In our text this morning, we witness Jesus sending out seventy-two people to various towns and places to prepare the way for his coming. He gives them encouragement and instruction which are still relevant for his followers today.

“The harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few”

What does Christ mean by this statement?

To begin with, for those he was sending out, there was great opportunity for the message. Many folks would listen to them. The harvest is plentiful.

But does this translate into our own day? Is there receptivity to the Gospel now? I would say that there is.

It is certainly true that there is widespread indifference today, and this can be wearying. But we can focus instead on those who are receptive to Christ. And these people do exist.

Some of you may have heard the following story:

One day, a man was walking on a beach after a great storm. Thousands and thousands of star fish had been washed up on the shore. The man came upon a young boy who was picking up the star fish, one by one, and gently throwing them back in the sea. The man approached the young boy and asked him why he was doing this since there were countless thousands of star fish along the shore. “You can’t possibly make a difference,” he said.

The boy picked up another star fish and threw it back in the ocean. “It made a difference to that one,” he said.

It is true that we cannot save the whole world. And nor does God call us to. But we can make a difference in what God puts in front of us – to the people he calls us to love, to the tasks he calls us to complete.

This leads to the second part of Christ’s statement: “The labourers are few”.

I take this to mean that those who are truly willing to respond to the call of God to serve him are rare. Most are preoccupied with other things. And it is certainly easy to be so in our day and age.

The question for us, then, is: Am I willing to be available to the purposes of God? To be like the prophet Isaiah, who responded to the question, “Who will go for us?” with, “Here I am, Lord. Send me.”

That kind of thing is easy to say, particularly for young and enthusiastic people. But Jesus elsewhere tells us to count the cost before promising things which we are not willing to give.

It sounds exciting to put ourselves in God’s service, but it involves a complete commitment: our attention, energy, relationships, finances, food, even our lives.

Most profoundly, it involves our willingness to suffer, to pick up our crosses and to follow Christ wherever he calls us to go.

Even given this challenge, we can still ask God sincerely, “What would you have me do? Where would you have me go?”

And we can ask ourselves, “Is anything holding me back?”

“Lambs in the midst of wolves”

Christ continues by saying that he is sending out the seventy-two as “lambs in the midst of wolves”. And he continues by telling them, “Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road.”

What is referred to here is the manner of our going out. Consider the gentleness and innocence of lambs in comparison to the aggression and violence of wolves.

As followers of Christ and his messengers, we are told to conduct ourselves differently to the world. The world is a very harsh place filled with aggressively ambitious people, filled with anger and violence, filled with selfishness, and, as a result, filled with pain.

A lamb sent out in Christ’s name seeks not to add to all of this sin and misery but to be different. To be a source of grace. To be gentle, to be present for and to other people in love, as Christ was.

And why does Christ tell his disciples not to take any provisions with them? Literally, here, to teach them to rely upon God’s power and provision. And we can learn a similar thing.

It is all too easy to find confidence in the material means of our existence: our money, our intellectual capacity, our status. The established Church very much has this problem. Perhaps we have this problem in our own lives.

And yet Christ sends his workers out into the world in weakness and poverty. This reminds us that we are not offering anything to the world except for Christ himself.

This might be an encouragement to those who feel weak in themselves. Perhaps you feel weak: tired, unwell maybe, ill-equipped, not knowledgeable enough, not good enough. Many of us struggle with feelings and thoughts like this. But this is no bad thing because it reminds us that God manifests his power not in spite of our weakness but through it. The growth of God’s Kingdom is always a miracle, and it comes about not as a result of our strength but as a result of his power.

At the end of his important book, The Benedict Option, the author Rod Dreher tells the story an earthquake that shook the region of Norcia in 2016. Norcia is, of course, the birthplace of St Benedict, who, as the founder of Western monasticism, is one of the most influential people in the history of the Western Church. After the first earthquake in 2016, the basilica of the monastery church in Norcia became too unstable for worship and the monastery buildings uninhabitable. The monks were forced to flee and to pitch their tents in the ruins of an older monastery where they continued their life of prayer. Five days after, more earthquakes shook the region with the strongest earthquake to hit Italy in thirty years coming on Sunday October 30th. This destroyed the fourteenth century Basilica of St Benedict along with every other church building in the region.

Prior to the earthquakes, Dreher had been researching the Benedictine monastery in Norcia. He reflects on all of these events in this way:

The monks saw in this loss an opportunity for deeper holiness, sacrifice and humility. We learn from this story that even the most secure and established safeholds in this life can be shaken. The things that we rely upon can be removed in a single moment. And yet, when this happens, when we feel bereft, there is always a call to greater and more singular reliance upon the power of God.

Ask yourself, then: What am I relying upon that is not Christ? What does Christ want to bring you to the end of? What strength? What confidence that is not him? When we let go of these things there is great freedom.

“Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

The final saying of Jesus that I would like to remark upon comes after the seventy-two return from their mission with joy, telling Christ that even the demons are subject to them in his name. Christ’s reply is quite interesting: “…do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven”.

We see here a relativisation of what we might think of as ministry success: the fleeing of the demonic powers, the turning of hearts and minds to Christ. Now, of course, there is much joy in this. The great theologian Thomas Aquinas thought that preaching was an even greater joy than contemplation. He said about this that, “It is better to illuminate than merely to shine”.

But Christ here wants to caution us against finding our joy primarily in what we are able to do for him. Rather the greatest joy of all – and indeed the purpose of our existence – is to know God. The knowledge of God is available to all – from the greatest evangelist to the most humble and youngest believer. It is offered to everybody.

Ministry success comes and goes. Church movements are, at one time, successful and, at another, not so much. But God is always the same and our relationship with him lasts forever.

Perhaps, at the end of this, you feel that you have let every opportunity pass you by. Perhaps you have regrets. If that is the case, I ask you to consider this: today is a new day and you still here listening to these words. Today is a day of grace. Today is a day for you to respond to his calling. Today is a day for you to know him.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.