You are standing in the center of a circle of people. You close your eyes and let those in the circle know that you are ready to fall. With heart racing and palms sweating, you lean back and let yourself fall. Will anyone catch you?
You may well recognize this as a trust exercise used at staff retreats, among friends, or in youth groups. The point is to challenge ourselves to let go. If we relinquish our own sense of control, will everything still be okay?
When we talk about trust, we usually talk about it in the context of other people. Do you trust your boss? Do you trust your classmates? Sometimes, people stand in for organizations or institutions. Do you trust your company? Do you trust the Church?
We talk about whether we really trust God. None of this is surprising. But how often do we speak about whether we trust the Gospel?
Do we trust that the Gospel is true? Will the Gospel make a difference in the world? Will the Gospel save us? But as much as we work on trusting the Gospel’s efficacy, the real question is whether we trust the Gospel to fend for itself. Do we honestly believe that the Gospel is strong enough to weather the most strenuous and difficult of circumstances? Will the Gospel continue to stand despite evil and entrenched human sin? Will it hold up against doubts, malice, or outright atheism? Or do we think that it’s our job to help the Gospel and protect it from harm?
These may seem like silly questions, but if we were to drill down to the roots of our faith, I suspect that many of us might struggle with trusting the Gospel. They say that preachers preach to themselves. And I know how easy it is to become protective of the Gospel. Sometimes this is revealed as reactionary defensiveness: of course, the Gospel is good news! Sometimes it manifests itself as an obsessive need to preserve the faith from harm: if I teach this doctrine well enough, I will make a bunch of orthodox Christians. Sometimes my protective instincts show forth as desperation: if I promote this church program or teach this class, the faith will spread, and the work of the Gospel will flourish. With my help, the Gospel will ring true for others.
But as worthy as some of these goals may be, I’m aware that my overzealousness can become protective and possessive. And I also know, from history and from my own experience, that when we become possessive of the Gospel, it rarely leads to anything good.
So, when Jesus commissions seventy people to go out and preach and live the Gospel, he gives very practical advice. Jesus knows that there will be a tendency to become overprotective of the good news. The seventy will be lambs sent into the midst of wolves. They are to greet each house they enter with words of peace, but they should know that not every house will receive that peace. If so, they are to shake the dust off their feet in protest.
It sounds remarkably like family systems theory. Differentiate yourself from those with whom you interact. Don’t take on their negativity, anxiety, or hostility. Move ahead, confident in your own sense of self and in what you have to say. Jesus’s words to the seventy are simple: proclaim that the kingdom of God has drawn near. That’s the only mission. And don’t fuss over who accepts it and who rejects the Gospel.
It’s clear that by the time the seventy return to Jesus from their mission, they are inflated with its power. Even the demons submit to them in Jesus’ name. Jesus warns them not to rejoice at their own perceived authority but, instead, that they have found favor with God. Jesus knows the danger of overzealousness. There is always a risk that the Gospel itself will be controlled by humans and that in doing so, all the life will be squeezed out of it.
This brings us back to our beginning question: do we really trust the Gospel to fend for itself? We can intuit from Jesus’s charge to the seventy that he knew all too well the temptations to become possessive of the Gospel, whatever the cost. And often, these nagging temptations are the work of the devil himself. If people don’t welcome you into their homes, cast judgment on them or force them to welcome you and the good news you carry. If people are not inclined towards peace, pester them until they learn it. If a town does not immediately receive the healing message of the Gospel, then maybe you aren’t doing your job effectively enough. In a world where demons submit to the name of Jesus, a little heavy-handedness might do some good.
But beware of this way of thinking. This so easily becomes us versus them. I’m sure you’ve heard these claims before. We are orthodox, they are heretics. We have a monopoly on truth, and others need to hear what we have to say.
Confronted by one problem after another, it’s all too easy to want to help the Gospel out a little bit. At the root of gimmicks and overprogramming is an inherent distrust of the Gospel. Perhaps we think that if we beat the good news into people’s heads enough, we can change their minds, or if we can only hoodwink them with something flashy, the Gospel will stick.
Which once again brings us back to our initial question, the million dollar one: do we really trust the Gospel to fend for itself? Or can we heed Jesus’s injunctions to shake the dust off our feet when people reject what we have to say? If we offer peace that is rejected, can we let that peace return to us without jamming it down someone else’s throat? Can we trust that preaching the Gospel, living it in our lives, and announcing that the kingdom of God has indeed drawn near are all we are called to do? Can we trust that the Gospel has sufficient power on its own terms if we don’t shy away from embracing its difficult truth?
Far from being an excuse for inaction, this means that we must be prepared to let God do his mysterious work through our imperfect proclamation of his good news. It means that God does not bulldoze his way into human lives. God never has. And God always works among people in ways we could never expect. I’m reminded of the wise words of the late Michael Ramsey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury: “Beware of attitudes which try to make God smaller than the God who has revealed himself to us in Jesus.” [1] So, the question is this: can we trust the Gospel to fend for itself, or are we tempted to make God smaller than he is?
What we learn from St. Luke is that the Gospel is powerful in its own right. It can withstand rejection by one village after another. It withstood the unjust death of its chief proponent on a cross while others jeered and mocked him. The Gospel has survived persecution and infamy. The Gospel has outlasted even the most flawed endeavors of the Church, like the crusades, deadly heresy trials, or the ongoing weaponizing of the Blessed Sacrament. That the Gospel has made it this far is testimony enough to the fact that, thankfully, the Gospel is bigger than our feeble minds.
And yet, we, like those seventy missionaries, are sent out into a world, like lambs amid wolves. If you haven’t already felt the bite of those wolves’ fangs, you probably will. If you haven’t had your own offers of peace rejected, prepare yourself. If your proclamation of the good news doesn’t seem to move anyone or spark any change in the people who most need to hear it, you’ve likely felt defensive for the gospel. Perhaps you’ve been jealous for God’s sake. And maybe you’ve resorted to making God smaller than he is.
But in a world that badly needs the love, truth, peace, and justice of the Gospel, we are given one reassuring piece of news today. The Gospel is trustworthy because God is trustworthy. We can even be bold and risky with our charge, knowing that the Gospel can indeed fend for itself when we mess up. And the best news of all is this: if we can truly trust in the immensity of God, all we need to do is be faithful to the Gospel. God will take care of the rest.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
July 3, 2022
[1] Michael Ramsey, The Christian Priest Today (London: SPCK, 1975, 1982), 25.