The Sauntering Pilgrim

The question seemed simple enough, but simple questions can quickly turn out to be not so simple. “Whom shall I send,” God asked, “and who will go for us?” The question that came to Isaiah in the temple was his call to carry God’s message to his people. I wonder what he might have felt as he responded, “Here am I; send me!” (You will find the account of Isaiah’s call in Isa. 6:1-13.)

Did he feel privileged, excited, full of enthusiasm and energy? What could be better than to carry from God’s mouth to the people’s ears the good news they had been longing to hear? “How beautiful upon the mountains,” we will read later in Isaiah’s prophecy, “are the feet of the messenger who brings good news” (Isa. 52:7). Did Isaiah look down at his feet that day and imagine how beautiful it would be to walk among his people with God’s message on his lips?

How beautiful it must have seemed to the first disciples of Jesus when they heard him say to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you’ll be catching people” (Luke 5:10), and they realized they’d be calling people into the same abundant new life they experienced when Jesus called them. Did they look down at their feet and imagine how beautiful it would be on the lakeshore and in the villages and vineyards to bring the good news that God’s gracious love walked among them?

And St. Paul – did he look at his feet and think how beautiful it was to stand where he stood and write about that divine love? “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude” (1 Cor. 13:4-5a). Hear those words in Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase.

“Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, doesn’t have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, isn’t always ‘me first,’ doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, doesn’t revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end” (vv. 4-7 The Message).

In one of his letters to the church, St. John continued the theme. “My beloved friends,” he wrote, “Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know [God] if you don’t love” (1 John 4:7-8 The Message).

How beautiful in the city, and in the suburbs, and in the country villages are the feet of those who are sent with good news of God’s love to family and friends, to neighbors and nations. For those who love are born of God and know God, and they speak of God’s love with the confidence “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).

But as I said at the beginning, simple questions – “Whom shall I send?” for example – can quickly turn out to be not so simple. So when we are sent with the good news of God’s love, we need to know that before the gospel is good news, it’s bad news. It’s bad news to the rulers and powers of this world and to those who are loyal to them.

It was bad news to King Herod. Remember how he responded to Love Incarnate by murdering every infant who had been born around the same time (Matt. 2:16-18). And it’s bad news to those who prioritize family values. Remember how Love Incarnate said he came to bring division even in families (Luke 12:49-53), and how he told those who carried his message that we will be betrayed and hated by all because of his name (Mark 13:12-13). And remember how Love Incarnate was taken to the cross and crucified by the rulers and powers of the world.

We who are Christian, we who by our baptism have intentionally embodied God’s love, we who have heard God’s call, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” and have responded by saying, “Here am I, send me” – we carry a powerful message of love that comforts the afflicted and, as the saying goes, afflicts the comfortable. We are called to take that message to Jerusalem, to the place where the rulers and powers of this world are most deeply entrenched, and to confront the darkness with the light of life.

Some will accuse us of being unpatriotic and even unfaithful when we are disloyal to any, especially to elected leaders, who do not embody God’s love. Some will consider us a threat when we confront the rulers of this age with the gospel of love. Nevertheless, our calling as the church is an essential calling to confront the rulers of this world with the gospel of love. As Martin Luther wrote, to rebuke rulers is not seditious when it is done by the church and through God’s word, spoken publicly, boldly, and honestly. If a preacher did not rebuke the sins of the rulers, Luther wrote, then he partakes in their sin and bears responsibility for it (Luther’s commentary on Psalm 82:1).

Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was martyred for his vocal opposition to the government of his nation, wrote, “The church must suffer for speaking the truth, for pointing out sin, for uprooting sin. No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and therefore a society with so many sores twitches when someone has the courage to touch it and say: ‘You have to treat that. You have to get rid of that. Believe in Christ. Be converted’” (The Violence of Love).

When God asks, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” and in our baptism we answer, “Here am I; send me,” we know we are sent to the hungry and thirsty, to the refugee and immigrant, to the sick and the prisoner, to the victims of oppression and injustice (Matt. 25:31-46; Isa. 58). We know we are also sent to the rulers and powers of this world who are responsible for injustice and oppression.

And when we confront the rulers and powers of this world, they will twitch. They will accuse us of many bad things, as the Trump administration is doing to the Lutheran church today. They will try to intimidate, silence, or marginalize us by whatever means they can. That’s when we must, as the author of the letter to the Hebrews encouraged us, “hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering,” knowing that “he who has promised is faithful” and considering “how to provoke one another to love and good deeds,” all the more as we see the day of God’s glory approaching (Heb. 10:23-25). ▪