Fifth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A, Proper 6
(Romans 5:1-8, Matthew 9:35-10:8-23)
Holy Trinity Parish (Episcopal), Decatur, Ga.
AUDIO (just of me practicing at home, not the actual sermon-giving live):
TEXT:
For the past several weeks, we have been hearing stories of Jesus’s early ministry from the Gospel of Matthew. We have listened as Jesus calls the disciples to follow him and watched as he heals the sick and raises the dead. Today we reach a turning point in the story. The movement has grown unmanageable. Upon seeing the crowds of people in need gathering around him, Jesus recognizes the limits of his humanity – “the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few” (Matt. 9:37). There are too many people in need for him to reach each person directly – and so he commissions the twelve disciples to go out into the world in his name, bringing healing to those they meet and proclaiming the good news that the kingdom of God has come near.
Not much has changed in 2,000 years. The need is still great, and the workers are still few. Just ask the front desk volunteers, who field calls and in-person visits on an almost daily basis from people looking for assistance with food, rent, or bills. Or ask Ed Buckley or Fr. Deneke about the extreme poverty they witnessed on their trip to Haiti in March. Or talk with Holy Trinity parishioners who have traveled to New Orleans multiple times over the past two years to help with the Katrina relief and rebuilding efforts - and have actually been there again this weekend. The need is great, but the workers are few.
The need is great. That’s not exactly what the passage says, of course – we all know the famous quote: “the harvest is plentiful.” But the “harvest” that is so plentiful is not an abundance of resources but an abundance of need. The potential "harvest" here refers to the crowds of people, those crowds on whom Jesus had compassion because they were in need – they were “harassed and helpless,” like “sheep without a shepherd.” The quantities of people who are in need – of basic necessities, of healing, and of the good news of God’s kingdom – is great. Those willing to go out and address these needs, heal these people, and proclaim the good news – are few.
And so Jesus sends the twelve. And 2,000 years later, Jesus sends us.
Except here’s a little secret for you: we are both the apostles and the crowd in this story. We are both those who are able to give and those who are desperately in need.
It’s easy to forget this in a church as affluent as the Episcopal Church. We are used to thinking of service as something we do to them, not something of which we are on the receiving end. And oh, we talk about the sacrifice of serving others, of how difficult it is to give of ourselves – our time, talents, and treasures – but how much easier it is to be seen and known as one who gives rather than one who receives! For there is power in the giving, there is a security in the knowledge that we have more of something than another – that we have so much of it, in fact, that we are able to give it away. There is great generosity in giving out of our abundance, but there is also great power as well.
William Willimon, the Methodist bishop of North Alabama, writes of our preference to be the servers rather than the served:
"I suggest we are better givers than getters," he writes, "not because we are generous people but because we are proud, arrogant people.”
It is tough to be served by others, Willimon writes, “because I would rather see myself as a giver. I want power -- to stand on my own, take charge, set things to rights, perhaps to help those who have nothing. I don't like picturing myself as dependent, needy, empty-handed.” [1]
So back to my little secret: while we may see ourselves as the apostles in this story, as those who are sent out into the world to help others, we are actually just as much in need as the crowds in this story -- those obnoxious, wandering, clueless crowds, harassed and helpless with no sense of direction.
ShirleyGrace Madajewski, our Monday morning front desk volunteer, often brings in interesting quotes and articles to share with our office staff. A few weeks ago she brought in an article called “Bozos on the Bus,” from a book called Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser, founder of the Omega Institute, a nonprofit organization for personal and spiritual growth in California.
Lesser writes about the clown-activist Wavy Gravy, most famous for his role as the master of ceremonies at Woodstock, and his use of humor in the service of social activism and motivational change. She says her favorite “Wavyism” is the following quote: “We’re all bozos on the bus, so we might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.” She says she loves this phrase because
“I believe that we are all bozos on the bus, contrary to the self-assured image we work so hard to present to each other on a daily basis. We are all half-baked experiments – mistake-prone beings, born without an instruction book into a complex world. None of us are models of perfect behavior: We have all betrayed and been betrayed; we’ve been known to be egotistical, unreliable, lethargic, and stingy; and each one of us has, at times, awakened in the middle of the night worrying about everything from money, kids, or terrorism to wrinkled skin and receding hairlines. In other words, we’re all bozos on the bus.” [2]
So much of how our world is structured and how we live our lives is an attempt to avoid this truth, however. We spend lots of our time calling other people bozos because we don’t want anyone to know that inside, we’re really just bozos ourselves. And because we think we are so deserving of all the blessings we have in this life, often not seeing them as blessings but as trophies we have earned, we approach service to others with a constant eye to whether or not the recipients of our charity are truly deserving of our help.
We live in a world that is mired in measuring and calculating who is "worthy," who is "deserving," and who "qualifies" -- for this aid, for that scholarship, for this welfare program, for that job. And in many ways, the limited resources that we have to address the world’s needs demand that it be so – it is the only way we can deal with distributing limited resources to address an unlimited need.
But what we often forget, when we get so caught up in the systems of the world – systems that do a great deal of good work, by the way – but when we get so caught up in the system’s method of judging and critiquing and figuring out who qualifies, we forget that our faith, that our relationship with God, does not operate in this way. We do not receive love and acceptance from God because we have earned or deserve them – we receive God’s love as a free gift of grace.
We have been reminded of this anew lately as we have been reading through the epistle of Paul to the Romans. In the passage today, Paul says it as clearly as possible: “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). If we were reading the Wavy Gravy Translation of the Bible instead of the New Revised Standard Version, that passage could just as well read, "while we were still bozos, Christ died for us."
God's love for us is not something we earn, but a gift freely given. When Jesus sends forth the disciples, he tells them to give to others without demanding anything in return: "You received without payment; give without payment," he says. (Matt. 10:23). We are called to model our giving to others on the way God gives to us - in waves of crazy, radical, abundant grace. Only if we first recognize ourselves as the recipients of grace can we truly give gracefully to others. This kind of servanthood to which we are called as Christians is not a hierarchical, top-down kind of relationship in which the "haves" give to the "have-nots," but a relationship of mutual sharing and support between all of us "bozos on the bus." We are certainly called to serve others, but we must also allow ourselves to be served as well.
This kind of mutual servanthood is illustrated beautifully in the "Servant Song," which we just sang as our sequence hymn before the Gospel reading, and which, by my request, we will sing again during communion. It reminds us that we are all "fellow travelers on the road" - or fellow "bozos on the bus," if you will - who are all in need of one another to "walk the mile and bear the load." But what I love most about this song is its acknowledgement of how hard it is for us to be served, how hard it is for us to admit that we are not just the apostles going forth to help others, but the crowds in need of that help as well. The first verse, which repeats as the last, starts out with a more traditional response to our call to servanthood: "Brother, sister, let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you," it says. We're pretty cool with that. After all, we get to be "Christ" in this metaphor. But then it goes on to say, "pray that I would have the grace to let you be my servant, too."
As we sing the Servant Song again during communion, focus on the words and let them seep in. I invite you to think about what it would look like if these words described not just your relationship with your fellow parishioners or those who you already consider your equals, but those who you consider higher or lower than you in our society's hierarchy. And the next time you find yourself silently evaluating whether or not someone deserves your help, remember that you too are a receiver, that you too are just a bozo on the bus -- and respond to that person with God's crazy, radical, abundant grace.
Amen.
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[1] William Willimon, "The God We Hardly Knew," in Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001).
[2] Elizabeth Lesser, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow, Villard Publishing, 2004, p.28.
