GOSPEL POWER l JULY 3, 2022 - SUNDAY

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gospel: Lk 10:1-12, 17-20

 1 The Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him  in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.  2 He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;  therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his  harvest. 3 Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into  the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. 5 Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to  this house!’ 6 And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace  will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. 7 Remain in  the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the  laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house.  8 Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what  is set before you; 9 cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The  kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10But whenever you enter a  town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say,  11‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in  protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come  near.’ 12I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom  than for that town. …17The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord,  in your name even the demons submit to us!” 18He said to them, “I  watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. 19See, I have  given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all  the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. 20Nevertheless,  do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

Only the Lucan Gospel includes a second dispatch of  missionaries. The number seventy offers a clue to  the meaning intended by Luke. In Nm 11:16, 25, God  instructed Moses to choose seventy elders to assist him in leading  the discontented and grumbling Israelites toward the promised land.  Luke presents the mission of Jesus as the new Exodus, in which he  involves seventy other disciples in announcing his way of peace. Jesus’  destination is not a land flowing with milk and honey, but the city  called “the abode of peace” — Jerusalem. He goes there as the one  whom Zechariah prophesied as “the dawn from on high… who will  guide our feet into the way of peace” (Lk 1:78-79). Jesus will testify,  through the offering of his life, that nonviolence is the only way to  God’s shalom. By the time Luke’s Gospel is written, Jerusalem will  have been completely ruined because of the Israelites’ failure to learn  the way of the Prince of peace.