Two weeks ago on Wednesday evening, one of my colleagues, The Rev. Chester Topple (Pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church here in Santa Fe) and I were sitting in the cavernous chapel at Glorieta Conference Centre.  We were in the middle of the annual gathering of the combined Northwest Texas Conference and the New Mexico Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Having myself just attended the annual Assembly of our Rocky Mountain Synod, I can assure you that this gathering was more than twice the size of the meeting I had been to in Denver on behalf of our church.  Chester and I were sitting about two-thirds of the way back in the pews, and because we were confused about the time the service began, we had a full hour to watch and observe and talk and meet some of the clergy and laypeople we knew from the Methodist community.

I turned to Chester and said, “Well, these people are certainly not Lutherans.”

“You can tell that?” he asked.

“Yes.  They don’t look like Lutherans and they don’t sound like Lutherans … we’re a bit quieter.  Besides if this were a Synod Assembly, people would be sneaking cups of coffee into the church.”

There were other differences of course that we noticed and made comment about comparing what we saw and heard to our own traditions, but worship is worship and while style and taste may vary and certainly does, the basic structure of worship on the tree of faith is the same: music, hymns, prayers, readings, and so on.

This service, and the reason Chester and I were in attendance, was however an Ordination Service.  One of our friends, Stephanie Harmon from St. John’s here in town (now serving a congregation in Roswell) was being Ordained a full pastor of the church, along with eleven other men and women; and she had invited us to the event.

It gave us reason in the time before the liturgy took off, a chance to go over our own Ordination Vows, talk about the whole experience we had in our lives and in our ministry … how at the time some of the promises we made were strange to us; I remember “Do you promise to be instant in prayer?”  And I thought to myself, Instant?! I wonder what that really means.  Do I just interrupt meetings with a well-intentioned Intercession before God … hmmm.  And because the Bishops were waiting for our answer, I and twelve others with whom I was ordained on May 21, 1972 said, “Yes, by the help of God.”

And then there was the matter of being asked to “inculcate piety among the people you will serve …”  Inculcate … now there is a word one does not meet on the Plaza every day … “Inculcate: to implant by repeated statement or admonition; teach persistently and earnestly” … but I did not have my Dictionary in hand when I was standing with my comrades at the Altar that day … I did have a moderate understanding of the word, but when combined with piety? … “Sure, Yes by the help of God.”

I felt a bit like those disciples must have felt in the story told by the Gospel Writer Matthew in the portion we read this morning.  It was, one might say for the moment, their Ordination Service … “Go.  Tell everyone that the reign of heaven has come near to them; cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.  OK?  Got it Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James, Thaddeus, Simon, Judas? … you understand?” 

I can see the line of Apostles looking at each other and then nodding, “Sure, Yes by the help of God” … not really certain what it all meant, just responding to the call to Go into the world.

In Glorieta that night, when each candidate for ordination came and knelt before the Bishops, family and friends of that candidate in the congregation were asked to stand where they were in solidarity and prayer with the one being ordained.  Stephanie took her turn and Chester and I proudly stood with the others scattered through the crowd.  As she made her promises, we silently renewed our own vows.  It was joyful and sobering at the same time, certainly for her, curiously for us.

She took her place among her colleagues, with us, and all those who had gone before her … a great line stretching back into history of those who have heard the summons to ministry and responded with promises.

The next best part of the service was the preacher, one Tyrone Gordon, Senior Pastor of St. Luke Community United Methodist Church in Dallas, Texas.  Vibrant, stirring, encouraging, sometimes roaring … he was the conference preacher of the gathering in Glorieta.  And that night he preached the Ordination Sermon, and not just to the new pastors, but to everyone.  He asked one question, “What kind of church do we want to be, are we called to be?  Are we a come to church or are we a go to church?”

And he went on to say that most of us like to be a come to church.  I’ll translate that into Lutheran:  “Come to our church.  We are a warm community, we are friendly, we’re open, we have good liturgy, beautiful music, tasty wine and bread, interesting people, deep faith, we serve real coffee, have terrific snacks, and love each other a lot.”

Nothing wrong with that.  It’s what defines us, it’s who we are.

But … it’s only part of who we are, it’s the part where we usually stop as we are encouraging people to join us.  And here Pastor Gordon insisted that yes, we Christians are mostly a come to church … but, what we are called to be, what Jesus is calling us to be – at least in the four Gospels we have in our Christian Scriptures – is a go to church.  “Go … into all the world” is the mandate, or in this morning’s reading, “Go into the world, tell everyone you see that the reign of heaven has come near, cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.”

You see the difference.  Coming into is only preparation for going out.  The church lives not in congregations, but in the world.  Our real life is out there, among the people, bringing the reign of God near to them, curing, raising, cleansing and casting out.  It’s what we get to do … emphasis on the verb, the doing, the action, the making the world whole again.  Or, if you have forgotten the Simple Gospel, “Love God, love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

That’s the difference.  Can you see it?  We all get to do it, it’s in the baptismal water which was poured over our heads or into which we were submerged … we see it’s reminder each time we pass the font and maybe dare to dip a finger or two into the sacred water and by the cross remind ourselves of our calling.

It’s what we are saying to Francisco Rene Jaramillo this morning at his baptism … you are a child of God, loved forever by God, you have a place in the reign of heaven come near, you will never be forgotten by the community we call the church, it will be forever your home away from home, it is your community, it is where you will be loved and where you will love … and by the way, that’s only the beginning … what you are called to do with the rest of us is: “Go into the world, tell everyone you see that the reign of heaven has come near, cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.”

It’s what we say to each other in Jesus’ name.  Join us, come and drink the wine and eat the bread, be washed in the waters of baptism, become a part of the family … the very body of Christ, pray for yourselves and for one another and for the world, share the peace, receive the blessing and then … listen to what Jesus demands of us and all creation asks of us …

Go into the world!  Do not stay inside the church, go outside among the people.

Cure the sick.  Do not ignore the poisons that harm us.  Proclaim the power of God to heal us.

Raise the dead.  Do not leave us in our tombs.  Proclaim the power of God to raise us up.

Cleanse the lepers.  Do not abandon the outcast in their misery.  Proclaim the power of God to restore us to the community.

Cast out demons.  Do not accept the demonic powers of evil.  Proclaim the power of God to cast them out.

Don’t be afraid of the task.  You join the apostolic line of faithful followers of Jesus who remained not in the safety of the community, but went out into the world making community happen.

+ Deo Gratia
The Rev. Benjamin Larzelere III