The 4th Sunday after Pentecost 2025
Texts: Galatians 6:1-16; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
The Reverend Marjorie Bevans
Read along on FB HERE
There was a young adventurer traveling in some remote part of Brazil when he met a Christian missionary in a tiny village. The missionary was a Canadian and the only other white person the adventurer had seen for months. So, the adventurer asked the missionary how he came to be in this isolated village. He said, “I was looking for some guidance from the Lord and considering becoming a missionary when I noticed a chocolate bar on the table with a Brazil nut in it.” The adventurer asked, “What would you have done if it was a Mars bar?”
The Gospel Lesson is about evangelism. Jesus is sending out 70 missionaries to prepare the people to accept Him when He arrives. Jesus is bringing God’s grace to the world, and these 70 are to trust God to protect them and provide what they need. Jesus does not want them to be weighed down with too many possessions. The 70 are to travel lightly to help keep their focus on the mission.
I served on the Evangelism Commission for the Diocese of West Virginia. We did research into demographics, church growth patterns, and effective tools and methods. I now think Jesus would have been disappointed with us. We were weighed down with information. We went all the way to an evangelism conference in Cape Town, South Africa, only to discover that South Africans are very different from West Virginians. The church in South Africa was growing because the culture was different. The people there knew their need for Jesus.
We don’t need new tools or methods to bring people to Christ. What is essential is our own faith and witness. Healthy sheep tend to reproduce. We were reminded that the goal is not to grow the church, but to save souls wherever they can be found. So, trying to replicate what works in Houston or Dallas or South Africa was not necessarily going to work in West Virginia.
While there are larger cultural trends of which to be aware, each church is unique. At Good Shepherd we began to focus on our hospitality ministry, then just get out the word. Friends were bringing friends to church because they had found it meaningful. They were being transformed, being healed, reconciled, or finding new life.
What I learned from my study of apologetics, which is related to evangelism, is that sharing our faith is not purely an intellectual thing. Even for those who raise intellectual objections, for example, if God is good and omnipotent why do bad things happen, or how can you prove the existence of God, it’s still an emotional decision, based on something we deeply need—the need to know we are loved unconditionally.
This is what I have come to believe about doing the work that the 70 were given to do.
First, it’ about connecting with people, being a friend to strangers, loving them before you even know them, simply because God loves them and He sent Jesus to save their souls.
Secondly, be who you are on your best day, which means not being overbearing or simplistic in sharing the joy you find in your faith. Just as each church is unique, so is each person we meet.
Lastly, someone who trusts God enough to leave home with few possessions or security to go into possibly hostile territory turns out to be an attractive, wholesome witness for Christ. This is why Jesus gave the 70 those particular instructions, to ‘carry no purse, no bag, no sandals’. Being from the south, I am familiar with the understanding of the carpetbagger who came south after the Civil War. They came intending to set up some business and establish themselves in the community. The 70 were not to be carpetbaggers seeking their own personal interest.
In Paul’s Letter to the Galatians he is addressing a number of issues that have arisen in the church there—fatigue in doing what is right, what is required to be a good Christian, the new place of the Law of Moses, how to correct one another gently, (or if you’re a Southerner, how to correct someone so gently that they don’t even realize they’ve been corrected—O bless your heart), the problem of self-deception. Paul is describing ‘discipleship’, how we live together and grow in our knowledge and love of Christ.
Like evangelism, discipleship in the church does not need to be complicated, but it does need to happen. So, we come together to study the Bible or some other book edifying our faith, to pray for one another, to be a friend, to serve the needy, to teach and encourage young people to trust God, to joyfully sing together.
Taken together the Gospel Lesson and Paul’s Letter for this morning hold up the importance of remembering the whole of the Great Commission. The Great Commission is the last thing Jesus spoke to the disciples in the Gospel of Matthew. We often easily remember the first part of it and neglect to remember the second part. These are his parting words and so they are most important.
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”
“Making disciples of all nations” is what Jesus was instructing the 70 to do. We do this when we simply invite people to come to church with us. “Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” happens when we come to Sunday School or participate in the “Faith Seeking Understanding” class. It’s not difficult. We are not all called to be missionaries in remote parts of Brazil. We have been called to be here. Thanks be to God. Amen.
