Sent and Received
Luke 10:1–11, 16–20
July 8, 2007
University Christian Church, Seattle, WA
Rev. Sandy Messick

• Whale blubber. When my daughter, Sarah, was applying to be a Student Ambassador with People to People, she had to participate in a group interview. With a couple of other students, she sat down with one of the group leaders to answer questions. The students would take turns being the first to answer the question. When it was Sarah’s turn to be first, the question was, “What is the strangest thing you have ever eaten?” The question was supposed to gauge their willingness to try new foods and to experience new cultures. For a moment, Sarah was stumped. She couldn’t think of anything strange or different. Then it came to her. Whale blubber. In 4 th grade, her class had been given the opportunity to try whale blubber. She didn’t like it, probably wouldn’t eat it again, but it was a great answer for the interview. Sarah was in.
• Now here’s my segue into the sermon: in this passage from Luke, Jesus sends his followers out into the world, two by two, without provisions, and tells them to eat what’s put before them. I would assume that would include whale blubber if the occasion called for it.
• This story of sending out the 70 only appears in Luke. All of the gospels record Jesus’ sending out of the 12, and a lot of the details are the same. But only in Luke does the writer also include this story of sending out 70 more.
• Some think that the number 70 is a reference to the 70 elders that Moses called to help him lead the people Israel. More likely, the 70 recalls the 70 nations mentioned in Genesis 10. This sending then becomes the mission to the nations, to all the world.
• The story is set here before Jesus’ death and resurrection, but it was likely the model for Christian missionaries in the early church. Those sent out to preach were to depend upon their hosts for provisions; they were not to take their own supplies. The missionaries were not to shop around for the best accommodations or the best chefs, or the best views of the city. Instead, they were to enter the first home they came to, and if they were welcomed there, they were to stay put. And, if they were not welcomed, they were simply to leave. Shake off the dust and move on to the next home. They were not to curse, or call down a rain of fire, or scold the occupants for their lack of welcome, they were simply to move on. Finally, Jesus tells them, eat what you is put before you. And he says it not once, but twice. This is important. Be a part of the home in which you are staying.
• In other words, the 70 were to live with those they were sent to minister to. They were to become part of the family.
• We think of missionaries as those who are sent out to preach to the masses. Missionaries are those who supply help to those in need. Missionaries are the ones who give to others who receive.
• But Jesus reminds us that we’re not called just to preach at others, or to toss our offerings blindly as we move through town like a grand marshal in a parade tossing candy to the children on the sidelines. No, Jesus calls us to engage with those to whom we are sent. Eat their food, he says, and drink from their cups, and live in their lives and perhaps discover that they have as much or more to offer you, as much or more to teach you as you have to offer in return.
• Jesus calls us to encounter those with whom we minister, to receive from them as well as give.
• And when we engage those we are trying to serve, rather than simply doling out our notion of wisdom, the message of Christ, the message of “God with Us” becomes far more powerful, and far more real, and preacher and hearer alike are changed.
• I realized this past week that July 2007 marks an anniversary of sorts for me. 20 years ago, on July 1, 1987, I began my first solo pastorate. I began a two-year ministry as student pastor for two United Methodist congregations in Central Illinois.
• Now the story would play better if I had entered that ministry full of myself, arrogant and sure that I, who at that point had a whole year of seminary under my belt, and certainly knew what these rural congregations needed to be successful, and then I had learned the hard way from them a needed lesson in humility. That story would certainly preach.
• But the truth is, I never had that much confidence in myself. The truth is, I entered that situation scared, without a clue, and shaking in my boots. And with good reason as it turned out. One of the two churches was definitely hostile territory. They had never had a woman preacher, didn’t want a woman preacher, and as God was their witness, didn’t intend to ever have a woman preacher and they were not shy about saying so. The only problem for them was, they were a United Methodist congregation. And so, while Disciples congregations call their own pastors, it is the bishop who appoints pastors to United Methodist churches. And the bishop was appointing me. They couldn’t say no. I could, but didn’t and that’s another story.
• So I went. I became the pastor of Indianaola and Fairview United Methodist Churches. And as much as seminary was teaching me about the bible, and theology, and church history, it was these two small churches that taught me to be a pastor.
• Within days of my arrival a prominent congregational member died and I was faced with my first funeral. It was the funeral director who showed me what to do and where to stand and talked me through the day.
• When I ran out of gas one Sunday morning on the way to the first of the two churches it was a member of another church in town who recognized me by the side of the road and stopped to share enough gas to get me to church on time.
• During my two years there I officiated at funerals and weddings, helped can peaches, ate fried chicken after church on Sundays, and rode in a combine to harvest beans at the end of growing season, and slowly, the city girl from San Diego learned about life on the Midwest farm, and I learned how to be a pastor.
• I even learned how to deal with conflict when a prominent church family became upset with me when I started getting serious with a young seminary student named Tom and so stopped dating their family friend, the local pharmacist.
• I was sent to those two churches to preach, and teach, and serve them Holy Communion, and I did. But they fed me as well. I learned from them as well, and received 10-fold back again.
• Jesus sends us out as Jesus sent the 70. But Jesus tells us, don’t just preach at them, live with them. Experience what they experience, eat what they eat, hear their stories and learn to understand their lives, for it is when the lines between givers and receivers start to blur, and we see each other as fellow pilgrims on life’s journey that Christ’s message takes on power and life and depth.
• Where are you called? Where is Christ sending you? Is it here, in this neighborhood, in this city, or out into the world? Are you being sent to the food bank, or the elementary school, or the mental health agency, or to an organization that works for peace, to the place you work, or the community in which you live, or perhaps simply to lonely people in need of a friend. Where is Christ sending you? What will you learn along the way, and what are you open to receiving from those you meet?
• Paul Palumbo, a Lutheran pastor, tells the story of his ministry to an inner-city neighborhood in North Carolina. He describes the chaos that reigned only blocks from his home. He writes, “ The gunfire was so frequent that my wife, who felt compelled to report all shots that she heard, was on a first-name basis with the 911 operators.” Though he knew that’s where God was sending him, he hesitated for over a year until finally, in his words, “God decided he was ready and brought the neighborhood to him.” His children, attending the same neighborhood school, began bringing their friends home to play. Soon the children were inviting him to visit their homes and so, hesitatingly, he went. He describes the experience this way, “As I walked through the neighborhood that first time, I noticed the young men, hanging out, scowling, suspicious of this new face in the neighborhood. “Gangsters,” I called them to myself, but the little ones with whom I walked called them “my uncle,” “my brother,” “my cousin.” I entered people’s homes, met their surprised, sometimes suspicious families, heard stories, was invited back by a few warm souls. These were the first to accept the peace I extended. Such was my first “missionary” adventure into the neighborhood to which I would become pastor for the next eight years. There I would learn that I might look like “a lamb among wolves,” but you can’t be a lamb among wolves when the wolves don’t act like wolves but welcome you warmly into their homes and lives. Nor can you be a missionary to a people who know Jesus better than you do and who depend upon God’s grace every single hour of the day in the midst of desperate surroundings. What happened to me was the subjection of some of my own demons: fear, self-consciousness, racial and economic prejudice, and—not the least—my abstract, intellectual understanding of God. It took more than one trip, but I continue to rejoice over what happened in those years.” (Paul K. Palumbo, “Eating What is Set Before You”, Word and World.)
• The scripture text for today ends with the 70 returning to Jesus rejoicing over what had happened to them. Jesus rejoices with them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.” Satan falling from heaven. I think that’s what happens when Jesus sends us out into the world to give of ourselves and we are open to receiving back again from those we meet. Thanks be to God. Amen.