July 7, 2025
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) on July 6, 2025 at Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Chicago, IL. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Isaiah 66:10-14; Psalm 66; Galatians 6:14-18; and Luke 10:1-12, 17-20.
Today, we begin journeying with Jesus and the disciples from Galilee to Jerusalem, as recounted in the Gospel of Luke. It’s a 70-mile journey that could be accomplished in 4 days of brisk walking, but it’s going to take us 10 chapters and most Sundays until the beginning of November. Luke clearly intends for us to consider what it means to be a follower of Jesus — both physically and spiritually.
Today, Jesus sends his disciples to the villages he plans to visit, including Samaritan towns close to where Jesus himself was recently rejected. If Jesus had asked us to be on his advance team, I imagine that most of us would have felt a combination of excitement in proclaiming the gospel, worry that we didn’t know enough, and fear that we, too, would be rejected. But as we’ll hear, the disciples were more successful than they could have possibly imagined.
Today, we face the seemingly contradictory idea that we gain confidence by embracing our vulnerability. Paul is unafraid, because he bears the marks of Christ crucified. Through the words of Isaiah, God calls us to remain as children. Jesus tells the disciples that he is sending them like lambs among wolves.
When we gather for Eucharist, we are reminded that we are chosen, blessed, broken, and filled with gifts to share. Let us give thanks for God’s gift of mercy!
Some of the most ancient copies of Luke’s gospel say that Jesus commissioned 70 disciples. Other ancient manuscripts say 72. Either way, I think Luke is referring to an older Scripture from – where else? – the Book of Numbers. In that book, God instructs Moses to assemble 70 elders from the tribes of Israel. God says, “Bring them to the tent of meeting…. I will… take some of the spirit that is on you and will confer it on them.” A few verses later, after God confers Moses’ spirit on the 70 assembled elders, we learn of 2 others who were not present in the tent but also received a share of Moses’ spirit. That makes a total of 72 elders.
So, no matter whether Luke intended to use the number 70 or 72, there are some staggering implications from him connecting the story in his gospel to the one in the Book of Numbers. The elders in Numbers had already shared a lot of formative experiences with Moses: the horrors of the Egyptian enslavement, the 10 plagues, and the escape through the Red Sea. They had witnessed – from afar – Moses receiving the Law on Mt. Sinai. So they had a pretty good idea what it meant to share in Moses’ spirit. But Jesus’ companions? They had only heard him teach and seen him perform miracles a few times. Jesus was sending them out before the Transfiguration, the Passion, or the Resurrection had occurred. What did these disciples know about bringing peace, proclaiming the gospel, curing the sick, and casting out demons?
Luke tells us that approximately 120 people arrived with Jesus in Jerusalem (Acts 1:15). Some people joined the group as they traveled south from Galilee (e.g., Mark 10:52). Therefore, it seems that the main qualification to being among the 70 or 72 commissioned by Jesus was simply… being there. Apparently, the bar for being qualified enough to be a follower of Jesus is much lower than we expect. As it has been said: It’s not so much that Jesus calls the qualified, as much as Jesus qualifies those that he calls.
[Pause.] This past year, my first as the pastor of Old St. Mary’s, has been one of the best of my life. Together, we in this community have shared a lot of successes in ministry. I have prayerfully concluded that those successes couldn’t be due just to hard work and dumb luck. Just like the disciples on the road from Galilee to Jerusalem, we are on this road together. We’ve been blessed these past 12 months with an odd combination of being open to the Holy Spirit, asking the right questions, and finding the people with the God-given wisdom and the hard-earned experience we need. Again: It’s not so much that Jesus calls the qualified, as much as Jesus qualifies those that he calls.
You’ve probably noticed a lot of little ways that we’ve tried to call more people forward in this past year. We’re being more transparent in our communications. We’re making tweaks to better reflect our cultural diversity. We’re developing our advisory boards. At least a dozen people have written reflections in the bulletin, half of them women. More school families are attending Sunday Mass. We’ve become more explicit in welcoming people who don’t look or think exactly like those of us already here.
But we have so much more to do to become the evangelizing parish that Jesus Christ invites us to be. In the next 12 months, we will need more people to volunteer for a wide variety of ministries, and we on the staff need to do a better job of asking for help. It’s time for us to come up with better systems, to add depth to our rosters, and to find ways to reduce the all-too-frequent panicking we do in the 20 minutes before an event begins here, only to see dozens of people who would have been willing to volunteer if we had known that they would be coming, and they had known that we specifically needed their help that day. Our dreams of strengthening, deepening, and multiplying our ministries also require us on the staff to let go of control and to empower some of our volunteers to take the lead with only minimal supervision.
Stepping out in faith in all these ways can feel scary. But our readings today make it clear that we must be willing to be vulnerable, willing to admit our weaknesses, willing to fail. God will provide us with unimaginable gifts for the journey… but we have to start on the journey before the gifts will become apparent. As Lauren Huelster reminds me all the time when I feel overwhelmed with everything on my plate: it’s often important to start on a job, even if we don’t yet know how to complete it. If we wait until we’re absolutely sure that we have all the skills, we’ll never get started. 2,000 years later, most of us would not feel qualified to be sent out as Jesus’ advance team… but all of us know more about the gospel than any of those 70 or 72 volunteers that Jesus commissioned. And of all the places that we go in a week, I hope that Old St. Mary’s is the place that feels safest to experiment with being vulnerable, admitting our weaknesses, and failing.
We must be humble enough to acknowledge that we can’t do it alone… which paradoxically gives us the confidence that the Holy Spirit will provide what we need. Thankfully, we each have enough afflictions, foolishness, and weaknesses to confidently proclaim the gospel. Remember, the disciples returned from their missions rejoicing, amazed to find that the Spirit had given them the ability to bring peace, proclaim the gospel, cure the sick, and drive out demons. And maybe – just maybe – the demon that holds us back is the one that tells us that we shouldn’t do anything unless we can do it perfectly.
Friends, together, in our blessed brokenness, let us proclaim the reign of God!