Sermon: Completely Unqualified

Text: Matthew 9:35-10:22

Date: June 12, 2005

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church

            Today’s scripture reading starts out with a road trip: Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, curing every disease and sickness.

            Today’s worship service will end up with a road trip, as we send some of our newest disciples out into our town, out into the world, to be Christians out amongst the folk.   It’s not that they will be radically different people than they were yesterday, but as a church we are acknowledging that they are choosing this journey for themselves, as thinking young adults.   We are sending them out as equal companions on the faith journey, no longer “junior bird men.”  

            What will they find out in the world?   How will they see the crowds the encounter?   In this part of the world, by identifying with a faith community, they are in the minority.   In Washington state, about 30% of the people are involved in a religious community, leaving 70% unaffiliated.   How will they (or you) see the majority of people who choose not to affiliate with a faith community?  

            When Jesus looked at the crowds of his day he, according to Matthew’s gospel, saw them as “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”   For some reason as I read that “sheep without a shepherd” phrase, I heard Steve Martin’s voice in my head, in his movie role as one of the Three Amigos.   He’s shouting an insult at El Guapo: “You Son of a Motherless Goat!”   Could Matthew’s evaluation of the crowd be voiced as an insult in that tone of voice—you “Sheep Without a Shepherd!”   Or, if Steve Martin is too old school for my confirmands, think about “sheep without a shepherd” being followed by the mocking voice of that kid on the TV show “Simpsons”— Ha -Ha.  

            It is tempting for any faith group who really believes in the truth of their convictions to look down on those who do not share them.   Christianity in particular seems vulnerable to a superiority complex as it surveys the crowds of people who do not share their faith.   But it is crystal clear in the gospel that seeing crowds harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd did not inspire feelings of superiority or derision in Jesus.   What did the text say he felt for these crowds?   Compassion.   He had compassion for them.   He wanted to help them with his teaching and his healing.

            I remember a moment in the confirmation class when we were talking about whether Christians need to witness to their faith, whether we are obligated to share our beliefs in word and deed with those who do not share them.   Most of us are a little reluctant to do so, out of shyness or respect for other living faiths or uncertainty about how to witness or whatever.   But I raised the question with the class whether they knew anyone who seemed really lost and aimless, anyone who was spiritually hungry even though they might not say it in so many words.    There was some real heat behind the “yes” that came back to me.   I heard in that reply the compassion that Jesus felt—that God feels—for those around us who are harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.   

            We’re sending the confirmands and all of you out on the road to meet them, and we hope you will meet them with the compassion of Christ, and do what you can do to offer help and healing.   Jesus called his first set of disciples and sent them out with these instructions: “Proclaim the good news, ‘the kingdom of heaven has come near.’   Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.”   Did you get all that, the job description for disciples?   Are you ready?   Do you feel qualified?

            It’s possible you don’t feel you quite have the skills to proclaim the good news, cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons.   Maybe you think you don’t have much of any skill.   Like one of the great film personas of the last couple of years, Napoleon Dynamite.   I bet some of you younger disciples remember this dialogue between Napoleon and his friend Pedro while they sat on the school steps discussing whether they would attend the school dance:

Napoleon
Well, nobody's gonna go out with me.

Pedro
Have you asked anybody yet?

Napoleon
No, but who would?
I don't even have any good skills.

Pedro
What do you mean?

Napoleon
You know, like numchuck skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills.
Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.

            We might be led to believe by the hefty job description Jesus lays out for the first disciples that Messiahs only want disciples with great skills—you know, like gospel proclaiming skills, leper cleansing skills, demon casting skills.   Who would want to send out a disciple without any good skills?  

            It might interest you to know that the first disciples didn’t seem to have any particular skills.   Nothing in any of the four gospels indicates that Jesus chose disciples with an eye to their skills or qualifications.   He didn’t go out on the road like some 21 st century human resources director, looking for the best people for the job, at least not as far as we can tell from what is given to us in the New Testament.   There is no uniform set of personality traits or abilities or talents needed to qualify as a disciple.   In fact, with the very little information we have about the original set of disciples, we can guess that they were pretty different from each other.   Matthew the tax collector is in the same small group as Simon the Cananaean, who is identified in Luke’s gospel as a Zealot.   The tax collector was a lackey for the occupying Roman government, a person who went out on behalf of the hated Romans to collect their taxes and made a living by keeping a percentage of what he collected for himself.   A Zealot, on the other hand, was the member of a political movement of the time that wanted to foment armed revolution to force the Roman bums out.    Just imagine the conversations the two of them must have had around the dinner table.   They may well have questioned each other’s qualifications as disciples given their political differences.   But there they were, on the same team.

            It’s hard to judge who is or is not disciple material from the information we have in the gospels.   They probably didn’t feel any more skilled or qualified to do what needed to be done than we feel.   Maybe that’s just as well.   In Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy the civilization of the day has decided that the best person to rule the galaxy is someone who doesn’t want to do it.   If you really want the job of ruler of the galaxy, you are disqualified.   There is a figurehead president of the galaxy, and only a few people know that his real job is not to wield power but to distract people away from it.   The person actually in charge, who does not want to rule, is not aware of his pivotal role in galactic politics.   He lives on a backwater planet and spends a lot of time talking to his cat.

            I wouldn’t suggest that wanting to be a disciple should disqualify a person from being one.   But it might be just as well that we not be too awfully sure of our discipleship skills.   One of the most unnerving disciples I have seen in action is a famous evangelist/healer who was just so proud of his ability as a healer.   I’m not here to judge whether he is a good disciple of Christ or not; I’m just saying that his great cock-sure confidence, combined with his expensive white three-piece suit, kind of creeped me out.  

            I certainly would want to say that a feeling that one is unqualified to do what Christ asks us to do does not disqualify one from discipleship.    Most of us are distinctly unqualified for the life of discipleship.   And we are the ones being sent.   Apparently, by design.   We certainly don’t have to know what we are doing in order to be effective agents of God’s liberating movement.  

            We don’t have to have figured out everything about Christian faith to attempt to be practicing Christians.   I had the confirmation students write journals and brief statements of faith as part of their class work.   They had some smart things to say, you betcha.   There were also lots of “I don’t knows” in their work.   One of students filled in one of the blanks in the faith statement form with this very honest and heartfelt statement: “I have no idea.”    I couldn’t figure out a good way to work that into the class faith statement, but I want to affirm it.   I do not expect the short remedial Christianity course we call Confirmation to solve all theological mysteries.   Some questions will be answered and others will be raised.   This is borne out in the life of experienced Christians, isn’t it?   We had an excellent theological panel to address student questions for one session, as we do every year.   Our panel included Len Bonifaci, Mary Piette, Bill Edmonds, Don Wilson, and Olga Macferran.   (I bet the rest of you who didn’t get to sit in on this session are envious now—what a stellar collection of the faithful!)   In the confirmation journal, one of the students astutely observed that “I was amazed and happy to know that although some parts of their faith were very refined, some were still in the rough draft phase.   This is just proof to me that faith really is a life long journey, it doesn’t stop when you’re married and have kids, there’s no handbook that you get when you’re 50 or something.   I’m glad I am struggling to find the answers in my life and I’m happy to know that I still have partners in my desperate scramble for security.”  

            Yup.   That’s why we have a church.   That, and our mission, being sent like sheep out in the midst of wolves to proclaim the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near, to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers and cast out demons.   I had to bring that job description up again.   How in the world will we do any of those things, either literally or metaphorically?   I may have succeeded in making you feel OK about being unqualified, but there is still this mission to accomplish.   How in the world?

            Well, we may be unqualified to work wonders in the world, but God is not.   What we need is to hang a sign on our souls that says this: AVAILABLE.   God will do the rest.   Mother Teresa put it this way: “Each one of us is merely a small instrument.   When you look at the inner workings of electrical things, often you see small and big wires, new and old, cheap and expensive, lined up.   Until the current passes through them, there will be no light.   That wire is you and me.   The current is God.   We have the power to let the current pass through us, use us, produce the light of the world.   Or we can refuse to be used and allow darkness to spread.”

            Beloved, we are completely unqualified to be the Light of the World.   But we are qualified at any age to say Yes to God.   Just say Yes.   Say you’re available.   Then speak your good news.   Don’t worry too much about what to say; so often the Holy Spirit helps us find the right words when we least expect it, when we feel at our most unqualified.   Reach out to those who are sick in body and soul.   Bring life to deadened spirits. Confront the demons that haunt our harassed and helpless neighbors, whether they take the form of addiction, despair, violence, oppression, and so forth.  

“Oh, Jesus, you have looked into my eyes; kindly smiling, you’ve called out my name.”   God calls, we answer— AVAILABLE