The Unbelieving Towns
THE UNBELIEVING TOWNS
LUKE 10:10-21
Jesus didn’t hide the fact that the message would often meet with rejection.
The lakeside towns had been uniquely blessed. In Capernaum the Lord had lived, and to many communities he was a familiar presence. To have lived in the light of the truth and to have neglected it is a dire responsibility. As though in illustration of the words of doom, the northern and north-eastern coasts of Galilee lie bare today. The level blue of the lovely lake laps empty shores. Capernaum is a ruin among its trees. Other sites are gone, or represented in a garbled name. Kerazeb, for example, may be Chorazin, but none can be sure. On the far side extends the eastern shore, its busy little ports all gone, and the Decapolis behind a wide scatter of ruined towns. Only Amman, the ancient Philadelphia, carries some semblance of the teeming life of the first century.
When the faith and principles round which a nation builds its strength and usefulness decay, inevitably disaster follows. Above all, the English-speaking nations should heed the warning. Uniquely privileged, enlightened beyond others, blessed with long centuries of faithful Christian witness, they abandon the old faith and prate of new moralities at their direst peril.
The seventy returned in jubilation. The Lord’s remark about the fall of Satan was designed to check the insidious growth of pride. It is a phrase in the style of Jewish apocalyptic poetry. “Yes, I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning,” runs Moffatt’s paraphrase. Satan fell by pride, and minds taught in such imagery would see immediately the point of the warning. Success in their preaching mission could so easily lead to arrogance. In similar apocalyptic vein, and not likely to be taken literally by Eastern minds, is the remark about serpents and scorpions. They are symbols of cunning and vicious enemies. Then in sharp simplicity the Lord bids his men take humble thought of their privilege and not their power. And he speaks to all.
Notes 10:12: “that day”—Sodom’s final judgment was still to come. 10:15: “Hades”—the abode of departed spirits. Note question form as in RSV. 10:19: cf. Genesis 3:15; Isaiah 11:8; Revelation 9:5. 10:21: the contrast in the prayer is not between the educated and the uneducated, but between those who vaunt their understanding and those of simple faith.