Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 10:1-11, 16-20:
In 1906 Vilfredo Pareto, who was an Italian economist,
noticed that 80% of the land was owned by 20% of the people. He then later observed that 80% of the peas
in a garden were contained in only 20% of the pea pods. This led him to postulate a theory now known
as the Pareto Distribution. This theory
was later applied to the business world by business consultant Joseph Juran who
stipulated the rule as we know it, which is commonly referred to as the 80-20
rule. While the 80% has no mathematical significance, it has been found that in
systems of distribution that the imbalance point will be right around 80%. 80% of your profits will come from 20% of
your customers, 80% of your complaints will come from 20% of your customers,
although not the same 20% who are spending the most money, 80% of sales come from 20% of the products. Computer programmers have found that 20% of
the bugs cause 80% of the software crashes, and safety personnel have found
that 20% of hazards cause 80% of the accidents.
The question for us is whether it’s really true, although it certainly
feels that way, but even more importantly is that the way it has to be?
The passage we just heard from Luke is a pretty famous one
with the claim that there is much work in the harvest, but few workers. This is usually taken as sort of a truism,
yet another confirmation of the 80/20 rule, that even in the church there is
too much work to be done, and too few workers to do it all, or too few who do
all the work. And if the Bible says it
then it must be true right? But is that what this passage actually says? Is Jesus simply telling us that it is the lot
of the church for 80% of the work to be done by 20% of the people, and 80% of
the money to be given by 20% of the people, about 80% of the complaints to be
done by 20% of the people? In my
experience on the complaint front it’s actually smaller, it’s probably 5% who
do 95%, although please don’t try and prove me wrong by having more people
begin doing more complaining.
Luke is the only gospel in which we find this story. Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell of Jesus
sending out the 12 disciples on a missionary journey, and similarly telling
them not to take anything with them, a task at which I fail, and if you saw our
moving truck you would know by how much, but only Luke tells of the sending of
the 70, although there is equal manuscript witness to Jesus sending out 72
here. This passage also contains a lot
more detail about what they are to do, how they are to interact, then does the
sending of the 12 disciples. There is a
lot of speculation about who these 70 or 72 are that Jesus sends out. Most scholars seem to be in general agreement
that the number here is a reference to a list of the descendents of Noah and
names the ancestors of all of the nations that we find in chapter 10 of Genesis. In the manuscripts of this passage in Hebrew,
the list of the nations has seventy nations.
But in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, which is known as
the Septuagint did not have 70 nations, instead it listed 72 nations. So we then have 70 or 72 sent out depending
on whether you were using the Hebrew or Greek versions of the Old Testament.
But if it is indeed a connection to the naming of the
nations, which I think is likely, then this story is also directly connected to
the story of Pentecost, which is also recounted by Luke in the book of Acts,
when the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples and they begin speaking in
foreign tongues spreading the gospel message.
But there is something striking about the Pentecost story that we tend
to miss, and that can be highlighted in comparison to today’s passage. As the book of Acts begins, Jesus is giving
final instructions to the disciples and the other followers before he ascends
into heaven. Jesus tells them that after
he is gone, that the Holy Spirit will be sent to them and the Holy Spirit will
give them power. What will the Holy
Spirit give them? Power. Remember that because it’s going to keep
coming up in our time together. The Holy
Spirit will give them? Power. And they are then to proclaim the gospel
message to Jerusalem, where they are, to Judea, to the rest of the Jews, to
Samaria, who are the enemies of Judaism, and then to the ends of the
earth. “Be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea,
Samaria and to the ends of the earth,” Jesus says, but then what do we find the
disciples doing?
They are not being Jesus’ witnesses. Instead they are holed up in the upper room
in Jerusalem, and Peter is teaching and preaching to those who already believe,
and so the day of Pentecost comes upon them and they are filled with the Holy
Spirit, I don’t believe it’s because of their faithfulness and because they are
doing such a good job, but instead it’s God saying to them “get out of the
upper room!” Go do what Jesus has told
you, go proclaim, be Jesus’ witnesses to all the ends of the earth, and if you
won’t do it yourself, God says, then I’m going to make you do it by giving you
different languages so that you have to get out and engage, you have to stop
talking amongst yourselves and begin talking to other people, to non-believers. But of course that’s when the really scary
stuff begins to happen, because that’s when we have to begin to trust God, when
we have to begin to deal with people who aren’t like us, scary, and we have to
truly begin to believe that the Holy Spirit will give us what? Power, the power to do what God has called us
to do.
Unfortunately when we hear Jesus say that we are supposed to
go out and do these things, we, like the disciples, come up with all sorts of
excellent excuses. But here’s where it’s
very important to pay attention to what Jesus actually says in this passage. The
first is that Jesus is calling people in to help bring in the harvest. “The harvest is plentiful,” Jesus says, “but
the laborers are few.” We are not being
sent out to plow and plant and tend, that’s the really hard stuff, but it
appears that God has already taken care of all of that, because the harvest is
ready to be brought in. Not that
bringing in the harvest doesn’t involve labor, because it certainly does, but
the hardest work has already been done by the Holy Spirit, which is already at
work in people’s lives. As United
Methodists, we call this prevenient grace, the grace that comes before, the
grace which God has extended to us long before we even know that it’s there,
before we even know that we need God’s grace in our lives, it’s already there.
So first is that we called to bring in the harvest, not
plant the seeds. The second thing is
that we are to begin with prayer. Really
we end with prayer too, but we should always begin with prayer. “Ask of the Lord of the harvest to send out
laborers into the harvest.” It’s not
that Jesus is saying there just aren’t enough people; instead it’s that there
are plenty of people but we must begin by praying for God to lead them to help
with the harvest, and we must also be open to the nudging of God in what we are
being called to do. Everything begins
and ends with prayer, but most especially in seeking to do God’s work in the
world. Third, and this is crucial, is
that Jesus sends that out in pairs.
There are lots and lots of reasons for this, and we might
spend an entire sermon just talking about this, but Christianity is not a
solitary religion. You cannot be a
Christian by yourself. Christianity is
done with others in community. There is
a reason why Jesus said wherever two or more are gathered, there I am amongst
them. And thinking to the passage from
Galatians this morning, going out in pairs, doing this is community, allows us
to bear one another’s burdens. So we are
called to collect the harvest, not plant the seeds, we are called to be in
prayer, we are called to be in community, and the last two are sort of linked,
and that is that we are called to be like sheep amongst the wolves and we are
called to give exactly the same message to those who receive us and those who
reject us.
It is this area that I think we get most confused on,
because way too often people go out like wolves amongst the sheep, and our
evangelism becomes tools of violence and fear, rather than peace and
reconciliation. Jesus does not tell
those he sends out to ask people if they have accepted Jesus Christ as their
personal Lord and savior, and I can’t help myself but every time I say that I
just have to do it with a southern accent.
Nor does he say to tell people how wrong they are, how many sins they
are committing, that if they don’t repent and accept Christ today that they
will be going to hell. He doesn’t do
that because that’s sending people out like wolves rather than like sheep.
God has already done the hardest part, we are just to go out
and gather the harvest by proclaiming to friend and foe alike the same message,
that the kingdom of God has come near.
But to do this requires a significant risk, and with risk comes the
possibility of failure, and that’s why so many people and churches want to try
and avoid this. We cannot accept the
possibility of failure, everything we do has to be successful, but that’s not
what God says to us. Luke in particular
emphasizes the grind of being a disciple of Christ because he is the one who
records Jesus as saying pick up your cross, how often? Daily, and follow
me. But what’s even more striking is
that risk is something that we as Christians should be doing all the time,
because we don’t talk about taking a leap of safety, instead we take leaps of
what? That’s right, leaps of faith. Being a disciple requires us to put safety
behind, to take risks, to step out boldly into the world, to risk failure and
success to make the proclamation that the kingdom has come near.
But to be a missionary, we must have a mission. We must have something to proclaim, and
something we are excited to proclaim.
You don’t tell your friends about some mediocre restaurant you went to,
or a lame movie you saw. Instead you
tell them about the things that really excited you. So to be able to tell people about the
kingdom of god, to tell people about Jesus Christ, we must have experienced the
kingdom of God, we must know what God is doing in our lives, how we have been
transformed, how God’s grace, mercy, forgiveness and justice are working in our
lives. We have to set ourselves on fire
with the Holy Spirit and receive the power of the Holy Spirit in order to do
the work of the Holy Spirit.
God does not say here go out and do all this work while I
sit back and watch. God says, I have
already done all the hard work for you, and so I am calling you out to bring in
my harvest, and it is God’s harvest not ours, regardless of what some evangelists
want to say, we are called to be in prayer, we are called to be in community,
we are called to go out in peace into the hostile world, and we are called to
make the same proclamation that the kingdom of God has come near. While some people come to Christ and to be in
relationship with a church community because of some mega-preacher, or a
revival, the vast vast majority come to Christ, and come to attend a church,
simply because someone they know goes there, and they took the leap of faith,
they took the risk, to not only tell them why Christ and the church are
important to them, but also took the leap of faith to invite them to come to
church with them. But for that to truly
happen and be effective, we must have a mission to be a missionary, we must be
sold out for Christ, we have to be on fire with the power of the Holy Spirit and
we must be willing to risk it all for the coming of the kingdom of God. May it be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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