The Lord Jesus appointed seventy-two disciples
whom he sent ahead of him in pairs
to every town and place he intended to visit.
The Lord uses his disciples to prepare the way for the persons and places that he himself intends to visit. This is how Jesus and the Father desire to address the needs of an abundant harvest. Jesus will not himself do everything directly by his physical presence, but instead prefers to act through those willing to labor for the harvest. The first step is to hear the call of Jesus sending us out. This gives us our directions, our marching orders. But even then we must not simply take matters into our own hands. We must continue to submit ourselves and our mission to the Lord of the harvest.
He said to them,
“The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest.
Jesus sent the seventy-two but commanded them to ask the Father for laborers for the harvest. This was for more than filling in the gaps of a missionary force that was small compared to the needs of the mission field. It was also so that they themselves could be the answer to their prayer. The idea is that they would then be operating at the call of the Father, sent by the Son, united in the Spirit. They would be able to make their own mission a sharing in the relationship of the Father and the Son.
he sent ahead of him in pairs
Even in the fact that they were sent in pairs we can see another facet of the Trinitarian structure of mission. It was not the domain of an isolated individual but meant to be carried out by communion of persons, united in love.
Go on your way;
behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves.
Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals;
and greet no one along the way.
Sent by both the Father and the Son, united in the Spirit, these seventy-two disciples would experience the freedom that can be found when the mission comes first. They would be able both to brave dangers and to endure privations and in spite of that still have a supernatural peace with which to bless the households they visited.
Into whatever house you enter,
first say, ‘Peace to this household.’
If a peaceful person lives there,
your peace will rest on him;
but if not, it will return to you.
All of this would work because it was not in their own strength that they went nor their own peace that they offered. They were not distracted by less consequential matters of merely human preferences because they had felt the heart of the Father and the Son toward these people to whom they went. They went, finally, as those preparing the way for the people whom Jesus himself would visit. And it is this way for us today. Whatever is our own part of the mission, it is always for the purpose of letting Jesus use us to prepare others for an individual encounter with himself.
If we recognize that we have been called by Jesus and ask the Father to send us then we too can know and share the peace of Christ with others, and he himself can use us to touch their hearts and lives. We can experience the singleness of purpose demonstrated by the seventy-two and even the great strength that the Lord gave Paul for the sake of the proclamation.
But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength,
so that through me the proclamation might be completed
and all the Gentiles might hear it.
No comments:
Post a Comment