6-15-17 - Packing Light

It is packing season – summer vacations, weekend getaways; many of us will be taking down our suitcases and tote bags and deciding what to bring along and what to leave behind. What we pack depends largely on where we’re going – a weekend at my sister’s may call for shorts and t-shirts, while packing for a wedding can require five pairs of shoes.

And what if we’re packing for a mission trip? Jesus says, “Don’t. Just go.” His instructions to his disciples are perplexing: “Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff; for laborers deserve their food.”

He wants them to go out without any resources or safety net, to rely completely on the hospitality of those to whom they are sent. “Wait a minute,” they may have thought – “I thought we were bringing the gift. Now you want us to ask them to take us in and feed us, so we can preach the gospel to them? What’s that about?”

Maybe it’s about vulnerability. Maybe it’s about mutuality, not going to people with the resources or answers we think they need, but inviting them into relationship in which they can meet Jesus. Maybe it’s about allowing people to give to us, so that that we’re sharing on level ground, not from a place of power or control.

And for the ones carrying the Gospel to others, it is also an invitation to build the kind of trust muscles we need in the service of God. Having no money or change of clothes, no toothbrush or even a staff to lean on is an invitation to lean totally on God’s provision and love. “Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?” we ask baptismal candidates. It is very hard to put our whole trust in anything, let alone a force we can know but not see or feel. But that’s the kind of faith Jesus invites us to grow.

When have you been in a situation where you had to rely totally on God? Where you couldn’t see what good was going to come, and could only trust that it would? These are trust-building opportunities.

It is not easy, but I can tell you that the testimony of those who live this way is that God comes through, again and again, often in completely unforeseen ways, often through the very people they thought they were there to help. When we break down the "us" and "them" and become "us," all kinds of mutual giving become possible.

This story was about being sent on mission. Perhaps it is also an invitation to live more lightly always, less encumbered about stuff and space and security. Every day we have an invitation, right in our own lives, to simplify, to free up.

And every day we have opportunities to go to someone in the name of Christ, seeing what meals are provided to us when we don’t try to get them for ourselves. We don’t get to set the menu, but we will be fed. That’s the life of faith.