Afflicting the Comfortable, Comforting the Afflicted 

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20 

July 3, 2016 

Mark S. Bollwinkel

            Fifteen years ago Bonnie and I had the privilege of participating in a choir concert at the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta in Clusone, Italy.  It was the last concert of a 17-day tour.  It was one of our best experiences.  A warm and welcoming crowd truly appreciated our presence.

Located in the foothills of the Alps, the paintings, sculpture and tapestries of this 14^th century Basilica were inspiring.  

As are the convictions of European Christians, past and present, who have left the world a legacy of art and architecture. 

And…a number of us Californians could not help but wonder about the content of some of the Basilica’s most prominent art.  Right in the front of the altar area was a large painting of the beheading of John the Baptist and the presentation of his bleeding head by the child Salome to King Herod (Mark 6:14-29).  On the other side of the sanctum was a marble statue of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, depicting his body tied to a tree and shot through with arrows.  In the center was a marble crucifix, with blood running from the wounds of Jesus’ side, hands and head.   These were but a few of the pieces of art in the wonderful basilica, all beautifully done and quite graphic in their depiction of violence.

It would be hard to imagine such images in a contemporary Protestant worship setting.

What was the message these great artists were trying to get across?  Why did the members of this church feel their art deserved display and preservation?

This art upholds the values of commitment, dedication and faith by honoring the sacrifice of the saints, vividly portraying the cost of discipleship and reminding us of the price Jesus paid for our salvation.  We still think those values are important but we wouldn’t decorate our sanctuary with images of violence to get the point across.  Would we?

How do we get our message across?

            How will we tell our world the good news of God’s love for us and the promised reign of God’s peace, justice and love in our place and time?

            Jesus might have asked similar questions as he traveled towards Jerusalem with his disciples.  Luke describes the sending of the seventy, the “Appointed” in pairs, to the villages Jesus would enter on his way to the capital.      

            News was spreading rapidly about Jesus and his mission by word of mouth, village to village, in the Galilee and Judea.  Crowds were gathering wherever he went.  But the ruling Jewish authorities and the Roman news bureaus in Jerusalem were burying the story.   They wouldn’t give Jesus airtime on their satellite link up to Rome.  Even Josephus, the Walter Cronkite of the year 30 AD, hardly mentioned the Nazarene.  So the Lord sent out “advance men” (we must assume the 70 were all male) to prepare the villages for Jesus’ coming.

            They were to travel light and depend on the hospitability of their hosts.  They were to proclaim the same message as Jesus, “Repent, the Kingdom of God is near.”  Empowered with the spirit of God as Jesus, they were to heal the sick.

            Jesus warned them that not all would welcome the news.  Many would reject it.  Those who were comfortable and invested in the status quo would be upset by such a message.  Those who were suffering or socially disenfranchised were yearning to hear such a message.  The Appointed weren’t to worry about pronouncements of doom or getting even.  If people did not accept Jesus’ message, they were simply to move on.

            Jesus gave something to these messengers that we could use today.  A sense of urgency.

            Jesus and his followers, along with most of the populace, were filled with the expectation that the world was about to end.  The eschaton was a hand.  The Day of God’s Judgment was about to unfold.

            There was no time for people to change their minds.  There could be no patience with the doubtful.

            The Christian mission was not forced upon the reluctant.  Jesus’ message was freely available, given to all.  The Appointed were not to thrust the message upon those who rejected it because in part there was not enough time.

            The message of Jesus and his Appointed was “now or never, the Kingdom of God is here, what’s your choice?!”

            Peter Gomes, the former Chaplin at Harvard University, likens this text to a rescue mission on a sinking ship.  As the ship is going down, there is no time to argue.  We are called to offer the means of escape to each cabin but then we must move on the next.  The initiative of response rests with those who must choose.

            Sinking ships do not allow the luxury of debate.

            Two thousand years after this time of urgent future expectation, we may want to believe that the ship is becalmed not sinking.

            We have been seduced into thinking that the comfort and prosperity of North America is permanent.  Anyone who lived through the Depression can tell you otherwise.

            The Cold War is over and our young people are not drafted to go off to war.  Yet a new age of terrorism, international and domestic, seems to bring us another atrocity each week.    Palestine and Israel, Pakistan and India, Iraq, Syria and Turkey can barely contain their violence.  The doctrines of war still convince us to invest in weapons instead of peace.

            The impoverished nations of the tropical world, where 20,000 children die each day of malnutrition related disease, don’t have much time to patiently wait for wealth to trickle down from the North.

            And how much time do each of us really have to find the purpose and meaning in our own lives that will transcend paying the bills and getting through the day.  What are we waiting for that will set our lives and relationships on fire with a truth beyond ourselves?

            Maybe the world would hear our message more clearly if we had the sense of urgency Jesus gave his Appointed?

            Like Ida Scudder.

In the late 1800’s Ida Scudder reluctantly visited her medical missionary father, John, at his post in South India.  One evening, Ida was asked to help three women from different families struggling in difficult childbirth.  Custom prevented their husbands from accepting a male doctor treating their wives during birth.  Ida herself could do nothing.  She was shocked to learn the next morning that all three women had died.  Although used to the comfortable life of an American expatriate, she believed that night was a calling from God.  Ida Scudder went back to America and entered medical school becoming one of the first women graduates of the Cornell Medical College. 

            Shortly after, she returned to India and opened a one-bed clinic in Vellore, Tamil Nadu in 1900.   In 1909, CMC was the first medical institution in India to offer nursing and in 1918 medical training to women. Today the Vellore Christian Medical College and Hospital serves 2,000 outpatients, 1,000 inpatients, performs 43 surgeries, and delivers 16 births on average each day.

            Ida Scudder’s vision was born of that sense of urgency Jesus gave to his Appointed.  Her life was transformed by Jesus’ call to live in the present by the spirit of God’s future. 

            Remember this old preacher’s joke?  The speaker was really getting into his message and so was his audience.  “We must forever rid the earth of the scourges of capitalism, elitism and political favoritism.”  One little lady raised her hand and said, “Could you add rheumatism to that list?”

            We may grow weary of the great problems of our day, which so often seem overwhelming.  But consider what average folk like us are already doing.  Most of us are not aware that a fraction of every dollar we give here at Church of the Wayfarer goes to support Ida Scudder’s CMC in South India through our denomination.  The United Methodist denomination houses, educates and feeds 1,000,000 children around the world every day.  Our United Methodist Committee on Relief resettles 400 refugees back into their homes, everyday.  Would that our sense of overwhelm be tempered by our convictions of hope!

If Jesus and his Appointed came knocking at our doors, would we be the ones to welcome his message or would we slam the door shut?

            “Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand” talks about turning our lives around; opening ourselves to something new; orienting our lives to the values of peace, justice and love instead of comfort, consumerism and sentimentality.  It describes a church committed more to those who are not here, than those who are.

            Reinhold Niebhur once described the role of the pastor as one who “comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable”.  The calling is true for any Christian.  Jesus sends the 70 out to declare a message that brings comfort to those who struggle and challenges to those who are most invested in keeping things the same.

            Maybe that is one of the reasons that along with the beautiful renditions of Mary and the baby Jesus and heavenly choruses of angels, European cathedrals, basilicas and churches depict violence and human suffering in their art.

            It forces the worshiper to ask “who are we?”, “whose side are we on?”, the comfortable or the comforting?

            The answer to that determines the message we want to share with the world.

            Amen.