Mission Possible

sermon by Torin Eikler
John 17:1-11 Acts 1:1-14

Summer is almost here. Just two weeks, one day, 13 hours, and ___ minutes left before the season officially turns over into the three months of light and heat. But with school out and the thermometer in the 90s this past week, I have resigned myself to sunscreen and sweat a few weeks early. For all practical purposes, summer is already here. And while it is not my favorite season, there is one thing that I always look forward to, one guilty pleasure that comes around each year at this time … the Summer Blockbuster Movies.

Some of you will remember when people attended summer movies, if they could, not so much because of what was showing but simply to escape the heat for a time. Before air conditioning was so common, that movie theatre was one of the only refuges from the sun, and for a reasonably affordable amount, one could enter the cool darkness from time to time and sit. Just sit in a comfortable chair and enjoy the distraction of whatever story happened to be playing out on the big screen in front of you.

Those days are largely gone. Most of us have turned our homes into that place of refuge. We have air conditioning. We have televisions with movies on demand, or if we haven’t gone that far (or maybe have skipped over that) we have VCRs or DVD players that can link directly to the internet and stream movies directly into our living rooms. This is becoming so common, in fact, that Roger Ebert recently acknowledged with more than a little sadness that cinemas themselves may be on the path to extinction. For many of us, it is just too much money and too much hassle to get everyone into the theatre when we can watch the same thing at home.

But, in my experience there are some movies that you just can’t watch on the TV if you want to get the full effect. To truly appreciate these “blockbusters,” we need the huge screen, the large space, and the echoing surround sound to pull us fully into the action and effects, and it’s strange and scary what that kind of technology can do. There are many movies, I’ll admit, that had sucked me in when I watched them in the theatre whether or not they had redeeming value, or good acting, or a strong story line. In fact, the “bad” ones were sometimes the ones that I enjoyed the most – sitting there for the adrenaline rush without having to think or feel anything. That is what I secretly love about them, and this summer promises several excellent examples.

One that I am particularly looking forward to is Mission Impossible 4 where rogue agent Ethan Hawke promises to get stuck in some inescapable situation only to worm his way out with the help of a few friends, a bit of luck, and innumerable techno-gadgets that will, of course, require quite elaborate stunts and special effects if they are to work at all. It’s brain candy, I know, but there’s something about beating impossible odds to pull off incredible heists that I just love.

I suppose a big part of my fascination comes from wishing that I could do all those things … at least in a smaller, less death-defying way. The thing is, I often feel like my life is full of impossible missions. Chief among them and most immediate is the challenge of raising two intelligent, sensitive, well-behaved, respectful, loving, good-hearted boys. If there is anything that I don’t feel prepared for it navigating that responsibility without inadvertently doing irreparable damage to them along the way. If anyone has a map or a guaranteed methodology to help me out, please let me know.

Beyond that, though, there are myriad others tasks that I feel more or less responsible for. Two big ones given everything in the news are working to protect the environment and struggling against the militarism that seems to have gotten a dose of steroids lately. Then there’s taking care of those less fortunate than I: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the imprisoned, and housing the homeless…. You know, all the things we preach about because we really do think they’re important.

Some of those things are beyond me because I don’t have the tools or the power or the wisdom or courage I would need to get the job done. They may not be action-packed or life-threatening (though I suppose they might be if I really committed to them), but they are in the same realm as the adventures of Ethan Hawke. Put me his position and there is no way I would be able to do what needed to be done let alone survive long enough to try.

Others seem impossible simply because they are so big or take so long. If you chip away at them you make some headway, but it’s hard to keep at it without becoming discourage no matter how important the ultimate goal. There are people, I know, who are passionate about such work … who get excited by the prospect of taking the first step down one of those proverbial thousand-mile journeys and have the perseverance to move mountains one stone at a time. I’m just not one of them … and I’m not alone in that. If I were, there would be an army of people hard at work on solving the problems of the global community instead of a few pockets of resistance here and there.


And, I suspect that my feelings of inadequacy are nothing compared to the way the first group of disciples felt when Jesus left them there on that mountain. As they turned and walked back down to Jerusalem, I think they probably came down off a once-in-a-lifetime high with each step they took. They had been there, after all, when Jesus reappeared. They had seen the prophesies fulfilled. Unbelievable though it was, they had talked to, eaten with, and learned from their Messiah even after he had died, and after a month of living in that new reality, I expect they had come to take for granted that Jesus would be with them forever – always there to show them the way.

Instead, he had left them, rising into the heavens in a blaze of glorious light … left them with a vague promise of help to come … and the all too real, all too impossible mission of continuing his work, of making disciples of all the nations.

A few weeks ago, I made a passing reference to what that phrase, “continuing Jesus’ work” really means for us – to what it means to make disciples of the nations, and I think this might be the time to explore that in more depth. The Great Commission, as we call it, is often thought to mean saving people for Christ – that is, proclaiming the good news that Jesus was and is the Messiah and that all who believe and are baptized will be saved from eternal suffering and ushered into eternal life through the gift of grace. But, I’m not sure we’ve gotten that entirely right. That’s definitely part of it – that inviting people to share in the redeeming grace of Christ, but if it true, as Gail O’Day claims, that “When Jesus commissioned the [community of his followers] to continue [his work, he meant that they were to make] God in Jesus known in the world.” And God as made known to us in Jesus was all about sharing the reality that the Kingdom was already present among humanity.

That means more than just baptizing people. It means proclaiming the new reality, describing it as clearly as possible, inviting people to step into the mystery of all that it might mean to be living in a world ruled by the one whose love led him to give his life for all of us. And it means more than that, too. It means modeling what a life lived in the midst of that reality looks like, being people of the Kingdom who act out of love and compassion so that everyone receives what she or he needs and no one is left alone. It means seeking healing – healing of bodies, healing of spirits, healing of the brokenness all around us.

That - all of that - is the task that Jesus left to the disciples. And I’m sure those men and women who were given that work were at a loss because if Jesus – if the Messiah himself with all his power and all his understanding was not able to do it, how on earth would they be able to? Even though they were a good sized community of people, I’m sure they felt lost and overwhelmed by the challenges that lay ahead.


I think we are in the same position. I feel like our congregation is on the brink of something, like potential and power and passion and energy are building toward some moment in the future – a moment when we will find ourselves in the midst of an explosion of new growth and a profound deepening of our spiritual life together as a community. But right now, in this moment, as I talk with you all and we look ahead at the challenges we face they often seems insurmountable.

Here we are with the very same mission received by those long-ago followers and handed down through the ages: continuing the work started by Jesus. Two thousand years later, the world’s need to hear and see and feel the presence of the Kingdom around them and the love of Christ within them still cries out to us. And we struggle with low attendance. We have trouble meeting our budget. Our ceiling leaks. And it is hard to get everything done because we all have such busy lives. Simply caring for our faith community is hard enough, picking up the mission left to by Christ ….

We are shy people – especially when it comes to sharing our faith. Our whole society is more than a little squeamish about it. We look at those who do share with distrust and distaste. That part of our lives, we have been taught, is personal, and the evangelists out there often wear the face of intolerance or carry the sword of judgment, and that doesn’t feel very Christ-like. We do not want to be like them. We don’t want to risk even the slightest chance that anyone might see us in that light, and so we go out of our way to avoid it.

I’m not singling any of you out here. I avoid it too … maybe even more than you do. It is hard to keep from being lumped in with “those people” when you are a pastor. We are all in the same boat here, and while we do a pretty good job of modeling and working for healing and reconciliation as a congregation, it seems like it might just take a miracle to get us out there describing the Kingdom, proclaiming the good news that it is here, or even sharing our own joy at having experience it here in this community of faith.


It took a miracle for the first Christians too. It took the coming of the Spirit to get them going, to remind them of Jesus’ promise that they were protected and unified by the power and the truth that he had shared with them. They had to wait for that miracle. Commissioned by Christ himself with their own mission impossible, they had to sit and hope that they would, somehow, be able to do what had been asked of them. They went and prayed that they would find a way to take even just the first step on that journey.

But, we don’t have to wait…. The miracle has happened. The promised presence of the Spirit has been fulfilled for us already, and the Sustainer lives within us offering us strength and encouragement … empowering us for the work that is ours to do as a community that has tasted the new reality of God’s Reign among us … giving us “shy people the strength and courage to do what needs to be done.”


Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is no more and no less than continuing the work of making God in Jesus known to the world. It is to go out into the world and living out the love and compassion that marks the Children of God. It is working to heal pain and brokenness, relieve suffering, and offer hope in the midst of despair. It is proclaiming in a sure and confident voice the truth that, whatever it may look like out there, the Kingdom of God is here, and it offers new hope and new life to any who wish to enter.

It’s a big task, but it is possible.