This Gospel reading from Luke has a special place in my heart, because it is a passage I clung to as I was discerning whether to leave my last call. I had a poem reflection on this passage hanging in my office, and by the time I left California, I had it memorized. The poem still hangs in my office here, as a reminder of what I left and why. The poem starts with this reflection:
There are times for leaning into the resistance that meets us; times when God calls us to engage the difficulty and struggle that will shape and form us in ways that ease and comfort never can…There is ground that becomes holy only when we remain long enough to see the blessing that can emerge from struggle, that shimmers only after the dust the struggle has kicked up finally begins to settle.
And then there are times for leaving; times when—as Jesus counsels his disciples—the holy thing to do is to shake the dust from our feet and leave behind a place that is not meant for us. This blessing is for those times.
I, like many of you, am one for “leaning into the resistance that meets us.” I think this is a lovely way to say that one is stubborn. This sometimes plays itself out in humorous ways. As most of you are aware, I finally moved this week. The hold up was a couple pieces of furniture that were too big for me to manage on my own. I had a couple of friends who were supposed to help me, but we kept being unable to connect. At one point I got so frustrated in my inability to line up help that I decided I didn’t need help. I could move a recliner by myself. There were various points in this process where I was reminded that this was an example of very poor decision making, for example coming down stairs out of my apartment that were barely wide enough for me and my recliner, or the point where my grip strength gave out as I tried to navigate two doors to get into the family room. But, I’m stubborn, and I got that recliner in, miraculously in one piece, and then collapsed, a scraped up, bruised, exhausted dust ball, but a dust ball that was dependent on no one in order to move a recliner! Luckily, I managed to coordinate schedules with a friend before I got equally ambitious about my desk and couch. Those would have ended poorly…
So I’ve always struggled with Jesus’ injunction to the disciples here to take nothing with them, to remain in the same house and eat whatever is provided. There is a level of dependency in the ministry that Jesus describes, that I just am not comfortable with. I want to be helpful to those I am ministering to, I want to free them from work, make things easy, help them out. I come by this honestly; it was drilled into me at an early age. When my family, including my grandparents, would visit my great-aunt in San Diego, on the day we were supposed to leave, my grandmother would literally sneak around the house and clean, with the goal of leaving my great-aunt’s house nicer then it was when we came. The problem with this was that inevitably a couple days later my cousin would call, my great-aunt’s glasses had been cleaned so well as to have disappeared, and might Nana remember where she’d put them?
That’s the problem with being to helpful and accommodating as a guest, there is actually a point when being helpful becomes unhelpful and distancing. When our own independence, our desire to do things for ourselves, and not bother others can break down our relationships. Jesus’ point here is that there is more gift in being a partner in ministry than a provider of it. Providing ministry, as well-intentioned as the provider might be, forces a power dynamic into the relationship. By having the disciples carry nothing with them; Jesus levels the power structure and allows the disciples and the villages to be equal partners in the spreading of the kingdom of God.
This is a powerful lesson not just for the disciples, but also for us. There is gift in letting others help us. There is gift in expanding the work load of the mission. To jump back to my moving analogy from earlier, I did get a friend to help with the last couple pieces of furniture, and there was gift in that. Not just in the fact that I didn’t end up crushed under a futon at the bottom of a staircase. But in giving my friend the opportunity to help me. Our friendship was strengthened in him carrying half my couch and crowd-sourcing the solution that will one day allow me to have a bed frame in my bedroom and not in my living room.
There is a level of vulnerability in allowing another to help us, but that very vulnerability can itself be transformative. If you remember, one of the on-going themes in Luke is Jesus breaking down the social barriers between those who are in, faithful Jews, scribes, Pharisees, and those who follow the law, and those who are out, sinners, tax collectors, gentiles, and the like. When Jesus sent the disciples out, he commanded them to “eat what is set before you.” This subtle statement about how to be a good guest is also a powerful dismantling of social barriers. This isn’t Jesus either telling the disciples to suck it up and deal if they don’t like tomatoes or to suffer in silence if they have a food allergy. Remember, what a person ate was a mark of social acceptance. Jesus was forbidding the disciples to give themselves airs and refuse so-called “unclean food.” It is a foreshadowing of Peter’s vision in Acts, where God declared, “what God has made clean, you must not call profane.” If these people, to whom you have been sent by Jesus to spread the kingdom of God to, have offered you a meal, then the meal is clean, they are your partners in the Gospel, and you are to eat what they give you.
Verse eight is really a great model for ministry. Step one, “eat what is set before you.” Create community through humility and allowing others to serve you. Step two, “cure the sick.” So, once you’ve created community, seen others as your equal, recognized our interdependence on each other, then we get to do the part we’re best at. The helping part. There is a need for helping, for service. But authentic helping comes out of authentic relationships, not the other way around. Our community gets the privilege of seeing the truth of this statement every day in the work of the Woman’s Co-op. Co-op means the women are partners with each other. They are able to help each other so effectively because they recognize their interdependence. And then, step three is to say to those with whom you are now in relationship, “the kingdom of God has come near.” Part of the authentic relationships that Jesus is leading the disciples to here is the vulnerability and trust to share the source of their motivation. Once you’ve been served by someone, once you’ve in return served them, isn’t it also a gift to share with them, my peace comes through my relationship with Jesus Christ, can I tell you about that?
Step one, eat what is set before you. Step two, cure the sick. Step three, say that the kingdom of God has come near. Spreading the good news of the kingdom of God is as simple as that. I see us living this out in our community through our various summer initiatives. Step one, eat what is set before you. OK, so we’re not the ones doing the eating this summer with the Meet Up and Eat Up initiative through Harper Creek or through Freeze Pop Summer, but we are meeting people on neutral ground. There are no requirements for this space, no class they have to take or program they need to attend or way they need to be. These programs are entirely driven by what our neighbors want. If they want lunch and freeze pops they come, if they don’t, they don’t. If they want to stay and chat, they stay and chat. If they want to take their freeze pop and leave, they do that too. We “eat” if you will, whatever relationship they set before us. Step two, cure the sick. See a need and meet it. There are a lot of kids in our neighborhood, and during the summer some of those kids don’t have enough to eat. We have a bus delivering lunches in our parking lot. There is a need, and now there is a solution. Step three, say that the kingdom of God has come near. We’re not there yet. Nor should we be, we’re three weeks into the summer. We’re not there yet, but we’re getting there. Folk know we are a church. They know we pray for them. They’re beginning to ask us for prayer, they’re beginning to trust us with stories. It’s week three, so I’m still using us and them language, but I think by the end of the summer it won’t be us and them. It will be Trinity folk who come Sunday mornings and sometimes other times throughout the week, and Trinity folk who come at lunchtime and sometimes other times throughout the week.
There will be people this won’t work for. And you know what, Jesus told his disciples, that’s OK. Shake the dust from your feet and move on. Not being received by someone is neither a failure on your part nor a cruelty on theirs. Sometimes it takes a while for the relationship to build, sometimes you are not the best person to build the relationship. That’s OK. Jesus went on, “Yet know this; the kingdom of God has come near.” Even when the disciples were rejected from a town, the kingdom of God was still present in that place. Because the kingdom of God was not dependent on the disciples’ ability to give it or the village’s ability to receive it. The kingdom of God is dependent only on the presence of Jesus. Like an ocean wave, it comes again and again, until all the world is caught up in his glory. So when we are not the messengers, we are free to walk away, knowing that our God is a God of resurrection, and hope coming out of the most unlikely places is exactly the way God operates.
I started this sermon by sharing that this text was one I clung to when I was discerning leaving my last call. I loved that congregation. We had been through so much together that walking away from them felt like abandoning the mission. But one of the truths of being a pastor is sometimes the only way to be faithful to the mission of a place is to leave them to the person who can better serve the next stage of their ministry. So I left. I shook the dust from my feet and moved on. Their pastor now is doing things with them I never could have done. Because there can be blessing in the leaving.
The final stanza of the poem on this text I have on the wall in my office goes like this:
I promise you
There is a blessing
In the leaving,
In the dust shed
From your shoes
As you walk toward home—
Not the one you left
But the one that waits ahead,
The one that already reaches out for you
In welcome, in gladness
For the gifts
That none but you could bring.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
The poem quoted is "A Blessing in the Dust" by Jan Richardson. The full poem can be read at her website: http://paintedprayerbook.com/2013/06/30/a-blessing-in-the-dust/
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