Luke 10:1-9 The Mission of the Seventy
1The Lord appointed seventy and sent them on ahead of Him in pairs to every town and place where He Himself intended to go. 2He said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. 3Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. 5Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house!” 6and if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. 7Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the labourer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9cure the sick who are there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”
Text ©The New Revised Standard Version, alt, Used with permission.
Jesus knew His scriptures, often quoting them or referring to them. Jesus was often portrayed in the New Testament as being a new, and greater, Moses, or one of the prophets. If we go back to the Exodus story (24:1) we hear about Moses taking seventy elders onto the mountain when he went to talk to God; in Numbers (11:16-25) we hear about Moses choosing seventy to share the load of work he had; the Sanhedrin itself was composed of seventy men; so to portray Jesus as being greater than those who had gone before Him, He had to send out seventy as lambs going into the territory of wolves. The seventy whom Moses had chosen were to prophesy, but only two did so within the camp. Since the Israelites were on a long journey through the desert, to whom did the other sixty-eight prophesy? I’m not offering an answer. Jesus’ seventy, however, were sent ahead of Him into the towns where He intended to go – a sort of advance party to prime people for the coming of the Lord and a new revelation.
Jesus often used agricultural ideas to get across His point. “The harvest is plentiful” could have had the obvious meaning of it being a good time to gather an abundance of grain, but there is no indication in the passage that it was time to gather grain, and Jesus was referring to the people who were ready to become followers and would need encouragement and support. Even today, we frequently hear people claim that the labourers – the ones who are called by God to make disciples of all nations – are few, but is that true because the Church authorities, like their counterparts in the first century, are keen to have labourers who follow the dictates of the authorities, not those of God?
Jesus tells these seventy people to get on the way, not to procrastinate, not to be worried that they might not have the words or the eloquence to do the task at hand – and don’t forget that they are being sent like lambs among wolves. Their lives will be at risk; they will be attacked for no other reason than their message conflicts with the message of those in charge of the areas in which they will work. Despite all this, they were to not carry money – so they couldn’t find a way home, they were to not carry any extra clothes, they were to not carry extra footwear, and they were to avoid contact with potential thieves and murderers along the way – in other words not greet anyone on the road. Trust and Obey, for there’s no other way. When we set out on a journey like this God will provide our needs – though not necessarily our wants. If they met with people who are receptive to the message they carried – we carry – they would be housed and fed, they wouldn’t need money to buy things, clothes and shoes would be provided. By offering God’s peace to those who showed hospitality that peace would be shared if it were welcomed, but would be unharmed if it were rejected. Whichever way it was received those sent forth would be able to bask in the peace of God.
Being accepted by a receptive host would have meant, in those days, that the evangelists’ stay would be welcomed for as long as they needed to remain in the one place, and the next stage of the journey would be marked by generosity in providing for travel needs along the way. The instruction for what to do within a town or community which accepted these people was to stay, to eat whatever was provided for them – which would fly in the face of Jewish food restrictions whenever they met with Gentiles – and to heal those who needed it. In other words, they will know we are Christians by our love. That expression of Christian love would be an outward sign that the Kingdom of God was at hand.
This passage ends before an important corollary to the welcoming town, for verses 10 and 11 tell them that if the town doesn’t welcome them they should clear the dust off their feet and walk away telling the townsfolk that God is not happy – Luke compares the people with those in Sodom. Some of us have had personal experiences like that, in today’s world.
What hit me first with this passage is the similarity to medical approaches in the 21st century. In the current Covid-19 era, where we are dependent on medical staff for advice and treatment to minimise the impact of the pandemic on our lives, we should take heed. “Honour physicians for their services” means honour them; don’t tell them they don’t know what they are talking about, don’t tell them we don’t need to wear masks when those physicians are telling us that’s one way to reduce the risk to us and to others, don’t belittle them because we can’t see the serious nature of an illness or injury. The physicians’ gift of healing comes from God, through all the research and development that has gone on through the centuries. We know as much as we do about the human body and how it works because physicians in the past have made discoveries which would astound most of us, and yet there are untrained people who think they know better, and whose concern is more about themselves than the safety of others. Think of how doctors and surgeons work together to restore our health when we have been attacked by bugs or violence, and we must admire their skills.
The popular Christian song “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice” is a direct lift from this passage. Despite his dire circumstances, Paul urges everyone to rejoice always. If you break a leg, rejoice; if you win the mega-lottery, rejoice; if you get a bad dose of Covid-19, rejoice; if you pass your exams with flying colours, rejoice. We may not see what there is to rejoice about it, but God can, and it will turn out for good.
This wasn’t just anyone asking a question, it was the Chief Priests – think of it as the Archbishops and Bishops – and the elders of the faithful people – our lay church leaders – challenging His authority to cast people out of the Temple and to use it as a healing venue. Given that those Chief Priests and elders were only allowed to be in their positions of pseudo-authority because the Roman forces were using them to keep the people from causing disruption, it isn’t surprising that they were anxious to find out where He thought His authority came from, and who gave it to Him. Authority can reside in a position of power, but even people elected to that position – Presidents, Prime Minsters, Chief Priests, etc. – cannot assume the authority and often consider they have more authority than they actually have.
How many times should I forgive somebody who sins against me? There is dispute about the response from Jesus, not in the need for forgiveness, but in the number. Some manuscripts suggest seventy-seven times, others seventy times seven. Those who take the scriptures literally would encourage us to have notebooks in which we record each act of forgiveness, and on the 78th occasion (or the 491st) refuse to forgive. That’s a horrible distortion of the message from these few verses. Not only should the forgiveness relate to one type of sin – so not counting ‘you lied to me when you were four years old, and you forgot to buy a loaf of bread for me when you were 30, so I’ve forgiven you twice’ – but the number is not supposed to be taken literally anyway. In the culture of the day seventy-seven would have been a very large number, by which time you would probably have lost count, so best not to even start. The important part of this message is that we should forgive, and forgive, and keep on forgiving, and that we should separate the sin from the sinner. Those who practise this separation on a routine basis can love the sinner while hating the sin – and forgiving someone who has sinned against us does not necessarily mean that the sinner doesn’t have to pay a penalty for the actions. One man who lost the rest of his family in the Port Arthur massacre forgave the man who committed all those murders on that fateful day. The events which led to that forgiveness were far more confronting than those which most of us will ever encounter. Can we do the same?
A lamb, after dressing, will yield about 15kg of meat, or enough for 30 to 40 people. That’s an awfully big family! No wonder the instruction is to share it with neighbours if there’s too much meat. Hold your horses – sorry, lambs. This animal is to be free from blemishes – according to whom? and it can come from sheep or goats. Did I miss something? A small goat is a kid, not a lamb – but here again comes the 21st century understanding, instead of that from many centuries before, and from a different culture. Let us beware of falling into the trap of thinking our way is the only way and it has always been so.
What did Jesus say to the one who had just proclaimed Him to be Son of Man, and the Messiah? “Get behind me Satan!” Jesus wasn’t condemning Peter for his attempt to save Christ from the cross, but condemning Satan, working through Peter’s problem in accepting the inevitable. There’s a real lesson for us there. Jesus separated Peter, one of His most ardent followers and someone able to listen to God, from the influence of Satan, who was taking Peter’s weakness and using it to attack Jesus. Can we separate the sin from the sinner in the same way? Our contemporary society can’t. I can think of many people who have been brilliant in their own way but have done something seriously wrong, and their great works have been discarded as well as them, and I can think of many others who have been treated similarly when their greatest failure is to have a different opinion from the majority. That’s what happened to Christ, except that we try to remember His good deeds, and try to explain away those bits which are difficult to accept.
3For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgement, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, 5so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. 6We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; 7ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; 8the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.
Doubting Peter, always prepared to show he doesn’t understand what Jesus is about, needs clarification, just like we do, but are afraid to ask, or too often we’re told our questions are silly, or we should know, or they’re ignored by those who can answer but don’t want to.
The disciples want her sent away because she was crying out and annoying them, and they, as Jews, didn’t want anything to do with her. The Greek verb κραζω (kradzo), which gets translated as crying out, or screaming, also has a connotation of being like a crow’s call, which can be penetrating and annoying. Were they also reacting to how she sounded as she tried to get Christ’s attention?
It was dark; it was windy; the waves were creating quite a spray; yet Jesus came walking on the water, in the middle of the lake, or Sea of Galilee. No wonder the disciples were terrified. I think I’d need some clean underwear too! Despite them having spent time with Jesus, learning His ways and His teachings, and getting a sense of who He really was, to see a human figure walking across the water would have appeared very much like seeing a ghost. I don’t know how effective it would have been, but Jesus continues towards them and tells them not to be afraid. They were already afraid before He spoke. Surely speaking to them would make them more afraid, not less. Most English translations take the Greek εγω ειμι (ego aimee) and give us “it is I” when good English grammar, as distinct from the Greek grammar, needs “it is me.”
Jesus warned us not to think we will be exempt from persecution. We’ve heard and read much about persecutions over the centuries, be they Romans attacking Christians in the first century, Christians attacking non-believers during the Crusades, Hitler attacking the Jews in the lead up to and during the second world war, and we expect to hear about those and many other movements in a troubled world. However, when the persecutions come from those much closer to home they can be unexpected and devastating.
Last week the revised common lectionary gave us the story of Rebekah having the twins Esau and Jacob. Being the first-born Esau had a “birth-right” which allowed him the lion’s share of his father’s estate when Isaac died, and the right for a special blessing as responsibility for the household was handed to the elder son. “Jacob” is the Hebrew equivalent of “taker” or “supplanter”; and “Isaac” is Hebrew for laughter. When Esau came home at the end of a day’s work so hungry that he thought he was dying, an astute Jacob used his culinary skills, and Esau’s hunger, to get his older brother to pass on the birth-right, much to Esau’s displeasure when he had recovered. Furthermore, some years later, Jacob had connived with his mother to deceive a by then blind Isaac into believing that he was giving his elder son the special blessing before he died. That’s one theory. Another is that Isaac knew that Esau didn’t deserve the blessing he would receive, but without being ‘tricked’ custom wouldn’t allow him to give the blessing to Jacob, so he went along with the ruse as that let him do what he wanted without being seen as a rule breaker.
45“Before I had finished speaking in my heart, there was Rebekah coming out with her water-jar on her shoulder; and she went down to the spring, and drew. I said to her, ‘Please let me drink.’ 46She quickly let down her jar from her shoulder, and said, ‘Drink, and I will also water your camels.’ So I drank, and she also watered the camels. 47Then I asked her, ‘Whose daughter are you?’ She said, ‘The daughter of Bethuel, Nahor’s son, whom Milcah bore to him.’ So I put the ring on her nose, and the bracelets on her arms. 48Then I bowed my head and worshipped the Lord, and blessed the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who had led me by the right way to obtain the daughter of my master’s kinsman for his son. 49Now then, if you will deal loyally and truly with my master, tell me; and if not, tell me, so that I may turn either to the right hand or to the left.”
