FINDINGS IV By Harry T. Cook


Proper 9 - C - July 7, 2013
Luke 10: 1-11, 16-20
 

By Harry T. Cook

7/1/13 

 

 

You Harry T. Cookcould 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.

In these verses from Luke 10 we may be getting a glimpse of the late first century CE 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 (or authors') intention to write "an 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 CE 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 are to 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 CE 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."
  
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 oneself 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 insecurity 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.
   
*From Jesus to Christ (2d edition),Yale University Press, 2000, p. xix

 

 

� Copyright 2013 Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
What a Friend They Had in Jesus: The Theological Visions of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Hymn Writers

Have you ever found yourself humming a favorite childhood hymn, only to realize you could no longer embrace its message? Harry Cook explores how hymns reflect the religious beliefs of their times. He revisits the texts of popular hymns, posing such questions as: How true are they to the biblical texts that seem to have inspired them? What aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century piety have persisted into the twenty-first century through the singing of those hymns? And, how does one manage the conflict between the emotional appeal and the theological content of such hymns?

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