In Mark 6:1-13, Jesus sends his disciples out in pairs. He tells them to take nothing with them, and they learn to trust that God will provide. May we grow in faith and trust as well.
Here’s my sermon for July 4, 2021, for the sixth Sunday after Pentecost at St. Peter Lutheran Church, a congregation of the ELCA in Greene, Iowa.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
Today’s gospel reading is really two stories. In fact, I discovered that if you ask our Catholic neighbors, they actually divide this up into two weeks.
The first six verses are about Jesus being rejected in his hometown.
Ideally, the people who’ve known you longest are your biggest cheerleaders, but sometimes as you grow and change, it can be hard for the people who knew you when you were growing up to see you as an adult. If you’ve ever been a 22-year-old still stuck at the kids’ table for Christmas dinner, you know what I’m talking about.
Maybe if Jesus had come from somewhere else, the people in this Nazareth synagogue could have received him as God in the flesh, but this guy? Some of the people in the room had babysat for him, changed his diapers.
Isn’t this Mary’s boy? Brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? His sisters are standing right over there! Who does he think he is, teaching this message about God’s kingdom coming, claiming to be sent from God.
In Luke’s version of this same story, the congregation at the synagogue get so upset that they drive him out of town and try to throw Jesus off of a cliff!
Mark just notes that Jesus is surprised by how unwilling his friends and neighbors are to believe, and all he can do there is lay his hands on a few sick people, cure them, and move on.
After that incident, Jesus starts to delegate his mission. He calls his 12 disciples, and gives them an assignment. They are to go out in pairs spreading the message that the kingdom of God is near, calling people to repent, healing people, casting out demons, basically, doing the work Jesus has been doing.
There are a couple key points for us from this story I want to look at this morning.
First, it’s a good reminder that all of us have different gifts and callings. I don’t know if Jesus sat down with a map and a list of disciples and assigned them to go to different areas, or if he just pointed them in a direction and said, “Go, I’ll meet you back here in a few weeks,” but different people are able to reach different areas.
I attended a church for a while in Dubuque with a pastor who was an avid Harley rider and did some great work sharing about Jesus at biker rallies. That is not my calling! I’d do better relating to people at a board game convention.
Even if one person (or one pair) shakes the dust off their sandals in a community, God might be sending someone else there from whom the message will be received. Different settings require different people. The call is to be faithful, not necessarily successful. The best we can do is to plant seeds. Only God can make them grow.
To put it more bluntly, me showing up and knocking on the door of someone I don’t know is probably not going to go very well. But chatting in the grocery store with someone you know could make a huge difference for that person! There are people who need to hear the gospel from you!
So that’s one takeaway: God has given us different gifts and callings, all for the same ministry of building God’s kingdom and spreading the good news.
Second, notice the example Jesus sets: He doesn’t try to do it all himself; he delegates. He calls the disciples, the church, all of us, to do God’s work. This is a shared ministry.
One of my fears from Covid is that we’ve stumbled a little farther into the trap of thinking that church is something the pastor and the “professionals” do. Worship music is never something just an organist or a guitarist do and everyone else watches. Prayers are not just something one person does while everyone else sort of nods along. Sermons can be given on a screen, but there’s something significant that is missing.
Jesus certainly could do everything himself, but he doesn’t; he empowers and equips the disciples to do it. And even then, he sends them out with a companion. The joy of ministry should be shared!
And when it’s challenging, we need the support of a community. God chooses to work through ordinary people, people like us.
Third, and the main point I think of this story, is that it’s about trusting God. I like to have things prepared, but trusting God requires giving up control. I can’t imagine going out on a journey and taking no supplies, no bag, no change of clothes, yet all Jesus tells the disciples to take is a walking stick and a pair of sandals.
That forces them to do two things. One, they must form relationships. They can’t just hand out tracts or stand on a street corner; they need to go into people’s houses. They need to talk and listen to people, get to know them. There’s a level of mutual trust necessary before the gospel message can be received.
Two, not taking anything with them means they need to trust that God will provide. They need to figure out that when they’re sent out empty-handed, they still have enough.
As Pastor Christine Chiles writes, “They knew Jesus and his love. They knew he had called and sent them with good news. Jesus’ instructions told them they were enough.” That’s true for us as well. We don’t need to have all the answers, or all the resources, or even enough money. Sometimes, God calls us to take a step of faith, to trust that we have everything we need. God equips you with everything you need for the mission to which God calls you.
So, siblings in Christ, what does that look like for you?
Maybe it is something dramatic. Maybe you are being called to sell your house and give all the money away to a good cause. Maybe God is calling you to quit your job and buy a plane ticket and go somewhere across the world to spread the good news.
If that’s you, my suggestion is to make really sure the calling you’re hearing is from God, and to pray and discern with other believers before you take that dramatic step, but sometimes God does call people to take those big steps of faith.
Or, maybe God is calling you to trust more—to rely more on the Holy Spirit—right where you are. To intervene when someone needs help, to make the phone call when you think someone might need a friend, to give a little more than you might feel comfortable with.
To take the time to pray, to turn your fears over to God, and to listen for God to answer and provide. To invite a friend to come to church with you.
We’re not called to put God to the test, but we are called to believe God is enough. We’re called to see the world through God’s lens of abundance, rather than the lens of the world’s fear of scarcity, that there won’t be enough.
One of my favorite historical examples of trusting in God to provide what’s needed is George Muller. Have you heard of him? George Muller lived in England during the mid-19th century, and his story is incredible.
In 1836, he and his wife discerned that God was calling them to work with orphans. They began by taking in 30 girls, and within the next few years, grew to include another three houses increasing the capacity to 130.
This is from his Wikipedia article:
In 1845, as growth continued, the neighbors complained about the noise and disruption to the public to the public utilities, so Müller decided that a separate building designed to house three hundred children was necessary, and in 1849, at Ashley Down, Bristol, the new home opened. By May 1870, 1,722 children were being accommodated in 5 homes, although there was room for 2,050.
Through all this, Müller never made requests for financial support, nor did he go into debt, even though the five homes cost more than £100,000 to build, nearly $20 million today.
Many times, he received unsolicited food donations only hours before they were needed to feed the children, further strengthening his faith in God. Müller was in constant prayer that God touched the hearts of donors to make provisions for the orphans.
For example, on one well-documented occasion, thanks was given for breakfast when all the children were sitting at the table even though there was nothing to eat in the house.
As they finished praying, the baker knocked on the door with sufficient fresh bread to feed everyone, and the milkman gave them plenty of fresh milk because his cart broke down in front of the orphanage.
Listen to his journal entry for February 12, 1842. He wrote:
A brother in the Lord came to me this morning and, after a few minutes of conversation gave me two thousand pounds for furnishing the new Orphan House … Now I am able to meet all of the expenses.
In all probability, I will even have several hundred pounds more than I need. The Lord not only gives as much as is absolutely necessary for his work, but he gives abundantly. This blessing filled me with inexplicable delight. He had given me the full answer to my thousands of prayers during the past 1,195 days.
By the end of his life, George Muller was responsible for distributing 285,407 Bibles, and 1,459,506 New Testaments.
Imagine the trust to sit down to breakfast and give thanks for the food…knowing the cabinet is empty, but trusting there’s about to be a knock on the door. His life is full of stories like that.
Most of us are not called to that public of a ministry. We’re not sent out with nothing. But we are sent out, and we are called to trust in God to provide, to use what God has given us to do the work God is calling us to. And God promises to provide whatever is needed for God’s work to be done.
Thanks be to God.
Amen