4th Sunday after Pentecost 2025

Sermon: 4th Sunday after Pentecost 2025

Text: Galatians 6:1-16, Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Grace, Peace, and Mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Today’s Gospel text highlights the urgent arrival of the Kingdom of God, prompting a response to those who receive the message to welcome or reject the world that God is bringing about. Like many of Jesus’ sayings, it carries that urgency that reminds that the time of decision in favor of God’s Kingdom is now: “plenty is the harvest, few are the laborers”, meaning the time is ripe. So Jesus sends His followers ahead to prepare the way in the towns where He will go to announce the arrival of God’s Kingdom. I would like to remark to you, a particular dynamic in this text, and that in the face of the Kingdom imminently arriving, there are hints in this text about how the Kingdom of God looks like as it comes to us.

Firstly, we see how these heralds of the Kingdom of God come as poor strangers. “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals”. These are men who once sent, their very survival would depend on the hospitality and generosity of those who received them into their midst. It was in the voices of these vulnerable people that God’s Kingdom was first being announced. What is Jesus trying to do here, sending His sheep into the midst of wolves? It is not that Jesus doesn’t care, but rather that the Kingdom of God is a radical agent in the midst of human life, it will ask that the ultimate vulnerability be met with the ultimate hospitality. Generosity to the poor stranger, to feed and care for the laborer, is met with healing and peace. When the Kingdom is arriving, human beings are led to ways of relationship that stretch beyond the suspicions and the barriers that we used to impose on others. So the Kingdom of God looks like the urgent knocking on the door, which asks for your whole to be transformed and restored to a goodness you did not know you could provide, to see in the poor not someone to push away from your community, but someone to receive that brings the abundance of God’s restorative joy. When the poor are received, there is healing, there is greater togetherness and meaning. I also imagine for the disciples that this mission Jesus sent them to made them unlearn many of their closely-held beliefs. As it was no longer of their own power and ability that they would live, they needed the neighbor. It was not their own food they would eat, but that provided to them, it was not their own house, but the stranger’s. The Kingdom of God comes near, Satan falls in defeat, when such a life begins to take root in the midst of the people, when God’s love and grace begin to outpour from us for the sake of others. In my own walk towards ministry, and not to say that I’m in the same state of poverty than those 70 disciples, but I can testify that this has been true in my life also. Because through many hands, God has been near to many of my needs. I’ve been met with extraordinary generosity. One example, my late mentor the Rev. Tim Stein, who gifted me his car to fulfill my internship. From my best friend who let me crash at his place when I was in the process of being called. Alongside the prayer and accompaniment of so many people that strengthened me to preach the Gospel of Christ and be here with you today as a church.

But how we treat the poor man at our door also brings Judgement. We see in this text how those sent out to proclaim the Kingdom’s nearness, are tasked to dust off the dust from their feet. For the Kingdom brings God’s justice, and the rejection of the poor and needy is an indictment on the city. When we cease to care, when the city is apathetic to the need of the poor and the voice of God’s justice, there is in part a kind of self-condemnation. For an enclosed, isolated and individualistic humanity reduces itself, it starts warping its true godly image. It stands contrary to what they were created to be, a reflection of divine generosity and love. When we close the door to God’s messengers, we deprive ourselves of the essentials of God’s world and vision. A world restored to wholeness.

Yet, even if for whatever reason, we are one of these door-shutters, I give thanks to God because He is mercy itself. And He does not abandon us to our stubborn reliance on sin. There is a great poem by the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega that goes like this:

Lord, what am I, that with unceasing care
Thou did’st seek after me, that Thou did’st wait
Wet with unhealthy dews before my gate,
And pass the gloomy nights of winter there?
Oh, strange delusion, that I did not greet
Thy blest approach, and oh, to heaven how lost
If my ingratitude’s unkindly frost
Has chilled the bleeding wounds upon Thy feet.

How oft my guardian angel gently cried,
“Soul, from thy casement look, and thou shalt see
How He persists to knock and wait for thee!”
And oh, how often to that Voice of sorrow,
“Tomorrow we will open,” I replied,
And when the morrow came I answered still “Tomorrow.”

Lope de Vega reminds me in this poem that Jesus is persistent in His love, He gently knocks and patiently waits for us to abandon our rigidity againstt