In today’s Gospel, we meet Jesus as he is commissioning. He gathers seventy-two disciples to send them out, two by two, with no purse, no sandals, no security. Just peace on their lips and healing in their hands.
He sends out ordinary folks, not just the twelve apostles. They are not scholars, nor clergy, nor influencers. They are simply willing.
And that’s the first surprise of this passage: the Kingdom of God does not arrive with fanfare or force, but on foot, in pairs, with empty hands and open hearts. This is the first surprise of this passage: the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaims does not arrive with fanfare or force, but through open hearts.
It is worth noting that Jesus doesn’t send them to the centers of power. He doesn’t give them a multi-step church growth strategy. He doesn’t send them with a detailed theology. He sends them as they are, to people and places they do not yet know. They are to announce a truth that still sounds radical to our ears: “The kingdom of God has come near.”
Reading those words aloud today, it feels like a tuning fork is striking my soul. It’s not simply a story about mission or conversion so much as a deep spiritual transmission. It’s not just doing something for God, but about becoming someone through God. This is a deeper call we can hear in our lives and our world right now.
The mission Jesus gives them sounds straightforward: go, take nothing extra, rely on the hospitality of others, proclaim peace, heal, and say “The kingdom of God has come near.” Behind the simplicity is a radical invitation, not as an effort to undertake, but to presence. He sends them to be vulnerable, “like lambs among wolves.” No backup plan, no extra sandals, no purse.
Why? Because their power wasn’t in their preparation, but rather in their resonance. Their capacity to be attuned to the peace of Christ, to walk in trust, and to carry with them not just a message but a field, a spiritual coherence that opened up healing and harmony in whatever house they entered.
Like us, they were merely doers in the world, rushing to fix, speak, or act louder than the fears they harbored within. We, like them, are spiritual beings that echo the vibrations of the Sacred. Our presence alone can shift atmospheres. What Jesus modeled for everyone was not some mystical escapism. Jesus embodied a new incarnation of the spirit.
Too often, especially in chaotic times, we believe our greatest contribution is our time and energy. We feel we must work hard. We must organize more. Our advocacy needs to be louder. Is Jesus saying something else in this passage?
“Do not move from house to house,” he says here, “Let your peace rest upon that house.” “Rejoice, not that the spirits submit to you, but that your names are written in heaven.”
What if, instead of frantically searching for change, we’re being asked to bring coherence? To stabilize the space around us not by control, but by presence?
This is the deeper contribution these verses speak of. Not what we do for the world, but how to show up in it. Not with strategies, but with our frequency. The field we carry. The tone of grace, calm, and clarity that we can embody when everything else feels jagged and anxious.
The seventy-two were not effective because they had a better plan than the towns they entered. They were effective because they carried peace. That peace either settled into the hearts of others or returned to them undisturbed.
Teilhard de Chardin once said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” If that is true, then our deepest work is not only to act for the kingdom of God, but to embody it.
Can we feel what’s here without rushing to fix it?
Can we listen before speaking?
Can we bring presence, rather than pressure?
This is the meaning of Jesus’ final words in this passage: “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.”
Not because the disciples shouted the devil down. But because the kingdom of
fear, separation, and domination collapses every time a soul chooses
love over control, peace over panic, and being over performing.
We are being sent, not just to speak of the kingdom, but to be fields of resonance. We are the waveform, the form made luminous. Spiritual coherence is not just an option we can choose; it’s our power. It is what heals, what holds, and what changes things.
So when the world gets loud, let's resist the urge to get louder. When our world shakes, let's not react by building levels of scaffolding to support it. We can become the still point. Let's not act on behalf of Life. Let's act as Life.
When the seventy-two returned with joy, Jesus didn’t congratulate them for what they did. He rejoiced because they had discovered who they were.
Fields of peace.
Conduits of healing.
Witnesses of the Sacred who lived in harmony and became the agents to embody it.
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