Empty Hands, Full Hearts

We all yearn for peace—no matter when you were born, what you’ve experienced, or where you’ve lived.

But peace has both started and ended wars—what differs is our interpretation of it: how we achieve peace, who gets to enjoy it, and who suffers because of it. This was the Pax Romana in Jesus’ time—peace that was twisted by an oppressive empire that denied people their dignity and right to life. And we’ve seen this subversion of peace repeat since—Hitler claiming peace once Jews were erased, and now the government that represents these same persecuted people is promising the same kind of peace once Palestinians are erased.

But we don’t need to look abroad to see how peace is used as a pawn to uphold power and suppress people. Here in Australia, peace can often be wielded to placate the population while privileging the few. No matter which government we vote for, there’s no way around it: this unpeace shows up in our black and white data. Indigenous Australians make up 3.8% of the population but account for 32% of the prison population. Despite decades of feminism, women still only earn 78 cents for every dollar men earn, and 1 in 3 women have experienced violence since the age of 15. Our Trans community fear the denial of peace in their own bodies as they wonder whether what’s happening in America will trickle down here. The cracks in the NDIS system are still leaving many vulnerable people without the real support they need. And many of us here today wonder what peace we’ll receive as we age in a society that often neglects and discredits its elders.

Because we’re often sold on these systems that accept this rhetoric of peace, people often feel the societal pressure to submit, to stay silent, to surrender to the status quo because our culture demands it of us. Australians, in particular, are known for following the rules, sometimes to a fault, in order to keep the peace at all costs. And one of the best ways this is packaged and produced in the West is through the wellness industry. As people were turning away from rituals of peace offered in mosques, synagogues, temples, and churches with the rise of modernity and capitalism, the void was filled by expensive elixirs, exercises, exotic retreats, and expansive breathing techniques—all promising peace in the body, mind, and soul while using the same mechanisms of capitalism and consumerism that have led to a civilization of unpeace to begin with. And look—I, myself, am an avid practitioner of yoga, meditation, and deep breathing—practices, I swear, have kept me out of jail.

But the peace in our scripture today, the peace promised by Christ and God’s imminent kingdom, could not look more different from the way peace has been packaged, produced, and promised in our society. Peace, as Jesus preaches it, is meant to disturb us, it’s meant to move us, and it’s meant to undo us. For Christ’s peace is not a coping mechanism. It is not a commodity. It is not something we achieve. It is something we receive. And it is something that sends us. The peace Jesus proclaims is not passive—it’s powerful. It’s not polite—it’s disruptive. It doesn’t make us comfortable—it makes us courageous. Above all, it is the most powerful thing we could ever imagine, for it is the only kind of peace that has the capacity to transform the world.

Our scripture follows from our text last week, of letting everything go in order to follow the way of God’s imminent kingdom. It begins with the sending of the 70 or the 72, depending on the translation. Even though most of us are more familiar with the sending of the 12 in Matthew’s Gospel, Luke is making a very different kind of point in our text today. For the number ‘seventy’ is not just a number—it’s a signpost. It reaches all the way back to Genesis, to the Table of Nations—a list of every people, tribe, and culture that made up the known world. Seventy names. Seventy people. Jesus is sending not just insiders. Not just the elect. Not a closed circle of power but a movement of labourers all throughout the world, for the harvest is plenty.

And how are they sent? Not with weapons. Not with scrolls of doctrine. Not with excuses. And not with delay. They are sent with nothing. No bed to lay their heads on. No time to bury their dead. No purse or bag to put their things in. And no sandals to walk the way upon. The only thing they have are empty stomachs and the kingdom of God on their tongues—a state, in other words, of complete vulnerability, of entering peoples’ cultures, customs, and quarters on their grounds and in their homes. To show up, regardless if they are rejected, to not only be vessels of peace to them but, first and foremost, to become recipients of their peace.

Peace never comes about through power but rather, like a shy animal, needs to emerge on its own terms and in its own time. It needs to feel safe, heard, and met with understanding. And this is why the 72 don’t go to the town square to pronounce God’s kingdom but go to individual homes instead, one by one. For this is how true peace is established—not through mass consumption and proclamation but by entering another’s household, listening to them, eating their food, and hearing their stories.

Our scripture shows us the revolutionary power of this act. For the last part of our scripture jumps forward in time to when the 72 return to Jesus, pronouncing how even the demons submitted to them, how Satan fell from heaven like lightning, how they were given power to tread on snakes and scorpions and all the forces of evil—and how nothing could hurt them. Images that may make us squirm in our seats as rational, progressive Christians, but images that are not only meant to widen our imaginations but embolden and hasten our call to become labourers of God’s kingdom ourselves.

Because the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. And as we look around us in the world that we are living in, as we continue to face atrocities triggered by world leaders—from missiles firing on the least of these to mismanaged economies favoring the rich—the embodiment of evil is not just a concept, it’s real. It’s thriving. It’s organized. And it’s often sugar-coated by policy, promises, and peace. The second greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he was the good guy.

So the peace Jesus gives is a peace that reveals the evil in our world. It is a peace that stands in the face of empire, lifts the veil off lies, and breaks the silence of fear. It often looks inconsequential, insignificant, irrelevant, and sometimes outrageous. But it’s from this place of absurdity, vulnerability, and intimacy that we actually begin to see what is true: that the Kingdom of God has come near. That this kingdom does not rely on tanks, trusts, or treaties. It certainly doesn’t rely on prime ministers, presidents, or policies. It comes in the most counterintuitive and seemingly counterproductive way possible: in weakness, in listening, in empty hands and full hearts, one by one, relationship by relationship. Not from a place of superiority but standing heart to heart with each other, bearing witness to people of peace who are all around us, despite the evidence. Sometimes this feels like being sent out into the midst of wolves.

The other day, as I was mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, I came across a story that stopped me in my tracks. The African-American lecturer and activist Loretta J. Ross shared how her sense of call was attending Ku Klux Klan rallies—not to confront or condemn but to listen, to understand, and to meet their hatred with compassion on her lips and peace in her heart. Though she is a survivor of unimaginable violence, she chose not to perpetuate the cycle of hurt, choosing a different path instead: not of hatred but of peaceful transformation.

Why? Because she was haunted by C.T. Vivian’s words, an aid for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “When you ask people to give up hate then you need to be there for them when they do.” Although not everyone in the KKK was challenged and changed by her peace, this did not stop her from being a presence of peace anyway. She ultimately found that this small yet outrageous act became part of her life’s work to help people who did leave hate groups. Through it she found something wildly unexpected: once she got to know them, she couldn’t hate them anymore. For they found that they loved one another, and in this bonded state, they shared a peace that surpassed all understanding. Change didn’t happen by pushing people away—it started by meeting others in peace wherever they were and wherever they were at, so that they might remember and re-embody who they are too: people of peace.

Our scripture is inviting us to let go of the idea that we must be ‘doers’ or ‘creators’ of peace but rather ‘affirmers’ of what’s already true in me, in you, and everyone—that we are all, at our core, people of peace who constantly need to remember and re-embody this truth. This is why we gather Sunday mornings, week after week, year after year. True peace can only exist when two or more people gather face to face, heart to heart. But it starts by leaving everything we once knew behind, to go to where the people are, to sit beside the unhoused on sidewalks, listen to stories of joy and hardship at Centre 81, eat with survivors of domestic violence, and show up in schools for kids in heartbreaking situations.

All this talk about the kingdom of God is somehow wrapped up in these small and seemingly inconsequential and irrelevant meetings of subtle peace. Our call, like those of the 72, is less about creating or bringing this kingdom ourselves and more about affirming what is already true. We need these kinds of witnesses more than ever: people who refuse to view the world through the lens of hectic headlines and hardened hearts, where people are continually treated as products, pawns, poverty cases, or unforgivable enemies.

This is the labour that is required to affirm and witness the Kingdom of God that has indeed drawn near. This is the labour that undergirds our Christian story to begin with: a God who came into the unpeace of our world, into the shame and oppression instituted by the false peace of an oppressive government, to show true peace, affirm people’s inherent dignity by touching lepers, liberating those denigrated by their sex, feeding those without food, and eating in the homes of the most despised in his society—with tax collectors and prostitutes.

But it starts with letting go—a death to our pride, our need for comfort, our idolization of security—so that we might begin to remember, re-embody, and indeed perceive the kingdom of God that has already drawn near. For this is the power of Christ’s peace. And when we receive it—when we use it as a lens in which to see the world—it has the power to transform everything, upturn graves, and affirm the only truth that matters: that the Kingdom of God has come near. No matter what empire says otherwise, this truth is already at work, where the unpeace of evil is falling from heaven like a flash of lightning.

Here’s the secret: we are all yearning for peace—every one of us—for this is who we all are at the end of the day. All we need is more labourers, 72 to begin with, and then the whole world, to bear witness to this truth that is already producing a harvest beyond our wildest imaginations.