IT’S TIME TO BE ON THE ROAD WITH JESUS
Did you hear the news? On Tuesday the Australian Bureau of Statistics released Australia’s Census data. One of the statistics which should be of interest for the church is that the number of Australians who identify as Christian has significantly decreased-now 44% of the population, around 15% less than a decade ago. This decline was almost triumphantly reported in the media. In The Sydney Morning Herald article ‘Abandoning God: Christianity plummets as ‘non religious’ surges in census’, Matthew Knott and Angus Thompson wrote:
“Australia has become strikingly more godless over the past decade, with the latest census data showing the proportion of self-identified Christians dropping below 50 per cent for the first time and a soaring number of people describing themselves as “non-religious… Based on current trends, non-believers could overtake Christians as the biggest religious bloc in Australia by the time the next census is conducted in 2026.”¹
What is your reaction as you hear this news? I wonder, should this really surprise us?
When the first census was conducted in 1911, 96% of Australians identified as Christian2. Since the Second World War there has been a dramatic decline. The traumatic devastation of war itself was horrific and shook many people’s faith; a scene that is playing out all over again with Putin’s bullying of Ukraine. Equally horrific has been the findings of the Royal Commission into institutional child sex abuse, the revelation of which has brought an undeniably damaging impact to social views on Christianity. The accounts of what survivors of sex abuse endured from people in places which should have been the safest, and the healing they still need, is both heartbreaking and sickening. The introduction of a church safe framework to care for other people is an insignificant impost to the church by comparison.
Then there is the huge increase in immigration which has brought different cultures to our shores like never before. Globalisation has seen the outsourcing of services to corporate organisations that were traditionally associated with the church, like donating aid. Weddings and funerals are increasingly performed by secular celebrants. There is no such thing in the education sector as the absolute truth that the church claims-instead students are called to be suspicious of, and question everything, and everyone has the right to assert their views and values as true. Social media has meant we are all authors of truth from our lounge rooms, with all the changing social, cultural and moral values with it. This is the world of Generation Z who have had mobile devices in their lives right from the start. Dummies, toys and cuddles are no longer used to pacify infants – an iPhone is. On-demand entertainment and communication is an assumed right for people today, and the loss of internet reception or mobile data is seen as the catastrophic event we need salvation from.
The church is just not in the line of vision of today’s society, one which many commentators now label as ‘post Christian’. Perhaps for those who have grown up in the church from two generations ago, the Census statistics are surprising-even shocking. This has seemed to have all happened so quickly, surprising us like a thief in the night, as Mark Sayers puts in, in his book Disappearing Church³. This is a worldwide phenomenon, across the denominations.
That is why today’s Gospel reading is such good news! The Lord appointed seventy (two) and sent them two by two before him to all the towns and places where he was about to go. And he said to them: “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few; pray then, that the Lord of the harvest would send workers into his harvest.” The harvest is plentiful!
Often that’s thought to mean the work of converting people, a picture we might have with words like ‘witnessing’ and ‘evangelism’, as if the work of bringing people into the Kingdom of God begins with us. But in our text the work is harvesting. It is not sowing, or watering, or nurturing, or fertilising. It is gathering in the crop that has already ripened. Jesus says the harvest is plentiful. 44% of our population-11, 440 000 people who identify as Christian-would seem to confirm this.
Of course, we would like that to return to the 1911 figure of 96%…well… wouldn’t we? God does. He wants all people to be saved. All Australians to be saved – those we live and work with, those we walk past on the street, mingle in the supermarket with, go to the music club with, even those he leads across our paths at this congregation – the contractors who come here, the people who hire our hall, visitors with family, the homeless who camp on the porch of Martin Luther House.
God wants all people to be saved – that’s why he sent his Son into the world. And because God wants all people to be saved, that is why he sends us. And so today’s Gospel reading has important things to say to us, Jesus’ disciples of today. Let’s look at that.
The first is that the disciples are not necessarily qualified or worthy. We might think that the disciples must have lived perfectly holy lives, were perfectly obedient, had exceptional faith, and knew their Bible back to front so as to give all the right answers to those whom they converted with their compelling arguments. But this isn’t the case. Jesus appoints ordinary people, like you and me, to partner with him in his mission.
Second, while the culture in the text is very different to that of 21st century ‘PostChristian’ Australia, the core problem is the same-the resistance and rejection of Jesus. At no time in history has the church ever been in a more vulnerable position than the infant church; the small band of followers in a hostile world without all the buildings and budgets and staff and programs and people that we have today. Jesus says they will be vulnerable in the face of danger. He tells them that he is sending them out as lambs among wolves. They are going out into an evil world. It will be a spiritual battle where the power of the enemy is at play, represented by the imagery of serpents and scorpions, and seen in the rejection of the message the disciples bring.
That is the very reason why Jesus sends them out because this rejection of God’s saving help in Jesus is the very spiritual condition that all people need salvation from. In this regard, today is no different to back then. But Jesus blesses and authorises his people to prevail.
Third, as Jesus sends them out, they are to rely on him, not themselves. And so Jesus sends them out with no money bag with which to buy provisions, no bag in which to keep their possessions, no additional pair of sandals to those on their feet. They have no resources within themselves as he sends them out as lambs among wolves. These seventy two have nothing in their own strength to overpower the wicked wolves of the world, and nor do we. But they have Jesus. He is their protector and provider, and so he is for us. That’s hard for us who live in the materially rich Western world to grasp-we who are so concerned about accumulating and increasing what is ours. Jesus wants his disciples to learn complete trust in him. God has already given us everything we have and will always return to us more than the tokens we offer to him.
And at the heart of all of this is the purpose for this small band of disciples; their one priority. It is not to fill rosters, debate the colour of the carpet or who should greet visitors, to steer committee outcomes, pack bags of food, run programs, trim budgets or trying to boost worship attendance. Their purpose is to go and care for people in the one way that no other organisation can do-sharing with others the Gospel. The proclamation of peace is to be their vision and core task to those whom they visit. For Jesus came to be the Prince of Peace to bring peace between the world and God; the peace of the forgiveness of sins, the peace of having fullness of life forever, the peace of God’s favour and blessing, the peace of his merciful help and presence.
If only some of those words are the only thing we can remember to say, then we have brought the Gospel to those who need to hear it. People need peace today just as much as always-not the fleeting peace that comes from entertainment, experience, retail therapy, cafe culture or likes on social media. They need peace that the world can neither give, nor take away-the peace that comes from Jesus alone.
This is what’s most astonishing about today’s text-the peace actually comes from Jesus himself. The disciples need not fear what to say. Jesus is with them, and speaks through them. That is why they are to say: “The Kingdom of God has come near.” He sent them two by two before him to all the towns and places where he was about to go. God’s Kingdom comes near to people in and through Jesus’ disciples. In the preaching of the seventy-two Christ is present as if he himself were preaching. When they say: “Peace to this house” those who listen to them listen to Jesus himself. So he gives them his assurance: “Whoever hears you hears me.”
The disciples weren’t to say this for the purpose of what they might gain out of it – like more bottoms on pews and money on the plate. That would still be self-interest. They are to be interested in the welfare of others – others who are unworthy and undeserving of God’s grace. They are simply to bring in the harvest: to serve others that they might also know the salvation they themselves had first received.
Why are we at St Paul’s here? For the church today, it is again time to go out on the road with Jesus. The world needs this. That is why, before the foundation of world, God chose you for such a time as this and placed you where you are, so as to share the Good News of his Son. As the children of God whose names are written in heaven, may your vision and focus always be clear on the core purpose of our being in the world – to go as ambassadors for Christ and change lives, making them whole by bringing divine peace. As you walk to where Jesus already is, you have his own promise that not even Satan or any evil can thwart God’s plan.
Where is the church today? Jesus is powerfully present with you where you are as your unseen companion and speaks through you. That is where the church is Sunday afternoon to Saturday night. And those who listen to you listen to him, the Lord of the abundant harvest. Amen.
¹ Knott, Matthew and Thompson, Angus Abandoning God: Christianity plummets as ‘non-religious’ surges in census, https://www.smh.eom.au/national/abandoning–god-christianity–plummets-as-non-religious-surges in-census-20220627-p5awvz.html last accessed July 2, 2022, 7:50pm
2 Ibid.
³ Sayers, Mark (2016) Disappearing Church: From cultural relevance to gospel resilience Moody Publishers, Chicago.
