Looking at the Commissioning of the Seventy from the Other Side

In Luke's gospel, Jesus commissions seventy missionaries to proclaim Jesus' message.  The seventy are sent out two by two to places where Jesus had not yet gone.  The seventy later return with positive results.

Sermons on the commissioning of the seventy normally looks at the story from the perspective and role of the seventy, remarking on the need for courage and diligence in responding to God's call and proclaiming Jesus' message.  Another way to look at the commissioning is from the perspective of the townspeople who hear the message from the seventy proclaimed.

Consider yourself from the perspective of the townspeople.  You have no prior exposure to Jesus' message.  You have never met the two individuals who enter your town.  Remember that this is in a cultural setting and a time in history where it was rare to travel very far outside your birthplace.  If you were a devout Jew, the message would have sounded heretical and would have stood in the face of everything that you had ever been taught.  Similarly, if the town where the seventy entered was outside the boundaries of Israel, the teachings of Jesus, grounded in Judaism, would have seemed even more strange and alien.

The willingness of the townspeople who heard the seventy to listen to the message of Jesus and embrace it required greater virtue than then willingness of the seventy to be commissioned.  Embracing Jesus' message would have required open minds and open hearts that were willing to set aside everything that had previously been known, practiced, and embraced, and hear something new.

I don't think that Christian people today would have done very well with the seventy.  We have become extremely set in our ways of thinking about God.  We are sure that we have it all figured out.  At best, we are willing to listen when the message comes to us in a setting that is well established for the proclamation of God's word (i.e. Church), and when the message is delivered in a way that conforms with our preconceived understandings of God using language that we are familiar with.

As the Church, we have to be willing to listen for God's Word that will speak to us outside of our preconceived notions of where, when, and how God is supposed to speak.  If we are willing to listen, there is no telling what wondrous things God has to share with us.