St. Luke, Evangelist
Marching Orders
Luke 10:1-9
St. Luke, Evangelist
October 18, 2009
Today is the feast day of the only writer of any book of either Testament who was a Gentile.
Luke was a Greek doctor and sometime companion of Paul on his missionary journeys. He was the author both of the Gospel which bears his name, and of the Acts of the Apostles- the New Testament's record of the spread of Christianity through the ministry of Paul and Luke and Barnabas and Silas and John Mark and the others who were involved in the Church's first, explosive growth. That being the case, it's especially appropriate that the reading from his Gospel, which is appointed for his feast day, is about being sent by Jesus into the world to proclaim the Good News to those who haven't heard it.
The actual context is the sending of the Seventy-Two, a group of those beyond the Twelve Apostles who followed Jesus. They were, in effect, to act as His "advance team," visiting the places where Jesus Himself would go later. Our Lord's instructions are remarkably brief. They involve no elaborate preparations. As church growth programs go, this set of directions is remarkably simple and to the point.
The first thing Jesus tells the Seventy-Two to do is to pray that God would send laborers into the harvest. "The harvest is plentiful," He tells them, "but the laborers are few." That hardly seems to be the case! Any of us who have ever been involved in evangelism know just what a discouraging task it can be.
There was an area of central and western New York State, which the heretic Charles Finney- who believed that evangelism was simply a matter of salesmanship, involving nothing whatever of a supernatural character- called "the burned-over district." So much evangelizing had been done there that Finney complained that there was no "fuel" left to re-kindle the fire. People had seemingly become immune to evangelism. Mention Jesus to people in that area, and their eyes would glaze over. Knock on their doors, and they would immediately tell their wives, "Oh, no. Another evangelist. Get rid of him, Martha!"
There's a sense in which all of America is a kind of burned-over district. Just about everybody has heard about Jesus. That doesn't mean, of course, that what they've heard is accurate- it's probably not- nor does it mean that they can see what relevance He has to their lives. Unfortunately, Finney’s spiritual descendants- those who look upon evangelism as a sales job- have predominated among those who have taken it upon themselves to spread what they believe to be the Gospel in this country, and it’s often been a mixture of legalism and jargon which has distorted the Message and obscured the Good News. That’s what always happens when mere humans usurp God’s job of making Christians, instead of being content to be His humble instruments.
But Jesus didn't send the Seventy-Two do be salesmen. Nor did He send Paul andv Luke and their companions to be salesmen. And He doesn't send us to be salesmen, either. He didn't tell the Seventy Two to advertise for harvesters, or to recruit harvesters. He told them to pray that laborers be sent into the harvest. From the beginning, He wanted to be sure that they understood that- Finney to the contrary- God is the One Who is in charge when the Gospel is shared. The Holy Spirit, Who operates through the Word, is the only “soul winner.” Our job is to speak the word.
We are not, the Church Growth people to the contrary, told to succeed in filling the pews, and the only way to fail in our mission is to fail to do the one thing we’re commanded to do: to speak the Word. It does not return to Him empty. It either converts, or it plants a seed, or it judges. But it never fails. Never.
But first, we are told to pray that God would send laborers into the harvest- because whether we can see it or not, the harvest is plentiful. There are multitudes who are carrying burdens too heavy for them to bear, and who think that what we have to offer is a greater burden still. But the yoke of Jesus is easy, and His burden is light. He sends us, not to add to their burdens, but to be the means by which He lifts them.
He calls us to be, in the words a D.T. Niles, “one beggar telling another where to find bread.” He offers the Seventy Two no courses in evangelism. The procedure He lays before them involves a notable lack of premeditation. He tells the Seventy-Two not to bother with a moneybag, a knapsack, or even with shoes. He tells them not to waste time saying “hi” to that neighbor they pass on the road. The task is too urgent. The job is too big.
There is a scene in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in which the resurrected Aslan, accompanied by Edmond and Lucy, recruits his army for the coming battle by breathing on those the Witch has turned into stone, and bringing them to life again. Aslan, of course, is Jesus, Who breathed on His disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Pneuma in Greek means “spirit.” But it also means “breath-“ just as the Old Testament Hebrew equivalent- ru’ach, what God breathed into Adam so that Adam became a living creature- means both “breath” and “spirit.”
The task is not to sell. The task is not to debate. The task is to share the breath of God, the Spirit of God, Who alone can give spiritual life and Who alone can win souls- and who does so through the Word about Jesus.
Jesus sent the Seventy-Two out as sheep among wolves. He sends us out that way, too. Despite the size of the harvest, our perception is right about one thing: we live in the midst of a culture that is profoundly hostile to the Word.
But the world of the First Century was that way, too. We may be rejected when we speak of the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life through Jesus. But we will not be made into pariahs for our faith. We will not be boiled in oil, or skinned alive, or beheaded, or crucified upside down, as tradition says the Apostles were. We will not be exiled, as was John- the only one of the Apostles to die a natural death. But Jesus does not promise us that the fruit our witness bears will always be visible, or that it will always lead to acceptance. Sometimes the Word judges rather than converts. And sometimes even when it converts, it bears fruit years later.
But we are not asked for results. We are simply sent out as the Seventy-Two were, to bear witness to the coming of the Kingdom of God.
The Word that we are called upon to speak does sometimes judge, even if we ourselves are commanded not to. People don’t like to hear that Word of judgment. But here’s a point, which the latter-day Finneys forget, but which is of the very essence: we are sent, not as sheriff’s deputies bearing a writ of condemnation, but as liberators, bearing a word of pardon. The Word of judgment- where the Word does judge- does so only in order to prepare the way for the Word of healing. The Law always prepares the way for the Gospel. We are sent, in the words of the pastor from Giertz’s The Hammer of God, as a visitor to the cell of the condemned bearing a letter of pardon in his pocket.
We are sent, not to indict, but to deliver God’s pardon. Our task is to represent, as the gang-bangers put it; to show the colors, to be whom God the Holy Spirit has, through baptism and the Word, has made us.
And what is it that baptism and he Word have made us? Forgiven. Healed. Pardoned. Strengthened. We are sent out as exactly what the people we encounter are: ordinary, fallible people no better and no worse than they, but whose failings are washed clean every day by the water of our baptism, and by the blood of Jesus.
We are sent out as people who are often confused and bewildered and at a loss, just like those to whom we are sent- but who by God’s grace trust that God has our times in His hands, and will bring us through our stumbling journey through all the detours our own willfulness and lack of trust take us on and all the disasters life can dish out to an eternal home.
We are sent as people who make mistakes, who drop the ball- and who, worse, act and speak selfishly and sometimes hurtfully to others, but who in Christ have both forgiveness for our sin and the means of healing for the relationships that it bends and sometimes breaks. We are sent as people who screw up.
We are sent out, not as people who have arrived, but as people who know where we are going; not as people who succeed, but as people whose shortcomings are forgiven and, at length, healed; as people in need, but whose need has been met- and continues to be met every day.
We are sent out as people in the same boat as others, as so many beggars telling other beggars where bread can be found. Some will listen; others may not. That is not our concern. We are not called to bring people to Christ. We are not called to prosper, to fill the pews, or to grow as a congregation.
We are called to be nothing more or less than what our baptism has made us: unworthy people made worthy by the merits of Jesus; sinners forgiven by a grace God wants to share with all human beings; people drowning in a sea of our own unworthiness, made worthy and kept alive by a life preserver in the shape of a cross, able to keep any number of the drowning people we encounter afloat as surely as it has rescued us.
We are called to finally do nothing more or less than to invite the drowning people all around us to grab hold, and live. Or rather, to give them the opportunity to be grasped through the Word by the One Who has rescued us, and who is able to bring them to safety as surely as we.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
Luke 10:1-9
St. Luke, Evangelist
October 18, 2009
Today is the feast day of the only writer of any book of either Testament who was a Gentile.
Luke was a Greek doctor and sometime companion of Paul on his missionary journeys. He was the author both of the Gospel which bears his name, and of the Acts of the Apostles- the New Testament's record of the spread of Christianity through the ministry of Paul and Luke and Barnabas and Silas and John Mark and the others who were involved in the Church's first, explosive growth. That being the case, it's especially appropriate that the reading from his Gospel, which is appointed for his feast day, is about being sent by Jesus into the world to proclaim the Good News to those who haven't heard it.
The actual context is the sending of the Seventy-Two, a group of those beyond the Twelve Apostles who followed Jesus. They were, in effect, to act as His "advance team," visiting the places where Jesus Himself would go later. Our Lord's instructions are remarkably brief. They involve no elaborate preparations. As church growth programs go, this set of directions is remarkably simple and to the point.
The first thing Jesus tells the Seventy-Two to do is to pray that God would send laborers into the harvest. "The harvest is plentiful," He tells them, "but the laborers are few." That hardly seems to be the case! Any of us who have ever been involved in evangelism know just what a discouraging task it can be.
There was an area of central and western New York State, which the heretic Charles Finney- who believed that evangelism was simply a matter of salesmanship, involving nothing whatever of a supernatural character- called "the burned-over district." So much evangelizing had been done there that Finney complained that there was no "fuel" left to re-kindle the fire. People had seemingly become immune to evangelism. Mention Jesus to people in that area, and their eyes would glaze over. Knock on their doors, and they would immediately tell their wives, "Oh, no. Another evangelist. Get rid of him, Martha!"
There's a sense in which all of America is a kind of burned-over district. Just about everybody has heard about Jesus. That doesn't mean, of course, that what they've heard is accurate- it's probably not- nor does it mean that they can see what relevance He has to their lives. Unfortunately, Finney’s spiritual descendants- those who look upon evangelism as a sales job- have predominated among those who have taken it upon themselves to spread what they believe to be the Gospel in this country, and it’s often been a mixture of legalism and jargon which has distorted the Message and obscured the Good News. That’s what always happens when mere humans usurp God’s job of making Christians, instead of being content to be His humble instruments.
But Jesus didn't send the Seventy-Two do be salesmen. Nor did He send Paul andv Luke and their companions to be salesmen. And He doesn't send us to be salesmen, either. He didn't tell the Seventy Two to advertise for harvesters, or to recruit harvesters. He told them to pray that laborers be sent into the harvest. From the beginning, He wanted to be sure that they understood that- Finney to the contrary- God is the One Who is in charge when the Gospel is shared. The Holy Spirit, Who operates through the Word, is the only “soul winner.” Our job is to speak the word.
We are not, the Church Growth people to the contrary, told to succeed in filling the pews, and the only way to fail in our mission is to fail to do the one thing we’re commanded to do: to speak the Word. It does not return to Him empty. It either converts, or it plants a seed, or it judges. But it never fails. Never.
But first, we are told to pray that God would send laborers into the harvest- because whether we can see it or not, the harvest is plentiful. There are multitudes who are carrying burdens too heavy for them to bear, and who think that what we have to offer is a greater burden still. But the yoke of Jesus is easy, and His burden is light. He sends us, not to add to their burdens, but to be the means by which He lifts them.
He calls us to be, in the words a D.T. Niles, “one beggar telling another where to find bread.” He offers the Seventy Two no courses in evangelism. The procedure He lays before them involves a notable lack of premeditation. He tells the Seventy-Two not to bother with a moneybag, a knapsack, or even with shoes. He tells them not to waste time saying “hi” to that neighbor they pass on the road. The task is too urgent. The job is too big.
There is a scene in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in which the resurrected Aslan, accompanied by Edmond and Lucy, recruits his army for the coming battle by breathing on those the Witch has turned into stone, and bringing them to life again. Aslan, of course, is Jesus, Who breathed on His disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Pneuma in Greek means “spirit.” But it also means “breath-“ just as the Old Testament Hebrew equivalent- ru’ach, what God breathed into Adam so that Adam became a living creature- means both “breath” and “spirit.”
The task is not to sell. The task is not to debate. The task is to share the breath of God, the Spirit of God, Who alone can give spiritual life and Who alone can win souls- and who does so through the Word about Jesus.
Jesus sent the Seventy-Two out as sheep among wolves. He sends us out that way, too. Despite the size of the harvest, our perception is right about one thing: we live in the midst of a culture that is profoundly hostile to the Word.
But the world of the First Century was that way, too. We may be rejected when we speak of the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life through Jesus. But we will not be made into pariahs for our faith. We will not be boiled in oil, or skinned alive, or beheaded, or crucified upside down, as tradition says the Apostles were. We will not be exiled, as was John- the only one of the Apostles to die a natural death. But Jesus does not promise us that the fruit our witness bears will always be visible, or that it will always lead to acceptance. Sometimes the Word judges rather than converts. And sometimes even when it converts, it bears fruit years later.
But we are not asked for results. We are simply sent out as the Seventy-Two were, to bear witness to the coming of the Kingdom of God.
The Word that we are called upon to speak does sometimes judge, even if we ourselves are commanded not to. People don’t like to hear that Word of judgment. But here’s a point, which the latter-day Finneys forget, but which is of the very essence: we are sent, not as sheriff’s deputies bearing a writ of condemnation, but as liberators, bearing a word of pardon. The Word of judgment- where the Word does judge- does so only in order to prepare the way for the Word of healing. The Law always prepares the way for the Gospel. We are sent, in the words of the pastor from Giertz’s The Hammer of God, as a visitor to the cell of the condemned bearing a letter of pardon in his pocket.
We are sent, not to indict, but to deliver God’s pardon. Our task is to represent, as the gang-bangers put it; to show the colors, to be whom God the Holy Spirit has, through baptism and the Word, has made us.
And what is it that baptism and he Word have made us? Forgiven. Healed. Pardoned. Strengthened. We are sent out as exactly what the people we encounter are: ordinary, fallible people no better and no worse than they, but whose failings are washed clean every day by the water of our baptism, and by the blood of Jesus.
We are sent out as people who are often confused and bewildered and at a loss, just like those to whom we are sent- but who by God’s grace trust that God has our times in His hands, and will bring us through our stumbling journey through all the detours our own willfulness and lack of trust take us on and all the disasters life can dish out to an eternal home.
We are sent as people who make mistakes, who drop the ball- and who, worse, act and speak selfishly and sometimes hurtfully to others, but who in Christ have both forgiveness for our sin and the means of healing for the relationships that it bends and sometimes breaks. We are sent as people who screw up.
We are sent out, not as people who have arrived, but as people who know where we are going; not as people who succeed, but as people whose shortcomings are forgiven and, at length, healed; as people in need, but whose need has been met- and continues to be met every day.
We are sent out as people in the same boat as others, as so many beggars telling other beggars where bread can be found. Some will listen; others may not. That is not our concern. We are not called to bring people to Christ. We are not called to prosper, to fill the pews, or to grow as a congregation.
We are called to be nothing more or less than what our baptism has made us: unworthy people made worthy by the merits of Jesus; sinners forgiven by a grace God wants to share with all human beings; people drowning in a sea of our own unworthiness, made worthy and kept alive by a life preserver in the shape of a cross, able to keep any number of the drowning people we encounter afloat as surely as it has rescued us.
We are called to finally do nothing more or less than to invite the drowning people all around us to grab hold, and live. Or rather, to give them the opportunity to be grasped through the Word by the One Who has rescued us, and who is able to bring them to safety as surely as we.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
Comments