Peace
to this house! The Kingdom of God has
come near! Amen! Now, let’s all stand and sing hymn number
280, Amazing Grace . . . not really.
You’re not going to get off that easy . . . but that is what Jesus told
the seventy to preach. Not that drinking
will get you in trouble, although we know that it might . . . not that
extra-marital sex is a bad idea, although that’s true as well. He told them to say two things: Peace to this House, and the Kingdom of God
has come near! End of story.
And
the question is: what does it mean to say these things? What does it mean to say “Peace to this
house?” This is especially pertinent
these days, when we can’t seem to get away from armed conflict, when we're
constantly bombing people—bad people, for sure—and embroiled in a war against
terror, although how you can have a war against a concept is beyond me. And
I suppose it's especially pertinent the
day before Independence Day, when we celebrate freedom, shooting off fireworks
to evoke rockets red glare . . . what did Jesus mean by “Peace to this house?” And what does it require of us as Christians?
Well,
for one thing, it was a common greeting in antiquity . . . To tell somebody
“peace be unto you” wished general favor, general well-being upon them. Shalom, the Hebrew word for general
well-being, is also used this way . . . when David asks Uriah how Joab and
the people are doing – not long before he has him killed – he asks about their
“shalom” – how is their shalom, their peace?
This, of course, is sort of ironic, because at the time Joab was leading
the people into battle . . . and it’s clear, I think, that when Jesus tells
them to wish the house peace, this is at least partly what he has in mind. Well-being upon all in the house.
But,
of course, peace has another meaning . . . when we say peace, we most of the
time think of a lack of war, an absence of conflict . . . and, I think Jesus
meant this as well . . . after all, his ministry was in large part one of
reconciliation, of making peace between ourselves and God, and between one
another here on earth. Over in Second
Corinthians, Paul describes our ministry – the same one Jesus sends the 70 out
to do – as a “ministry of reconciliation.”
And really, can the two meanings of “peace” – general well-being and
lack of conflict – really be separated?
Can there be the first without the second? Can a church in conflict be said to be
well? Can a family? Can a nation?
Jesus
used the word peace often, when he was describing his ministry. In the upper room, he told the disciples
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you.
I do not give to you as the world gives.” He told people he healed to “go in peace.”
Three times after his resurrection he greeted his disciples with “peace be with
you.” It kind of gives you the notion
that peace was important to his ministry, doesn’t it?
It
was important to his followers’ ministries, too . . . Peter says over in Acts
that God was “preaching peace” by sending Christ to us . . . Paul calls God the
“God of Peace” and numbers peace among the fruits of the spirit . . . James
tells us that “a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make
peace.”
And
so it is today . . . we followers of Jesus preach peace, don’t we? Just a few minutes ago, we passed the peace,
we said “the peace of Christ be with you . . .”
Well . . . we talk about being a people of God, a Christian people, a
people who loves peace, but as a nation, we sure spend a lot of time at war . .
. many of us talk a lot about hating violence, about how much it pains us, but
then we hire policemen to protect our stuff with guns. Oh, we make it clear that violence is only a
“last resort” . . . but for Jesus, it wasn’t any kind of resort at all, first,
middle or last. He wouldn’t use violence
even to save his own skin, even as he hung nailed to a cross, and he rebuked
his disciples for even considering it.
There’s
a second component to the message of the seventy: they’re supposed to knock on a door, and if
they’re received, stay and don’t move from house to house. And when they enter a town, they’re told to
say “The Kingdom of God has come near to you.”
But what they’re not told to do is to explain it, like us modern
preachers do. The kingdom of God, we’ll
begin, is God’s just reign on earth—which is also within you—characterized by
God’s forgiving grace, where the hungry are fed, the wounded are bound up, and
all are loved and cherished as God’s children on earth. The kingdom of God – we’ll say – is present
in Jesus Christ, and in his body on earth, which is the church. And finally, it's present within us, as followers of Christ. It’s somehow present already, yet still to
come, here and yet not-here. And we’ll
finish up saying that we children of God are charged with helping God to bring
it’s fulfillment, and the banks will lie down with the beholden, deadly drones
will be beaten into threshing machines, and we will practice war no more . . .
and there, by the way, is that peace thing again.
But
Jesus doesn’t tell the seventy to say any of that, he doesn’t tell them to
explain it at all – he says eat whatever’s put on the table, cure whoever is
sick thereabouts, and say “the kingdom of God is near!” Eat what is set before you, don’t pooh-pooh
what your host puts in front of you.
Just the very fact that they’re to eat in whatever house they stay is
revolutionary . . . table fellowship was rigidly structured by class and
ethnicity . . . Jews didn’t eat with Samaritans or Greeks or gentiles of any
kind. And Jesus is telling them to eat
wherever you land – whatever is put before you, whether it is clean or
unclean. Become one with the people
you’re sent to, Jesus says, do not remain aloof. Paul would say it somewhat differently:
become a Jew to the Jews, a Greek to the Greeks. Create community wherever you go, with whomever
you meet.
And
the second thing is look after their physical needs as well. Cure those that are sick wherever you
are. It’s not just spiritual needs
you’re to take care of, perhaps not even primarily spiritual needs . . .
they’re to eat with them and take care of their ills. And then they’re to tell ‘em what it all means: The kingdom of God is near. And that’s the whole point, isn’t it? The seventy aren’t told to launch into some
long-winded explanation of God’s rule on Earth, they don’t have to go to
seminary to learn to do neat, tidy expository sermons . . . what the seventy are to do is demonstrate the
kingdom of God. To demonstrate it. They are to bring the people a word of peace,
create community wherever they go and take care of their earthly needs. Then – and note that it’s last on the list –
they’re supposed to tell them what it means: the kingdom of God is near.
Now,
this isn’t the first sending story in Luke . . . earlier, Jesus sends out the
twelve, and just like the seventy, they’re told to travel light, to demonstrate
the consequences of rejecting their message by shaking the dust off their feet
. . . like the seventy, they are to proclaim the kingdom and cure diseases, but
no mention is made of table fellowship or preaching peace . . . and in fact,
Luke is the only one who tells this story, it’s not in Matthew, Mark or John,
and it reflects Luke’s particular emphasis on the universality and
inclusiveness of the gospel . . . even the number is significant: seventy is
the number of nations in Genesis. So the
Gospel is for every nation – not just the Jews.
And the seventy are to eat whatever they find with whomever will accept
them, creating community with outsiders, making part of them people who –
before that moment – were not part of them.
And they are to heal everyone who needs healing in whatever town – in
all the nations! – they arrive. And by
this they are to demonstrate – not explain or interpret – the kingdom of God.
But
this story illustrates another thing: the mission of God is not just for the
elite, not just for a few carefully-selected people. Luke shows the sending of the twelve first –
twelve disciples, twelve tribes – and then a much larger number. Ministry is for the whole people of God, not
just for the few. And this has much to
say to the present situation of the church, perhaps especially our denomination
. . . we have grown dependent upon a professional class of ministers, paid
staff to whom we entrust the mission of God. We have professional Christian
Educators, professional church musicians, professional janitors . . . if a
church is big enough, it can hire professionals to do everything, all the
congregation has to do is give money and sit back, singing Amazing Grace in
air-conditioned comfort.
This
has its advantages . . . it allows people to go out and get specialized
knowledge and skills that they could not otherwise afford. It allows local congregations to have
full-time pastoral care and help in their day-to-day relationships with
God. But it also separates the laity
from God’s mission, it insulates them from the hard, rewarding work of ministry
in the church . . . it allows them to get away, if they want, with just coming
on Sundays to be “fed,” not participating in the day-to-day realities of decision-making,
of keeping the light-bills paid and the heat turned on.
Historically,
it’s done another thing, as well . . . it’s helped to create a feeling, a
belief almost as strong as that in God’s own self, that without a full-time
pastor, a congregation is not really a church, at all. When it became clear in the first little old
church I pastored that it was time to go to a part-time pastor, the Presbytery
and I did a pretty radical thing: we began to prepare them for it ahead of my
leaving. We had focus groups and
brainstorming to help shape the future of ministry in that place. And the church grieved, not at losing me
personally, but losing their perceived identity as a church. Some of them said “we’ve always had a
full-time pastor, other churches have full-time pastors, that’s just what they
do, and without one, we’re less than a church.”
But of course, that’s simply not true.
The church is the people, not it’s leaders, it’s the body, as Paul might
say. And Jesus didn’t say go out and
organize yourselves into groups with a full-time Minister of the Word and
Sacrament and half-time music director and secretary, he sent out the people,
the seventy, to do his work, to demonstrate – not to explain, but to be a sign
of the kingdom of God on Earth.
Look
what happened when they returned, when they came back from doing the work of
God: they returned with joy.
They were ecstatic that they had power over evil in the world, that they
could do God’s work of overcoming sickness and poverty and conflict, that they
could overcome what they thought of as the powers of Satan. And Jesus rejoices as well, saying “I watched
Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning!” It’s true, he says, I’ve seen it . . . evil
is conquered by your sending, it’s already done.
Some
of you know that this passage has been used in the Transformation 2.0 process
your Session agreed to. And it's an apt one, not necessarily for the
details, but simply as an image of going out, looking outward, instead of
anxiously inward, wondering how long we can remain a church. We are asked to go out, looking in the
community for where God is working, and join in. We're asked to look outward, not inward, into
the community, to go into the highways and hedges where the people are, not
wait for them to show up at our doors.
And if we do, I have no doubt we will, like the seventy, return in thanksgiving
and joy. Amen.
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