Mark 6:1-13

Jesus sends out his disciples and tells them, “Take nothing with you on your journey.”  (Okay.  You can take a staff, but other than that, take nothing with you”).

This would be an extremely difficult task for me right now:

Last weekend Bonnie and I went to Portland.  It was our first road trip with Baby Moses and we were only gone for three days.

Now, mind you, this child only weighs 12 pounds and yet we filled an entire station wagon full of things that we needed to bring with us just to take care of this little human!  There is so much stuff… I feel the weight of stuff?  I probably clean out my garage four times a year, and yet it’s still full of stuff!  If the rest of the world consumed the same amount of stuff that we Americans do we would need 5 planets.  The weight of stuff is on us… and the weight of our stuff is on the rest of the planet.

In contrast to our Portland trip, last summer Bonnie and I took a three day trip to the San Juan Islands and we decided not to take a car, instead we would hitch hike the whole way.  We knew where we were headed and we knew what time we wanted to be back… the rest was up to whatever God put in front of us.  Our friends and family thought we were crazy. But with thumbs in the air we started walking, relying on the mercy of God to come to us in the form of 11 different strangers who stopped and picked us up.  And we’ve never had a trip more full of surprise and gratitude.

In a similar way, when Jesus sends us into the world he says, ”I want you to travel light, Take nothing with you on your journey.  No bread, no bag, no money.  Because God will provide.”

Does this sound trite?  Usually what we mean by trite is:  “Well, that sounds nice, but it’s a little naive, because back here in the real world, things don’t work that way.  But if you want to write that on the inside of a birthday card, we wont stop you.”  If we live our lives as solely self-referential people, meaning we only trust what we ourselves have experienced, then we might want to call this promise trite.  And yet, in our baptism Jesus connects us to a much longer story.  We live our lives in reference, not solely to our individual story, but to God’s story in the world and in this longer story God says, “Listen, trusting me for everything in life isn’t trite!  It’s about the realest, grittiest thing you could say about life. So remember your story.  You are children of Abraham and Sarah.  I told them, ‘I am sending you to a place that i’ll show you, take nothing with you and I’ll make nations out of you.’  They were childless, menopaused, low small sperm-count, but now look: here you are, a child of Abraham and Sarah.

Remember your story.  You are children of the Exodus.  I told the Hebrew slaves, ‘I am sending you to worship me, take nothing with you and I’ll make a free people out of you.’  They were impoverished, enslaved and without hope, but now look: I became their liberator.

Remember your story.  You are children of the Wilderness.

My people were wandering the desert and I told them, ‘I am sending you to a land, take nothing with you, and I will feed you.’

They were on the verge of mutiny, bickering and hungry, but every morning food showed up outside their tents.  And I became their provider.

All these events are now a part of your history, your story.  And you have all these memories to call upon when I call upon you and say, ’I am sending you, take nothing with you because I will provide.’”  Do you see what God is doing with you here?  This is how the People of God came to know God as their God.  This is how Jesus sends his followers into the world.  And this is how the Spirit calls you to know God as the undeniable source of all life, and protection and provision, and healing and forgiveness: by stepping into places of utter trust in God.

I met an ELCA mission director from Texas a few weeks ago and he told me this story:  In 1980 my first assignment as a pastor was as a chaplain in the military.  I was only months into my ministry, but because of my Latino heritage I found myself in Florida watching the Mariel Boatlift as over 100,000 Cubans sought asylum from Cuba in the United States.  The refugees were made to wait in tightly secured camps, but the conditions inside were awful.  Fidel Castro had emptied out the Cuban maximum security prisons as he let the rest of the refugees flee the country.  The camps were rampant with crime and rape.  I was asked to perform a Mass in the camp and to speak to these refugees who were caught between two worlds.  Who had left everything behind them for the promise of the land of opportunity.  He was so very nervous.  What would he tell them?  He sat looking over the camp the night before Sunday Mass and a young cuban man came and sat next to him staring out over the camp.  And then after a few moments of silence he said, “We’ll never be as free as we are today, will we?  We think freedom awaits us on the other side of this camp where there’s the promise of buying a house and putting our kids in college and having a credit card… But it’ll be a new kind of slavery.  And right now, we’re free.  It doesn’t seem like it, but we’ll never be as free as we are right now.”  That was the word that God was speaking and the very next morning I got up and told those people what that young man had told me:  ”Though you have nothing, though you might think that freedom is what comes next, you will never be as free as you are right now.”

Wilderness journey is an essential part of our story.  It’s what happens when you live in-between to realities, no longer in Egypt but not yet settled in the Land,no longer in the past, but not yet in the future.  The only place you can live and be free is right now.  And no doubt, that’s where you are right now.  Some of you aren’t sure when or where work is going to come.  Some of you aren’t sure how to make your mortgage this month.  Some of you aren’t sure what in the world you will do with your life, or how to make sense out of anything.  None of these things look like freedom at all.  They look like crisis.  They look like danger.

And in all of these situations God’s Spirit says, “You will never be as free as you are right now.  You are free to follow me, because I am sending you.  So, take nothing with you on your journey because you have a God who will provide for you

on every step of the way, manna in midst of wilderness, right words when tested, a future where there was no future.  Take nothing with you on your journey because you have a Christ who comes to you in bread and wine right here and right now, and says “you are freed to live”, live free of shame and guilt, live free of the fear of what other people think or do, you are even freed to live without the fear of death, because I have overcome death.

So take nothing with you on your journey because the Spirit is sending you in the mission of this community:

‘To welcome strangers.

To tell stories of God’s grace.

To celebrate Christ’s healing presence.

And to give yourself away as a gift to the world.’”

How will we do that?  We don’t even have a home base… We are only sixty odd folks…  How will we do that when we’re not sure how we’ll make our budget with significant cuts in our funding?  Beloved, we are freer now than we’ve ever been.  God will provide.