"Go!"
Jesus Sends Out the Seventy-Two

           One of the fascinating things about the Jesus story is how far and how fast it spread. The book of Acts begins in Jerusalem and ends 1500 miles to the west in Rome. The wild fire also burned to the east. By the year 635 believers confessed Jesus as Lord in China. A hundred years after that, Syrian believers had spread the gospel to Baghdad, Tibet and India. The apostle Paul traveled 10,000 miles proclaiming the good news of God's love.

           How did this happen? Luke's gospel for this week gives us some clues.

Jesus sends the seventy-two.

           Jesus traveled from village to village proclaiming the good news of God: "The time has come! The kingdom of God is at hand. Follow me." He preached to the poor and healed the sick. This urgent message invited a radical response: "Repent and believe the good news."

           And that's what many people did. They made a break with business as usual and followed Jesus.

           When Jesus saw Peter and Andrew fishing, he invited them, "Come, follow me." The gospels dramatize their response: "At once they left their nets and followed him."

           When Jesus later saw James and John fishing with their father Zebedee, the call and response were the same: "They immediately left the boat and their father and followed him." Likewise for the tax collector Levi: "He left everything and followed Jesus."

           In addition to these individual callings, Jesus appointed twelve followers as apostles — literally, "sent ones." Their collective response mirrors these individual calls. Speaking for the twelve apostles, Peter said to Jesus, "We have left everything to follow you!"

           This calling of the Twelve hints at the movement's first organizational impulses. All three synoptic gospels grocery list the twelve apostles. All three lists put Peter first and Judas last. John's gospel doesn't give such a list, but he refers to "the Twelve" three times, and throughout his gospel he mentions nine of them by name.

           Jesus sent out the Twelve to share what they had experienced. He told them to do what he did — preach, teach, and heal. Mark says that Jesus sent them out in pairs.

           A few pages later, the movement expands. In this week's gospel, Luke writes that "the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go."

           Luke never names these people, and we never hear of them again. Since this is the only mention of them, we have no idea where they went, what they did, or what happened to them. Like many others before them, they too left families and homes to spread the message of Jesus about the kingdom of God.

           Who financed this fledgling cadre of gospel witnesses? Who underwrote these "sent ones" who had left their livelihoods and deserted family businesses? Luke is clear. Prominent women who had left their husbands and families financed and traveled with the itinerating evangelists.

           Luke writes: "Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; Joanna the wife of Cuza, the manager of Herod's household; Susanna; and many other women. These women were helping to support them out of their own means" (Luke 8:1–3).

           They must have been quite a sight — newly appointed envoys with no formal training, an advance logistics team for Jesus, and "many" women supporters. They were the first of those first believers in Acts 4:34 who sold their lands and houses to support the Jesus movement.

           Although the larger group of seventy-two "sent ones" is clouded in historical obscurity, speculation about their identity has been impossible to resist.

           About half of the Greek text manuscripts say there were seventy-two sent ones. Other manuscripts give the number as seventy. Both numbers can claim symbolic importance.

           Were they formal apostles or merely disciples? The Orthodox prefer the former and more technical term. Western Christians prefer the informal designation "disciples." Luke simply says that Jesus sent out "seventy-two others."

            Several lists down through the centuries name the seventy-two. As you'd expect, there are variations, omissions, additions and "corrections" in these lists. Many names in the lists are people mentioned in the New Testament. Some of the lists include several women among the seventy-two. That's a tantalizing historical tidbit if these women emissaries were "apostles" and not mere "disciples."

           A work called On the Seventy Apostles of Christ attributed to Hippolytus (170–235) lists seventy names. A hundred years later, Dorotheus of Tyre wrote The Choosing of the Seventy Holy Apostles. A ninth-century hymn writer named Joseph wrote an Orthodox hymn to celebrate the seventy. And in the 13th century, bishop Solomon in Iraq made his own list in a Syriac manuscript called The Book of the Bee.

           The Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledges these lists but concludes that they are "unfortunately worthless." Most Protestants would agree. But not the Orthodox, who commemorate the seventy-two with a feast day every January 4, and honor their memory with individual feast days throughout the year.

           Whoever these people were, they model for us the radical response to the urgent announcement of Jesus.

           "Go!" says Jesus in Luke 10:3. "The harvest is plentiful in a hurting world. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."

           If you wonder where to start or what to do, consider the epistle for this week: "Bear one another's burdens. Do good to all people." That's the meaning and message of Jesus. It's what he sends us out to be and to do. Right where we are.

           For further reflection:

           The ninth-century Canon for the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles of Christ by Joseph the hymnographer:

Troparion (Tone 3)

Holy apostles of the Seventy,
entreat the merciful God
to grant our souls forgiveness of transgressions.

Kontakion (Tone 2)

O faithful, let us praise with hymns
the choir of the seventy disciples of Christ.
They have taught us all to worship the undivided Trinity,
for they are divine lamps of the Faith.