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Last week, I spoke about our local Synod Assembly for the Central States Synod, which is the annual business meeting of churches doing ministry and stewarding money and responding in faith.  There are rules and parliamentary procedures and I’m not especially jazzed about all that, and I would have skipped the explanation entirely except that the whole reason we bother with all the procedures is because we’re trying to govern the church within community.  We don’t elect representatives to govern on our behalf—we’re all stakeholders in decision-making.  There are votes.  There’s a bishop, but there’s no CEO. 

Lately I’ve been noticing in our culture and in our world the rise of extreme income inequality and the consolidation of power—and the ways these things can give rise to mischief at best and evil at worst.  This gives me an appreciation for entities like the ELCA that are trying to gather many people and many voices.  It might feel chaotic sometimes with regard to governance—when I heard someone say “I move to amend the amendment,” my brain kinda broke apart—but what we’re not gonna do as a church is to put a solitary human being in charge of all decision-making. Unless you count Jesus by way of the Holy Spirit.  But even then, the Holy Spirit works through groups of people—we are a people together, and a community. 

This community idea goes way back—today we read from Exodus, the origin story of God’s people, Israel.  It doesn’t start with people electing a savior—it starts with God.  God acts first, to free the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt.  And then God proposes a relationship through a covenant, a promise.  Live by these rules, God says, and I’ll be with you. 

This is an oversimplification, of course, but sometimes I think simplicity is called for.  If my sermon last week was the complicated outcome of corporate discipleship—which can do terrific things like facilitate international church relationships of mutual support but is tougher to navigate as an institution—then this week is about lowering the barriers to entry.  Uncomplicated discipleship—it really can be simple.  Go back to the beginning, back to Jesus, all the way back to Exodus. 

The part of Exodus that we read, where God is telling Moses what to communicate to the people, is just before Moses receives the Ten Commandments.  Where God’s power was once displayed through ten plagues in Egypt, now there will be Ten Commandments to show God’s power to bring life.  The Law is life, and this is relationship with God.  And here’s my public service announcement for those of us brought up in faith with Lutheran dialectical training: the Law is not the opposite of the Gospel, as if one is good and the other is bad.  Both Law and Gospel are needed. 

I thought of this when I visited my friend’s new house this week.  My friend Linsey loves plants and pretty much anything that grows, and in the yard of her new home, already there are plants taking root and beginning to grow.  She could tell me about the dreams she has for her garden and what she wants it to look like eventually, but it’s still in the early stages for now. 

I thought of how a trellis looks by itself—some kind of wooden or maybe metal framework that is meant to support a plant that grows by making vines.  A trellis by itself obviously belongs in a garden, but it would look silly by itself.  The trellis exists to lift up the growth of a plant that needs support.  On a trellis, a vine has room to grow upward, beyond its basic nature.  A vine left alone on the ground is likely to get stepped on or damaged, but a trellis allows the plant to become even more beautiful.  The vine and the trellis are better when they work together.  This is what I think the Law and Gospel are like—working together and they only make sense together. 

Law and Gospel are part of how we understand our relationship with God, and both of these are gifts of God, born of God’s grace.  Jesus enters a world in need of healing, and Jesus doesn’t go out and immediately tell people what to do before they can be healed: first, he heals them.  That’s the Good News and there’s more beyond the healing: there’s relationship with God and then being invited to witness miracles.  

And also Jesus says, oh yeah, you disciples with almost no training: y’all go on ahead and do what Jesus does.  Proclaim the good news!  Cure the sick, raise, the dead, cleanse those with a skin disease, cast out demons—all the regular, everyday stuff.  No worries if you’ve never done this before: you have what you need.  You don’t need a four-year degree or an apprenticeship or letters of recommendation—just go and heal and proclaim. 

Imagine how much confidence Jesus has in sending out these newly-formed disciples, with no oversight, no micromanaging, no…accountability?  I mean, I don’t have that kind of confidence, even to be a disciple and follow those instructions!  I want structure and an itinerary and someone giving feedback because I feel like I would constantly be questioning “Am I doing this right?!” 

But discipleship isn’t about what I’m doing—it’s about what God is doing.  God always makes the first move: to liberate, to heal, and to invite relationship.  And it’s not a relationship of power-over, where God is just bossing humans around.  In Jesus, we see more clearly God’s desire to work together with humanity, to have power together. That’s how Jesus can send out barely-trained and possibly unqualified disciples to do the same work Jesus himself is already doing, expanding the reach of God’s healing power. 

So let me break it down for you, and it might be bad news: guess what, you don’t need more training or more practice to be disciples of Jesus.  Just start where you are.  Go and do what Jesus does: healing the sick, healing broken relationships, restoring creation and even raising the dead.  If you trust in God, you already have everything you need.  I don’t deserve God’s love, and you don’t deserve God’s love, but God has freely loved us already, and everything is a gift. 

Jesus doesn’t send out disciples and abandon them—he does say “don’t go among the Gentiles,” and obviously the strategy changed somewhere after that, or we wouldn’t all be here today.  So if you’re going to do what Jesus does, stay connected to the God with whom you are in relationship and stay connected to God in whom all the power resides.  Commit to the journey and expect to receive instructions as you go, one step at a time.  Wherever you are, start there. 

Today Elizabeth Lynn will be baptized.  She’s three months old, so maybe you’d think she doesn’t have much to contribute to God’s kin-dom, or maybe she doesn’t have much to proclaim, but you’d be wrong.  She’s three months old, but she’s already beginning to sing—I have witnessed this!  And even a newborn can be sent out to minister, to heal what is broken.  Just let her joy echo in you and see if your soul isn’t just a little bit healed today. 

Sure, when we go through the whole list of promises made in baptism, to grow in faith and serve God, Elizabeth is not going to precociously say yes.  But for now, she knows enough—she knows her parents love her, she knows she is safe, and she knows that she is surrounded by love and support, and even if she doesn’t quite know it yet, she’s gonna know that she is welcome as our sister in Christ.  It’s enough, at least, to get started.  It really doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. 

Amen. 

Pastor Cheryl