The Rev. Robert P. Travis
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost Sermon – 8 and 10:30am Eucharist Services, Church of the Ascension, Knoxville TN July 7th, 2013
Scripture Text: 2 Kings 5:1-14, Psalm 30, Galatians 6:1-16; Luke 10:1-11
Sermon Text:
Our mission team has returned from Bolivia.
And our mission there is becoming robust
as Fr. Brett has lead five mission teams there.
Our local mission work through Family Promise
continues to offer hospitality, housing and help
to those who struggle right here,
and we just finished hosting families this last week.
And our work with Fish Hospitality Pantries
continues to grow, which you'll hear about next week.
Certainly Ascension has come a long way,
and is sharing in the joy that we enjoy,
and we are being sent out to many places,
where the Lord desires to go.
As I read the psalm we recited this morning,
I was moved by how Ascension as a community
can hear it's voice in the words of the psalmist.
Not too many years ago, a priest at Ascension
was heard telling people they might as well leave,
that Ascension was dying.
But today that couldn't be further from the truth.
The psalm says:
“you brought (us) up, O Lord from the dead;
you restored (our) life as (we) were going down to the grave.”
There was a time of weeping,
but now it seems that we have been living
in the joy that comes in the morning.
So now that we are experiencing that joy,
the natural thing is to share it,
and we have been sharing it,
and growing,
because who does not want to participate in joy?
We have been going about finding the places,
and the people to whom we're being sent,
by the guidance of the Holy Spirit,
and the connections that God has already placed in our lives.
Is it an accident that we have been going to Bolivia,
or that Fr. Brett was called here with Carla,
who is from Bolivia?
Certainly not.
I believe that was the Holy Spirit,
putting in our midst people whose call was clear.
Similarly, when we were coming to the end of our
last Alpha Course here in Bearden,
my wife started working at The Next Door.
I think I've mentioned it before,
but in case you missed it,
The Next Door is a Christian ministry,
helping women who are coming out of incarceration,
and struggle with drug or alcohol addiction.
So Jackie commented to me one night,
You know, the women at The Next Door
might appreciate an Alpha Course,
many of them have no idea,
who Jesus really is.
So I went to talk to the staff, to give them some materials,
telling them and fully expecting
that they would take a few months to consider
the course and then get back to me.
But in just hearing about it, they were excited,
as if the Spirit moved them,
and they asked us when we could start.
Now I did not have a plan for adding an Alpha Course,
at that time, while we were just finishing another one
but God certainly seemed to have
a plan for those particular women to be reached,
in this way.
And let me tell you the exciting result.
A few weeks ago we did our talks on the Holy Spirit,
and during our Friday night session,
the women were filled with the Holy Spirit,
many for the first time.
There were twelve women on the course at that time,
and I found out on Monday,
that four of them had gone to the church of one of their grandmothers that Sunday,
and they got baptized!
They were beaming the following week,
and so excited to tell us about it,
and saying “will this joy ever stop?”
And let me tell you one particular story,
from that group.
One of the women who was baptized,
she told my wife later,
That she received the Holy Spirit on the 21st,
and the 22nd was the anniversary of the date,
that she and her boyfriend had been arrested,
just one year before,
and on the 23rd she was baptized,
at her grandmother's church.
Her new life has really begun.
God had a plan to reach those particular women,
and not to wait until we were ready with our own plans,
to start something new.
Was it an accident that God placed my wife,
in a new job at that house, right when our church,
had such experience with Alpha?
I don't think so, I think it was part of God's plan,
these are places that “he himself intended to go.”
that we were just starting to see.
Look at the Gospel from Luke.
Jesus appoints and sends out seventy of his disciples.
Luke writes,
“he sent them on ahead of him, in pairs,
to every town and place where he himself intended to go.”
And Jesus said to them,
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;
therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
That has been our experience at The Next Door,
and in Bolivia,
and here in Knoxville.
God is doing amazing things,
and there is a great harvest of people to bring to Christ.
But the laborers are few.
So even when we go and participate in what God is doing,
we pray for more laborers to be sent into the harvest.
You know where I've heard this saying repeated the most?
By Bishops I have met from Africa.
Like Bishop Todd McGregor,
who we saw again a couple of months ago.
I learned from many people around the world,
when I went to the New Wineskins for Global Mission
Conference in our own backyard,
in North Carolina.
Don't tell the North Carolinians that I called it
our backyard.
But it seemed that way, that so close to here,
all these missionaries, Bishops, priests,
lay people from all around the world,
gathered for their triennial conference just a few months ago.
And I learned this startling figure.
1 Christian Workers for every 7 Christian people
in the evangelized world.
versus 1 Christian Workers for thousands of Christian people in the parts of the world being evangelized now.
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”
When I heard that, it struck me that we have the ability,
to send more people out into the harvest.
While Christians around the world are praying
“Lord we need more laborers
to go out into your harvest here.”
We have an abundance of Christian ministries and churches right here.
What if God is calling us to send more people out,
to minister in his name in places
where the harvest is plentiful,
but the laborers are few?
So just as much as we see God's hand in
Fr. Brett and Carla coming here,
and in Jackie started working at The Next Door.
We also see God's hand in how
we have been developing a relationship
with Bishop Todd McGregor,
now the Bishop of one of the newest
and fastest growing Dioceses
in the Anglican Communion,
the diocese of Toliara in Madagascar.
I got to go to one of his workshops in North Carolina,
and learn about his evangelistic method,
and hear other bishops and missionaries question him.
I found this this man is special.
He is doing something amazing,
in a place that the rest of the world has forgotten.
And it is clearly becoming a place in which God,
is reaching new people with the hope of Christ.
So at Fr. Howard's suggestion,
I asked him if he would like us at Ascension
to develop a relationship with a church in his diocese,
as a way to learn from each other,
and help each other with our respective gifts.
He said he would love that,
and when I asked him which church he had in mind,
he paused for a moment and then said,
Our Mother church in Ankilifaly.
He said he would like me to bring another person with me,
and come for a short time, to get to know people,
and to learn what our relationships might bring to each other.
And in his asking that I bring another,
I heard echos of our Lord sending out his seventy
disciples in pairs.
We prayed about it, and I asked a member of our vestry,
and longtime member of Ascension,
Mark Sanders, to join me on this preliminary mission.
I was delighted that Mark agreed,
even when he knows that it will be a big step outside his comfort zone to go with Ascension to Madagascar.
We will go after Easter in 2014.
And we hope to make this a shared experience even while
it is happening.
I hope that through our technology here,
we can connect with Ascension during the Sunday School
hour while we're there,
and bring you real-time, into the community of Ankilifaly.
This is a deepening of a relationship that started
between Bishop Todd, and Father Howard,
and will begin between Church of The Ascension
and the mother church in Ankilifaly.
I am certain that Mark and I will learn a great deal,
with Ascension behind us on this mission,
but I'm most excited about what you at Ascension
will gain by becoming
more deeply involved in global mission.
When Elisha told Naaman the Syrian to wash in the Jordan and be healed,
he at first balked and said “are not the rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel,”
But God was calling him into this specific place,
to find the healing he sought.
Likewise, some might say
Are not the mountains of East Tennessee more beautiful than the desert of Southern Madagascar?
Why should we get involved with spreading Jesus Gospel halfway around the world, when there's plenty to do here?
To that I would say, we're looking for the connections
that the Holy Spirit has given us,
and trying to follow him,
into the place where he himself intends to go.
So let us listen to Paul's letter to the Galatians today,
“let us not grow weary in doing what is right,
for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up.
So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all and especially for those of the family of faith.”
Here is an opportunity to work for the good of the family of faith, that is growing by leaps and bounds
in Madagascar.
Let's take that opportunity together,
and see what we reap at harvest-time!
Amen