Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
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. He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road.
Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house.
Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’
“Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”
The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
I learned a new thing this week, thanks to Liv Larson Andrews, the pastor at Salem Lutheran Church, in Spokane, Washington. She wrote about how her yoga instructor has her yoga students literally shake themselves as part of their practice, which seems odd. Shake themselves. Like a full body shake. It seems odd because whenever I’ve done yoga and when I think about yoga, I think about slow, deliberate, strong and stretching, methodical sort of movements, not what I imagine a full-body shake might be like.
But the logic, the rationale, the explanation – one might say, the theology – of this shaking exercise, comes from the notion that mammals, in the wild, if they have survived an attack, often shake their bodies once they have regained their safety because, smarter people than me – including certain yoga instructors, apparently – believe this literal, physical, sometimes violent shaking completes the trauma cycle.
(I was going to show a video, but I didn’t want to scare the kids. Watching an animal escape an attack like I’m describing might be a little gross and scary for some. But have you ever seen footage of a giraffe, or a gazelle, a zebra, or a wildebeest survive and escape an attack by a lion? Can’t you see, or imagine, or remember how they very often, literally shake themselves, when it’s over? It’s something like a dog after a bath. You can Google it. It’s a thing.)
And there’s a name for it, even, “Therapeutic Tremoring,” because sometimes it looks like a seizure, too … a full-body tremor … like you’re as cold as you’ve ever been; chilled to the bone and unable to get warm again. Whatever the case, the thinking is it helps to release muscular tension, to burn excess adrenaline, and to calm an over-charged nervous system.
And it’s not just for animals. Maybe you’ve experienced it or maybe you’ve seen some people do it when they get, what I will scientifically call the “heebie jeebies,” right? … when we’ve been scared suddenly, or disgusted and grossed out by something … we feel that shiver up our spine or we do our own full-body shimmy to try to shake off or shake out whatever has disturbed us in the moment.
Anyway, while there is a ton of stuff we could wrestle with in this reading from Luke’s Gospel this morning – this long litany of marching orders from Jesus to his first faithful followers – I had already been wrestling with this bit where he tells them to wipe the dust from their feet, when I came across this stuff about shaking and trauma, “therapeutic tremoring,” and our natural inclination, if not need, for such behavior and practice in our lives – especially these days.
Now, I’m not sure Jesus would have described any of it this way, don’t get me wrong. But it resonates with me as a practical and holy way to consider what Jesus is getting at, nonetheless. See in other popular translations of this text, we’re told Jesus tells his followers not to “wipe,” like we just heard, but to “SHAKE” the dust from their feet, in protest of those who refuse welcome and receive them.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that these last few weeks, months, and years, really, have been an exercise in some measure of trauma for people on the planet. I’m not sure we can gauge if things are any worse for us than they have been for previous generations, or that we have it any harder or that we’ve been any more traumatized – as white, middle-class, people in the United States of America; any more traumatized than so many others have been in our own country or around the world these days or over the course of time, I mean.
But it’s all relative. And we aren’t used to what we’ve been dealing with lately. Because we are bombarded with however much bad news and anxiety and stress and trauma we can consume thanks to Social Media and by way of 24-Hour news; never mind the many and various ways we suffer and struggle in our own lives more up-close and personally. (Take a moment to close your eyes and think about the litany of things that give you pause or stress, anxiety or fear these days…)
That wasn’t hard to conjure, was it? That list is long and easy to write, for many of us, isn’t it? I’ve heard it said that our hearts and minds, our brains and nervous systems aren’t wired to manage all that the world continues to pile on these days, in the world as we know it. (Pandemics and politics; war in Ukraine, war in Yemen; gun violence and school shootings; we know too many things about too much ugliness in our lives and in this world.)
So I wonder if Jesus’ invitation to wipe off or shake off the dust of it all is nothing more and nothing less than an exercise in and invitation to faithful self-care.
Remember what he said: “whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you … go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you.’” It makes me think of that social media meme that’s become so popular recently, with all of the political and cultural division in our country … you know the one that says something like, “We don’t have to agree on everything in order to be friends.”
I understand the sentiment. I get the point. I believe the intent to be good. But I’ve never seen it posted by someone who feels like they are being oppressed, abused, taken advantage of, or traumatized. The wildebeest or the zebra or the gazelle who has been attacked – even though she escapes – wouldn’t post that meme on her Twitter feed after making it back to her herd.
So, I also understand that it can’t apply in every circumstance. If you’re a racist or a bigot or a hateful homophobe – who doesn’t want to learn why or how not to be those things – you may not be able to be friends with everyone. We can share communion. We can worship, learn and serve together – and I think that we should try. The Kingdom of God is as near to you as it is to me as it is to “them,” whoever “they” might be – even if I think they’re wrong about what that Kingdom looks like.
But if you – or the hearts and minds and lives of vulnerable people you care about are not safe in the presence of or by way of the policies, politics and theology someone else endorses – the truth is you can’t be “friends” in the fullest sense of that word. We can be kind and cordial with one another – to a point – but there came a time when even Jesus wiped the dust from his feet in protest of those who refused to receive him. And I believe we’re allowed to do that, too – for the sake of our own safety and sanity and well-being in this world.
And I hope this is a place where all of that happens – where we are kind and cordial and gracious, of course – but also where we can wipe the dust of this broken world from our feet and shake the trauma and anxiety, the suffering and struggle from our shoes and from our souls, for however long it will last, so that we can head back out there and try again.
I hope our confession, when we offer it, and our forgiveness, when we receive it, is a chance to shake off the dust of our own shame and sin – and that which we share as the Body of Christ in the world – so that we can live and move and breathe with an unburdened, liberated, clean slate once again.
I hope the water of baptism we’re invited to touch as often as we can get our hands on it – changes us all, every day with God’s love – and that it’s a chance to wipe away the fear and frustration, the sadness and the despair that threatens us so much of the time, these days.
And I hope that, somehow, we are a vision of the Kingdom that has come among us – the Kingdom that has come for us – the Kingdom that is meant to be shared by us – for the sake of the world, until we are all friends, bound together by a real, deep, love, care and concern for one another, and by the grace of God – that can’t be shaken – and that will redeem us all, in Jesus Christ the Lord.
Amen
