I stopped a man in our church just a couple of days ago to thank him for yet another significant service he had provided us.  “Oh, it was nothing,” he protested.  “Oh, yes, it was,” I persisted.  “It was a very important something.”  “Well, I enjoyed it,” he said.  “It’s part of being in the family.” 

Yes, that’s it, I thought to myself.  It’s always the family.  When you’re part of a family that lives well together, you take your part.  You help out.  You help each other.  A family has a common goal though it contains any number of members.  The church is a family.  We call each other sisters and brothers in Christ.  We’re not linked by blood, but by common faith.  And I can’t tell you how often I stop in amazement when I think of how many of you do so much to keep this great church great, though we don’t pursue greatness for ourselves but for our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose Spirit we live and move and have our being.  To do all that we do here at home and all that we do in reaching out to the ends of the earth, we need a great work force.

That’s what Jesus is telling us in this morning’s account from the Gospel of Luke of a second commissioning of workers to go forth.  The first commissioning had been given to the inner circle as recorded in the previous chapter:  “Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority . . . and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.”

But then, in an account recorded only in Luke, we read that Jesus expanded the call of the twelve with another call.  He appointed “seventy others” to go out into the villages and towns, proclaiming the kingdom of God in word and deed.  Now the first thing we need to notice here is that the number “seventy” is not intended literally.  Seventy is a code word, a number signifying many, many others; in fact, everyone.  Seventy has no limit.  Jesus knew he needed a great work force.  So much to do, so little time.  Or, as he put it, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. . . .”

None of the seventy is mentioned by name, and there is no hint that they were especially gifted, trained, educated, noble, pious, or exceedingly moral exemplars to the other people.  There was apparently no indication that they were great preachers or communicators.  They are referred to not as the “seventy best” but simply the “seventy others.”  They were not the original twelve disciples, but all the rest.  They are we; we are they.  A great work force to proclaim the kingdom of God.

Evangelism is the operative word here, a word that has been tainted by the often misplaced and misdirected zealotry of religious people who get too much in your face.  But evangelism is a good word with ancient roots.  It comes from the word for “gospel,” good news.  And evangelism means the proclamation and dissemination of the good news of Jesus Christ.  We used to have a committee here called “membership and evangelism,” but a year or so ago we dropped the word “evangelism,” in part, I suppose, because we didn’t want to feel connected with a way of proclamation that many of us don’t find comfortable.  But use the word or not, when we go from this place as people of faith representing the Gospel of Jesus Christ in everything we say and do, we are evangelists.  People outside will detect hypocrisy right on and reject us.  But if we truly represent the ways of Christ in the world others will be drawn to the truth we proclaim.  And our evangelism will have produced fruit.

One of our new members told me that she had moved here from a community where church membership seemed not to be a priority.  So in her adult life there – though she had been reared in the church and then fallen away in her early adulthood – she hadn’t felt an impetus to seek out the church again.  But when she moved here and she heard people describe their various associations in the community, she heard time and again which church people belonged to.  Church affiliation seemed to be more a part of life here than there.  So she came to see what happens within these walls, and she has come back to the church to stay.  She has been evangelized, we might say.  So let’s not discount that old word that some have made distasteful to us.  We are still part of the seventy others, called to spread the word of Jesus Christ in our community and our world.

We contemporary evangelists who often think of ourselves as unequipped and unsophisticated when it comes to proclaiming the gospel can take comfort in the fact that we share a commonality with one of the greatest early evangelists of them all.  In his first letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul writes: “When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom.  For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.  And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.  My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.”

So if our mission does not require of us extraordinary talent or power, what does it require?  What are the identifiable characteristics of our calling as Christian disciples?  To pay attention to what Jesus tells us, we might note first of all that he promises that the harvest is abundant.  Where others might see scarcity, Jesus sees abundance.  This is not because Jesus is simply an optimist; this is because Jesus has faith in “the Lord of the harvest.”  Jesus does not commission us to prepare a harvest; that remains God’s work.  But our commission is to gather the harvest in and to pray that other laborers will join us in this important work.

Whenever we welcome new members into the congregation I am renewed in hope that the talents and gifts they bring to share with us will introduce innovative ideas and new vitality into our life together.  My hope is more often than not borne out in reality.  The same is true when we ordain and install new officers.  We lose eight elders and seven deacons then, but we also gain the same number in new talent and fresh energy.  How often a new elder brings precisely the skill set we need to meet a problem or fill a deficiency.  How often someone turns out to be a deacon’s deacon, embodying the compassion of God in Jesus Christ.

A second mark of our calling is that it carries vulnerability.  The world is often hostile to the ways of Jesus Christ, even as it was when he carried the cross to Calvary’s hill.  But Jesus does not arm us for battle against the world.  Rather, he sends us out into the world as lambs among wolves.  That’s a pretty good image of vulnerability.  But God the good shepherd stays with us through our trials, enabling us to endure.  We are to offer God’s blessing upon those who receive us in Christ’s name and to accept graciously the hospitality extended to us.  Our culture has conditioned us to be self-starters and lone rangers.  Christ’s gospel calls us to vulnerable dependence on and basic trust in God.  That may be among our most difficult challenges.

Third, the successes of the seventy have far greater significance than they perceive.  Jesus calls us to join in work that he did, which included healing and restoring life.  We marvel at these accounts but often discount the degree to which we, too, are empowered to bring new life to places where nearly all breath has failed.  Whenever we attend faithfully to the mission of Jesus Christ in the world, God’s kingdom on earth is being announced, the reign of evil is being challenged, and the promise of God’s consummation is being made.  There is no greater purpose to our lives than to be part of such activity.

Fourth, and perhaps most important of all, Jesus declares that there is something even more significant than the triumphs of the seventy: “I have given you authority . . . over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you.  Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”  What matters more than the earthly and spiritual successes of Jesus’ followers is the eternal relationship with God they enjoy through him.  We have this relationship by grace alone, recipients of the mercy of God embodied in Christ.  As we journey with Christ toward Jerusalem and see the depths to which God’s grace extends, we will be called also to witness to what we have seen, confident that, regardless of the visible outcome of our ministry, our place in God’s kingdom is secure.

It seems apropos today – and perhaps a slightly cruel reminder to her – that Dorothy Gelb is our elder worship leader.  Dorothy also chairs our nominating committee.  No one knows better than she what a great work force the life of this congregation demands on a continuing basis.  Once summer is over the work of calling new leaders will begin.  When you hear the call, remember that it may be the voice of someone you know, but that in that voice is, in fact, the voice of the Spirit of God calling you to labor for God’s kingdom here on earth.

The words of the hymn preceding my words bear repeating.  Listen:

Come, labor on.  Who dares stand idle on the harvest plain/While all around us waves the golden grain?/And to each servant does the Master say, “Go work today.”

Come, labor on.  Claim the high calling angels cannot share;/To young and old the gospel gladness bear,/Redeem the time; its hours too swiftly fly.  The night draws nigh.

Come, labor on.  Away with gloomy doubts and faithless fear!/No arm so weak but may do service here;/Though feeble agents, may we all fulfill God’s righteous will.

Come, labor on.  No time for rest, till glows the western sky,/Till the long shadows o’er our pathway lie,/And a glad sound comes with the setting sun, “Well done, well done!”