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June 15, 2008 Prayer
of Illumination: silence
in us, O God, any voice but your own.
Let your ancient words speak new words of transformation for us
today, right now. We pray in your name, Amen.
The harvest is
plentiful, but the laborers are few. Let’s see how many twists of meaning we can take with this
phrase from our gospel this morning.
There is more work
to do than there are people to do it.
Up to this point in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has been healing
people, one at a time, one interesting narrative after another.
The scene painted is tranquil.
Jesus walks leisurely across the country and when asked to do so, he
transforms and heals someone---restores them to health,
raises them from the dead.
It all feels and sounds orderly and we picture Jesus kind of like a
St. Francis statue, where birds light on his shoulder and children and
animals gather at his feet every time he stops long enough for a photo
shoot. And then
somehow the story shifts. When
Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed
and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
All of a sudden the volume has increased. The magnitude of the need is pressing in around
Jesus and his followers and Jesus is filled with compassion. Something has to be done and Jesus declares:
The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few…..we need more
laborers. The twelve are
called, dispersed for their mission, and the needs of the world are
delegated and met nicely.
The harvest is
plentiful. The laborers are
few. Let’s go with images
this time. When Jesus
compares the harassed and helpless people to sheep without a shepherd, he
employs a common image of shepherd, which generally is understood in both
biblical and non-biblical literature as a reference to leadership.
Good leaders, (Interpreter’s Bible) are like God, bad ones maintain
a hierarchical society and exploit the poor.
Harassed and helpless people, with disease and sickness and issues
galore are without a leader. They are beaten up by the Roman and religious
elite. (NIB BIBLE) Then the image shifts to the harvest.
The Harvest image is a common image for judgment.
Jesus’ ministry saves or condemns but needs workers. The 12 are commissioned, deployed for their work and the
world is saved.
The harvest is
plentiful and the laborers are few. Let’s talk structure this time. John Shea looks at this text and identifies a structure
for the church’s work in the world that is helpful. He
said we need prophetic grievers---those are the people who identify what
isn’t working, what’s not right, what needs to change!
These are the people, who like Jesus, look out over the vast array of
issues in the world, identify what’s not right, and feel compassion about
the problems. But if we only ever identify what’s wrong, solutions
are never possible. So
prophetic grievers need to make way for another kind of work---that’s the
analyst who can size up the problem and the strategist who can lay out an
action plan and implement it. In
our story, Jesus plays this role, too, and he delegates and commissions the
disciples giving them pretty specific orders about what to do and not to do,
who to talk to and who not to talk to and identifying the goals:
Proclaim, cure, raise, heal, and drive. Analysts and strategists will burn out, Shea
concludes, if they aren’t in regular contact with the prophetic grievers,
the ones who have the “heart” that pumps behind the issue.
When the heart is missing, the analysis becomes sterile and the
strategies unworkable. (John
Shea, On Earth As it Is In Heaven, p. 203)
The harvest is
plentiful, but the laborers are few. Let’s talk big picture this time. Jesus’ ministry is just underway……he sees a growing
need and a growing desire for people who are responding to the good news of
the gospel. It would be easy to
slip, for most of us, into scarcity type thinking about this point in any
project. This is
just too big. WE
can’t do this. There’s
only a few of us and the need is so great!
What do we know about good news anyway?
Scarcity thinking gets stuck in the enormity of the problems.
Scarcity thinking undermines our confidence. Scarcity thinking strokes our egos while it does it,
because it says that the success or the failure of a project rests solely on
me! Even Jesus didn’t
rely just on himself. Plentiful
thinking, or abundance thinking says that God is in the midst of all of our
life providing a plentiful harvest, or as the WB would put it….exuberant
generosity and inexhaustible well-being.
Our lives are a gift, not a possession, B would say. (Festival of
Homiletics) Our job as God’s
people is to live our life in response to that.
To see the plentiful harvest as our empty palette,
the framework that holds all the possibility of our life.
The place where we are called to make our mark, to offer our gifts,
to create the picture of the Kingdom.
It is the backdrop of the drama of our lives…..and the drama is
this…..to understand ourselves as called (along with the 12) to proclaim
the good news, to tell each and every one of those who are in need that the
kingdom of God has come near.
The harvest is
plentiful. The laborers
are few. Let’s
talk Lake View this time. Last
week our congregation voted to call a new associate pastor…..Larissa Kwong
Abazia. Folks, it was not
scarcity thinking that took this bold and risky step.
If ever a church was being called for abundant living, ours is it!
God has demonstrated exuberant generosity and offered inexhaustible
well-being for 124 years! And 2008 is no exception.
This is a gift. To
be called as a member to this church in this time is a gift! Not a right, because you’ve weathered the tough
times. Not a privilege,
because you happened to join during an upswing!
A gift. A gift
that has with it some pretty weighty responsibilities.
My first sermon title this week was Harassed and helpless…..I guess
I was feeling it that day…..thinking about all that needs our attention
and all the issues that we must tackle in the next few years.
I will list just a few: We
are bursting out of our building. That’s the easiest to see (go---prophetic grievers)
and the hardest to accomplish (strategists and analysts---better gear up).
A $5 million dollar+ price tag comes with our initial analysis.
Our Academy is facing transition just as the need for alternative
education has never been greater. As
leadership shifts in the next few years, the vision for the future of the
Academy is going to depend on new leadership!
More families are raising their children in the city, and that means
more families are staying right here! What
a great problem! More
kids, means a shift in our program efforts, means a squeeze on the space
again, means staffing in a different ways, means thinking about hospitality
with new eyes, means changing our attitudes around worship so that even the
smallest among us can worship our God.
Social justice issues abound. Greening
the church, staying connected to justice issues in the Middle East and
around the world, advocating for change within our denomination and in our
communities, the call to participate in fair trade, the challenge of
increased numbers of lgbtq youth in our neighborhood…..and the issues that
come with that for Café pride, our
ties to the Gulf and Katrina survivors……..with all the good work we’ve
done, we’re obviously not
finished….and that’s before we might even consider something new that
God might be calling us toward.
The harvest is plentiful at Lake View.
WE are not without vision.
We are not without a sense of call.
Far from it. Our
call seems strong---loud and brassy some days…..deafening some
days….discordant and disconnected some days…..and on those days,
we may be tempted to feel harassed and helpless like sheep without a
shepherd. But what shifted my title this week was this startling
revelation: We are not
sheep. And we are not
without a shepherd. We
are God’s gifted and beloved community and God’s shepherd has made one
thing quite clear: We
have received without payment and we are called to give without payment.
What does that mean?
The harvest is
plentiful. We have
received opportunities at every corner, in every direction, to proclaim the
good news of the gospel…..to work for justice, to demonstrate a radical
love of neighbor, to heal up the brokenhearted, and bring good news to the
poor. The
possibilities of our harvest are endless.
The laborers, are not few…..we are many. Not
12 people, but 150 people are available just in this one corner of God’s
kingdom to respond. Some will
be prophetic grievers. Some
will be analysts and strategists.
Some will be teachers.
Some will be healers.
Some will be musicians who nurture our souls for this hard work.
But no one goes it alone.
And the collective power of our gifts is equal to the magnitude of
our call. I’m sure of
it. When we made the decision to add pastoral staff to this
church, we took a huge step forward in proclaiming our readiness to meet the
needs of god’s people in this place and beyond.
It was no skimpy, short-sighted step.
It was a big daddy of a step, one that will have ramifications long
into the future. There
is no doubt in my mind that the collective power of our gifts is equal to
the magnitude of our call.
We have a shepherd. And
we have plenty of laborers, and plenty of harvest.
All we need to do now is work out of the abundant mind-set so we
don’t feel harassed and helpless.
exuberant generosity and inexhaustible well-being----that is the
reality of this God of ours who will not stop giving---but who loves us and
leads us and provides for us without fail.
Amen. |
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