The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Ephphatha Parish of the Deaf
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY
Once upon a time there was a little girl. I am not sure how old she was, maybe 7 or 8. Her parents had a swimming pool in the back yard, and the little girl loved to watch the older children swimming and diving. But she was very sad because she was not allowed to go into the pool. She had to play in a plastic wading pool, and she felt that was something to be ashamed of. It made her feel like a baby, and so she decided that she wanted to learn to swim so that she could go in the big pool with the big kids.
So, our little girl asked her dad to teach her how to swim. He had her lie on her tummy on a lounge and showed her how to kick and how to move her arms. And she said, "Oh, boy! Now I can swim in the big pool!"
Dad said, "No, not yet. You have learned some of the things you need to know for swimming, but you have not tried to do those things in the water yet. You still need to learn how to do them for real, in the real pool." So he took her to the shallow end of the pool and told her to climb in and hold onto the side of the pool. He went in the pool with her, too. He had her hold onto the side of the pool and practice kicking just as she had done on the lounge.
And the little girl said, "Now I can swim!"
Dad said, "We are going to find out if you can really swim. I am going to hold you away from the side of the pool, and you try to swim. Don't be scared. My arms will be under you and if you forget to kick or move your arms right, I will catch you. You will be safe, but you still need to try to do all those things together, kicking, moving your arms and breathing carefully so you don't get water in your nose."
Dad stood near the little girl and held his arms under her so he could catch her if he needed to. And the little girl started kicking and moving her arms the way she had practiced, and trying to breathe air, and not get water in her nose. Pretty soon, she was really swimming all by herself, but Dad still kept his hands under her just in case, and she felt safe.
But then she began to get tired, and she lost the rhythm of the swimming stoke, and got scared. She forgot that Dad had his arms under her. She grabbed for the side of the pool, and she got a nose full of water, and began to cry and forget all she had learned about swimming. And of course Dad lifted her up out of the water and helped her calm down and told her that she had really been swimming very well, all alone for a few minutes, before she got scared.
"Did I really? Did I really and truly swim, all by myself?" she asked.
"Yes, you really swam all by yourself. I kept my arms under you so I could catch you if I needed to, but I was not touching you. You did it. You swam by yourself."
"But, Dad," she said, "I don't think I could have done that if I wasn't sure that you were right there, ready to catch me and keep me safe, if anything went wrong."
Well, the little girl was right, and that is the lesson for us in today's readings from the Bible. St. Paul, in his letter to the church in Galatia, makes it clear that he cannot do much by himself. All of his success in preaching and getting people to believe in Jesus is because he knew that God was working with him and through him, and that God would keep him from making mistakes in teaching the people and preaching. He said that he could not boast about what he had done. He could only boast about the cross of Jesus, and the strength that he, Paul, got from his faith in Jesus.
The story in the Gospel is much the same. Jesus sends out 72 disciples, and he tells them to preach and to heal the sick. But he also tells them not to take any money with them, no extra clothes, nothing at all but their faith in God and their memory of what Jesus had taught them. They were not to depend on their friendship with other people, or on how rich the house where they stayed was, or how important their host was. They were only to depend on God and get their strength from their faith that God was with them, helping them and keeping them safe, and guiding their work....like Dad's arms under the little girl in the pool.
And that is our lesson for today...for you and me, now, in the 21st century. We are not able to do much by ourselves. But if we truly believe, and remember, that we are doing God's work and that he is always with us, every minute of our lives, we will be working with faith, depending on God to guide us and help us pick the right words to say, choose the right people to talk to, and know the right time to tell that person about Jesus and how his death on the cross takes away our sins...including the sins of that person we are talking to. We cannot depend on our own knowledge, or what we have, such as special tricks or special things to say. We have to learn to depend only on God to guide us and to protect us if we get into trouble. That is the way Paul and the other apostles built the church. That is the way we must build it and take God's Good News about Jesus to other people, today, too. Amen.
