The passage that informed my sermon this week tells of Jesus sending his disciples out in pairs, rather than just following him. It was their first such venture, and it still speaks.
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When I was a high school English teacher, I did an exercise with my ninth graders where they had to write instructions for how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I had all the elements out on a table: jars of peanut butter and jelly, a couple of knives, a loaf of bread still in the wrapper, a plate. One of the main reasons behind the activity was to get them to understand the importance of details, so I told them to make sure and write down every little thing you had to do to make a PB & J.
What I didn’t tell them was the was that the way the assignment would be evaluated was how well one of the other students could make a sandwich by following their directions because they could only do what was written on the paper. It became apparent rather quickly that no one had thought of details like open the bag and take out two slices of bread, I gave their instructions back to them for revision.
We all learned that directions are hard to write.
Whenever we come across a passage where Jesus gives instructions to his disciples, it is tempting to read his words as though he was offering a sort of User’s Manual for all of us. There are parts of scripture that read that way—the Ten Commandments, for instance—but even they don’t have all the details for exactly how we live out those ideals.
In our passage today, Mark recounts the first time Jesus sent his followers out on their own. Remember, this is a continuation of the scene we looked at last week when Jesus couldn’t get his hometown folks to take him seriously. He decided to move on to other places and he told his disciples to do the same, except to do it without him.
And he gave some instructions, which we read a few moments ago. I want to read them again, this time from The Message translation:
“Don’t think you need a lot of extra equipment for this. You are the equipment. No special appeals for funds. Keep it simple. And no luxury inns. Get a modest place and be content there until you leave. If you’re not welcomed, not listened to, quietly withdraw. Don’t make a scene. Shrug your shoulders and be on your way.”
The reason Jesus’ words reminded me of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches is because I found several sermons that tried to turn his words into a little instruction book. One preacher made a connection to Robert Fulghum’s All I Really Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten. Remember that book? The author took things we learned as kids and talked about how they applied to our lives, such as, “Share everything. Play fair. Put things back where you found them. Take a nap every afternoon. And when you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.”
Those words hold a lot of truth, and I am a huge fan of naps, but life doesn’t come with easy-to-follow instructions when it comes to how to live meaningfully—or perhaps it’s better to say the instructions are a starting point.
Jesus does give instructions, as did our kindergarten teachers, but he wasn’t offering a step-by-step manual of how to change the world, or even how to be a disciple. He was inviting them into a deeper understanding of what it means to love one another, whether those one anothers were people they knew or people they had just met. And so he told them to put themselves in positions where they needed the help of others, even as they were going out to try and help; to live within their means; and to meet people on their terms. If they didn’t want to engage, then give them space and move on.
He challenged them to be guests rather than experts, to act just as he had just done in Nazareth. Instead of a list of instructions, he told them to go and build relationships, to engage other people on their terms.
That’s as close as you can get, I suppose, for instructions on how to love someone: meet them on their terms and offer what you have. As The Message translated it, “You are the equipment.”
Those words made me think of the Platinum Rule, which I learned about from Ginger. The Golden Rule, as most of us have been taught, is to do to others as we would have it done to us. The Platinum Rule says do to others as they would have it done to them. Use them as the reference point rather than ourselves. Listen to them before we decide what they need.
Perhaps that is doing as we would have it done to us, in a way, since we would like to feel listened to and regarded.
Theologian Sam Wells says that often, when we think about how to care for others we think about what we can do for them. “And,” he says, “those gestures of ‘for’ matter because they sum up a whole life in which we try to make relationships better, try to make the world better, try to be better people ourselves by doing things ‘for’ people.”
But for is not the key word in the way God relates to us. When the angel tells Joseph what to name the child, they say to call him Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” “’With’,” says Wells, “is the most fundamental thing about God. . . . It is the word that describes the heart of God and the nature of God’s purpose and destiny for us.”
Jesus sent the disciples out to be with people, not just to go do stuff for them. And with is harder than for. We want to feel productive and useful, to be able to see how we helped. But sometimes the best thing we can do is to follow what the White Rabbit told Alice in Alice in Wonderland: “Don’t just do something, stand there!”
I first heard that line from my supervisor when I was a fresh-out-of-seminary hospital chaplain intern at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas. I had gone from the classroom to being in hospital rooms with dying patients and families. I didn’t know what to do and my supervisor reminded me I couldn’t do anything but stand there. Just be with people. Even when I couldn’t fix it, I could choose to stay. That is true beyond the hospital. Even when we can’t fix it, we can choose to stay. We can choose to be with each other, no matter how much it hurts and how helpless we feel.
But I am not telling you something you don’t know.
As I thought about Jesus sending out the disciples, I kept thinking, “That is kind of what we do every Sunday. We got out from here into the lives of those around us to see how we can be with them, and then we come back here to remember we are with each other.” You have been with each other for a lot more Sundays than I have been here.
I’m not telling you something you don’t know, but it’s worth being reminded that the way love changes lives is in our being with one another, is in our being together. God is with us and we are with each other. Amen.
Peace,
Milton
