No expectations

 

Luke 10: 1-11, 16
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
July 3, 2022

Photo of a dandelion going to seed;
background is blurred with shades of muted yellow, green, gray, white, and black.

In her latest book author Mary Pipher wrote, “Our greatest challenge in this life is coming to grips with impermanence.” In an interview she said that accepting impermanence, accepting change is the only way to be happy. She went on, “…at some point, especially as we get older, we need to be able find the love we need within ourselves. It just gets harder to find it in the outside world.” She writes about generating more love and joy in her heart and lowering her expectations about what she can receive from the world. She has learned to surrender, that word that makes most of us dig in our heels or turn away and shudder.



When Jesus sends out pairs of people to places and towns that he intends to visit, it is a lesson in impermanence, surrender, and no expectations, save that the kindom of heaven has come near. Jesus sends them out as lambs among wolves, as love and compassion among predators. He tells them to take nothing with them, like some hard-core evangelical mission trip has probably done, like the baptism of fire, the being thrown into the really deep end, the unknown or the possible known we all fear. And yet they are to go with peace and share that peace with whoever will receive it, eating and drinking whatever is served to them.

Poster with rainbow stripes and diamond and twinkling star shapes around a thought bubble with this message: Shoutout to everyone who is still committed to trying to be an open-hearted and kind person even while having to process lots of heavy things.

As Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, the wisdom of our faith is foolishness and its strength is weakness. We live in a mystery in which we embody divinity and wholeness and also weakness and foolishness. We are capable of so much delight and disgust, exceptional beauty and atrocious evil. We give life and we take it away, and none of it lasts forever.



Perhaps that’s what Dietrich Bonhoeffer was thinking of when, nine months before his execution in a concentration camp, he wrote these words from prison: “So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as [those] who manage our lives without [God]. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. God lets God’s self be pushed out of the world on to the cross. [God] is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which [God] is with us and helps us.”

I’ve used Bonhoeffer’s words many times because they are scripture for me and because the awful truth they preach means that if the kindom of God has come near, it must come from within. We shift our expectations from what the world is offering and how we want it to be, to the way the world is and what we will bring to it.



These are hard times to believe that the kindom of God has come near. We humans are swamped with crises, with fear, anger, grief, and trauma. And yet that kindom is always as near as it ever was, that kindom of unconditional love and fearless compassion, of radical forgiveness and restorative justice. It’s as close as Hope Dining Room. It is as near as the Highmark Walk for Friendship House. It’s as handy as the thank you notes from mission partners in our current newsletter. It's as immediate as the picnic for our unhoused neighbors at Calvary Baptist Church today at noon. It’s as present as online church and Zoom meetups and small group discussions. It’s as close at hand as a phone call, a text, an email, a Zoom visit, a driveway visit, a hike in the woods.



The kindom of God is as near, as close, as familiar as this Table. Jesus left his disciples and us with no expectations except “remember me”.



Would they remember to love their neighbor as themselves?



Would they remember to forgive the sins of others as they have been forgiven?



Would they remember to love God with all their heart and mind, with all their soul and strength?



Would they remember that they are beloved of God?



Would they remember that the kindom of God is within them?



Would they remember that everything they do is so sacred that it can become a ritual?



Would they remember that resurrection only comes after death, that new life comes after letting go of what was?



Would they remember that they are the hands and feet of that kindom come near?



Would they remember that they are never alone but connected, that they belong to each other?



Would they remember that all they were promised is that they would learn to love well?



Remember, my friends, the kindom of God is within you.

Poem by David Whyte, "Everything is Waiting for You"

Benediction – Richard Bruxvoort Colligan


Lift up your eyes, behold the hills
From where will help and rescue come?
We call on One who made the earth,
Who blessed the stars, the moon and sun.


God is holding your life, God is holding your life,
God is holding your life, we believe.
God is holding your life, God is holding your life,
God is holding your life, we believe.