It is good that we have four Gospels instead of one because it gives us a fuller picture of Jesus. Jesus sending out the seventy-two in today’s Gospel is an example of something in Luke’s Gospel that is not in the others. It is surely significant that Jesus sent out seventy-two because the Book of Genesis lists seventy-two nations in the world (in the Greek translation; the Hebrew original has seventy). There are about 195 now depending on how you count them but at that time they counted seventy-two. Obviously these seventy-two disciples of Jesus would only be able to travel to towns around Palestine in the brief time they had, but it seems that Luke wants us to know they were already symbolizing the future Church spreading into all the nations of the world. The word “catholic” means “universal” referring to the whole world, and already Jesus sending out these seventy-two is looking forward to the future Church being Catholic. Jesus sending out the seventy-two disciples is already thinking of you and me in his Church.
When Luke was writing his Gospel, he had so much information about Jesus. He had to be able to fit his Gospel in the length of a papyrus roll and so he had to make choices about what to include and what to exclude. Luke had travelled with Paul for part of Paul’s ministry in Asia and Europe (“we” in Acts 16:10-17; 20:5-15; 21:1-18) and on his journey to Rome (27:1-28:16) and had firsthand experience of Paul welcoming non-Jewish people into Christianity accepting Jesus as the Messiah. He saw all people everywhere who accepted Jesus as the Messiah being welcome by Paul into the Church and it must have made a deep impression on Luke and influenced how he decided what information about Jesus to include in his Gospel. They say travel broadens the mind. Luke portrayed Jesus’ ministry in ways we don’t see in the other Gospels—Jesus sending out the seventy-two. At the time of Jesus, the Samaritans were hated by the Jews but in Luke’s Gospel, only a Samaritan leper who was healed by Jesus returned to thank Jesus while the Jewish lepers did not (Luke 11:17-19), and a Samaritan in Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan is an example of love of neighbor (Luke 10:29-37).
Usually there is a link between the first reading and the Gospel; something in the first reading foreshadows the Gospel or is fulfilled in the Gospel. The exultant joy of the exiles in the first reading returning to Jerusalem anticipates the joy of the seventy-two disciples in the Gospel returning to Jesus after a very successful mission. Perhaps we could find another link. The love of God in the first reading is described as the love of a mother for her child:
As nurslings, you
shall be carried in her arms,
and fondled in her lap;
as a
mother comforts her child,
so will I comfort you. (Isa 66:12-13)
We call God our Father but his love for us is also like that of a mother for her child. There is equal attention given by Jesus to women and men in a number of places throughout Luke’s Gospel. Just some examples are:
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when Jesus gave his sermon in Nazareth, he spoke about widows and lepers; women and men were the subject of Jesus’ sermon.
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Jesus healed the centurion’s slave and raised to life the son of a widow in Nain. A man had his slave healed and a woman received her son back to life.
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The kingdom of God is like the mustard seed a man took, sowed, and became a massive shrub, and the kingdom of God is like the yeast a woman took and mixed with the flour till all the bread had risen. The kingdom of God is like something a man did and something a woman did.
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Jesus told a parable about a man losing his sheep and going to search for it until he found it and Jesus told a parable about a woman losing a coin and searching in her house until she found it.
We call God our Father but the love of God in the first reading is described as the love of a mother for her child and in a number of places in Luke’s Gospel Jesus gives equal attention to women and men. (Of course, we see Jesus’ attention to women in the other Gospels, for example, Jesus meeting the woman at the well in Samaria in John 4, and in John 20 Jesus sending Mary Magdalen to tell the apostles he had risen from the dead.)
Luke has been described as “the Gentle Scribe” but his gentleness reflects the love of God for us like a mother for her children and Jesus’ desire that his Church spread to all nations of the world.
© Fr. Tommy Lane 2025
This homily was delivered in a parish in Ireland.
More Homilies for the Fourteenth Sunday Year C
Related Homilies: The Seventy(-two)