Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost,
Solemn Mass, July 4, 2010
By the Reverend Stephen Gerth
Year C: Isaiah 66:10-16; Psalm 66:1-8; Galatians 6:14-18*; Luke 10:1-12, 16-20


After the evening Solemn Mass for the Annunciation this past March 25^th, Father Smith and I had dinner with our guest preacher, Tom Nicoll, who is rector of Saint John’s Church in Larchmont. We were all dressed as members of the clergy, with the round or “dog” collars most Episcopal priests wear. An older couple who had finished their dinner needed to find out who we were. Before we knew it, we suddenly found ourselves in some kind of John Cheever short story about so-called New York society.

The couple had never heard of Saint Mary’s – “We never go to church on the west side” – but they knew about Larchmont – because of its yacht club. They had no idea that Father Nicoll had declined to be chaplain at the club when he came to Larchmont because of its discriminatory policies.

It turns out the couple left Saint Bartholomew’s Church on Park Avenue when that parish got rid of pew rents that provided reserved pews for members at their main services. The husband had gone to an Episcopal boarding school, the wife remarked, so they really didn’t need to go to church anymore. I know Jay, Tom and I all successfully kept our composure during this. Jesus’ disciples had power over serpents and scorpions. We did not begin to know how to proclaim the kingdom to them.

Luke and Matthew share the today’s gospel story of Jesus sending out of those who followed him to gather the harvest, but the stories are different.[1] In Matthew, it’s just the Twelve who are sent out to join in reaping the harvest and they do. In Luke, the Twelve are sent but no results are reported. Luke’s Jesus then sends out seventy or seventy-two others – this is a place where the manuscript evidence is unclear about the number.[2] The seventy others return, but are excited about the wrong thing, their power. Jesus has sent them out to bring something else, his peace.

My favorite version of Psalm 23 is probably Isaac Watt’s text, My Shepherd will supply my need – and in no small part because of the American folk melody, Resignation, to which we sing it. The last verse captures as well as anything the peace Jesus sent his followers out to share with others:

“The sure provisions of my God attend me all my days; oh, may thy house be mine abode and all my work be praise. There would I find a settled rest, while others go and come; no more a stranger or a guest, but like a child at home.”[3]

In the Old Testament, “peace” represents far more than the absence of war. “Peace” is something complete, like “the settled rest” of “a child at home.”[4]

But, the disciples are more interested in power over demons. Jesus seeing Satan fall from heaven is far less important than that that God knows them and loves them, each by name.

A friend shared an article from Friday’s Wall Street Journal about Christians and missionary work.[5] In 1910, there was a large conference on missionary work in Edinburgh, Scotland. Last month, an organization of the Church of Scotland – that’s the Presbyterians – held a much smaller event on the same theme. In 1910, Western Protestant Christianity was set to conquer the world. In 2010, missionary work is no longer some kind of colonial enterprise but is bound up with outreach, feeding, building, healing. And a lot of good is being done. But many in the missionary community worry that people who do good works because of their faith don’t feel comfortable saying that it is their faith that sends them to Thailand to work against the child sex trade or to work in orphanages in the poorest countries in Africa.[6] With respect, it is the nature of the certain parts of Christian tradition, Anglican, Catholic and Protestant, to worry.

Today’s gospel lesson suggests to me, not that we should not worry, but that we should worry about doing the work God gives us to do in our lives and to trust that God himself will bring in the harvest in God’s own way, in God’s own time.

The important text here is how our names are written in God’s book in heaven – an image that first appears in Exodus when the people of Israel have lost faith in the God who has delivered them from slavery in Egypt.[7] Luke’s gospel is about the presence of the kingdom of God for those who repent and believe, about the return of all prodigal sons and daughters to a forgiving Father.

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