LECTIONARY READINGS
First reading: Isaiah 66:10-14
Responsorial Psalm: 65(66):1-7, 16, 20
Second reading: Galatians 6:14-18
Gospel: Luke 10:1-12, 17-20
Link to readings
Luke’s Gospel tells of two occasions when Jesus sent out disciples on mission. In 9:1-6 there is the sending of the Twelve. Then, at the beginning of his great Journey to Jerusalem, he sends out ahead of himself 72 others in pairs. The sending out of this larger group makes up the Gospel for today (Luke 10:1-12, 17-20).
The fact that Luke records no less than two occasions of sending shows the significance he attributed to this action of Jesus. Undoubtedly, both accounts were meant to provide a model for Christian missionaries in his own day. Both underscore the essentially missionary nature of the Church: its supreme task is to proclaim the onset of the Kingdom of God.
SENSE OF SPIRITUALITY
Both mission accounts also communicate a sense of the spirituality that should accompany the proclamation of the Kingdom. While the instructions Jesus gives the missionaries cannot, in most respects, translate literally into our own situation today, his central message, bearing upon spiritual practice, has a lasting relevance.
The instruction suggests that for the most part the world is not going to give a friendly response to the gospel. The presupposition behind this, as behind Jesus’ mission generally, is that the world has largely fallen out of the hand of God into the grip of spiritual forces, hostile to God and to the true interests of human beings. The missionaries, therefore, do not operate on benign or even neutral ground. They are being sent out into territory that has to be wrested from the grip of the enemy. Hence the stress upon successful exorcisms in the disciples’ exultant report on their return and the mysterious words of Jesus stating that he had watched Satan fall like lightning from heaven. He had seen a heavenly reflection of the battle and being waged on earth and its victorious outcome.
RELIANCE ON HOSPITALITY
The missionaries are to go out very lightly clad and taking no provisions for the journey. This means that they will have to run the risk of relying on what hospitality they find. This reliance has to do with the nature of the combat they face and the gift they bring. For combat with spiritual forces no amount of earthly protection will be of use. Like the armour of Saul that David first tried on before going out to face the Philistine giant, Goliath (1 Sam 17:38-51), it will only get in the way and detract from being armed with the power of God.
They have a right to hospitality because of the supreme value of the gift they bring. Any expenses their hosts incur in putting them up are simply negligible in comparison with what they have to give in exchange: the good news of God’s unconditional offer of reconciliation (Luke 4:16-21), the invitation to the Kingdom, and the gift of messianic “peace”.
GIFT OF PEACE
This gift of peace seems to be the rationale behind associating with the Gospel the text from Isaiah 66:10-14 that makes up the First Reading. The prophet tells the exiles returning to a ruined Jerusalem to rejoice because her beauty, richness, and capacity to nourish will be restored. God will send peace – in the full Hebrew sense of “shalom” (abundance of life) – flowing to her like a river. This is the essential biblical image in which the message of the missionaries is couched.
But Jesus’ instruction also foresees situations where neither the missionaries nor their message will receive a welcome. People do not always want to hear good news if it challenges their present assumptions and settled way of life. Then the missionaries will have to exchange their positive message for a negative prophetic gesture: shaking the dust of the inhospitable towns and villages off their feet as a sign of judgment to come.
Likewise, in the brief Second Reading from Gal 6:14-18, St. Paul speaks in starkly confronting terms: through the power of the cross he is “crucified” to the world and the world to him. Through the “death” that this involves there comes into being nothing less than a “new creation”; old categories and allegiances no longer apply. Only through such radical change does messianic “peace” become a reality: “peace” upon the “Israel of God”.
CHRISTIANITY REQUIRES WORK
Today’s scripture readings challenge any easy assumption on the part of followers of Jesus that they can be casual about living by the values prevailing in the world around them. If we simply drift in the strong current of those values and the forces behind them, we shall surely drift away from the Gospel and the hope it holds out; we shall not be part of the radical new creation that God is calling into being through the cross of Jesus. As the old slogan goes, Christianity is comforting but not comfortable.