Sermon for Proper 9 (Year C, 2025)

Sermon for Proper 9 (Year C, 2025)

Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Preached by Aaron Conner

July 5 2025

at Church of the Advent of Christ the King, San

Francisco

Sermon for Proper 9

As I was preparing for this sermon, I reflected on two personal anecdotes to open with. Since

they both fit well, and you don't mind long homilies, you get both. Just kidding about it being long, but

you are getting both anecdotes.

The first introduction I had to the Episcopal Church outside the very self-insulated diocese I

was confirmed in was in 2007 when I attended the Province VIII Young Adult Gatherings during

Spring break, hosted by St Michael's in Isla Vista, by UC Santa Barbara. The theme of the weekend

was on social justice and one of the activities we did was picking strawberries along side migrant

workers in the fields outside Goleta. The experience rocked my perception of immigrants and field

workers. The owner of the field which seemed to stretch on for miles showed us what to look for in a

berry that was ready to pick, where on the plant to pick it, and what a plant might look like if it needed

some care. We were given baskets to collect the bounty and pour them into bins on the side of the field.

So, forty-something of us were released into field only to find we could not keep up with the workers at

all. They moved and picked so much faster and were refilling their baskets three times faster than we

could fill ours. Their trained eyes could spot what ready for picking while we inspected the plants

carefully. Their movement in between rows of plants was gracious and dance-like compared to our left-

footed attempts to not destroy the berries we were picking. After 45 minutes, we were exhausted. It was

a sunny 65 day, and I didn't want to think about what this work felt like in the summer months. Luckily

for all of us, the diocese had a taco truck ready for lunch so all of us were able to sit down share a meal

conversing in broken English and broken Spanish. The owner of the field also let us keep the

strawberries we picked. I still think about this whenever I journey back home down the Central Valley

eyeing the fields that appear to go on for miles and miles.

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. This was rallying cry in my evangelical

upbringing. As church-going teenagers, we were seen a missionaries to our schools and our mission to

bring our classmates to Jesus. How guilt-ridden and spiritually flawed every time I came across

someone, someone a “bad boy” or “goth girl” and would attempt to stutter the words “w..w..would you

like to know...Jesus?” All my peers at church seemed to do it just fine, or so I was led to believe

anyway. One time two of my friends did come to youth group with me and did say they were saved. I

was overjoyed with them but was unprepared for the emotions that seemed to come up with them in

reaction to be “being saved” and contention with their parents who wouldn't let them go to church.

Thus I for a short while was overwhelmingly responsible for their spiritual growth and well-being.

What seemed to go on forever in eyes of a teenager was only a week or so, and like the seed that was

scattered to rocky soil and didn't take root, my friends slowly lost their short-lived religious fervor.

Some campus missionary I was. But my class of 2004 ended up voting me as “Most Likely to be a

televangelist” anyway.

The mandate to be a missionary was less about our text in Luke 10 and more about the Great

Commission in Matthew 28 to "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the

name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have

commanded you” (v 28-29a). Even though its maybe easy for us more quiet-minded more introverted

flock of the faith to keep it in the periphery, disciple making is part of our spiritual ethos. See the

section on The Ministry in the Catechism (pg 856, BCP):

Q. What is the duty of all Christians?

A: the duty of all Christians is to follow Christ; to come together week by week for corporate

worship; and work, pray, and give for the spread of the Kingdom of God

And, of course, it's in our Baptismal Covenant:

Will you proclaim by word and example the Good news of God in Christ?

I will, with God's help.

Thankfully, when we take in the whole of scripture, we find that what Jesus' instructions to his disciples

in Luke 10 is a blueprint to make the Great Commission in Matthew 28 happen.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke all have the sending of the 12 disciples out with the authority to heal

and cast out demons, taking nothing with them, preaching the Kingdom of God. But only Luke records

this preaching mission that expanded from the 12 apostles to 70 disciples. The harvest is plentiful,

Jesus says. Jesus isn't just drawing on the daily life of an agrarian society. He's speaking of an ancient

promise of the Hebrew scriptures. From the Prophet Isaiah, chapter 27:

I, the LORD, am [the vineyard's] keeper; every moment I water it. I guard it night and day so that

no one can harm it (v 3). On that day the Lord will thresh from the channel of the Euphrates to

the Wadi of Egypt, and you will be gathered one by one, O people of Israel (v 12).

God promises gathering to a people divided. In Isaiah's time, the Northern Kingdom of Israel was

always in conflict with the Assyrians, the Southern Kingdom of Judah facing threats from the Assyrians

and Babylonians. 700 years later, Israel lives under Roman occupation waiting for that harvest, for the

one who will thresh the fields with justice, re-uniting the nation as God's chosen from all over the

world and over throwing those who stand against her. This in-gathering of Israel is reflected in

agricultural harvest celebrated annually as one the three high holy days of the Jewish calendar. The

Feast of Booths or Tabernacles, the seven-day Thanksgiving holiday of Judaism that celebrates the end

of the harvest season. During this week, 70 bulls were offered, a number that Rabbinic tradition

interprets as the symbolic total nations of the world. 70 bulls and disciples, Luke is conveying to his

readers that Jesus is the One who gathers everyone to himself at the final judgment festival where all

the harvest that has been reaped is rejoiced over.

Even though I'm from an area of California that supplies 80% of the nation's carrots, I was

never very educated in the ways of agriculture. It wasn't until I went out picking myself where I learned

that the harvest isn't completed in one day. Like the ways I used to think about disciple-making and

ultimately the end of all things when our Lord will, as the Advent hymn goes,“come in clouds of glory

robed in royal majesty,” I thought the harvest just sort of happened all at once. But the harvest is a

season. A season where us laborers are sent out to see which fruit and wheat is ripe enough to listen to

the message that God's Kingdom is near and to tell which fruit and wheat need some more time to

ripen, trusting that in God's good time it will ripen while we shake the dust of our feet in

disappointment at is and move on to next plant.

In an era where, I think for some very good reasons, the relationship between the Church and

culture wars at large in our society have been strained and distrustful, it is hard to see the harvest Jesus

speaks of. It's hard to see a harvest where we might see fields that have gone fallow, or stunted by lack

of rain and nutrients. Its hard to see harvest as pews have trended toward empty. But where we might

fields whose yield is questionable, Jesus sees crop that can be cultivated. Where we see empty pews,

Jesus sees a barn with plenty of room to store the gathering of a plentiful harvest. The short and simple

Great Commission does put the onus on us to go out to world, but the sending of Jesus 70 disciples to

the world makes us messengers and reminds us that we are not the message or persuader, but it is Jesus

who persuades, gathers, and the message is Jesus himself.

Jesus sends his disciples out in vulnerability, taking nothing with them, wholly trusting in God

that they will be taken care of. He also send them trusting in the hospitality and receptiveness of others.

It's in going out and building relationships with others that the disciples preach the Kingdom. It's sitting

at tables getting to know others that Jesus prepares his coming. Its easy to over complicate church

growth when we focus only on metrics like the number of communicants and pledges (not that those

aren't important). Whenever we share food with strangers at coffee hour, or are at work, or out in the

wild and come across a situation where a good word or deed is needed and prayerfully discern how

God would have us act, when we are out tabling in the community and sharing in conversation with our

neighbors, or giving sandwiches and water to those who need them, that is relationship-building for the

Kingdom of God and preparing that plentiful harvest for the coming of him who is already here.

God's world needs this relationship-building. Many right now fear for their safety and safety of

their friends and families whose queerness or lack of citizenship they can't hide. Many fear the

potential loss of their financial safety net. Studies are showing over and over again that people are

facing more loneliness as our third-spaces between home and work are disappearing from not only the

church but clubs and leagues, coffee shops that never reopened after the pandemic and replaced by

social medial and virtual spaces, even chatting with AI in lieu of connection with trusted others. We

have plenty of space in our barn for the plentiful harvest. If all of us can take the initiative to trust just a

little bit more deeply that whenever we walk out the doors of the church, home, work that we are being

sent out to prayerfully show the world that Jesus' Kingdom is here, then we too will come back

rejoicing at the wonderful works of God who heals and casts out demons of all sorts who have no place

in God's kingdom. In doing so we don't earn our names being written in heaven, but we are confirming

that our names our written in heaven. Jesus isn't keeping track of that number of souls we bring into the

Church because is the one who is doing the in-gathering. The angels who rejoice over the one who

repents shows that God isn't interested in numbers but is interested in hearts. Yours and mine. As our

collect prays, God teaches us to keep all the commandments by loving God and our neighbor, needing

the Holy Spirit's grace, that we may be devoted to God with our whole heart, and united to one another

with pure affection. When God has won over our hearts, and we have won over each others, we can

inspire hearts to receive the message of Jesus' kingdom of love. And we will, with God's help. Amen.