A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on July 8, 2007, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

            The person who taught me the most about what’s important in parish life was not a priest or even an office holder in the church.  Verna Dozier was a high-school English teacher and later an administrator in the Washington , D. C. public schools.  Late in life she became a noted author and authority on studying the Bible who traveled the world teaching and lecturing in Episcopal Churches.  Nevertheless, to the end of her life Verna insisted that her calling was not to become a priest, but to remain a committed lay person.  From her status as non-ordained she gained the authority to speak of the mission lay people have to change the world.  It is about that mission I want to speak to you today.

            Because I’m not a layperson, I want to call on Verna Dozier’s credentials as a lay person in talking about the mission we all have to be in the world and to change it.  Verna told the story of being on a religious retreat once that closed with an informal celebration of the Eucharist.  She was surprised when the meeting ended and the conferees did not simply stop work in their places and break bread together.  Instead the leader had them dance from the work room into another room where a table was prepared for the Eucharist.  The reason given for the change of venue was that the work room was not “sacred space.”  Verna was incensed that the designated “sacred space” was a place different from where life was lived.  She wrote “I believe the sacred space is where the institutionally ordained preside.  I believe it is ALSO where mothers tend their children, teachers guide their students, doctors care for their patients, police officers patrol the streets, executives make decisions, laborers ply their trades—laity everywhere doing the work they are called to do. The ground on which we stand is holy ground.” Verna lived what she preached.  She has written about her life teaching literature to kids from the inner city: “Sometimes when I was teaching, I was praying.”

            In our Gospel this morning, Jesus appoints seventy people to go out into the world to make a difference.  I do not believe this scene depicts the beginning of ordained ministry.  The seventy were not leaders in any institutional sense.  Their names are not recorded, so we can’t make them into plaster saints.  They were not priests.  The early church did not have any.  They were just people sent out into the world.  Their job was to be people of peace and wholeness and people who said to others that God was very close to them.  Note that there’s no special learning or subtle argument here. Just peace, wholeness and the closeness of God.  Those seventy, I believe represent the way the church is supposed to be in the world.  They are ordinary people, going into ordinary households, but making a difference.

            Preacher Barbara Brown Taylor writes about how far we have come from this basic notion of what the church is about.  She tells about a parishioner who came to her asking to be sponsored for ordination.  The young man was bright and articulate and capable of being a winsome and engaging leader.  But as they talked, Ms. Taylor recognized that he didn’t want to serve a church, was not attracted to a ministry of the sacraments and didn’t really want to preach.  “Then why do you want to be ordained?” Taylor asked him. He answered, “For the identity, I guess. So I could sit down next to someone on a bus who looked troubled and ask them how they were without them thinking I’m trying to hustle them.  So I could walk up to someone on the street and do the same thing.  So I could be up front about what I believe.”

            You see the problem, of course. By virtue of being followers of Jesus, we have the credentials we need to offer peace and wholeness to the person on the bus or to those we meet on the street. Our job in the world is to change lives.  The vast majority of us are not supposed to do that in church buildings, we are supposed to do that in homes and schools and hospitals and offices, in factories and on police beats.  Our job in the world is to offer peace and wholeness and the closeness of God to a world starving and tearing itself apart.

            One of the great privileges of my life has been that my job has brought me into contact with many veterans of the second world war.  One thing I’ve found that most of them have in common is that they speak reluctantly about the sufferings of war.  Only very privately do they sometimes remember—and then with tears—the fear and horror and deprivation. But the typical comment in spite of it all is this: “I look back on those years as the very best years of my life.  For once I really had the feeling that I was a part of something bigger than myself.  We had a mission.”

            It is the shame of the church that it takes a war to call out that feeling from people.  The fact is that we all of us have a mission.  This world of ours is hurting.  We are tearing ourselves apart with hate.  Greed makes all of us its cruel victims.  Despair waits for all our silent moments.  How desperately do we all need someone to come bearing peace?  How much do we long for wholeness?  How much do we need to know that God is close to us?  The ground we walk on every day is holy because what we do on that ground is holy. God give us all the sense of mission and the will to change the world.  As Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”         AMEN