We must do what it takes.

 

Luke 10:1-20 is the Gospel Lectionary text for Pentecost IV.

 

The Message and Movement of Agape Love has got to be put out there.  The false teachings of who Jesus is and what Jesus is about permeate our society.  American Civil Religion has all but swallowed up Christianity in our nation.  What the Temple Cult leaders did to God’s Will and God’s Word in the First Century was much the same.  They turned it into a tool for manipulation of God’s people in order that they might gain more power, wealth and status.  They abused people with their power and stirred up hatreds in order that they might have more of it.  They used their positions of leadership to line their own pockets and keep influence with empire’s elite.  They represented empire instead of God.

 

Today’s evangelicals in America have been doing the same thing since 1981, when they got into bed with the political “right.”  As America has become empire in the world, the right-wing church leaders have twisted even the Gospel to make it reflect the values of empire and have twisted the idea of Jesus in the minds of many to support their false claims of “superiority”, entitlement and privilege.  So, Jesus sends us out.

 

And when we go out, we are to recognize that it is dangerous.  They will stop at nothing to silence the real Gospel of Agape Love, because it does not serve them and their purposes.  They will dismiss and then confront, ignore and then attack.  When we go out with a message and ideology of love for the other, we are sheep among wolves, for they are well practiced at their ruthless pursuit of more for themselves. 

 

We go out into homes.  Most of the churches have been institutionalized to represent empire on one level or another.  They exhibit the values of greed, lust for power and desire for status that is empire ideology, and they aim their hatreds at others in order to scapegoat them for any lack of them having what they want.  We go with just ourselves.  We give the Good News of Jesus upon which the world relies for a return to sanity, and we receive having our needs met.  Our value necessarily must counter the values of empire.  We must embody the generosity, sharing of power and value for equal value of all people that is the Good News of Agape Love.  We must not be hateful.  We must confront evil, name it and expose it, but we must proclaim Shalom to those who we meet, for it is the Way of Shalom which is the Way of Jesus.

 

If we are rejected, we simply let them know that the Kingdom has come near and we leave, not taking anything from them with us.  For the ideology of empire has twisted minds and hearts so much that to stay and debate is a waste of time.  Some will get the Way of Jesus in Agape Love toward Shalom for All People, and some just will not.

 

Jesus talked about how intolerable it will be for those who reject His Way.  Using a literary method as old as Isaiah, Jesus rebukes those areas in which the empire ideology is so well engrained that no one will repent (change their thinking and thus their direction).

 

It worked then.  The seventy rejoiced at the results.  People were hungry to hear the Good News of Jesus and they responded to it.  Jesus had to warn his followers not to get caught up in their own glory, however, as that reflects the very empire ideology that the Good News counters.

 

It could work again.  I believe that.  If we stay with what Jesus taught, commanded and modeled, and resist empire’s ideology and ways by showing people Jesus’ Way, some will get it.  I believe that this is the only hope for the church that bears the name of Jesus, that we offer current generations an alternative to empire’s ideology, rather than a reflection of it.  If we are followers of Jesus, we will live what Jesus taught, commanded and modeled for us, in this part of God’s Kingdom, here and now.  And it could transform the world, one person, one house, one community at a time.  It worked for the seventy.  It worked in the First Century through the Apostles.  It must be done in the 21^st Century in order for the world to survive.  Empire must fall, and the values of empire must die.  We have seen the injustice, despair and destruction it has caused.  Only Jesus’ Good News of Agape Love toward Shalom for All People can save and sustain us.