He Sent Them Out

Sunday, February 09, 2020
Intern Teleen Saunders

Mark 6:1-13

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I’m going to start out with a personal story about my relationship with my husband, Marshall. Perhaps it’s because Valentine’s Day is coming. Perhaps it’s because our text is about going into the world two by two. But I was thinking about the moment that I decided it was time to get married. I was twenty-two years old living by myself on the second floor of an apartment building down in Rochester. It had been a particularly icy spring where the snow melted during the heat of the day and froze again into thin patches of pure menace at night just waiting for someone to slip and fall. That someone was me. I broke a bone in my leg and was on crutches for the next two months. It was about this time that I realized it would be easier to go through life’s ups and downs with a companion. I decided to get married. Luckily, I already had a boyfriend. And it turns out I was right. Life is easier with a companion. That boy and I have celebrated 25 Valentine Days together as a married couple and I couldn’t be happier.

Companions, partnerships, alliances come in all shapes and sizes. We can be companions with our neighbors, companions with our bowling league, companions with co-workers or classmates, and companions in the gospel. It seems that working and sharing our lives with others is what life is all about. After all, God has been making companions since Adam and Eve. Words translated as “companion” are listed 63 times in the Bible. [1] Moses, Ruth, Jesus, and Paul all had companions. We all need companions because we are relational people by nature. It’s in our very fiber. In fact, the whole being of our Trinitarian God is companionship. The delicate dance between God the creator, Christ the redeemer, and the Holy sustaining Spirit moves us towards the understanding that God more than a noun. God is also a verb. The Trinity is in a constant state of companionship with itself… and amazingly has chosen to be in a constant state of companionship with us as well.

In our Gospel message today, we hear that Jesus called together his twelve apostles and sent them out two by two. Now, if you think about this, it’s pretty amazing. When was the last time two Jewish folks knocked on your front door wanting to talk about religion? Let’s face it. Some religions are clearly more associated with door-to-door proselytizing than others. In fact, a great bulk of the Old Testament talks about separateness, purity, and preserving identity. Now suddenly, this Jesus flips tradition on its head and starts sending people out into neighboring villages – two by two. Proselytizing for Jesus starts and ends with companionship.

So, what about you, Augustana? Are you ready for some door knocking? Our tradition in the ELCA is pretty shy and door knocking isn’t really our thing either. But this doesn’t mean that we hide our faith under a bushel basket. In fact, Mark 6 tells us exactly the opposite. Jesus wants his disciples to tell the story of the loving God of Israel and this doesn’t mean staying put safely behind the walls of the church. This means going out into the community because God, as a verb, is something that needs to be shown through action. This is why we have mentors for Confirmation and sponsors for Baptism. We tell by showing. Jesus wants his disciples to face down evil. Jesus wants his disciples to heal the sick. We can’t just talk about the love of God. We can’t just talk about compassion and grace. We need to BE the love of God. We need to BE compassion and grace. In short, the world has a broken leg and Jesus sends his companions to help fix it.

So, what does this look like? Companionship looks like Elva Kaffe with dancing children, singing butchers, and rice pudding. Companionship looks like letters to college students from the home church. Companionship looks like a warm meal served at the Boys and Girls Club or Loaves and Fishes. Companionship looks like a shower and a cot for the folks at Matrix housing. Companionship looks like a Befriender visit. Companionship looks like an orchestra concert on a cold day. Companionship looks like a new sanctuary for our partner congregation in Nyamhanga. On a personal level, companionship looks like a cup of coffee with a co-worker, a visit to the hospital, a birthday card, or helping a classmate with homework. True companionship is authentic because it comes with the power of God as we humbly recognize that God gives each of us unique gifts and opportunities to give through the spirit. We don’t need to worry about failing. We are enough. The rest, of course, is up to God.

Now, I can’t get over the part of our reading where the disciples are told to bring only a walking stick and sandals. (I’m sure snow boots work just as well.) These instructions from Jesus are interesting. Jesus, in a sense, is saying that we should take only what is necessary and leave behind everything that will stand in the way of creating pure and loving companionship. Leave behind self-doubt. Leave behind politics and prejudice for those who are different from us. Leave behind fear of the unknown. Leave behind our self-righteousness and puffed up pride. Leave behind our animosity and name-calling for we are not called to bully those who disagree with us. We leave these things behind because we don’t need much when we have companionship. Here’s the reality: when we build a community in the name of Christ, we have a community to support us too. Yes, the world hurts. But we hurt also! We too need a cup of coffee, a place to sleep, or help with our homework. Companionship is allowing others to serve us too in a mutual give and take. It is here where we are living in the dance of the Trinity.

Now there will be times of rejection. Marriages break up. Bands break up. Corporations dissolve and churches split. Division is painful. And, we pick ourselves back up, dust ourselves off, and move on. This is not the time to start a Holy War. These aren’t the Crusades. Instead of meeting rejection with stewing, holding a grudge, or lashing out, Jesus wants us to move forward with dignity for the sake of the gospel. Jesus wants us to move forward in love, not backwards in hate.

By sending out his apostles, Jesus reveals a sweeping new reality, one of openness, grace, love, and compassion. He is calling us to be companions in the living gospel by showing the world how to care for each other. I have a footnote to my broken leg story (no pun intended). Last winter, my husband had his turn to slip on ice. He too broke his leg and it was my turn to help him. Companions are good. Thanks be to God.

[1] https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/words/Companions

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Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

The book of Romans is a letter. An actual letter. Like, a letter written by hand and then sent to someone else for them to read. Paul, the author of this letter, wrote a lot of letters. Paul was an apostle, that is, someone who is sent – in this case, he is one who is sent to preach the good news of Jesus Christ to the furthest reaches of the known world. He’s really, really good at it.

At the time that Paul writes this letter to the church in Rome, he’s been doing this work for probably twenty years and is at the peak of his career. He’s developed a great pattern in his work: visit a place, get to know the people, continually share his faith with them, help gather a community of believers from all walks of life, and stay with them while they learn how to be followers of Jesus. Then Paul leaves – after all, he’s got other places to visit and more people to teach. He is an apostle – he is sent. But he doesn’t leave the church abandoned. He writes letters back to these churches, especially when he hears about crises or conflicts. Sometimes they need comfort, sometimes challenge, sometimes critique, but always he writes as one they know and love. They welcome his input.

The letter to the Romans is not like that. Paul has never been to Rome. There is already a Christian church there, one brought over likely from Jerusalem very early in the faith. And the church in Rome has recently seen conflict. A few years before the writing of this letter, the Roman emperor expelled all the Jews from Rome. Because Christianity was effectively a form of Judaism at the time, Christians were also exiled. After the emperor died and the Jewish Christians returned, they found a church that had continued to grow and develop – this time with Gentile Christians.

It’s hard for us to understand how shocking and despicable this would have been. Two weeks ago I preached on Acts 10, and how Peter’s vision of God calling all animals clean and good to eat flew in the face of millennia of culture, history, and society for Jewish Christians. Jesus himself was Jewish and kept these laws – surely if anyone else wanted to be Christian, they could likewise follow these rules. Peter’s vision and the general movement of the church revealed otherwise.

That didn’t mean it made things easy. It is hard to let go of tradition and expectation and legislation as the Spirit moves us to new places. I hear people struggle when someone sits in their pew or wears sweatpants to church. Let’s be honest: those are enormously trivial things. If still we grind our teeth at the thought of these worthless infractions how much more might faithful people be driven to despair by moving on from the purity laws ordained by God?

This is the faith community to which Paul writes. He writes to a church redefining and fighting. It is a church that feels a deep rift, a painful split, one that goes deep into matters of identity and righteousness, one that threatens to dissolve into name-calling and condemning and finger-pointing and disgrace to the very name of God in whose name they mean to gather – and if we’re honest, we know how that feels. Those fears are not unfamiliar.

So how does Paul start his letter? He has no standing in that church in Rome. They don’t even know who he is – and if they do, it’s possible that they might still remember him as he was in his youth, an aggressive persecutor of the early faith. What can he say that would possibly invite them to listen to him, to hear the word he will share, to receive the message that he hopes will join them together in the work of the gospel?

He keeps it simple: he tells them the truth. He tells them who he is, and it is fully wrapped up in who Jesus is. His self-introduction is the story of the gospel. Nothing he can say about himself means more than who he is in Jesus Christ.

He tells them he wants to come see them, that he wants to be with them, that he hopes he can share some spiritual gift – but even more than that, so that they might mutually encourage each other in faith. He doesn’t want to come to them because he’s better than them, because he can fix them so they can get things right, because they’re obviously sinful mess-ups who just haven’t been taught the truth. No, he wants to join them for mutual encouragement in faith. He wants to walk with them. He hopes he has something to offer them in his teaching and leadership, but just the same, he knows he will grow by being with them as well.

What if that’s how it’s supposed to be? What if we’re supposed to talk about what we believe and why, not because we’ve got it right and we want to establish our superior knowledge, but because we know that God works through our mutual encouragement in faith? What if we were not ashamed of the gospel, not afraid of getting it wrong, not worried that someone would think we were weird for talking about what we believe and why and then asking others the same? What if we trusted that the power of God was at work in this mutual encouragement? What if we were not so proud and short-sighted as to think that the way we see God is the only way God works in the world? What if we actually believed that God is at work in the world, that God has already been working long before we showed up, that we arrive as much to learn as to teach?

Ah, but I know the argument against it: we’re supposed to keep polite conversation, right? What don’t you talk about at the dinner table? Religion and politics, right? Look where it’s gotten us. It’s gotten us to a place where we can no longer have civil discourse, where we are more likely to condemn than to seek to understand, where we claim a Christian can only look one way, live one place, vote one direction, take one moral position. It’s gotten us built up and walled off and fighting against our own beloved members of the family of God.

So don’t do it. Take Paul’s example. Tell people who you are. Tell them where you’re from. Tell them what you believe. And then invite them to do the same. Make your story of faith as natural a part of your introduction as where you work and where you live and who’s in your family. And when someone’s story is different, listen to it. Hear it. See God at work in it. Be amazed. Allow for the mutual encouragement of faith, because this is how the gospel is shared.

No matter where you go from here, no matter where you find yourself, no matter what comes next for you – you can do this. You are called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel which is the power of God for salvation for everyone who has faith – no matter what. Thanks be to God. Amen.

He Sent Them Out

Sunday, February 09, 2020
Intern Teleen Saunders

Mark 6:1-13

Past Sermons

Reclaiming our Place as Creatures of God

Living a New Life with Christ

The Power of God’s Love

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

Reclaiming our Place as Creatures of God

Living a New Life with Christ

The Power of God’s Love

About Augustana

Quick Links

Contact Us

Worship Hours

He Sent Them Out

Sunday, February 09, 2020 Intern Teleen Saunders

Mark 6:1-13

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019 Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

About Augustana

Quick Links

Contact Us

Worship Hours

Sunday, February 09, 2020
Intern Teleen Saunders

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson