Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

You know, I never noticed this before,

but when Jesus sends out these seventy new disciples,

he spends a whole lot more time

telling them how to do their work

than actually laying out for them what that work is.

Imagine taking a new job today,

and being told: here’s your cubicle,

and here’s the corporate dress code,

and here is the travel policy, please read it at your convenience …

but somehow they never get around to giving you

an actual job description!

Now, one imagines that these 70 had been following Jesus for a while,

so maybe it was obvious to them

what they were supposed to be doing

when they went into the towns and places

to which Jesus sent them.

But it is strange.

Even stranger, then, is the rest of the story:

even though Jesus never specifically told them to cast out demons,

lo and behold, they return to report that they are successfully doing so.

How cool is that?!

And yet, Jesus warns them …

"do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you,

but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."

Wait a minute …

so maybe it wasn’t a mistake that he spent so little time

giving them their job description …

What mattered to Jesus was

who they were, and how they were in the world,

not what they accomplished.

So far as he was concerned,

how they did the work was at least as important

as the content of the work itself.

Even if the spirits had not submitted to them,

if they had done the job as Jesus told them to do it,

then their "names are written in heaven."

What mattered was to be faithful,

not to be "successful."

Well, what a countercultural message that is.

Don’t we all want to be successful, however we define it?

Better income … a promotion or new job title …

name recognition, like, if you Google your name,

you can actually find yourself …?

We want to make our mark, leave our impression.

In our younger and idealistic days,

we may feel like we have the opportunity to change the world:

to discover a cure for cancer,

to rid the world of warfare and weapons,

to feed the hungry by persuading the rest of us to share.

Even as our dreams become less grandiose,

we still want to leave our mark behind somehow …

"I hope one of the kids will take over the family business;

I would hate to see it just go away."

"Okay, maybe I won’t find the cure for cancer,

but I can help my neighbor by driving her to her chemo,

and taking care of her yard while she feels so awful."

For many of us, it may even extend beyond the end of our life:

how many of us plan to make a mark

by leaving some of our estate to a charitable cause,

or at least somehow dividing it up in a way

that sends a message?

Way back when I was in high school,

one of the adults who worked with us

asked us to consider a question that has haunted me ever since:

"Will it matter that I was …

and to whom?"

To whom will it make a difference that I existed,

rather than never having been born in the first place?

Other than the obvious response of family members …

where, on whom, have I left a mark?

Hopefully, a good mark, a positive one!

It’s a question that probably most adolescents don’t ask themselves very often …

not at a time when we are more concerned with

not looking or being too different from everyone else

than with making a difference.

Which is probably why we were asked to consider it

at that moment in our lives!

I suspect that most of us ask it of ourselves

on a fairly regular basis.

We think about it especially

at those times when we come face to face with

the fact that we aren’t going to live forever.

Who will remember me when I’m gone?

And what will they remember me for?

Is that what I want to be remembered for?

And into the midst of our worrying about

whether we’ve made our mark,

whether we’ve left a suitable legacy,

Jesus comes back to remind us that what matters to him is not

whether we were "successful,"

but whether we were faithful.

It’s not,

"Show me the outcome measurements;

exactly how many demons did you cast out,

and out of how many individuals?

And how many did you try,

and were unsuccessful in casting out?

Okay, our demon batting-average is 70 percent …"

The question is, did you do your job?

Did you tell people that the kingdom of God has come near,

regardless of whether they believed you, or not?

Did you stay quietly in any town that welcomed you,

eating what they eat and living as they live,

not always on the road in search of something better?

Did you attend to the sick who came to you?

Did you bring peace to every place you stayed?

So, yes, we are expected to leave a mark,

but it’s not drawn in a way that the world can easily measure.

Notice also the instruction that Jesus gives for those times

when the seventy and their message is not welcome.

Does he tell them to stay anyway,

and shout until people listen?

He does not.

Does he tell them to hire the best marketing firm

and create a clever ad campaign to get people to listen in spite of themselves?

No, not even the first-century equivalent.

Does he tell them to stay there and mope and whine

about the fact that no one is paying attention?

He does not.

He tells them to leave that place behind,

and move on down the road.

If there is no way to leave a mark in a certain place,

then it is appropriate and even necessary to move on.

Perhaps someone else, later,

can get through to that town and its people.

I dare say that this is an important teaching for us, together,

to hear at this point in our life together.

Because even in the church, of all places,

there is far too much emphasis placed on "success"

according to the world’s standards.

Every year, Grace Presbytery makes a significant fuss

over churches that have gained numerically

in membership or in worship attendance.

Big deal.

Mainline churches in suburban areas

where there are lots of white, middle- to upper-middle class families,

are going to grow.

It is a demographic and sociological given.

When I suggested that it would be at least as useful,

and maybe even a fairer measure and message of faithfulness,

to make a fuss of those churches that give sacrificially

to their communities and to the larger church …

well, they nodded their heads sagely

and nothing at all has come of it.

It is easy to look at declining membership

as a sign of failure, somehow …

certainly the standards of the world would tell us so,

and it doesn’t help that the larger church plays the same numbers game.

There may, indeed, be times when that is the case.

Declining membership may, on the other hand,

be a sign of change …

and a sign that there is a kind of mismatch between

faithfulness as we know how to practice it

and faithfulness as the community around us needs it.

A decision to close

could be a sign of failure, to be sure.

Or it could be a sign of faithfulness,

and an attempt to utilize resources differently in a time

when our message no longer matches our community.

Let’s talk about making a mark,

and whether we have done so,

and will continue to do so.

We will take for granted that the life of Trinity Presbyterian Church

makes and has made a difference in

the lives of the people who are its members, over time.

But who else?

How many hundreds of our neighbors

have been helped to learn English in this very building?

How many of their children have gotten a head start

on school, and even preschool?

How many dozens of homeless families found stability at Oasis,

and moved on to a better life?

How many hundreds of homeless persons did we feed

at Austin Street Centre,

and how many meals did we serve to persons with HIV/AIDS

through AIDS Services of Dallas?

How many thousands of dollars have we spent

helping our neighbors near and far

with rent, utilities, prescriptions?

How many mentally ill residents of this neighborhood,

especially in the boarding-house days,

found a welcome in this church,

and a place where their needs were met

and their concerns taken seriously?

(I know the answer to this one:)

Seventy students have received Manton Scholarships

to help with the cost of their college education.

We have raised, and shared, tens of thousands of dollars

for hurricane relief, tsunami relief,

Heifer Project International,

new beds for Grace Presbyterian Village,

Epiphany Presbyterian Church in Ghana,

pastors for tiny churches in Guatemala,

Presbyterian Children’s Homes,

Oak Cliff Churches for Emergency Aid,

a van for AIDS Interfaith,

the Caring Fund at the Village,

Grace Presbytery’s new building,

the new chapel planned at the Village …

and those are only the things that I can remember

and only from the past ten years!

There may be few of us remaining,

but in our efforts to be faithful to Jesus Christ,

we have touched thousands of lives for the better.

There should be no sense of failure about that.

Indeed, we are just about to the point

where we are just 70 disciples,

like the ones Jesus sent out.

May we remember …

that the mark we leave

has nothing to do with "success" or "failure."

May we rejoice

that our names are written in heaven.

Amen.

© 2007 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)