Text: Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
GOD of Hope and Wonder, the mission you have given us is dangerous and deeply rewarding. May we have the courage to accept the challenge you give us. Amen.
Sometimes Jesus doesn’t make it easy for us, does he? The instructions that he gives the 70 are to go out, taking nothing with them, and travel to all of the places Jesus wanted to go. These are not easy expectations. What if we left here and some headed to Peachtree City and others to Roscoe and others Fayatteville. You leave from here without stopping at home and without your cars. All right everybody, stand up and get moving! You’re not excited by this prospect? You don’t want to walk all that way without clear expectations for what you are to do when you actually do get there? And considering he also says to leave your purse at home, when you arrive there at about dinner time, you’re going to be pretty hungry and have no money…I can’t understand why you aren’t motivated by these prospects! Huh…I’m going to have to rethink my expectations.
What I was asking you to do is no more out of character for us than it would have been for them. Jesus was asking a lot of these people. He asked them to leave everything behind. Everything. One set of clothes. That’s it. He even makes it tougher on them: they’re to go barefoot. This is a high demand.
Why does he ask this of them? To remove what prevents them from relying on GOD. He is putting these people in danger, in a position of complete dependence on something other than themselves. This is what Jesus is expecting of the 70.
What does Jesus expect of the people they will meet? These 70 people will arrive in their various towns in pairs. They will be hungry, dirty, tired, and with nothing of value—no means of helping themselves. If the people the 70 meet are Jews, they are likely to take them in and offer to clean their feet, offer them food and a place to stay, and demonstrate a profound sense of welcome, that everybody that walks through their door deserves their help. This is a profound sense of hospitality that few of us could imagine happening today.
Jesus is expecting these 70 to depend on GOD to provide for them and depend on the hospitality of others. Those are some pretty lofty expectations.
Few of us are comfortable with this subject; with this part of the expectation because Jesus is asking us to be vulnerable. In a world of strength, being vulnerable puts us at the bottom.
Jesus asks us to voluntarily empty ourselves of worth and power and influence and become dependent on GOD and our neighbor for our very survival. I highly doubt that Jesus only intends for us to hear this metaphorically. I am also not saying we’re supposed to literally walk to Peachtree City shoeless to stay in a stranger’s house and hang out for a few days, but I don’t think that such a vulnerable position is only supposed to happen inside us. What would it mean in today’s terms to empty ourselves in this way: to make ourselves that vulnerable to GOD and one another? Does it mean living without a savings account to protect us? Does it mean selling a car and asking others to take us where we need to go? Does it mean giving away the excess—the stuff and the money that goes beyond putting clothes on our backs and food on our tables? Does it mean abandoning our glorious homes and living in a state of physical and economic poverty? If we are honest to Jesus’s teaching, none of these questions is ridiculous. And this puts a lot of pressure on the way we do live—on our Western obsession with personal and corporate security. We want assurance of safety in the moment and for tomorrow. And deep down, we know better. We know that no amount of border guards and no amount of weaponry can ever keep us entirely safe. No amount of “cushion” in the bank will ever bring us complete economic security. Jesus shows his followers that the only assurance of safety we have comes from being entirely dependent on GOD and one another.
These words aren’t easy to hear any more than they are easy to say. If we trust in GOD, we will receive abundantly. But that trust is shown through vulnerability.
The assurance we have comes from Jesus. This gospel comes immediately after the pericope in which Jesus “turns his face toward Jerusalem”—an act of confidence and certainty of purpose and focus in direction. These 70 followers are sent out to the places that Jesus wants to go. In this new direction for Jesus, there is urgency. And in this morning’s pericope, there is similar urgency placed, not on the disciples, but on 70 of his followers. Jesus is calling on them to “get vulnerable already! It’s time to go!”
We talked about this on Wednesday at the Bible Study, about that number, 70; that it is likely a reference to a list of nations from Genesis 10, in which the nations of the world numbered 70. So Jesus is sending out all the nations of the world, a precursor to what would happen later at Pentecost. It also helps us to see this as our call—as something that Jesus asks of each of us.
But this expectation comes with a second expectation: an expectation of what those followers will find when they reach the towns and cities. Some that the 70 will visit will show uncommon welcome, feeding and clothing and caring for their needs, while others will not, receiving the dust from the followers’ feet.
The hope is that enough places will show that welcome so that all 70 will be cared for and that their needs will be met.
The lesson that I take away from this pericope involves how like the 70 we are—called into vulnerability by GOD—and how like those townspeople St. Paul’s is. We have the opportunity to go out into the world vulnerably and the opportunity to provide for those charged to this vulnerable life. Because if Jesus expects us to be so vulnerable, doesn’t he expect everyone to do the same? And if someone comes among us who is stripped down to the metaphoric shirt on her back, are we not the householder that should invite her in? Are we not the ones that should feed her and wash her feet and give her a place to stay?
The life of the Christian is to be vulnerable and to protect others; to allow ourselves to be weak in the face of our enemies and strong in defending the poor and the abused—concepts that are so opposite our cultural priorities and alien to our usual modes of thinking. And let’s be honest, even being the protector requires vulnerability—to let someone into your house, to eat your food, to live with you—is to share in an uncommon intimacy that few of us could truly understand.
We are challenged this week by a charge that is uncomfortable and frightening: to be vulnerable to GOD, to friends, and to strangers. To show uncommon hospitality to those that need love and nourishment of all kinds: spiritual, psychological, emotional, theological, intellectual, inspirational, and on and on. To show a profound intimacy that comes from believing Jesus when he suggests we put all of our trust in GOD. To extend that invitation of profound welcome to others knowing that doing so may well change the very foundation of our faith and the very core of our being. We are those townspeople that Jesus is hoping to transform.
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