Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

The Worship of God · July 4, 2010

Litany of Praise

From Psalm 30

You drew us up like people who had stumbled into a pit

            You set us free, saved, and healed us.

Weeping may linger with the night, but joy comes with the morning.

            You turned our mourning into dancing!

Let us pray:

            As you have clothed us with joy

                        Now we give thanks to you forever! Amen.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,

World without end. Amen. Amen.

A Prayer for the Nation

Offered in unison by the congregation.

Almighty God,

You have given us this good land as our heritage. Make us always remember your generosity and constantly do your will. Bless our land with honest industry, truthful education, and an honorable way of life. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogance and from every evil course of action. Make us who came from many nations with many different languages a united people. Defend our liberties and give those whom we have entrusted with the authority of government the spirit of wisdom, that there might be justice and peace in our land. When times are prosperous, let our hearts be thankful; and, in troubled times, do not let our trust in you fail. We ask all this through Jesus Christ our Lord, who taught us to pray…

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: for thine is the kingdom, the power, and glory, forever. Amen.

Pastoral Prayer

Tim Carson

Lord of the Universe, who created and continues to create, far beyond our full knowing but fully present with us now, we now receive the gift of silence, waiting to see you through the eyes of love.

(Silence)

Lord of all nations, this family of your many families lifts our prayers to you thanking, confessing, and seeking:

We thank you for blessings untold, individually and as a nation.

(Silence)

We confess the ways in which we have harmed our people or other peoples through pride, greed, or insensitivity.

          (Silence)

We seek a way in which

our deeds match our ideals,

our laws and policies to rise to the level of our principles

and our dreams of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

extend to all of God’s children.

          (Silence)

Bless the honest work of our hands, brave sacrifice for the well-being of others, and the governing of all leaders vested with authority. When strident voices threaten to polarize, lead us toward the sane center. When integrity is threatened by selfish interest, help us to reclaim our original vision. When our environment is devastated, our economy injured, or peace jeopardized, lead us again to ways of peace, justice and harmony. 

We pray this through the name of the One before whom all the nations of the earth will be judged, including our own.

New Testament Lesson

Luke 10:1-11

After 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. He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid.  Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘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.’”

Message

The Harvest

Tim Carson

I once knew a woman whose job, in her younger years, was to be a vanguard for the Barnum and Bailey Circus. She would fly into a city and make all the arrangements for the advance PR, radio and television spots. She made sure that the news was out and that tickets were available. She did this over and over, all across the country, so that she always traveled light; everything she needed was contained in a very small carry-on bag. Wherever she went, there was a hotel room waiting, and that became her base of operation for as long as she was in town. She had to learn to live simply and to be nimble on her feet. She literally prepared the way for the circus. This itinerant way of life grew old after a few years, but she fondly remembers her time as the vanguard of the circus and how she ended up in the most unusual and interesting places.

In the story from Luke’s gospel today, we find a similar kind of thing. Jesus commissions disciples to go ahead of him to the villages he is planning to visit, as a kind of vanguard. The number, 70, is symbolic and based on the perfect number, 7, so they represent perfection in action. These 70 go as a vanguard before Jesus. They are going to the places he is about to visit. They are a preparation team. They are to go, travel light, secure someone who will provide hospitality, and then in return, bless them with peace and share the good news of coming attractions. They are to set up a base camp in this one home to insure stability, as opposed to always moving around. Then, in exchange for hospitality, they bring peace and news of coming attractions. The circus is about to arrive. Jesus is about to come. That is their job to promote this. The punch line of the passage is that the harvest is great but the laborers few.

We used to think that this passage was the theological underpinning for all evangelism, especially what they used to call, “foreign missions.” We thought that until interpreters started pointing out and reminding us that Jesus was sending disciples deep into their own culture. These were Middle Eastern Jews going to Middle Eastern Jews. Sure, there are lots of stories of Paul and Barnabas and others going outside of their culture, being evangelists spreading the good news way beyond their cultural comfort zone. But this sending of the 70 is more about going out into the harvest within your own cultural backyard, your own place, and your own people. What do you do when you are in your own backyard?

And I believe there is a field of souls and always will be, because as long as people are created in the image of God, there is something deep down that, like Augustine said, is restless until they find God. And that happens in so many different ways.

The question for us today, in our culture, is how to be faithful to a loving God who is passionate about drawing all people into that love, especially when they don’t know it? We are all created in the image of God, but the fact is people just don’t know that. They are hungry. They are starving to death for this. They don’t know for what they are starving. We distract ourselves. That is what our noise is all about. We distract ourselves with all kinds of things. We cover up that hunger, that voice that is calling to us, with distractions. We medicate it away. We distract it away. That is what we do. But the hunger is still there. God is passionate about reaching out to all of us. 

So many live in the dark shadows of despair, overwhelmed by attachments to everything but God, playing with the dark side of life. We all know what misery is like because we’ve had our share, so we know what people suffer. That’s where God is entering the harvest of faith and strangely enough, we’ve been drafted as a part of the enterprise, frequently preparing the way for something that follows us.

So what does this mean for you and me? How do we do that, considering our present culture? Do we take the Mormon approach and send our young people out two-by-two on their bikes, wear their white shirts and black ties, and go out on mission sharing wherever they can? Or is it the Jehovah’s Witnesses, spreading their pamphlets door to door? Or is there another way?

Right now, I think everyone in our culture is pretty sensitized to the bogus, phony charlatans that are out there. There have been too many fakes, too much commercialization, flashy, showy, shallow religion thrown at people through the airwaves and elsewhere. And I think people’s defenses are understandably and reasonably high. It is reasonable to have those kinds of defenses. They have had it with hype and false hope generated by a prosperity gospel. They are sick of hypocrisy, church cover-ups, judgementalism, and a consumer faith that sounds like a religious Wal-Mart, the marketing of religious products that are hawked at blue-light specials. That is what I think the culture is thinking. That’s why I think their suspicion is reasonable.

Here’s what I really believe: What people are looking for today out there in the harvest, which is always at our feet, are spiritual friends who have some sense of God in their life, who are authentic, and willing to share their weaknesses and struggles. They are genuine. They are looking for a community of faith that actually tries to live the things they profess as true.

And here’s what I also believe: I don’t think the sending of the 70 is some program we develop or a product we sell. I don’t think you sell God. I don’t think you market God. I don’t believe that. The commodifying, and the commercializing of God is vanity, and dust in the wind, and a disease of our time.

I think the sending of the 70 today is about a way of living we have and our willingness to share it in real and genuinely loving relationships. I think that’s where the harvest really happens now in American culture. Our mission field is wherever God places us. And after people trust that Christians are real, loving, honest, and genuine, and have some experience of God, then lots of things can happen. But without those things, it doesn’t matter if you send 70, 700, or 7000.

I was talking to a young woman who was in a former church. She told me that one time she was in the school cafeteria. She is a rather quiet sort. She is rather shy. She was sitting at the lunchroom table, and a foreign-exchange student sat down beside her. She put her chin in her hands, and said, “Would you tell me about your inner-life?”

What a guestion! Why was the question posed? Because that person noticed something about her life. She wanted to know what is at the root of this. What is down there that makes you the way you are? That was genuine relationship. That question opened a door for her to share of her experience with her deep life with God. That is the place where people make a difference in the harvest. I think that is what at the root of the sending of the 70.

So, I guess what I am saying today, here in our Broadway community of faith, we are no doubt being sent to the harvest, which is whatever God gives to us, places in our path. The harvest is everything around us, in our community, and in our families, and in our friends, and in our work, and in the community in the largest sense. It is whatever our world happens to me, because our worlds are different. Whatever that world is for you, that is the harvest. And our honest, loving, compassionate, spirit-filled and willing presence is all God ever needs to create something new and beautiful. That is the thing that has to be trusted, what the Spirit can do with these beautiful, sometimes wounded, hopeful souls of ours. 

That is the wonderful thing about this story. These disciples go forward to prepare the way. They don’t do the way. They don’t take the place of God or the Spirit. They are simply playing a part, their part, their little part. That is what we do. What a relief that is. Don’t you just feel yourself relax? Doesn’t that feel good? Because, after all, it is not up to us. What is up to us is to be genuine, real, compassionate Christians wherever we are. Then God puts together the 1000 pieces. We don’t know what they are. It doesn’t matter. We are who we are in this moment, and years from now, decades from now, a hundred other things have happened in a person’s life. They come together in a beautiful moment. They feel drawn to the Spirit. That is the power of the sending of the 70, who go to prepare but are not God. They are not doing God’s work. They only prepare so God can do God’s loving work.

Let me tell you a story.

A long time ago in Israel, in the town of Tsefat, the richest man in town was in synagogue, sleeping, as usual, through Sabbath services. Every now and then, he would stir awake, but then go right back to sleep. But during one of his wakeful moments, he heard the Torah verses read from Leviticus where God (in a strange passage) instructs the children of Israel to place 12 loaves of bread on a table in the ancient wilderness tabernacle (24:5-6).

When services ended, the wealthy man woke up, not realizing that what he really heard was a portion of Scripture describing the 12 loaves of bread, and thought instead that God had come to him in a vision and had asked him personally to bring 12 loaves of bread to God. The rich man felt honored that God should single him out, but he also felt a little foolish. Of all the things God could want from a person, 12 loaves of bread did not seem very important. But who was he to argue with God. He went home and baked the bread.

Upon returning to the synagogue, he decided the only proper place for his holy gift was in the ark, where the scrolls are kept) so he carefully placed all 12 loaves there and prayed, “Thank you, O God, for telling me what you want of me.” Then he left.

No sooner had he gone than the poorest man in the town entered the sanctuary. All alone, he spoke to God. “O Lord, I am so poor. My family is starving; we have nothing to eat. Unless you perform a miracle for us, we will surely perish.” And then as he looked at the ark before him he saw the 12 loaves of bread! “A miracle!” exclaimed the poor man, “I had no idea you worked so quickly! Blessed are you, O God, who answers our prayers. That was quick!” Then he ran home to share the bread with his family.

Minutes later the rich man returned to the sanctuary and, curious to know what happened to the bread, he took a peek. As he opened the ark, he saw that all of the bread was gone. “Oh, my God!” he shouted.  “This is wonderful; I’ll bring another 12 loaves – with raisins in them, too.”

The bread exchange became a weekly ritual that continued for many years. And, like most rituals that become routine, neither man gave it much thought. Then, one day, the rabbi, detained in the sanctuary longer than usual, watched the rich man place the dozen loaves in the ark and the poor man redeem them.

The rabbi called the two men together and told them what they had been doing.  He told the men what had been happening, and it broke their hearts.

“I see,” said the rich man sadly, “God doesn’t really take my bread.”

“I understand,” said the poor man, “God hasn’t been baking bread for me after all.”

The both feared that God had never been present at all.

Then the rabbi asked them to look at their hands. “Your hands,” he said to the rich man, “are the hands of God giving food to the poor. And your hands,” said the rabbi to the poor man, “also are the hands of God, receiving gifts from the rich. So you see, God is perfectly present in your lives. Continue baking and continue taking. Your hands are the hands of God.” (The Book of Miracles, by Lawrence Kushner. Jewish Lights Pub, 1997, “The Hands of God,” 67)

So, what about your hands? Now look at your hands. Your hands are the hands of God. We are little pieces of the puzzle. We have no idea how God is going to use us. And yet God does. All of our hands together, all different, all giving and receiving, praying, creating, and loving, all part of the presence of God in life. And this is what we take into the harvest, who we really are and what we were meant to be, not something we aren’t and were never meant to be. The only thing God needs is our real selves making ourselves available to God, and God can do the rest. Each one of us is a piece of God’s intricate puzzle, often unknown to us at the moment, but discovered later. Just think of the countless influences in your life that brought you to this moment in time, brought God close to you and you close to God. Multiply that by billions and you start to get the picture of the enormity of the harvest and the way God works in it with uncountable willing souls.

Any harvest begins with the planting the seeds. So where will you plant yourself this week, this year? What growth will come? We have no idea! But we have trust and faith. The harvest is come. And your hands are the hands of God.

Thanks me to God. Amen.

Benediction

Now, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship and communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.