Third Sunday after Trinity 2025

James explores the sending of the seventy in Luke 10 — the harvest is plentiful, the labourers few — as a model for mission: travelling light, depending on hospitality, and announcing the nearness of the Kingdom.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So, Heavenly Father, as we come to open your word, would you send your Holy Spirit that we might be transformed into the image of your Son. Amen. We're slowly working our way through Luke's gospel, and we're trying to watch how it unfolds and pay particular attention to where the episodes that we're engaging with fall within the larger framework of the Gospel of Luke and using that to help us work out what the passages mean. Because, and I don't think this is our unfair assumption, we can know, we can assume that Luke's gospel was written with intention and that he's trying to tell us a story that unfolds in a particular way. And so if we're aware of the structure that he's using, it might help us see why each individual passage is where it is in the larger narrative and in our lives. So the opening section of Luke's gospel is the Christmas story, the bit that we're familiar with of Jesus' birth that we tend to read at that point in the year, and the other songs and things that take place in and around Jesus' birth. And then the first major section after that, we called two weeks ago Jesus and his mission. And we said that in that section, Jesus tells us what his ministry is all about, and then he shows us what the ministry is all about. So he stands up and declares in the synagogue that the kingdom of God has drawn near, that the Spirit of God was upon him to proclaim good news to the captives, to release the prisoners, to give uh recovery of sight to the blind. And we said that when God's kingdom comes, particularly the emphasis in Luke's gospel, is that it comes to the poor. Where the kingdom of God comes, it's about release of the captives and the healing of the broken. And so then we watched as Jesus does that. Having told us what he's about, he shows us what he's about. And so the outcasts are given homes and the sick are healed. And then last week we watched as some of the disciples start to cotton on to who Jesus is, and one of them is able to declare, You are the Messiah, Jesus, the Son of God. He's the embodiment and the bringer of God's kingdom in the earth. So we've moved a few chapters further forward in the Gospel of Luke, and we're going to call this middle section the journey to Jerusalem. Jesus has formed a community around him, he's told them what his life is about, what his ministry is for, and they've started to get the message. They've started to see what every how this all joins up. And so he turns his face to Jerusalem. And the middle section of Luke's gospel is about the walk that takes place from wherever Jesus was all the way to Jerusalem. And what we're going to see in the last section is this kingdom of God that Jesus embodies. It clashes with the kingdom of this world, ultimately resulting in Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. And so we turn to Luke chapter 10. And in this passage, Jesus appoints 70 of his disciples. So he's, we had the 12, and now we've got the 70. We're gathering a bit of a crowd around him. He appoints the 70 and he sends them ahead of him wherever he was intending to go. And he says to them, The harvest is plentiful. Pray for laborers, so that they might go into the harvest field and reap what God is going to sow. And then he gives a series of instructions on how they should behave while they're on mission. And then we see their response. They come back from the harvest fields. They've been able to engage in the ministry of Jesus, and they say, This is amazing. We can't believe the experiences that we had. And then Jesus leaves them with one final wisdom nugget. Now, most people, if you read the commentaries, will look at this passage and say that what is happening in this passage is not just descriptive, but is prescriptive. It's a really helpful question to ask as you're reading through the Bible. Is what I'm reading a description of something that took place 2,000 years ago, or is it prescriptive? Is it something that I should be doing today? There's lots of things in the Bible that we should not be replicating, but are there because they actually happened. And then there are things in the Bible that you go, just as happened then, so we should be doing now. Jesus is telling people about his ministry, and then he gathers a group of people and he commissions them to do his ministry like him in all the places that he intended to go. And so the commentators would suggest Jesus in this passage is also sending us out to do his work just as he sent out the 70. We should not read this passage and say, oh, isn't it interesting? 2000 years ago Jesus sent 70 people to do his ministry. We should see in this passage a model that still applies to us 2,000 years later. And so I'd like to frame the rest of our time together around three words absurdity, joy, and comfort. What is being asked of us here is absurd, but it will also fill us with joy and ultimately comfort us. Firstly, is it not absurd that Jesus would send anyone else to do the ministry for which he has been called by God to do? Let's just think for a moment about these 70 disciples who have spent maybe a year, 18 months with Jesus, listening to his teaching, he commissions them to go out. Let's just ask some basic questions about this 70, shall we? Are any of those 70 people better at teaching than Jesus? Can any of those people offer more profound answers to the big questions of life than Jesus could? Were any of them more powerful in their prayers than Jesus was? Were any of them more gracious or loving or kind to the or generous to those people that they met? No, of course not. So why, Jesus, would you waste your time having people represent you who can only do at let at best a B plus version of what you're able to do in person? He was there in the promised land, going around doing his ministry, and rather than doing that, he sends other people out who are less qualified than him to join in his work. And yes, it applies to the 70 2,000 years ago. Of course, it applies to us today. Is it not absurd that the Church of England would be a place where the kingdom of God germinates and grows? Where churches up and down our land and across the world would be places of God's kingdom. Isn't that utterly absurd? An institution that fails so often, so publicly. We had again in the news this week more failing out of our sister church in Wales. Embarrassing to be associated with that. And we have also had this week the Enique report, which points to many places in which the safeguarding in this place needs to grow and improve. So why would God do something so absurd as to invite us to be his ambassadors? And it's not just the institution, it's not just the 72,000 years ago, it's you and me, little old you and me, who for some reason God has invited us to join him on mission that we might be his hands and his feet in the world, or to use a different metaphor, that we might be ambassadors of his kingdom, who come from a different world, the kingdom of God, and go out into the world to share God's love, to be part of his ministry, to do the things that Jesus did, like setting the captives free, healing the sick, praying for those in need, loving the unlovable, being generous to those who aren't generous back. Armed only with the peace of God, we go out into the world, as absurd as that might sound. So our passage this morning is absurd. But secondly, what happens when the Christian when the disciples go? They rejoice, they're filled with joy, because what happens as they go, believe it or not, as unbelievable as it sounds, is the ministry grows, the kingdom of God comes, the prayers are answered, the captives are set free. Despite all our failings, despite all the mistakes, somehow God works through the people. One of my jobs as mission here at the cathedral is to be a chaplain at Blackburn College, which is in our kind of parish boundary, such that it is. And uh I go there hopefully once a week on Friday mornings, that's the time set aside, that I go across during term time and I speak to the staff and I speak to the administrative team and I talk to students and I smile and I try to be friendly and I wheedle my way into conversations as and when I can. And probably most weeks I come home and think, what was the point in that? Did I have any impact? Did I make any difference? Did anyone even notice that I was there? Sat in a corner of Starbucks trying to smile and be friendly. And then a couple of weeks ago, a student reached out to me through his teacher who said he's interested in becoming a Christian and would like to know more. And so I met with the student and the teacher, and since then the three of us have been slowly working our way through the alpha course. He and his family live in Blackpool, and so I've connected them with a church up on the coast. So it does seem as though, in all our failings, in all our shortcomings, as we go out, we have the joyful experience of the ministry working somehow, extraordinarily. I'd like to point you to this report, uh, which has come out of the Bible study, uh, the the Bible Society. You know, not a bunch of nut jobs, fairly sensible, buttoned-up, ordinary UK-based organization. And earlier this year, they published a report based on six years of uh data uh called the Quiet Revival. Let me just read for you. They have at the beginning of a report the report in 30 seconds, so I'm just going to read those two paragraphs for us. The churches across society have to notice that something amazing is happening, challenging long-held predictions about the future of Christianity in the 21st century. Once we saw aging congregations and steady decline in attendance. Now we see dramatic growth led by the young. Where once we saw apathy and even hostility to Christianity in the Bible, now we see increasing openness again among the young. You may have heard rumblings or rumors emerging over the past few years. You may even have noticed it in your own community, or it might have entirely passed you by. But this data in the report shows that it is real. This is the quiet revival. For the first time, this is not just an anecdote, but is demonstrated in the largest results, oh, sorry, in the latest results of a large, robust, and nationally representative population study that has tracked the religious attitudes and behaviours of England and Wales since 2018. We found that the church is in a period of rapid growth, driven by young adults, in particular young men. Along with this, the church demonstrates greater ethnic diversity than ever before, both within and outside the church. Young adults are more spiritually engaged than ever, than any other living generation, with Bible reading and belief in God on the rise. We have also seen that active engagement with the church has a significant impact on the lives of attendees, with high increase in mental and general wealth well-being. Again, particularly among young adults, a generation in the midst of a mental health crisis. It is also changing communities, with churchgoers more likely to feel a connection to their local area and get more involved in social engagement activities. Challenges remain for the church and civic society, but they must respond to this quiet revival, and its reality can no longer be denied. So it's absurd that Jesus would send us, but apparently when he does, things happen. And so we can point to, I'm sure I hope you're aware of some of these people. There are a number of celebrities or kind of well-known people who have in recent years publicly come back to faith. Tom Holland, Aina uh Hershey Ali, who was up until quite recently a famous uh new atheist, Rory Stewart, or Lamorna Ash, who uh is a 29-year-old author who wrote a book uh this year called Don't Forget, We're Here Forever. And she wrote it because two of her friends from university suddenly and unexpectedly became Christians. She wanted to find out why. And so she went on her own journey of discovery and spent a number of years exploring churches and found herself coming to faith. When I talk to uh bishops about the confirmations that they're doing uh at the moment, time and again they say to me that this is the story they are being told by those people they're confirming. I'm in my mid-30s or 40s, not been interested in church for most of my life, but in the last couple of years, something has piqued my interest. And so I've been going online and reading or uh watching videos, and now I started reading the Bible, and it's changed my relationship with my children or my ex-wife or my uh daughter, and I'm finding myself fascinated by Jesus and coming along to church. So it is absurd that Jesus would send 70 and that he would continue to send us, but nonetheless, there is a joy when we seem to produce fruit. Jesus said the harvest fields are ready. People want to hear and want to believe, they're desperate to discover more, they're desperate to engage in the services of which we offer. But then lastly, there's not just absurdity in this passage, there's not just joy, there's also comfort as Jesus says this. Nevertheless, do not just rejoice in the in what's happening, rejoice that your names are written in heaven. Be very easy after a sermon like this to think, oh gosh, not another thing I've got to go and do. I do not understand how busy my life is already, and now you want me to go out and join in the ministry of Jesus. The good news is that we don't have to do anything for our names to be written in the book of life, in the book of heaven. Jesus is not saying in this passage you have to do these things and then your name will be written. Or if you work hard enough, maybe you can write it in quickly after you die so that St. Peter lets you in through the pearly gates or some nonsense like that. The good news is not that you have written your name in the book of life, but that the book your name was written in the book of life because of the work of Jesus. No one has ever found God. All these people say they're finding God. No one has ever found God. The good news is that God has found you, that you have been discovered by God, and that you have discovered his reaching down to hold you close. And so we're invited to go into the world, not to make people believe, but with the good news that in Jesus they have already been found. Amen.