The thing is, I love to travel. I don't love getting ready to travel.
I don't know about you, but for me the challenges of a trip begin before the trip commences, starting with, "What do I bring?" You don't want to bring too much and have to schlep stuff you won't use from hither to yon and back again. On the other hand, you don't want to get caught without something you need and have no way to get it on the road. You want to be ready for emergencies. You don't want to be a pack mule.
This is important even in our modern era, when the actual journey part is usually assisted by plane, train, or automobile. When people traveled mostly on foot, when the journey often took longer than the time at the destination, when there wasn't a motel or hotel or even a yurt available in every town, traveling lightly while having the resources you needed on the road was an even more particular art.
A lot of this worry about what to bring has to do with vulnerability. Lacking something important while on a journey makes one feel vulnerable. Traveling light also means embracing the necessity of depending upon people you don't know. Lacking understanding of a new place and new people makes us feel vulnerable.
The world in which we live tries its best to convince us that vulnerability is a condition to be avoided at all costs. That vulnerability is uncomfortable at best and frightening at its worst, because this world also tries to convince us that there is not enough, that those around us are threats rather than kindred. And travel involves getting outside the comfort zone of all that is familiar and certain. Travel encourages, even requires, vulnerability, even after the packing decisions have been made.
Travel means encountering strangers, and embracing being a stranger yourself. It means encountering strange roads, strange food, strange accents or strange languages, strange customs. The happy traveler is a humble traveler, one who embraces the strangeness and the vulnerability as a chance to grow and learn about others in the encounters that await-- and at the same time learn about themselves. Embracing that kind of being present and open to new experiences teaches us that without vulnerability, honest relationships are impossible, too.
In our gospel portion today, Jesus is still not long into his public ministry, but he has already attracted enough followers that he can choose 70 of the best and brightest and give them a special task. He will send them out ahead of him, two by two, because it's always best to have a wingman. These disciples will be reconnaissance teams, preparing the way, as Jesus himself and his followers travel around the countryside, encountering new people and new places creating a new community.
Now, Jesus is a master at traveling light. He noted in last week's gospel that, although foxes had holes and birds of the air had nests, Jesus as the Son of Man had no place to lay his head. Jesus and his friends and followers share everything they own in a common purse. And it seems like they rarely spend more than a night or two in the same place. Many of us may hear Jesus make that comment about foxes and birds and his relative homelessness, and feel a pang of sadness, or maybe even anxiety. But what if we understood that comment as key to his ministry, and ours-- meeting people where they are, and meeting people as someone just like them? Someone who deliberately meets people humbly, with genuine interest. Someone who embodies one of my favorite sayings about interpersonal relations from Ted Lasso, by way of Walt Whitman: be curious, not judgmental.
Perhaps this can help us make sense of his instructions to his 35 pairs of evangelists to travel lightly. In doing so, disciples travel knowing that they don't just bring good news to the places that they travel-- they also depend upon the kindness and hospitality of those same strangers. Disciples are to come into these new places modestly, humbly-- and in return, when welcomed, exchange peace and blessing with those they encounter. Disciples are to come being curious, not judgmental.
Central to Jesus's gospel is real, loving connection. Jesus may only stay a few days or hours in one place, but the relationships he builds with us are meant to be enduring. To be real. To last a lifetime-- and beyond. Encountering people in all walks of life, but especially those who often get overlooked, those on the margins, encountering them as people who have as much to give to us as we do to them, that is the key to sharing the good news.
Jesus calls his disciples to share peace-- and share it even before they know anything about the house they’ve just entered or the beliefs of those living there. Peace that is more than peace—it’s shalom. It’s well-being, completeness, a greeting, a farewell, and everything in between. Peace, based on justice and mercy, takes a random group of strangers and forms them into community.
We can only share the good news of Jesus, not impose it on others. Not coming in and forcing people to be exposed to snippets of scripture, assuming that we have some thing "they" don't. Instead, the life of peace and justice, which surely we all deserve, means living alongside each other, opening ourselves in vulnerability, in bravery, without resorting to privilege. The heart of the gospel is that the relationship between Redeemer and those needing redemption is rooted in mutuality and interdependence. Like all lasting relationships, the good news of God's love is not rooted in transaction, in profit, in exploitation, but in openness, egalitarianism, and vulnerability.
The list of what they, and we, as disciples are NOT to take in witnessing to the gospel is pretty long. It's meant to remind us of what is really important. It centers our lives as Christians in humility, open-heartedness, and vulnerability. These are not weaknesses. They are gifts in service of discipleship. Gifts at the root of not creating barriers between ourselves and those we meet with protective layers of status, wealth, power, or privilege.
Once again Jesus is reminding us that the gospel is always counter-cultural, but especially in our time and situation right now. Jesus reminds us today that, in the quest to share the Good News of God's Commonwealth existing right now around us, we are called as followers of Christ to proclaim something better, and make it visible by bringing it to people, to all people, where they are.
That is what we proclaim here in this place, both as a community and a parish, and as individuals. In all our ministries, and all our partnerships, such as with Circle of Concern which we celebrate today, and all our relationships, we are in the business of creating community bound by love, mutual respect, and celebrating the dignity and worth of all. We proclaim the power of the truth of interdependence to make us all stronger, freer, and more connected. There is no independence without interdependence. It is interdependence that makes us great. Our commitment to each other is the great ideal that makes us one people out of many-- not just as a nation, but as the Body of Christ.
Saint Augustine summed up the purpose of life as this. He said, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive." The greatest asset we have is ourselves, and our wide-open, vulnerable hearts. To see through the eyes of Christ the truth: that when the forces of empire keep trying to come up with new ways to divide and conquer, they are trying to distract us from the incredible power we wield for good when we wield the power of love, the power of relationship across differences, when we wield the power of community. In a world in which loneliness has become an epidemic here in the western world, community-- that starts with the willingness to see each other as beloved children of God no matter who we are or where we are from-- is the real superpower.
You know, that's one of the greatest gifts of travel, after all. To leave all that is familiar, and expand our horizon of the known world beyond our own selfish interests. We then see not only what we all have in common but see the incredible beauty of diversity. How can that kind of epiphany not also change us, and make us fully alive? As the lyrics of our opening hymn reminded us, when we encounter new places and new people humbly, we suddenly see the people around us not as potential threats, or strangers, or competitors for what scarce resources, but as members of our one community-- the community of creation. To see our neighborhood as not defined by boundaries but by sharing what we have in kinship.
As travelers on this earth, as disciples, what Jesus urges us to leave behind in our ministry pales in comparison to what we ARE to share, and share abundantly: peace, followship, true community, healing and reconciliation. Jesus reminds us that the key to witnessing to the Good News of Jesus starts with remembering that that Good News is rooted in community, in relationship, in embracing vulnerability, and most of all in humility. We start by acknowledging that we are not arrogantly leading people from poverty or ignorance and sin from a position of superiority, but meeting people where they are in an interchange of respect and mutuality.
This is our Good News. This is our song. This is our prayer, our dream, our holy shrine. And isn’t this what we see the world around us longing for, right now?
That is what we proclaim here in this place, both as a community and a parish, and as individuals. In all our ministries, and all our partnerships, such as with Circle of Concern which we celebrate today, and all our relationships, we are in the business of creating community bound by love, mutual respect, and celebrating the dignity and worth of all. We proclaim the power of the truth of interdependence to make us all stronger, freer, and more connected. There is no independence without interdependence. It is interdependence that makes us great. Our commitment to each other is the great ideal that makes us one people out of many-- not just as a nation, but as the Body of Christ.
Saint Augustine summed up the purpose of life as this. He said, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive." The greatest asset we have is ourselves, and our wide-open, vulnerable hearts. To see through the eyes of Christ the truth: that when the forces of empire keep trying to come up with new ways to divide and conquer, they are trying to distract us from the incredible power we wield for good when we wield the power of love, the power of relationship across differences, when we wield the power of community. In a world in which loneliness has become an epidemic here in the western world, community-- that starts with the willingness to see each other as beloved children of God no matter who we are or where we are from-- is the real superpower.
You know, that's one of the greatest gifts of travel, after all. To leave all that is familiar, and expand our horizon of the known world beyond our own selfish interests. We then see not only what we all have in common but see the incredible beauty of diversity. How can that kind of epiphany not also change us, and make us fully alive? As the lyrics of our opening hymn reminded us, when we encounter new places and new people humbly, we suddenly see the people around us not as potential threats, or strangers, or competitors for what scarce resources, but as members of our one community-- the community of creation. To see our neighborhood as not defined by boundaries but by sharing what we have in kinship.
As travelers on this earth, as disciples, what Jesus urges us to leave behind in our ministry pales in comparison to what we ARE to share, and share abundantly: peace, followship, true community, healing and reconciliation. Jesus reminds us that the key to witnessing to the Good News of Jesus starts with remembering that that Good News is rooted in community, in relationship, in embracing vulnerability, and most of all in humility. We start by acknowledging that we are not arrogantly leading people from poverty or ignorance and sin from a position of superiority, but meeting people where they are in an interchange of respect and mutuality.
This is our Good News. This is our song. This is our prayer, our dream, our holy shrine. And isn’t this what we see the world around us longing for, right now?
Preached at the Saturday 505 and the Sunday 10:30 Eucharist on the 4th Sunday after Pentecost, July 5-6, 2025.
Readings: