5 July 98
It was a sunny mid-May noontime in Olympia, Washington. I was on the way to the drive-through mailbox at the post office on my lunch hour. There's a one-way curved driveway through the parking lot. I was about to turn left into the driveway when I noticed a very dapper gentleman approaching briskly along the sidewalk. He had, even on this unseasonably warm day, a suit jacket, a spiffy umbrella, and a bowler hat as part of his costume, and his small goatee was neatly trimmed. I waited to let him cross the driveway before I drove into the parking lot. Then I drove in and deposited my letters in the box.
Just as I got to the exit, he came to that place where the driveway crossed the sidewalk, and again I paused to let him pass. It was a pleasant moment of waiting, with a little breeze coming in through my rolled-down car window.
But instead of walking on by, he stopped near my car, gave a courtly bow, and said, "God told you to wait for me, didn't he?" Not expecting that as a conversational opener, I was silent for a moment, and he went on to introduce himself: "My name is John George Washington, Son of God. God bless you, my dear."
And then he strolled on, leaving me more than a bit bemused.
When I went back to my office, I told a co-worker about the encounter, and he said, "Oh, yeah, I know who he is. He's always around downtown, telling people he's the Son of God, claiming he controls the clouds and the sun and the traffic lights..."
Later, at home, I told my then-teenage son about the strange meeting, and with the instant decisiveness of those of his age, he said, "Looney Tunes!"
I wonder what the Aramaic equivalent of "Looney Tunes!" was... Although there weren't TV cartoons then, there were surely similar phrases of dismissal... And surely Jesus encountered them as he walked about...
Had I met and been blessed by the Son of God in that post office driveway? In a way, at least, yes. In any case, he was a son of God, as we are all God's sons and daughters, and for a moment he had jolted me out of the everyday -- and that question, what if he WAS?, had made me see the possibility of the presence of God in another human being in another way...
Jesus told the seventy to tell people who welcomed them, "The kingdom of God has come near to you." Even in cases when they were not welcomed, after they had shaken the dust of the town from their feet, they were still to tell the people, "Yet know this, the kingdom of God has come near."
Know this, the kingdom of God has come near.
The kingdom of God had come near. Because they had come near. Not Jesus, not the inner circle of the Twelve, but those seventy, the same number as the number of elders selected to help Moses, the same number as what was then thought to be the number of the nations of the world, traveling light, staying wherever they landed first, eating and drinking whatever was put before them, going in "cold" to proclaim the presence of the kingdom of God.
When they entered the house, Jesus told them, they were to say "Peace to this house!" Peace. Shalom. The fullness of the presence, the mercy, the love, the blessing of God, a peace given not as the world gives but precious in its own way. A peace that these laborers in the harvest brought with them. They were to carry no purse, no bag, no sandals, but they were to carry with them the peace of the kingdom. And it was not to be a personal hoard of the goodies of that kingdom, but peace, the fullness of shalom, to be shared freely with the strangers they would encounter. "And if anyone is there who shares in peace," Jesus said, "your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you." Peace.
Curing the sick, proclaiming the kingdom, sharing the peace of God, the seventy were sent out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Some would greet them in peace, and some would not. And Jesus told them, "Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me." Given authority over snakes and scorpions and all the power of the enemy, they were cautioned to keep their rejoicing based on the writing of their names in heaven, not on the authority they carried on earth.
They carried the peace. They carried the coming of the kingdom, in and with them. An awesome task and responsibility.
And we are called to the same labor, the same responsibility, the same joy. The same carrying of the peace and the kingdom of God. It is part of our calling to be the sons and daughters of God, and to offer God's peace and God's blessing to those we meet along the way.
Today we meet in the presence of a tent -- a good symbol for the journey of faith, and also for a "tent of meeting", a holy place, where we come together to worship, and which we will leave as carriers of God's love and peace and kingdom as we go back out into other holy places that are the highways and byways of our everyday lives.
But how everyday is it to meet a son or a daughter of God? And to know that that is who we are meeting? We are all that. What would happen to this congregation, to our individual lives, to the world we live in, if each of us traveled consciously in the journey as a son or daughter of God, and recognized those whom we meet along the way as also children of the living God? What if we saw in them, and offered them, the peace and the blessing of God?
This weekend we celebrate our independence as a nation. May we also celebrate our interdependence as children of God. When you turn to your neighbor at the peace today or downtown tomorrow, Know this: the kingdom of God has come near.
[Isaiah 66:10-16; Psalm 66:1-8; Galatians 6: 14-18; Luke 10:1-12, 16-20]
The Rev. Lois Hart
5 July 98