SUNDAY SERMON
NOTHING FOR OUR JOURNEY?
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost Proper 10, Year B
July 13, 2003
Gospel: Mark 6: 7-13
For us, this summer is a season of pilgrimages. Last month Church of the Holy Communion sent eight people off to France and six to Spain. This week seventeen youth and adults leave for Ireland. That's thirty-one overseas pilgrims.
I, too, am making a pilgrimage. A year ago I spent a week in spiritual retreat with clergy from congregations across the country. That week was part of an ecumenical program called "Going Deeper: Clergy Spiritual Life and Leadership" offered by the leaders of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation. God willing, in less than ten days, I will return with my colleagues to that retreat center, located on more than 300 acres of woodlands just west of Baltimore, Maryland.
We will come together for prayer, silence, rest, worship, meals and conversation.
We will also have some time to be alone. And we will do all of this in a contemplative
mode, seeking God in community and in solitude, seeking to discern what the
Spirit of God has been up to, in our lives and in our churches, since we last
came together.
I want to suggest to you that those who have gone to France and Spain and those
who will go to Ireland and Maryland are not the only ones on pilgrimage. I believe
we are all on a pilgrimage. Like the twelve apostles in today's gospel, we are
all pilgrims.
The word we hear Jesus use is "journey." A pilgrimage is a spiritual journey, a journey we share with others. Now, I've got good news and bad news. First, the bad news: a spiritual journey is NOT a vacation. It's work. Sometimes it's very hard work.
Don't get me wrong. Human beings need vacations, real rest from our labors. We all need to recharge our batteries -- mentally, physically, emotionally, intellectually.
And, like other pilgrims down through the centuries, we need spiritual rest, too. We need times of retreat with God. Our spirits need time off, to be refreshed by God's Spirit, so that we can go on with the work of our spiritual journey
I believe the primary work of spiritual journey is the work of learning. At the end of last week's gospel account we heard that Jesus "went about among the villages, teaching" (Mark 6:6b). One translation says Jesus was "on one of his teaching journeys" (New English Bible).
The twelve apostles were sent out on a journey to learn something. It's clear that they were not always open to what Jesus wanted to teach them, they did not always want to do the work of learning. The question for us always is: how open are we to learning what Jesus wants to teach us? For example, there is not one path on our journey. How ready, willing and able are we to follow Jesus along a new or different path?
Now, here's some good news: the spiritual journey is NOT solitary work. It's
teamwork. Jesus sent his apostles out, not alone, but in twos and threes and
twelves, as colleagues and friends. How many parishioners does it take to build
a Habitat house? The answer is, "not one." This is good news, as long
as, of course, we are team players.
What IS the spiritual journey? It's more than just the work we do together --
far more. The spiritual journey is what God's Spirit is working out, in and
for and through us. It's what happens to us along the way. The good AND bad
news is: the Spirit blows where it wills. God will take us where we want to
go, yes, but God also sends us places we would rather not visit, and even, on
occasion, drags us there, kicking and screaming.
All our lessons today are, in some way, about being sent out by God. The word
"apostle" literally means "one who is sent out." The twelve
apostles, whose mission was to extend the mission of Jesus, are sent out to
preach and to teach and to heal, like he did.
Just as all of us are pilgrims, all of us have an apostolic mission. Whether
we are clergy or not doesn't matter. We are all apostles and ministers, sent
out to share with the world the Good News of God's love and healing and forgiveness
in Jesus Christ.
Over the past year, I have been blessed to work with more than seventy of you in a ministry we call pastoral care. No one has taught me more about living the Good News of Jesus in a tangible way, day after day, than the members of our Pastoral Care Teams. It may at times be tough work we do, but we do it with love, and we do it together.
So how do we prepare for this journey with our fellow apostles? Well, here's
what may be the toughest news of all: Jesus ordered his apostles to take
nothing for their journey.
It's the same two words in nearly every translation of this passage you can
find: "take nothing." What, you may ask, does that REALLY mean? By
asking that question, you would be in very good company, with lots of other
apostles -- like Matthew, Mark and Luke.
In Luke's version of this story, Jesus says, "Take nothing." Period. But in Mark's, it's nothing…but a staff, sandals and one tunic. And Matthew? Matthew just has a list of what NOT to bring -- including those things that Mark's Jesus says are OK.
Now that sounds like humanity to me. "Nothing" can be a relative term for us human beings. "Take nothing" means something different for you than it does for me.
Maybe it's more about what we human beings are learning on our journey. Even the human Jesus learned things along the way. German theologian Dorothy Soelle tells a story in one of her books about a Sufi mystic's perspective on Jesus. This Islamic mystic, a student of the teachings of Jesus, said he believed Jesus:
"had become so detached from worldly things on his pilgrimage that he
only had a cup and a comb in his possession. But he threw away the cup when
he saw a man drinking from his hands and the comb when he saw a man using his
fingers (in his hair)…." (The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance,
p. 233).
Jesus' words "take nothing" may seem crystal clear, but, time and
again, he does allow us a bit of humanity. Do you remember the story of the
rich young man, who kept all the commandments? He asked Jesus what else he needed
to do. Jesus told him to go, sell all he had, give the money to the poor and
follow him. When the rich young man realized he could not do this, that he wasn't
able to take THAT kind of nothing for the journey, Jesus looked at him...and
loved him, anyway.
What is nothing for you? For me, on my journey to Maryland, it means, for sure, no books (that I take along and never read) and no Starbucks coffee maker. Mostly, though, it's about trusting God's Spirit, at work in my Shalem friends, taking care of me, giving me all I need for my journey with them.
What do we need to unpack before we continue on the journey? What would truly traveling light look like? What does this mean as a community of faith, as a church? Maybe it means not taking even the dust on our feet. Perhaps we are to leave behind our dusty old agendas, our dirty prejudices, our carefully-crafted yet always imperfect theologies, our hard feelings -- even, as Blair said last week, our rejections.
Here are two examples of people who shook the dust off their feet and journeyed with next to nothing, each in his or her own way. First, Albert Schweitzer. Dr. Schweitzer had three doctorates, in music, theology and medicine. The first two he earned by his twenty-fifth birthday.
Yet, despite objections from all his friends and family, Schweitzer chose to become a medical missionary in Africa. Leaving behind what would have been an enormously successful career, taking nothing but his sense of call, he left home to care for the physical needs of those without a doctor or hospital. Along the way he wrote a book on Bach, a classic text of theology called The Quest for the Historical Jesus - and won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Molly Craig is far less famous. Her life has recently been described in a movie
called "Rabbit-Proof Fence." It is the story of the Australian Aborigines,
how a law controlled their lives in every detail - and how one young person
claimed her own authority and confronted a corrupt system with the Gospel.
The pilgrim in the story is a fourteen-year-old half-caste girl, who, along
with her younger sister and cousin, runs away from a native resettlement camp
far from home. Having been taken away from her mother to be trained for domestic
service, Molly is determined, in her own way, to preach Good News: that God
has set these prisoners free.
Molly is a clever girl who simply wants to go home. And so the three of them escape and set out, facing a 1200-mile journey. They have nothing, and so, they take nothing, except shoes and one tunic. Along the way they are fed, clothed and sheltered.
It is far from easy going for them. They are tracked every step of the way. A desert looms large with 400 miles to go. When feet give out, Molly carries her sister. Their cousin gets distracted and is caught. But in time, Molly and her sister make it home. Inspiring us as we watch them on their journey, they are never alone, lifted up by the prayer and the care of their families and others.
Jesus teaches and sends out the twelve, with some advice that seems like bad news. But the Good News is that he does not leave them all alone. They have the Spirit of God in Jesus to go with them. And they have each other.
They are, to coin a phrase, companions in Christ. Together, they make their journey. And together, they discover this other piece of Good News:
Jesus is all we need for our journey. Like birds in winged migration, their journey is together, homeward. Jesus is with them and with us, all the way. "To begin to experience the divine presence within us," says one writer on the spiritual life, "is the first step on the return journey home" (James Somerville, The Mystical Sense of the Gospels, p. 147).
Let us pray.
God, help us to remember these things Jesus teaches us:
We need take nothing for our journey
When we go near or when we go far
For the journey we are taking
Is a journey into God
And Jesus is on our journey
And Jesus is our journey
And Jesus is the One
To whom and
Into whom
We journey
All the way
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