FINDINGS II
Proper
9 - C - July 4, 2010
Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20
 By Harry T. Cook
6/28/10
RUBRIC
You could call it "lambs to the slaughter." Luke's Jesus
even used a similar allusion to account for the sending out of the 70 missioners
as an advance team for Jesus himself: "like lambs into the midst of wolves."
Such an idea would be incredible to those engaged in animal husbandry in any
age. The herdsmen's job is to keep predators away from the flock, and
especially the more vulnerable lambs. Those Luke imagined being sent ahead by
Jesus were, in military terms, the first wave. Those in the first wave of a
landing or an invasion usually sustain high and heavy casualties -- as would
lambs if they were driven into a wilderness of wolves, perhaps to sate the
wolves and spare the sheep that would come later.
There are echoes here of contemporary jihad, suicide
bombings even. Did the author or authors of According to Luke remember accounts
of Roman persecution of Jews and others in the Empire's way? Or did they know
of actual resistance with which early Jesus Jews had to contend? And was the
idea to sanctify the pursuit of a lost cause? Until one gets to the end of the
passage, which seems highly optimistic in nature, one does not know that the
lambs were not eaten by the wolves or, if they were, the struggle was worth it
because the names of the "70 others" "are written in heaven." It has a tincture of the "70 sloe-eyed
virgins-in-paradise" promise: one virgin per missioner.
WORKSHOP
In these verses from Luke 10 we may be getting a glimpse of
the late first century C.E. church's modus operandi in the commission of the 70
(or 72), the confusion stemming
from the Hebrew and the Greek Septuagint's rendering of the number of
"nations." The significance is that the "70 others" are sent to the "nations,"
this being an expansion of the commission of the 12 to exert authority over
demons and the diseased (9:1). The question we want to ask is what did Luke
mean by writing the first of the 12 and then of the 70. Perhaps it is a
reference to the author(s)' intention to write "and orderly account" (1:3). The
order of things that Luke depicts began with Jesus and his initial community
called "the 12," obviously a literary nod to the 12 tribes of Israel. A later
generation with an expanded apostolate is represented by the 70.
The marching orders for the 70 in ch. 10 differ from those
of the 12 in ch. 9. The 70 are sent as innocent and vulnerable lambs into the
teeth of the wolf pack. If Paula Fredriksen is right about Galilee in the first
third of the first century C.E. being relatively free of Roman presence*, maybe
the original first century communities did not experience the same degree of
trouble as those toward the end of that century to which Luke refers in his
lambs-to-the-wolves analogy.
Compounding their natural vulnerability (as lambs into the
midst of wolves), the 70 are to "carry no purse, no bag and no (extra pair) of
sandals" (10:4). The 12 were to have taken nothing at all: no staff (symbol of
intrepid self-sufficiency -- think here of Gandalf), no bread, no money (9:3).
Both the 12 and the 70 make shake off the dust of inhospitable venues from
their feet in protest.
The 70 are to eat with the people they visit, cure the sick
and proclaim that, ipso facto, the rule of God has come as close as it was
going to get. Nothing is mentioned about eating in ch. 9's commission of the
12. Its mention in ch. 10 and the commissioning of the 70 may reflect the
custom of the fellowship meal. Eating together has a curative power all of its
own as intimacy and overcomes distrust. Matthew in the parallel (his chs. 9 and
10) mentions food, but only in connection with the just compensation for the
worker -- "the laborer is worthy of his hire."
Luke affords an interesting take on Mediterranean hospitality
in ch. 10. In our modern Western understanding of hospitality, it is the host
who has the advantage. The host welcomes whom he or she will. The sense of
10:10-11 is that the invitee gets to decide whether or not he is welcome and if
the hospitality is sincere. And he may leave, shaking the dust of the place off
his feet, leaving the host with the dust of his own habitation in his nostrils
and egg on his face. Thus the
unweighed down, penniless, purse-less, bag-less, bread-less traveling-light
itinerant will take his gift of freedom with its potential to cure the sickness
of too-much-ness to another threshold, hearth and table.
Luke alone tells the story of the 70 going out. Luke alone
writes of the success of that apostolic ministry, perhaps as a preview of Acts,
"the second book." The 70 are depicted as returning in triumph "over the
demons" (those human dispositions that conspire against hospitality and the
peace and at least momentary social equity it nurtures and that retard the
return of wholeness).
V. 19 must be stiff-upper-lip cheerleading, because late
first century C.E. Jesus communities were regularly bitten by the serpents and
scorpions of persecution. Members of the communities were hurt, v. 19b to the
contrary notwithstanding. That may be whence the idea that their "names are
written in heaven."
*From Jesus to Christ (2d
edition),Yale University Press, 2000, p. xix
HOMILETIC COMMENTARY
Evidently Luke could not resist incorporation of the Q
material of 10:12-16 (see the Matthew parallel at his 11: 21-23) with its Sodom
and Gomorrah-like curse. Luke 10:16 makes clear the bias of the gospel, viz.
that Jesus and his derivative communities represent that deity whose rule the
itinerant missioners convey by their very presence. If they are not "received"
(as Matthew puts it) or "heard" (as Luke says), the non-receivers and/or the
non-hearers have rejected life.
Here the homilist or careful student needs to be cautious in
not turning the proposition into Christian take-it-or-leave-it imperialism.
Rejecting Jesus and his teachings as the early church worked them out does not
make a person or a people evil. However, not treating the other as one wishes
himself to be treated can and usually does have consequences that range from
inconvenience to catastrophe.
The wolves that kill and eat the vulnerable in our
contemporary society include 1) an obscene disparity of wealth that leaves the
few with abundance and the many with scarcity, 2) an airy disregard of those at
the margins by those close enough to the center to know economic security and
3) a topsy-turvy set of social values that weave a web of sufficiency around
the fortunate to the exclusion of the unfortunate.
Those persons, movements and institutions that put aside
concern for their own safety and comfort and enter the fray against such malign
forces are the descendants of the 12 and the 70.
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