THIS Gospel is available in two parts; for a declaration of woe (verses 12-15) is omitted. The first part is Jesus’s instructions to the seventy (or seventy-two, depending on the Greek text) when he sends them out to proclaim his Kingdom message, and to point out the results of the Kingdom by healing the sick. He gives them unexpectedly precise instructions — “unexpectedly”, because he could have focused on the message, “Say this. . . explain that. . .”; but most of his attention goes on how the seventy are to be equipped, and the way they need to behave.
At the start of those instructions, Jesus makes an admission: he’s deliberately making their task harder. He didn’t need to make them hit the road preaching without baggage or equipment, but that’s what he has chosen to do. The admission itself takes the shape of a simile. Everyone in those days would understand it, as we still do: “I’m sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.”
The seventy can be defenceless: on the mercy of anonymous forces akin to weather or their very own cold and hunger, but additionally vulnerable to the animosity of anyone who’s suspicious of strangers, especially strangers disturbing a peaceful establishment. What is the purpose of insisting on this weakness, when common sense dictates ensuring their security as one of the best solution to get the message out?
The answer lies in whom the message is for. At this relatively early point in Jesus’s ministry, “the Kingdom of God” is a message of a simple kind. No redemption has yet been effected by Jesus’s salvific sacrifice on the cross. Any faithful Jew could respond positively to the preaching of the seventy, while still remaining a faithful Jew.
At least one purpose in Jesus’s lambs-among-wolves programme — perhaps an important — is its effect on the seventy themselves. They must learn to just accept being vulnerable, meeting with hostility, and enduring hardship, isolation, and deprivation. They must learn to adapt themselves to the needs of any who show themselves receptive to the message. They must accept that they’re utterly reliant on God for the necessities of life, and trust him to offer for them.
After a time (the duration will not be specified), the seventy return, and their return is joyful. They sound greater than joyful: they sound excited, perhaps amazed by the facility they’ve found inside themselves — “Even the demons undergo us!” In the previous chapter (9.40), they’d did not exorcise such spirits of evil, but now, even when Jesus himself will not be present, his very name is sufficient to forged them out.
Now for the second a part of the Gospel. Jesus’s response to this enthusiastic return is mysterious, making a link between mission and exorcism, and so setting a pattern for the Christian future: “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.” The verb form points to this remark as being continuous: we could translate it as “I watched again and again”. Christians got here to associate this verse with Isaiah 14.12: “How you might be fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn!”, thus merging Satan and Lucifer into one. But generations proceed to puzzle at how Lucifer (the name means “bringer of sunshine”) could possibly be a fitting name for the Adversary.
Much on this passage stays unclear (no less than, it does to me), but there is definitely a vital message for the seventy within the proven fact that, in the meanwhile when Satan falls from heaven in a flash of sunshine, their names are being recorded in heaven. His place is lost at the identical moment — and as a part of the identical shift — as theirs is secured. Jesus’s remark of the actions of the seventy also real-ises the autumn of Satan. Their mission becomes, in that moment, salvific — not yet for all, true, but undoubtedly for them.
What Jesus is de facto doing is popping the eye of the seventy away from their very own wonder-working successes and on to the actual point of the exercise. What have they learned, once he concludes his explanation of what has taken place? They have learned that their faithful obedience, their overcoming of fear and hardship, their recognition of Jesus’s authority, have earned them the place in heaven for which they long. There is cause and effect in being lambs, and being written within the Lamb’s book of Life (Revelation 21.17).
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