"As you go proclaim this message: 'The Kingdom of Heaven has come near.' Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received. Freely give."

 

         On Thursday evening, at the Central Conference ministers' annual meeting, we had a worship service in which the 14 ministers who will be ordained in June gave their testimonies. It took two and a half hours, but it was quite an experience.

         Vicki is a hospice chaplain in Wisconsin. She talked about coming to faith and truly becoming a follower of Jesus. She said she was at a Christian conference, and during one meeting there was time to be quiet, so she was deep in prayer. And out of that experience she surrendered her life to Jesus. And then she said, "I said 'yes' to Jesus before I heard what the question was." We might say, "I said 'yes' before I heard the call," or "I said 'yes' before I received the instructions." Sometimes Jesus calls us to serve him. Sometimes Jesus calls us to follow some specific instructions.

         But Vicki said "yes" before she heard what Jesus was asking of her. Today we read of the twelve disciples and how they received instructions from Jesus after they had surrendered to him. These were the instructions Jesus gave to them, rather matter-of-factly: "Heal the sick. Raise the dead."

         This has always been a very challenging passage for me. I feel overwhelmed by it.

         "Heal the sick. Raise the dead."

         I am not so good at raising the dead. At the heart of discipleship is humility. You are never good at what Jesus asks you to do.

         There are two things that I notice about this passage. The first is that the call of Jesus is authority-based, not skill- or competence-based. Jesus did not send out the disciples because they were skilled at raising the dead. He sent them out because he had given them authority from God. There is something we need to understand here. R.T. France explains that in Jesus' day "exorcisms and certain healings were regarded as taking place by supernatural power, so they required a gift of authority." In other words, these were not seen as medical issues. They were seen as powers taking over a person's life.

         Our society is largely competence-based. We think primarily of receiving training and developing skills. We do not think about authority. But you really cannot read the Gospels without seeing the issue of authority. Some types of healing, the forgiveness of sin, and the casting out of demons are done by the authority of God, and not the skill of humans.

         So, we need to re-examine some of the basis that we use for ministry in the church. Training is good and necessary, but we should not ignore authority. That is why prayer is so important in all that we do. If we believe that skill and training are adequate for ministry, then we do not see the need for prayer. But often the most effective ministry comes from the heart, comes from the Holy Spirit working in us in ways that are quite beyond our skill or training.

         We cannot ignore the place of the authority of God in the church. For example, on Friday evening and Saturday morning at the conference, our Superintendent, Jerome Nelson, preached to us. His preaching was rather direct. He simply read several New Testament passages about Christian behavior, and then spoke very clearly about the kind of lives we are to be living. He spoke about our moral lives, about how we were to love each other in the church, about how we are to act in the church when we encounter conflict. As he spoke I could tell that he was speaking from the heart. He was speaking with the authority of God. He was not scolding us. He was not simply using his knowledge of Bible study and theology and ethics to form a message that might be admired. He was speaking very directly and with authority. That included the authority of his office, but it was authority from God.

         The other thing I see in this passage is the issue of vision. Jesus clearly raises the bar here concerning the vision for ministry in the disciples. He says to them, "Heal the sick. Raise the dead." That is a vision of the kingdom of God. It is a vision they did not have until he put it into a clear instruction.

         When you serve Jesus, you cannot focus on the small, the insignificant, the details. The vision that Jesus places in us forces us to look up, and look outward and look forward. You cannot raise the dead and heal the sick, but the instruction raises the vision of the Kingdom, it puts a picture of the goal in front of us.

         Since we have begun to talk about adding on to our building, I find that I like to go out and walk in the parking lot, and up on the hilltop, and I try to imagine what the new building will look like. I try to pace it off, and get the angles and see it there. Then when I can see the building, I begin to think about how we can use it so that there will be people using it six or seven days a week, morning, afternoon and evening. Who will come here? What are the great variety of ways that we can help people from our community experience Christ as they meet and play and study together? I am not trying to come up with all the ideas. You will do that. But I am trying to grasp a vision. Jesus puts a vision of the Kingdom in his disciples and then says, "as you go," put it into practice.

         How does this authority based and visionary ministry work? When Jesus looks at the crowds of people, he sees that they are harassed and helpless. The word for "helpless" means "dejected," "thrown-down," "confused" or "crushed." So he sees "thrown-down" people, and he has compassion on them. This does not lead him to actively respond, or to train his disciples in how to minister to dejected people. This is not a skill-based response to need. What Jesus does is to ask his disciples to pray. This is ministry based on the authority of God.

         Now Jesus uses another figure of speech. He shifts from sheep to a harvest when the grain is ripe. He says that the harvest is plentiful. By that he does not mean that there are lots of people who are lining up to become Christians. He does not mean that there are lots of people just looking for a friendly church to attend. He means by "plentiful" that people have a lot of problems and a lot of needs. He is the worker in this harvest field of need. We have been reading of his response to need in the last few chapters. So he wants the disciples to pray that more workers be sent out into the harvest.

         Here is an example. I saw an interview with David Beckman, the president of Bread for the World. He is a minister who has given his life to dealing with issues of hunger, on a large scale. He is clearly competent and knowledgeable. Bread for the World is a political organization. It is a lobbying group that advocates for legislation that will significantly impact the issues of hunger in America and around the world. David Beckman clearly is very astute in the political arena. But what struck me in the interview is that he so clearly acts on the authority of God. He comes into the public square with a biblical view of hunger, of the distribution of food, of the use of land, of justice. He has confidence in God and acts in the authority of God that is found in God's Word.

         "Raise the dead."

"End hunger."

These are things we are not very good at. They are overwhelming, far beyond our skill.

Impossible.

We might feel defeated, helpless, "thrown down."

Or we might pray, and act, with others, on the basis of the authority of God.

         Vicki said, "I surrendered my life to Christ, before I heard the question."

         Sometime after she surrendered, she heard the Lord say to her, "minister my love to people whose pain is so great that they cannot see beyond it."

         So that is what she does.

         Amen.