Luke 10:1-24
Today’s gospel is about mission, a helpful definition of which is, ‘finding where God is active and jumping in’ (former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams). And God is active always and everywhere!
To put today’s gospel in context. Jesus had earlier sent out his twelve apostles on the same task, to go before him to cure the sick and the broken in mind and spirit.
Immediately on their return, when Jesus was debriefing them, a crowd of 5,000 showed up whom Jesus and the disciples fed.
Jesus now sends out seventy more disciples, not the twelve, on the same mission. To learn how to feed his sheep.
The Lord operates in his kingdom the same way today. After we believe and come of a certain spiritual age, God starts to use us, or ‘send us out,’ even if we are not aware of it.
We learn and grow from the little acts of kindness, forgiveness, and generosity we may do. We are first trusted in small things, then bigger things, all just by being ourselves.
So what could today’s gospel tell us? A lot, I think!
Firstly, we are the body of Christ, not bodies of Christ. Jesus sent out the twelve and the seventy as one group, one body, yet individually fully empowered them with the divine facility of healing and deliverance.
Mission is this melding of God and the body of his Son on earth, the Church.
Now that make us feel nervous because we don’t feel confident in our own abilities. But that’s exactly how Moses felt in Exodus 4 when he said to God, “Lord, don’t send me. I have never been a good speaker. I am a poor speaker, slow and hesitant”.
But God wouldn’t let him off that lightly and said to Moses, “Who gave man his mouth? It is I, the Lord. Now go, I will help you to speak, and I will tell you what to say”.
And the same is true of us today, that if we are obedient to God in responding to the mission call, he will empower us for the task and give us the words to say. Like these 70 whom Jesus sent out, we may be taken out of our comfort zone.
But we go in the power of the Holy Spirit and are transformed from being mere bystanders into being participants in the work, or the economy if you like, of the Kingdom of God.
As it says on v.1 of today’s gospel, “Jesus sent them on ahead of him.” We are not responsible for what happens after we have been faithful in some act, prayer, or encouraging word.
God comes in behind us, after us, and is responsible for what happens afterwards. We say in the Lord’s Prayer that “the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory are yours.”
If we are obedient in the small things, it is God who brings about transformation in people’s lives, yet, in an act of grace, God allows us to be part of it.
This morning’s reading tells us that sometimes we will be accepted, and sometimes we will be rejected, just like the seventy in today’s gospel. The Christian Walk is on the narrow path, not the broad easy road. Sometimes the going gets hard.
Many of us can give examples of a selfless, Christ-like act or word that is deliberately misrepresented to others by the person we were trying to help. They tell an outright untruth about what happened or really twist and manipulate it.
This really hurts! My dear friends, take heart, for your reward will be great! This happened to Jesus repeatedly, yet he forgave them. We must too. This is the hardest part, I think, in our life-long walk with God.
Yet if we make up our minds to forgive and give our hurt to God, the Holy Spirit will graciously give us peace. God swoops in behind us for our sake, because he loves us.
Secondly, we need to be focussed on the task in hand. It’s easy for us to get side tracked and forget why we are on the journey in the first place. We, like all churches, need to constantly seek ways to share the gospel with others.
Sometimes we may need to speak – but mostly mission in parish churches is about attitude towards others, honouring and respecting everyone, how we relate to people.
Then when people ask us why we are filled with peace and joy and love, we can talk about Jesus, the cross, and the glory of God. It doesn’t work trying to do it the other way around!
Thirdly, mission is the process of bringing people near to the Kingdom of God. Jesus tells the seventy in v.9 to proclaim to the people they are staying with and healing, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ Jesus then shows some ways this nearness is demonstrated.
This nearness is fostered through the sharing of hospitality. We share hospitality both by accepting it and offering it. So, when Jesus says “eat and drink whatever they offer you” is to share hospitality and is a sign of the Kingdom of God.
The seventy were devout Jews who were sent to the other side of the Jordan, that is gentile country; for them to eat and drink whatever was put in front of them probably meant unclean food. Jesus said to them, eat it anyway – as a sign of my nearness to them.
In mission we try not to lecture people about how wrong they are! We are not about criticising or judging people; all that does is put barriers in place – we actually remove all barriers when they see we are truly interested in them as people, just as they are.
Hospitality (whose root means ‘caring for’) is sharing space together. I’ve told the story of the brother and sister we baptised here from an unchurched family.
Yet in the sharing of this St Matthews space for an hour, there was true joy, and they were reluctant to leave for they had been drawn near to God by God.
The kingdom of God came near to them, even though they are still far away in terms of the priorities of their lives. As we said earlier, we confidently let Jesus come in behind us. Hospitality perhaps is spending time with people who are very different to us.
Secondly, compassion and care are signs of the nearness of the Kingdom of God. In v.9 Jesus said, “‘Cure the sick who are there’”. Caring for the sick and the dying, the sad, the lonely, the hurt and the anxious, are all signs of the Kingdom of God in our midst.
Thirdly, proclaiming the Gospel is a sign of the Kingdom, verse 9 again: “Say to them, ‘The Kingdom of God has come near to you’”. To proclaim means to speak out, but first the relationship, then the proclamation.
People cannot guess the truths of the Christian faith. They need to be told about Jesus’ love and how that has been expressed through the Cross and Resurrection.
Proclaiming the Kingdom, clearly in words, is an important aspect of mission too. This is why baptism of infants who parents don’t yet know our Lord is fully missional work. They expect me to talk about the Love of Christ and how it will work out in theirs and their babies’ lives.
One final point I would make from today’s reading is that we know nothing of these wonderful, humble and anonymous disciples. The bible doesn’t tell us any of their names and they are not mentioned again in the gospels.
Yet they filled their master with joy (v.21), as they themselves were filled with joy (v.17).
This is the same today. The kingdom of God is spread by humble anonymous disciples of Jesus, just like you and me, who love God with all we are and have. Jesus continues to rejoice today, as our names, too, are written in the Lamb’s book of Life.
This is what Jesus meant when he said that the least shall be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. How wonderful is that. Let me pray …