One of the Seventy

It was a mud hut in the poorest section of a village I’d never visited before. About halfway through my year as a Fulbright teacher at Baring Christian College in northwest India I had gone to this village with several Indian Christian teachers from the college to visit the Christians there and distribute clothing and books. As in most north Indian villages, the Christians were formerly Untouchables, i.e., people at the bottom of the caste system who traditionally did the dirtiest jobs. My roommate, another American woman, and I were taken to the tiny mud hut. Heaven only knows where the chairs on which we were invited to sit had come from. Of course, the honored American guests could not sit on the rope-strung bed, the only other seating, with everyone else! Then a wizened woman, who looked sixty but was probably at most thirty-five, gingerly placed a hard-boiled egg and a mug of tea in front of each of us. I looked quizzically at one of the teachers who had brought us. How could I eat and drink what had probably cost this family several days’ wages? And was the egg safe? The teacher nodded imperceptibly, “yes.” I ate the egg and drank the tea.

The seventy disciples whom Jesus had sent out to prepare for his coming, as he walked to Jerusalem, may not have had to face eating eggs or drinking tea. However, as observant Jews travelling through Samaritan country, they may well have had to eat things they would never otherwise have considered eating. Who were these seventy? While Matthew, Mark, and Luke all mention Jesus’ sending of the twelve, only Luke mentions this second sending of the seventy (or seventy-two, as some manuscripts have it). An underlying motif in the gospel of Luke is the proclamation of the good news to all people, regardless of class or ethnicity. So the number of these disciples is no doubt symbolic, referring to the Table of the Nations in Genesis 10, i.e., to the entire world. What were their names, and where did they come from? Were they some of those people who had heard Jesus’ call and gladly fell in behind him? Were some of them the wealthy women who were bankrolling Jesus’ ministry? Luke tells us nothing about them. The Western Church has largely ignored them. However, the Eastern Church continues to venerate them. Today there are several different lists of their names. Orthodox churches regularly commemorate their ministry on January 4th, the feast of the Seventy Apostles.

Whoever they were, the seventy were clearly commissioned and sent by Jesus – and with some urgency. The seventy were to serve as an advance party in the countryside between Samaria and Jerusalem, preparing people for Jesus’ coming and proclaiming the peace and salvation that come with reign of God. Bearing Jesus’ authority, they were to do everything that he had done: they were to preach, teach, heal, and proclaim that God’s reign had begun. In commissioning them, Jesus had clearly warned them of the risks and rewards of signing on to his program. They were to travel in pairs. They were to travel light and not stop to socialize along the way. They were to be prepared for hostility and rejection. They were to accept whatever hospitality was offered them. Once settled, they were not to cast around looking for better digs. They were to stay focused on proclaiming the good news. Knowing that the work was more than even they could manage, they were to stay connected with God and continue to ask God to add to their number.

My friends, you and I are here because the seventy disciples did their job very well. As we learn from reading the book of Acts, Luke’s companion volume to the gospel, the seventy, the twelve, and others went out from Jerusalem to Asia Minor and Europe. They created new communities of disciples, and the Way, the Christian faith, went “viral.” In later centuries, they went to China, Japan, India, and the Americas. They proclaimed the good news and, with the authority of Jesus, they preached, taught, and healed. They invited those whom they met, those whose eggs they ate and whose tea they drank, to join Jesus’ fellowship of love. They created communities united not by ties of family, ethnicity, class, color, or even place of birth, but by shared allegiance to Jesus and his mission.

And now we are part of their number. We are part of that number not because we are “members” of the Episcopal Church. Despite what the canons of the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Southern Ohio say, despite all our concern, in parochial reports, with “members in good standing,” we are not “members” of the church. Your presence in this community is not like your membership in the Rotary Club or the country club, or the book club, or even the AARP. You do not pay dues to this community, and we do not assess you when it’s time to put in a new air conditioning unit or roof. Nor are you here because you have all the right beliefs, or because you understand perfectly all the tenets of the Nicene Creed – not that the Creeds are unimportant. You are not here because you have read enough books about the church, or prayer, or theology. You are here because you have been transformed by God and continue to seek transformation of your life.

We are all here because, through our baptisms, we have committed ourselves to being disciples of Jesus and have accepted his commission to proclaim the good news. We have promised to walk the talk in a world that doesn’t want to hear about Jesus, let alone encourage us to put his teachings into action. We are here because we trust that God has empowered us to bring the good news of God’s love to unexpected places. We are here because we understand that ultimately the work of proclaiming the good news is God’s work, and we are willing to be God’s instruments in that work. Indeed, we are open to letting God be incarnate in us. And we are willing to persist in calling others into the beloved community of Jesus’ disciples.

Do you remember one of the promises we all made in the baptismal covenant: “to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?” As those commissioned and sent by Jesus in our own day, we trust and hope that we will live our lives with such integrity and devotion that others will see Christ in us and will be drawn into fellowship with Christ. We trust and hope that we may be agents of reconciliation and friendship among those with whom we work and live. We trust and hope that our political actions, our votes and our communication with our elected representatives, and our support of social agencies, will enable us to partner with God in bringing in a reign of peace and justice. In addition, as a parish we have a significant ministry of hospitality, not only in Loaves and Fishes but in our support of the groups who use this building. How else might we proclaim the nearness of God’s kingdom? Are there other ways for us to serve the Gallipolis area? For example, can this building serve as a shelter in time of disaster?

Yet we know that there are times when we must also speak our faith, when we must actually say in equivalent twenty-first century language, “The Kingdom of God has come near to you.” Certainly, we must use modern electronic forms of communication. That is why St. Peter’s has a web site and Facebook page. We need to develop other forms of electronic communication, and I hope those of you more knowledgeable in this area than I will suggest new ways for us to proclaim the good news. What sites are you using where St. Peter’s should have a presence? Are there ways to offer Christian formation via electronic media? What forms or times of worship we should be exploring?

Important as electronic media are, in the end we are charged with speaking our faith to real, live people, face to face. Sometimes charismatic preachers can fill the hall for a year or two. Sometimes a glitzy, packaged program will enable a parish briefly to grow. But, believe it or not, a simple word-of-mouth invitation to a relative, neighbor, or friend is the most successful way to encourage people to “come and see.” Is this a community in which people are nurtured spiritually? If so, can you invite someone to join you here? How about inviting someone to join you at the picnic Eucharist in August? How about inviting someone to help with Loaves and Fishes this month? How about inviting someone to refresh their soul in a quiet morning? Can we dare to voice our faith in God’s love and tell others of its reality?

Even when we are asked to drink tea and eat a hard-boiled egg, we are commissioned and sent to proclaim the good news. “Come, labor on. Who dares stand idle on the harvest plain, while all around us waves the golden grain? And to each servant, to each of us, does the Master say, ‘Go work today.’”