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S. Pentecost 4.25 Luke 10:1-20

‘Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves… whoever hears you hears me, whoever rejects you rejects me.’

Here we see the institution of the New Testament pastoral ministry, the scriptural template for all to follow that gets fleshed out in a bit more detail by St. Paul in Timothy 1-2, and Titus, and slightly modified by the Lord in the Upper Room—the bit about no moneybag, rucksack, or weapons is apparently waived though I’m hearing Jesus ironically exposing his apostles’ occasional reluctance to rely on him alone 😉 For the record: we never again see apostles carrying or using earthly weapons—apparently because they finally see the spiritual weapons Jesus has given them are actually far more powerful!

That waver aside, we do see the apostles and their later-day successors like Timothy, Athanasius, Luther, following the script Jesus gives quite strictly, starting with where they go…

Here is something almost universally misunderstood by modern Christendom: the mission of Christ’s apostles—where they go and don’t go. Luke says Jesus sent them where “he himself was about to go” and in Matthew 10, [the real Apostolic Great Commission!] Jesus plainly says “Go nowhere among the Gentiles; enter no town of the Samaritans, but go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel…” that is, go only to the church, the temples and synagogues of Israel.

In Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, we are told what the Apostles actually did—clearly defining their mission’s scope 😉 We see they never, no, not ever! go seeking Gentiles, Samaritans—the unchurched—never attempt to convert them Israel’s faith. Not once! In Acts 17:2, Luke clearly defines the scope of of the Apostolic Mission, “And Paul went in, as was his custom, to the synagogue of the Jews and reasoned with them from the scriptures… saying ‘This Jesus whom I proclaim to you is the Christ.”

On Malta, where Paul was shipwrecked, and where there was no synagogue, Paul not only never preaches to them, he does not disabuse them of their notion that he is a Greek god! He follows the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of St. Peter in 1 Peter 3, quite strictly.

The gospels make clear that Jesus did not go anywhere but to Israel. Yes, he passed through Samaria, Gerasene, and Syrophoenician towns, occasionally. But going is one thing—passing through quite another! For example, when a Syrophoenician woman accosts Jesus in Mark 7 (as he’s riding through the area 😉 begging him to heal her demon possessed daughter (a lot of that in Gentile-land, dontcha know 😉 he doesn’t even acknowledge her presence until she makes a witty rejoinder at his laconic saying to his disciples ‘you don’t give the children’s food to… dogs’ 😉 Woof!

In John 4, Jesus orders the Samaritan woman to get him a drink, and only talks with her when she asks why a Jew would ask a Samaritan woman for a drink (he wasn’t asking, he was ordering 😉

The modern idea that Jesus later changed his mind on outreach is simply… wrong. In Matthew 28, Jesus does not say: “Go therefore and make disciples…”. It’s not an imperative verb, “Go!” It’s an aorist passive participle, “Having gone [by implication, where he’s sent us] we’ll make disciples even of Gentiles! by Baptism in the Triune Name and Gospel proclamation. As we mentioned above, the Book of Acts shows: the only Gentiles the Apostles went to were the ones they found in the synagogues of Israel, or who plainly asked to hear the gospel of Jesus like the Ethiopian eunuch or the Philippian jailer…

Amazing!, the things you learn if you just read the scriptures and take them straight, no chaser! It’s also amazing—the scorn and opposition you get from the leaders of your own Synod when you point these things out in an age that just luuuvs missional outreach and unchurching the church! Personally, I suspect it’s more a love for money, power, and success than for ‘saving souls’ that drives much of this nonsense… 🙁

Anyway, “the field being harvested” in Luke 10 isn’t simply the world, but it is those fields where the lost sheep of the house of Israel have strayed. St. Paul reached all of the lost sheep of the house of Israel, Jews and Greeks alike, in the province of Asia—we learn in Acts 19—simply by reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus with the disciples for 2 years and not bothering to go anywhere else!

It’s almost like it’s TRUE!—what the Small Catechism says in Article 3 of the Creed: that the Holy Spirit, all by himself, calls, gather, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the true faith—all by his grace, not by our efforts, like HE’s actually GOD or something, and that we apostles are (as Paul tells the Corinthians) just tools, in every sense of that word.

Almost like that… 😉

Which is why Jesus can send us shepherds out like lambs in the midst of wolves, with no moneybag, rucksack, cloaks, or weapons, and why we greet no one along the road (because we’re always in hostile territory—like a commando squad caught behind enemy lines and badly outnumbered) to simply proclaim the Peace of Christ. Because: that Peace will be received by a faithful few, here and there, in Israel’s towns, and they will provide all we need because this is a full-time vocation, this pastor gig, and those who preach the Gospel will live of the Gospel.

And for 33 years, I’ve lived off it just fine, thank you very much!

Though, with much… opposition.

Yet, we’re not sent to reason with opponents. When our Peace bounces back, we don’t argue, or do “Christian Apologetics”. NO! Jesus tells us to just… walk away, and as we’re going, proclaim: “Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you! Nevertheless, know: the Kingdom of God has come near you, and it will be better for Sodom on the Day of Judgment than for your town!”

A confident, literally vir-tuous (Latin for manly) way of being. I’ll admit, I don’t totally hate that part of the job. “The only thing about the Zombie Apocalypse that’ll be difficult for me is pretending I’m not… excited.” If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. 😉

It is joyful—seeing demons subjugated, seeing torrential rain, hail fall, just as you prayed, on those irreverent drunker bikers demanding you pray for ‘good weather’ for their wedding parade. Seemed good to me 😉

But, Jesus gently reminds us: while calling down fire from heaven is fun, YES!, and sending she-bears to maul your mockers… more fun, still!, and while nothing can really hurt us, ever; our joy should simply be that our names are written in heaven.

And not for the benefits we reap from that, but joy simply that God’s will is done in us—implausible subjects of the King—and that with us, incredibly, for Christ’s sake!, he is well pleased…

And, in this… in this is Peace, surpassing all understanding, guarding our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.