July 6, 2025 (Year C)
Every Sunday following the recessional hymn, the Deacon or Assisting Minister stands next to the baptismal font to declare “Go in Peace. Serve the Lord.”
This liturgical action is called the dismissal but it could just as easily be called the commissioning. A dismissal declares that we are free to go. A commissioning means we go out with a purpose. Having feasted on the living word of God and on the Lord’s Supper, we go to share the Bread of Life with a waiting world.
How do we serve the Lord? It depends on our gifts and call. God has called each of us to particular people and places to use our unique gifts. While each call is unique, we share a common call and that is to proclaim to our neighbor that the Kingdom of God has come near.
If you have the gift of generosity, that’s a sign that the Kingdom of God is here even amongst the loud and boisterous kingdoms of greed. If you are someone who has been given the gift of conversation, what you say about God’s love matters greatly. If you have a heart of caring for others, your ministry is a sign of God’s mercy. If you have a passion for God’s justice then you may be sent to be speak the truth in love amidst kingdoms of injustice. The list goes on.
Our gifts differ but our purpose is the same – to serve Christ.
Does that commissioning seem difficult? Are there days when you step into the world as a representative of Christ but aren’t quite sure what it all means?
It is good to look to Jesus and his instructions when he sends out the 70 disciples. His instructions to them are instructive for us.
Basically, Jesus told them to go and to go without a bag or a purse or a pair of sandals. Jesus commissioned them to go with nothing other than the resolute aim of telling the world the wondrous news that the kingdom of God has come near. In other words, you don’t need much. You already have what you need. The Spirit has gifted you and empowered you to serve.
In a conversation I once had with a person who served many years as a missionary, he talked about the joys and challenges of serving God in circumstances and places that were new to him and his family. When I asked him how he learned to do his missionary work, he said, without a moment’s hesitation, “There is no book!” In other words, you learn by doing and trying things and taking risks and depending upon the grace of God.
This ideal sounds great and it while on the face of it, sounds easy, marching orders like this are very difficult for us. We depend upon instruction manuals, “how to” books, and YouTube videos. Can you imagine going on a trip without luggage? Can you imagine taking any kind of journey without your cell phone or the ability to text or email or have your Facebook page at your disposal? No cash, credit card, clothes, and no manual, just the command to say in whatever way you want to say it that the Kingdom of God is among us.
Jesus’ reminds us that the business of serving him isn’t dependent upon our being experts. Nor do we have a bag of tricks. We go in faith and trust.
Over the years, when I’ve asked parishioners to participate in some kind of ministry, they have often told me that they felt unqualified. They were without a theology degree and didn’t know the Bible as well as they should. In response, I have said that while things are very important, they don’t really matter when it comes to the everyday business of following Jesus. We are witnesses to what we know to be true. We need no other certificate than our baptismal certificate. We go with the gifts we’ve been given and we are set free to use our gifts in service to Christ but Jesus’ instructions to “travel lightly” aren’t as easy as they sound. Besides that, Jesus strikes a note of terror when he says that he sends us out like “lambs among the wolves.”
Jesus doesn’t flinch in saying that the good news we have to share will not always be accepted. In fact, there is a great likelihood that it will be rejected.
Here is the gift in Jesus’ charge. We have no control over how people respond. That’s okay. That is more than okay
We live with the culturally conditioned narrative of success. We live with the notion that whatever we do must yield results. We’ve come to trust this narrative because we know that with results we are rewarded like the farmer with the bumper crop, the businessperson who makes a bundle of money, the athlete whose skill wins trophies and so on. These are all good things but they can become ends in themselves especially when the goal is always to do more and do better. Then we live under the illusion that abundant life depends upon how well we succeed, how much stuff we have, or how popular we must be. It looks like abundance but it most surely leads to anxiety.
Every Sunday we hear the charge, the sending, the commissioning to go in peace and serve the Lord but we are not set up success or the reward of winning. We are sent for no other purpose that to engage in the work of loving others just for the sake of loving them. We do not reap the rewards of winning. We are sent to without the burden of getting results.
Once again, the word of Jesus is counter-cultural and often unbeknownst to us, extraordinarily freeing. In this culture we spend a great deal of time warding off failure or rejection. But how freeing is that?
Jesus calls us to bear witness in word and deed that the Kingdom is near AND the results are not in our hands.
So what do we do when we face rejection for doing the loving thing or speak the good news?
Let’s go back to Jesus’ instructions to the 70: “… whenever you welcome a town and they do not welcome you, go out into the streets and say, even the dust that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you.”
Other translations say “shake the dust off your feet.”
Where our witness or our work on behalf of God’s Kingdom meets with resistance or rejection, we simply move on but first we shake the dust in protest.
It is sort of like shaking a fist. We don’t have to be nice Christians who passively accept rejection or ill will. No, we make our objection known. That is part of our witness. This does not give us permission to be violent or to retaliate or seek retribution. These are not marks of God’s kingdom. We do, however, have the freedom to speak our truth and then hand it over to God.
It is not unlike the rabble rousing rabbi who spoke truth to power. Jesus met with rejection and resistance but it did not deter him from speaking the truth of God’s word. It got him in trouble, but he did not shy away from the truthful word and neither should we. We are not doormats but neither are we called to take up the weapons of the powers and principalities of the kingdoms that surround us. We speak our objections in all honesty but then we “let go.” That’s freedom. We are asked to hand it over to God. That’s freedom. We turn away from using violence as a means of redemption. That’s freedom. We leave results in God’s hands. That’s freedom. We resist coercion and manipulation. That’s freedom. We speak the truth in love. That’s freedom.
There’s one more thing in Jesus’ commissioning words that enhance our freedom and our calling as Christians. Jesus sent the seventy out in pairs. They went together to bear witness and to speak the good news of God’s love.
The work of the kingdom is something we do together. Perhaps it is one way God teaches us the value of community and relationship. Jesus even told the seventy to rely upon u pon the hospitality of others.
We can take these very real commitments to relationship with each other and our neighbors for granted, but they are a treasure.
The worship leaders bids us to go in peace and serve Christ by the waters of the font beauties it is there, at the place of baptism where God has set us apart, anointed us for service and commanded us to let the light of the Gospel shine before us.
And we come back again. We come back week after week. We notice the font when we enter this space and we are reminded again, especially when we bring the waters of the font to our bodies in the sign of a cross that by God’s grace we belong to a beloved community and remember that at these very waters we have been saved and proclaimed the beloved ones of God. Amen.