I simply have to begin today with an “honesty” warning because your homilist finds this Gospel passage to be very odd. It appears to be an amalgam of perhaps a few authentic words of Jesus mixed in with a whole bunch of strange, later additions which don’t even come close to sounding like anything the authentic Jesus of Nazareth might have said. Today’s reading comes in a whole section of Luke from the ninth to the nineteenth chapters which takes place on the journey to Jerusalem, though actually very little of the material demands the setting of a journey. Throughout this nearly ten-chapter section of Luke, Jesus is presented as a wandering teacher, of which there is no doubt that he actually was, but it is absolutely important to recognize that the purpose of this material is not historical but theological. The Gospels, all of them, are not biographies. This material smacks hugely of later additions and editing. What is clear is that the intention of Jesus’s mission was to go toward Jerusalem, whatever that might mean for him in terms of his own suffering; the demand of discipleship is to follow.
Today’s reading about the sending out of the 70 is something only Luke relates. It seems pretty clear to me that Luke created this narrative in his time some 50 years after Jesus’ death to symbolize the later mission of the church to the Gentiles. That said, it is not difficult to imagine that Jesus, a wandering teacher, might occasionally send out some of his followers on mini-missions of their own to test the waters as it were about the message. There is little doubt that Jesus occasionally sent out his inner circle of the twelve. That he also had other followers is pretty obvious and that he might have sent them out too from time to time to spread his teachings wider. This “story” in Luke we hear today is then probably typical of numerous others times disciples and followers were sent out; as such it is fairly illustrative of what may have been a common practice of Jesus with those who followed him, be they his hand-selected inner circle of twelve or others, though I find it strangely odd that the other Gospel writers fail to mention this.
The whole notion of a mission of the seventy was clearly intended by Luke to by highly suggestive and symbolic of the mission of the early church into the Gentile world around them. In the Jewish literature of Jesus’ time, the number “70” became symbolic too, representing what was thought to be the number of the nations beyond Israel, the so-called Gentile world. There are many other interpretations of the 70 but frankly none of that matters much.
The bottom line is that Jesus was heading to Jerusalem; he was not making plans for an organized church. Neither did Jesus structure a world-wide campaign or mission. All that was a construct of the early church looking to legitimatize itself and thus reading back into Jesus things he never said or did. What is clear is that probably from time to time during his Galilean ministry, Jesus would send out his disciples and followers on mini-missions to get into places Jesus himself would not or could not go. These missions were to arouse his fellow Jews with an apocalyptic message of the nearness of the kin-dom or reign of God on earth. These “sent out” were to call other folk to repentance. They went out not alone but in pairs. They were to depend on the hospitality of their hearers for support. They were to cast out demons and heal the sick. They were to remain only where they were welcome. And all of this was because time was of the essence. God’s in-breaking reign was at hand!
With all of this, I must confess I’m not exactly sure what implications this Gospel story has for us in our day, beyond the pairs of white shirt and tie Mormon gents on our streets or the Jehovah Witnesses who knock on our doors and set up their watchtower displays on busy corners and bus stops.
Few if any of us have ever engaged in this kind of missionary activity. I doubt any of us ever will engage in the kind of missionary outreach Luke suggests in Jesus’ commission of the 70. Watching Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning or claiming your authority to tread on snakes and scorpions is probably not on your discipleship resume. It’s certainly not on mine!
Still this strange passage from Luke does remind me that those who dare to step out into the larger world to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8) often do so without all the comforts and the tools they may think they need. Those of us who have taken to the nation’s streets recently to confront malevolent political powers and their hateful and hurtful policies can find it to be a frightening risk-taking. Sometimes even opposing fellow advocates can be fraught with difficulty as opinions certainly vary about what to do or say in times like these. Like the seventy who are armed with very little, about all we have in our arsenal are study and prayer. God provides us with little else but some moral clarity and a willingness to stick out one’s neck. Yet thankfully that seems to be enough.
Jesus wisely sends his people out in pairs, pointing to the strength that comes from community support and mutual encouragement. Advocacy’s power can be multiplied when teams work together to draw on each person’s special capacities and to support each other. As a college student of the turbulent civil rights 60s and a seminarian in the anti-war 70s, I found then and now that the words of an old Chad Mitchell Trio song remind me that the best way we confront the powers and principalities and march and advocate for justice possibilities in our world is together, always together:
One man’s hands can’t tear a prison down…
One man’s eyes can’t see the way ahead…
One man’s faith can’t bring a world of peace…
But if two and two and fifty make a million
We’ll see that day come round.
If this story about the mission of the seventy who are sent out has any relevance for us, it just may lie in the clarity that authority and responsibility are dispersed in this movement of God in the world. That is a good thing to know, I think.
But I must hasten offer a big caution here.
When Jesus sends out the seventy, he both expects them to be welcomed AND to be rejected. Welcomed AND rejected. Any interpretation of this scene just goes terribly awry when this welcome and this rejection are assumed to be related to acceptance of Jesus as “Lord and Savior” as the evangelicals are always quick to demand. When interpreters get this order inverted, they provide fuel for the fire in which violent, self-righteous, so-called “Christians” like to burn (both literally and figuratively) those who disagree with them. It is time we stopped them from providing such fuel. Jesus expects welcome and Jesus expects rejection, which is to say that Jesus expects that some of his fellow Jews will remember their ancient duty of hospitality, to protect the wanderer and the immigrant among them, and that others will not remember. And those who do not remember their ancient duties given to them by God, recalling that Israel itself was once a nomad, a bunch of wandering Arameans as it were, will be rejected and shut out in return. “Not even the dust of your city will we accept as a gift from you since you do not remember what it means to be the people of God.”
Say what you will, it all pretty much comes down to the rituals of hospitality, about whom you welcome and about whom you shun. The stranger, the wanderer, the immigrant, the sojourner – all are to be treated as family, all are to be welcomed, all are to be fed and cared for. No real followers of Jesus would cheer on a concentration camp in a Florida alligator infested swamp. Or a shipping container of immigrants to South Sudan. Or sending immigrants to a torture den in El Salvador. No amount of wearing a cross around your neck hawking pillows or lying to the press while proclaiming Jesus as your “personal” Lord and Savior amounts to diddly squat if the duty of hospitality is not front and center, an obligation beyond all others – to love your neighbor, all your neighbors, as yourself. As my friend and Garrett-Evangelical Seminary colleague Phil Amerson says, “Why raise a hand to worship and never lift a hand to help a neighbor?” Helping the neighbor, extending hospitality to the least and the lost and the lowest is how Israel is to be authentic Israel and how the church will ever hope to be authentic Jesus. As the late Pope Francis said, “You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. This is how prayer works.”
We are to be roused by the nearness of the dominion of God in the most radical of ways – to do justice and to love kindness. Then and only then will we be the faithful people of God, a people prepared, a people who know that time is of the essence.
As Mennonite pastor Gina Burkhart writes in the current issue of The Christian Century:
“In our current political milieu, many feel powerless against the larger-than-life rulers who make and break the patterns of life. We need the reminder that ordinary, relatively powerless people are very often the links to life-giving change…. As followers of Jesus we can imagine the healing and wholeness our hurting world needs. Will we be vulnerable enough to voice our dreams? Can we be bold enough to redirect others toward wholeness? With the compassion of real love for others, we could arouse ourselves from despair and regain a footing as people of hope. We could be dreamers of God’s great plan of wholeness, joining God’s spirit to expect it, move toward it, and create it.”
To that I say AMEN and AMEN!
And I also say, “Jesus, here we are. Send us! Send us!”