Matthew 9: 35-10:8
“Church Out There”
June 14, 2020
Ready or not, out they go. Yesterday Arlington’s senior class, in a service like no other our high school has ever experienced, masked and seated with their family and apart from each other, they were sent to “fly like an eagle,” as the Steve Miller Band song went at the end of the ceremony, sending them on their way.
Trained over these last three months by a pandemic they couldn’t control, these graduates now know how adaptable they can be to a changing world where hard things happen and their comfort and skills with technology and working on-line will some day have been worth the frustration. They’ve learned how to take care not only of themselves but of others with masks and social distancing. Some have celebrated birthdays with drive by parties and all of them dealt with disappointment in missing out on sports and concerts and prom and senior trip.
They had to learn how to work within a confined space and how much patience is a gift that will serve them well, especially with family. They found out the hard way that friendships can survive even when you weren’t there in person to laugh with or console or commiserate with each other.
And now, with hard goodbyes they venture out into jobs and training and college and military service, expected to live as adults while still finding their way in the world. COVID-19, experienced as young adults has given this class of 2020 the push into a significantly altered world that may help them make their mark with a compassion that has the potential to change the course of human history.
Jesus here is pushing the twelve apostles out of the nest. He has been showing them how to be church by his movement. He is not attached to a single location but rather has so much good news to share that he is on the move constantly, seeking out the outcasts and embracing them, offering the sick a path toward wholeness and bandaging up the hurts that the walking wounded have been carrying alone. “He had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless.” Jesus both moved and was moved.
We have not been able to gather for three months now in the 170+ year old building that is so dear to us. We have been pushed out of that nest and back into more time spent still at home. What if instead of bemoaning that fact or getting too comfortable showing up in slippers and sitting in a favorite chair we were gearing up for what Jesus has modeled for his disciples and thus for us?
Maybe this time of Zoom church, and phone call check-ins and reliance on email and texts is preparation for something more? We all know that at some point we will return to a changed world that somewhat resembles the one that slipped away three months ago. We have not stopped being church. How we are church when we don’t have a building to give us our identity is where we’re at, especially right now when there is social isolation, economic insecurity and demonstrations and calls to action in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death.
Two weeks ago the writer Anne Lamott shared on her blog what she was missing amid all of the turmoil when she wrote: “I wish I had my Sunday School kids today, during the devastation of the pandemic and the terrifying images of murder and protest. I would tell that I am lost, too, but from the wise old pinnacle of my years, I would assure them that we can trust God no matter how things look and how long things take …
…The pain inside us and right in front of us is nothing compared to the power of love that surrounds us…When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”
That’s what we have to offer as church. We are so much more than our beloved building. Our work is to be a loving and life-giving presence in a hurting world. How to be Christ’s body to the world. Dream with me for a few moments? What could we be now during the hurting and later when the healing is happening? Who needs us most? And these buildings we love – how might we offer them as a brick and mortar extension of the Body of Christ?
Just as our graduates have been given a loving push out of the nest of safety and nurture to go into the world to make a difference so, too, are we as disciples of Jesus, being given a loving shove by the state of the world to be agents of change and healing. We may not encounter lepers to cleanse or dead bodies to bring back to life but we can be the hope with arms and legs and hearts and minds that can lift up those who are looking for proof of a loving God.
Each of us together and apart get to share what we know of that all-powerful and ever-present love. To quote the late tennis great and humanitarian Arthur Ashe,
“Start where you are.
Use what you have.
Do what you can.”
Amen.