Below, for your consideration and reflection, is the sermon from Bethel's March 20, 2005 Sunday Morning worship service.

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“Go into the village ahead of you.” With those words, Jesus sends two unnamed disciples one step closer to the fateful events of what we now call Holy Week and his own Via Dolorosa, the way of sorrows.

I suppose the disciples, by this time, had gotten used to being told to do something, the significance of which eluded them in the moment. But they had also seen enough healings, heard enough wise sayings, felt enough the presence of the divine in Jesus that there was no good reason to question this latest directive. “Go into the village ahead of you.”

In the Church’s earliest memory recorded now in scripture, these two disciples remain unnamed. There is no special recognition accorded them, no highlighting of their obedient act, no special status assigned, no shrine built or holy day named to commemorate this event. The text doesn’t say if they came from the inner circle – Peter, James or John – or from what would soon become the outer circle – like Judas – or whether it was the reformed ex-tax collector, a non-rebellious zealout, or a soon-to-be doubting Thomas. We don’t know who it was who performed this mundane task.

Here’s one time, apparently, when there was no jockeying for position, no attention-getting shenanigans among the disciples. Let’s face it: the task itself is pretty menial, potentially messy, going to secure a donkey and her colt. Where’s the glory in doing such an ordinary duty? You walk ahead, find the two beasts of burden in the village, lead them back to the main road, wait for Jesus and the others to catch up. A smelly, dusty, dirty job.

It isn’t far, now, to Jerusalem, and the performance of this little duty, while providing a critical prop to the Palm Sunday entrance, seems hardly worth mentioning.

Humility has never been a popular word, perhaps least of all in our own age when the culture of instant fame on reality TV or the “pride in self” preached by pop psychology seem to be all the rage.

Who is willing to do something, for Jesus, something that doesn’t involve fanfare or accolades or a big write-up in the paper, something like simply caring for a donkey and her colt? While the disciples, and we, really want to be close to the master -- to show him that we know how to practice the discipline of humility and sacrifice, what we will mostly hear from the disciples this week – and perhaps from us, too -- will be empty promises about never abandoning him, never turning tail, remaining loyal. Easy enough to think or speak when you are on the outskirts of Jerusalem, outskirts of the Golgotha.

A woman by the name of Sue Bender from Berkeley, California, writes about her attempt to discover spiritual calm amid the frenetic busyness of being a wife, mother, artist, and family therapist. One day, when she was in her early thirties, she stumbled upon some quilts made by Amish women that she saw hanging in a Berkeley store. In contrast to these quilts with their “odd color combinations” and “deep saturated colors” that spoke of order and calm, she realized that her own life had become a “crazy quilt” and an “incoherent pattern” that she hated. She described her life as being like “hundreds of scattered, unrelated, stimulating fragments, each going off in its own direction, creating a lot of frantic energy. There was no overall structure to hold the pieces together. The crazy quilt was a perfect metaphor for my life.”

As these Amish quilts captivated her soul, she eventually had to go on pilgrimage to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, there to discover not only quilts that calmed her soul but faceless dolls made by Amish mothers for their daughters. All of her life, Sue Bender had been told, “be a star.” But now, these faceless dolls stuffed with straw or quilt batting or rags spoke to her of the Amish lifestyle where there was no “pecking order . . . none was better or worse than the others. They didn’t have to perform or prove anything. No voice said ‘be happy, cute, or pretty.” No voice said, ‘be a star.’

After her encounter with the Amish, with their quilts and with their dolls, she concludes, “in my world, everyone has a face, and many of us try to stand out. In their simplicity, these faceless dolls said more with less. . . . Maybe accepting who they are, they don’t waste their strength trying to change or compete.” (Searching for Your Soul, 426-437)

For these two unnamed disciples, in something as faceless as tending to the animals, there is the practice of humility and earthiness, a connection with self and the God within that offers a moment of transcendence and deep meaning.

Go, says Jesus; go without recognition; go in humility into the village ahead of you.

And go, trusting, knowing, that whatever the Lord tells you to do, whatever that is, can and should be done. The disciples didn’t always get it anymore than we get it, but I think Jesus tried to teach them that there will always be tatters and tears around the edges of faith – let’s face it, faith matters are never as clear and clean as we’d prefer -- always that dark ambiguity or slippery question lurks just around the corner. Providence, in hindsight, may always be 20/20, but in the present moment our purpose, our task, our calling is rarely so clear.

And so, if you are a disciple, now or then, there will always be those details the text just happens not to mention. Matthew, for instance, doesn’t say what village, which two disciples, if Jesus planned to ride on both animals, what kind of tree branches, nor whether some or all in today’s crowd might have changed their tune by late Thursday or early Friday morning. Nor just how many of those Passover pilgrims who flocked to Jerusalem really cared enough to stop what they were doing when Jesus rode into town.

The gospel story is like that – we have to search and prod and poke around plenty and try as best we can to fill in the blanks and details – and even then, my details may not agree with yours. But that’s alright – for it is really the open-ended quality and the mystery of it all that makes the gospel worth living in the first place.

Go, says Jesus; go into the village ahead of you, and go trusting that there (wherever there is for you) that there you will find your true self as you enter into that relationship that God has already entered into with you.

James Karpen writes about his spiritual journey. “Reading through centuries of theological works, the ones I have found compelling are the ones which deal with God as a reality to be experienced and sometimes understood, rather than a supposition to be defended. . . .” He read from the works of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Herschel and realized here was someone who knew about the reality of God. “In the beginning was the relation,” says Herschel. Not the proposition. Not the supposition. In the beginning, the relation. We know God because we are first known by God.” (Searching for your Soul, 460).

Go, in humility; go trusting that the one who began the relationship will never abandon what was once begun.

And, then, go to serve.

Securing the beasts of burden was just about the most inglorious task imaginable. Yet, it needed to be done. The standing of the disciples was finally not measured by their politically correct speech, or any innate or acquired ability to wow the crowds, or even their influence on the formation of the early church. But their importance lay chiefly in whether or not they had hearts for serving others.

A campus chaplain tells this story that bears repeating:

“I hold you personally responsible,” he began in a most exasperated and agitated tone.

“For what?” I asked.

“My daughter. We sent her there to get a good education. She is supposed to go to medical school. She is to be a third-generation nephrologist. Now she has got some fool idea in her head about Haiti, and I hold you personally responsible,” he said.

“Please,” I said, “could we try to be rational?”

He told me who he was, who his daughter was. I knew her, but not that well. She ushered nearly every Sunday in the chapel. She had also been active in various campus causes and had been one of the organizers of the spring Mission Workteam the year before. How could anybody be upset about a daughter like her?

“Like I said,” he said, “she was supposed to go to medical school. Her grades are good enough. Now this.”

“Now what?” I asked.

“Don’t act dumb, even if you are a preacher!” he shouted into the telephone. “You know very well. Now she has this fool idea about going to Haiti for three years with that church mission program and teaching kids there. She’s supposed to be a nephrologist, not a missionary for heaven’s sake!”

“No pun intended,” I said.

“None of this would have happened if it had not been for you. She has become attached to you, liked your sermons. You have taken advantage of her when she was at an impressionable age. That’s how she got so worked up over this fool idea about going to be a missionary.”

“Now just a minute. Didn’t you take her to be baptized?” I asked.

“Well, yes, but we are Presbyterians,” he said.

“And didn’t you take her to Sunday school when she was little? You can’t deny that. She told me herself that you used to take her to Sunday school,” I said triumphantly.

“Sure we did. But we never intended for it to do any damage,” he said.

“Well, there you have it,” I said. “She was messed up before we ever got her. Baptized, Sunday-schooled, called. Don’t blame this thing on me. You were the ones who started it. You should have thought about what you were doing when you had her baptized.”

“But we are only Presbyterians,” he said, his once belligerent voice changing to a whimper.

“Doesn’t make any difference. The damage was done before she ever set foot in our chapel. Congratulations, Mr. Jones, you just helped God make a missionary.”

“We just wanted for her to be a good person. We never wanted anything like this.”

“Sorry. You’re really talking to the wrong person,” I said, trying to be as patient as possible. “We only work with what we get. If you want to complain, you’ll have to find her third-grade Sunday school teacher. The thing is quite out of our hands. Have a nice day.”

And so, disciples who go by many names, whether you are nine or ninety, whether you’re having a great day or a rotten day, today, Jesus says: go into the village that is ahead of you.

In the name of the holy one who has claimed and called each of us for a holy purpose. Amen.