Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
Pentecost 6

Dear friends in Christ,
If you are, or have been, a homeowner, you’ve probably experienced something like this. You happen to look out the front window and you see someone, often a pair of people, walking up your driveway towards your home. If it’s a campaign year, it may be a politician. If it’s a young adult it may be someone selling a miracle cleaner that will take out stains in your carpet or walkway, stains you’ve long since ceased to care about. If men are dressed in suits, if women are in long dresses, if there’s a child in hand, it may be the Jehovah’s Witnesses approaching to share their views of religion. Regardless, if you’re at all like me, you just kind of want to go in hiding. Or, if you can’t do that, at least keep the conversation at the door as brief as possible. Take the literature, be cordial, but get them out of your personal space as quickly as possible.
Now that may not be true for everyone. I know there are some that actually like to engage such people in conversation. But not most. For whatever reasons, this door to door approach makes people uncomfortable and doesn’t seem very effective any longer.
I begin with this because in today’s gospel lesson that is precisely the approach Jesus uses in sending out 70 disciples ahead of him to proclaim the coming kingdom of God. This would be the Biblical text you would point to, to send out people two by two, door to door, to evangelize a community. If you were a Biblical literalist, you might say this is the approach Jesus himself commands, and it must be done regardless of the current times and people’s feelings about such things.
But I wouldn’t place myself in that camp. The sending of the 70 took place at a specific time for a specific purpose in a specific culture. To say that this is the only Biblical way to share the good news would be misreading this text. But I do believe there are some important principles to be learned, that we very much can apply to our current situation. I’d like to speak briefly about four principles for mission we can glean from this text.
First, the church, believers, you and I, must be involved in mission. Jesus clearly asks for and sends out laborers into his harvest. Mission is not negotiable. I’ve always loved the way Pastor Ray Rosales, former member of this church and missionary in Latin America, now deceased, said it in the introduction to his book, “It’s About Mission.” “The mission of the church is mission. The church exists for no other purpose than to send out and go out with the Good News of salvation through Jesus Christ. The church’s mission, its purpose, its task, its reason for existence is mission. … It is when the church has harnessed its power to the task of mission that it is strong and vital. When it gets sidetracked from mission, it loses its focus and squanders its spiritual resources. Whether it be teaching, nurturing, Christian service, worshiping, or private devotion, all should serve the central task of mission.”
This mission is both local and global. It’s not one or the other. One clue to this truth is found in the lesson. Jesus sent out 70 missionaries before him. At that time, it was popularly believed there were 70 Gentile nations in the world. If the 12 apostles were originally sent to the lost sheep of the tribe of Israel, the 70 have a broader mission. They are to announce the coming kingdom not only to Jews, but to Samaritans and Gentiles as well. The 70 are symbolic of the now global mission that Jesus was about to usher in. So the lesson reminds us of this first principle, the Christian faith is a missionary faith, meant to be shared.
The second principle is that we need everyone involved in this mission task. It’s not just the job of the designated leader, or selected leaders. If you are part of a faith community, it is your responsibility to in some way be involved in Christian mission. It’s not something you can leave for someone else.
In sending the 70, I’m sure Jesus was calling to mind the story of Moses some 13 centuries before Christ. After successfully leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt toward freedom in the Promised Land, Moses had problems with a somewhat rebellious and cantankerous group. So he complained to God, "I am not able to carry all these people alone, the burden is too heavy for me" (Numbers 11:14). In fact, Moses was so discouraged he asked God to kill him unless he helped him. So God asked Moses to gather 70 men whom he knew to be natural leaders and officers and to bring them to the tent of meeting, where God’s Spirit would come and they would become the leaders to give Moses the help he needed. And that’s what took place. Moses couldn’t do it alone. Thirteen centuries later, Jesus uses the same number -- 70 -- to recruit disciples to help him spread the word about the new kingdom of God. If Moses and the 70 elders were developing the Old Israel, Jesus and the 70 were about to develop the New Israel.
Today, that mission work continues, and it takes all of us to be laborers. Now it doesn’t mean we all have to do the same thing, or give the same amount of time, or contribute at the same level, but we all have to do something, to be involved in some way. Maybe you feel called to be the key person in planning and organizing a major outreach event like the “Neighbors Night Out” picnic we did a few weeks ago. That’s fabulous! We need leaders that can step up and give in that way. But maybe that’s not possible for you. Maybe all you can do is pray for that event from your home. That’s fabulous. We need that, too. If we claim to be Christian, it’s now part of our badge, our new DNA, to be involved in mission. We need everyone.
A third mission principle we see in this lesson is that mission is always done in both word and deed, by what is said and by what is done. To quote from the lesson, about halfway through, “Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you. (by the way, there you have the Biblical command to sample all those potluck dishes, one command I can actually consistently keep!) cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’” Meet the physical needs (cure the sick) and speak about God’s love. (the kingdom of God has come near)
It’s really important that we hold both of these dimensions together. It’s not just proclamation, sharing the message of salvation. Nor is it just social action, meeting physical and social needs. It’s both. It’s giving the cup of cold water, on behalf of and in the name of the Lord.
This week our youth director Joe Rand and seven others from the congregation are doing this mission work on our behalf in New Orleans. I’m sure they’ll have some amazing stories to tell about the devastation that still exists in many areas of the city, and the devastating effects Hurricane Katrina had on the lives of individuals they meet. They are present both in word, representing the Christian faith, and in deed, doing service as they contribute to the clean-up and rebuilding taking place. A missionary church does both, knowing that you can’t have one without the other.
The fourth and final principle of mission I see in the lesson is to expect mixed results. Not everyone will respond positively to your witness, despite your best effort and intentions. Some will, but not all.
I’ll always remember the first anonymous note I received as a pastor from someone who listened to but apparently did not appreciate a sermon I gave. It was in my first church in W. St. Paul where we did an outdoor service at the drive-in theater, that, of course, no longer exists. We’d collect information slips, much like the worship response sheets in our bulletin. A note came back, unsigned, “Pastor Beebe, please speak to us, not at us.” Ouch. I was young, just out of seminary, and had a high need to be liked, loved, and appreciated. Welcome to the real world. I guess somehow in my delivery of the message, someone thought I was being too authoritarian, maybe too domineering or something. Of course, there’s no way to respond to anonymous messages, so I’ll never really know.
Well, since that time I can tell you lots of different stories of people that have been upset about some aspect of the mission work that I and others have tried to do. My skin is quite a bit tougher. Sometimes, I’ve contributed to the problem in some way, and that’s on me. Hopefully I’ll learn and grow from that. But a lot of times, it’s on someone else. It’s their issue, not mine. None of us can reach everyone, or even be liked by everyone. Jesus is pretty blunt with the 70 he sent out. Stay where you are welcome, where the harvest is ripe. Shake the dust off your feet where you are not welcomed and move on. Hopefully, God can and will use someone else to reach a person we may not be able to reach. As the old saying has it: "If the horse is dead, get off." If people don't respond to the gospel or your representation of it, move on to those who do. Trust that God will use somebody else, in some other way, to reach that person.
Too often we make the mission about us. But Jesus reminds us here that people are responding to God, not to us. When wonderful things happen as a result of something we have said or been involved with, we need to be reminded that it’s God’s doing, not our own. Likewise, if things don’t go so well for some reason, we should not be overly discouraged, for there are some who just aren’t ready to receive what we offer on behalf of the Lord. We don’t produce the harvest, God does. We’re just the laborers, doing the best we know how to plant the seeds that, God willing, will one day bear fruit. Our ultimate joy is not in our success or lack thereof, but that, as Jesus says, our names are written in heaven.
I’m not going to ask for volunteers this morning to go out door knocking, two by two, this week. Past experience tells me there wouldn’t be many names on that list. But I am going to ask you to be involved in mission today. Mission is the work of the Christian community. We’re all called to do it. It can happen in many different ways, but is always done in word and in deed. And in the end, it is God that brings the harvest. So, go out in mission. It is what God calls us all to do. Amen