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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
God blessed me two weeks ago, during my Continuing Education course at Faith Lutheran Church in Plano, through a family of peace that received me into their home’s providing me a place to stay and serving me food and beverages. The husband and wife’s hospitality came to my mind as I studied today’s Gospel Reading in preparation for this sermon, as today’s Gospel Reading speaks of Jesus’s sending 36 pairs of men to carry His peace and joy to houses and towns with the support of people who heard and received them. Admittedly, today’s Gospel Reading describes the mission of the Church in a vastly different time and place, but its underlying message is the same here today, and so this morning we reflect on today’s Gospel Reading under the theme, “Peace and Joy to Houses and Towns”.
In the context of St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, today’s Gospel Reading comes after Jesus earlier had already sent out the Twelve Apostles both to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal, giving them both the necessary power and authority over demons and diseases and instructions similar to those we heard this day (Luke 9:1-6). And, as we heard in last week’s Gospel Reading (Luke 9:51-62), after the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up and He had set His face to go to Jerusalem, He sent unnumbered messengers ahead of Him, village by village, to make preparations for Him. Then comes today’s Gospel Reading, with Jesus’s appointing to an office 72 others and sending them ahead of Him on a short-term mission trip, two by two, bringing His peace and joy, potentially into a house in every town where He Himself was about to go.
People in our time also go on what are called “short-term mission trips”: a few of us last week heard about one such trip that the LWML Texas District recently sponsored to Poland, and this morning we will pray for the success of two other such trips that friends of mine are involved in, one to Panama and the other to Ecuador. In the Gospel Reading, however, Jesus tells the 72 not to carry a moneybag, knapsack, or sandals, the very things we might think that they would need. With some Old Testament precedent (2 Kings 4:29), Jesus tells the 72 to go directly to a house in every town that will receive them and to bring them peace and joy, by proclaiming the Kingdom of God and healing those in need.
Jesus anticipated the 72’s encountering both houses where there would be no people of peace and towns that would not receive the 72, rejecting them and so ultimately rejecting both Jesus, God’s Son, and God the Father, Who sent Jesus. Such willful resisting and rejecting of those whom God had sent and so of God Himself contrasts sharply with hearing and receiving those whom God had sent and so God Himself. Now, I am not aware that anyone here this morning rejects God’s ministers and so God Himself in quite that way, but those of us here this morning still have something else to think about along those lines. The short-term mission of the 72 in that time and place needed a house full of people of peace in each town to provide the 36 pairs with places to stay and to set before them food and beverage. Today, when the Church no longer meets in people’s houses and when wages are paid not in food and beverage but in money, the mission of the Church still needs the support of its members, offering money and serving faithfully as congregational officers and Board and Committee chairs and members and as volunteers who work with them. To some extent, our Pilgrim congregation is blessed in these ways, but, as I expect the upcoming Voters’ Meeting will make painfully clear, there is so much more that we can and should be doing, partly to keep God’s minister from strictly becoming a building contractor, secretary, webmaster, and the like, but mostly to better bring God’s peace and joy to houses and towns.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus uses Old Testament language and imagery (for example, Isaiah 14:13, 15; Daniel 9:3; Esther 4:3) to call to repentance various towns around Him. Similarly Jesus calls to repentance you and me. Jesus’s warnings about the Day of Judgment also apply to us. Apart from faith in Jesus Christ, we deserve not to be exalted to heaven but, because of all of our sins, to go down to Hades or Hell. So, from our sins regarding the mission of the Church, from all our other sins, and from our sinful natures themselves, we turn in sorrow, trust in God’s forgiveness, and want to do better. When we so repent of our sin, then God forgives our sin. God forgives all our sin, whatever our sin might be, for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ. Instead of the curse formula and action that the disciples were told to give the rejecting towns (see also Paul’s practice in Acts 13:51; 18:6), we receive the powerful greeting and actions of peace and joy.
People such as us may have different responses, but either way the Kingdom of God has come near. The Kingdom of God has come near even through God’s ministers, but only because those ministers themselves are sent by Jesus Christ. The God-man Jesus Christ Himself was sent by the God the Father in order to save sinners such as us (John 3:17). With Jesus’s death on the cross for us, He casts out the ruler of this world (John 12:31). When we see, believe in, and honor Jesus Christ, we see, believe in, and honor God the Father (John 12:45, 44; 5:23). Then we have the forgiveness of sins by grace through faith in Jesus. Each time the Holy Spirit brings us or someone else to repentance and faith, Satan loses that much more of his stranglehold on this world. The crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ works through His Word and Sacraments to give us peace and joy in His Kingdom—His Kingdom that prevails against not only the gates but also the entire kingdom of Hell or Hades (Matthew 16:18).
So, we can say that Satan fell like lightning from heaven this morning as the baby now named Gwendolyn Kaylee had God’s Triune Name put upon her with water and the Word in Holy Baptism and thereby was born of water and the Spirit and so entered the Kingdom of God (John 3:5-6). At the Baptismal Font, like all of us baptized before her, Gwendolyn Kaylee in faith received the forgiveness of sins, was rescued from death and the devil, and was given eternal salvation. Satan and his demons are in God’s Name subject to God’s ministers, who then had the authority literally to tread on serpents and scorpions as miraculous signs (Mark 16:18; Acts 28:6), even as today they figuratively defeat their spiritual counterparts (Genesis 3:15; Psalm 91:13; Romans 16:20). For those who privately confess the sins that they know and feel in their hearts, God’s ministers effect peace and joy in individual Holy Absolution. Because hearing God’s ministers is hearing God’s Son Jesus and so also hearing God the Father, we “believe the voice of the one absolving no less than we would believe a voice coming from heaven” (Apology of the Augsburg Confession XII:40). And, as God’s ministers in the Gospel Reading then had table fellowship with those who heard and received them, so here today in the Sacrament of the Altar we have table fellowship with our Lord: with His Body in, with, and under bread and with His Blood in, with, and under wine, given and shed for us to eat and drink and so to receive the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
Now, despite some notions to the contrary, not every one of us is a laborer in the Lord’s harvest, at least not in the same way, for we have different vocations. Like the 72 in the Gospel Reading, we do not exactly go from house to house, but, with God at work in us, we live our Christian lives as children, siblings, spouses, parents, employees, employers, volunteers, and the like. We support the mission of the Church through this congregation, offering money and, as we are elected and appointed, serving faithfully as congregational officers and Board and Committee chairs and members and as volunteers who work with them. Ultimately we do not have peace and joy because of the authority we have been given or because of the things we do (confer Stephenson, CLD XIII:126), but we have peace and joy because our names are written in heaven, just like Gwendolyn Kaylee’s name is now so written, and thereby we receive the benefits of the authority Jesus was given and what He did for us.
The 72 in the Gospel Reading were sent then as God’s ministers today are sent: to bring Jesus’s “Peace and Joy to Houses and Towns” with the support of the people who hear and receive them. Depending on their response, our larger households, towns, and even our country may well be condemned as the Gospel Reading describes, but, as God delivered Lot and his family from Sodom before its destruction (Genesis 18:16-19:29), so God delivers us, so that we can be part of the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21:9‑27) with its peace and joy, as described in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 66:10-14). With daily repentance and faith, we live in God’s forgiveness of sins, forgiving one another and, as today’s Epistle Reading described (Galatians 67:1-10, 14-18), sharing all good things with the one who teaches, who makes his living by the Gospel (1 Corinthians 9:14). Like the disciples before me (Luke 22:35), I certainly lack nothing, and I appreciate the congregation’s generous wages and other benefits as I bring you God’s peace and joy. May God grant that that continues until He exalts us and all who believe to heaven.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +