I wonder how many of you have joined the nostalgia movie kick this summer. It seems that all of the blockbusters for the last month or so have been based on the past we want to re-capture. The biggest appears to be “Batman.” I don’t know about you, but I practically grew up with the “caped crusader,” although at the time I didn’t realize he had so many psychological hang-ups. However, my real favorite was Captain Marvel. Wouldn’t it be great if an adolescent boy could really say a magic word and turn into a muscle-beach hunk in a red suit? How many of you remember that secret word? That’s right: SHAZAM.
Besides this summer’s Batman nostalgia, we also have a movie for the younger folks whose memory goes back only as far as “Ghost-Busters“. For the in-between crowd, there’s the latest “Indiana Jones” epic. However, if you’re not into sequels for your nostalgia, you can also see “The Dead Poet Society,” or the real nostalgia-grabber: “Field of Dreams.”
“Field of Dreams” may be the best of the nostalgia movies for this season. It embodies so many of the major elements of our American mythology, especially all those wonderful memories about summertime when the living was easy.
One of the images in today’s gospel reading focuses on a summertime image. If you close your eyes, can’t you just see those fields ready for the harvest. For some of you, it might be corn fields like those you saw in “Field of Dreams.” Perhaps it might just be a field of tall grass ready to be cut and carried to the hayloft in the barn in an old wood-bottomed truck that looked nothing like the pick-ups driven by our city farmers here in Houston.
It would be very tempting to focus on scenes like this for today’s reflection. To meditate on swimming holes and rope swings. After all, did we not hear in today’s gospel how the seventy-two disciples were to bring “peace” to the households they visited when Jesus sent them out? Aren’t these visions of “peace” and comfort worth thinking about? I fully admit that they are. Nevertheless, the focus of today’s reflection is on our bringing that peace and comfort to others rather than upon our receiving it.
As much as we might want to forget it, there is another summertime nostalgic story. Do you recall the fable of the ant and the grasshopper? How the grasshopper fiddled and played all summer while the industrious ant worked at gathering her supplies for the winter and was able to survive while the poor grasshopper suffered in the cold. In our gospel story we are once more reminded how we need to prepare the way for Christ. Let’s take a closer look at what we heard in today’s gospel reading.
First of all, there is the matter of the seventy-two followers Jesus sent out to the towns where he planned to go. Most of the time we think about only the Twelve Apostles; how Jesus sent them out on special missions. We sort of view all of his other followers as part of the crowd. A crowd who listened to him, who were perhaps healed or changed by his presence but weren’t really expected to do anything else. Yet in today’s reading we are told something different. Jesus not only sent out twelve special messengers, twelve men we call apostles, since that is what the word “apostles” means. (It means messengers, or ambassadors, those who are sent out), Jesus sent out not only twelve apostles but six times as many men and women to preach that the Reign of God is near.
What does that mean for us? I believe it means we can’t hide behind the excuse that you have to be someone special, one of the select Twelve, in order to spread the message of Christ. I believe that while bishops may view themselves as the heirs of the Apostles, all Christians are heirs of the Seventy-two whom Jesus sent out to the towns ahead of his coming to them personally.
And what instructions did he give to those seventy-two men and women? First of all, he reminded them, and he reminds us, you don’t have to be completely prepared to do God’s work, to spread the Good News of the kingdom. The Seventy-two did not need to carry a walking stick or a traveling bag. All they needed was what they had. We, too, do not need extra equipment in order to speak about the Christ. What we have and who we are right now are all he expects of us. What else did he tell them?
At first, it might sound puzzling to hear him say that they should not greet anyone along the way. That sounds down-right unfriendly and not like Jesus at all. Perhaps, what he was really saying is something that we all need to hear: don’t procrastinate. Don’t put off getting to where you are needed. Do what must really be done rather than what you might think is more pleasant to do. How many times have we said something like: “I’ll start my diet tomorrow?” Or when it comes to our spiritual welfare, something like: “I can start praying tomorrow, today’s is almost over and there isn’t any time left today.”
Besides telling the seventy-two disciples to use what they had and not to delay in doing what must be done, Jesus also instructed them on what they had to do in order to prepare the way for his coming. They were to bring to each place, the Peace of Christ; they were supposed to stay where they were needed and not go off from place to place looking for new adventures; and finally, they were to cure the sick who came to them.
These may be thought to be difficult tasks for the Seventy-two and for us to accomplish. How do we bring peace? Why is it necessary to stay in one place? How do I cure the illness of others? Perhaps it might help to take a look at another image we heard about in today’s readings: the major image we saw in the First Reading from Isaiah.
In this passage, Isaiah speaks of Jerusalem and of God in terms of a nursing mother. This is a difficult image for us. In our modern, American culture, we can imagine God as a father and pray to a masculine God as Jesus taught us when he gave us the prayer to “Abba”. I admit that it is not often that I think of God as a mother who nurses me.
Ours is a “Simulac” culture. We seldom think of breast-fed babies. We rarely remember the classical art depicting a nursing Madonna. But think for a moment of that image of the peace and comfort of those classic portraits. Imagine for a moment the absolute stillness of the mother and child. Agitation and nursing are incompatible. There is an absolute demand for stillness, for peace, for comfort, for inner healing during such moments. It is with this in mind that Isaiah can quote God as saying: “Oh, that you may suck fully of the milk of her comfort, that you may delight at her abundant breasts! … as nurslings, you shall be carried in her arms, and fondled in her lap; as a mother comforts her son, so will I comfort you.”
Indeed, God is our father and our mother. God is our parent who gives us peace. God is also the one who sends us forth in the words of his Son to bring peace to others, to heal the illness of others.
● We are to heal broken hearts, broken bodies and broken spirits.
● We are to drive out the demons of despair, of hatred, of anger and of strife.
● We are to comfort those who are imprisoned by guilt and by loneliness.
● We are to nourish those who are hungry in body and in soul.
● We are to clothe those who are naked in body and uncovered in their loss of dignity.
We are the laborers who are sent into the fields. We are not sent into these fields alone; each one by himself or herself. Instead, we are sent out in pairs, we are sent out in community to harvest the fields. And when those seventy-two laborers returned to Jesus to tell him about the wonders they had accomplished in his name, he reminded them of one last important matter. He reminded them that they should not take pride in what they had accomplished; they should not be proud that they expelled demons and evil spirits, but rather rejoice that, because of him, they were part of that kingdom which they proclaimed.
A few minutes ago, I said that the movie, “Field of Dreams” is a major example of a movie focused on nostalgia, a sentimental return to the past. But it is also a movie which tells what a person must do when called by an unseen voice. It tells of how a person must continue to work when others believe that the work is unproductive or even crazy. Two thousand years ago, Jesus sent seventy-two people out before him to tell others that the Kingdom of God is near. I wonder if he said something like this to them, and now, to us: “If you build it, he will come.”
Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time; July 9, 1989
Is 66:10-14; Gal 6:14-18; Lk 10:1-12, 17-20