The Gospel Needs Strategies

4 Pentecost, C p 9, July 7, 2019

2 Kings 5:1-14  Psalm 30

Gal. 6:1-18    Luke 10:1-12,16-20 

Lectionary Link

The church history professor with tongue in cheek asked the seminarians, "Why was the Episcopal Church so late to arrive on the frontier?"  Answer:  "They were waiting for the invention of the Pullman Car."  Obviously, they would leave evangelical poverty to others.  The laborer is worthy of his hire meant something different for those Pullman Car Episcopalians.

When we read the Gospels, we are used to the "big 12" getting all of the attention.  It could be that 12 was more symbolic as the early church tried to reinterpret the church as the new 12 tribes of Israel with 12 corresponding leaders.  We know that there were women who were considered close associates of Jesus and we read today about the seventy who were sent in pairs to get the message out about the kingdom of God being near.

We know that some religious groups still are very literal about going two by two in their mission, as we all know when we see two young men in white shirts and ties and riding mountain bikes on the streets.

Rather than being literal about how mission work should be done, whether from the comfort of a Pullman car or with evangelical poverty, the big point being made is that the Gospel needs strategies.  In legal theory it is said that a law that is not promulgated is invalid; meaning if no one knows about the law, how can they know be held responsible for keeping the law.  The Gospel which is not promulgated is a Gospel that is not given the opportunity to be responded to.

The Gospel always needs strategies of promulgation.  I would like to share some insights from our biblical readings today about potential strategies for the spreading of the Gospel.

First, everyone one needs good news.  And what does good news mean for someone who is sick and afflicted?  It means health.  The fullest meaning of salvation is holistic health.  Health, salvation and good news is not just for us; it's for everyone.  Foreigners outside of Israel got sick too.  Even a foreign general like Naaman needed good news of possible recovery.  He was even willing to go into foreign territory and submit himself to their strange folk remedy to seek health. The prophet Elisha had to be big hearted enough to represent a God who offered health and salvation to all.  What is the insight for us?  We need to know that God wants us to reach outside of our familiar crowd to offer the best news that we have.

The second insight that I'd like to share is St. Paul's law of karma.  "You reap what you sow."  This has nothing to do with whether God forgives us our sins; it has to do with the unavoidable outcomes of what we do in our lives.  Our deeds are always affecting future outcomes.  If we keep our good news locked up in insider arcane theology and liturgies, we may find ourselves like the spiritual equivalent of the Shakers.  They died out because they didn't propagate; if we don't sow the seeds of the Gospel in inspired ways, we too can be responsible for our own diminishing numbers.

The Gospel evangelical mission commissioned by Jesus offers us several insights.  Jesus said that he had a message that everyone needed.  There is a harvest because the knowledge of the nearness of God's kingdom or realm is something which everyone needs to know.  As much as our nationalities are important to us, everyone needs to know citizenship in a larger realm, the realm of God.  We are God-ites first before we are Americans.  We live and move and have our being in God; that is our primary identity and it is really good news if we can come to experience this God-identity.  In a Roman occupied country, what value did their national heritage do for Jews and for their spiritual freedom?  Jesus was inviting everyone to the nationality of God; there was no greater citizenship identity to have than to accept one's citizenship in the realm of God. 

What were the strategies for the evangelical mission?  Get the message out quickly.  Travel light; don't get bogged down in over administrated logistics.  Live off the land.  Don't worry about rejection; just move on to the next opportunity.  Go in pairs so you have fellowship and encouragement and someone to consult with on the mission.  Finally, don't make success or failure the issue; the message of being a citizen in God's realm is its own reward.  Your name is written in heaven, whether you have the metrics of success or failure.

So, what insights might we ponder today for Trinity Cathedral?  What are our strategies for the Gospel future here?  Lots of people want to know the way to San Jose.  We are in the middle of great wealth, great intellectual property, and great technological information revolution.  How can we let it be known that God's realm is very near?  How can we let it be known that we live and move and have our being, not in San Jose, not in the Silicon Valley but, first in God?  How can we make relevant the basic identity with God's realm in this temporal realm and location?

Certainly, you continue in your ministry to those who speak Spanish.  We can seek to provide a welcome to an incredibly diverse crowd in our neighborhood.  God's love is able to be translated into every language.  You work to have a voice to deal with the great and looming housing crisis.  Trinity has a moral voice to offer at the table for those deciding the provision of housing for everyone who needs to live and work in this city.  Trinity has the mission to offer the complementing experience of the sublime experienced in music, art, and poetry.  Trinity has the big chair, the cathedra, the seat of our bishop.  While the geographical center of our diocese is further south, Trinity Cathedral is at the heart of the population center of our diocese.  The call for Trinity is to be a center that befits a cathedral at the population center of our diocese.  Perhaps Trinity has a role to be a satellite learning center for our Episcopal seminary in Berkeley.  Wise learning needs to go forth from this place.  Trinity Cathedral has a mission to the largest religious group in society today, those whom the pollsters call the "nones."  Those who say they are not religious but spiritual.  Trinity Cathedral, in a university city with plenty of religious skeptics can create the intellectual forum for a new hearing of the Gospel in Episcopal overtones, and give people a reason not to reject Christ because of really bad behaviors and really bad thinking by the people who often misrepresent the Gospel in the loudest way.  Trinity Cathedral can offer a graceful aesthetic liturgical presentation of good thinking attaining corporate prayer.  And Trinity has the mission to represent good stewardship of the earth and of human resources.    In one of the wealthiest places, one is seeing a failure in philanthropy, a failure in the stewardship of wealth being applied in creative ways.  If Trinity Cathedral lives in an environment which boasts a commitment to a free market;  then this parish needs to influence participants in this free market to make the best use of freedom by including the creative care of the common good of the many as the very best function of the free market.

Friends, I presume too much as an outsider,  so forgive me as a one-shot preacher, but I believe the Gospel would provoke us all to develop strategies, tactics and actions plans for letting the people in this city know that God's realm is very near to them.

And so I commend you here at Trinity to rejoice in all that you've done to make God's realm evident here, but now in your current transition to seek Jesus as the Lord of the harvest to inspire some new strategies for the future harvest to be known here through your ministry.  Amen.