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Luke 10:1-16
Jesus Sends Out the Seventy-Two
After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. 2 He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. 3 Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. 4 Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.
5 “When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ 6 If a person of peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you. 7 Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.
8 “When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you. 9 Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10 But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town we wipe from our feet as a warning to you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God has come near.’ 12 I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.
13 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. 14 But it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. 15 And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to the depths.
16 “Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me.”
This is the account of Jesus’ second mission of his followers. He had already sent out the twelve, and now he sends out seventy-two others to go ahead of him to prepare the way in the towns he would later visit to preach and teach.
We tend to think of Jesus either as traveling with twelve men or surrounded by crowds of thousands, but this story might give us a better idea of the number of committed disciples Jesus had at this stage of his ministry. Some New Testament scholars have suggested that by the end of his earthly ministry, Jesus actually had somewhere between 75 and 100 devoted followers. So the number in this passage would seem to fit that estimate.
The passage strikes me as an important one, because the instructions Jesus gave his disciples as he sent them out are probably meant to apply to people like us who represent him in our time.
First of all, notice that Luke says that Jesus sent his followers ahead of himself. They weren’t being sent out to convert the world by themselves, but rather to prepare the way for their master. It was Jesus himself who would ‘save’ people and transform them by the power he brought into the world.
That seems very significant to me. Lots of believers are intimidated about sharing our faith, because we mistakenly think we have to single-handedly persuade people to ‘come to Jesus.’ But our mission is more modest – to tell others about the difference Jesus has made in our own lives, and about what we’ve seen him do in the lives of others. Then we can trust that Jesus will come after us, working by the power of the Holy Spirit to make himself known in a saving way.
Jesus also tells his followers to pray that God would raise up others to join in telling the world about him. When he talks about ‘the harvest,’ he’s talking about spreading the word so God can gather people to himself. So the people Jesus sends out are to be praying for God to call others to join in the work of the kingdom.
As he sends out his followers, Jesus tells them not to take a bunch of stuff with them, and not to stop along the way to visit with others. That probably didn’t mean they were supposed to stare straight ahead and not speak to anyone, but rather that they weren’t to be stopping along the way to visit family and friends. They were “on business,” so to speak, not on vacation.
We might miss the significance of the part where Jesus tells the disciples to eat what they’re offered. (In fact, he tells them twice.) Jesus conducted some of his ministry in gentile areas, so it seems possible that some of these disciples would be served foods that were not considered kosher. Jesus himself sat and ate with people who were considered “unclean,” so his disciples seem to be expected to do likewise. Accepting the hospitality of people of all kinds and breaking bread with them would become an increasingly important way to build relationships that allowed the disciples to effectively tell the good news about Jesus.
And that good news was and is that the kingdom of God has come near. We might expect that Jesus would have the disciples tell people that he’d come to die for their sins. Or that they should repent of their sins and be good. But it seems that the main point Jesus wanted them to communicate was that the kingdom of God had started to break into this world. His incarnation was the beginning of that process, and his followers were to play a part in bringing that kingdom to fulfillment.
Jesus also tells his disciples to heal the sick. They are to minister to people’s physical needs as well as to their spiritual hungers. The commitment by Jesus’ followers to healing the sick would quickly become one of the identifying marks of their movement, and it still is to this very day.
Finally, Jesus warns the disciples that not everyone will accept their ministry. He points out that even in his adult hometown of Capernaum, lots of people failed to follow him even when they witnessed his miracles. (He also mentions that people in some gentile towns would respond to the word better than the people in Jewish areas.) So his followers should expect that the good news they bring will not always be accepted and embraced. That’s obviously true of our witness today, too.
When you think about it, it’s striking how much Jesus’ instructions to these 72 disciples apply to our own circumstances as the body of Jesus in the world today.
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you for the opportunity to receive these same instructions Jesus gave his first followers. Help us to go into the world as they went, following his directions as they did, and inspired by the same Spirit that empowered them. Amen.
Every Blessing,
Henry
(The other readings for today are Psalms 3 and 4; Ezekiel 7:10-27; and Hebrews 6:13-20. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.com, the website of the International Bible Society.)
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