NOTES for Luk 10:1-9

Every person mentioned in the Bible becomes an example for us in something special and very personal. Luke, who wrote much but is rarely mentioned in the text of Scripture, is often lost against the background of those whom he described so brightly and vividly. Whenever we try to make out his features and hear his voice, it is best to remember the apostle Paul's words from today's reading: "Luke alone is with me." Here Luke is the one who remains nearby when the celebration is over, when the days follow one after another, filled with hard and thankless work. He will remember and preserve what matters most; he is faithful and patient. And he will never turn away from the One in whom he believes, and that, you will agree, is very important on a difficult road.

But what we have here, "The harvest truly is great" or "When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth" Luke 18:8)? Is it not a paradox? "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations" Mt 28:19) - is this the sending of the labourers into harvest? If we remember the parabola about the wheat and the tares, then we know that "the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the Angels" (Mt 13:39). The answer to the paradox is paradoxical: it is not the "or" that makes it paradoxical, but rather the "and". Christianity is a way, on which there is always something at the point of departure and something at the final goal. That is why, although faith is little, the harvest is great. That is why, although nobody (except Jesus) has the right to effect the final judgment, people are called to gather and to bring so their fruits. But, Jesus speaks to us above all about praying for the sending of labourers, - so the Lord of the harvest will say: is it not the moment to send my Angels!

Sending His disciples to preach the Kingdom that has drawn near, Jesus says to them: I send you as sheep among wolves. A natural question arises: why does everyone around turn out to be wolves? And if so, why and for what purpose does Jesus send the disciples to preach? Meanwhile, the answer lies in the very character of the preaching, in what those sent are going to preach and what they are to bear witness about. The disciples are to bear witness to the Kingdom. To the Kingdom that, according to the Savior's own word, is "not of this world." And which for this very reason the world does not accept.

Not even because it is of a different nature from the world, but because it is hostile to it. The world lies in evil. If it were simply different compared with the Kingdom, there might be no hostility: the action of the Kingdom on the world would transfigure it, change its nature, and the world would become the Kingdom, opening itself to God's direct action. But in the world there are forces that oppose the Kingdom, and the world has submitted to them, has fallen completely under their power - that is why it is called fallen.

And therefore it is hostile to the Kingdom. Not by nature, but by the present state of that nature. And everyone who lives according to the laws of this world becomes, accordingly, hostile to everyone who lives by the Kingdom and bears witness to it. Here there is the same organic opposition as between wolves and sheep. Wolves do not attack sheep out of malice, but out of hunger.

As, in fact, all predators do with their prey: nothing personal, only the necessity of survival. And unlike the well-known character in Krylov's fable, neither wolves nor other predators seek justifications for themselves. "You are guilty already because I want to eat" is a human view of the situation; animals know no such concepts, and their instincts tell them nothing about any moral categories.

And people who live according to the laws of the fallen world often react to witnesses of the Kingdom and to those living its life in roughly the same way: they want to get rid of such people, they want them to disappear from the world and from their own life simply because they are different. Because they bring into the world and into their own life something that will destroy the existing order of things, apart from which the fallen person cannot imagine himself. Of course, unlike wolves and other predators, people usually somehow justify this desire of theirs.

But in essence the same instinct of self-preservation is at work here, the desire to survive and not perish, which makes a wolf attack a flock of sheep. And until a person himself wants to change, until he wants to be freed from the power of that evil in which the fallen world lies, he will react to witnesses of the Kingdom as a predator reacts to prey. Not from any personal motives, but simply according to the law of this world.

And so He sent laborers into His harvest - and what happened? Our labor looks more like a stroll of wolves than the life of lambs. We are always right in everything; the world is divided into "them" and "us." The fewer people listen to us personally, the narrower the circle of "us" becomes, smoothly turning into "I," and the wider the circle of "them" becomes. They do not understand, do not know, do not hear, but I know, understand, and hear, so I must insist on my own way. Otherwise it will be worse for them than for Sodom and Gomorrah, so I can impose no limits on myself in words or deeds.

How convenient it is to apply to ourselves what the Lord said about Himself. But let us read in the Gospels that "whoever is not with Me is against Me." Yet concerning the laborers who must bring the news of His death and resurrection: "Whoever is not against you is for you." It is not our task to judge which of us is with Him, how, or to what extent; what matters is that in Him we are not against one another, but together. And then Psalm 65 will become reality, when "You tested us, God; You refined us as silver is refined."

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.

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.

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.

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.