Boast Only of Christ

Year C Ordinary Sunday 14 Sermon--2 Kings 5:1-14; Galatians 6:1-16; Luke 10:1-20

So Jesus sends disciples out—70 of them; and as they go, he warns them, “You won’t find the going easy, so you have to have some strategies in place. If people listen and respond, work with them. If they don’t get it, don’t waste your time. Move on. If they don’t get it, don’t waste your time. Move on.” Is this the Jesus we’re used to hearing, or at least thinking about? Is this really what Jesus said, what Jesus meant, what we’re supposed to do in Jesus’ name? “If they don’t get it, don’t waste your time. Move on.”

We want to believe that everyone can get it; that everyone will understand; but what if they don’t? We want to believe that we live in a Christian society, or at least one based on the Judaeo-Christian tradition; we want to feel secure that we share Christian values or values compatible with Christianity with our neighbours; but what if we don’t? And what do we do if we find ourselves in such a situation? What do we do if we realise that that’s the situation that we’ve been in all along? “If they don’t get it, don’t waste your time. Move on.”

We are living in a time when it is clear that not everyone does share the values that we would want to uphold. We certainly know that not everyone understands God in the way that we do. But where is the compassion with such an injunction: “If they don’t get it don’t waste your time. Move on.”?

If nothing else, Jesus’ words force us to confront the truth that we will not always find the message of Christ welcome in the places we inhabit. And to some extent, Jesus’ words let us off the hook: “If they don’t get it, don’t waste your time. Move on.” If you know the message is not getting through, then don’t waste your time, don’t waste your energy, don’t risk despair, ridicule and disheartenment. Move on.

But why? Why doesn’t Jesus say, “Persist”? “Never give up. Never give in. Never believe that all is lost. Always believe that you just might get my message across.”

As Galatians reminds us, other barriers don’t seem to get in the way of sharing the good news. Both Jews and Gentiles, both circumcised and uncircumcised may be part of God’s new creation in Christ Jesus. Why is the line in the sand, or rather the dust, drawn by Jesus here?

And then, the conclusion of the story in Luke indicates that the 70 received an amazing reception—that they rejoiced at the authority with which they’d been received. None of Jesus’ fears were realised apparently. And still Jesus cautions, although the caution is slightly different: “It’s not about what authority others give you. It’s about who you are in God.” “It’s not about what authority other give you. It’s about who you are in God.”

Whether people like you or don’t, whether people receive the message or not, it’s never about that. It’s always about who you are in God. You don’t need to save the world—God does that. You just need to be true to the good news. You don’t need to save the world. You just need to be true to the good news.

We can get so wrapped up in what we do, how we behave, what we achieve that it’s sometimes very easy to forget what we were doing it for, why we were behaving that way, or in whose name we were seeking to achieve. Jesus’ words remind us that it’s never about us in that sense. It’s always about us as the people whom we are in God.
For God requires very little of us. God doesn’t expect us to be God. God expects us to be us.

Naaman didn’t quite understand it either. He thought that something momentous should be required of him in order for him to be healed. He couldn’t believe that the prophet, by way of messenger, only asked him to bathe in the Jordan River.

He thought that it should have been the king who made the proclamation, but it was just a prophet and not even a prophet, but a prophet’s servant.

Naaman thought that the things of God needed to be bigger and grander and more difficult; but it was just a simple request from a servant that God demanded of Naaman. And this is all that God asks of us too—just something simple.

We humans want our lives to be grand, to be wonderful, to be larger than life, but that is not what God asks of us. God asks of us only that we honour God; only that we tell God’s story; only that we share the good news in word and deed. God doesn’t ask us to save the world, because that, friends, is God’s work. God just asks us to respond to that marvellous act of salvation.

“If they don’t get it, don’t waste your time. Move on.” Not because God does not care for them; not because things can’t change, but because God does not ask us to change them. We are not the source of such miraculous power. We are not the centre of such momentous action. We are just servants at the door of a prophet, and more than a prophet, of the reconciling one Jesus Christ. And God asks of us only this: that we deliver the message and move on.

And surely, in delivering the message, we will discover unexpectedly and joyfully, that God has used us in God’s work.