Genesis 18:1-15, 21:1-7
Romans 5:1-8
Matthew 9:35-10:23
“These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: Proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” Now, Matthew doesn’t say as much, but the implication is that it isn’t just the twelve who are called to do this work, but all of Christ’s disciples - us, too. We, too, are called, privileged to be invited to take part in bringing closer the kingdom of heaven. Christ sends us out to proclaim the good news, to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons.
And this is the point at which we say, yeah, yeah, whatever. I mean seriously - it’s one thing to go around being a generally good and nice person, to smile politely as we walk by the homeless people on the street, to do our bit for the environment and recycle and compost, and it’s another thing entirely to believe that we are given the power to cure the sick, raise the dead, and cast out demons. It’s another thing completely to believe that Jesus has given us the power, and is expecting us, to proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is more of a reality on earth than it was before, and to believe that we are being called to make it so. To believe that Christians are being given the ability to bring such new life to the world, to believe that the church of Christ’s followers are able to be a presence of real healing in this suffering world - well, forgive me, but to me it sounds preposterous.
Because what we’re talking about here, what seems to be suggested to us, is a wholescale, global renewal of the church that returns it to its roots among the apostles. We’re talking about returning to the embodiment of the body of Christ that was presented to us in Acts: to selling our assets and putting the proceeds into a common pot, to operating soup kitchens for all of the poor who need it, to casting out demons, powers, and principalities - but on a scale much larger than it was two thousand years ago. We’re talking about the re-birth of the Christian church. It’s preposterous.
It’s as preposterous as God proposing to Abraham and Sarah that they should have a biological son at the age of one hundred. Imagine - one-hundred year-old Sarah, with whom it has ceased to be “after the manner of woman,” not only conceiving, but carrying a child to term, surviving the terrifying danger of child-birth, and breast-feeding this child for three years or so. She, and Abraham, were old and withered and probably expecting to die sooner than anything, and here they were, being called and given the power to bring forth new life into the world. And not just any new life, but one single son who would give Abraham his “multitude of nations” and from whom nations and rulers would come, and through whom, as we heard last week, “all the nations of the earth would be blessed.” Is it any wonder Sarah laughed? Is it any wonder she expressed some doubt as to the likeliness of this happening?
The two situations, ours and Abraham and Sarah’s, are actually not that dissimilar. Our presence in the world is minimal, just as Abraham and Sarah’s was in the land of Canaan. The idea that one as-yet-unborn boy should bring about multitudes is as unlikely as the idea that we, so small in number, should have a hand in bringing the kingdom of heaven to this secular world. We are, to a certain extent, foreigners in an alien land, us faithful in this country. Nominal Christians notwithstanding, less than 30% of Americans are regular church-goers, and that number continues to decline. (http://www.religioustolerance.org/rel_rate.htm) It is preposterous to think that so much should come from so little.
The Christian Church, too, could be considered old and withered. There was a time when the Church did wonderful things, and produced many good fruits, but that came to an end very quickly and we could rightfully be called barren. We have had terrible relations with the Jews, trying to wipe them out on more than one occasion. We have proclaimed the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near through forced or coerced conversions - not actually “good news” for anybody. We have attacked heathens and pagans and imposed our “Gospel” on them for their own good. We have treated our own Christian brothers and sisters appallingly when it comes to issues of justice. Even today, we as the Church in America avert our eyes and only whisper very quiet protests when it comes to issues of universal health care, social infrastructures for the poor and needy, when it comes to challenging the powers and principalities of the global systems that enslave and devastate at least two-thirds of the world’s population.
So, given that the extremity of our situations makes God’s propositions so outlandish, is it any wonder that we react to God’s promises the same way Sarah and Abraham did? To laugh, or worse than that, to ignore God’s promises altogether? Given the history of the Christian church, given the Church’s current passivity and its entanglement in the status quo, it is not surprising that when we hear the call to proclaim the good news, to heal the sick and bring new life, we instead try to rationalize away the power to change the world, or underestimate the effect that the Church can have, or pretend that Jesus is not, in fact, calling us to do the preposterous things he asked his apostles to do. We go merrily along our way, laughing at those who do believe, at best calling them naive, at worst calling them dangerously idealistic.
And yet, God makes these promises all the same. And, no less than that, keeps them. Sarah may have laughed at the idea of bringing a newborn son into the world at her age, but that didn’t stop God from making it happen. Isaac was born, and did flourish, and fathered Jacob and Esau, who fathered over twelve sons including Joseph who was Pharoah’s right-hand man. And these twelve sons became the twelve tribes of Israel, from whom David and Solomon came. The people of Israel established the standards of justice to which we still subscribe: you shall not murder, or steal, or commit adultery or incest, or leave the widows and orphans to starve - standards that have certainly been a blessing to the nations. From these people, from Abraham and Sarah, has come the Christian Saviour, and since him, doctors and scientists like Einstein, Neils Bohr, Jonas Salk, musicians and artists like Mendelssohn, Chagall, Modigliani, great thinkers like Spinoza and Derrida, people who have made the world a better place and have indeed brought the kingdom of heaven closer. Despite circumstances that would normally have made such things impossible, God fulfilled God’s preposterous promises to Sarah and Abraham and used them to bless the world.
And so, despite our impossible circumstance, despite our minority status and our passive faith, despite our deplorable history and our dim-looking future, we can count on God fulfilling those other preposterous promises - that we would be empowered to go out and proclaim the good news, to bring the kingdom of heaven closer, to heal the sick, and bring new life, and cast out demons. We can believe that God will use us to rebirth the Church on earth, in order to make the world a better place and to be a blessing to it. That’s not to say that it won’t be hard - I’m sure Sarah’s pregnancy and labour was no walk in the park. And that’s not to say that there won’t be setbacks along the way - the Jewish people have certainly suffered, and continue to suffer, as they carry out their work as a light to the nations. God does not promise an easy path, but God does promise to bless the world, and invites you to be a part of that, to take part in this new birth. So, doubt all you want, laugh like Sarah did, but the kingdom of heaven is coming ever more near, and God is using you to make the preposterous come to pass. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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