Called, Gathered, Sent

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
1 After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2 He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3 Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. 5 Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ 6 And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. 7 Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8 Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9 cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’
16 “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” 17 The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” 18 He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. 19 See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. 20 Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

As the “Pete Is So Awesome” Tour heads to a new city, we have a text that speaks of the call to reach out with the Good News of the Kingdom. This seems to me a text that might well call for us to speak of the priesthood of all believers.
I wonder, sometimes, at the talk of “leadership.” I think of Forde’s line, “beware of ship words.” Or the title of that Dilbert book, “Don’t Step in the Leadership.” Do faith communities that reach out well in the name of Christ benefit from excellent leadership, or faithful followership?
I like this in Willimon’s blog entry on the Xian Century site. He riffs off of the second lesson, then moves to the Gospel:

...suddenly, in mid-diatribe, Paul asserts, “Now you are the body of Christ.”
Really? This forlorn conglomeration of inept hangers-on, they are the body of Christ? It’s outrageous for Jesus Christ to so limit himself in such a lousy body. Alas, that’s the way this God works.
Let’s first agree that God can do anything, anywhere, anytime God wants. Self-sufficient omnipotence is the very essence of deity? Right?
Wrong.
There is something about the Trinity that refuses to work alone. One of the medieval rabbis, in his commentary on the Exodus, stood amazed that Yahweh refused to work wonders without Israel. The Creator of the Universe needs help? Whatever God wants to do for the world, God chooses a ragtag family like Israel to do it. Though God does not need Israel or anybody else to work wonders, something in this God desires to work synergistically.

Later, he has this great line

It takes a great God to stoop to work through little people like us.

The Preaching Peace people see this text as a call to proclaim a message in keeping with their Girardian read on the Gospel: “Peace to this house” “The Kingdom is near”
Mary Hinkle’s blog has some good stuff quoting from Richard Lischer

"In a culture obsessed with self-improvement, preaching speaks an eschatological word. It announces God’s open future that has broken into time in Jesus Christ. …
"The sermon participates in something larger than improvement, the reality of which is hard to put into words and whose end cannot be seen. In Luke 10 after Jesus sends out the Seventy, they return with glowing reports of their success. The Lord replies in an eschatological non sequitur, 'I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.' What we see in our parishes is improvements and setbacks; he sees on our behalf what is the beginning of a whole new age (pp. 178-9)."
Richard A. Lischer, "The Interrupted Sermon," © Interpretation 50 (1996) : 169-81.
She says:
Perhaps it works to say that Jesus sees the beginning of a whole new age in our lives together as well as our congregational life together? If that is true, and if preaching is indeed the strange language that communicates the transformed future that has broken into time in Jesus Christ, then preaching could also be described as the proclamation of what Jesus sees.

What does Jesus see when Jesus looks at us? Those through whom God has elected to work with to bring God’s peace to this world in need?