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Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost – July 6, 2025
Isaiah 66:10-14, Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
In our gospel reading for today we hear Jesus sending seventy of his followers out into the world with a mission. He sends them out in pairs to every town and every place he intended to go. Jesus sends these followers out to proclaim peace, to proclaim that in him the kingdom of God has come near. “Whatever house you enter, Jesus tells them, “say, ‘Peace be to this house.’” This might sound like he’s merely encouraging them to be polite, to mind their manners, but it is so much more than that. These are words of blessing. This is a proclamation. It is a word that does something. It is a blessing of peace: peace with God, the peace beyond all understanding, the peace that the world cannot provide, the peace only Christ can give, the peace that comes from being restored to right relationship with God.
This blessing of peace foreshadows the peace the risen Lord Jesus will bestow upon the disciples as he appeared to them saying, “Peace be with you, peace be with you.” This peace is not the absence of trouble. It is the presence of Christ, which brings comfort and hope.
Jesus also tells his disciples to proclaim to people that the kingdom of God has come near to them. In Jesus Christ, God is bringing people close. God is holding them near. Jesus sends the seventy out to those who need to receive this blessing the most: the sick, the vulnerable, those who are isolated and alone and suffering.
Jesus sends them out to tell them that the kingdom of God has come near, bringing healing and wholeness and restoration to body and soul.
At the risk of using imagery which may be awkward for some, I see a connection between this word Jesus has given his followers to proclaim and the picture of God’s comfort we have in our first reading for today, from Isaiah. I was warned by a lectionary podcast I listened to this week to avoid having that passage read by an immature lector, who might have a hard time not snickering about “drinking deeply with delight from God’s glorious bosom.” It is startling language, to be sure, funny only because it is so unexpectedly earthy. But the image is a beautiful one. It shouldn’t be awkward, because this God’s own design for how babies are fed. Nursing mothers are image-bearers, reflecting God’s nature. God uses this imagery to describe how he will comfort his people.
God promises to comfort his people as a mother nurses her infant. God promises to restore Jerusalem in such a way that those who currently mourn may come to her consoling breast, drinking deeply with delight from the glorious bosom God provides. They shall nurse and be carried on her arm and dandled on her knee. This is a picture of the kingdom of God drawing near. This is God at work to bring his people close. As God says, “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.”
This imagery is especially vivid for me because last week we went up to Bellingham for a Bellingham Bells baseball game, and seated below us was a mom with twin infants. They couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old. Those babies were being passed around, held by dad, held by what looked to be grandparents, held by friends. (I was hoping to get a turn, but they didn’t offer.)
There was all the chaos of a baseball game in progress: the cheering, the taunting of batters, the criticism of the umpires, the obnoxious yelling of college students who were in a few beers deep. Over the course of nine long innings, there were times when those babies started to get ornery and out-of-sorts. Maybe they were startled by the noise. Maybe they were tired. Maybe they were hungry.
When they started to cry or fuss, they would inevitably get handed back to mom. And this mom welcomed it. She pulled them close and, one at a time, discretely began to nurse them right there in the stands. Their little bodies melted into her. When they eventually unlatched from her consoling breast, all was right with their world. You could see it on their little faces. Their eyes were glassy with contentment, rolling back in their heads in utter bliss. They were now at peace.
This got my wife and I to reminiscing about when she was nursing. There were times when she would go to the grocery store with all three of our boys when our youngest was an infant and his brothers were four and two and a half. When the newborn would start to get fussy, she would scoop him up out of his carrier, hold him close, and discretely nurse him while walking down the aisle. She would hold him with one arm while pushing the cart with one free hand while two toddlers bounced around at her knees! Within moments, he would be consoled, at peace.
I mention this in part to gratuitously brag on my wife a little, who was and is an incredible mom, but I mention it even more to draw out this imagery from Isaiah, where God is described as being able to juggle a whole people, nursing them, keeping them all close, drawing them near in order to console them, giving them comfort, giving them peace.
Jesus sent these seventy followers out to announce that God had come to draw people in close. Jesus sent them out to proclaim peace, especially to those who were vulnerable or suffering. He sent them out to proclaim that in him, the kingdom of God had come near. Jesus sent them out to bring people into God’s comforting embrace, there to drink deeply with delight of God’s glorious love and grace.
This is still the mission of the Christian church. The mission we hear about in our gospel reading for today foreshadows the mission Christ gave to the church after his death and resurrection, when he called his disciples to proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sin to all people. All of this foreshadows the Great Commission Jesus gave to the church, to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that he has commanded us. All of this foreshadows our task and calling as Christ’s people here today. We too are sent out to proclaim the peace of God. We too are sent out to proclaim that in Jesus, the kingdom of God has come near.
I wish this were as easy as handing hungry babies to their mother, but of course it isn’t. Jesus is honest about this. He tells us he is sending us out as sheep in the midst of wolves. There will be dangers. There will be those who snarl and bite at us. This remains true. There are places in the world at this very moment where it is dangerous to be a Christian, places where proclaiming the gospel will get you killed. Jesus tells us that we can expect rejection. He is honest about the fact that not everyone will receive us or our message. Jesus tells us that when this happens, to just shake it off and move on. He tells us not to take it personally. “When they reject you,” he tells us, “they are really rejecting me.”
But there will be successes too. There will be those who receive this peace. There will be those who will joyfully receive the good news that in Christ the kingdom of God has come near to them. There will be those who drink deeply with delight of the gospel. After all, the seventy returned with joy, didn’t they? They shared with Jesus how demons submitted to them. Jesus rejoiced that so many had been freed from Satan’s grip. Jesus affirmed that they had an authority from his word which was more powerful than snakes and scorpions, which are symbols for sin and death. Jesus affirmed that his word gave them authority over the power of the enemy.
This was something to celebrate, to be sure, but even better, Jesus reminds them, is that their names were written in heaven. Even better is that the seventy themselves had been brought close to God – not by their works, not by their efforts, but through Christ, who had not only called them but claimed them. He himself had written their names in heaven.
Our mission today, collectively as the church and individually as Christians, is to share the blessing of Christ’s peace with others. We are sent out to announce that in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God has drawn near. We are not sent out to build the kingdom, but to proclaim that through faith in Jesus Christ, it is already here! It is not our works which establish the kingdom, but Christ’s work of dying and rising for us for the forgiveness of our sin. We are sent out to proclaim this. We are sent out with a message, with an authoritative and powerful word, a word that can overcome sin and death and the power of the enemy. This word is powerful and authoritative because it comes from Jesus. “Whoever listens to you,” Jesus says, “listens to me.”
Whoever listens to the word Jesus has given to the church listens to Christ himself.
So listen to this and hear Jesus speaking directly to you: Peace be with you. Whatever is going on in your life to trouble you or make you afraid, it is no match for Jesus. He has stomped out every snake and scorpion, so that you might have peace. Hear this too: The kingdom of God has come near to you. In Jesus Christ, God has come near to all of us. In word and in bread and in wine, God pulls you in close, giving you forgiveness, giving you consolation, giving you comfort.
Drink deeply with delight from God’s glorious grace today, brothers and sisters. Know that your names are written in heaven. And then let us go out like the seventy to all those anxious, ornery, hungry, vulnerable, and suffering souls to share with them the good news that there is a place at God’s glorious bosom for them too; for in Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God has come near.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church