17: The seventy [-two] returned rejoicing, and said, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your name.”

18: Jesus said, “I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky.

19: Behold, I have given you the power ‘to tread upon serpents’ and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing will harm you.

20: Nevertheless, do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”

The following commentary may help to get a deeper understanding of the text.

Luke 10.1: The Mission

Jesus sends the disciples to the places he would be visiting. The disciple is Jesus’ spokesperson. He is not the master of the Good News. Jesus sends them in pairs. This allows for mutual help and thus the mission is not that of an individual but of the community. Two persons represent the community better.

Luke 10.2-3: Co-responsibility

Their first task is to ask God to send laborers. All of Jesus’ disciples must feel responsible for the mission. Thus they have to pray to the Father for the continuance of the mission. Jesus sends his disciples like lambs among wolves. The mission is a difficult and dangerous task. The system within which they lived and within which we still live continues to resist the reorganization of people living in community. Anyone who, like Jesus, proclaims love in a society organized on individual and collective selfishness, will be a lamb among wolves and will be crucified.

Luke 10.4-6: Hospitality

Jesus’ disciples may not take anything with them, no purse, no sandals. All they can take with them is peace. This means that they had to rely on the hospitality of the people. Thus the disciple who goes carrying nothing but peace, shows he trusts people. He thinks that he will be accepted and that thus people will feel respected and confirmed. In this way the disciples were criticizing the laws concerning exclusion and brought out the old values of community sharing of the people of God. Salute no one on the road means that they must not waste time with matters not pertaining to the mission. This may be a reference to the episode of the death the Sunamite’s son, where Elisha says to his employee, “Go! If anyone salutes you, do not answer” (2Kings 4.29), because this was a matter of life and death. Proclaiming God’s Good News is a matter of life and death!

Luke 10.7: Sharing

The disciples must not move from house to house, but must stay in the same house. They must live together with and share in the life and work of the local people, and live on what they receive in exchange, the laborer deserves his wages. This means that they must trust in sharing. Through this new practice, they recovered one of the old traditions of the people of God, criticizing a culture of accumulation that was characteristic of the Roman Empire and so proclaimed a new model for people to live together.

Luke 10.8: Communion around the table

The disciples must take what food and drink they offer. When the Pharisees went on a mission, they went prepared. They took with them purse and money so that they could provide for their own food. They maintained that they could not trust the food of the people because it was not always ritually “pure”. Thus the observance of the Law of legal purity, instead of helping to overcome divisions, weakened the life of communitarian values. Jesus’ disciples must not be separate from the people but rather accept communion around the table. When coming into contact with people they were not to be afraid of losing legal purity. The community value of fraternal living together is greater than the observance of ritual norms. By acting thus, they criticized the current laws on purity, and proclaimed a new way to purity, to intimacy with God.