Give Me Your Tired

Luke 10:1-11, 17-20

This Sunday is the 4th of July, so it’s appropriate to mention what Emma Lazarus wrote as the Inscription on the Statue of Liberty. It says,

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,  
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me;
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

If I didn’t know better, I might think Jesus said this. Maybe he did and Luke decided not to include it, thinking it could be used somewhere else. Sunday’s text would be a good place to say it since Jesus was talking about needing laborers for the harvest.

It seems to me that if we are trying to be the body of Jesus Christ in our communities, and if we accept the call to be laborers in the harvest, we might take the inscription on the Statue of Liberty and put it above the front doors of our churches. What a perfect invitation for a church to extend to its community:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to us;
We lift our Lamp beside the golden door.

Statistics tell us that over 83% of the people in our neighborhoods won’t be in church Sunday morning. That might increase on July 4. The harvest is plentiful.

We need more laborers, more people willing to share what feeds them as they participate in a church community. Sharing the good news is more about growing in relationship with people than it is about recruitment.

Being the church is about people gathering in Christ’s name to rejoice in life’s blessings, helping each other in difficult times, and establishing a reputation in our communities for our kindness, our ability to help others, and our willingness to help. People are attracted to churches when we share the peace we know in Christ.

Once these tired and poor are drawn to us, I hope we can give them a place where they can experience the fruits of the Spirit: peace, joy, love, goodness, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, and self-control.

Peace - PWM