by someone in need of help, in need of God’s love and God’s care. Than we need to realize we have thousands of neighbors.

The harvest is plentiful but the laborer’s are few.  So what’s the plan then. For bringing the love of God that we experience here at Fairview to the thousands of our neighbors who need that same love.

Let’s see how Jesus goes about this in Luke 10:1-11:

10After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2He said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. 3Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. 5Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house!” 6And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you.

7Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the labourer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9cure the sick who are there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” 10But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 11“Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.”

What has Jesus’ ministry looked like up to this point.  Jesus and his followers were curing the sick, offering healing to people.  They were casting out demons and feeding the hungry.  They were sharing good news, bringing hope to the oppressed and downtrodden.  And Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful. There are so many more people who are sick, struggling with oppression or their own demons. So many more who need hope and healing.”

And Jesus comes up with a plan. I’m not going to share that plan with you this morning. I’m going to let Rev. Katie Hays of Galileo Church in Texas, share that plan by video. We’re going to hear from Rev. Hays a couple times this morning. Back in September, Elder Stephanie Bode and I had the chance to hear her speak on this morning’s passage at a conference we were attending. And Rev. Hays brought some powerful words about this passage. And rather than try to sum them up I will let her speak for herself.

So Jesus realizes the vast number of people in need of good news and God’s love and he has to come up with a plan. Here is one option that he could have chosen:

Hays Video #1 7:47-8:52

Jesus could have set up shop. Could have planted himself and his ministry in one place and said let everybody know I’m here and let them come to me. But he didn’t. Instead he realized that he and his followers needed to go to the people. They needed to spread out all over the area and find those who need healing where they were. They needed to reach those struggling with their own demons, wherever they were. The burden of travel should not be on those who needed help but on those who had already received God’s blessings.

So Jesus gathers seventy of his followers, and he gives them some two things. First, he gives them some specific instructions. Don’t take anything with you, and rely on the hospitality of those who will welcome you. Don’t take a bag to carry stuff in. Don’t take stuff. Don’t even wear shoes!

Why is this? Is Jesus being harsh? Cruel? No, I don’t think so.  What’s happening here is Jesus wants them to know that when they go out, they aren’t to rely on their own abilities, on their own power.  They are to rely on the second thing he gives them: power and authority.  Jesus tells them that wherever they go they are to cure the sick and let them know the Kingdom of God has come near.  They don’t have traveling provisions, but they don’t need them because they have the power and authority given to them by God.

And to make that clear, Jesus says that the seventy need to simply move on if they are rejected, because in reality, the people aren’t rejecting Jesus’ followers, they are rejecting God.

I think we, you and I, often miss this blessing.  Too often, we are intimidated when we think of going out offering God’s blessings, healings, message of love, to other people. We worry about how we will come across, what will people think of us, what if we offering a bit of our faith or a kind act out of God’s loves and it is rejected?  Or we worry that we don’t know how to talk about our faith or offer a compassionate act to someone in need of God’s blessing.

But Jesus promises the seventy, and Jesus promises us, that we don’t need to have exactly the right words, or know exactly what someone needs, we don’t need to rely on ourselves and our own ability. If we just go to the people, then God will do the rest.

Our biggest challenge, is not knowing what to do when we get in the midst of the harvest, but going out to join in the harvest in the first place. The biggest challenge we face is truly believing not in God, but that God is calling us to love and care for our neighbors as much as we care of ourselves.  If we truly believe that our thousands of neighbors out there, need God as much as we do, need God’s love, and healing, and wholeness, as much as we do, then like the seventy we must go find them.  Let’s here from Katie Hays again:

Katie Hays Video #2 17:37-19:25

Loving our neighbors as ourselves, means leaving our beautiful church building. Not expecting the man left for dead by robbers on the side of the road to pick himself up and come to us, but for us to be like that Samaritan and go to him in his need.  Loving our neighbors as a church means hearing the urgency in Jesus’ voice. The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. Jesus is saying, “Don’t wait until you feel full ready. Don’t wait to pack your bag. Don’t wait until you have a place to stay. Go! Now!” Jesus was always moving forward, always looking for the next person who needed God in their life.

Jesus is saying to us, “You did a great job of taking care of the person in your midst who had cancer, so keep it up, keep going. There’s ten people with cancer who need that care, your care, my care, ten people within blocks of you right now!”

We’ve talked as a congregation about “Finding Our Why” discovering and articulating God’s call for us, the reason behind everything we should be doing. For Jesus, his Why was to go to as many people as he could, heal them, love them, give them good news.  As Christians, that’s our why too: get to as many people as we can, bring them God’s love, healing, and good news.

We are long past the time when we can expect that most people who need God will come to us.  And many of them have good reason. Erwin McManus, pastor of Mosaic, a church in Los Angeles, says, "people have given up on the truth of God because they don't believe anyone can be trusted. The world is full of people who have been hurt by those who were supposed to love them-people they should have been able to trust. Before churches will be heard, they must reestablish trust. To establish trust, they must first show their ability to love.”

The harvest is plentiful. Let me turn one last time to Rev. Katie Hays, and a story she has about her church’s work in the harvest.

Katie Hays Video #3 21:55-24:14

How do we make Fairview a church for non-churchy people too? Nothing against churchy people, I’m one of the churchiest people you will find. But most of our neighbors in need are not churchy people. They aren’t going to come to us, but they have needs and struggles like we do, but they don’t have the faith, the community of care that we do. How do we bring it to them if they aren’t going to come to us?

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

How many of us are here this morning?  1..2…3…maybe somewhere around 70? God says, “I am sending you. Go. Don’t worry about what you will bring with you, you don’t need it. All you need is me. Bring peace to those you meet. And if they reject you, they are really rejecting me. Go! Cure the sick, bring wholeness in my name. Let people know that the Kingdom of God is near!”

Later in in Luke chapter 10, the seventy return, amazed and what happened at what God enabled them to do.  I have no doubt, that if we go, trusting God, our results will be amazing too.