A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .
two-thirds of god is go!
Luke10:1-12, 17-20, Preached at Congregational Church of Boca Raton, August 29, 2010
In honor of the political season, and of taking journeys: A bus load of politicians was traveling down a country road when, all of a sudden, the bus ran off the road and crashed into a tree in an old farmer's field. The old farmer went over to investigate. He then proceeded to dig a hole and bury the politicians. A few days later the local sheriff came out, saw the crashed bus, and asked the farmer where all the politicians had gone. The old farmer said he had buried them. The surprised sheriff asked, "Were they ALL dead?" "Well," the old farmer replied, "Some of them said they weren't, but you know how them politicians lie."
If the church calendar were being redrawn today, we’d call this Viral Marketing Sunday. “Viral marketing” is an advertising buzz phrase right now, but even if you aren’t familiar with it, chances are you’ve been a part of it. The concept of viral marketing is that a business gets its own customers to market it, with word-of-mouth advertising through pre-existing social networks of product users. Think of the classic Faberge shampoo commercial from the ’70s. That feather-haired blonde knows you’ll be so excited about Faberge that “you’ll tell two friends, and they’ll tell two friends, and so on and so on.” With each level of word of mouth, the screen splits from one to two to four to 16 models shilling shampoo.
We’ve seen viral marketing in place ever since our first friend approached us about trying Amway or Mary Kay. The best viral marketers are what Malcom Gladwell, in his business classic Tipping Point, calls “mavens.” Mavens are people who can’t stop talking about that great new thing. When mavens tell 12 friends, “You have to try the cinnamon rolls at the corner café,” 8 of them actually will.
But before Amway and eBay, there was Jesus. Luke 10 shows the virality of the kingdom: “After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.” Wherever Jesus wanted to go himself, he had others go and spread the message for him first. Jesus certainly appears strategic here. Jesus was setting up his kingdom founded on the idea of spiritual participation and not just spiritual consumption. All people had to do was listen to the disciples, get a good feeling for this Jesus guy, and then come and see for themselves. They would in turn talk to others about him. I imagine some did, while others didn’t. Sometimes we miss the moment, don’t we?
Sometimes greatness passes by, but we do not recognize it. As
Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The morning wind forever blows; The poem of creation
is uninterrupted; But few are the ears that hear it.” A newspaper editor in
Sometimes we seek greatness; sometimes we seek God for
ourselves, or our spouse, or our children. The question we ask is Where can I
find God today? We might think of reading the bible or coming to church. But if
we were to be a bit more honest, it's doubtful God is lost or the one who is
tough to find. Frantic busy-ness seems to be the natural order of our lives. The
tasks that make up our days encourage us to keep head down, eyes lowered and
ears closed. In order to become most proficient at completing our daily agendas,
we accept being blind and deaf to the sights and sounds of a greater life.
In the 1930s, two of the greatest physicists of the modern era, two
architects of the golden age of theoretical quantum physics, Paul Dirac and
Werner Heisenburg, traveled around the world. They showed up unannounced at the
University of Hawaii, and the president of the university told the rest of the
story a few months later. “A couple of guys turned up, said they were Heisenburg
and Dirac and wanted to give a lecture; but I saw through them and had them
shown out.” Faced with a chance to experience even a tiny glimpse into the vast
complexities of the universe through the brilliance of two gifted men, this
doubter confidently announced, "I saw through them." When we exclude the
possible, then greatness passes by.
The kingdom doesn't always play by the rules we recognize. Jesus
counseled his missionaries to forget about the letter of the law, the
preciseness of etiquette, so that they might become flexible enough to extend
the Good News to all. The disciples' strange dress and manner were required by
Jesus not just to make them impoverished and dependent upon the kindness of
others; it was more than this. It was a test, and those who rejected the
disciples' based on their uncustomary appearance would have failed the first
test of the kingdom, and would have proved they weren't fit for the Good News.
But how often have we been guilty of a similar reaction. Our reaction to a new
way to do things is rarely, "Hey, what a great idea!" More common are, "It will
never work," "But we've always done it this way." "This will make things worse,
not better." Sort of reminds me of the stubborn 10-years girl who was walking
down the street when a big man on a motorcycle
pulls up beside her and says, “Hey little girl, do you want to go for a ride?”
“NO!” says the little girl as she keeps on walking. The motorcyclist pulls up
beside her again and says, “Hey kid, I will give you $10 if you hop on the
back.” “NO!” said the little girl and proceeded down the street a little
quicker. The motorcyclist pulls up to the little girl again and says, “Okay kid,
I will give you $20 and a BIG bag of candy if you hop on the back of my bike for
a ride.” At this point the little girl turns to him and screams angrily, “Look
Dad, YOU bought a Honda instead of a Harley, so, YOU ride it!”
When Christ offered people the chance to participate in the kingdom, and they rejected it, they did so because they couldn’t see a new and true incarnation of God’s love; they let the moment, the kingdom, pass by. We don’t want to be like that. Be careful when you reject something because you don't understand it, or because you feel challenged by it. They may be angels unaware. Look, at one point Christianity was the new thing. And Paul said, "if anyone is in Christ, (s)he is a new creation; the old is gone, the new has come." This is a theological statement equating newness with Godliness. So don't try to control all things; instead, keep your heart open to what God is doing new today. Seek and find God's will for your life by celebrating life with an expanded compassion, an enlightened perspective, a hopeful embrace of the new, the different, the unusual. Put yourself at risk to new relationships; make yourself vulnerable to other's kindness; and once in a while dress funny.
I like what the actor Viggo Mortensen said, "There's no excuse to be bored. Sad, yes. Angry, yes. Depressed, yes. Crazy, yes. But there's no excuse for boredom, ever."
The other opportunity our scripture tells us we miss is when we don’t say what we know, and don’t tell what we’ve learned. We need to be the walkers and the talkers. We are to be the disciples, and not like the people for whom Jesus and the seventy did everything.
Listen: when you go, when you go out, when you go to the store, when you go on a date, when you go to your kid’s school or their game, when you go home or to the hospital, when you go to work, to a friend’s house, to church, when you go anywhere, can you imagine the difference if in all these times and places you kept in your mind and stored in your heart the thought: “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” If you were to keep between you and her, between you and him, between you and your teenage child, you and your spouse, you and your colleague, you and your neighbor, between you and all others, the Christian proclamation, “The kingdom of God has come near you,” would it not work miracles? Would it not remind you of what is invisibly, supernaturally, humanly at hand whenever two or three are gathered? Would it not remind you of the purpose of you being together with someone else for the first time, or the millionth, or the last? Would it not put a guard on your tongue, and kindness in your heart, and a purpose in your mind?
How much happier we would be reminding ourselves that the
You might be thinking this is crazy, or at least for crazies,
real religious nuts. But I absolutely do not think so. Jesus didn’t say his
followers were perfect and therefore the kingdom had come near them. He said
they arrived, knocked on a door, and didn’t want anything from others, nothing
else but to bring and be at peace, to help if possible, to cure if capable, to
eat and drink if available. They were nobodies, like fools or lambs walking
about. And as if to make it even clearer, Jesus sent them forward with
absolutely nothing, no purse or money, no bag for clothes or food, no shoes for
comfort, no stick for protection. Nothing but nothing, nothing but a single
thought, a single sentence, a single hope: to share the
Now we're not going to walk around like those seventy; we aren't going to live like that. But what if we weren't so afraid of losing something every time we met someone? What if we didn't always have to protect our honor, or worry about what's right, or keep score? What if we could be wrong and it'd be alright; weaker and still a winner; speak second and feel fine? What if we stripped down, and stepped out of our ego, fears, distrust, and carried none of that baggage? We’d travel light then; we’d be free for what's new; we would find good where we missed it before. So carry Jesus' proclamation with you. Make Christ's most basic faith statement your own inner mantra: The kingdom of God has come near. And when you go, bring God with you. When you leave, leave the Lord behind. Set the kingdom of God in your heart and before your eyes, and the kingdom will go wherever you go.
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