A Balanced Life

Sermon Given July 3, 2022

So I don’t know about you, but I look at this week’s gospel reading and I get a little intimidated. Jesus sends out seventy-two people ahead of him on his journey to Jerusalem, directing them to go in pairs to all the places Jesus will visit on his journey. They are to carry absolutely nothing with them, stay with whomever will welcome them, heal people, and share the gospel. At the end of their journey they say even demons submitted to them. Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve never miraculously healed someone or rebuked a demon. I’ve certainly never traveled to places unknown without some cash in my pocket and a bag of personal items. Their journey, all of what they did feels so big and huge, I feel dwarfed by their accomplishments. I think, “Sure I did this thing, but they did something so much greater.” I get into the realm of call comparison, and that’s a dangerous place to be. Paul reminds us today that each of us should be happy with our own work and not compare ourselves to others. But in an accomplishment obsessed society, how could we not just look at these seventy-two and not feel a little inferior?

I’ve seen these seventy-two used so many times as a way to get us to do more. It drives home in me the message I’ve spent a lot of time in therapy trying to release: You’re not doing enough. You’re not enough. Our doing gets prioritized over our being. We become our actions, and in doing so, we perpetrate harm on ourselves, always striving to do more and be more. In the end, I don’t know if we’re happier or more fully alive. I think maybe we just become people in need of vacations and nap time. We ignore the commandment to practice Sabbath because we’re afraid that if we step aside for a moment we’ll miss out on something important. 

At the Young Adult and Campus Ministry Conference I went to in Minneapolis we had a keynote speaker who was a former campus minister herself. At one point, she had become a poster child for The Episcopal Church, a young Latina adult who was passionate about ministry. She served on three bishops’ staffs and went to Yale Divinity School. People saw a spark in her and continued to ask her to do more things because they saw her enthusiasm. She worked hard for the Church, and then she had a moment where she recognized her need for rest, for stepping back, for doing something else. Now, she doesn’t do anything for the Church. She got out of the machine that was pushing her towards doing more, making her faith known through her accomplishments. Instead she moved back to her home city, started her own thing, and released herself from the rigors and demands. Her favorite form of prayer now is picking out her clothes in the morning. It helps put her in touch with her emotions and how she wants to be seen in the world. She enjoys just being, being present with God without all the demands of everything else. She talked to us about the dangers of the doing machine, the mechanisms that push you towards more and more until you are wiped out physically, emotionally, and spiritually. She talked about creating places of release, of allowing people simply to be present. She invited us to take time every day to be, not do. 

During her talk, my mind wandered not to our college students, though they have busy demands, but to our high schoolers. They are told, “Do all your homework, be involved in several after school activities, and volunteer.” This is how they will  ensure they get good scholarships and into their first choice for college. Everything gets tied into college selection, which itself is a daunting task for a teenager. I fear that our children are being taught from a very early age to constantly work, constantly grind, because we see that as the way of success. Our doing is our biggest accomplishment. 

That talk at the conference solidified in me a desire to open up a space for our high schoolers to just be, without expectations, without doing more, just a time to come together, check in, and relax. And don’t we all need those spaces really? We need places to rest as well as places to be active. We need that balance of life. 

As I delved into  this gospel lesson again this week, I viewed it through a different lens. I explored what this was like for Jesus. Jesus had just set his face towards Jerusalem. He was ready to go out and do a really tough thing that he was sent to do, to go to a place where he knew that death was imminent. He had just told others that if they wanted to follow him, they didn’t have much time. Don’t even look back with your hand on the plow. He held so much within him that needed to be done. 

But he also needed time to process. He needed space. After sharing the urgency of the moment with others, sharing the importance of this time and this place, he stayed in an undisclosed village and he delegated the work. He set limits for himself. Rather than going and doing all the hard work of seeking out spaces of welcome, places where he could stay safely, he sent seventy-two others in pairs to do the work. Thirty six pairs were to go to at least thirty six towns. They were to help Jesus draw a map of where he could go and stay without risk of being arrested before he arrived in Jerusalem. They were also to do Jesus’ work in the world. Jesus needed support, so he set his mantle upon others. But Jesus didn’t just say “Go do.” In setting his mantle upon them, he set them up for success and helped them out in three very important ways: The first is that they went in pairs and stayed in one house as long as possible, fostering community. The second is that Jesus taught them what they were to do, they didn’t have to just figure it out as they went along. Finally, Jesus picked people who would be enlivened by the experience, he recognized their unique personalities and talents. 

Jesus didn’t ask them to go it alone. Jesus gave them conversation partners, people they could work with and who could help them out. They weren’t to go from place to place, they were to settle in a house and establish a relationship with those who lived there. Jesus knew they couldn’t do this without a community to support them. They had to be careful, they couldn’t just talk to anybody, but they needed people to process and share life with. Even going to unknown places carrying nothing with them, they had someone else alongside them every step of the way. 

Jesus also taught them what to do. Jesus empowered them with the Holy Spirit, giving them the gifts Jesus possessed. Jesus sat them down and laid out the plan.This was how they were to approach this time of journeying. Having a plan is immensely helpful. Even if it’s hard, they had expectations and instructions on how to approach the task at hand. They were called and they were equipped. They were told from the beginning that things wouldn’t always go well. They were told upfront that not being accepted had nothing to do with them, releasing them from any shame they might feel. They were given a tool for shaking off their disappointment, their frustrations, and their anger when things seemed to fail radically. Their job gave them a lot of responsibility, but their training and equipment for the task was solid and good. 

To my third point, Jesus picked the people who would be enlivened by the task. They were people who had the gifts and talents to do this kind of work. Jesus called people to this task who would find the mission rewarding. Not everyone was called to do this. Jesus saw the gifts and talents of these seventy-two and matched them to this task. There were others who had different gifts and talents, who would have not done well with this task and were much better suited to other things. Jesus respected their personalities, their uniqueness, their needs. Jesus had other tasks for other personalities. 

Then, after they had done this good but hard thing, Jesus let them take a break, just as Jesus had taken a break. They both had spaces of rest after a job well done.There was a balance, a mutuality. They weren’t going all the time. Jesus wasn’t going all the time. They worked and they rested. They had a specific task for a specific season and then God said, “Well done.” They weren’t constantly churning and producing. Jesus rested while they worked. Then Jesus worked while they rested. Rest is built into the fabric of what we are called to do and who we are. That’s why keeping the Sabbath is the first commandment. 

While at the young adult and campus ministry conference, I stayed at a small retreat house. They left a list of quotes in my room. I grabbed it without much thought and stuck it on my office bulletin board upon arriving home. One of the quotes grabbed me as I stared at the board the other day. It’s from Thomas Merton. He says, “To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender oneself to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. It destroys your own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of your own work because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes the work fruitful.” 

Jesus never asked us to succumb to violence. Jesus called us to a balanced and whole life. There are so many things before us in the world today that we need to work on. There is the demand of our households, our communities, our state and national politics, it can feel overwhelming, especially when we see injustice in so many places. There are so many things we want to support, to help out with, but we can’t do it all. Jesus couldn’t do it all. He worked with others and shared the load. He trusted them to do what they were equipped to do. The burden becomes more manageable when more people take it on. We don’t need to take on everything individually. We can support and trust others, we can balance each other out and work together in collective ways. It is indeed possible, even though the work may be hard. 

You are allowed to take time to just be and soak in the love. In fact, that’s Sabbath, God commands that for you. You don’t have to try to be the seventy-two. Jesus called them for a certain time, and now he’s calling us to our own things in our own time. The task at hand is not to consistently do more, it’s to be filled and supported by the love of God. We are allowed to rest and balance things out. God calls us to do great and important work in the world, but God also calls us to rest. May we find balance as we move forward in what God is calling us to do. Amen.