Lectionary 14C/ Proper 9

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20 

All three of the synoptic gospels include the account of Jesus sending his first twelve disciples out. But only Luke includes the sending of the seventy that we hear in this morning’s gospel.

You can imagine the scene: while a group of twelve fits around a long table, this group of disciples is about the same size as our worshiping congregation. Addressing his followers Jesus adopts the language of harvest, saying "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few….” (Luke 10:2a)

Bringing in a harvest isn’t a task that anyone can do alone. Today I’m not even talking about the hours of labor that go into sowing seed in acres of land or protecting the crops against pests and weather. At harvesttime, before mechanized equipment, a farmworker could expect to hand-pick 100 bushels of corn in a day if the conditions were good. [i] Whole families would begin at dawn, trying to get the first “50 bushels, 2,800 pounds of corn, before lunch, and another 50 bushels in the afternoon, often harvesting until dark.” And it could take weeks to get it all picked. [ii] It was rigorous, exhausting work that seemed to go on forever.

And Jesus was describing not just one small corner of the world but all of it. The people listening to him had to be wondering, “How much can two, or twelve or even seventy of us do?”

Then Jesus says, “therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.”

The very first instruction that Jesus gives is to pray.

Pray for the harvest, remembering it is God’s work and God is Lord of the harvest, not us. And then pray for laborers to be sent into the harvest.

Jesus doesn’t say, “Pray for more church members” or even more Lutherans, but for more laborers, co-workers who will bear God into the world just as we are called to do.

The Lord’s harvest is about being open to God’s timing – a kairos time that doesn’t follow our human wants or demands – to tend to those whom God has prepared; those who can hear the Good News of God’s love and see God at work in the world.

The twelve were sent with “power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, … to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. (Luke 9:1-2) Here Jesus goes into more detail as he prepares the next group to go out. He sends his followers out, not to proclaim our expertise or our superiority, but with humility and vulnerability. Jesus asks us to bear God’s peace into the world and receive the hospitality we are given, without criticism or judgment.

Often, when we talk about going out into the world, in local service or international mission trips, we make our lists, plans and preparations and the people we intend to help become objects of our attention. As well-meaning as that is, here Jesus tells his followers to go out empty-handed, dependent on the provision of others, and be fully and peacefully present with people where we find them. It is a model of accompaniment, and relationship-building, that is focused on the person and not on a project or a job to be completed. Sometimes, that will mean taking a risk, being uncomfortable, and going places that are outside of our familiar routines and hangouts.

At the beginning of this gospel, Luke says, Jesus sent the seventy to “every town and place where he himself intended to go.” (Luke 10:1) In Luke’s gospel, that includes the synagogue and temple, but more frequently it includes places where demons inhabit adults and children or disease has withered and defeated people, places where people have been declared unclean and unwelcome; and it includes both deserted places and places crowded with hungry people.

Although Jesus tells us to go out and says he is sending us “out like lambs into the midst of wolves” (Luke 10:3), he does not send us alone.

Jesus sends us with authority. We have received authority because in Christ, God comes to us, and gives us all that the Son has, and the Son takes all that is ours. We no longer live as ourselves but as God’s people. We empty ourselves and become vessels to bear God’s love and grace into the world, and through our words and actions, we proclaim, “The kingdom of God has come near.” (Luke 10:11) Not because of our human presence but because the God who saves is with us.

We are given authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and power over the enemy, but too often, we forget that we have this authority.  The enemy is the one who tells us that we don’t have enough people or money or children and the Church is dying. The enemy is the one who defeats us when we are asked to do something new and are afraid. The enemy is the one who tells us God’s Word isn’t for us.

But the Good News we have from Jesus is that God’s Word is for us –God speaks the promise of forgiveness for our sin and promises the Holy Spirit is with us, here and now. These instructions that Jesus gives are not just for the seventy appointed on that day two thousand years ago, but for each one of us now.

Let us pray…
Holy and forgiving God,
We give you thanks for Your Son Jesus who sows seeds of peace and bears our burdens, freeing us to proclaim your nearness;
Take away our arrogance and our fear.
Give us courage and help us remember You have given us authority and power over the Enemy.
We pray in the name of Your Son Jesus.
Amen.

[i] https://www.tnfarmbureau.org/how-much-corn-can-you-harvest-day, accessed 7/5/2019.
[ii] https://www.tspr.org/post/how-much-corn-could-you-pick-hand-20-minutes, accessed 7/5/2019.