(Matthew 10) Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.2 These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; 3 Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; 4 Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. 5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. 6 Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. 7 As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.9 “Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts—10 no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff, for the worker is worth his keep. 11 Whatever town or village you enter, search there for some worthy person and stay at their house until you leave.12 As you enter the home, give it your greeting. 13 If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. 14 If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet. 15 Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the Day of Judgment than for that town.16 “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. 17 Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. 18 On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. 19 But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, 20 for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.21 “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. 22 You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. 23 When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.
Nearly 300 years ago in upstate New York, a middle-aged man of the Mahican Indian tribe looked at the German man sleeping in his hut, and thought to himself, “I could so easily add his scalp to the others I have taken through the years.” But Native culture gave no honor to betraying the trust of an unarmed, defenseless man who had asked you for shelter and a place to sleep. If anything, you gave him whatever he asked, and offered him more, like food and water. The Mahican host’s name was Wassamapah, also known to locals as “Tschoop.”
The German man asleep in Wassamapah’s hut was Henry Christian Rauch, a missionary of the Moravian church. He was not the first missionary whom Wassamapah had heard. Some years earlier, one had come to his village and preached on the existence of one supreme God. To that Wassamapah replied, “We know that already; go back home and think up something new to tell us.”
Later, another missionary came to say that the One Supreme God did not approve of drunkenness, adultery, murder, theft, falsehood and fornication. He got the same response: “We know that already.” And then Wassamapah added, “Go back and preach that to your own people; they seem to need that message most.”
But Christian Henry Rauch was different. He surprised Wassamapah by standing outside the hut and respectfully asking entry, to speak personally with him, as a friend. And he spoke the Mahican language fluently, like someone who loved it, who had maybe even come to think, dream and pray in it. Nor did Rauch consider himself above eating the Mahican food that was offered to him.
The message that Rauch shared was also different from the imperious bromides of the previous missionaries. Rauch spoke about how the One Supreme God became a human being like the two of them, how this God-man lived among us as one of us, peacefully, nonviolently, vulnerably, to the point where his two-legged creations abused him, killed him, and most importantly, shed his blood, with nails and a spear thrust into his side, drawing also water from his heart and lungs. Wassamapah would have recognized that as a sure sign of death.
After discussing such things at length, Rauch then had another message and an urgent question for Wassamapah. The message was: “I’m really tired and exhausted right now.” The urgent question: “Do you mind if I lay down in your hut and catch a nap?” Mahican hospitality could not refuse the unarmed, defenseless stranger that, either.
Wassamapah’s testimony is recorded and saved for us in the Moravian Missionary Chronicles in their Historical Society Center in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The archives record Wassamapah’s thoughts about this visit, and the man sleeping in his hut. Watching him sleep so peacefully, Wassamapah thought: “This man cannot be a bad man; he fears no evil, not even from us, who are so violent and cruel, but sleeps comfortably, and places his life in our hands. I might kill him, and throw him out into the woods, and who would even know it? But this gives him no concern.”
It was not only the courageous and trusting defenselessness of Rauch that impressed Wassamapah, but that of the God of whom he spoke, a God who came among us willing to shed his blood. Native Americans put much stock by dreams, and Wassamapah had dreamed often, of late, about blood. In his warrior past, he had shed much blood, of both Natives and European enemies. As his world came apart by warfare and white settlement, Wassamapah had become enslaved, he knew, to resentment, drunkenness and violence. But Rauch spoke about this vulnerable God-man’s blood, and the water from his spear-riven chest, as the flow of this God-man’s life into the world, giving power for liberation from whiskey, warfare and resentment, even, as the birth of new people, and a new world of love and mercy. All life, Wassamapah knew, both two-legged and four-, was born into the world fresh and new in a burst of blood and water.
And so was born a new Wassamapah, one of the first three Native members and leaders in the Moravian Church of the Americas. How different Rauch’s relationship to him was from that of many missionaries in the Spanish colonies, whose conquistadors conquered and enslaved many Natives, and then drove them to the waters of baptism at gunpoint.
Sometimes people talk in their sleep. Sometimes preachers talk while other people sleep, but Rauch preached one of his most convincing messages in his sleep, just by sleeping. Wassamapah saw, in the peacefully sleeping Rauch, a perfect harmony between the message, about a God who made himself vulnerable, and a very vulnerable messenger.
And that’s what Jesus was aiming at in the instructions we just heard to his twelve apostles in training: harmony between the message and the messenger. Whenever we read, preach or teach on Christ’s evangelistic instructions to his apostles, we typically focus on the power and the authority which Jesus gave them, to preach, to heal, and to drive out evil spirits.
True, quite true.
But this morning I’m talking about the vulnerability and weakness that Jesus ordered his apostles to take on as well. “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves,” Jesus told them. “Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” Some translations say, “as harmless as doves.”
In effect, Jesus is saying, “Understand that the same people with whom you will share the gospel will be the same people on whom you must depend for food and lodging, even though some of them will deny you such; some will vilify you, some may even seek to harm you or even kill you, even from among your own family. Still, take no purse nor money to cover all your expenses, no extra pair of clothes nor shoes, no staff for self-defense, because you are not to lord it over those to whom you come, nor to impress them with your power, control or self-sufficiency; you are to enter into emotional and spiritual intimacy, interdependence and vulnerability with them, just as I have done with you. Your relationship with the people to whom you preach the gospel must look like the gospel that you preach. The messenger must look like the message.”
This struck me a few years back when another missionary, preparing to go to Burkina Faso where Becky and I once lived, asked me, “Would you suggest that I bring along a tent to sleep in during my travels out to remote villages?”
“Yes,” I replied. “But only if you really want to insult and upset the locals. Not only are they perfectly willing to feed you and put you up for the night, they would consider it an honor if they could do so. They would consider it a terrible dishonor if you denied them that honor. What’s more, you will find people most open and receptive to what you have to offer when you are most open and receptive to what they have to offer. You will have the best conversations with them after eating their food, while drinking their tea, and trusting them with your care and protection.”
Jesus sent his disciples on their first evangelistic training trip into a society very much like the one I just described.
Even if we don’t evangelize at gunpoint, like the Spanish Conquistadors of the 16th Century, we can still fall into the trap of power and invulnerability that I saw during my college years, in an evangelistic campaign called, “Here’s Life, Texas!” It had slick, market-tested ads in magazines, newspapers, radio and TV, bumper stickers under the slogan, “I Found it!” and carefully scripted samples, examples and talking points to take to your unbelieving neighbors, co-workers, friends and family members. As a result of all this effort, one person across the whole state of Texas could be documented to say that she had become a believer. And the directors, sponsors and participating churches said that her one precious, eternal soul was worth all the time, effort and expense.
Fair enough. True, in fact.
But even as a young Christian, they lost me at the words, “I Found it!” The message we share is not about ourselves and our expertise and wisdom at finding something that other people have not yet had the smarts nor the goodness yet to find, supposedly. The Gospel is about the One who came seeking us, and who found us by joining us in the weakness and vulnerability of our human condition. When we confess that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” we’re effectively saying that God made himself vulnerable and available to us, even to the worst we might do to him.
As I look forward in time and around the world, I’m glad that the days of Crusades and conquistadors are over, Thank God. And I suspect that slick, institutional evangelistic campaigns and religious promotional products will be increasingly less effective, even more counter-productive, especially if they convey power, self-sufficiency, and smug self-confidence in ourselves and our kind. People trust such institutions and attitudes less and less. It’s not hard to see why.
But that won’t hinder the growth of God’s kingdom and of God’s honor in this world. If anything, I see God’s kingdom growing in those very places where the church is most weak and defenseless from a worldly point of view, and most vulnerable to poverty, persecution and opposition. Like the Ethiopian Mennonite church, which grew in numbers, gifts, power and witness thirty years ago, even while its buildings, its schools, its clinics and many of its leaders were taken by a hostile government. Sometimes, we don’t know how much God is all we need, until God is all we have. So, for the mission of the church, the Twenty-first Century will be more like the First than the Twentieth. Jesus’ forgotten directives about the how of mission will show themselves to be as right on and perceptive as the why and the what of Jesus’ mission. For God himself first tested and applied the power of such vulnerability, beginning with taking on flesh in the womb of Mary.
But I’m not only speaking about vulnerability as it relates to the mission of Christ’s church. I’m talking also about vulnerability as it relates to the whole of the Christian life. As the Master is, so must the servant be, in all aspects of life. The power and authority of Christ to do miracles and overcome falsehoods are impressive enough. But so are Christ’s honest self-disclosure to his disciples of his intimate life with his heavenly Father, of his prayer life, his fears and his tears, his joy and his laughter, his frustrations, and, of course, his love for them.
How different then is Christ, the Second Adam, from the First Adam. In response to his disobedience, and the resulting shame he felt about his nakedness, the first Adam covered himself with fig leaves and hid from God. Christ, by contrast, accepted being exposed on the cross to all shaming, ridicule and violence. Because of the shame he felt, Adam hid himself when he heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden. Christ, by contrast, lived an open, constant and transparent communion with his heavenly Father. Adam then took to blaming Eve: “That woman, that you gave me, she gave me the fruit to eat, and I ate it.” Christ, the second Adam, took our shame and blame with him to the cross, rather than casting them onto others.
But that’s what shame does, the shame we often feel for our disobedience, our weakness, incompleteness and vulnerability: either we cover ourselves, try to look good, try to hide ourselves from God, others and ourselves, or we lash out in blaming and shaming others. Then we’re like dinosaurs who had only two ways of dealing with their vulnerability: either by arming up defensively, with size, bony plates or clubs and spikes on their tails, or by arming up offensively, with ruthlessness, tooth and claw. And for all that, they still went extinct.
I don’t know of anyone who has totally grown and gone beyond the occasional fit or spasm of shame. As long as we are mortal, dependent on each other, limited in knowledge and strength, and subject to temptation, in short, as long as we are sinners, we will always struggle, this side of the New Jerusalem, with the shame that makes vulnerability so scary, and yet also so necessary. Vulnerability is so necessary because, alone in the dark secrecy of our pretensions to invulnerability, the things about which we feel shame will only grow in their power to control us and distort the image of God in us. Vulnerability is so necessary also because, while it opens us up to ridicule and rejection, or worse, it also opens us up to love, joy, grace, goodness and blessing. We just cannot be open, vulnerable and available to God and to all of life’s goodness, without being open, vulnerable and available to pain, discomfort, grief and confusion, either.
A life of Christ-like vulnerability is free from the oppressive weight of Adam’s defensive and offensive weaponry. Imagine, instead, that when Adam heard the voice of the Lord God, walking in the garden, calling out, “Where are you?” as he does for all of us, Adam had stepped forward from behind the trees and said, “I’m so glad you’re here; something’s wrong, and I need help.” That would be the vulnerable life. And when God asked, “What have you done?” if Adam had simply said, “I disobeyed and ate the fruit that you forbade; will you forgive me?” that again would have been the vulnerable life. In such honest, open vulnerability, God is free and invited to do his work of forgiving, healing and recreating. But God is not so free in the defensive, invulnerable life, because he won’t go wherever he is not invited. He respects us too much.
Vulnerability to God means vulnerability to others. But not equally to everyone. One reason I have a spiritual director is to insure that all parts and pieces of my life are an open book at least to someone, so that shame, secrecy and sin do not grow in the darkness of our pretensions to invulnerability. Small groups and prayer partnerships can also help us know and love each other truly, and be truly known and loved all the more. But we cannot be equally as vulnerable and open about everything to everyone, nor should we be. Let’s not get stuck alone with secrets; but let’s also choose our helpers and confessors wisely.
But vulnerability is not only about letting the truth of ourselves out, good or bad. It’s also about letting the truth in, in all its complexity, difficulty and beauty. Such vulnerability, to good and bad, God and each other, is an especially important thing to think about on this Father’s Day, because I suspect that our fondest memories and our greatest appreciation of our fathers, or of other men in our lives, are not only about their capabilities, but about their availability, and their vulnerabilities, as well. A lament I have often heard about fathers is that “he was not there.” Sometimes, he was just not there emotionally, or spiritually, even if he was there, physically. I believe that there is in each person a deep father hunger, for the man who made our lives possible, to also validate and bless those lives, like Esau crying to his father Isaac, after Jacob had cheated him of his blessing: “Bless me too, my father! Have you no blessing for me?”
On Father’s Day, today, I’m remembering a blessing from my father, which didn’t feel like a blessing at the time. It came in the wee hours of the night, around 2 AM, I’d guess, when I was in second grade. Dad awoke me and urged me to come downstairs to see something. “This is just so wrong, waking me up at such an hour,” I thought. But after I followed him downstairs to where he opened up a closet door, I saw what he wanted me to see: our cat giving birth to kittens. In the wonder and the beauty of the moment, I immediately forgot how tired I was, and my outrage at being awakened, as together we watched in rapt attention, awe, wonder and delight, the emergence of each new life, and how the mother cat attended to each kitten. My father is quite capable with almost any tools and tasks, and I treasure that about him. But I have also always treasured the way in which my father, late that night, invited me to share his childlike delight in the birth of kittens. In a shared moment of wonder, joy and awe, it was like we were both still in second grade.
I thank God for all our wonderful talents, tools, skills and capabilities. But for the mission of Christ in the world, and for our life in Christ, so often our best capability is our vulnerability.