Sermon for July 6, 2025

July 6, 2025

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20



On Friday, July 4, I sat down to finish this sermon—but then it took a radically new direction after I read the Declaration of Independence. Then I turned to the Gospel for today again.  I read the Gospel and then read the Declaration of Independence. Both of these readings have dangerous ideas that might take us to freedom, taking us to freedom by upsetting the status quo. Both are democratic, in ways that we expect and in surprising ways. As you might imagine, Jefferson’s dangerous ideas in the Declaration of Jesus are significantly different than the dangerous ideas of Jesus.

This Gospel text might feel so familiar that you’re puzzled right now—you might ask, “What dangerous ideas are you seeing in this go and deliver the good news text? Isn’t that what disciples do?”

But Luke’s version is very different. Here, instead of just sending out the 12 disciples, as in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark, in the Gospel of Luke Jesus sends out “72 others.” Who are these others? Why aren’t they named?

Maybe their individual identities aren’t important. If we look at the Gospel of Luke, Jesus often travels with a crowd, and many scholars think of this crowd as the unnamed disciples, which doesn’t mean that they are less committed. Some scholars theorize that people in this crowd do get named in later passages, like Mary and Martha who we will meet in the Gospel for July 20.

Scholars agree that the same person who wrote Luke also wrote Acts. Both books show a widening of mission. Unlike Mark and Matthew, books that often seem to say that Jesus comes for the Jews, at least at first, the writer of Luke presents a picture of a much more inclusive Jesus. In the book of Luke, Jesus empowers not only the disciples but at least 72 other people, and by the end of the book of Acts, the Jesus movement looks like a much more democratic movement than any other we see in the first and second centuries.

We can point to all the ways that early Christians failed to be democratic, just as we can look at the ideals of Jefferson and see where he was not nearly as inclusive as we would have liked. But failures of carrying out the ideals don’t mean that the ideals themselves are bad.

Jesus offers a radical vision of evangelism. He sends out these 72 in pairs. From what we are told, he doesn’t spend time training them or testing them. The 72 don’t have to spend time shadowing him first. No, they just head out.

They will know where they are going and when they get there by who shows them hospitality. I read one account of a seminary professor who taught this passage to seminary students and asked which aspect would be hardest. The seminary professor thought it would be the traveling with no money, but one student said, “Having to eat whatever is in front of you.” That vulnerability is one of the key aspects of Jesus’ approach to evangelism.

Like the ones who go out, the ones who offer hospitality don’t face a difficult test either. They won’t be judged on how complicated their dinner is, on how well they can follow a recipe. They only need to share.

The disciples offer peace and then as they leave, they tell people that the Kingdom of God is right here and right now. In Luke, we don’t see an evangelism that is about saving souls for Heaven. It’s about equipping people to live the Kingdom of Heaven right here and right now.

What a radical idea. Jesus sends people out without training, without resources, without a master plan. And it works! They come back to report success, and Jesus relays to them a message of greater success, Satan overturned, and the names inscribed in Heaven. These first believers go out and spread the word, and thus they survive the persecutions of Rome, the downfall of the Roman empire, and all the upheavals to come.

As we celebrate Independence Day, we see a similar story: colonists who don’t have much in the way of training or resources as they fight against the great empire of their time. They know they’re taking a risk as they sign their names to that Declaration of Independence. They bind themselves together in a bid for freedom. They pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

Those colonists and those first Christians risked everything—from a distance of centuries and from the advantage of knowing how it has turned out so far, we might applaud their efforts. It’s worth asking, though—would we do the same?

Like Jefferson, Jesus calls his followers to sacrifice one kind of freedom, living comfortably by following the rules made by men—in doing so, they get a much vaster and deeper freedom. But Jesus gives his people better chances for survival. They go with nothing, so they are hardly a threat. If they are rejected, they don’t need to stick around to try to convince the people in the town—they keep moving. Unlike the signers of the Declaration of Independence, they will not attract the attention of authorities—unless they find a home that welcomes them, they’re not in one place long enough. Jesus’ plan relies on hospitality and vulnerability, not weapons and confrontation.

Jesus uses peacemaking as a way of winning the victory over the all the forces of evil, demons and illness, Satan and the Roman empire and all the other government forces that enslaved the people of the first century. The travelers begin by announcing peace and leave with the reminder that the kingdom of God has come near. Biblical commentator and scholar Amy Oden says, “As Christians, we can reliably root our lives in these two proclamations — ‘Peace to this house!’ and ‘The kingdom of God has come near.’ This is the good news that we have to share! These keep our gaze on God’s activity right in front of us, rather than turning it to blaming, accusing or judgmental analyzing, symptoms that reactivity holds our lives in bondage.”

Both Jefferson and Jesus offer dangerous ideas in a time of clear and present danger. They are ideas with the power to change the world. Indeed, they already have.

Jesus was a hinge point in history, as did Jefferson. Paul was part of that first wave of laborers in God’s Jesus-shaped vineyard: Paul was there, helping to shape the new communities that he cultivated, with ideas that still guide us today. We, too, are standing at a point where humanity is poised to go in a radically different direction from what has come before.

Paul is not the first or the last to tell us that we’ll reap what we sow. Do not grow weary of doing what is right. The ripe crops await, and the laborers are few. Today and every day, say yes to Jesus, who calls us to a new harvest, a harvest based on hospitality and vulnerability, a harvest ripened by love.