SUNDAY, JULY 6, 2025 | AFTER PENTECOST PROPER 9 (C)

Good morning,

Happy post-4th of July, looks like we made it! Everybody’s got all the fingers and toes before Friday? Good. I may need to watch my triglycerides for a bit again, but it was a good time with friends and family.

Our text today is very missional - we learn about Jesus’ instructions for the 70/72 disciples that were sent out in pairs to share the news of the coming of the Kingdom of God. They were sent out with very limited resources - no sandals, or purse and yet, they were instructed not to become a burden on the community they enter: not to demand special treatment, no house hopping within the community, and to make themselves useful by curing their sick.

And also by not entering somewhere where they are not welcome, even though they are to still share the good news of the coming kingdom of God with them no matter what. Even though as Jesus shares, perhaps the news will not be as good for them as Sodom, the famous city rebuked by prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and Ezekiel for inhospitality, pride, lack of care for the needy, and general wickedness, will fare better than them. Yikes.

The unrepentant cities are named explicitly in the excluded passage:

(Mt 11:20–24)

13 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. 14 But at the judgment it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you. 15 And you, Capernaum,

will you be exalted to heaven?

No, you will be brought down to Hades.

16 “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Lk 10:13–16.

When they return jubilantly that even the demons submitted to them, Jesus tempers their joy a bit:

Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Lk 10:20.

Why? As the The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary on Luke remarks: Perhaps the messengers are too enamored with the power rush they experienced at driving out demons—“in Jesus’s name,” of course—but with that name more ancillary than primary.

They still have some growing to do to truly become humble servants for Jesus! And this passage also illustrate just how much of our ministry is supposed to be cooperative and the answer is: A LOT. For the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few and the mission is not about individual success, but rather communal progress. Together as the holy priesthood we ought to cooperate on the vineyard.

I think that is valuable as so much of today’s society is about personal success, getting ahead, and “making it.” And that then sadly seeps into policies, where the successful and fortunate are rewarded and the less lucky are punished for it, which is not how a social system in a developed country should work. Just looking at a recently passed “Big budget Bill”, I think it must be said that tax breaks for the rich (the top 20% receiving average tax cut of $12 500) and at the same time taking away of benefits and relief from the underprivileged (about 12 million more people are estimated to be uninsured by 20234) is like the exact opposite of the principles of the Kingdom of God! That and also enacting and funding policies that are focused on keeping refugees out rather than finding ways to welcome and integrate them. And don’t get me wrong - t he church is not supposed to rule the world with its theology and sentiments, but political leaders should not claim divine authority, especially when the love and mercy of God’s kingdom is nowhere to be seen in their actions. That is the true misuse of God’s name and what God stands for.

I think this passage lays down some important principles for the church:

Work as a team

Don’t get bog down by superflous property

Don’t become a burden on the community

Make yourself useful

Share the gospel freely

Do not linger with those that do not welcome you

Do not rejoice in personal success, but rejoice in the Lord’s mercy upon you!

Easy to follow? Hardly, but very instructional. It may not always lead to success in the conventional sense, but it is the commitment and faithfulness to the Lord’s will that matters more. Just like Jesus’ faithfulness to the will of his Father led to his suffering, crucifixion, and death, which in the conventional sense would be considered a failure, but the true outcome was hidden beyond the horizon and in God’s hands - His resurrection and ascension.

I wonder if it is similarly with us - faithfulness and commitment to the Lord’s will may result in conventional “failure”, but the true outcome is beyond the horizon. Our wins here on earth are only temporary and fleeting, but acts of mercy and love are forever, even if we do not benefit from them right now and right here.

Let us be faithful to the mission and committed to the Lord’s will and I am sure we will eventually find out. And in the mean time, we can change lives...through God’s love and mercy. We can help people along towards God’s mercy, comfort, and peace. Amen.

Isaiah: Jerusalem chosen as the city of blessings/consolation

Galatians: let us share each other’s burdens

7 Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. 8 If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. 9 So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. 10 So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.

Revised Common Lectionary (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2009).

Revised Common Lectionary (Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2009).

Luke: The seventy are sent on a mission with very limited equipment to rely on people’s hospitality as a part of the mission - bless those who accept them and to leave behind that do not. They returned jubilantly as they had success - whatever God orders, God will also pay. But the success is not the point, the point is serving God.

They were supposed to share the good news even with those that did not accept them.

Only Luke reports this extra mission of Jesus’s disciples, both mirroring and expanding that of the twelve apostles (9:1–6, 10; cf. Matt 10:1–15; Mark 6:7–13). This larger campaign, launched but not personally led by Jesus, foreshadows the early church’s outreach in Acts. Sending “in pairs” (Luke 10:1) matches the partnering arrangement of Peter/John, Paul/Barnabas, Paul/Silas, Barnabas/John Mark, Priscilla/Aquila in Acts. Given women’s involvement in Jesus’s movement (8:1–3), it is possible that the present mission includes some male-female teams or even “sister” pairs (cf. 10:38–42; Rom 16:7, 12).28

28 D’Angelo (“Reconstructing ‘Real’ Women”) speculates that the traditions concerning Martha and Mary in Luke 10:38–42 and John 11:1–12:8 reflect “the memory of two famous women who formed a missionary partnership, like the pairs in Matt 10:1–4” (108; cf. 107–9).

F. Scott Spencer, Luke, ed. Joel B. Green, The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2019), 272.

Link to OT:

But Luke’s Jesus is not only concerned with the catch and enlistment of many disciples (cf. Luke 5:6–11), but also with their care and discipline. For the number seventy(-two) also recalls the staff of Spirit-imbued elders appointed to assist Moses in managing the burden of plaintive Israelites in the wilderness. In one tradition, at the advice of father-in-law Jethro, Moses selects an unspecified number of “able men” to settle petty disputes, leaving him free to handle major cases (Exod 18:13–27). Along with providing Moses much-needed relief, this arrangement permits “all these people [to] go to their home in peace” (18:23). In another model, the Lord commands Moses to gather seventy elders to help him handle the congregation’s boiling displeasure over their meatless, manna-only desert diet (Num 11). In this scenario, however, Moses’s assistants function not as pastoral-counselor judges promoting peace but as prophetic-correctional judges mediating the Spirit of the Lord’s intense anger, which ultimately erupts in a “very great plague” against the ungrateful Israelites at a site morbidly memorialized as Kibroth-hattaavah, “Graves-of-craving” (Num 11:33–34)

F. Scott Spencer, Luke, ed. Joel B. Green, The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2019), 273.

Following God’s way of peace demands persisting commitment: one peaceful response here or there does not a “child of peace” make. Conversely, long-standing patterns of hostility can be broken and fresh paths of peace pursued. It is too late for Satan and his minions. Jesus certifies their precipitous plummet from heavenly heights and unrelenting death-dealing schemes, which he continues to thwart (10:18–19)

F. Scott Spencer, Luke, ed. Joel B. Green, The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2019), 275.

Christ’s faithful messengers enjoy secure enrollment in God’s heavenly register, now and in the age to come (cf. 18:28–30).

But why is this knowledge better than, more joyous than, the experience of subduing demons and liberating those they oppress? Perhaps the messengers are too enamored with the power rush they experienced at driving out demons—“in Jesus’s name,” of course—but with that name more ancillary than primary.

F. Scott Spencer, Luke, ed. Joel B. Green, The Two Horizons New Te stament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2019), 276.