Brief synopsis of the readings: We begin with God speaking through the prophet Isaiah. God speaks of the love between him and his people and uses the imagery of a child nursing at his mother’s breast: “Oh, that you may suck fully of the milk of her comfort, that you may nurse with delight at her abundant breasts!” God will spread prosperity and comfort the people as a mother comforts her child. Finally, “the Lord’s power shall be known to his servants.” In Luke’s Gospel Jesus appoints seventy two to go out every town. They are go in pairs and are to carry almost no provisions. Once in a town they are to stay in households and proclaim peace to the occupants. But if they are not welcome, their peace will return to the disciples. If they are welcomed they are to accept their hospitality. But if the town does not receive them then the disciples should shake the town’s dust from their feet and move on.

Whenever someone tells me that the Bible is boring and dry I have a few passages to show them and today’s reading from Isaiah is one of them. Here God chooses imagery that is both sensual and familiar to nearly everyone. I’ve always been awed by the experience of new parents. They speak of how their world has changed overnight and they are nearly overwhelmed by the reality that they have a new human life who is wholly dependent on them. Their love and determination is equaled only by their fear in recognizing the immensity of their roles. And they’re right: this new life is completely dependent on them for food, hygiene, protection from the elements, etc. And from the newborn’s perspective, it all works perfectly. The newborn has no concept of what he needs or who is supposed to do what, only that his needs are being cared for. Even his awareness of his needs is beyond his understanding. And as the child grows and develops he becomes more and more aware of his needs and more and more aware of the identity of his parents. But that bond never goes away even when the needs move from food and protection to developing a moral compass. Even as adults a parent dies the child feels like an orphan.

I’m certain I’m not going to shock anyone by using this imagery in our relationship to God. At first this may seem to be a no brainer, but perhaps not. I spoke about the growth and development of the child, but sometimes the child’s understanding can go a little off track because the child may have an awareness of his own progress, but not the parent’s. The famous car racer Al Unser once said: “Dad taught me everything I know. Unfortunately, he didn’t teach me everything he knows.” In our history (Genesis chapter 11) the people attempted to build the Tower of Babel as a show of their own power. We see this as a problem because they thought their own abilities were limitless (in the end God introduced different languages to confuse the builders and make its construction impossible).

Modern technology can give us the same illusion. The late physics genius Stephen Hawking once argued that solving the “Great Unified Theory” will allow us to “know the mind of God.” In fairness to Dr. Hawking he didn’t believe in the personal God we believe in, just that we can achieve complete knowledge of our universes. But our acquisition of knowledge needs to be tempered by the reality that we’ll never know all that God knows and we’ll never be able to depend exclusively on ourselves.

And that reality continues in our Gospel today from Luke. When Jesus appointed the 72 to preach the word he gave them (from our perspective) terrible instructions. We understand why he instructed them to preach the word, but he told them he was sending them out “like lambs among wolves.” Without some protection that never goes well for the lambs. These disciples were supposed to carry no money or sandals; even modern boy scouts know to always be prepared. But they were going with protection as God promised to protect them.

As for us? Well, let’s face it: it’s a balance. God is not calling us to travel without maps (or GPS if you’re under 60 years old) and make no preparations. We’re not called to be a burden to people in the places we land. But amid the preparations we need to recognize that God is with us as we travel, and as we travel through life. There’s always much to fear but fear of God forgetting about us simply won’t happen.

As I write this our Congress is debating the federal budget and it’s hard sometimes to watch the process. When we look at how a person/couple/family/nation budgets its resources we can see what it values. Legislators are experiencing great pressure to pass a budget that will greatly restrict health care to the poor and basic science that could improve the quality of life for all. And they are told that unless they vote for this they will lose their jobs.

This should trouble all of us because these legislators (assuming they recognize the simple math here) are grasping on to job security and their fear of losing their job as well as kneeling to peer pressure. None of them have called me for advice and I’m not waiting by the phone but c’mon. I would tell them that their families are not going to miss meals or become homeless and if it’s the status they crave, something has gone wrong. If they lose their jobs because they did the right thing they will still go on. President Grover Cleveland lost his reelection bid in 1888 because of his opposition to tariffs, but ran and won again in 1892.

I’ve said this before but if we believe what we say we believe about discipleship we need to be willing to do the right thing and trust that God has our back. If we lack courage because we can think we can use fear to justify our actions we can’t. Or at least we shouldn’t. When God tells us he will care for us we should believe him.