14th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Lk 10:1-20) “We Are Not Like We Think.”
We have a special challenge in our church. We must pass on knowledge of Christ to each generation of believers. We have had an unbroken chain of Christians since the 1st century. We look to Jesus’ example to teach us how to accomplish the task.
The way Jesus operated seems to be kind of haphazard. He appears to make a lot of assumptions. We read how he sent out seventy-two disciples in the 10th Chapter of Luke’s Gospel. He had just sent out the 12 apostles one chapter before. He seemed to be in a hurry. One must wonder what kind of training all these people were given. Did they feel ready to undertake such a task? How would we feel if we were Christians only a few months, and we were sent to another community to teach people how to live like Jesus? We might wonder if we would have had a receptive audience.
A curious part of the story is that Jesus appears to have sent the disciples to bring in a harvest. We have a sense, that someone else had planted the seeds of the Gospel. Someone else had also tended the crop. In other words, work had been done in advance.
The fact that Jesus delegated to others wasn’t unusual. Whenever an important person traveled through the ancient world with valuable information, they would send emissaries ahead of them to gather a crowd.
The implication here was that the seventy-two were going to complete the task of converting followers. We ask again, who did the prep work? Why were people ready to hear Christian preaching? Somehow, we surmise that God the Creator had sown the seed. The people who Jesus sent teachers to, were ready to receive the Gospel. How could this be?
Most of the time we are pessimistic about whether human beings are ready to think like Jesus. We have been taught that the natural order of things is that all creatures are constantly competing. Darwin taught, after all, that it is “survival of the fittest.” Even among creatures of the same species, there is competition for resources. The strong survive. The weak are pushed aside. But is this the way it is in nature? Many scientists would question this. Animals, in the wild, have a habit of using only what they need. If we study God’s creatures there seems to be an innate desire to cooperate.
Have you ever been driving down a country road when the seasons are changing and suddenly you see thousands of birds flying together in unison. The birds rise and fall but they don’t hit the ground. The birds don’t bump into each other. What researchers observe is that there seems to be no dominant bird that is leading the others. This phenomenon is called murmuration. The birds have an innate sense of how to fly together. If we study other species, we see that very often there is inherent cooperation.
The people who listened to the preaching of the disciples were living in a world like ours where the message seems to be that “might makes right.” If you wanted to protect yourself, you had to be physically stronger than those around you. You had to hoard resources. You couldn’t share because that might mean you wouldn’t have what you needed. The disciples lived differently because they lived in simplicity. The disciples were told by Jesus to be thankful for what they received. The disciples served without expecting repayment. The message of Jesus tapped into what people knew was right and good and fair and just.
The message of those in power hasn’t changed through the centuries. And that message is that we can’t trust anyone. A healthy amount of suspicion might be justified. An unhealthy amont of distrust can destroy society. We crave a world where we can cooperate with our neighbors. God has made us like this. When Jesus says, “treat others the way you would want to be treated.” We know deep inside that this is how life should be. As St. Paul says in the Letter to the Romans, “Love does no harm to the neighbor therefore love is the fulfillment of God’s law.” Jesus teaches us that the strongest characteristic of all living things is the wish to live in harmony.