Luke 10.1-11, 16-20

+ This past week, as you may have heard, Jimmy Swaggart died.

Swaggart, for those of you who don’t know, was one of those notorioustelevangelists from the 1980s who spewed some pretty terrible things, and thenhad a very public fall from grace.

If you ever doubted my “the chickens always come home to roost”analogy, look no further than Jimmy Swaggart.

Personally, however, my father was a huge fan of Swaggart.

Swaggart spoke for men (and probably some women too) of myfather’s generation.

He was macho.

He was tough.

He could sing a kind of countrified Gospel music.

He could be funny.

And, before his scandal toppled him, he was knew how to use hiswinning personality to rake in a LOT of money.

This is nothing new in the church, after all.

Church history is filled with people like Swaggart—bigger thanlife personalities who made it all about them.

I have known too many church leaders who have  made it clear to me that it was because ofthem—because their winning personality, or their knowledge of church growth, ortheir years of expertise—that a particular parish or diocese flourished.

It’s an unfortunate trap leaders in the Church fall into whenthey believe that a congregation’s success depends on them as individuals andtheir own abilities of ministry—and, mind you, I am not just talking aboutpriests here. Lay leaders in the Church have fallen into this trap as well. Ihave known some of those lay leaders as well, trust me.  

Maybe to some extent it’s true.

Maybe some people do have the personality and the winningcombination in themselves to do it.  

But for those who may have that kind of natural personality, Istill have to admit: it all  makesme wary.

It’s just too slippery of a slope.

We are dealing with similar personalities in today’s Gospel.

In our Gospel reading for today, those seventy that Jesus choseand sent out come back amazed by the gift of blessing God had granted to themand their personalities.

They exclaim, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!”

In and of its self, that’s certainly not a bad thing to say.

It’s a simple expression of amazement.   

But Jesus—in that way that Jesus does—puts them very quickly intheir place.  

He tells them, “do not rejoice in these gifts, but rejoicerather that your names are written in heaven.”

Or to be more blunt, he is saying rejoice not in yourselves andthe things you can do with God’s help, but rejoice rather in God.

The burden of bringing about the Kingdom of God shouldn’t besolely the individual responsibly of any oneof us.  

Even Jesus made that clear for himself.

Just imagine that stress in having to bring that about.  

Bringing the Kingdom of God into our midst is the responsibilityof all of us together.  

It is the responsibility of those who have the personality tobring people on board and it is the responsibility of those of us who do nothave that winning personality.

For those of us who do not have that kind of personality, it is ourresponsibility to bring the Kingdom about in our own ways.

We do so simply by living out our Christian commitment.

As baptized followers of Jesus, we bring the Kingdom into ourmidst simply:

By Love.

We do it by loving God and loving each other as God loves us inwhatever ways we can in our lives.

 Bringing the Kingdom of God about in our midst involves more than justpreaching from a pulpit or attending church on Sunday.

Spreading the Kingdom of God is more than just preaching onstreet corners or knocking on the doors. 

It means living it out in our actions as well.

It means living out our faith in our every day life.

It means loving God and each other as completely and fully as wecan.

But it does not mean loving ourselves to the exclusion ofeverything else.

It means using whatever gifts we have received from God to bringthe Kingdom a bit closer.  

These gifts—of our personality, of our vision of the worldaround us, of our convictions and beliefs on certain issues—are what we canuse.

It means not letting our personalities—no matter how magneticand appealing they might be—to get in the way of following Jesus.

Our eyes need to be on God.

We can’t be doing that when we’re busy preening in the mirror,praising ourselves for all God does to us and through us.   

The Church does not exist for own our personal use.  

I, for example, am not your free therapist.

And the Church is not you group therapy.

If we think the Church is there so we can get some nice littlepat on the back for all  the goodwe’re doing, or as an easy way to get us into heaven when we diem I hate to tellyou but we’re in the wrong place.

And we’re doing good for the wrong intention.

The Church is ideally the conduit through which the Kingdom ofGod comes into our midst.

And it will come into our midst, with or without me asindividual.

But it will come into our midst through us.

All of us.

Together.  

The Church is our way of coming alongside Jesus in his ministryto the world.

In a very real sense, the Church is our way to be the hands, thefeet, the voice, the compassion, the love of God to this world and to eachother.

But it’s all of us.

Not just me.

Not just you as an individual.

It’s all of us.

Together.

Working together.

Loving together.

Serving together.

And giving God the ultimate credit again and again.

Hopefully, in doing that, we do receive some consolationourselves.  

Hopefully in doing that, we in turn receive the compassion andlove of God in our own lives as well.

But if we are here purely for our own well-being and not for thewell-being of others, than it is does become only about us and not about God.  

And in those moments, we are sounding very much like those 70who come back to Jesus exclaiming, “look at what we have done!”

The message of today’s Gospel is that it must always be about God.

It must always be about helping that Kingdom of God breakthrough into this selfish world of huge egos. It means realizing that when weare not doing it for God, we have lost track of what we’re doing. We have lostsight of who we are following.

So, let us—together—be the hands, the feet, the voice, thecompassion and the love of God in the world around us. Like those 70, let us beamazed at what we can do in Jesus’ name.

But more importantly let us rejoice!

Rejoice!

Rejoice this morning!

Rejoice in the fact that your name, that my name—that our namesare written at this moment in heaven.

Amen.