JESUS SENDS OUT THE SEVENTY-TWO

Fifth Week in the Time of Galilee

 We are in the Galilee of our spiritual year. We have learned how Jesus healed the leper and returned him to his rightful place as a human being with equal rights. We have learned how Jesus saw the faith of the four friends that brought the paralytic to him for healing and said their faith had healed him. We have learned how Jesus looked at the man driven by demons, loved the man and called out the shadow of the Roman oppression that was driving him mad.

And we have seen some of these miracles among us. A green card veteran who was treated like a leper and left alone in Tijuana was returned through a movement of faith, made clean of any criminal record and restored to his rightful, equal place in this nation. A mother of six has been protected from deportation by a circle of simple faith in a humble church, standing strong against the most powerful government in the world.

Jesus sends out the 12 disciples giving them the power to heal and drive out demons – and to bring the Good News to the poor that the Kingdom of God is near. Now he sends out seventy two more, giving them also the authority and power to heal and drive out demons.

Yes, we are in the Galilee of our spiritual year. You are called to be one of the seventy two. You are called to heal the leper and bring forgiveness to the paralytic. You are called to show your love to those brothers and sisters driven by a demon to violence and addiction and self-destruction and call the demons from them.

We are in the galilee of this spiritual year. Just as Jesus gathered his disciples and a growing number of the poor in a movement of faith, it is required of us that we bring forward new disciples and begin gathering a renewed movement. Let me explain what I mean.

There is a great portion of the citizens of the United States that count themselves as Christians. The wickedness of racism has divided Christians just as once even Methodist churches celebrated Christ with a rope down the middle of their temples, white on one side and people of color on the other. That wicked racism has brought millions of white Christians to support the evil that occupies the White House. Trump cannot be defeated if we do not break the hold of Satan on these millions that profess their faith in Jesus Christ.

Can we in our little churches bring about this revolution in the Christian communities by ourselves? Of course, we are not alone. At the core of our faith is that the mighty Spirit of Righteousness runs through history and that Spirit can raise up a movement in thousands of places on time to defeat evil. Yet we also know God works through very humble people to bring about change.

The sanctuary movement that has spread through cities and counties and states across the nations has been the only real defense for millions of those families under attack by Trump’s department of ICE. That is why he openly attacked the sanctuary movement in his state of the union speech. That sanctuary movement began here, right here, in our humble church.

I believe that we are called again by our faith. When we move by faith and not by sight there is not always a clear path that we can see – but there is a path that God puts before us. The disciples, the twelve and then the 72, and hundreds and then thousands of the poor of Galilee made a commitment to follow and join the movement that Jesus began. The Spirit led that movement to Jerusalem to the cross, to the resurrection and to Pentecost. From there communities of faith and resistance sprang up among the people and outlasted an evil and arrogant empire. We are asking you today to build the movement of faith for this time in this country that is required.

I believe that we have been given the right cross to carry - the cross of the right to family for 8 million young people, eight million children of the people of color Diaspora. Our commitment to that campaign is a faith commitment. Moreover, it is a campaign that challenges the faith of those who have turned from the sanctity of the family to follow the wicked policy of family separation.

The movement we are called to build this year may indeed play an important role in the political direction of this government. The Good News is that it will without doubt make our people stronger in their lives and their relationships and in the communities.

When we learned that Jesus healed, we also learned the true miracle was who he healed. The Jesus movement challenged the hypocrisy of religion that compromised with racism and injustice and turned its back on those who were marginalized by that injustice. Thousands who were excluded from the church of his time lived without faith, without love, without the moral code to guide them which called on each to love their neighbor as themselves.

Today, the millions of “children of the Diaspora” whose right to family is threatened, have also been abandoned by churches that will not take their side. We have tried to show you from the scriptures that Jesus began a movement of healing and forgiveness and love that was also a movement of resistance. A church that does not take the side of those who face injustice is an empty church, music without a drumbeat, shouts without the Spirit – but the church of faith AND resistance pours out the Holy Spirit on everyone! Today, we just want you to imagine what that movement looked like and felt like.

Jesus and the disciples were wandering through Galilee, the poorest area of that ancient people. People began to seek them out. They saw people healed, people that the government and the established religion didn’t care about. They prayed. They felt they were in the presence of a liberator sent by God, a God they had thought only yesterday had abandoned them. There would have been singing and dancing and the sound of music. People would have been sharing food. It was a mobile church, moving as Jesus moved, growing in size.

And then Jesus sent the twelve out to bring in more people. They came back with stories about how even they had healed the sick and driven out the demons with which oppression had scarred so many of the people. Then Jesus gathered up seventy-two of those following him around and sent them out – giving them the authority to heal and drive out demons. They came back celebrating, telling their stories of success, bringing those they healed with them – and Jesus warned them not to get big heads about what they had done but to be glad that they had seen what the Kingdom of God was like.

That was it: His message was that the Kingdom of God was near, was among them. They were already celebrating their liberation, feeling their freedom. They wanted him to pour out the Holy Spirit on them.

Yes, that was some kind of “church”, gathering crowds, moving from one place to another. It wasn’t a church in a fancy stone temple. The ceiling of that church was the sky above Galilee. The floor was the dirt and the grass of their land – but as they celebrated and sang and danced and prayed, they were beginning to feel like that could be liberated land and they could be a liberated people.

Jesus called the disciples together and told them,” You have seen what the rich and powerful would give everything to have seen – you have seen the Kingdom of God!”

That’s the church we felt in 2006 when millions marched here in Chicago and in big and small cities across this country to demand an end to the deportations, an end to the treatment of millions of hard working Latinos as criminals. That’s the church we need today, a purpose driven, justice seeking mass of people that seeps into the temples of hypocritical religion, pours out the Spirit of Righteousness among those who call themselves Christians and cries out for the church of Jesus Christ, the church of liberation – Arise, Arise and sing Alleluia, Alleluia!

 If you will just join with us in building that movement of faith, if you will read the scriptures and take them into your heart, if you will open your heart and let the Spirit of Righteousness flow into you and through you, if you will be one of the seventy two starting today – we can, we will, make a space for the Kingdom of God among us, among those we love, among those who will come after us.

We ask you to put in the work of gathering and inspiring this year’s movement of faith and resistance. We ask that you talk to friends and strangers alike and get them to sign on as supporters of our right to family campaign. We need to identify the committed so that we can call them together in large numbers to bear witness to the Kingdom of God in which every human being is respected and loved and part of the people of God.

We need to gather the people who will hear the call, soon, very soon, to let Freedom ring across every city and town in this nation.

We ask that you continue your work in the Youth Health Service Corps, learning and saving lives, bringing healing to those who are being denied twenty years of their life.

We ask that you make Jesus your role model in choosing a life of prayer and service and struggle – and that each week you multiply, bringing together the core of the movement of faith God has asked us to build.

And together we ask God, “Give us the faith to build this movement, your true church, a church of both love and resistance, of both forgiveness and justice – Pour out your Holy Spirit on us – and Give us Faith!

 THE HOLY SCRIPTURES OF THE FIFTH WEEK WITH JESUS IN GALILEE

L. Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues,

P. proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.

L. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 

P. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

 Mark 6:6-13  Jesus Sends Out the Twelve

Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village.  Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over impure spirits.  These were his instructions: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts.  Wear sandals but not an extra shirt.  Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town.  And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” They went out and preached that people should repent.  They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

 Luke 10:1-7 Jesus Sends Out the Seventy-Two

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two[a] others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.  Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.  Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.  “When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’  If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you.  Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.

Luke 10:17-24 Jesus Sends Out the Seventy-Two (Part 2)

The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.” He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19 I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.  However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do…. Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see.  For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”