July 6, 2025

This morning, Jesus is a man on a mission.  He’s ended his ministry in Galilee and with his ragtag followers, is on his way to Jerusalem.  But apparently, he intends to visit a LOT of places along the way.  So he commissions 70 of those followers to go ahead of him and prepare towns and villages for his arrival.

And that makes me wonder what it’s like to be Jesus’ advance team.  Making sure that everything’s been set up so that things run smoothly when Jesus arrives.  Creating some publicity.  How exactly do you do prep work for the Messiah?  And that’s what I want us to be thinking about today – how do you do prep work for the Messiah?

The Gospel doesn’t give us many details about what these teams of two did.  But we can make some pretty good guesses.  Let’s close our eyes and imagine ourselves in the sandals of one of these people for a few moments.

We’re walking along a dusty road in ancient Palestine with our partner.  We’re excited – Jesus, our rabbi, has chosen us to be part of his mission.  We’re going to visit a small village that he’s planning to visit later, to prepare the way for him!

Now we’ve finally arrived.  It’s the middle of a hot desert day.  We’re thirsty and hungry, because Jesus sent us out with no money, or food, or even water.  We pick a large home near the center of the village, but are turned away at the door.  We go to a second home – no luck there either.  After a while, we find a baker at a stall in the market who offers us more than enough water and a little bread.  As we eat the food he’s generously given, he tells us about the challenges of village life.  The well is so far away, and Roman soldiers just came through, taking too much of the little grain the villagers had.

Then he asks why we’ve come to the village, and we begin to tell him about our amazing rabbi.  How he challenges the attitudes of the powerful – like the Romans – and ministers to the outcast and the powerless.  How Jesus proclaims in word and deed a message of hope for all people.  We tell him about the things we’ve seen Jesus do and how it’s changed our hearts and lives.  And all of a sudden, we notice that a crowd has gathered around.  Hungry to learn more about our teacher and his message.

You can open your eyes now.

At its core, today’s Gospel story is about evangelism.  Now if you’re like most Episcopalians, the word “evangelism” makes you cringe.  It evokes images of fundamentalist preachers or of having very earnest people ask whether you’ve found Jesus.  But if that’s our image of what evangelism is, I’m here to suggest that we need to rethink that idea.  Because – as the story we imagined together suggests – in the end evangelism is rooted in hospitality and storytelling.

It's hard to find a church that doesn’t offer some kind of hospitality.  Coffee hour.  A weekly dinner.  A newcomer’s group.  Here at Christ Church we invite addiction recovery groups to use our building.  Those are all great things.  But the challenge with always offering hospitality is that it allows us to decide who to welcome, and when, and how.  Always being the host gives us the sort of one-sided power that costs us credibility in a world that is suspicious of institutions and especially of religion.

Today’s Gospel passage tells us that learning how to receive hospitality is a key habit for churches.  Jesus sent the Seventy out with nothing because he realized how vital depending on others’ hospitality is for ministry.  Because when we’re on other people’s turf, dependent on them, we give up our power.  And that changes everything for us. 

Because as we listen to our hosts’ stories, in their spaces, we see the world through their eyes.  Our vulnerability opens our hearts and minds.  We begin to understand what it’s like to be them.  We become more like Jesus, who throughout the Gospels is constantly inviting himself into other peoples’ spaces – asking “is there a place for me with you”?

It’s only when we can enter into the dreams and longings and fears and regrets of others that our telling of the story of the Good News will have real meaning.  But we’ve got work to do here, too.  Because even though each of us is a Beloved Child of God, the reality is that all too few Christians can tell how we have personally experienced the promise of the Gospel: that God is with us in all things.  We’re challenged to imagine how our own stories fit into God’s promises of reconciliation and fullness of life.  We can’t speak to what the Good News is or how it’s changed our lives.

Being able to tell about how experiencing the Risen Christ has shaped us is essential to passing along our faith.  Here’s an example of one such story. 

I have a friend leveraged her knowledge and skills around business and nutrition to start a nonprofit dedicated to getting healthy food the people who need it most.  She can tell you the story about how God called her into this work when she got to know the people who needed this help.  How God tapped her on the shoulder when she walked into their space and heard their longings and losses.  And she knows her place in God’s story of reconciliation – how God liberates people from the powers of sin, and evil, and death.  She knows how her experience of God has changed her.  Her authentic story about the Good News – that in this work for justice the Kingdom of God has come near – is a powerful one that offers real hope.  The sort of hope the world cannot offer.

We don’t have to be someone who fights for food justice or one of the Seventy to be invited into Jesus’ mission.  Each and every one of us was called to be listeners and storytellers at our baptism.  Jesus’ mission continues – and joining in it is more critical than ever.  Our society is in the midst of a profound spiritual crisis as people feel deep despair and hopelessness.  We have a world filled with people hungry for authentic encounters with Jesus – wondering how the ancient message of the Gospel might give meaning to their daily lives.

My friends, the Sea-Parting, Grave-Busting, Shalom-Bringing God has commissioned us to be God’s advance team.  You and me.  To eat at our neighbors’ tables.  To see the world through their eyes.  And to tell how our experience with the Risen Christ has changed us.  So let us go forth today empowered and encouraged, rejoicing that Jesus invites us, like the Seventy, to prepare the way for Him as we enter the spaces of others, ready to tell our own stories of the Good News.  Amen.