As many of you know, I spent two summers in college working at the Gettysburg battlefield.. One of my favorite people in Gettysburg is a guy named, ironically, Jim Getty. Now if you met Jim, you’d immediately know what he does. See, Jim looks just just like Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States.
In the 80s, Jim owned “A. Lincoln’s Place”, a little theater there on Baltimore Street where every day he performed a first-person, one-man show as Abraham Lincoln, complete with the long coat and stovepipe hat. I used to hang out there in the evenings posing as a Union Army guard at the door. I’ve probably seen him do his act a dozen times and believe that there’s probably no one in the world who knows more about Lincoln than Jim…it’s almost as if they’ve morphed into the same person. It was great fun to walk down the street with him and watch people do a double-take!
Jim is still often invited to travel around the country giving speeches as Lincoln. But Jim isn’t the only one who does this. I’ve since learned that there is actually an organization called “The Association of Lincoln Presenters” – a group of men and women who are dedicated to bringing Abraham and Mary Lincoln to life. There are currently about a 150 Abes across the country.
Can you imagine what this convention looks like? And you can probably guess what car is most prevalent in the parking lot at that event: Lincolns, of course.
People tend to want to emulate those whom they admire. Some will go so far as to dress and act like them, others will merely want to adopt their example in their own lives. In today’s text from Luke, I kind of get the sense that Jesus is sending out these “seventy others” to go out “to every town and place where he himself intended to go” as kind of an Association of Jesus Presenters—followers of Jesus who were to go out and emulate his lifestyle, words, and actions as a way of inviting others to become Jesus followers and presenters themselves. As Jim Getty makes his living presenting Lincoln, so are these disciples to spend their lives presenting Jesus.
We might associate “presenting Jesus” with evangelism and witness—two New Testament words that conjure up a whole lot of imagery.
When we say “evangelism,” a lot of people think of pairs of well-dressed missionaries knocking on doors and handing out tracts—a kind of door-to-door sales pitch for Jesus. “Witness” has the same kind of connotation, with people aggressively sharing their own testimony of faith, usually on an airplane. Now, it’s certainly true that there are people who come to Christ through these techniques and they shouldn’t be completely discounted. The negative connotation comes, however, because often evangelism has been done in the name of results rather through the building of relationships. Some Christians have been more aggressive in selling Jesus than they have been in representing him with their lives.
When we look at Jesus’ instructions to the seventy, however,
we see that what Jesus is sending them out to do isn’t merely to give a sales
pitch. The disciples are called to be Jesus Presenters – people who represent
or “re-present” Christ to the world, offering his message of grace and truth.
Their mission, like Jim and the other Lincoln presenters, is to present not
only their knowledge about Jesus, but to present Jesus himself through their
actions. Disciples are to be dead ringers for Jesus himself, so that wherever
they are – work, school, home – everyone will be reminded of Jesus.
So, how do Jesus Presenters represent Jesus to the world? Well, let’s look at the make-up and mannerisms of a good Jesus Presenter according to Luke 10:
1. They carry nothing. Jesus instructs the seventy to leave behind their purses, bags and sandals. They will be completely vulnerable and must rely on the hospitality of strangers. They leave their stuff and their status behind, much like Jesus did when he was sent on his mission to the world. Paul tells us in Philippians 2 that Jesus “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” (2:7), leaving behind all the privilege of being God in order to become human. Christine Pohl, who was one of my professors, says, “In his life on earth, Jesus experienced the vulnerability of the homeless infant, the child refugee, the adult with no place to lay his head, [and] the despised convict.”
How often do we shy away from being witnesses for Jesus because we’re afraid it will cost us our reputations? Our resources? So many Christians want to demonstrate that following Jesus will make people successful, maybe even rich (that’s the message of the prosperity gospel). Jesus presenters realize, however, that Jesus doesn’t care about what we have, only that we’re obedient as laborers sent out into the harvest and that that obedience may cost us something—maybe everything.
A Jesus Presenter knows that the first characteristic of Jesus he or she needs to adopt is humility—knowing that our witness isn’t about us and our image, but only about the Christ without whom we can do nothing. As Paul puts it in Romans 13:14, the only clothing we need to carry is that of Christ himself!
2. They urgently engage the mission. In the Old Testament, the “harvest” is often used as a metaphor for God’s coming judgment and the gathering in of God’s people in the last days. Jesus picks up that image here—that the time is short and that Jesus’ disciples must have a sense of urgency for the mission of bringing the life and message of God’s Kingdom to a world that desperately needs to hear it. So urgent is the mission that Jesus tells the seventy to “greet no one on the road.” You don’t have time for distraction or delay. Go!
You know, I think one of the things that has hindered the witness of the church is the fact that we have no sense of urgency about sharing the good news of Jesus and his kingdom. It’s not about the “end of the world” being nigh, but rather the coming of the kingdom sooner rather than later. Jesus is always saying in the Gospels that the kingdom is breaking in—it’s already here and yet it’s still to come. The more urgently we work, the more purposeful we are in our witness and work, the more we begin to see the kingdom emerge in our homes, communities, and workplaces. We’re not “waiting around for the end of the world,” we’re working for the world’s redemption under the leadership of Christ. Too many Christians are waiting around so that they can go to heaven when they die, rather than spending their lives helping to bring the life of heaven here, working for what we pray for in the Lord’s Prayer—God’s will to be done on earth as in heaven, present tense!
3. They build relationships. When the seventy Jesus Presenters come to town, they do, indeed, knock on doors but they do so in order to build relationships and not merely to offer information. The proclamation of “peace to this house,” which is an offer to begin a relationship based on mutual trust and hospitality. The way this gets expressed in the first century is around the table. The seventy are to “remain in the same house, eating and drinking” whatever they provide, whatever is set before them. They aren’t to jump around from place to place looking for a better deal, but instead they settle into a community, a relationship that enables them to begin the conversation about the good news of Jesus.
In other words, the Jesus Presenters do what Jesus himself did—sit at table with people, especially those who are strangers or outcasts. In the first century Middle Eastern culture, to eat with someone meant that you were bound to that person in mutual friendship, protection, and love. Jesus spent a lot of time sitting around tables with people and, because he did, they were able to listen to him and know that they mattered to him and to God. The giving and receiving of hospitality provides climate for people to get to know the image of God in each other.
I wonder how much our perception of evangelism would change if we primarily saw it as an opportunity for building friendships instead of being a sales pitch? We live in a culture where people don’t know their neighbors or anything about them. I look at my neighborhood and realize that, yes, I can wave to these people but I don’t know much about them. How can I represent Jesus to people who don’t really know me from Adam?
I was reading a great book recently titled Movements That Changed the World and one of the movements profiled was that of Saint Patrick. Most of us only know Patrick from the day celebrated in his honor with green beer and shamrocks. Actually, Patrick was one of the finest Jesus Presenters who ever lived. In Patrick’s day, the church’s evangelism model was to build a building in the middle of town, proclaim that every one was in the parish, and then expect people to show up in order to receive the ministry of the church.
Patrick, however, went the opposite direction. When he and his monks wanted to evangelize an Irish village, they settled nearby. They invited villagers to eat with them, listened to their problems, helped wherever they could. They became good neighbors first and then, after a long time of building relationships, they were then able to get a hearing for the gospel from the people who now knew them well enough to match their message with their lives.
I think one of the key tasks we need to invest in if we’re going to be Jesus Presenters is to make an intentional effort to gather at the table with people for the sole purpose of building community with them. What would it be like, for example, if all of us decided that we were going to invite our neighbors, particularly those we don’t know very well, to dinner or dessert, not as a way of bringing them in to give them the Jesus sales pitch, but as a way of beginning conversations that go beyond “What’s up?” I’m guessing the world would view Christians as less of a threat and more as people they’d like to know.
4. They healed the sick. Jesus tells the seventy to carry on his own work of healing the sick in mind, body and spirit. The Jesus Presenters enter the community not only to preach the gospel but live it out by meeting peoples’ needs.
So much evangelism has been about saving peoples’ souls, when Jesus demonstrates to us that the work of the kingdom is about saving the whole person. Jesus’ healings were a sign that God’s kingdom was breaking in. When disciples of Jesus demonstrate their own concern for the broken, sick, and hurting, we are as much proclaiming the gospel as we are when we preach a sermon.
John Wesley, the founder of our Methodist movement, wrote a lot of books and pamphlets, some of which I have shared with you. But did you know that his bestseller was a book called Primitive Physic? It was a book that offered medicinal cures for people using common remedies (his favorites were cold water and electricity). When the early Methodist movement came to a town, people soon realized that the Methodists cared as much for their bodies as their souls as they distributed medicine using Wesley’s manual and built hospitals for the poor. It was a graphic demonstration of that old adage—“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
We live in a world where people are hurting in a myriad of ways. We are called not just to share the message of the gospel, but also its promise of wholeness, healing, and resurrection. Jesus Presenters look for every opportunity to relieve suffering wherever they find it.
5. Lastly, they proclaim the message of the kingdom. After doing all these things, Jesus says, then the Presenters are to go and proclaim “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” That message will gain a hearing because the people have already seen it at work. The gospel of the kingdom isn’t just theology, it’s practice. The best evangelists are those who don’t merely talk about Jesus, but demonstrate his life, his character, and his work. In the Great Commission, Jesus instructed us to “go and make disciples.” That process only begins when we ourselves choose to be Jesus Presenters ourselves, teaching and living everything that Jesus commanded us.
So, how will you present Jesus in your home, your workplace, your school? You don’t need to put on a robe and sandals or grow a beard. People will associate you with Jesus not because you look like him, but because you speak and act like him. Tri-Lakes United Methodist Church has been called to be an association of Jesus Presenters. How will you join the group?
In Luke 10:17 we see the results of the mission of the seventy. The seventy returned with joy saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” Jesus responds by saying that he watched Satan fall like lightning from heaven. That’s not a reference to some prehistorical heavenly battle, but rather what was happening as a result of the mission of the kingdom carried out by these Jesus Presenters. The work of the kingdom changes everything and hastens the ultimate defeat of Satan and his weapons of evil, sin, and death. Lincoln did a lot of great things, but even he did not accomplish that!
The more we present Jesus to the world, the more like him it may become!
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