14th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Isaiah 66:10-14
Galatians 6:14‐18
Luke 10:1‐12,17‐20
Jesus does not do everything himself. He allows his disciples to actively participate in his mission. This time not the twelve apostles, but seventy-two others. He sends them on a missionary journey. They should go ahead of him ‘into every town and place where he himself was about to go.’ To heal the sick and proclaim that the kingdom of God has come near. To bring in the harvest. To lead all those to Jesus who are destined for the kingdom of God.
It will not be easy. ‘I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves,’ Jesus says to the disciples. They are not allowed to take anything with them: No money bag, no knapsack, no sandals. They are to live on what people give them voluntarily. But not all of those they meet will be generous and take them into their homes.
‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few,’ says Jesus – no wonder with these working conditions. Isn’t it completely naïve to set off unprepared, without any money, equipment, planning or other precautions? What feelings and thoughts did the disciples have when they set off? It is easy to imagine that they wondered doubtfully whether the whole thing could succeed at all. Let me remind you that it is not the twelve ‘hand-picked’ apostles specially called by Jesus who set off here. No, this mission is given to seventy-two ordinary disciples like you and me. Some of them will have had their doubts.
But then they all experience an incredible success. ‘The seventy-two returned with joy, saying “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!”’
Jesus does not do everything himself. He takes others into his service. But for his servants, it is enough to mention his name to have the full power of Christ at their disposal. It is the hand of the Lord who does the work. ‘The hand of the Lord shall be known to his servants’, we heard in the first reading from the book of Isaiah. A servant of the Lord should make his whole life available for the mission. But he must not rely on anything other than the power of God alone. In fact, he needs nothing more than that. ‘Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you,’ Jesus says to the seventy-two. When the church acts in the name of Jesus, it acts with the power of Christ. And this power defeats all evil.
Jesus does not do everything himself. He allows the church to have his divine power at its disposal and thus allows it to participate in his mission. But no one in the Church can boast of himself. It is always the power of Christ that heals and delivers from evil. Paul writes to the Galatians: ‘Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.’ The ‘world’ here stands for all forms of human social order in which everyone is judged according to performance, origin, possessions or similar criteria. These are all things that one can boast about in the world. Paul has no longer anything to do with this order. He has withdrawn from the race for recognition. You cannot boast in the service of Jesus, you cannot be proud of anything of your own, because all the power comes from the Lord. More precisely, from the cross of Christ. Jesus himself does not boast of his divine power either. He takes a different path. A path of humiliation that leads him to the cross.
Jesus does not do everything himself. At the decisive moment of his life on earth, he does nothing at all. He hands himself over completely to the people who crucify him. He is actually passive in the moment of his triumph over Satan. He suffers. Others are active. But it is precisely through his passive suffering, through his passion, that he defeats sin and evil and opens the way to heaven for us.
Jesus does not do everything himself. He gives his Church authority over all the power of the enemy. But it is not that which we should rejoice in. ‘Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven!’ Let us rejoice in our redemption! Let us boast in the cross of Christ!
Amen.
