3rd Sunday of Pentecost Happy Father's Day!

“Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples,
And gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out,
And to cure every disease and every sickness.
And these are the names of the twelve apostles…”

Wait a minute!
Something’s happening here, something important.
But it goes by so fast you may not even have noticed it.
In the first sentence, they’re “disciples”
Then, suddenly, they’re “apostles.”
What happened?

Even if you caught the change,
You may not have paid much attention:
“disciples,” “apostles,” What’s the difference?

They’re just interchangeable names for the same twelve guys, aren’t they?
What’s the big deal?

All over the country at this time of year,
There are young people (And not so young)
Making the same kind of transition.

The papers these past weeks are full of reports of commencement
speeches,
Lists of graduates,
Pictures of young people with mortarboards on their heads:
And parties to celebrate their change in status.
One minute they’re students, still in training,
Still learning the ropes and the rules,
Learning the formulas and logarithms,
Then comes the moment of graduation--
Diplomas in hand, shifting tassels from one side to another, grinning for
pictures with proud parents--

And suddenly, they’re somebody else. something else:
No longer students, but graduates,
Ready to go out into the world to practice what they’ve been learning for
these many years.

They’re no longer “disciples”--
Students, learning the disciplines of their craft or trade or profession.
They are, in effect “apostles,”
People being “sent out” into the world to do what they’ve been “discipled” to
do.
That is what “apostle” means:
Someone who is “sent out.”

This passage from Matthew marks the moment when the followers
gathered around Jesus “graduated,”
When Jesus seems to have decided that they knew enough,
Were formed, and shaped, and changed enough,
To be sent out to share the mission and ministry with him.

Unlike our contemporary graduates,
It wasn’t that they’d completed a nice, tidy set course,
With the required numbers of credit hours and proficiency exams.
Discipleship isn’t as easily marked out and measured as that.

It was more a matter of Jesus deciding that he’d taught them about all he
could, at least for the moment.
And he knew that the world needed their ministry.

For several chapters before this story,
Jesus had been traveling around,
Healing and teaching, and the crowds were building.

More and more people kept coming, with their pain and their need and their
troubles.
As he looks on them, he can see the great need--
Far more than he alone can reach.
And so it was time to add some helpers--

“to send out laborers into the Lord’s harvest.”

So Jesus called his closest followers,
And passed on to them some of his power--
The power to name and overcome evil,
The power to heal and reconcile,
The power granted to him by His Father, the living God.

And then he sent them out--
“Apostled” them--
With these instructions:
“As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come
near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out
demons…Proclaim the Good News, ‘The kingdom of God has come
near.’…It is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking
through you.”

And off they went, to do the work in his name, as disciples become
apostles.

Did they do it perfectly?
Not at all.
The Gospels and the book of Acts tells us over and over again of the ways
they missed the mark,
Dropped the ball,
Fell over their own feet.

They couldn’t understand the parables,
didn’t know what he meant when he predicted his own death,
slept when Jesus told them to stay awake,
they even deserted him at the end of his life:
and then barely recognized him when he was resurrected.
One of them even sold him to the enemy:
And YET--
And yet…

There is a church around the world today,

Witnessing in every nation to the Good News of God in Christ.
The sun never sets on the Christian hope,
The faith that proclaims the good news even in the darkest hour.
All because the disciples,
Imperfect as they were,
Answered the challenge of Jesus to be sent out to proclaim the good news:
That “The Kingdom of God has come near.”

Our baptismal promises include the promise that “we will, with God’s help,
proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.”
That’s because we too, are apostles.
It’s not just a term for those first twelve guys.

And sometimes,
We’re content to be disciples.
Safely gathered around our Lord, shutting out the world:
Sitting contently and safely in our churches.

But we’re APOSTLES.
And to be an apostle, is to risk, to venture,
To step out:
To be SENT out:
To proclaim the Good News of God in Christ.

And those first twelve followers of Jesus weren’t too different from us.
They weren’t eager to go out there,
Outside the comfort of the close circle around Jesus.

And like the first apostles,
We won’t be perfect.
We’ll make mistakes, miss opportunities,
Betray our Lord.
But our Lord is endlessly forgiving,
And he keeps sending us back out into the world in his name.

The first apostles, our forebears in the faith,
turned the world upside down, in the power of God.
You can too.

Go out from this place:
As a Christian graduate.
And be an apostle.
And imperfect, Forgiven, and loved, apostle.

Amen.