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July 13, 2003; Proper 10, Year B
    The Rev. Harold "Skip" Comer, Rector

Imagine being one of Jesus’ disciples for a moment.  You have just left Nazareth, where Jesus has all but been tarred and feathered by his family and friends.   Now as you are walking down the road Jesus stops, turns to you and says, “Now it’s time for all of you to go out on your own and do what I have been doing.”

Do you believe that the disciples obediently paired up and set off on their missionary journeys without any comment?  Personally, I find it hard to imagine that the disciples, especially Peter, would not have raised some objection at this point.  After all, they had just seen their leader chastised by, of all people on the earth, his family and friends.  I can just hear him saying, “Rabbi, don’t you think that we need just a few more positive experiences with you before we go out on our own?”

What did Jesus hope to accomplish when he sent his disciples out two by two?  Did he want them to get a first hand experience of how hard it was to be the messiah?

Again and again in the Gospels, when Jesus is attacked, he takes the offensive.  Earlier in his ministry Jesus healed a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath and was condemned by the Pharisees for breaking the law.  This did not stop Jesus.  He left that town and went on to other towns and villages performing miracles and teaching.  And in the several confrontations that he had with the Pharisees, and other religious leaders he often answered their questions with his own questions, thereby taking the initiative, and putting them on the defensive.  Even when he was before Pilate, you get the sense that it is Jesus who is in control of the situation.  

His family and friends have just rejected him; it must have been a devastating blow emotionally, but that is not going to stop Jesus.  Jesus has a mission to accomplish, and now that the disciples realized that everyone would not embrace their leader with open arms, it was now time to them send them out and use what they had learned.  Jesus takes the initiative to expand his ministry. 

There go the disciples, who had been with Jesus, probably less than a year.  I am sure that most of them would have rather stayed in the comfort of the company of Jesus.  They felt at ease with him, and really did not have very much, if any responsibility as they walked the roads and visited the towns and villages.  They just followed and were content to be the followers.  Perhaps that is why he sent the disciples out on their missionary journeys at this point.  After witnessing Jesus’ rejection by family and friends, the disciples might have told Jesus, “its ok you have us, and several other loyal followers, just forget trying to convert all the rest of the people.”  Maybe the disciples just wanted the church to be a small group.  If this was their attitude, Jesus’ action of sending them out conveyed the message that if they were not at least trying to incorporate more followers, then they were not really his disciples.

William Temple, former Archbishop of Canterbury in the first half of the Twentieth Century said, “The Christian Church is the one organisation in the world that exists purely for the benefit of non-members.”[i]

Earlier this year Bishop Gepert met with the members of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Sparta.  St. Matthew’s is a small, tiny, congregation, with a handful of people that has been struggling to keep the doors open for years.  Former Bishop Lee had devised a plan for St. Matthew’s under the Total Ministry Program, whereby lay members of the congregation would be trained to do the ministries necessary for the congregation to continue to exist, or survive, at least until some more of its members died off.  Bishop Gepert looked at this plan and the area that St. Matthew’s is located in and decided to take the offensive.  St. Matthew’s is in a growing, some would even say exploding, community.  Yet the church has not grown from its handful of members for years.  The diocese is now in the process of trying to revitalize St. Matthew’s by investing tens of thousands of dollars, sending a priest trained in turning congregations around, and by encouraging members of another nearby parish to sending tens, maybe over a hundred, people to join St. Matthew’s and try to make it a vibrant Episcopal witness in the community.  It must be very hard for the members of St. Matthews to have the rug yanked out from under them by being told that they will not be allowed to just survive in their own little group.  Yet I believe that Bishop Gepert is right.  There is potential for this tiny parish to grow.  Take the offensive to try to make this a healthy and self-sufficient parish, to be a missionary outpost in a growing community through which the good news of Jesus Christ is spread.

It’s nice to gather with family and friends inside these beautiful walls.  Yet anyone who has been here more than seven years can remember when it was not so joyful here.  It was a small struggling group that came devotedly each Sunday, wondering what the future would hold for St. Philip’s.  Well, we have been revitalized!  Revitalized because the offensive was taken to turn things around.

Now may of you will give Wally Draeger and I the credit, and we do deserve some of it.  But, as The Rev. Charles Fulton, said in this weeks issue of The Living Church, “Remember that sheep beget sheep, and that shepherd takes care of them.”[ii]  While this is literally true, only sheep can give birth to sheep, for the church it is true in another sense.   In study after study that has been done, the vast majority of people come or are brought to church by lay people, not the minister.   While the minister may be an attraction, it is the people who bring people to church.  We have grown because you have brought people to St. Philip’s.  We have grown because you have made those guests welcomed and a part of our loving and caring community of faith.  While I have not sent you out two by two into the community around us, many of you have in your own ways spread the good news of Jesus Christ.

That is what we are to be all about.  Not keeping the good news just for ourselves, but sharing it with others.  We, the members and friends of St. Philip’s, exist for those who have not yet joined us.

Jesus sent his disciples out in order to spread the good news farther and quicker than he could do himself.  We are his disciples, today gathering to praise God for Jesus Christ, and then going out to let the people of Benzie County know what a joy is it to be a Christian.

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