St. Paul’s Church in
Bergen, Jersey City NJ
June 18, 2017
Year A, Proper 6: The
Second Sunday after Pentecost
Exodus 19:2-8a
Psalm 100
Romans 5:1-8
Matthew 9:35-10:8
Touching the Future
I
know today is Father’s Day, but, if you don’t mind, I want to take a minute and
talk about my mom.
As
some of you know, after more than a quarter century of teaching Special
Education here in Jersey City, my mom is retiring.
Last
week, Sue and I and the rest of my family attended her retirement party with
many of her colleagues, both present and past.
It
was a wonderful party, with her colleagues reminiscing about her with obvious
affection and humor – and my mother herself trying to sum up all of those years
in the classroom.
For
me, though, the high point was when my mom was presented with a binder
containing letters written by her students, expressing how much her hard work
and kindness had meant to them.
Since
that night, I’ve been thinking about all the lives that my mom touched over all
those years of teaching, her colleagues, the parents of her students, and most
especially the children themselves – children who in this case, all too often,
the world sees as not worth very much at all, and yet, are so precious to God.
Speaking
as a former teacher myself, sometimes you know when you’ve made a difference,
but, I think, much more often we have no idea how much our work touches lives.
We
definitely have no idea how our love and kindness, our hard work and
generosity, will live on in the lives of those we touch – and how our love and
kindness, our hard work and generosity, will continue to echo down through the
generations, will live on long after we’re gone, long after we’re just a name
on a list, and, long after we’re not even that.
As
the teacher-astronaut Christa McAuliffe famously said, “I touch the future. I
teach.”
And,
it’s not just teachers, through our hard work and our love, all of us can touch
the future.
Touching
the future.
In
today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus assigns some hard work to the twelve apostles: to
cast out the evil spirits of the world, to heal what’s sick, to proclaim the
Good News in word and deed.
Jesus
doesn’t give these assignments to the apostles so that they can somehow earn their
salvation.
No,
this work is the opportunity for the apostles to respond to the love and
salvation they had already found in and through Jesus, to respond to that love
by spreading it around to as many people as they could, especially the broken
and helpless.
And,
the Evangelist Matthew uses this opportunity to give us the roster of the
twelve apostles.
Funny
thing about the apostles, though.
I
recently read a book called Apostle
and in it the author visits the alleged resting places of the twelve.
Over
the course of his study and conversations and travels he discovers what I know
because every year I have to come up with something to say on each feast day
honoring the apostles:
We
know almost nothing about the apostles.
Oh,
sure, we know a bit about the big ones – Peter, James, and John – and Judas
Iscariot, of course, and some of the others have little cameo appearances in
the gospels, like when Thomas famously expresses his doubts.
But, how about James son of Alphaeus or
Thaddeus or Simon the Cananaean?
We
know just about nothing about them. They’re just names on a list.
In
fact, some of the different lists of the twelve found in the gospels don’t even
contain exactly the same names.
So,
it seems that, within just a few decades, the Church’s memory had already gotten
a little fuzzy, definitely remembering that there had been twelve apostles, but
no longer remembering much at all about many of them.
Of
course, although the Church forgot the apostles’ biographical details almost
immediately, God doesn’t forget.
And,
although the Church forgot them almost immediately, the work of the apostles continued
to echo down through the generations – that’s why there was a Church that eventually
wanted to write down the story of Jesus and his friends.
The
work of the apostles continues to echo down through the centuries - that’s why
we’re still here today.
The
apostles touched the future by doing the work God had given them to do.
Now,
the apostles didn’t do this work so that they could somehow earn their salvation.
No,
their work was the opportunity for the apostles to respond to the love and
salvation they had already found in and through Jesus, to respond to his saving
love by spreading it around to as many people as they could, especially the
broken and the helpless.
In
a few minutes, I’ll have the privilege of baptizing Obi Okere, this little boy
who might very well live into the 22nd Century – a chance for me and
for all of us to, quite literally, touch the future.
A
lot goes on during a Baptism, but one of the most important things is we all get
reminded of the work that God has given us to do – the work that God promises
to help us do: to gather here for prayer and worship – to resist evil – to
proclaim by word and example the Good News – to seek and serve Christ in absolutely
everybody – to respect the dignity of every human being.
We
do this work not to earn God’s love or to save our souls, but to respond to the
love and salvation we’ve already found in and through Jesus.
And,
each time we try to love those who are hard to love – each time we try to see
Christ in the person the world dismisses as not worth very much at all – each
time we try to respect the dignity of someone who maybe doesn’t even respect
his own dignity – each time we just try, with God’s help, to do these very hard
things, we do the work God has given us to do.
And,
each time we just try, with God’s help, to do these very hard things, our love
and kindness, our hard work and generosity, will live on in the lives of those
we touch and will continue to echo down through the generations, in ways we can’t
even begin to imagine, into the 22nd Century and beyond, long after
we’re gone and forgotten by the world.
Each
time we try, with God’s help, to do these very hard things, we do the work God
has given us to do – and, we touch the future.
Amen.
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