Sermon: “The Kingdom of God Has Come Near”

Text: Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

14^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)

July 4, 2010

Scripture introduction.  Our second reading for this morning comes from the 10^th chapter of Luke’s Gospel, and it tells how Jesus appointed seventy of his followers and “sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town where he intended to go.”  Just one chapter earlier, Luke had told a similar story about Jesus’ commissioning the twelve disciples to go out into the world to proclaim the kingdom of God.  But Luke puts more detail into the story of the seventy, using much of the same source material that Matthew and Mark had used to describe the commissioning of the twelve.  Thus, Luke makes the story of the seventy a bigger deal, in contrast with the more matter-of-fact treatment he gives to the commissioning of the twelve.  He must have had a reason. 

When Jesus sent out the seventy, it was probably into Jewish territory.  Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem and would have been going through Jewish towns.  And he probably intended the metaphor of “gathering in the harvest” to refer to Jews; the prophet Isaiah had used the same metaphor centuries earlier in reference to the gathering in of all the lost tribes of Israel.[1]  Through the mission of the seventy, Jesus probably intended to alert all the Jews to the coming kingdom of God. 

The way Luke tells the story, he is faithful to the words of Jesus, which can be limited to a mission to the Jews.  However, Luke may have been suggesting something broader.  The number seventy is significant because, according to the 10^th chapter of Genesis, it is the total number of nations in the world. [2]  Moreover, in biblical times the number seventy was thought to symbolize a large totality—a complete and large whole.  Writing the story down more than forty years after it happened, and during a time of the expansion of the Christian church, Luke may also be suggesting subtly another possible reading of Jesus’ words—that the disciples of Jesus had been commissioned to an even greater harvest, going into all the nations of the world and bringing them, too, into the kingdom of God.

Sermon.  We could go many different directions with this text.  It might be interesting to reflect upon Jesus the organizer.  We are accustomed to thinking of him with his small circle of twelve disciples, but the suggestion in this text is that there were whole crowds who were following Jesus around and that Jesus organized them into advance teams that would go and prepare the way for him.  This was not unlike the strategy used by Paul the Apostle, who would stay in one place long enough to train some church workers and then would send them out into the surrounding countryside.

Or there is that tantalizing line near the end of our text, where Jesus says, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.”[3]  Does this refer to the moment, before the creation of the world, when Satan rebelled against God and was cast out of heaven?[4]  Or maybe Jesus is prophesying that future (?) moment when Satan would be cast down to the earth and to the pit, as is promised in the book of Revelation.[5]  I favor the interpretation that Jesus said this as a response to the joyful report of the seventy that they had power over the demons.  It was as if Jesus said, “Yes, and as you were ministering in my name, Satan was being overthrown.”

I’m also fascinated by Jesus’ statement to the seventy that he had given them authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and that nothing would hurt them.[6]  Based on this verse and another verse from Mark (16:18), there are Christian churches that engage in the practice of handling poisonous snakes.  Dennis Covington, a journalist from my home town of Birmingham, lived in several snake handling communities while he was researching his book, Salvation on Sand Mountain.  He was so taken up in the fervor of their snake-handling worship services that he almost was persuaded to handle the snakes himself. [7]  However interested I may be in this practice, though, I always think of my seminary professor, Dr. Kathryn Johnson, who remarked about the snake-handlers, “What good does it do anybody?  How does it advance God’s purposes?”[8]  That puts the snakes into perspective!

I take it that the point of all this business about Satan and snakes is to emphasize that when we go out and minister in Jesus’ name, somehow the power of Jesus goes with us and works through us.  We are not to glory in that power, but rather to be thankful that Jesus has allowed us to be a part of the work of his kingdom.  Rather than lifting a snake and saying, “Hey, y’all, watch this!” we should be thankful that, as Paul wrote,[9] God has chosen to put the inestimable treasure of the gospel into such clay jars—such ordinary containers—as ourselves.  Which, I think, leads us back to the main thrust of this passage—the mission of the seventy.  If we are right in thinking that Luke saw in Jesus’ words to the seventy a paradigm for the later evangelism of Christian churches, then this passage has much to teach us about our own witness in the broader world.  So, I’d like to focus the rest of the sermon on those lessons.

The first and most obvious lesson is that our witness should extend to every nation.  That is the implication of the symbolism of the seventy, the total number of nations listed in Genesis.  In his charge to the seventy, Jesus said that they were to go to every place where he would be going.  Of course we know that the risen Christ is in every place.  In point of fact, we do not have to go there first because Jesus already is there.  But he still asks us to go.  He still plans to use us, and for this we should be grateful.  Now it must be said that the missionary movements of the last several centuries have been successful in bringing the gospel to all parts of the world.  I had a Sunday school teacher whose brother was a missionary to the head-hunting tribes of the Amazon.  Perhaps there are still pockets of the world where the gospel has never been heard, but I would venture the guess that there are not many such places left.  I don’t want us to miss the full implication of an understanding that we should be in the all the world.  “All the world” includes Terre Haute, Indiana.  We have for so long been focused on “foreign missions” that we may have assumed there is no work to be done in our back yards.  I believe that nowadays our call is to our home turf.  And that is where our witness will be most effective.

Second, if we take Jesus’ words at face value, there are many people who would eagerly receive the gospel if we shared it with them.  “The harvest is plentiful,” Jesus said, “and we just need some more laborers.”  As I understand it, we are not responsible for planting the field, we don’t have to cultivate it or fertilize it.  We don’t have to worry about it getting enough rain.  We should be encouraged by this:  the harvest does not depend upon our skill as farmers.  The corn is already “as high as an elephant’s eye.”  All we have to do is pick it.  God has done the hard work.  The Holy Spirit already has brought people to the point where they are ready to follow Jesus.  We simply need to share with them the difference that he has made in our lives.  Twenty percent of Americans express no religious identity at all.  That’s one in five.  Of those who say they are members of a faith, many rarely attend a worship service or are otherwise involved in the life of the church.[10]  There is no need for us to steal sheep from other congregations; there are plenty of unattached sheep out there ready to be brought into the fold.

Third, although the harvest is plentiful, we will not always be successful.  Some of the villages and towns into which the seventy would go would not receive them nor their message about the nearness of the kingdom of God.  There are wolves out there who would oppose us and mock us.  But that is not our problem.  Jesus does not call us to be successful—only to be faithful.  If we tell someone what Jesus means in our lives, if we show them the peace of Christ and the love and grace of God and they do not respond, then that is not our fault.  Maybe they will respond to someone else at a later time.[11] 

Finally, Jesus told the seventy that when they came into a village or a house they were to be peaceable.  Try to find a way to help.  If there is sickness, minister in Jesus’ name to the ones who are sick.  If there are other human needs, do your best to address those.  But the gospel is never coercive.  Even if we could, we are not allowed to bully people into accepting the lordship of Christ.  We should pattern ourselves on the one whom we follow, who was himself the Prince of Peace.  Being peaceable means being willing to listen to the other person’s story, as well as being eager to tell our own.  If we are patient and peaceable, we may find points of contact between their story and our own that will draw them closer to Jesus.  Jesus said, “Go to their houses; stay in their houses; and eat what they eat.”  In a sense he was saying, “Meet people where they are.  Respect their humanity.  Do not look upon them as objects to be evangelized, but rather as brothers and sisters, members of God’s family.  Just being present with them is the first step in any ministry to them.

These are simple lessons, really.  (1) Pay attention to the harvest in your own home town.  (2) Be assured that the harvest is plentiful and many persons are well prepared for your witness.  (3) Expect opposition, for Jesus himself was opposed.  (4) Yet even in the face of opposition, be peaceable.  If we do this, not only will we be voicing the theological truth that the kingdom of God is near—for indeed it is—but we will be ones who make the kingdom’s nearness a reality for those who need to hear the message.