JESUS THE PIONEER

“After this, the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place he himself intended to go… see I am sending you out like lambs in the midst of wolves…carry no purse, no bag, no sandals…”  Luke 10:1, 3, 4

Today we conclude this week’s celebration of American Independence and freedom.  One of our most cherished freedoms is to be able to gather in an open forum such as this and worship God in the faith expression of our choice without fear of government reprisal.  Our founding ancestors believed so passionately about the dream and possibility of this nation they were willing to put it above and ahead of everything else, even their lives. 

It occurred to me this week that we could say there were two kinds of people that constituted the earliest days of this nation: pioneers and setters.  That’s what I want to talk about today: pioneers and settlers.  The early generations that populated this nation; those who declared the first colonies an independent nation; those who later pushed across the Appalachians into the Mississippi Valley and beyond were most certainly pioneers.

For better or worse the attitude and spirit that shaped the history of this nation was a pioneer attitude: a thirst for adventure; a willingness to put oneself at great risk; a need to push beyond the next horizon; a disregard for the conventions of comfort and security.

But sooner or later the pioneers became settlers. The pioneers and their descendants finally had to settle in.  Sooner or later the hard won gains of pioneer-ism had to be protected and defended by settler-ism.  Visible and invisible walls of security had to be built to preserve what the pioneers had gained; enemies had to be kept at bay. 

I remember the first time I saw the front range of the Rocky Mountains.  It was June of 1963.  I was with a group of youth on the way to camp riding the train across the boring flatness of Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and finally eastern Colorado.  Suddenly someone yelled, arousing us out of our dozing stupors, “Look - the mountains!”   We all scrambled to the windows and sure enough there they were in all their glory.  It was that week I fell in love with mountains and have spent most of my adult life near some of the great mountain ranges of North America in Colorado and Alaska.

I wonder what those first pioneers thought and felt when they came across the great plains and before them loomed the great physical barrier of the Rocky Mountains.  The barrier was so formidable to some that it converted them into settlers and places like Denver and Fort Collins were established, and here we are today.  For others, the lure of gold, silver and adventure were intoxicating and not even the prospect of 14,000 foot peaks, severe winters and a myriad of other life-threatening dangers could discourage them from pressing onward.

Living along the front range of the Rockies, even to this day, can give one a sense of being caught between two worlds: the pioneer world of mountainous mystery and risk, and the settler world of level, controlled, flat sight and safety. We who live along the front range of the Rockies are stretched between those worlds, attracted to certain elements of both, searching for our place in the picture.

I believe Jesus was very much a pioneer.   Last week in the Gospel from Luke 9 we heard Jesus’ self-description when he said, "Foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no where to lay his head." (Luke 9:58)  He lived on the road and had no permanent address - a pioneer. The image of Jesus and his disciples traveling on the road in the Gospels is so familiar to us that we seldom stop to even think about it - or more importantly stop to think about its implications for our faith.

Actually Jesus was an exception to the rule of his time.  At the time of Jesus, Jewish teachers and preachers were usually settled and situated. People came to them for instruction and inspiration rather than they go out to the people. But not so with Jesus! He was an exception to the rule.

To be a pioneer is to live on the edge, to travel light, be open to the challenges of each day, the unknown turns in the road, the sudden unexpected circumstances that arise, the unknown people you will encounter; the surprising vistas and resting places; the difficult obstacles; the joyful welcomes; the sour rejections.

To be a pioneer is to live vulnerable, letting go of the need to always be in control of every situation and to be open to what might intersect with your path along the way.

If the truth be known, 97% of the time we live just the opposite of a pioneer. We live as settlers.  We like to settle in and get comfortable and build visible and invisible walls of protection around all that which we call our own, that we've worked so hard to build!

We are settlers in that we have our carefully crafted agendas, schedules, and plans. We often label a day, week or year bad because something, somebody, some power, or some event has intruded, and interrupted and changed our well established plans: death, loss, injury, disease, trouble in the family, a drop in the stock market and a million other things can throw us into emotional and spiritual turmoil because in our hearts we prefer to settlers, not pioneers. We like to stay in calculated control.

We're settlers who often choose to be insulated enough that we can avoid the pain in people around us, or undesirable people we do not like or fear. We strive to position ourselves in such a way to walk around a difficult situation or avoid being asked to do something that we don't want to do - settlers.

But it is not so with the pioneer.  Life looks a lot different from the vantage point of the pioneer. The pioneer expects change, complexity, and interruptions. The pioneer has accepted the reality that there will be intrusions, violent twists and turns in the road. The pioneer doesn't expect that answers to complex problems are always simplistic.  Since a pioneer often relies on others and must interact for survival, the pioneer gets to know others in a way the settler and the resident sometimes never do.

Look at Jesus. If you enter into the gospel story you will see that Jesus was repeatedly criticized by the religious settlers of his day because, as a pioneer, Jesus saw the potential, the humanity, and the dignity in each face he encountered, especially in the faces of the least desirable; in the faces those living out on the margins; in the faces of the rejected, the unclean, the sinful and the condemned; those whom the religious residents and settlers of his day had written off!   He crashed through conventional and accepted religious barriers. 

"And Jesus appointed 70 others and sent them ahead of him saying... I am sending you like sheep to the wolves... carry no purse, no bag, no sandals..."

I believe these words were not only meant for those 70 appointed pioneer disciples, but these words are also a challenge to you and to me. Jesus' words are an invitation for us to be pioneer disciples as well.  Jesus is saying that to follow him, to name yourself after him, to call yourself Christian means to be a pioneer Christian - at least part of the time!

But what might that look like for you and me? What could that invitation possibly mean for such well established, entrenched settlers like you and me? How can we, settlers that we are, become more pioneer-like in our Christian walk?   I make two suggestions.

First, to be a pioneer is to expect that God lives outside the boundaries of your well-planned, well-ordered and well-scheduled days. A pioneer follower of Jesus adopts the attitude of seeing the next interruption that comes along not as an inconvenience, which it very well may be from a settler’s point-of-view, but a detour upon which you just may experience the awesome presence of God in a whole new way. When I look back I can see that the times I have grown the most in my faith, and experienced most profoundly God's presence have been on detours and twists in the road that came as interruptions, surprises and inconveniences – even in the tragedies and traumas I have experienced along the way.

In the Bible God's people frequently grew most in faith, not within the boundaries of their well-ordered plans, but when they found themselves, against their will, wandering in the wilderness, taking the unexpected fork in the road. It was out there living on the edge of adventure and risk that they learned what it meant to trust and rely upon God.

Second, a pioneer risks living with fewer walls and boundaries.  For a long time now I have repeatedly insisted that one of the great sins of Christianity is that we have confined and bottled-up God’s incredible kingdom of grace given through Jesus Christ behind so many confining walls and constricting boundaries:  boundaries of denominationalism; walls of a specific personal piety; boundaries of specific biblical interpretation; confining walls of theological viewpoint; behind boundaries of this and walls of that.  We peek over the tops of our walls in judgment and condescension at those who are different from us in any way. 

This week was Independence Day for our nation, but in the kingdom of God every day is Independence Day.  Every Day God in Jesus Christ is calling us out from behind our walls and boundaries setting us free to bring God’s kingdom of grace and good news to the world. 

Jesus had vision, not of singular nation, but a vision of the kingdom of God’s grace, and he believed so passionately in that vision he gave his life for it – and it is through his death and subsequent resurrection that that kingdom is continually reborn in the world in human hearts. 

Let the Kingdom of God's grace be reborn in you every day.

The living out of and application of God’s grace as expressed in Jesus Christ is going to be complex and not always simple in our kind of world.   Fear and uncertainty will tempt us to abandon the pioneer spirit and convert to settlers.  But this I do believe.  God’s grace will continually invite us out from behind settler’s walls to the exciting life of pioneers, following the greatest pioneer of all, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.