Lectionary for July 6, 2025
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Isaiah 66:10-14; Psalm 66:1-9;
Galatians 6:7-16; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
I released a book earlier this year with Fortress Press about trauma and healing in Genesis. If you study trauma at all, two devastating facts repeatedly emerge from all the research: 1) trauma shatters mental and emotional health and builds healthy selves in their place, and 2) trauma has intergenerational impacts, both epigenetic (how the environment influences genes) and psychological. Children of traumatized parents are impacted even if they never experience the trauma firsthand. And, God forbid, when children do experience trauma—such as the current conflicts in the world that we pray against—it will likely affect them their whole lives, unless and until they receive serious treatment and healing, and often not even then.
God’s words in this week’s lectionary passages take seriously the intergenerational impact of trauma, especially on children, and speak of divine healing.
First, in the Gospel account, Jesus sent around 70 apostles out in front of him to every town where he would travel. These weren’t random journeys but carefully planned and organized missions to specific areas. The apostles were in a hurry—they were not to speak to anyone they encountered on the road but go directly to the places where they had been sent. They had two jobs: heal the sick and announce the kingdom of God.
To fulfill their missions, the traveling apostles needed a home base in each of the towns where they had been sent. They were to go to a home and bless it with peace. If the peace was not received (the lectionary leaves this part out), the disciples were to announce that it would be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town when judgment came. Why these examples? Because the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were punished for their abuse of the poor and foreigners (Ezekiel 16:49-50; Jude 1:7).
Jesus sent his followers out without purses or supplies. When they arrived in these towns, they were literally poor strangers and in need of hospitality. How to receive poor foreigners is an issue that comes up repeatedly in human history. Jesus is explicit on how those who refuse to welcome all guests will be treated.
God urgently desires that all people—all people—will be children of peace.
Jesus also gave a positive example of welcome for his apostles. He told those whom he sent that they would sometimes be received by a child of peace (Luke 10:6). Some folks in the towns that Jesus planned to attend were “raised right,” so to say, in a culture of welcome and peace. In these houses, Jesus’ apostles would receive welcome and hospitality that would be a foundation for their healing and evangelical missions.
How are we, as congregations and as a denomination, raising up children of peace, who know what it means to welcome everyone into our towns, homes and, yes, even churches, simply because they are human and showed up?
Turning to the first reading, I love the passage from Isaiah, because it takes suffering so seriously and deploys a beautiful feminine metaphor. Speaking to returned, traumatized, exiled Jews, the prophet describes the New Jerusalem as a breastfeeding mother, who nurses, plays with and carries the returnees (66:10-12). Imagine the soothing effect of nursing, embracing and playing on a traumatized infant! The physical contact between mother and child, and the oxytocin released in both during nursing, has a profound impact on the emotional well-being of both mom and baby.
God says this is exactly the kind of love and care for a traumatized child that will be provided for God’s people. God knows the evil and dehumanizing effect war and displacement has on humans—and what it takes to heal from that kind of trauma.
God urgently desires that all people—all people—will be children of peace. Children of peace will both receive good news from poor foreigners when they bring it and will also wisely resist retraumatization. You can’t tell someone that the injury from which they were healed is not a big deal when it’s inflicted on someone else!
So, what are we doing to help raise children of peace and heal children of trauma? I would suggest two movements. First, demonstrate for positive peace (and not just a temporary cessation of armed conflict) across the world. We must commit to be children of peace and welcome the foreigners who come to us, especially those without their own resources. We can’t only focus on other places in the world when our own neighbors are torn from their families and deported.
Second, following the recommendations of the Barna and Fuller report for the ELCA, we must “cultivate congregations that are warmer, more inviting and more invitational.” We must welcome all in Christ’s name, even if—especially if—their descriptions and experiences of the kingdom of God are different from ours. That is, after all, what children of peace do!
