Sent Out: Equipping Unfinished Disciples

The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, the 9th chapter.

Glory to you, O Lord.

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.

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them,

because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

Then he said 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.

Then 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.

First Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew,

James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John,

Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew, the tax collector,

James, son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus,

Simon the Canaanite and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions.

Do not take a road leading to Gentiles,

and do not enter a Samaritan town,

but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

As you go, proclaim the good news.

The kingdom of heaven has come near.

Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with the skin disease,

cast out demons you have received without payment.

Give without payment.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, O Christ.

You may be seated.

This past week at VBS was nothing short of awesome.

Awesome. Amazing.

You know, for five mornings in a row,

200 children entered through the doors of Peeler Hall

and then proceeded to sing songs and dance,

hear stories from the Bible, make crafts,

do science experiments, play games,

and learn some amazing things about God,

like how God is our creator,

God knows everything,

God is our safe place,

God is love,

God is forever.

It is a lot of work to pull this off,

and so many, many countless thanks to Stacy Schaefer

and our many, many volunteers who helped make this week possible.

It is truly, truly one of the highlights of what we do at St. John's.

And yes, you know, it's a highlight because of all the fun.

It's a highlight because of the bright rainforest colors

and the pink shirts that covered our campus.

It's a highlight because the snacks are creative

and the songs will stick in your head for weeks on end.

And these are all the highlights for me as well,

but for me today, as I reflect on the week that was,

it's a highlight for me because for one week of the year,

at Vacation Bible School, maybe more than any other week,

we as a church live into the mission

that Jesus is talking about in our gospel reading from Matthew.

And the mission is this,

equipping and sending out unfinished disciples

for the sake of an imperfect world.

And here's how the Bible story paints that picture.

What we heard today in our passage from Matthew

is that Jesus is busy doing what I like to call Jesus things.

Jesus things.

Namely, teaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God

and curing every disease and every sickness.

Throughout the gospels, this is what Jesus does.

And Jesus has been doing these Jesus things for quite a while now.

The chapters that come before our reading for today

tell us that Jesus is going about all the cities in and around the Sea of Galilee.

There he goes.

The one-man show.

Jesus doing Jesus things.

Talking about God.

Healing people.

Teaching.

Preaching.

Good news to the poor.

Release to the captives.

And then in what we heard today,

it seems like for the first time, and perhaps a long time,

Jesus stops and he looks around.

He kind of takes stock of where he is in his ministry.

And what he notices is this.

It says,

he saw the crowds

and he had compassion for them

because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.

He notices this, and it is this that compels him to say to the disciples,

the harvest is plentiful,

but the labors are few.

And it is this realization that causes Jesus, therefore, to send them out.

And here's how he does that.

He summons his twelve disciples,

Peter and Andrew, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew,

Thomas and Matthew, the other James,

Thaddeus, the other Simon,

and Judas Iscariot.

He summons them to himself and he gives them instructions.

And what, pray tell, are those instructions?

It's simple.

The Jesus things.

He tells them,

proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God,

cure every disease and sickness.

Yes, Jesus wants his disciples

to do the exact same thing that he was doing.

But here's the kicker.

Are they ready for such a great task?

No, not really.

Is it going to be hard?

That's right, extremely.

It is.

Will they be successful?

Sometimes, sometimes not.

We don't get a lot of scriptural accounting of how it went

after these guys, you know, are sent out by Jesus.

But from the instructions Jesus gives them,

it doesn't sound like it will be too easy.

Jesus tells them in the section that follows our reading from today,

he tells them, don't take any extra money,

no extra clothes, not a second pair of shoes,

not a staff for fending off animals

or for helping you walk through the desert.

He says, just entrust yourself to the graciousness of others.

He says, don't even practice what you will say.

The Holy Spirit will come and do that.

If it doesn't go well,

well, you can always shake the dust off your feet.

And the metaphor Jesus uses to describe all this,

and here I'm quoting him, he says,

I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves.

Okay, VBS parents out there, or really any parents at all,

teachers, grandparents, great-grandparents,

really anyone who has cared for someone else,

if in not exactly the same sort of dramatic way,

but also sometimes,

isn't this how it can feel

to raise a child or to send someone off on their own that you care about?

A little bit like Jesus sending out his disciples,

because at some point, whether they are ready or not,

there comes a time when we have to say, okay,

it's time to spread your wings.

Go, go learn.

Be good.

Try your best.

Go out there and make a difference.

And to help with this, we try to be a good example,

so that the good parts of who we are are also who they are too.

Just as Jesus' things he hoped would become the disciples' things,

we try to live well and teach and preach good news

about love and kindness and faith and generosity.

But as I'm sure Jesus felt with his disciples,

I feel the same way about how we parent

and how we even instruct children at church, at VBS.

We do our best with the time that we have been graciously given.

But without a lot of certainties,

there comes a day when we have to send them out,

out into this world.

That's the unmistakable feeling I had in my stomach

when our oldest child went off for the first day of kindergarten this past year.

There she was, ready or not, with a backpack that's half the size that she is

and a lunch box full of food that I know she's not going to eat.

My little sheep.

Hopefully not too many wolves.

All right, that might be a little dramatic,

but I've talked to parents of all ages,

and I've heard that that feeling doesn't go away.

Whether it's the first time after having a baby,

and remember this, you go out on a date for the first time,

and there's a babysitter,

and your second guess, you're like, maybe we don't go out after all, right?

The baby's not ready, no way.

Or I know we thought, how many notes do we leave around the house

to help the babysitter out?

Or what about the first time you hand your keys to the car to a teenager?

The moment you pack them off for college and just leave them there.

The day they get married, have kids of their own.

The first injury or illness that you can't fix with a Band-Aid

and a hug and a kiss.

Maybe you felt that day when you dropped them off at VBS, right?

You sign them in, you get that piece of paper that has their name on it,

and we just say, show up at the end of the day.

They'll be there waiting for you.

And off they go.

You know, you did your best, teaching, guiding, loving, just like Jesus.

And just like Jesus and the disciples, when it comes time,

you send them into the world, and now it's their turn.

Jesus knows the risks when he sends his disciples out

to begin the work that he started.

But he looks around at the world, and with great love in his heart,

love for his disciples, but also love for this beautiful, messy,

complicated, broken world, and says, the time has come.

Yes, I have more to teach them.

But I won't always be around.

And they must one day learn to do this whole preaching and teaching

and bringing about the kingdom of God on their own.

And so Jesus sent these imperfect, unfinished, ragged band of,

what are they, fishermen, tax collectors, and some guy who would betray him.

And this, my friends, is the work of the church.

It's the work of VBS.

Because even if it's just for a week, a few hours in the morning,

even though we fill the time with fun and games and singing and dancing and learning,

in this little time that we have together,

we're trying to live into what the church, when it is at its best, is called to do.

Equipping and sending out unfinished disciples, each and every one of us,

no matter our age.

Equipping and sending out unfinished disciples for the sake of an imperfect world.

I mean, sure, that's a great, big task.

But what we have learned from Jesus and his disciples is that

when we are sent out into this world,

be it to the first day of school or to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God,

we are all, we are all little children, still growing.

Unfinished.

Unfinished work in the hands of God.

And still God sends us out all the same, ready or not,

guided by the Spirit.

No need to bring extra things,

as long as we are equipped with love,

joy,

peace, patience,

kindness, goodness,

and faithfulness.

Equipped with those, the kingdom of God will certainly come near.

And as we say all week at VBS,

Wow, God!

Amen.