3rd Sunday after Trinity St Andrew’s 2025
Today we celebrated the 3rd Sunday after Trinity accompanied by Alison.
Next Sunday 13th July 10am Sung Eucharist we welcome Bishop Nick, our new Bishop, to preside and preach. Please all support if you can.
This Week
Tuesday 10am – Prayer Group in the Garden Room
Thursday 10am – Said Holy Communion followed by coffee in Friendship House.
Readings for next Sunday – 4th Sunday after Trinity – Deuteronomy 30:9-14 Colossians 1:1-14 Luke 10:25-37
Today’s readings – Isaiah 66:10-14, Gal 6:7-16, Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
It’s a while now since we have had a Jehovah witness on our doorstep. In fact, we don’t see many door-to-door salespeople anymore, probably because often people aren’t always at home during the day and in the evening most people are wary of strangers at the door. Even Christian Aid have stopped doing house collections in this area and during the election campaign last year we had no prospective candidate canvassing at the door.
Plus, there has always been something slightly creepy about someone selling religion on the doorstep…rightly or wrongly it’s never been part of the Anglican tradition.
We live in a very different world to the one described in the gospel this morning as Jesus appointed seventy missionaries and told them to go out two-by-two into the towns and villages from house to house – to heal the sick and to tell everyone who would listen that the Kingdom of God is near.
Last weekend the church celebrated the feast of St Peter and St Paul. We think of Peter – how Jesus trusted him to be the rock on which to build the church and Paul who spread the good news of the gospel worldwide to many different places and people. On Thursday it was the feast of St Thomas. The church calls this period in the church’s calendar Petertide.
It is a time when we think of ministry in our present age and our own callings to serve God and to proclaim his word. Petertide is traditionally a time for ordinations. Several candidates were last weekend ordained priest or deacon in cathedrals throughout the country. Much prayer and advice would have been given to them as they were sent out into their parishes with their charge to serve God and his people.
In the gospel today Jesus is also sending out his candidates
“Go your way; behold, I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, and no sandals; and salute no one on the road” (Luke 10:3ff).
One can’t imagine the same words were ushered to our present day recruits but the advice given to the seventy evangelists by our Lord belongs to a different culture and a different age.
However, the challenges of ministry are not so different. Christian ministry can today also receive a hostile reception or more likely for us these days a blank stare. Certainly, there was open hostility in the time of Jesus. All four gospel writers wide about this. Both Mathew and Mark contain similar teaching to Luke. St. John records how Jesus prayed for his disciples before his own arrest.
“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.’ John 15:18
Even today there are some people who think the Church and all its supporters are an irrelevance at best and positively harmful at worst.
But what about the other part of the original advice to the seventy disciples, the command to “carry no purse, no bag, no sandals” Jesus appears to be encouraging people to go out unprepared and ill-equipped. What a contrast again with those so recently ordained. We presume that they have been well trained, provided with everything they need to fulfil the task assigned to them.
So why did Jesus advocate a kind of poverty amongst those seventy sent out by him? As we know it’s often easier to travel light, and so Jesus’ disciples, the less they had to carry the more energy they could put into the task in hand, and Jesus wants them to be purposeful on this journey, not necessarily to ignore people but to get a move on.
“The kingdom of God has come near to you” he says to them. There’s a sense of urgency here, no time to waste on chatter and gossip.
But also, by having nothing it meant that they had to ask others to meet their needs. Just like Jesus, they had to ask for water when they were thirsty, for clothing when they were cold, for food when they were hungry. In that way they evoked in others that very spirit of love and hospitality of which they were advocates. By having nothing the disciples were dependent on others which brought them into direct contact with them which in turn enabled them to spread the gospel.
Jesus also encouraged them to work in pairs. It is important to work together in ministry, not only does it encourage one another but it is also affirming to those being ministered to.
Today we are the present day disciples, all called in various ways to ministry. But the one thing we can all do is to pray. We need to pray for a revival, a revival of the Christian faith, and there are signs that this maybe happening, so we need to continue to pray. We need to ask the Holy Spirit to work through us, to encourage us in our faith and those around us as it did with those early disciples we heard about this morning.