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Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
July 8, 2007 Sermon by The Rev. Bill Van Oss, Rector
Readings       

Jesus sent the seventy out on a mission trip. These disciples had been sitting at the Master’s feet, learning the ways of compassion, mercy, justice, peace and love, and now Jesus sent them, “Go, do good, practice what I have taught you, put your faith into action.”

It’s interesting to note that Jesus spends more time telling the seventy how to engage in mission than what they’d be doing. What they were to do was very simple: cure the sick and tell everyone who was willing to listen that “the Kingdom of God has come near.” But how they were to go about doing it – Jesus goes into elaborate detail:

Go in pairs, carry no purse, bag, or sandals, don’t spend a lot of time making idle chatter along the way, accept people’s hospitality and don’t move around, eat what they serve you, don’t get all caught up in the dietary restrictions and ritual washings spelled out in the law. In other words, focus on the ministry. Focus on the people you’ll serve and not on yourself.

Because you’ll need a single-minded dedication, people will reject you, “you are like lambs in the midst of wolves.” Sometimes you’ll simply have to shake the dust off your feet and move on. “Now, go out and do good”, Jesus says.

And then there’s the wonderful lines at the end of the Gospel where the disciples return “with joy” – filled with excitement and enthusiasm and they say, “Lord, it worked” – love and goodness have overcome evil and hate. The power of the enemy has been overcome. “Satan has fallen from the sky.”

Filled with joy - the disciples were – joy and enthusiasm for they had seen the power of love, the power of goodness and compassion and mercy and healing.

They had been sent on a mission trip to save the world, the change the world, and they had seen the world could be changed and that they, too, could be changed. For ministry had changed them, filled them with joy and energy and enthusiasm. Energy and enthusiasm means “filled with God.”

Back in the early 1990’s, I had the good fortune to lead a group of teenagers on a mission trip. About 20 of us piled into two vans in Appleton, Wisconsin, and made our way to Hartford, Connecticut to do good.

We were to work in a soup kitchen in the inner city, a place called “The House of Bread.” We would paint some apartments that served as transitional housing for young mothers, and clean up and help fix a playground that was in disrepair.

We needed to pack light for our journey. Twenty of us in two small vans, without a lot of room for hair dryers and boom boxes (remember those?), and no room for extra changes of clothes.

We’d be staying in the apartments of host families – we stayed in pairs – and the teens were thoroughly instructed that the food would probably be different, and the neighborhood would certainly be different.

This was one of the most poverty stricken areas in the whole country, in the midst of the wealthy suburbs of Hartford, the inner city was blighted and depressed.

The people who would host us and the ones we would serve would be very different than us. We were all white and very middle class. They were mostly people of color and very low income. [We should] be grateful for their hospitality and accept what they put before you. Life will be different, very different, for there are guns and gangs, drugs, violence and hopelessness.

The drive from Appleton to Hartford is long – very long – and we drove straight through. The teens talked all along the way about the good work they would be doing, and about how different the whole thing was going to be.

And we worked hard, and we did some good things. Hungry people got fed, walls were painted, apartments cleaned and a playground was restored. But the change did not just take place in Hartford.

On the long drive home and in the days and weeks to come, those teens talked about how they had been changed.

We prepared them for how different the situation would be – different kind of neighborhood, different food, different lifestyle and recreation, different culture. But the teenagers realized that the hopes and dreams of the people they served were the same as theirs.

They all wanted a safe place to live, work to provide for themselves and their family, meaning and fulfillment and to be treated with dignity and respect.

The teens had gone out to change the world, and they themselves had been changed, just like the seventy in today’s Gospel.

Barriers had been broken down, assumptions overcome, prejudices and stereo types shattered. They had learned to love people very different from themselves, and the kingdom of God was born. They had learned to love people very different from themselves and the kingdom of God was born.

Jesus sends us out on a mission trip every time we walk out the doors of this church. “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few – Go on your way.” Build the kingdom. Break down the walls and barriers that divide.

Go out and change the world. Allow yourself to be changed in the process, and the kingdom of God will be born.



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