Luke 10:1-24 "What We've Seen and Heard" Scott Hoezee

Once upon a time, but not so long ago, the average church could fill up its largest meeting room just by having a couple missionaries come to show slides of the work they were doing in Nigeria or Kenya, the Philippines or Japan. But times have changed, and that is true in a number of ways. Once international travel was a rather rare phenomenon. Some years ago going to a travelogue or seeing missionary slides provided glimpses of exotic parts of the world--areas that many folks would never get to see otherwise. But now by the time many young people get out of high school and college, a startling percentage of them have already traveled abroad. Even a large number of us over the age of 50 have now been to parts of this world that our parents and grandparents could never have dreamed of visiting.

The world seems smaller to us. Seeing or hearing about other parts of this world is no longer so unusual and so some of what once intrigued people about especially foreign missions has, frankly, diminished a bit. But it's not just the ease of travel that has changed. There has also been a shift in the overall perception of mission work. A couple of years ago Barbara Kingsolver's novel The Poisonwood Bible was a best-seller, but its portrayal of missionaries in the Congo was not exactly what one would call complimentary. There is now a popular perception that for a long time, Christian missionaries were vandalistic of native cultures. And so in an age of increased tolerance and pluralism, not a few people question the overall legitimacy of doing missions at all. Telling other people to believe a certain way, that much of what they traditionally thought was wrong, that they must distance themselves from the way they were raised--that all seems merely improper to some today.

But changes in this area are not limited to just that, either. For a long time a phrase that well characterized mission work was, "From the West to the Rest." The Western world of Europe and North America was the stalwart center of the Christian faith from which were launched missions to the rest of the world: to the Southern Hemisphere, Africa, Latin America, Asia. But as I mentioned a few weeks ago, in less than twenty-five years from now, fully two-thirds of the world's Christians will live not in the Western world or the Northern Hemisphere but in Africa, South America, and Asia.

It seems quite likely that before the 21^st century is finished, missionaries will be coming from Africa to evangelize the secular citadels of Europe and North America. It seems that we have become someone else's mission field, and maybe we're not certain how we feel about that. But the fact is we could maybe use some missionaries. Our own nation has its own problems but our neighbor to the north, Canada, is far more unchurched. Whereas in the U.S. something like 40-45% of people still attend church each week, in Canada that number is about 20%. Even within the church-going population, only 40% of American Christians and a scant 19% of Canadian Christians think it is important to tell non-Christians about Jesus.

So if you combine those various statistics, then it becomes clear that even within the larger church, the majority of believers are unsure about the evangelizing mission of the church. And since the church-going population is itself just a fraction of the larger populace, it is the case that even in the United States, much less in Canada, barely one person in five is confident that mission work is a vital aspect of the church.

And so the question could be asked: What is wrong with us!? The mission of the church was never about viewing pretty photos of picturesque native peoples but was always and ever about proclaiming the truth. The mission of the church was never about just what happened "out there" in the wider world but how we live and stand up for the truth everywhere. Furthermore, we should not be surprised to find ourselves living on a mission field--there has never been a time when that was not true. We should not be surprised that proclaiming the gospel is offensive to some--there was never a time when it was popular.

But as much as anything else, perhaps just here is the rub. We don't want to do difficult or off-putting things. We don't want to be insensitve or to appear intolerant. We'd rather be somewhat urbane people, culturally "with it" folks, and so we squirm if we sense that we are being lumped together with narrow-minded fundamentalist obscurantists whose ideas are as antique and outmoded as the pony express. We're afraid, in other words, that witnessing is maybe a little outdated.

Also, we know that as a matter of fact, Christian mission efforts have at times been conducted in reckless and imperialist ways. Our forbears in the faith did do some terrible things. We all cringed to see the way the Taliban in Afghanistan treated non-Muslims, but some of us are historically aware enough to recognize that they were hardly the first religious people to behave that way. Christian Crusaders, Conquistadors, and Colonialists do not represent the church's finest hour in history.

So we know that such excesses have happened, and naturally we don't want to repeat such spectacles. But rather than find a better, gentler way to witness to the gospel, some have given up on the enterprise altogether. Some have not only thrown the baby out with the bathwater they have concluded that the world doesn't need bathwater at all--the cleansing waters of baptism are not anything we will suggest people need.

But so far I've been talking in generalities about overall trends and national statistics. For the balance of the sermon, it's time to talk specifically about Calvin Church. One of the reasons I suggested to the Mission Outreach committee that we not get a guest preacher for one of the two Mission Emphasis mornings is precisely so that Bob or I could address this matter of missions and witness based on our personal knowledge of Calvin Church. So as we look at ourselves, what kinds of things can we observe?

Happily, we can note that Calvin Church has a long and good history of supporting missionaries in a variety of ministries and in a variety of places around the world. Unhappily, it's probably also true to note that we have at times been a bit less certain as to what shape our own local mission efforts should take. Happily, our giving toward mission causes continues to exceed the pledged amount just about every year. Unhappily, we are starting more and more to fit the larger cultural trend of being more interested in local projects than we are with what happens somewhere across the ocean. Happily, we still have the core conviction that witnessing to the gospel is necessary. Unhappily, our interest in hearing about how mission work is going in other places has waned.

On top of all that, however, is our postmodern discomfort with the very notion of directly challenging another person's belief system. We sense that especially these days doing the work of evangelism will strike many as quaint. We don't want to be misunderstood, we don't want to cause offense, we don't want to be identified with certain other religious types, past or present, and so we find ourselves unsure just what it means to follow our Lord's command to get out and work in those fields of labor where Jesus claims there is a rich harvest just waiting to be brought in.

So as this week and next we think about missions--both our local mission efforts right here at Franklin and Ethel and our global mission efforts through the work of the people whose names we heard earlier in this service--as we ponder all this, what kinds of things should we keep in mind? Let's allow Luke 10 to answer that for us What does Luke 10 tell us about missions?

A main thing it tells us is that this work will not be easy. Have you ever been shy about speaking up for your faith? Have you ever sat quietly in the lunch room at work, hearing stuff that offended you, and yet still you held back? Have you ever finally said something, told someone that the name he used as a swear word was the name more precious to you than anything, only to find that saying even that much took about every ounce of courage you had? In other words, have you ever sensed the difficulty of telling people about the gospel? If you have, then be assured that Luke 10 recognizes the difficulty.

"I am sending you out like lambs among wolves," Jesus says. Experts in motivational speaking might deem that to be a just-less-than great way to make people step forward and volunteer. It's hard to imagine some college football coach getting his team ready for a big game by saying in the locker room, "Boys, you're just a bunch of wimps that will probably be eaten alive by that burly other team, but let's give it our best shot anyway!!" Jesus doesn't say, "You can do it because you're so strong." Like Dr. Phil who has recently become so famous for telling it the way it is, so Jesus bluntly says, "You're lambs, they're wolves; you're dinner on the hoof, but go out there and witness anyway!"

This is not going to be easy. Still, the lambs of God are to wish peace upon the people they meet and then just wait to see what happens. The good folks will be glad to receive this peace. But others will say, "Keep your peace to yourself and be gone!" And make no mistake: Jesus knows full well that this will happen. When it does, the disciples are told simply to move along. When you know you've done your best, proffered the good news to the best of your ability, then if they still won't listen, you just move on. But not before you say one last time: "The kingdom of God is near."

So missions will not be easy. Jesus even uses himself as a good example of gospel rejection. Jesus had worked in some of the most religious areas around, but those pious places proved to be more difficult than if Jesus had just started in pagan citadels like Tyre and Sidon to begin with. There is no predicting, in other words, how things will go. Yet even still the disciples are told to go forth and to trust God's Spirit to care for them.

And so these seventy-two folks do so, but incredibly Luke completely skips over their actual work. Not one syllable is devoted to tell us where these folks went, how long they worked, what they did. We jump from verse 16 to verse 17 and so jump right over the actual work. That doesn't mean Luke thinks the work itself is uninteresting. In fact, Luke will eventually write an entire book, Acts, that will be about nothing but the church's mission work. But for now Luke wants to frame that work in the right way. And so he shows these people returning to report some good results, which prompts Jesus to say,"I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven!"

And that's the line in Luke 10 that should call each of us up short. Commentators think that this is a prophetic statement from Jesus. Obviously Satan was not definitively defeated at the time these seventy-two worked. Jesus seems to be saying that eventually the sum total, the net effect, of the church's mission will be the defeat of Satan. Disciples are lambs in a world of carnivorous wolves. Disciples are, as Jesus says in verse 21, "little children" who look naive and silly and immature in a world of people who fancy themselves as wise, mature adults, as people whoeventually will out-grow the need to believe in any God. Yet still those lambs, those little kids, can become God's instruments in causing no less than the fierce lord of darkness to fall.

But this calls us up short, if we are paying attention anyway. Because here is a facet to the mission of God's Church that many of us perhaps think about far too seldom. We come to church each week, we sing our songs, we listen to the message and ponder its relevance, we toss our offerings into the plate, sip our coffee after the service, maybe even pray that a certain ministry activity coming up during the next week will go off OK. But we do it all without ever much thinking to ourselves, "We're helping bring Satan down!"

To our Reformed, American, Western Michigan, educated minds, talk of chasing the devil and giving old Satan a run for his money is the provenance of folks who hail from a rather different quarter of the larger church. It's the kind of thing that clergy in robes don't thunder about but that sweaty evangelists on TV scream about as they sprint from one end of the platform to the next, egged on by the cheers of an arm-waving congregation.

But Jesus says that when we tell people the truth, when we try to bring to their households the peace that only the gospel can give; when we offer a cup of cold water in Jesus' name by housing the homeless, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the lonely; when we do whatever we can to tell the boys and girls of Eastown that there is such a person as Jesus and that he loves them; when we send money to Nigeria so that Mike Kiekover can do his work and the Dykgraafs can teach the Ivadi to read the Bible; when we help the Holwerdas equip church leaders in the Philippines and when we enable Rachel Bos quietly but surely to tell her university friends in Beijing that there is a Lord no government can thwart; when we help the Kapteyns translate the Scriptures into languages the Bible has never before known or equip the Van Dykens to keep the radio airwaves alive with the message of hope; then in all these ways and more beside we are taking up our part in a cosmic battle between the Lord of light and the prince of darkness.

These days we crowd into movie theaters to thrill to the spectacle of how Jedi Knights in Star Wars do battle with the dark side of the Force. We munch our popcorn as we watch brave elves and stout dwarves fight Lord Sauron in The Lord of the Rings. But in real life, how often do we realize that Jesus himself said that when we are faithful lambs and good children who do our best to bring gospel peace to this world of war, it is Satan himself we are helping our God in Christ to bring down once and for all.

We hear our president speak of evil and we ourselves sensed we saw deeds of evil on September 11 last year. And we watch this evil being ostensibly combatted through cruise missles and stealth bombers. But how often do we realize that evil is in vastly bigger trouble not when bombs fall but when prayers are whispered; not when soldiers surrender but when the gospel peace we wish our neighbors is taken to heart.

Times have changed. The way we think about missions is different from how it once was. The church really has made mistakes and committed sins that we do not want to repeat. As a church, we do repent of those times when lambs tried to become wolves, when children tried to become grown-ups who would punish those who wouldn't listen. We do need to find better, purer, gentler ways to embody the gospel. But what we cannot do is think that the task of bringing the gospel's peace to our world is something that is just too unpopular, too intolerant, too out-dated to pursue anymore. Unless I missed the story in the newspaper, I think God's battle with Satan continues, and so long as it does, we need to keep telling people about the nearness of God's kingdom and the liberating peace that can be theirs if they will enter that kingdom along with us.

When this story in Luke 10 concludes, Jesus blesses his followers, saying that they ought to be happy that their eyes could see and their ears could hear what many great people in history had hoped to experience but never did. Blessed are we, too, that we have seen and heard such things. Through the mission of God's Church, may he make us a blessing to those millions who have not yet seen nor heard but who may well encounter the kingdom through us when we join the workers in the gospel's fields. Amen.