Taking Responsibility

Pentecost 2 – 2020

Matthew 9:35-10:8 

Marian Free

In the name of God who calls, equips and sends us into the world. Amen.

A number of you will have received and returned the Parish Survey – thank you. The Wardens wanted to get a sense of your expectations as we prepare to re-open the church for public worship. If you have completed the survey you will know that most of the questions are quite straightforward – where you are most comfortable worshipping, how you have found the isolation, what are you most looking forward to when you return and how you see St Augustine’s (what does it mean to you). I imagine that no one had difficulty with any of these questions and, from the answers we have received so far, it is clear that a majority of people have been reasonably happy with what we have been doing in the past and are keen to resume face-to-face worship in much the same way as it was before.

After answering the more general questions you might have been caught by surprise (as I confess, I was) when it came to the last statement on the survey: My vision for my spiritual future looks like:…. Most of the other questions were somewhat general and impersonal. They allowed us to place responsibility for the life of the Parish elsewhere: on the Parish Council or on the ministry team. But, as I read it, this last statement asked us to take responsibility for ourselves and for our own spiritual journey. “My vision for my spiritual journey.  The statement challenged us to reflect on our own spiritual health, to consider whether or not it will look any different in the future and, if we think it will look different, what we are going to have to do to make that future a reality. 

It is a quite confronting and even demanding statement, especially for traditional Anglicans who are not used to articulating their inner experiences or sharing their spiritual practices with others. It is a reminder too, that in the end it is we as individuals (not the Parish as a whole) who will have to answer to God for the way in which we have responded or not to the presence of God within us. As members of this Parish we may have to justify how we have or have not built the Kingdom of God in this place, but how we do that will depend in part on how we have responded to God’s call in us.

In the end how we move forward as a community depends not on the Ministry Team or the Parish Council, but on each one of us. Together we make up the congregation of St Augustine’s or of the Parishes of which we are a part. Our individual spiritual health contributes to the health of the congregation as a whole. Our commitment to grow in our faith and to develop good spiritual practices will in turn ensure the health of our Parish. The depth of our relationship with God and with each other will be a sign of hope in the wider community which will in turn draw others to faith.

Taking responsibility is at the heart of today’s gospel. Jesus sends the disciples out to do the very things that he has been doing: “preaching the good news, curing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing the lepers and casting out demons”. Jesus “sends them”. He doesn’t go with them to ensure that they get it right. He doesn’t give them explicit instructions as to what to do or what to say. In fact, he sends them out with very little – except their faith in him and his confidence in them. Jesus trusts his relationship with them and theirs with him. His mission and its future depends absolutely on his ability to trust the disciples to take responsibility for the healing, life-giving good news that he himself proclaimed. 

So, Jesus sends them out – on their own. He doesn’t go with the disciples and hold their hands. He doesn’t hand them a script and expect them to follow it word-for-word. He doesn’t give them a check list that they have to tick off. He doesn’t look over their shoulders to ensure that they are getting it right. Jesus simply sends them out believing that they are up to the task while he himself gets on with his own teaching and proclaiming. 

We know that the disciples were a mixed collection of foolish, ambitious, cautious (even cowardly) men yet Jesus has complete confidence that they are up to the task and the disciples, despite their human frailty, trusted Jesus (or the Holy Spirit that Jesus bestowed on them) to empower and lead them to complete the mission they had been given. 

So, it is with us. Jesus gives us the responsibility to trust that the Holy Spirit that each of us received at our baptism will lead, inspire, direct and encourage us to complete our mission – in our life as a community and in our individual spiritual lives. Jesus will not give us a detailed list of instructions or a specific road map of the way ahead. He won’t continually check up on us but will treat us as adults as people who have their own agency and their own free will to respond to his call on our lives and to carry out the mission to which he has assigned them.

It is somewhat unnerving I admit. The future is not clearly spelt out for us, it is not written down step by step. It will simply unfold as we continue to place our trust in Jesus and in Jesus’ trust in us. 

If you found the last statement in our survey confronting or challenging that is not necessarily surprising. Our spiritual future is something of an open book – one that is dependent in part on God’s plan for our lives, but one that will not come to fruition unless we continue to place our trust in God and to place our lives entirely in God’s hands.