2 Kings 5.1-14
Psalm 30
Galatians 6.7-18
Luke 10.1-12, 17-24
Sunday 6 July 2025
©Suzanne Grimmett
“See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.”
Put like that, this missional summons is a bit alarming. Some level of fortitude must be required for those, “sent out into the harvest”. We may prefer to think such courage in following Jesus is for the heroic disciples back in the day, but the number of ‘seventy’ chosen seems to disallow that, given that it is a number likely associated with all humanity – Genesis 10 numbers all the nations at 70. The call of Christ is for everyone.
The early Christian communities first reading Luke’s Gospel no doubt heard the reference to wolves and Satan falling like lightning in the context of their own persecutions, likely interpreting their mission and earthly struggles as a cosmic showdown with evil. But how comfortable are we 21st century Anglicans with the idea of being sent on a mission of cosmic dimensions, particularly when the metaphor used is ‘the harvest’? What does it mean ‘to be harvested’ and aren’t we dehumanising people with an ‘us and them’ mentality when we think in terms of some gathered and others excluded?
As we begin this NAIDOC week, we might also be uncomfortably reminded of approaches to evangelism that have been shackled to colonisation. When ‘the harvest’ is associated with a sense of cultural superiority and uses the structures and machinery of exploitation, then we are left with violent associations of the church’s evangelism project. Where the church’s mission through history has happened to align with the powers of the day and linked to economic gain, we should always be suspicious. Sometimes wolves don’t look or sound like wolves, but they can still act like them. We should also always take note when God seems to be contained or brought by any one group or power. The Rev’d Aunty Di Langham of Newcastle Diocese has said, “I always think that when people start talking about the church, they are talking about a pot plant that they brought out and put on the land and then they nurture it and they prune it and they make it fit on our land, but it never actually gets roots. Did you know that God didn’t come on the front of Captain Cook’s ship… did you know that God was already here?”[1]
Some of our discomfort with the language of mission may come down to this kind of intuition- that the gospel should never be about imposing our own understanding of God on others and wiping away all the divine encounter that was already there, threaded through different stories and lives. The mission of the disciples was about teaching and healing, but it was a mission not of imposing the final answers but of preparing the way for the reign of Christ. Those who welcomed the disciples were told, “The kingdom has come near to you!” Those who rejected the disciples were similarly told, “The kingdom has come near to you!” It would be hard to find a less coercive response than the instructions to simply wipe the dust from their feet and leave.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German theologian and martyr of WWII, in his unfinished work, “Ethics”, deals with such tensions about the Church’s mission by focussing on a central theme of Christlikeness. There is no room in Bonhoeffer’s thought for the success of human endeavour or moral superiority. This resonates with Paul writing to the Galatians that we can boast only in Christ and him crucified, depending on God to bring to completion the new creation in us. Sounding very like the mission of the seventy – “say to them, the kingdom has come near”- Bonhoeffer insists that the Church is simply the space in the world where the reign of Jesus is demonstrated and proclaimed. But he also shares insights which might help any of us who have some discomfort with the language of mission. He says;
“This space of the church does not…exist just for itself, but its existence is already always something that reaches far beyond it. This is because it is not the space of a cult that would have to fight for its own existence in the world. Rather, the space of the church is the place where witness is given to the foundation of all reality in Jesus Christ. The church is the place where it is proclaimed and taken seriously that God has reconciled the world to himself in Christ…. So the first task given to those who belong to the church of God is not to be something for themselves, for example, by creating a religious organization or leading a pious life, but to be witnesses of Jesus Christ to the world. [2]“
We can take comfort that ours is not to defend our religious organisation nor to fight for space in the world over and above other ideologies and worldviews. To think like that is to align mission with the consumerism of our time, the damaging myth of scarcity and the belief that we need to compete for market space. We are instead to be witnesses to the simple reality of God’s love and the truth of reconciliation, resting in the abundance of the God who assures us that even when we go out into the world with nothing, we have enough and we are enough because of what Christ has already done.
This text also makes clear that the role of hospitality in mission cannot be overstated. The mission is peace and the way the disciples are instructed to go about it is to turn away from all forms of exploitation, self-centredness and personal gain. With such a method and spirit in the mission, we should re-evaluate the language of ‘harvest’. Such language in this context cannot come with any meaning of superiority or coercion but rather is a metaphor for growth, maturity and gathering into the peaceable commonwealth of God. The disciples are to be relational and respectful, not forcing receptivity but coming in vulnerability and accepting the hospitality of others. We are called into that same vulnerable mission, expressed so well in Rev’d Shane Hubner’s words in the parish reflection this week;
“Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly. Pray, listen, learn, and love. Break the bread, drink the wine, bear the burden, share the peace.”
But what of the wolves that Jesus tells us are out there? It is important that we heed the warning and recognise the existence of energies that are destructive or aggressive, greedy or self-serving. I think in our comfort, perhaps we have grown too casual about the presence of evil. The risk is, though, that like taking on the Church’s mission with a sense of cultural or religious superiority, we can become too ready to assume we know who the wolves are and who are the lambs. The judgment that belongs only to God, comes too easily to the human heart and mind. In our haste to be like lambs, we might be swift to hide our wolfish tendencies from others, from God and even from ourselves.
Such hiding tends towards lives of desperate performance rather than the truth of simply being who we are. We notice the gentleness and vulnerability of the way Jesus sends the disciples, but we might just as easily notice the humility, particularly in the simplicity of having no possessions, and in the instruction to rejoice not in the cosmic victories but in knowing and being known by Christ. Perhaps, we could say this is what it means to have the courage not of lions, but of lambs. Humility is the foundation for such courage because to become humble is to see yourself as you really are, allowing the grace of God to work in you the healing power of acceptance and love. No longer afraid, no longer hiding. God’s generous hospitality invites us to the table, and the victorious peace of Christ promises the time when the wolves lie down with the lambs and we shall be healed.
So may we lay down the burdensome weight of the need to prove, convince or coerce and instead, by the gentleness and hospitality of our lives, reveal the alternate reality of God’s peaceable commonwealth on earth.
May we trust in the Lord of the harvest to complete the work which has begun, offering our lives in vulnerability and courage, trusting the Spirit who always gifts more than we may ask or imagine.
And may we have the courage to allow the grace of God to work in our spirit, bringing forgiveness and healing that we become witnesses, grounded in this country, to the transformative power of Christ’s reconciling love.
+Amen
[1] The Rev’d Canon Aunty Di Langham, A Report from Abundant Justice 2018
[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, Ilse Tödt, Heinz E. Tödt, Ernst Feil and Clifford Green (eds), Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 6, Fortress, Minneapolis, 2005, pp. 63-64