Luke 10:1, 7-11; 2 Kings 5: 9-11

To Follow Jesus, or to Go Before Him?

Friends this week has been a stressful one. On my very first week trying to lead a church without mentorship, and while still processing all the feelings and thoughts, I found myself having to plan my first memorial service.

I have been doing full-time church work for 18 months now and Pastor Aart has made us residents do a lot on our own, so I shouldn’t be freaking out about any of the responsibilities assigned to me, and I’m not! This church has been -and I’m sure will continue to be- very supportive. But you know that feeling of being shielded and sheltered and then losing that shield? It’s a bit scary at first.

But I don’t know how the Holy Spirit does it every time but I found myself reading in today’s Scripture selection stories of groups of disciples being entrusted and sent by their teacher Jesus before and without him to the places he intended to go, to do things he alone was doing among them in the past.

I remember when I was a teenager my grandma used to send me to the grocery store several times a week. My parents occasionally did too. The grocer knew who sent me on that specific day just by looking at the food I would be buying. And whenever he reckoned that I was getting something for my dad, he would be on his toes making sure to give me the best quality so he wouldn’t have to deal with my father later. He didn’t worry much about my grandma.

Though I am still the same person, sometimes shopping for my parents on other times for my grandma, I got treated differently in each case, because to the man in the shop I am a representative of whoever had sent me on that day, I am but a messenger.

Likewise in Luke 10, whenever the disciples were commissioned to go somewhere they were being sent as messengers, not representing themselves but their sender –Jesus-.

But there is a truth we cannot escape: messengers, though they represent their senders, are also expected to lead their own way. There is a certain responsibility that comes with the role. I know because at many times, not being given enough details I had to choose what type of squash to take home and my grandma had to live with it.

The disciples, being sent on their way were supposed to be messenger but were also expected to be leaders. Just before the commissioning of the 70, two persons had asked to follow Jesus and Jesus had turned their requests down. At that time of Jesus’s almost end of ministry, he didn’t seem interested at in making any more followers, but in creating leaders and initiators from among those followers, who would be willing to go before and on behalf of him.

So here they are, called to ministry, barely trained, happily serving under Jesus’s supervision in the past, but now they are sent out without him, Ahead of him, before his face. Allow me to speak on their behalf, this sounds frightening. You want us to do what? How about you come with us? Or maybe go before us and let us follow you.

Friends, it is frightening to be in a position to lead when chances for failure are as probable as those of success. We live in a world where we’re expected to hold down a very rewarding and successful job, raise a well-adjusted family, have a full and fascinating social life, go on fabulous holidays, save the world, have the health of a top athlete, be a church of hundreds, have so many young people in our pews… and as a church in transition we might fall for those expectations and pressures.

But this morning I say this to you, but I tell myself first: we’re not supposed to have it together all the time, but here is what we can do: we can be faithful messengers leaning on the power of our sender, and bold leaders daring to go forward and open new doors, though behind those doors lays the unknown.

In one of the most famous TED talks in the US, Brene Brown says: “you either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.” By inviting the disciples to go independently of him, Jesus is not challenging them to have all together all the time, instead he is inviting them to own their story. Today we are also invited to walk inside our story and to have the courage to show up even when we have no control over the outcome. We are invited to venture out and experiment, and see what new things may result. Of course, we might stumble at times and make unsure steps at others, but we have the confidence that as a congregation we made it thus far not through our own but through God’s power.

May we obey God’s commission to go forth, may we dare to lead with trust, may we not lose heart, and may God be with us. Amen.