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Baggage
claim. The place where we stop to pick up the bags we brought
with us after we finish traveling. Does it ever feel like life
comes equipped with its very own baggage claim? Sometimes I
feel as if before I start the day, I have to stop and pick up
my baggage. Wouldn’t want to leave home without it.
Baggage—“the stuff” we carry with us.
We
all have some baggage we carry around with us. Some of the
bags we carry are full of the hurts and frustrations of our
lives. In them are the memories of all the times we have been
wronged, hurt or ashamed. Another bag is filled with guilt and
regret. Another bag, like the one the character from our drama
was carrying, is filled with all of the things we are using to
try to build meaning into our lives. It has all the trophies,
the plaques, the degrees, the newspaper clippings and the
letters of recommendation—all of the accomplishments and
accolades that we hope will give meaning to our lives. The
problem with that bag is that it just never seems big enough.
As soon as it is filled, we find someone with a bigger bag of
stuff.
Baggage
claim. We seem to stop there every day to pick up our baggage.
Even though it weighs us down, we just don’t know what to do
without it. And before long we begin to realize something.
Rather than claiming our baggage, too often we discover that
our baggage has claimed us.
There is
one other bag that many of us carry. It is our religious bag.
Oh, we don’t like to talk about that bag—at least not
here. But yes, indeed, some of the baggage we carry around is
a result of our involvement in the church. The very
institution that has been called to help us lighten our load,
has at times added to the very load we carry.
Dare we
open up that bag—that bag that we may have picked up from a
lifetime of church-going and religious training? Let’s see
what’s in there. Lots of lists. Lists of answers—all to be
memorized—each with corresponding scriptures to be delivered
to anyone, anywhere, any time the occasion calls for it. I
wouldn’t want to get caught in a situation where I don’t
have the right answer.
“How do
you know the Bible is true?” Got that list right here. “If
there really is a God, how come there is all this war and
hunger and violence?” Where is that list of why a just God
allows suffering? That one has the nice charts to help make it
all so easy to
understand. Then there is this one. This one comes in those
desperate moments while visiting someone in the hospital.
“Hey, pastor, explain this one to me. I’ve been a good
person my whole life. Gone to church, paid my tithe, taught in
Sunday School, worked in a soup kitchen. Tell me, why did God
let me get cancer?” Oh, this is a tough one. Where is that
list about God’s will? Answers—got to have them.
Wouldn’t want anyone to know, surely wouldn’t want God to
know, that there are some things I am not sure of. All the
right answers. I carry them right here in my bag.
What else
is in that church bag? Well, there are more lists. This is
“The People to Avoid” list.
This is “The Places to Avoid” list. Oh, but here is
a good list: the “Who Gets into Heaven” list. I’m always
checking to make sure I’m on that one. But you can’t have
that list unless you have the other one—the juicier
one—the “Who Is Not Going to Heaven” list. Oh yeah, here
is one more list. The problem is that it got so big, it had to
be bound and a hard cover put on it. That is the
all-too-weighty “List of Sins.” I need to keep that one
around so I know, and I can let someone else know, when they
are sinning. The lists of dos and don’ts are what I carry in
my baggage.
There
is one more thing in my religious bag. I wonder if it is in
yours, as well? My mask. My church mask. The one I put on that
says everything is okay and things are just fine. This mask
hides any doubts or fears I might have. I wouldn’t want the
church folks to know about those. I call my mask “The Shiny
Happy Jesus Mask.” Anybody else have one of those? Do you
carry it in your bag so you can whip it out when you walk
through the doors on Sunday? The religious bag can weigh us
down and make us preoccupied with right answers, rather than
right relationship.
But you
might be saying to me, “What if I put all this baggage down,
Jeff? What will I have left? I don’t like my baggage, but it
is what I know. I’m not sure what it would mean to live
without these bags. What do I have if I don’t have my
baggage?” Well, if we set down our bags, we will find
ourselves like the other character in our drama. Without our
baggage, we will find that, at the end of the day, all we have
is ourselves. Then maybe, just maybe, we will realize that is
all God has ever asked of us, anyway. Just us. Just our lives.
That is all God has ever asked of us. Our lives—given back
to God and then given away to others. No extra baggage
required. It is right here in our Gospel account for tonight.
This is the
moment in Mark’s story where those who had been following
Jesus are sent out to be witnesses in the world. The first six
chapters have them following, watching, listening and
learning. And now, here is the big moment. Jesus sends them
out into the world to bear witness to all they have seen and
heard. Listen again to Jesus’ marching orders:
Take nothing
for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in
your belts. Wear sandals, but not an extra tunic.
“Pack
light,” Jesus says. Leave it all behind. No extra baggage
required for this journey. No answer books to take along. No
big, leather-bound Bible with the gold trim and red lettering
to tote. No tracts to hand out. No doctrines to defend. It
seems like the only thing they need is a good pair of walking
shoes.
Jesus sends
his disciples out into the world with only their lives and
their stories. Their lives will be the witness to the new ways
God is active in the world. Their stories and their lives are
what they have been equipped with for ministry. And
stories—they had great stories to tell. Stories of the truly
amazing things they had seen God doing in and through the
ministry of Jesus. They had a story to tell.
There
was the story of the time they saw those four guys carry their
friend (whose life seemed to be frozen, stuck, unable to move)
for miles—and when they couldn’t get in to see Jesus, they
actually climbed up to the roof and lowered their friend down
to make sure that the hand of God could touch their friend.
What a story about friendship! A story too good not to tell!
Then
there was that time Jesus was trying to get them to cross over
to the other side of the lake. The “other” side.…where they
were….where they lived. Surely God wanted nothing to
do with them. Was it any wonder that a storm brewed up
halfway through the journey? They would have to turn back. The
storm had to be God’s way of saying to Jesus that ministry
to them was simply not a part of the plan. But then
something happened. Jesus calmed the storm. They went to the
other side. God wanted the disciples there on the other
side.…with them….among them. In fact, the
disciples soon realized that they were more like them than
they had ever imagined. What a story about breaking down
boundaries! A story too good not to tell!
How about
the one about the woman who had been bleeding and bleeding for
twelve years. Her suffering seemed endless. She tried
everything. Went to every doctor in town. Tried every support
group. Read every book. But nothing seemed to work. She just
kept bleeding. She just kept suffering. Then suddenly she saw
her chance. Something that seemed to embody the very spirit of
God was passing by. So she just reached out and grabbed a hold
of it. And the bleeding was gone. Years of suffering and
isolation seemed to melt away.
Just like that. What a story of suffering and hope! A
story too good not to tell!
Not only
did they have these stories about what they had seen happening
around them, they had stories about what was happening within
them. Peter, Andrew, James and John never believed it possible
that life could mean more than trying to get bigger catches of
fish. Now they knew what it meant to have bigger fish to fry.
And old Levi, the tax collector, who had lived a life consumed
by the pursuit of financial security, had an understanding of
eternal security that no amount of money could ever purchase.
They had stories to tell—each of them—about how God was at
work in their lives. That is how Jesus sends his disciples out
into the world: with their lives and their stories.
There is one
other important thing to see in today’s scripture about the
nature of the mission field where Jesus sends his disciples.
It is right there in verses 12 and 13.
They
went out and preached that people should repent. They drove
out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and
healed them.
In the
mission field, the disciples’ preaching was never divorced
from a ministry of healing.
Telling the truth about who God is and what God is
calling humanity to can never be divorced from genuine acts of
compassion and healing. They must go hand in hand.
In
today’s scripture we see Jesus laying out the model for
evangelism. Oops…I said it, didn’t I?
Evangelism. Boy, there is a word we don’t like to
talk about too much around here. Evangelism.
If there was ever a word in the Christian vocabulary
that has gotten a bad rap, evangelism is it. Just to say it
makes us all a little nervous. But today’s scripture makes
it clear that the followers of Jesus are people who are sent
out into the world to proclaim, through both word and deed,
the Good News of God found in the life, death and resurrection
of Jesus Christ. But evangelism—that makes us all a little
nervous, now, doesn’t it?
On the
street, evangelism is often equated with pressure. It can feel
like selling God—as if God was vinyl siding, replacement
windows or a mortgage refinancing service. It can feel like
having to shove our ideas down someone’s throat, threatening
them with hell if they do not capitulate to our logic or
Scripture quoting. It too often means excluding everyone from
God’s grace except those who agree with the
“evangelizer.” This is the reputation evangelism has for
most people, probably even for many of us here.
But
consider this. What if there really is a great and good and
kind God, and human beings really are God’s creatures,
though we lose our way sometimes? And what if our deepest
dream is really true, that the God who really exists really
loves us? And what if one of the best ways for God to get
through to those of us who have lost our way is via the
kindness and influence of those others who have been brought
back to a better path? What if there really are “angels”
out there—not the wings-and-halos type, but the
flesh-and-blood, laughter-and-tears type—people who are
literally sent by God to intervene, to help those of us who
have mucked up our lives, to give us a taste of grace?
And what if
you and I, who begin as wandering and confused people, could
be so helped by our caring, God-sent and love-filled friends
that we could join them as messengers of grace, carriers of
good news, secret-agent angels, case studies in God’s power
to change, enrich, fill and rescue lives that were being
wasted, ruined and self-sabotaged? So what if it is not
evangelism, but rather the style of doing it that has emerged
over the last 100 years, that is deserving of our mistrust?
What if evangelism is one of the things that our world needs
most?
After all,
most people want to talk about things that really
matter—their sense of God, their experiences of meaning or
transcendence, their attempts to cope with their own
mortality, their struggles with guilt and goodness, their
dreams and hopes and deepest longings. They want to talk about
these things because without them, all that is left is reruns
and shopping, and spending and saving, culminating in estate
sales and probate.
True
enough, most of the modern ways of evangelism—with the sales
pitches, propositions and proofs—feel coercive and
contrived. But that is, in fact, never how Jesus intended it
to be. Tonight’s scripture makes that clear. Evangelists,
the kind we discover in tonight’s scriptures, are people who
engage others in good conversations about important and
profound topics such as faith, values, hope, meaning, purpose,
goodness, beauty, truth, life after death, life before death,
and God. They do this, not because they are experts or because
they want to impose their views on others, but because they
feel they are called by God to do so. They live with a sense
of mission that their God-given calling in life is not to just
live for themselves, or even just to live well, but in fact to
live unselfishly and well and to help others live unselfishly
and well, too. Evangelists are people with a mission from God
and a passion to love and serve their neighbors. They want to change the world. And they realize that to do
this there is no extra baggage needed.
In fact, true evangelists realize that they already
have everything they need—their lives and their stories.
Our
scripture reminds us that evangelism means engaging others
with good deeds and good conversations. And if we know
anything about Jesus, we know that he was an amazing
conversationalist. Unlike the typical evangelist-caricature of
the last 100 years, Jesus was short on sermons, long on
conversations; short on answers, long on questions; short on
abstractions and propositions, long on stories and parables;
short on telling us what to think, long on challenging us to
think for ourselves; short on confronting the irreligious,
long on confronting the too-religious. Before he told people
to believe, he invited them to belong. Jesus changed the world
with his life and with his stories.
So, you
see, we are more ready than we realize to answer Jesus’ call
to transform the world. And we don’t need a bag of tricks
full of right answers, proof texts or propositions. We have
everything we need: our lives and our stories. I know some of
the stories that are in this place. There are stories about
how God has brought you through divorce and blending families.
Stories about how you found healing after the death of a
parent and how God is using your transformed pain to help
bring healing to others who walk through the valley of the
shadow of loss. I have heard stories about people who turned
down bigger and more lucrative jobs because the cost to their
families would be too high. Out there tonight, there are
stories about persons who have been brought through the fear
of cancer, depression and job loss. There are stories about
how people found God while worshiping in a small mission
church in a foreign country. There are stories about people
who woke up one day to realize that they were giving too much
to their careers and not enough to their families, and had God
help them reconfigure their priorities. Those are stories too
good not to tell!
Each of us
here also has a story about this place, about this community.
We can go out into the places we work and live and tell people
about the things God is doing right here every Sunday at 5:00.
We have a story to tell about a place where Tyler, Bryon and
Drew are often the ones to greet you at the door. A story of a
place where Kelly will greet everybody with a hug. A place
where we all have surrogate grandparents named Stew and Ruth,
and everybody has an adopted mom named Mama June. We have a
story of how God can take an accountant, an eye doctor and a
trained opera singer to make some of the most inspirational
and powerful music. We have a story here that is too good not
to tell!
The roll
call continues. It is a call to go out into the world and let
the light and love of God shine in us and through us. We are
called to change the world. Julie Work. Jeff Livesay. Wendy
Champoux. Bob McGregor. Bridget Nelson. Alexa Frye. Ron
Reynolds. Jeff Nelson. “Will any of you be checking any
baggage?” No, we already have everything we need.
Note: This
sermon was preceded by a drama entitled “Baggage Claim.”
In it, two characters meet in a waiting room. They strike up a
conversation and soon we realize that they are in the waiting
room of heaven. One of the characters has a bag full of his
accomplishments. The other comes empty-handed. The drama
drives home the idea that, at the end of day, God requires our
lives, not our works.
I was also
aided by Brain McCleran’s book, More
Ready than You Know. McCleran is the one of the leaders in
the “emerging church” movement, a movement that is helping
the church understand its place in the postmodern world. I am
just picking up his book, Finding
Faith, and finding it very interesting and insightful.
Don’t be surprised if you find it being quoted in future
sermons.
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