June 10, 2005
Preach
Pentecost 4/6A Mt 9.35-10.15
We Episcopalians take not a little pride in what we call “apostolic succession.” By that we mean something that often seems like some ghostly filament dangling down through the ages. Somehow, it’s got our name on it and connects our parsons with these very twelve that Jesus commissioned and sent out into the boonies to preach the gospel, the ones Matthew writes about today. Of course, we wouldn’t be presumptuous or anything like that.
That’s about as far, however, as any similarity goes. Jesus sent them out with next to nothing. He said, “Take no gold, nor silver, nor copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor a staff… and if any one will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that town” (Mt.10.9,14).
We 21st century wannabes look a bit more like apostolic success than did they. It takes several major vestment houses to keep us suited out, and, as you know, one can never tell a bishop (aka apostle, they like to think) from an acolyte without a staff (aka crosier) heaven only knows. Those guys were collared by Jesus, not by Almy or Whipple.
Turning into our driveway coming home one afternoon around the shank end of Lent, we were greeted by two suits, Bibles in hand, standing on the front stoop. They said they wanted to introduce us to Jesus. I said, thanks, but we’d met him already. They said they wanted to read some Bible to us. (Apparently they’d forgot the part about shaking the dust off their feet.)
I invited them out to our parish for the Easter Vigil and said we’d read the whole Bible to them or at least enough of it that it would seem like it. They said how long will that take. I said you ought to know. Wiser — and more polite — than I and unlike our liturgy writers, they said they couldn’t do it in one night. We wished them well, thanked them again for their effort and for their staying power.
I’ve never been all that sure why people like that offend me so. I couldn’t — better, wouldn’t — do what they’re doing. Yet they’re not all that far off the mark of Jesus’ commission to his disciples, maybe just cleaned up more.
I thought afterwards that I’d rather keep this story and my behavior pretty much to myself. Then I remembered this Jesus they’d wanted to tell me about, the same one who’d already forgiven me so much and now, I hoped, could probably manage at least this one thing more.
We churchers — and I’m for sure a lesser satrap among that “we” — will do almost anything to avoid having our noses rubbed in the gospel like this story does. We never cease to run out of diversions. They’re not excuses, of course, they’re reasons, but we’ve done so many things to the church since these first disciples — including making it like it is rather than how it was — we have to have all these reasons to avoid too much time pushing doorbells and telling about Jesus.
“Preach as you go,” Jesus told them, “saying, ‘the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying, give without pay.” It was a tall order. It remains a tall order. Forty millions of us have no health insurance. Changing that would be a good place to start healing the sick. We’ve for sure forgot how to raise the dead, even our own programs. Leprosy? AIDS? Demons, now there’s something we could get our hands on — the military-industrial complex, sexual discrimination and patriarchy, hunger-making systems and poverty, desert-making systems and global warming — demons all, permeating and polluting our spiritual, social, and political environment.
Maybe notions like preaching about the proximity of “the kingdom of heaven” confuse us. It’s understandable that we try to avoid and deny them with jokes about Peter and the Pearly Gates. Such will be around forever, more than likely. But until then, try on the idea that wherever the brokenness of the world is being mended, there is present the kingdom of heaven. Then let us get some compassionate glue and sutures, stop worrying about who’s on first, and start patching. There’s not much question about where to start. Maybe for me, I might start looking for those suits, or, at least, their Bible.