Luke 10.1-9
After this the Lord appointed seventy
others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he
was about to go. He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are
few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his
harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a
purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road. “When you enter a
house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ If someone who promotes peace is
there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you. Stay there,
eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages.
Do not move around from house to house. “When you enter a town and are
welcomed, eat what is offered to you. Heal the sick who are there and tell
them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 
Do you remember the prayer we often say that follows from our
Leading Your Church into Growth initiative? I wonder how seriously we take the
ideas behind it and internalise them: we’ve been exploring together what
mission means for us and how best to share the Gospel in word and deed in our
wider community. We’ll soon be moving into Christmas, which, of course, is a
wonderful opportunity for us as a church to engage in mission with our family,
friends and neighbours. So it’s a good time to remind ourselves what it means
to be a church dedicated to sharing the Gospel and that is what this morning’s
Gospel reading is about.
The story is about Jesus sending out his followers into
mission and you’d think that before he sent them, he’d want to give them strong
words of encouragement and to stir up their spirits and fill them with a sense
of joy and hope for the mission journey that lay ahead. But he doesn’t do that,
I’m afraid: in fact, his approach seems a bit counter-cultural.
Given Jesus’ approach, I’m not sure that that many businesses
would want to employ Jesus as a Personnel Manager: he obviously hadn’t been on
any team building courses. There is a huge task that Jesus wants his team to
undertake, so what does he say? “The harvest is plentiful. But the labourers
are few”. That’s not much of a way to motivate the team, really: there’s a lot
of hard work to do but hardly any of you to do it. Off you go!
And as if that wasn’t bad enough, he compounds the problem
further: “Go on your way! I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of
wolves”, and “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals”.
This task doesn’t sound very inviting, does it? It’s too big
for the team, we are likely to get ravaged by wolves, and we can’t take
anything with us to help us on the way.
Welcome to Christian mission!
But, as we’ve been recognising in the wider diocese, we’re
called to be take mission seriously and devote ourselves to this most
uncomfortable of callings.
When I was on the Yorkshire Ministry Course we had a unit on
mission which looked at the changing patterns of mission through the history of
the church and how those different styles reflected the needs and the thinking
of the church at particular times.
1. Filling the Ark was a term used by
our lecturer to describe the approach of the early church: “Jesus is coming
back soon, let’s get the ark as full as possible before the end of the age.”
That was the pattern for the first one hundred or so years of Christianity but
we can probably recognise that in the current approach of many Christians.
“Let’s get them in.”
2. Then, when the second coming wasn’t
quite as imminent as originally thought, the emphasis turned to a wider mission
into the gentile world with a greater emphasis on theological thinking shaped
by the influence of Greek philosophy as individual believers were encouraged to
consider union with God as the route to eternal life. There’s still a bit of a
hint of that in some of today’s approaches as the church seeks to determine to
what extent it can accommodate modern thinking and move with the times.
3. Then we move into the Medieval
Catholic period where authority became a key issue and the Church became
increasingly identified with the Kingdom of God and the faithful were expected
to render obedience to both the church and the crown. The emphasis on mission
here was to bring people into the sacramental life of the church so they could
participate in the penitential cycle and receive salvation. I think we still
find echoes of that approach in today’s church too.
4. Then the Protestant Reformation came.
All the trappings of what was previously believed to be pleasing to God and
necessary for salvation began to be peeled away to be replaced by a huge
emphasis on justification through faith in God alone by His grace. Can we still detect that in our mission? We
should be able to.
5. Then came the enlightenment and the
emphasis moved to building the Kingdom of God on earth: a Christian needed to
be a committed agent of social change as God’s Kingdom was built through
education, medicine and social reform. We still see elements of that approach
in today’s church.
6. Finally we looked at post-modern
mission which sought a locally rooted community of hospitality and care,
prophetically pointing to the coming of the Kingdom. We are expected in this
model to be practical theologians: in short, to walk the walk AND talk the
talk.
Now I enjoyed all of those sessions but what really struck me
was the idea that God’s mission, known as the Missio Dei, is exactly that:
God’s mission and I thought back to all the times I’d sat uncomfortably in PCC
meetings and other focus groups as we planned the latest parish mission. In
retrospect whose mission was that then? God’s or ours? It seems to me that all
attempts at mission are doomed to failure if the initiative is human rather
than divine. The one principal I always remember from those lectures was what
was to me was an inspirational message: to be involved in God’s mission is to
seek out where God is already at work and join in with him there.
So, given that, what do we learn from today’s passage about
the task of mission to which we are called?
Firstly, mission is a partnership activity between all of us
and God.
We read that Jesus sent out 70 men and this is important
because the fact that there were 70 people reminds us of the story of Moses in
the wilderness: Moses was tired and overworked and the people of Israel were
expecting too much of him and working him into the ground so Moses complained
to God, and God said to Moses, “Gather for me seventy of the elders of
Israel...they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you
will not bear it all by yourself.”
So we have the example of Moses calling 70 helpers for the
mission mirrored here in the life of Jesus as a reminder that mission and
ministry is not the sole responsibility of the leader, whether that’s Moses, or
Jesus, or even Brunel. No, mission, and the ministry that goes with it, is a
corporate activity that we undertake together as the Body of Christ in this
community.
Now that may make us feel nervous because we don’t feel
confident in our own abilities. But that’s exactly how Moses felt during the
Exodus 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. If we are obedient to God in responding to the mission call,
he’ll empower us for the task and give us the words to say. Like these 70 who
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 for the Kingdom of God.
If I can use a sporting analogy here, mission in some
churches can seem a bit like supporting your football team where 11 people are
running around, exhausted and desperately in need of a rest being cheered on by
a big crowd of people who desperately need some exercise. I’ll leave you to decide which of those groups
you fall into but we need to continually share the load amongst us because we
always need to remember that mission is a community act. And that’s why, in
this passage, Jesus sent them out two by two, in partnership with one another.
So, the call to mission is essentially a call to partnership
work for the Kingdom of God and we all have a part to play in that.
We also learn from this Gospel passage that mission requires
us to be absolutely focused on the task in hand. As a church we need to be
single-minded in our commitment to mission. That’s why, in verse 4, Jesus says
to the 70: “Greet no one on the road” which sounds like Jesus was encouraging
rudeness - but that’s not really what he was driving at. When it comes to
mission, it’s easy for us to get side-tracked and forget why we’re on the
journey in the first place. Too often, churches operate like social clubs – a
place to hang out and be with our friends - which is absolutely vital to church
life and if the churches in this benefice are not places where we’re forging
friendships and positive relationships, then we’re doing something seriously
wrong. Of course we must be a warm community but that’s not the sum total of
what we’re about: we’re to be a mission-minded church, constantly seeking ways
to share the Gospel with others.
So Jesus’ imperative not to stop and greet anyone wasn’t
saying that they shouldn’t be friendly to other people but saying that the
building of relationships was part of the task in hand and that they shouldn’t
get side-tracked and forget the missional work that needed doing by becoming
too comfortable. They needed to remain single-minded in purpose.
And as we continue to develop as a mission-minded church we
may find ourselves being taken by God outside of our comfort zones so verse 7
in this passage is really important. Jesus says: “Remain in the same house,
eating and drinking whatever they provide”. Well, that’s obvious isn’t it so
why is it worth mentioning?
Well, it was quite a radical thing to say to young Jews, who
would only have eaten ritually clean food. Because the mission they were being
sent on was to the other side of the Jordan, which was a Gentile region, if
they accepted hospitality Jesus is saying that, in order to be successful in
their mission, they would have to sit lightly to their religiosity and their rituals
and immerse themselves in the local culture so that there would be no barriers
to receiving Christ.
Of course, that is a huge challenge to us as a church as we
seek to remove any barriers that prevent others from coming to Christ in our
local community. We may be very comfortable with the way we experience church -
but, if we are to be truly missional and embrace the wider community, it will
inevitably involve us stepping outside our comfort zone in order to find new
and creative ways to reach out with the Gospel. And that can be as challenging
as it is exciting.
So our mission is a partnership activity, between all of us
and God and mission is a way of being that demands us to be absolutely focused
on the task in hand.
The final
thing we learn from the passage is that mission is activity-based.
This might seem an obvious thing to say, but being involved
in mission is about more than words; it’s about active engagement. In this
passage, in verse 9, Jesus exhorts his followers to say: “The Kingdom of God
has come near to you”.
But when we look at the world, we might very well question to
what extent that is the case; there is so much pain, so much suffering and such
terrible hardship in our society and across the world. These things are clearly
not signs of the Kingdom - but Jesus does point to other signs that prove the
Kingdom of God is near. In brief, there are three of them mentioned here:
Firstly, the sharing of hospitality, in verse 7: “Eat and
drink whatever they provide, do not move about from house to house…” The
sharing of hospitality is a sign of the Kingdom. And by hospitality, I don’t
mean just having a cup of tea or a meal together but that we are to share space
together, to celebrate diversity and to encourage one another in our walk with
God - even when that journey may look very different from our own. A
mission-shaped church is inevitably a hospitable church.
Second, compassion and care are signs of the Kingdom, in verse
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.
Third, proclaiming the Gospel is a sign of the Kingdom, verse
9 again: “Say to them, ‘The Kingdom of God has come near to you’”. People can’t
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.
So, this short passage has much to tell us about mission:
Firstly, that the call to mission is a partnership activity
between us and God.
Secondly, that we need to be focused and single-minded about
mission: we need to take it seriously and be prepared to move outside our
comfort zones.
Thirdly, that mission happens in a variety of ways: sharing
hospitality together, showing compassion and care to one another, proclaiming
the good news.
Our prayer must surely be that we become increasingly known
as a missionary people - not because of what we do but because of who we are: a
hospitable people, a compassionate people, a proclaiming people.
But remember, too: the mission is God’s mission: all that
I’ve said is good advice from Luke but there’s no particular pattern. “We’re
going to have a mission week targeting children. We’re going to focus our
mission on the elderly this year. We need a mission to young families.” No.
It’s all about behaviour, not about a mission strategy: mission only makes
sense if we discern where God is already at work and join in with him there. It
should never be our initiative. We go out; we meet people and we do our thing
as Christians where we see God already at work and in doing that we follow
Luke’s guidelines.
As we allow ourselves to be shaped by God in this way, the
community of Cleckheaton will increasingly join with us in proclaiming this
one, great Truth: “The Kingdom of God has come near.”
Amen.
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