In Luke 10, Jesus sends the disciples out to proclaim peace. We’d rather avoid the truth: that some people we like don’t want to hear it.
Jesus sends us out to make peace not justify our hate
Proper 9C | Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
Even after a cascading series of mistakes, Jesus trusts his disciples with the keys to the kin-dom. Peter, James, and particularly John messed up at a titanic scale. Jesus would be completely justified if he made them miss the boat.
Instead, they’re all sailing ahead toward new, uncharted territory.
This level of trust is so improbable, given the context, we’d be remiss to not address it.
They are on a love mission and Jesus’s closest followers keep coming up with excuses to hate.
The Hinge Point
This part in the gospel of Luke is a hinge—through it, we shift from one direction to another.
When we’re standing on one side of it, we’re learning about Jesus, seeing these miracles, learning to follow him. Then the hinge thrusts us to the other side, in which we see what goes along with commitment and where we’re following Jesus: to Jerusalem.
And this hinge has two parallel moments in which Jesus sends out disciple/apostles to be Christ to new communities.
At the end of the first half, chapter 9, Jesus sends his closest followers, The Twelve. Then at the beginning of the second half, chapter 10, Jesus sends out all 70 of his disciple/apostles.
This repetition is curious. But if we take on the difference this hinge-point makes, we can see how it colors them differently.
The 70 disciple/apostles actually go out into the world with something The Twelve didn’t. They have a mission that is focused and facing Jerusalem. Now the stakes are higher.
The Stakes
We usually take these stakes for granted because we don’t entirely understand them.
That’s why in a story of Jesus sending his disciple/apostles out to do his ministry, to bring peace into the world, we hate to hear Jesus’s challenging tone.
The instructions are direct. Go out in pairs. Take nothing with you. Rely on the hospitality of strangers. When somebody shows you hospitality, say
“Peace to this house!”
Now, hold up just a second. This is actually a specific instruction. This isn’t “be nice to people” This isn’t “go-along-to-get-along.” This is to go out blessing people’s homes.
May Shalom be here! Let this be a place of wholeness and health! May all who are here be at peace and security! Keep them safe and well. And if there be any division between its people, may they be brought together.
What if we did that? Blessed each other’s homes, restaurants, workplaces? What if we all did this every place we went to? It’s a simple prayer, actually.
“Peace to this house!” Or Peace to this place!
That’s big step toward Jerusalem.
The Pain
We struggle with what Jesus says immediately after this. And I totally understand why.
Because we’re all imagining our blessings privately and non-materially. Like saying “Bless you” when somebody sneezes.
But Jesus says
“Peace to this house!” And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you.
So this is something real, effectual! And I don’t think we actually treat peace as Jesus knows it (Shalom!) as something real or even possible.
Wholeness, vitality, life itself! Mercy, forgiveness, trust, truth, peace, equity, hope: this is the stuff of life! And, to Jesus, very much real–and not just hypothetical.
The Rejecting
There should be little wonder, then why Jesus would renounce the rejection of peace. Those times when God’s people come offering Shalom and their neighbors reject the offer. Why Jesus would invite his apostles to protest such an act in the middle of the street.
“Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.”
Precisely because this isn’t a game of telephone or partisan politics. These people are to manifest peace, wholeness, and love in the world. And some won’t meet them there in this Way of Love. We dare not call that “independence,” an exercising of rights, or anything else than it is: the rejection of peace.
And this is a spot we get really hung up on.
The Avoiding
Our lectionary cuts out verses 12-15. In these verses, Jesus condemns those who reject peace and those who seek the way of power and control over others.
And I think we have done that for two reasons:
- We want to focus on the main point: the blessing of the world.
- The thought of Jesus condemning anyone makes us uncomfortable.
But refusing to understand what is being condemned is a mistake. Because that is the kind of fatal flaw that erodes the very peace we seek.
In his book Winners Take All, Anand Giridharadas describes this same desire in great detail.
It’s the idea of trying to make the world a better place without ever making powerful people feel bad in any way. Especially when they’re the ones responsible for our situation.
We avoid speaking the whole truth because some will feel pain. So we crib it, strip it down, make it easier for the powerful to hear. But we also, at the same time, avoid our collective means of holding the powerful responsible.
Therefore we try to never hold anyone responsible for present injustice.
And then we have the audacity of incredulously asking “well, how in the world did we get here?”
Of course, we didn’t get to this place on purpose. We just don’t want to hurt anybody. We want the powerful to do good AND we don’t want anyone to be condemned in the process. But theirs are almost always the very wrongs we need to change.
So we try the easiest way out. We hope to win everybody over with small wins. So, for instance, we want to solve our problem of plastic by abstaining from using what accounts for 0.01% of all plastic. Because that feels like something we can do. Because confronting the real problem is hard. It means doing things we don’t want to do.
But the problem is the problem, even when we avoid it.
The Peace
This is what we confront in Jerusalem, on this side of the hinge point. That Jesus’s Way of Love the Path of Peace isn’t timid. Nor is it falsely unifying. It proclaims the presence of peace and expects us all to join in. It doesn’t expect injustice or label it “realistic”.
This work is what we’ve turned toward. And if we’re not up to that task, Jesus will find those people who are.
Shalom, true peace, doesn’t tolerate injustice. Therefore, it is not unShalom-like to name injustice. It is unShalom-like to maintain injustice. It isn’t divisive to name an existing division or to bless the people we meet with peace.
But we often defend such arguments to avoid responsibility.
Jesus isn’t rejecting his own peace or punishing people who “deserve to be punished”. He sends his people to make peace. And if instead of peace and love, they receive violence and hatred in return, then they are to keep going. Wiping dust from sandals is a testament to the willingness of the people: both those seeking peace and those rejecting it.
Let us not confuse the Way of Love for what it isn’t. It is active, intentional, and generous. But it also seeks all of the aspects of Peace/Shalom: health, wholeness, equity, and justice. And followers of the Way know that peace in the presence of injustice is not true peace.
This is what’s different on the path to Jerusalem—we sign up for God’s Shalom and it’s positive presence of peace, not simply the temporary absence of conflict. Or the ways in which we avoid upsetting the will to power.
We sign up for a part in making God’s peace real. Over the protests of the powerful.
The Power
When the disciple/apostles come back, he warns them of the power they wield. And rejoices in this communal stewarding of peace. Because this is the path to the Kin-dom.
So we aren’t to dwell on the exceptions to the rule, who refuse to know peace, for these are the ones who would prevent peace by cursing the weak!
Focus instead on what the rule reveals about the whole! That we are all made for blessing. We are the vehicles of Christ’s peace. Shalom shall always be on our lips.
As I recently wrote:
For Jesus, trust in God means we also trust each other. Love is unmistakably love. And hope, not cynicism, is the vehicle for realism.
We aren’t in the business of quitting before we start or justifying injustice. But we’re also not in the business of avoiding offending those who would maintain injustice.
We are followers of the one who gave his life for Shalom. Whose way is Shalom. Whose followers live Shalom.
These are the stakes. Love, health, wholeness, justice, peace for everyone in this community and on earth. And they are local and they are global. They are individual and they are communal.
We are called to be Peacemakers and Peace-describers and Peace-declarers. Let us go out, bringing the Peace of Christ with us. And may we offer it generously to everyone:
Peace to this place!