Oh, the Places You WILL Go!

Or Listen Here after reading the scripture.
Mt. 10:16-23

Mt 28:16-20

The Great Commission

¹⁶ Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. ¹⁷ And when they saw him they worshiped him, and doubted. ¹⁸ And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Therefore, as you go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

                Our own Chuck Sparks this week returned from a mission trip and related a quote from his brother… “The people of the Way need to GO away sometimes.”    And indeed we do.  This morning, we read the words of the Great Commission… My seminary professor and New Testament scholar, Francis Taylor-Gench helped us translate this passage one day.  The grammar rules are tricky, but most Bibles translate this badly in her opinion, and I agree.  They often translate the verb GO as the command.  However, GO is the assumption.  Make disciples and baptize are the commands.  It’s best translated as I read it… Therefore, AS YOU GO, make disciples of all nations.  There is no IF.  It’s a WHEN.  It’s a foregone conclusion.  And so is the title of this book by Dr. Seuss.  The title is not, “Oh, the Places You Could Go,”  “Oh, the Places You Should Go,” or “All, the Things that Could Happen to You.”  The title is, “Oh, the Places You WILL Go.”

                Seuss is sending this “kid,” as he calls ‘im into the world… just as Christ sent the disciples, and sends us.  Jesus turns to his disciples and he does not say, “build a church here, advertise, promote, start amazing outreach and Christian education, a great youth program and be super friendly and hospitable to everyone who walks in the door.”  Not that those are bad things, and I’ve been asked to tell you not to cancel your pledge this year.  But Jesus doesn’t indicate that some of them have “gifts for evangelism” or “talents for reaching the unloved and forgotten.”  He says to ALL of them, “Therefore, AS YOU GO…”

                And folks, this is a great challenge for us.  It means that we can’t just be Christians here in these walls or even just here in Denver.  Who here has sung “This Little Light of Mine?”  Raise your hand.  And what do we do with this light?  Do we hide it under a bushel?  NO!  We put it on a stand.  But having that light, shining that light, being that light is more than just setting a fine example.  It requires a kind of proactive approach.  It requires us to ask God for opportunities, to seek needs, to be wise enough to spot them and courageous enough to act.  Oh the places, you’ll go.

                If you’re the person at work or in your school who is kind to everyone you meet and a good spirit, always doing what is right, you’re someone deserving of much respect.  Truly.  But Jesus came to challenge us to more.  At Highlands Camp this summer, the kids are learning about parables.  In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells parables of lost sheep, lost coins and the lost prodigal son.  He tells us that his mission here on earth is to seek and save the lost.  This is our mission.  In our places of work, in our schools, in our homes, our communities and churches, we are called to look for those in need, to seek and save the lost.

                Sometimes I challenge the children or youth with who I work to spend all day or all week looking for someone in their life who is lost, lonely or excluded.  This is the person who needs them to reach out to them.  Maybe they are sitting next to you right now.  Who is that person for you?  Who is the person who makes your life most difficult?  Is that the person you pray for the most?  Should it be?  These are the lost.  These are the ones in need.  We are called to find and welcome those in our midst.  And we are called to go and be in the midst of those in need.

                Oh, the Places We’ll Go!  For we are called into this world… into the midst of all need.  As I began reading this book again, something new hit me.  Seuss illustrates the “wide open air” with the little kid wandering out down streets that crisscross bare open patches of grass and earth.  This is exactly what it looked like in Joplin, Missouri as we drove through the neighborhoods demolished by the tornado, streets that crisscrossed bare patches of yards where houses once stood.

                And Seuss tells us we’ll come to places where the streets are not marked, that “some windows are lighted, but mostly they’re darked.”  In Joplin, once the debris was cleared, they had to spray paint the names of streets on the pavement because life-long residents could not tell where they were in town.  Landmarks had been erased.  So many homes still standing were abandoned, and “darked.”  He follows this with the questions of self-doubt… do you go in, stay out, how do you approach such a problem, how do you help?  So, we “mind-maker-uppers” end up… in the waiting place.

                So the question we must face is… Is our church a Waiting Place?  Is our church, as indicated by the banner above our children’s education hallway downstairs… A Church on the Move?  Or is our church a place where we wait for needs to manifest, for committees to report the needs out there so that we can react, a place where overwhelming need paralyzes us into inaction?  What does Seuss say?  And I quote, “NO! That’s not for you!”  You see, we have places to go.

                And the wisdom we learn from Seuss is no different than the many warnings of scripture we get from Jesus.  It’s not all boom bands.  “Behold, I send you as sheep amidst the wolves!”  Splendid.  We’ll meet up with things that “scare you right out of your pants.”  Things “down the road between hither and yon that will scare you so much you won’t want to go on.”  And brothers and sisters, there is no shortage of such scary things in this world.  The road between Hither and Yon is as close as Shoreline Boulevard.  Our community was once again rocked by violence, something so scary that no one could be blamed for not wanting to go on.

                Oh, the places you’ll go.  The wolves that lurk, the Hakken-Kraks of Denver and Aurora and all the places we call home where our “enemies prowl,” they scare us out of our pants.  And neither “brains in our head and feet in our shoes,” nor belief in the God who seeks and saves us, is a guarantee that we won’t have to face these scary people or terrifying and heartbreaking circumstances.   But Jesus never sends the disciples out alone.  He sends them in pairs.  He sends them as a community to “love one another” as he loved us.  And he sends them with the gift of his presence and help and comfort… the Holy Spirit.

                In life and death, we belong to Jesus Christ.  And though we’ll hike far, “we’ll face up to our problems whatever they are.”  Because, as believers, we are promised that we are never alone, that Christ is with us, “even to the end of the age.”  In fact, we’re told in capital letters, “KID, YOU’LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!”  For if we have the faith of a mustard seed, we will say to a mountain, “move,” and it’ll toss itself in the sea.  And it’s no coincidence that Jesus calls us all children of God and that Seuss writes a book for children AND adults and the protagonist is merely called, “Kid.”

                Dr. Seuss doesn’t tell us that Hakken-Kraks aren’t real.  He says we can still go on.  G.K. Chesterson once said that, “Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be defeated.”  We do not read God’s word to learn how hard this world will be to face each day.  We know.  We read scripture and we teach our children God’s Word because God’s promise is that we will never face anything alone.  We are called by God to go into the world in the same breath as the promise that we do not ever walk alone.  And that is good news when the darkest times come, when we face tragedy, when we face evil.  God sends us to be the arms of comfort in mourning.  He sends us to be the voice of reason spoken to anger and hatred.  He sends us as the voice of inclusion and help when people are so anguished that they seek to hurt others.  And he does not send us… alone.

                Oh, the places you’ll go.  Jesus calls us to respond, not just to comfort those who mourn, but to seek those who are in pain before they do desperate things.  I do not know if Jesus had a public policy plan that included laws to prevent bullying and violence or medical care to lepers and the possessed or taxes for the wealthy and the tax collectors to help the poorest and the downtrodden.  I don’t know.  But I do know he exemplified a life of kindness, mercy, generosity, and servanthood, loving all and ignoring none.  And we cannot be content to leave that responsibility to anyone else.  We are called to that life and called now.  We are called to move mountains and told that we can.

                Oh, the places we’ll go.  Anyone who has ever been to the Holy Land has done some sort of “walking in the footsteps of Jesus” tour.  His ministry was a journey.  Early believers were not called Christians right away, but were called followers of “The Way.”  The early founders of the Church were not called ministers, priests, rulers or Jedis – much to my disappointment.  They were called Apostles, a word that comes from the Greek for one who is sent.  Jesus begins his ministry after his baptism being driven into the desert, calls his disciples to leave their lives, and sends them out in the great commission.  We are not students of Rabbi Jesus, studiers of the Prophet of Nazareth or students of the school of the Nazarene.  We are followers of Christ.  And the places he calls us to, the places he sends us, those are the places we will go.

                The places we’ll go may be around the world to Haiti or Russia, across the country Joplin or Galveston, across town to New Genesis or across the room to the person sitting alone.  The places we’ll go may be hospitals or shelters, schools or prisons, to homes or to the homeless.  They may be in these walls, but they will probably be to the person you didn’t notice until God tugged on your sleeve or on your heart and dragged you outside your comfort zone and into someone else’s pain, loneliness or problems.

I’m going to suggest something radical and maybe uncomfortable.  I’m going to suggestion that there is great opportunity this week and in the weeks to come.  I’m going to challenge you to consider that we need to do more than comfort those affected by the tragedy in Aurora.  I’m going to challenge you to seek and to reach out to the lost.  I think it’s incredibly likely that each of you has someone in your life in deeper pain than you know, or someone with bigger struggles than anyone knows, or someone who just needs to know they aren’t alone, that help is there.  I’m going to tell you that God can and will show you those people, if you ask.  I’m going to tell you that you can help, that you can love, that you can save lives and change this world.  And I’m going to implore you to trust God to move in your life this way.

Oh, the places you’ll go… they might not look or feel like any of the places you’ve been.  They may be scary.  They may be monumentally challenging.  The problems we face are quite scary and large, and to fix them we must listen to the big guy in charge.  He has sent us his Spirit while he is away, so let’s move our mountain and get on our way.  Amen.