|
Click to hear this sermon sermon100704
I chose to title today's message "Don't Sweat the Small
Stuff!" because both of the texts for today speak to us about seemingly
small and insignificant things.
"Don't Sweat
the Small Stuff!" Jack Keating Cicero
United Methodist Church
July 4, 2010 6th Sunday after Pentecost Text: Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20
I chose to title today's message "Don't Sweat the Small
Stuff!" because both of the texts for today speak to us about seemingly
small and insignificant things.
The first reading, from II Kings, tells us about a healing
miracle that occurs in a
pretty unexpected place .... the River Jordan, which is really not much more
than a muddy creek along much of it's course, a river certainly unlike most of
the mighty rivers that Naaman, the commander of the armies of Aram, might have
been familiar with.
And then, in the New Testament Lesson we hear more about the
disciples of Christ ... who are few in the face of such need .... and who are commissioned to go into the world. They're sent like lambs in the midst of wolves
into the harvest that God has prepared ... and they're told to not carry any of
those things that people normally rely on when they
travel - no purse, no bag, no sandals, -- but
to proclaim peace to all who will accept it. They're armed only with peace and healing and the nearness of
the kingdom of God.
The story of Naaman's healing is one of the great bible stories.
As I read it this
week I asked myself, what would I want to hear about it if I was in the
congregation? In
other words .... What's the good news here?
And I think the good news here is to be found in the solution to the story.
Naaman has a problem, leprosy, one of the dreaded diseases of
the ancient world, and he needs a solution ... he
needs a healing. That's something we can all relate to, I think.
So Naamam seeks his solution, and, by
the grace of God, he finds his solution. All he has to do is, "Do
it."
All he has to do is humble himself and recognize that his greatest problem can be taken care of: taken care of by a
simple act of obedience within a small and insignificant river.
But as you know, Naaman resists this
idea.
Naaman believes instead
that his healing should come from the mighty prophet
Elisha himself. That Elisha should come out of his house and stand before him
and call on the name of God and wave his hands over his leprous spots and so heal him.
Naaman is much like us.
We often have a hard time grasping the small things - the
seemingly unimportant
things are the things that God most often uses to accomplish the great things.
And he has a hard time grasping that solutions - especially divine solutions - are
most often wrapped up in obedience - obedience in
what are seemingly small matters.
I can think of people who have gone to their doctor after a
heart attack and have
been told to walk for 30 minutes or so a day. It's a small thing (relatively speaking) but yet many don't or won't do it.
Quitting smoking is another one. The
solution is there. And it's up to us to obey.
But many don't.
In these people, and indeed in my
own life when T have been confronted by a large problem, I can hear a bit of
Naaman saying, "I want the cure, but I don't want to be part of it. Elisha
is supposed to take care of things for me. I should only have to show up and be
healed."
Naaman is told that his healing will be found in washing seven times in the muddy river and he storms off in a rage because he
wants - and expects - the solution to be something different, something more
dramatic, something more special, something that is more proportional to who he
is and what his problem is.
How close Namaan is to walking away
from the cure!
Fortunately for him, his servants loved him enough to confront
him and counsel him with loving reason, "if it had been a great thing that
cost a lot of money, if it had required a long journey, if it had required some
heroic effort, you would have done it...."
And fortunately again for Naaman, he responds to this reasoning,
he listens to his servants.
I wonder what it must have been like for Naaman after the first
dunk in the
Jordan?
And after the second, third, and fourth, and nothing had happened ..... Fifth. Still no healing. Sixth. Nothing. I wonder if he
said, with mud dripping off his face and head, "Let's just get this over
with!" OR MAYBE "What's the use??" ,
Yet he persevered - he immersed
himself the seventh time - and 10 - the
blessing
came!
Obedience! And then the blessing!
Isn't that usually the way God works?
We don't earn the blessing. But we are granted the blessing when
we surrender our wills in obedience to God's will.
When we earnestly seek a solution to our problems, God is
faithful and will supply the solution.
If we choose to be obedient to that solution, our problem will
be taken care of. And more. Because not only is Namaan
cured physically, but his soul is healed too. And he knows afterward ..... that not only is there a prophet in Samaria,
but that there is a living God in Israel.
When we are obedient to God's solution, even though God's
solution might appear hidden as small matters, the results end up being more
than we wanted, more than we ever could have hoped for.
Small matters matter - especially when those matters are God
directed and we are obedient in them.
And as for the New Testament lesson
- well, small matters matter there as well.
In the case of the Gospel reading it is the disciples themselves
who are small. Small in the face of the task that Christ assigns them - the
task of being the ones who go into the abundantly populated fields of God and
bring in the harvest.
Like Namaan the disciples are told to do something that many
might consider
foolish. They are told to perform their tasks
with absolutely none of the support that
people normally have when they set forth on a journey or go out to harvest an
earthly crop.
No purse containing a change of clothing or tools to make the
job easier, no bag
containing food to sustain them in their labor, no sandals to protect their
feet from the
rocks of the roadways or the hot sands of the wilderness.
They are told instead to rely only on the welcome of those who
will receive their
greeting of peace and to shake off the dust from their feet against those who
will not and go on instead to the next place.
Indeed they are told not even to rejoice in the powers that God
will give them as
they go forth: the power to heal - the power to trample on snakes and scorpions
and to
overcome all the powers of evil, but to rejoice only that their names are
written in heaven.
In short they are told to rely on nothing familiar to them, but to rely only on what
God will provide for them through men and women of peace as they proclaim the
message concerning the nearness of the kingdom of God.'
"The harvest is plentiful - but the laborers are few," says Jesus. "Ask the Lord of
the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into the harvest field."
And then - his command and his statement of what things will be
Iike..... "Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves."
Isn't it like that for us today? We are constantly told by
people within the church
and outside it that we are few in number and that the need around us is great;
greater than our ability to address it.
How can we buy a new building here, how can we even meet the
regular budget let alone buy something else for the work of God? How can we
touch the community with God's love when the worldly forces around us are so
strong and so opposed to that love? How can we speak to our neighbors of God's
peace and perform healings and announce the coming of the Kingdom of God
- when we seem to have so few resources and when the kingdom itself seems so
small in comparison to the greed, to the injustice, to the evil of this world?
Indeed, how can we do anything for God - for Christ - when we are ourselves so
small, so uncertain - and at times so divided among ourselves?
But we are commanded to go. To go with nothing but the word of peace and the
promise that we will be looked after.
Like Namaan, like the disciples, we are confronted with a big
problem - a big task,
and as with them the solution that has been proposed to us requires of US two things:
- to abandon our ideas of what the
solution should look like
- and to wash ourselves in the
cleansing waters of obedience, in those
waters in
which Namaan himself was immersed and Jesus himself
was baptized.
I don't know what all your special and individual problems may
be. All I know is that most of us, like Namaan, have one. I don't know all of
the difficulties that each of you face as individuals.
I do know, however, what the problem of our world is I do know that every home
needs the peace of
God to come upon it .... And that every nation needs the kingdom of God
to draw close to it .... And that,
indeed there is a huge task - a harvest task - waiting for the servants of God
- out there.
And I do know from the story of
Namaan, and from the story of the sending out of
the 72 disciples, and from so many other passages of holy
scripture that the answer to
our problems is
most likely already before us, and that it most likely bears a humble form, and
requires us to do nothing more than live in humble submission, a humble obedience.
In our finances, which so often look desperate, the Word has long told us that if we give a 10th of
what we have to God, that the windows of heaven will be opened and our land,
our crops, our families, will be richly blessed.
In our longing for peace of mind and
a sense of hope and wholeness, the Word has long
told us that if we make our requests known to God with prayer and supplication,
with thanksgiving; and if we will meditate on those things that are worthy,
those things that are
good, beautiful, and true, that the peace of God which passes all human
understanding will keep us safe in the knowledge and love of God.
In our desire to have our burdens lightened or removed
altogether, the Word has
long told us that if we offer to Christ our
burdens and take upon ourselves his burden, his cross .... That we will have rest.
Small matters - with big consequences; big consequences for
those who accept the Word -
who accept the solution -
and who do what it asks.
Namaan's servants went to him and said, "My Father, if the
prophet had told you to do some great thing, would
you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, 'Wash, and be
cleansed'!" So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven
times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became
clean like that of a young boy."
What is it that you need to do today? What
have you put off doing because it
seemed too simple, too small, and too silly to do? What act of humble
obedience do you
need to perform so that you might claim what God is offering you, and through
you - to your family, your neighbors - and indeed to your
world?
Is it as simple as remembering to pray each day? To pray as
Christ told his disciples to pray - for more workers for the harvest? Or to
pray for the peace of those homes which you enter - and to accept that which
those who accept your greeting of peace offer you without question, and without
seeking more?
Does it require you to abandon your reliance on the small but
needful matters of
life? Things like your home, your back account, your job skills, and your
knowledge of the ways of the world? And to trust instead in God to do what God
has promised to do even as you dip for the fourth, or
the fifth, or even the sixth time in the muddy waters of a spiritual Jordan?
The solution is not out there somewhere in a place where you have to look for
it.
Rather the Word -
the solution is here - it is already in your hearts - and upon your lips. That
is the Word of faith that we are proclaiming, the word God wants you to believe and act upon so that peace may come upon your household and
healing may be done in your community.
All in all today - the scriptures speak
to us today about small matters - with big
consequences. And it is up to us to receive the Word - or not.
It is my prayer, and it is the prayer of Christ and of the whole Church - that you
may indeed receive the word of peace, and be ones who live by it in trust and
humble
obedience.
Blessed be God, day by day ... Amen
|
