discriminate/indiscriminate
An ordination sermon for Per and Scott on the Eve of Reformation Sunday from Matthew 9.35-38
Matthew 9.35 And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
First, a call to be discriminate about taking any role that doesn’t have anything to do with the basic actions of a farmer or concerning the harvest: sowing, cultivating, reaping.
The vocation of pastor intersects with many disciplines:
therapeutic & health
psychology & psychiatry
leadership & management
sociology & community organizing
activism & justice work
publicity, communications, & sales
political & civil engagement
immunology & statistics
copy machine & livestream technician
musician & artist
economics & accounting
fundraising & non-profit
real estate, law, & construction manager
Let’s be honest, your pastor-calling will intersect with these other vocations. You might even put on painter’s whites or pick up a protest sign or lay on the ground trying to get that stuck piece of cardstock from the jammed printer. But don’t get too used to it—putting on those other uniforms, that is. It is not that they aren’t important or that they are beneath you. Jesus says there is nothing beneath you! Most people are looking for a high calling, but you’ve got a low one—service. And, in that low calling, you will find friends in low places. Your calling is down in the dirt—the humble soil—hummus. That is where the seed goes, and the manure and the weed management and the harvest. Sowing, cultivating, reaping.
Why will the other uniforms be so alluring? Painters have immediate pleasure in seeing what they have done. And, they can go home at night tired, but done. Your work will make you tired, and it will always feel undone. And most days you won’t see where you’ve been or what you can show for yourself. Other vocations can bring their quantifiable areas of expertise and actually help organizations or families or the sick. They can say, “I know something.” “I have a commodity to offer.” “I can get something done.” Eugene Peterson wasn’t much of a joker, but he passed this one on:
A retiring pastor reflects on his years of ministry with his congregation: “My first baptism, the boy grew up and became an atheist. My first confirmand, the girl backslid and left the faith. My first marriage ended up in divorce. But good news: My first funeral, the man stayed in the ground where I put him.” Eugene Peterson, Letters to a Young Pastor, 30.
Peterson also talks about this pain of being a pastor
“It amazes me still how much of the time I simply don’t know what I am doing, don’t know what to say, don’t know what the next move is. The temptation in that state of being is to become competent at something or other-master something or someone. Unfortunately, there are many opportunities, many “ways of escape” in which we can exercise and develop areas of administrative or leadership or scholarly or programmatic competencies in the church.” Peterson, 14.
No wonder shedding this white robe for some other uniform is alluring. Most pastors I know end up finding some adjacent niche. A place they feel more in control—more mastery. It feels better to have pills to prescribe or advise to give or some trackable way to prove our usefulness. But, I am pleading with you: Don’t find an adjacent niche. Because we need what you are called to bring: the seed of the gospel of Jesus Christ—received in word and sacrament. In the Name of Jesus is Henri Nouwen’s plea to Christian ministers:
“The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God's love. The great message that we have to carry, as ministers of God's Word and followers of Jesus, is that God loves us not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love and has chosen us to proclaim that love as the true source of all human life.”
Everyone has to put on a different uniform every once in a while…to look for “that smell” or when the statements need to be sent out, or when live-streaming through an iPad in your living room is the only way to get the word of Christ out. But, when the live-streaming becomes the point, instead of pointing to the point, and the point is Jesus Christ—and him crucified to justify the ungodly, well then it must be set down. Or better, delivered to someone else. Because live-streaming is important, and someone needs to help get the word out, and we need good financial reporting, and we need compassionate therapists, and leadership gurus—but that is not you. You are pastors. Sowing, cultivating, and reaping. Be discriminate about taking any role that doesn’t have anything to do with the basic actions of a farmer or concerning the harvest: sowing, cultivating, reaping.
Finally, be indiscriminate about your use of the seed. Put the “broad” in broadcasting the seed. It is not your seed, and will not do any good sitting in your silo or in your satchel. It is not your’s to ask if the seed has potential, or if the soil is good enough. What the chances are of successful germination and fruition.
Listen to me. Those questions are God’s business, and frankly, they are his problem. Your’s is to sow! Prodigal sowing. Jesus’ parable of the soils must mean that he always takes his chances by indiscriminately sowing on rocky, weedy, bird-predator land. Just throw it. There is a witness in the wastefulness. When you throw seed even where it doesn’t seem very likely to produce, you are agreeing with God that there is plenty of seed, and there is no need to be stingy with it. Baptize that child from a family that doesn’t show many signs of being good soil. Tell that wandering drunk about the Lamb of God who takes away all the sin of the world, including his. Meet the adulterer down at the altar, and tell her what Jesus tells her, “Neither do I condemn you—go and sin no more.” Find your way to the youth room where the too-cool and those crushed by the expectations of their parents and school and despair about their future are thirsty for the relief of the gospel that says, “I love you dear one, not the idealized version or yourself or the future improved version—but you—actual you.” Tell the harried, end-of-her-rope mom the angelic message to Jesus’ own mom, “With you it is impossible, but with God, nothing will be impossible.” When we are stingy with the seed, it makes the world think that there must be a shortage, so holy people have to hoard it. When we are broad in casting, we bear witness to the truth. There is plenty for you and for me with plenty left over. That is the gospel.
Finally a word about the harvest. Surveys say that church attendance is in decline, and that a secular age has descended upon us. That might be true, and yet it doesn’t change a thing about the actions of harvest. Harvests seem magical, but they are not. The only way to have a harvest is to sow. If it isn’t harvest time, and maybe it isn’t. Then let’s look at the crowd of humanity—harassed and helpless, and ask for the Good Shepherd’s gut-wrenched-compassion. He longs for them to have shepherds. And today he will make two more.
So may the peace of God that passes all understand, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
