St. Luke, Evangelist, 2009
(transferred to Monday, October 19, 2009)
Pastors’ Winkel (gathering) at Lamb of God, Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin
The seventy-two returned full of joy and said, “Lord, even the demons were obedient to us in your name!”
And he said to them, “I saw Satan falling from heaven like lightning. Recognize that I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and authority over all the enemy’s power. Nothing can hurt you.
But don’t rejoice because the demons are obedient to you. Rejoice instead that your names are written in heaven."
Luke 10:17-20
The church is decked out today in red, the color of martyrdom. Proof positive that there is no 401(k) plan for an apostle (or an evangelist). If your life is going to be a witness, you have to be able to set it at risk, go without creature comforts, end it with a whimpering cruciform bang. Christ’s promise of resurrected life isn’t worth witnessing about if it doesn’t make us careless with our own lives. It’s only when we are free to lose our dreams, our money, and our choices that we are ready to be a bloody red martyr.
The seventy-two are sent out to live that life. No money, no security, no certain prospects. Just hanging on the promise that the God who watches over sparrows will provide for them, too. This is closer to the ministry we know. “Sent out” means here, sent out on behalf of someone, to be the mouth and hands and authority of someone else. Seventy-two mouthpieces of the Lord, with His imprimatur and His presence in their work. That’s ministry: not knowing what the future brings, or where the daily bread will come from, only knowing we are sent to be His mouth and His hands – always with His authority in all we are doing; the Spirit driving us, as he once drove Christ into the wilderness; never alone, never without power, always being treated as Jesus was, both the good and the bad.
Because he has sent us, we have to battle the same things Christ battles. There is sin. Who wishes to be admonished for it? There are demons, Satan’s co-angels, manifested here as serpents and scorpions. Christ turns them back. Finally, there are disease and death, the opposite of the resurrected life. Our words, Christ’s Words, along with His Baptism and His Body, are bringing life back into this dying world. We have been sent out to transform creation.
Sometimes it doesn’t look as if it’s working. The rebukes are met with anger instead of contrition. People die. The demons make us miserable, depressed.
The problem, of course, is that we cannot see the entire combat. If we were to reflect on our ministries, we would see that diseases have been cured (thousands walk out of hospitals every day) and that hearts have been turned. Demons cannot block us from walking along the great broad avenues of Heaven’s City. The victory is ours, but we are distracted by sudden firefights and unexpected ambushes. Poverty and disappointment (parishioners’ disapproval!) make it hard to see the success of our work. We long to rejoice as the seventy-two did after their amazing victory tour.
To this, our Lord says, “Go ahead! Rejoice now! Rejoice, because your name is written in heaven.”
There is no greater honor. The image is thoroughly Roman, straight from the Arc de Triomphe of the world’s greatest western Empire. If a Roman general, a great Caesar, were fabulously victorious over his enemies, his name would be chiseled in stone on a great gate in the eternal city. There his deeds would be retold, his hardships glorified. All of Rome would be one day forgotten, all its people lost to history’s murky, mysterious depths. But this man’s monument and name would remain.
Christ the Emperor of creation speaks to you as if you were greater than a Roman General. You are. You’re a pastor. Listen to how the true Emperor speaks to His faithful soldiers:
“Your name shall stand. Not in the Romans’ eternal City, but in my eternal City, the heavenly Jerusalem. Your hardships retold, your work glorified, your failures turned heroic. I send you out among wolves. I bring you back grizzled veterans, wounded, but victorious. Cheer up, dear Pastor. Your trials will be war stories worth telling in the new creation.”
Pastor, Christ says your name is written in heaven. Written with the Blood of Christ. Is that not worth it all? The demons, the detractors, the despisers shall see it there on the final day and bow.
Emperor Jesus has promised.
Amen.
The Reverend Sean M. Smallwood
cruxprobatomnia -- the cross tests everything
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