God wants to meet us exactly where we’re at!
Every time I hear this Gospel about Jesus sending the disciples out to visit people in their homes, I can’t help thinking about all the homes I’ve visited in our parish, and how many more that need to be visited. You Eucharistic ministers that take communion to the shut-ins know what I mean.
This is where our God meets every one of us- right where we are in our ordinary lives. If God only came to us when we were all dressed up and looking our best, when we had everything prepared and completely in order, what kind of a stilted and formal relationship would that be? The Lord of all creation desires a close and personal connection with all of us. That’s why Jesus makes himself small enough to enter into our human hearts in the sacrament of the Eucharist. I think this is why Jesus didn’t send the 72 disciples out with trumpets and all kinds of fanfare. He wanted them to meet people just as they were, right where they lived, in exactly the same way that God wants to meet each one of us.
Every once in awhile we’ve gone to what was thought to be the “wrong” place and ended up meeting someone with no connection at all to our parish, only to find that was the one person who needed to talk the most, from the lady who had just lost a loved one to the man who had left the church many years ago.
It is a humbling experience to go to the wrong address or end up in the wrong room or go to the wrong hospital bed and find that God was using what seems like a mistake to reach out to someone who was truly in need. In the first reading, Isaiah tells us to rejoice, because God will comfort each one of us “as a mother comforts her child”. If one of God’s children needs to be comforted, he will find a way to do it, and any one of us, like the disciples in the Gospel, can be the instrument God sends to the right place at the right time.
As Jesus sends forth the seventy-two in today’s Gospel, he also sends each one of us — hairdressers and police officers, contractors and accountants, pastors and professionals, parents and children —to go out into our world carrying with us God’s comfort and peace. Sometimes we know exactly where we’re going. Sometimes we are fully aware that we are doing God’s work, performing a ministry such as Outreach or religious education or visiting the sick. But sometimes, probably most of the time, we’re just going about our business and living our lives when God surprises us with an opportunity we never saw coming, a person in our path who is lonely or in pain, a child who needs an extra hug, a neighbor who is struggling with a heavy burden, a co-worker who is going through a difficult divorce. These are the unexpected doorways God puts in front of us. We can enter in and bring the comforting presence of Jesus along with us, or we can just keep going our own merry way.
At the end of our Gospel reading Jesus tells the disciples to deliver this message to the people: “The kingdom of God is at hand for you.” Please pay special attention to where Jesus wants them to bring this amazing news. He doesn’t tell them first to gather everyone on a distant mountaintop, or in the Holy of Holies in the great temple. He doesn’t ask them first to have the people put on their finest clothes or perform any complicated set of religious requirements. Instead, Jesus sends them first right into each person’s home. “The kingdom of God is at hand for you,” right here and right now, right where we live. We put on our nice clothes and come together to worship later, as a response to this freely-given gift of the kingdom.
“The kingdom of God is at hand for you.” Sometimes we’re the disciples delivering this wonderful message, and sometimes we’re the ones waiting at home, longing to receive it. Sometimes, like the hairdresser in our story, we can deliver the message without even knowing it, just by bringing the comfort and peace of Jesus with us wherever we go. We are all a part of something much bigger than ourselves, God’s own kingdom right here on this earth. When we join hands and pray the prayer that Jesus taught us as we gather around the table of the Eucharist in a few minutes, we will all say the words, “Thy kingdom come.” As we feel the touch of a hand and hear the sound of our own human voices, let us all be especially aware at that moment our Gospel message. The Kingdom of God is indeed at hand, for every one of us.