Trinity 5 - 2010

A Refection By Canon Prof Mike West,

Rector of Wrexham on Luke 10: 1-20

It has been an interesting week as far as the church is concerned. Our gospel reading last Sunday began a section in Luke’s Gospel that examined what it might mean to be a disciple of Jesus. We struggled with some hard sayings from Jesus that challenged the securities that we build around us and demanded that we be more open and vulnerable in response to Christ’s call.

On Sunday afternoon, Bishop Gregory came to confirm over 50 people in St Giles’ Church and our attention was focussed on those who are near the start of their Christian journey.

On Tuesday the Church celebrated the feast of St Peter and Paul, the two great apostolic figures who most influenced the birth and growth of the Christian Church. And then yesterday we celebrated the life and witness of St Thomas, best known perhaps for his stubbornness to believe what he had not seen with his own eyes.

Our hearts rejoiced in their lives and deaths that glorified God, but we were struck also by the weakness and vulnerability of these giants of our faith. And we noted that their power lay so often in their weakness. And we saw also that their faith grew most effectively from their vulnerability and from the hard challenges they faced to understand what God was asking them to be and to do. And we saw that their authority grew out of their need for forgiveness by Christ and their total reliance on him for all that they were and all that they did.

We saw power expressed through weakness, leadership through service, and courage ultimately expressed by embracing a martyr’s death. No wonder the disciples struggled to understand what it was that Jesus demanded of them, and why it is still hard for us today to give our lives into Christ’s service. And our Gospel reading this morning, continues, and weaves together a number of these themes.

Jesus appointed seventy followers to go ahead of him to preach the good news of the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick. Immediately we are struck by the number 70. In the book of Numbers, Moses commissioned seventy men to help him in the task of leading Israel, and this could be why Jesus decided on this number. The seventy that he commissioned would now help him in his work of proclaiming God’s rule.

And then we are struck yet again by the vulnerability of those he sent out. They were to go in pairs for mutual support, but they could take no provisions with them for their journey. With no purse, no bag and no sandals, they would need to rely entirely on the hospitality of those in whose houses they would stay.

It is a model of mutual support and it is one that would be important for the early church.

Those who initially followed Jesus were literally called upon to leave the security of their homes and to embrace the hazards of the road. Travelling in Jesus’ day was fraught with dangers and difficulties and was a hard life.

After Jesus’ death and resurrection the Apostles would all eventually take to the road. We know of Paul’s missionary journeys and we know of Peter’s travels, and we know that they both met their deaths in Rome. We know little of Thomas’s journeys but there is a strong tradition that he took the Gospel to Kerala in India. We also know that the Apostles had help from many other Christians in taking the gospel out from Jerusalem to the edges of the known world. And we know that, as they did so, they did indeed stay in people’s homes and did found Christian communities that worshipped in those places.

Therefore the model that Jesus uses here is a model embraced by the early church in its work of spreading the gospel. But this model also contains two great metaphors, or ways of understanding our life as a church today.

The first is the metaphor of journey, the idea of being on the way with Jesus. And, as we learned last week, this metaphor teaches us vulnerability. It challenges us to recognise the securities that we put in place in our daily lives that hinder us in our attempts to follow Jesus with our whole heart

And the second metaphor is hospitality. Those who receive the 70, bring them into their homes, feed them, clothe them and look after them. And this is an important metaphor for the church. And that is because a key part of our work has always been to provide a haven for those in need, and a place of refuge for those on their own journeys through life. And the church is called to be open and available to people both in times of joy and at times of crisis and loss.

As Christians and as a church we are called to both go out, and to invite people in, to be vulnerable on the road and hospitable in the house. And, as our passage makes clear, it is Christ’s peace, given, received and shared out among us, that binds these two activities together.

Christ’s journey, Christ’s hospitality, Christ’s peace, our challenge.

Amen