After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go (Luke 10:1)

When I was at university I stayed, as most students do, in rented accommodation on a year by year basis. You were allowed, generally, to keep your stuff there over the Christmas holiday but you had to take it home over the Summer. So I had this great big blue trunk and a kind of metal porter’s trolley. I remember the weight of the thing as I hauled it over the footbridge at Stirling station. The thing weighed a ton. Fortunately I didn’t discover until my last trip home that I was supposed to pay for that as well as for my own ticket.

I had, over the four years I was at Stirling, acquired a lot of stuff and it certainly made travelling a lot more difficult than it might be. These days when Sue and I go abroad we try to save money by not having luggage to put in the hold on aeroplanes; by travelling light. Not as light, though, as the seventy people Jesus sent out to prepare the way for them. No purse. No bag. No sandals. Just themselves and the clothes they stood up in, relying on the kindness of strangers. Israel had an ancient tradition of hospitality. If folk turned up needing shelter for the night you were supposed to provide it. That, by the way, was the real sin of Sodom in the Old Testament that as a city they sought to attack strangers rather than sheltering them.

So imagine a pair of these seventy arriving at a town. Seeing that they have nothing a family takes them in and, by the low light of an oil lamp, they talk over a table as they eat their meal. “Where have you come from? What has brought you to our town?” Then the pair tell their story - the story of a teacher who is coming with a message of God’s love for them, for their family, for all humanity. And as the pair talk more tothe family maybe those the family talk to their neighbours, passing on what these strangers told them.

These seventy are travelling light, with nothing more than words to pass on to those they meet in these towns and villages. But that can be enough. I’m a member of Lockerbie Drama Club and for the last play we used an online ticketing service for the first time. One of the advantages of this system is that it asks people how they heard about the production. Of those who answered, far and away the biggest response was ‘word of mouth’. It was people seeing their friends and saying “I was at the play at the Little Theatre last night and it was really good”. That was what was going on with these thirty-five pairs of people. They were saying, “Look, we’ve met this teacher, this miracle worker and we’ve got some really good news for you.”

That’s how the Gospel spread in its early years and, in fact, for a thousand years and more. We like to celebrate the great evangelists, starting with Paul, then the likes of St Columba and St Ninian, Saint Augustine of Canterbury. The truth is, wherever those evangelists went, word of Jesus had already arrived. It had been spread by word of mouth, by traders, slaves and travellers carrying the same simple message the seventy carried about Jesus and his teachings: that God loves them, loves their families, loves all humanity. Simple as that. They were travelling light.

Maybe we’ve forgotten that. Maybe the Church has forgotten that. For decades people have talked about Mission, about evangelising, about spreading the work of God. I’ve raised it many times in Kirk Session meetings and people shuffle their feet and look at the floor and I wonder, do people just think that this is something they can’t do. That it’s beyond their skills. That it requires training they don’t have. That it’s the job of spiritual superheroes to spread the Gospel - people like Paul, Ninian, Columba and Augustine. People whose names have rung down the centuries.

But here’s the thing. Do you know some people whose names haven’t rung down the centuries? The first missionaries; the first evangelists; the seventy people that Jesus sent out to prepare the way for him. As far as we know they could have been anyone. They could have been people like me. They could have been people like you. They had no training, no remarkable gifts of oratory as far as we know, just a very simple message for anyone willing to listen: that God loved them, loved their families, loved all humanity. They were travelling light.

Maybe we feel diffident, sometimes, about talking about our faith is that we feel we should be expert. in some way. That we should have a thorough grasp of theology; of theodicy, eschatology, soteriology and no I’m not just making these up. That we should be able any question that someone might throw at us about the doctrines and teachings of the Church. All of these things are interesting. Some of them are things that I have to think about when I’m writing a sermon. But I wonder, sometimes, when it comes to Mission that they just weigh us down; whether they are like my trunk and we feel we have to carry everything the scriptures have to tell us and everything that Church says about everything with us, when really we should be travelling light with a very, very simple message.

The message that God came into this world in the life of a human being to show that he loves us so much that he will always be beside us. That In that life he knew all the temptations we all experience that lead us to sin and suffered the consequences of human sin in the form of a brutal and unjust death. That through that death we are forgiven all the rotten things we do in our lives and no, I’m not sure why or how either. I have what I think and that’s all I need. And that through the Resurrection of Christ we have an assured hope of eternal life.

Maybe even that is too heavy a trunk. Maybe all we need is this to communicate the good news of Christ to someone else: that God loves them, loves their families, loves all humanity. Maybe that’s all it takes to get people thinking. Alongside that, though, maybe we need to show them what that looks like. Are we there beside them in times of hardship and temptation as God was with humanity in Christ? Do we forgive those who hurt us or let us down as God forgives us in Christ? Do we care for the poor and hungry, the outcast and the refugee, the grieving and the dying as God cares for all his children.

Words of kindness and support. Acts of generosity and charity. Smiles of forgiveness and welcome. Voices given to the silenced and the scared. In all these things we are the seventy sent out by Jesus. We are his heralds to hearts that don’t yet know him. We are witnesses to the simplest idea in all of religious thought: there is a God and he loves you and all his children. I can do that. You can do that. We can all do that. We can all do Mission if we travel light.

Lord may we share your love, the love you have for us, with all your children in word and in deed. In doing so may we speak aloud the Gospel of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ in word and action

Preached at Dalton