Marching Orders - July 9, 2006

Mark 6: 1-13

Soon after a new pastor lands in a first congregation, there is a peculiar but predictable list that begins to be compiled: Stuff They Never Taught Me in Seminary. My list included things like this:

  • Where the toilet paper and paper towels are stored.
  • How to work the office copier.
  • Why the little pew pencils are dull—every one of them.
  • What do you call that little line of detritus that forms at the back of the pew, on the seam of the cushion?
  • How do you punt when the pitcher contains no juice on communion Sunday? How about when there's no loaf to break?
  • When the young disciples outnumber the clergy eight-to-one, and a couple of them are doing their own thing, who is really in charge here?
  • What do you say to people who have lost both of their parents in about 48 hours?

If the new pastor is persistent, eventually the questions on the list get answered:

  • Storage closet off the kitchen
  • Hire a wonderful Office Administrator
  • Because they haven't been sharpened in four years
  • Pew dust
  • There will always be some bread and some juice on the table; make it work.
  • Admit you are in over your head, and say a prayer
  • You don't talk; you listen. And you pray.

But even as these questions are being answered, new ones are forming, even as I speak. And that is what they really taught me in seminary. Ministry and discipleship are not usually about knowing the answers, they are about listening and looking and paying attention to the questions long enough.

I spent some time driving on the Rock Freeway this week. That's what I learned to call westbound I43 when I first moved here, over 20 years ago. It is one of my favorite drives to make; the farms are so pretty. And when I'm on that freeway, now some ten years later, I can't help but think of the time I was riding in the car with my family, and I had something Very Important I had to tell them. This very important thing, if accepted and enacted upon, would change just about everything in our lives.

I thought somehow that telling my family that I was having thoughts of quitting my job, asking my husband to do the same, selling the house, pulling the kids out of school and moving us far away so that I could follow a dream—one that I wasn't sure was even mine— would be the hardest part. It wasn't. Soon after our family decided that maybe we were on to something with this idea, I began to slowly, quietly, tell friends and members of our church. I had already confided to my pastor about this little germ of an idea, and hadn't gotten any resistance there. I wish I could tell you that all the friends we told were enthusiastically supportive, but in truth, the conversation was usually a short one: ”Why would you want to do that? Didn't you just move into that house a couple of years ago? Didn't Pete just get that new job?”

And so, feeling sorry for myself, I found myself sitting in my pastor's office one day, blubbering about my unsupportive friends, and how my extended family didn't really believe in me, and after a while Fiona reached for her Bible, opened it up to the gospel of Mark, and read these words: “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”

Jesus, Mary and Joseph's boy, the carpenter's son, the hometown kid, came back to Nazareth to do what God had called him to do, and the folks from the old neighborhood mocked him. And he laid his hands on a few people, healing them, and then he left.

I wonder what it was like for the twelve to watch what happened to Jesus when he was “dissed” (as the kids say) by his hometown? If they were watching him closely, seeing how he dealt with this authority, watching to see how he commanded a crowd, and hoping someday to be as famous as Jesus, as admired by Jesus, as loved as Jesus, this must have been quite a letdown. Sometimes the reality check just hurts, like a punch in the gut.

But it sounds as if the disciples didn't really get time to wallow in the disappointment of seeing their mentor cut down by the hometown crowd. The next thing we know, they are off again, and Jesus is doing his thing, and then, then things begin to get interesting for the disciples. Jesus sends them out, two by two, on their own. And it seems no matter how well prepared a person is, no matter how well schooled in all the latest theories and techniques, no matter if the ink is barely dry on the ordination certificate or the license to practice—the first day on the job can be a daunting one. And we show up, and we look around, and we see that yes, indeed it is we who are there to do a job, and we wonder if it is really okay to allow us to be by ourselves that first day.

There's a scene in the film “Forrest Gump”, when Forrest first shows up at his base camp in Vietnam after entering the Army. Lieutenant Dan is explaining to him how to stay alive in Vietnam. “The most important thing to remember, “ says Lt. Dan “Is to always have dry socks. Don't ever let your feet get wet. Wet socks'll kill you.” (This from a man who later ended up losing his legs.)

When Jesus is preparing the twelve for going out in pairs to begin their own ministries, he tells them this: “Don't take anything with you. Travel light, depend on the kindness of others; accept hospitality. When you get to a place, stay there. Do what you are sent out to do. Don't let worry about food, or clothing, or a place to sleep distract you. Oh, and one last thing…remember when my own neighbors and friends rejected me, didn't believe what I was doing or what I was saying, and wondered who in the world I thought I was? I hope you were paying attention to that. That will probably happen to you. And when it does, don't argue, don't get defensive, don't stick around, either. Just leave. Go on to the next place. Keep doing the work that I have sent you to do. Don't worry over the ones who rejected you. Act as if it doesn't matter. Shake it off.”

Gee, that sounds about as helpful as advice to keep one's feet dry. Who would sign up for a job like that? (Just shake it off….) If you want to know who would sign up for a job like that, I suggest you look at the sign up sheets in the narthex, or look at those sitting in the pew next to you…then go home and look in the mirror. If we are disciples of Jesus Christ, we have signed up for what Jesus is sending the twelve out to do. I hope our sandals are comfortable, and our socks are dry.

Going out to follow Jesus, to live the life of a disciple with barely our wits about us, is dangerous work. It's easy to believe that we are somehow all it takes to make the difference, that there is some inherent trait in us that makes us different than all the rest. And the first time we fall flat on our faces, the first time we make a fools of ourselves for God, the first time somebody says to us, “Church? You want me to go to church with you? Why on earth would I go to church with you? Give me one good reason.” well, then the test is on.

Luckily for us, we have each other. That's one thing that those of us who belong to a body, belong to a community, have over those who are out there really trying to make it on their own. Two by two. Not alone. Even if sometimes that other one is the Holy Spirit, that voiceless, faceless, disembodied Comforter.

We need each other. God designed us to work together. We have been given our marching orders. When the disciples figured this out, Eugene Peterson in The Message says this: Then they were on the road. They preached with joyful urgency that life can be radically different; right and left they sent demons packing, they brought wellness to the sick, anointing their bodies, healing their spirits.

Oh—and one other thing: if you want to hear what happens—what really happens to us when we sign up for discipleship—be sure to come back next week and hear the second part of the story.

Thanks be to God.