Lord of the Harvest w/ Anthony—W1

Let me read our first pericope for this month, which is Luke 10:1-11, 16-20. (This month, we’re going to focus on the New Revised Standard Version.)

It is the Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 9, which is July the third.

After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. ² He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. ³ Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. ⁴ Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. ⁵ Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ ⁶ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. ⁷ Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. ⁸ Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; ⁹ cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’¹⁰ But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ¹¹ ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’

Jesus came to proclaim the nearness of the kingdom of God. And in this particular passage, he’s authorizing a wider band of disciples to go out and do the same thing.

He’s not sending them out to be door-to-door salespeople, hocking magazine subscriptions and lawn care services. He doesn’t want them to look like moochers or give even a whiff of being profiteers. He is telling them to go and bring peace, Shalom, to all who will receive it. And the rest of their message is pretty straight forward.

The kingdom of God is near you. They are proclaiming a whole new way of life, a way to live and to be in this world, a whole new way to orient, not just this or that sideline feature to one’s life but everything, the whole ball of wax, every jot and tittle of one’s existence. Even when Jesus tells his disciples to wipe the dust of the rejecting town off their feet, he still tells them to conclude their comments with yet one more reminder that the kingdom of God is near. And who’s to say that we cannot speak those words through tears of love and compassion. And Jesus talked about “go on your way or as you are going,” like we see in the great commission in Matthew 28. See, I’m sending you out as lambs.

And this is what cruciform living is all about. Cruciform is just a word that simply means having the shape of a cross. It is a life that looks self-sacrificial, a life of laying down one’s life for the other. And he’s saying (as we saw in Acts 1, when Jesus said, you’ll be my witnesses) we know that word, witness in the Greek language, it literally means martyr. It’s to lay down one’s life.

You will receive power by the Holy Spirit, God with you, a God who understands what it looks like to lay down one’s life. And I’m calling you, I’m inviting you into that same sort of cruciform living. This is the missio Dei, which is a Latin, Christian theological term that is translated as the mission of God or the sending of God.

God sends us. He says, I’m sending you out. Jesus is sending us as he was sent by the Father. And as Jesus was sent, we also go in the power of the Holy Spirit. And what do we say to people? Peace! Peace to this house. Peace be unto you. Peace be with you. This is what we find Jesus doing. Even as we see in other passages, where he shows up and the disciples are afraid, or they’re not living the missio Dei in the moment as he would have them do, his first word is peace be unto you.

And these are the words that our Prince of Peace have given to us. And that means even in the face of great consternation, great suffering, and affliction.

Just this week, the week that I’m recording this particular episode, we’ve had another mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas [U.S.], and it was just devastating, wasn’t it? To hear the news, to see the scenes, to see the anguish and the grief of parents and grandparents and siblings that have lost loved ones, young children.

And it just gets me thinking, if these events have left us heartbroken and weeping, which they have, imagine what God must be seen and feeling. God, the Creator, who entrusts us with his creation, with one another’s lives (and with his own life, in a sense) today, the Creator and the created once again, stand together, weeping and broken hearted over this senseless loss.

I no longer see these tragedies as problems to be fixed or behaviors to be corrected. Oh, don’t get me wrong. There are steps to be taken. Rather, I just viewed them as symptoms pointing to a deeper issue. And until we are willing to deal with the deeper issue, things aren’t likely to change. And the deeper issue is the human heart.

Whether by terrorist attack, through prejudice [and] discrimination against a minority group or political campaigns or in our personal relationships, the violence and mistreatment we perpetuate on each other first arises from an inner violence that poisons and fragments, the human heart. We need a change of heart.

We need a heart of peace. So where is the peace of God today? I think that’s a question many are asking. It’s a question I suspect God is maybe asking too. Where is the peace? It is a question that theologians and practitioners have wrestled with through ages and ages.

So, the question of theodicy—which ultimately is a question. Why does a perfectly good Almighty, an all-knowing God, permit evil? And I don’t know that I have a good answer for that. We live in a fallen world where brokenness is still running rampant in our world, but I thought I would share with you some quotes from Brad Jersak’s book, A More Christlike God. Here’s what he has to say about the question theodicy.

“What are we to make of the gaping abyss between the perfect goodness and infinite love of God over against the affliction, suffering, and evil in the world at large? How do they come together, if at all? This puzzle has recurred throughout the ages—ever since people became aware of the reality of both the heights of God and the depths of human misery. When I ask, “What is true about God?” and, “What is the character of the world?” the two realities don’t seem to match. The fundamental truth of God’s nature (which is love) seems irreconcilably incompatible with day-to day life in this world (which is affliction).

Rather than dazzling us with a clever answer, the Cross of our Lord arrests us. In a sense, it offers us an anti-theodicy. The love and the anguish—both present in the extreme—are astonishing. The goodness of God and the affliction of mankind is no mere problem, puzzle, or paradox. God’s love (a cross) and human affliction (a crucifixion) appear as a true contradiction. In bewilderment, we echo Jesus’ own cries, “God is good, but all is not well! Where are you?”

And the incarnation, (and by the way, that was end quote from Jersak’s book) the incarnation teaches us that God entered into the fullness of our affliction and experienced it unto death. And not just any death, but death on a cross. And it matters that our Lord who embodies peace, who in himself is Shalom, that we know that he didn’t stand off from some sort of antiseptic distance from our pain and sorrow and grief and affliction, but rather entered into the heart of our darkness.

What if a heart at peace is about loving our neighbor as ourselves, or more importantly, as Christ has loved us? It would mean that the other person, regardless of who she or he is, counts and matters as much as we do, which is the truth and the reality of who God is revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The heart of peace refuses to lump masses into unknown people with lifeless categories, such as Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, Muslim, whatever, which makes them objects to be dealt with or enemies to be defeated. A heart at peace encounters everyone as a person. It looks another in the face and recognizes itself.

So, tell me, what do you see when you look in the face of another? This is a good question as we ponder this particular passage for Proper 9, and as we go on our way, sent out as lambs in the midst of wolves saying, peace to this house.