“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……..”

Hey, wait a second.  Did anyone notice that in one sentence they’re “Disciples,” and then, suddenly in the next sentence they’re “Apostles?”  Go ahead. Read it again on your insert.  I wonder……….what happened?

Now, we could just see this switch as the author simply using the words “Disciples” and “Apostles” interchangeably.  After all, “Disciple…Apostle….What’s the difference”?  My guess is that many of us simply see them as the same names for the same twelve guys.  So, the switch in the usage of terms for the twelve in today’s gospel isn’t that big of a deal – or is it?  Well, I think perhaps it is in that it marks an important transition point for the twelve.

All over the country at the end of May and beginning of June there are young people (and some not so young) making the same kind of transition.  The paper has been and will be full of reports of commencement speeches, lists of graduates, pictures of young people in cap and gown, and recognition of those receiving awards.  One minute they’re students, still in training, still learning the ropes, the rules, the formulas and logarithms, syntaxes and structures.  Then comes the moment of graduation – diplomas in hand, shifting tassels from one side to the other, grinning for pictures with proud moms and dads – and suddenly they’re something else.  They are no longer students, but “graduates,” ready to go out into the world to practice what they’ve been learning for lo these many years.

So, in other words, 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.  You see, that is what “Apostle” means:  someone who is “sent out.

So, it seems to me that this passage in Matthew that we read this morning marks the moment when the followers gathered around Jesus “graduated,” if you will; 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, however, it wasn’t that they had completed a nice, tidy set course, with the required numbers of credit hours – and proficiency tests – and final papers.  Jesus’ discipleship evidently 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 has been traveling around, healing and teaching, and the crowds were evidently building.  More and more people kept coming, with their pain and their need and their troubles – “Harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd,” as Jesus describes them.  As he looks on them, he can see the great need – far more than he alone can reach.  And, so it is time to add some helpers – “To send out laborers into the Lord’s harvest ……” 

So, Jesus called to him his closest followers, the ones who’d been with him the longest and observed the most closely, and passed on to them some of his power – the power to name and overcome evil, the power to heal and reconcile, power granted to him by the Heavenly Father, the One, Holy and 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.

Yet, did they do it perfectly?  Frankly, no….not at all.  The Gospels and the Book of Acts tell us over and over again of the ways they missed the mark, dropped the ball, fell over their own feet, and generally were the gang who couldn’t shoot straight.  They couldn’t understand the parables, didn’t know what he meant when he predicted his own death, slept through his last agonizing hours, deserted him as he went to judgment and the cross, barely recognized him when he appeared to them as the risen Christ, and hadn’t a clue what to do when He ascended into heaven.  One of them even sold him to the enemy government for a briefcase full of unmarked bills.  And yet --- and yet -- there is a church in every part and corner of the world today witnessing in every nation and tongue to the good news of God in Christ.  Those twelve, imperfect as they were, answered the challenge of Jesus to be sent out to proclaim the good news:  “The Kingdom of God has come near.”

And you know, we Christians talk a lot and we hear a lot about being a disciple.  But perhaps we’re called to be apostles, too – those who are sent out.

In our baptismal covenant, we promise that “we will, with God’s help, proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ.”  We promise to be apostles.

Oh, sure I know that title has always been reserved, so to speak, for those first twelve guys.  And, after all, when was the last time you spoke of yourself as an “apostle?”  That would seem rather strange, wouldn’t it?

But you see, all too often we’re tempted to treat our life in the church as if it were an end in itself.  We’re happy to gather within the comfort of our own walls, with our friends, glowing in the presence of our Lord.  In other words, I think we’ve become content to be disciples, safely gathered around our Lord, sometimes shutting out the world.  To be an apostle, though, is to risk, is to venture, to step outside of our close supportive company and into a world of people caught in suffering and fear.  It takes courage to be an apostle.

And those first twelve gathered around Jesus weren’t much different from us.  They certainly weren’t eager to go out there, outside the comfort of the close circle of friends and companions, where they had to be “wise as serpents” as well as “innocent as doves.”  But Jesus saw the world, grieving and wounded, and knew the suffering, felt it in his own bones, in his own heart.  He sent out his first apostles to bear the power of God into the struggle with evil, to heal the sick, to bring the reconciliation of love.  And, I am convinced that he sends us still, to do the same.

I’m sure most of you remember the TV show, “Mission Impossible.”  In fact, it was a movie a few years ago.  Anyway, you may remember the line, “Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is ….”

Well, in a sense, Christians, as apostles of Christ, are called to a “Mission Impossible”: to bring healing, reconciliation, and love to the world, in the power of the grace of God.  Each of us has our own places to which we are called – families, homes, workplace, clubs and groups – wherever there are people hurting, searching, in pain.  Our world is as full as Jesus’ world was of people who are “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd”.

And, like those first apostles, we won’t be perfect.  We’ll make mistakes, miss opportunities, welsh on our word, 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.  And I really believe that you and I can, too.

Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to go out from this church to the world we live in.  Name evil and injustice and sleazy practices and work to change them.  Touch the sicknesses of the world – in all of its forms of fear, rage, racism, people set against people, hopelessness, despair, emptiness, pain – and heal it.  And to say to the world, “The Kingdom of God has come near.”  And, we don’t have to worry about how we’ll accomplish it.  The words and the ways will come to us, because it will be the Spirit of God moving through us.  So the “Mission Impossible” will become the “Mission Possible” in the power of God.  This is our mission, if we choose to accept it. 

Maybe it’s time for you and me to graduate.  Amen.

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