Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Dear Friends in Christ, God’s grace and peace be with you.  Amen

My niece and her husband were in town this week, and we were able to meet their baby who was born last September. He’s adorable, really, so sweet, with those chubby toes and elbows that make 9 month old children irresistible, and of course, I’m a softy for a baby.

He’s just old enough to know that we are strangers, so he’s appropriately nervous. There we were, trying to pass him from lap to lap, frightening him with our new embraces and voices. For each new set of arms, he turned nervously to his parents and let out a soft, exhausted wail, as if to say, “I haven’t slept in hours, and you’re trusting these complete weirdos to hold me? You’re handing me over like a lamb to wolves?  How could you?”

His parents would gently encourage him with a quiet, “It’s okay, I’m right here!” and would give him a few minutes to try to get comfortable with one of us, but generally, they’d end up rescuing him. Only when safely back in recognizable arms, would the little one’s face light up with contentment again, and he’d resume his cheerful babbling, absolutely delighting the gathered family with renewed hope and joy.

I think the prophet Isaiah must have been visiting with his niece and her baby when he tries to comfort his friends in exile. There, far from their home in Jerusalem, the prophet paints a picture of a child being reunited with its mother. Soon, he promises, we will be returned safely to our homeland, and Jerusalem will carry us in her arms, like a mother safely snuggling her child. After our years of exile and abuse, we will soon be restored to comfort and security.

The physical, nurturing image of a mother bouncing a baby on her knees, carrying her child in her arms, and nursing a newborn from her own body, is the best image the prophet could use to describe God’s never-failing love for us. Isaiah promises us that no matter how long we have suffered abuse, or rejection, or affliction, or oppression, the love of God is sure. And though we may despair of ever being safe or comforted again, God will never forget us. Our hearts shall rejoice and our bodies shall flourish like grass that has been rained on every day for two months.

It’s a God which is that comforting and dependable whom Jesus trusts, too. And it’s in God’s trustworthy power that Jesus sends his followers out to the harvest.

From the beginning of the gospel, Jesus has been declaring that the reign of God has come near. Jesus’s entire ministry has been to bring the presence of God’s justice to light. He cures the sick, restores the broken to wholeness. He feeds the hungry, casts out demons, rebukes fevers, and preaches forgiveness. He teaches us to speak truth to power and to love our enemies; to do good to those who hate us, to be generous, and to welcome the outcast. He demonstrates the reality of God’s claim on each one of us, the physical truth of God’s longing for each person to be whole and safe and accepted into community.

Now he sends out seventy others to do the same. “Go and declare to everyone that the reign of God has come near.” We sometimes think that this mandate is just for religious leaders – pastors, or missionaries maybe. But in scripture the number 70 almost always represents everyone, all the followers of Jesus were encouraged to share the good news of the reality of the reign of God, and the healing changes God’s reign can bring to the world.

That seems like it should be good news, but there’s something so ominous in the way Jesus sends them. “I’m sending you like lambs into the midst of wolves. Take nothing with you, and greet no one, but continue with a sense of urgency. When peace isn’t returned to you, move on, and anticipate rejections.” He prepares his followers with allusions to what he said in the previous chapter, “Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but you may expect no place to rest your heads.”

Like 9-month old children with newly-developing stranger anxiety, most of us would hear an invitation to ministry like this and would resist.

Jesus isn’t deterred. He assures his followers that regardless of whether it will be received, the goodness of the reign of God will come near.  And if the peace of God his followers offer isn’t shared by those they meet, it will return to them. Those who accept the messengers accept, Jesus himself, and in fact accept the one who sent him. When the peace of God is received, God’s own presence is with us. Like a mother gently comforting her child who is frightened by strangers, Jesus assures us, “It’s okay; I’m right here; you’ve got this.”

These are anxious days. We hear that the rates of anxiety and depression and the sense of isolation are steadily increasingly for us and understandably so. The headlines seem to present a far cry from the reign of God coming near. Leaders around the world promote their own dominance and fear of outsiders. Anger and animosity stand in place of civility in our discourse. Dishonesty, greed, defensiveness and fear have been normalized, and it feels as if we’re more hostile and argumentative than ever. We are horrified by the stories of families separated at the border and children living in detention centers rather than receiving the welcome they had hoped to find.

On top of all of that, the reports of the damage we are causing to the environment can do us in. It’s as if our society’s addiction to convenience and consumerism is threatening the well-being of the planet itself.

Jesus is still sending us out to bring healing and restoration to our communities, to work for justice and the care of the stranger, and the welcome to the least, but the message seems to be falling on deaf ears.

In fact, we know that Jesus will not ultimately be received in peace, either. The peace he comes to share will be so strongly resisted, it will lead to his death.

How can he so non-anxiously send his followers out to a world that he knows is resistant to the peace he brings?

Because Jesus trusts the loving arms of his Mother God. Jesus knows that no matter how much it looks like it, this is God’s world. As it was for Isaiah, so for Jesus: no matter how much abuse, or rejection, or affliction, or oppression we may face, the love of God is sure. The God of the harvest has sown seeds of love, and ultimately, the harvest of that love is simply unstoppable.

Jesus sends his followers into the fields, because the crops are heavy with produce. While it may not look like it on first glance, Jesus knows that goodness is stronger than evil, and there is more love than hate in the world to reap.

Did you notice that the 70 don’t come back with stories of how awful it was in the fields? We don’t get to hear about the towns that rejected them. We never know if they had dust to shake from their feet.

All we hear when they return to Jesus is that they are celebrating. Apparently, when they declared the love of God to those they had encountered, it had been a powerful source of reconciliation and healing. The forces of evil and fear had fallen around them. The voices of hatred and animosity had been silenced, and God’s peace had been shared.

Do you think that’s still the case for us today?

There are voices that need to be amplified in our culture today, and they’re not the voices of hatred and fear. Rather they are the voices that sing of hope and compassion[i]. They are the ones that hold up the common good of our neighbors, that encourage us to be open to new ideas, and to not allow fear to restrict our efforts. They are the voices that remind us that each one of us has agency and opportunities to make a difference.

They sing the songs that remind us we’re not alone, that Jesus always sends us out with a buddy, and that even in the midst of summer on a holiday weekend, there are at least 70 of us. They are the poets who know how to share peace, and who believe that the efforts of even just 70 of Jesus’s friends can accomplish amazing things.

This morning we are adding two more young voices to the choir. Little Emerson Frederick and Ada Marie are being equipped through the water of baptism to tread on all the powers of hate and evil in the world.

Their names, like ours, are written in the heavenly list of those who have power to work for good, to share compassion, to feed the hungry, to look for solutions to the problems that seem insurmountable, to hear the voice of our Mother assuring us that it will be okay, and to never ever give up.

The Reign of God has come near, and the peace of God will not be thwarted. Thanks be to God.

[i]Parker Pal

mer, “Five Habits to Heal the Heart of Democracy,” Global Oneness Project. http://www.globalonenessproject.org/library/articles/five-habits-heal-heart-democracy?fbclid=IwAR1G-fTRrBv6CI8gfHE25oZxPyjCkVL5XcTyT_BLc0XgDKnvnJ_rIOCLrhE