If a casual but sincere person were to ask you, “what is the basic message of Jesus of Nazareth?,” how would you reply? What would you say? ‘That God loves us?’ That is certainly true, and we’re right to take that away from Jesus’ words. But ‘God loves us’ is more the distilled message of the Church, today, than it was Jesus’ main proclamation. No, according to the witness of Scripture, in the overwhelming majority of the parables, in the red letters of the Gospels, when Jesus wants to encapsulate his message, he says: “the Kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe the Gospel!”

So why don’t we in the Church say more about God’s Kingdom coming near? Well, one reason could be that this message is a little more complicated than “God loves you” - and it’s more demanding! But I think our seeming de-emphasis of Jesus’ Kingdom-message may have more to do with the fact that we’ve reached a time when talk about the Kingdom seems quite otherworldly, like a fable with a happy ending. “The Kingdom of God is coming,” sure. One day, anyway. In the meantime we’re fighting two counterinsurgency campaigns that look like unending wars, and our economy is teetering on the brink of a still-deeper recession. Worldwide, millions are at risk, thanks to perennial killers like poverty and hunger, while millions more are at risk of eating too much and physically doing too little. With all the violence, earthquakes and famines, the world feels less and less safe all the time - and none of this is what we’d expect of God’s Kingdom!

This past Sunday, some of us heard Jesus say some rather unreasonable things to those who were thinking about following him. He told one to leave the dead to bury their dead, another that no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the Kingdom of God (there it is again!). With a sales pitch like that, we might wonder if anyone will even be hanging around at day’s end, much less motivated to find out more about this Kingdom thing.

Well, today we hear that, perhaps surprisingly, seventy people got past that seemingly high bar Jesus set. Now we get some insight into the lives of those who do decide to follow Jesus - what those who strive to live according to the ways of the Kingdom of God will be expected to do. Jesus sends the Seventy out - so right off the bat, we see that this Kingdom thing somehow involves making everybody a message-bearer. The number seventy, by the way, is almost certainly significant, drawing on Genesis 10, where all the nations of the world are symbolically numbered at seventy. So in the new Kingdom, everybody is expected to participate in the harvest, and the mission field is the whole world, all the nations. We also notice it’s not a solo enterprise: the seventy are sent out in pairs - so what we do, we do together as a sent community. We pray “our Father,” not “my Father.” We learn love (and forgiveness!) only in relationship.

What Jesus sends the 35 pairs out to do is to deliver a message, plain and to the point: to those who listen and to those who don’t, they are to announce that “the Kingdom of God has come near to you!” But do you suppose that made any sense to them? Times back then were rough. The Hebrews were a conquered people, ruled by a pagan empire. Taxes were crushing them, people were losing their farms, their family lands, becoming day-laborers, even selling themselves into debt-slavery. “The Kingdom of God has come near?” Not in these here parts, pal!

If their message made any sense to the Seventy, it wasn’t because of what Jesus told them next: he was sending them out into the world “like lambs among wolves.” Rather than encouraging them to take advantage of conceal-carry or otherwise be prepared for trouble, Jesus tells the Seventy they cannot take the most basic provisions for the road: no purse, no luggage, no extra pair of sandals in case of a Birkenstock blow-out. They are not to chat or trifle away time - they just enter a house, eat what they’re offered, and never try to ‘trade up’ their lodgings to obtain more comfortable digs. Their modus operandi will be one of single-mindedness and self-denial; and probably as yet they have little idea as to why.

What will they do, these defenseless lambs, sent out among wolves? They will do as Jesus does: live out a radical trust in God, armed only with the message that God’s reign, God’s power, God’s Kingdom is not only coming, but has come near. You see, those strange travel logistics Jesus gave them - those were more than just marching orders, a missionary’s how-to handbook. What Jesus offered them is a new way of living. Those who follow him are to become a sign, an advance team of God’s heavenly reign on earth. Consider: they have no food or supplies, no provisions, no weapons, but they demonstrate the generosity of those who have no reason for concern about their own well-being. They practice peace and justice, even when they are wronged and mistreated. They treat others with dignity and respect, though they are often seen with contempt. They meekly receive hospitality, and attend to the sick and to others who cannot repay them. By their own peculiarity, they point to a God the world really does not yet know, a God whom the world clearly does not expect, a God whose power, in the humble ways of a carpenter-king, is already at work in the world.

And that’s really where the rubber meets the road, isn’t it? As long as those who follow Jesus can embody this new way of living, as long as we can point to the strange economics and politics and relationships of God’s reign of righteousness, we become a visible sign of the Kingdom of God come near. And when we do anything less, anything else, we are a sign of what the world already knows and expects. When we shout each other down, arguing for this or that formula for salvation, when we lavish resources on ourselves while others die for wont of the basics, while we live as if the Gospel were a prized possession for our enjoyment while others perish in ignorance, we are a sign only of the present order of things, a season in which evil has its day.

But only last week, there were some shining faces among us - adults and Youth just back from an extraordinary mission week spent in western PA. We might have expected them to tell us what they did, where they slept, what they ate. But what they wanted to talk about, and soon will have the opportunity to tell us about, was what they witnessed God doing in their midst. On their return, I was reminded of what it was like when the Seventy came back from their mission trip. They were also on fire, having drawn on a power and an authority far greater than any they had ever known. They had rebuked evil, and seen signs and wonders.

Jesus went their enthusiasm one better: they didn’t just do some good out there. He shared with them his vision of the beginning of the end for the Devil, of evil destroyed once and for all on the last day, the dawning of a new Kingdom of righteousness and peace - not in the sweet by and bye, but right here on the earth. That’s what they had been part of - an inauguration of things to come.

Somehow we knew this already: there is something about our faith that has to be lived out, experienced not in a classroom or even in a sanctuary, but in the kitchen of the homeless shelter, beside a nursing home bed, in a park with the neighborhood kids. We are sent out to discover that we need not look for the coming of the Kingdom of God. For it is with us, it is among us, and it is waiting for us to walk out into the ripening fields.

Thanks be to God.