NOTES for Luk 10:13-16

And so Jesus sends His disciples out to preach. See what authority He gives them! A whole chain of “authorized representation” is formed here: the Father sends His Son into the world and gives Him all power and authority; the Son, as He educates His disciples, prepares them to become future messengers and Apostles, and raises up the Church that will later bear witness to Christ, passes His authority on to them.

When we become Christians, we are called to bear witness to Him, and therefore these words of Jesus apply to us as well. Whoever rejects our words and our witness also rejects the Son and the Father! That is remarkable. We might rejoice in such authority being granted to us. But I am more inclined to reflect on our responsibility for our words, and for the substance and adequacy of our witness—and to pray about it...

Several times during His earthly ministry Jesus sent His disciples out to preach. And the chief meaning of this preaching was always witness to the Kingdom, to the fact that it is near and ready to enter the world. Of course, such witness was important for preparing people for what was to happen on the day of Pentecost. But this mission was no less significant for the disciples themselves. They too needed to experience the reality of the Kingdom for themselves. They needed to understand what it is like to be its citizen. Of course, this was not yet the experience of Pentecost; the fullness of the breath of the Kingdom breaking into the world like a whirlwind still lay ahead. Yet those sent out to preach felt the first, still distant and faint, but entirely real movement of that breath.

It was enough that, according to their own words, even demons obeyed them. Meanwhile, the Savior directs their attention to something else. He says: rejoice not in power over spirits, but in the fact that your names are written in heaven. For the Kingdom is not superpowers, not mastery of some secret forces, whether natural or supernatural. The Kingdom is, above all, participation in a new life. A life that does not exist in nature. And that means a new quality of one's own life, inward and outward. This, in fact, is Christianity.

By sending His disciples out to preach, Jesus gave them the opportunity to understand what Christianity is. Of course, later He would say much to the Twelve in words. Especially during the Last Supper. But without this mission, without the experience connected with it, His words would hardly have been at all intelligible even to the Twelve. Words could only describe how to live so as not to lose what they had already partly joined.

The experience of the breath of the Kingdom entering the world through a heart that has joined in that breath is the most precious experience, and nothing can replace it. And the Savior gives this experience to His disciples so that afterward, in the days of Gethsemane, and after the Resurrection, and on the very day of Pentecost, it would become a measure for them. So that they would not be deceived about the new life and would not doubt the reality of what was not at all easy to believe in. And so that, as they joined the life of the Kingdom, they would feel that they were returning home, where they were awaited. And where He Himself was ready to meet them.

All of us, in one way or another, are called to apostleship, to the preaching of the Gospel. Clearly, not everyone must be a missionary, a preacher, or some other "minister of the word"; nevertheless, witness to Christ is the work of the whole Church. Today's passage will help us understand the principles on which such ministry should be built.

First, openness and complete trust in God; second, openness and goodwill toward the people to whom we bring the Gospel; third, the real action of grace through us. It may be expressed not only in healing the sick and those possessed by demons, but also in every good deed, in prayer for these people, in peacemaking, or simply in the presence of a loving heart where love is lacking.

The disciples are glad that they have become heralds and co-workers of God's Kingdom, victors over demons and healers of diseases. But Jesus stops them: "You are rejoicing over the wrong thing"... God gives those who believe in Him many good and amazing things (if they can see them), but the chief value of His Kingdom is not this.

The disciples, and with them the readers of the Gospel, are blessed, happy already because they have seen and heard what the prophets and sages of antiquity only dreamed of: they are witnesses, witnesses not only of miracles, healings, victories over evil, but they are near the very Center of God's Kingdom.

So this is not an abstraction, not paradise, not an afterlife, not gifts and miracles, but God Himself, revealed to people in His Son Jesus.

As we read Luke the Evangelist's account of the sending of the seventy apostles to preach, it is important for us to determine as precisely as possible the charge with which Christ sends them. The Evangelist conveys in detail the Lord's words that the seventy should not prepare for long and difficult journeys, but, relying on God, should be content with what He would send them along the way. The main thing, the Lord says, is this: where they receive you, stay there; where they do not receive you, go on from there. The essence of what the Lord sends them with is to bring the message of peace and that the Kingdom of God has drawn near to you.

So the task of the seventy apostles, and after them of the whole Church, is to announce to people that Christ is already near, close beside them. After the apostles, the Lord Himself will come into those villages and towns and will speak the word to those who want to hear and heal those who suffer. In the apostolic ministry of the Church, the main thing is to proclaim to the world the coming of Christ, and the key element in this witness, according to Christ's word, is the ministry of peace. Not to scourge people's vices and "rebuild society," but to bring peace to those who are willing to receive it.

The Lord says: "If a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him." It is important that He does not say "My peace," although the prophets had long said that He Himself is peace for people, as the apostle Paul will repeat: "He is our peace." In order to fulfill the commission given to them, the seventy apostles, and the whole Church after them, must themselves be filled with this peace of God, so that it truly becomes ours.