St. John’s Lutheran Church
18 June 2023 + Lectionary 11a (3 Pentecost)
Matthew 9.35–10.23
Rev. Josh Evans

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Another Sunday, another call story. Actually, make that stories (plural).

In the span of a few verses, one disciple becomes twelve – and probably more than that. They’re just the ones (the men) who get named.

Their task: Proclaim the good news. Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.

A tall order, to be sure.

The risks: Betrayal, hatred, persecution, even death. “Like sheep in the midst of wolves,” Jesus calls them.

And all of this without payment, no less.

But the payoff? “The harvest is plentiful,” Jesus promises. Soon, as one disciple became (at least) twelve, the twelve will – theoretically – double, triple, quadruple, and continually multiply in size.

As I look out at our pews – and the pews of congregations across the church, it’s hard to believe the harvest is “plentiful.” Maybe in Jesus’s first-century world, but in our 21st-century, post-COVID world? It seems like anything but.

In recent years, I’ve read more articles than I care to remember about how “they’re not coming back.” The pandemic has only exacerbated the decline our congregations – big and small – have been experiencing for decades. It’s true that some people aren’t coming back, and those who are, are coming back less.

“Will the ELCA be gone in 30 years?” one pre-pandemic article asks. Current projections suggest that the whole denomination will have fewer than 67,000 members in 2050, with fewer than 16,000 in worship on an average Sunday as soon as 2041 – less than twenty years away.

I wonder how it worked out for the twelve. Did they find a “plentiful” harvest? Even within their own ranks, one eventually betrayed Jesus and one denied ever knowing him. That’s a 16% loss right there.

The harvest is plentiful … really?

There’s a lot of talk of “Future Church” within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America these days. In many ways, that future is unknown – and that can be scary.

As we pray in our morning prayer liturgy, “O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown…”

Being the church in this time and place can feel a bit like being lambs in the midst of wolves, if we’re even brave enough to go outside.

A few weeks ago, at the beginning of Pride Month, I shared a post on St. John’s Facebook page:

“During #PrideMonth and every month at St. John’s, we welcome, affirm, and celebrate you in the fullness of who you are. There are no exceptions, prerequisites, or qualifications to God’s unconditional love for you. You don’t have to hide, tone down, or change any part of your identity. You are who God created you to be, and God is proud of you. There is a place for you here.”

The number of hateful comments I’ve had to delete on that post saddens me. The gospel message of welcome and inclusion is apparently still that offensive to some.

There was also another comment on that Facebook post, just yesterday: “Not sure if I’m near any pride church,” they wrote, with what I interpreted to be sincere interest.

As much as there are those who find the gospel message of welcome and inclusion offensive, even more so are those who desperately need to know a “pride church” exists – that churches do exist that embrace the fullness of who God created them to be.

People out there still need to hear the message we proclaim in here this and every Sunday: that God’s love is for us and for them, whomever they are, wherever they’re from, whomever they love, whatever the color of their skin or the language they speak, however they feel about church or organized religion.

The harvest is indeed still plentiful.

There is a future for the church, and there is still work to be done. It is God’s future, and God is still at work, in and around us.

There is a future here because there is a present. God, who is present here, who is present in all the hurt, all the pain, all the brokenness of our world, who has washed us in the waters of baptism and renews us at this table of mercy, sends us as God’s laborers into a still plentiful harvest:

Proclaiming good news, consoling the sick, and casting out every form of evil and oppression that harms God’s good creation.

In here and out there, God is present with us and with all this hurting world – into the future and always.