Homily on Luke 10
“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But at the judgment it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades. “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”
Luke 10: 13-16
Jesus commissions the seventy-two to go out before Him, reminding them of the hard work they are undertaking. Jesus utters warnings that are now well-known and oft-recited by Christians today: that “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few”; that we are in the world as “lambs in the midst of wolves.” And, perhaps most importantly for us to remember today, as missionaries to the campus of Louisiana Tech, that when the disciples enter a town and encounter the rejection of the world, they are not to take that rejection upon themselves as indicative of their own inadequacy to proclaim the Good News concerning Jesus of Nazareth; they are not to stay and try harder and find better ways to convince them of that Good News. Instead, Jesus tells them to wipe the dust from their feet and proclaim in the streets that, nevertheless, “the Kingdom of God has come near.” For it is not Jesus’ disciples who have failed to give honor and thanks to God and God alone; it is the world that has exchanged the truth for a lie, for when the world rejects Christ’s disciples, it also rejects Christ. And woe to the world.
The cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum saw firsthand the “deeds of power” and mighty works of God yet still rejected Christ. We must remember as we go about the work of proclaiming the Gospel that the choice to listen to or to reject us, and by extension Christ, is not ours to make for the students on this campus. Let us not rush to judgment when we are not received by the town; when the town chooses to reject us and the Christ in Whose Name we come, let us not in condemnation cast them down to Hades. Let us, instead, remember our own repentance, our own mourning in sackcloth and ashes, when we, too, rejected those who came bearing the Name of Christ. Let us wipe the dust from our feet and go forth into the world once more, for the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. And let us remain with those who do receive us; let us proclaim the Gospel concerning Jesus of Nazareth to those who have ears and would listen to us. Let us proclaim to them, “The Kingdom of God has come near to you.”
Amen.
Alana Crump