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5 Disciples Chapter 10 begins with a list of the twelve apostles, whom Jesus commissions to extend to other Jewish areas his work of preaching (that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand”), healing, and exorcism. After he has advised them on how they are to conduct their missions , he leaves Capernaum at the beginning of chapter 11 to preach in other cities, two of which, Chorazin and Bethsaida, are named and denounced. He also receives two disciples from John, who is in prison and wants to know if Jesus is indeed the Messiah. In chapter 12 narrative yields to preaching and healing; in chapter 13, to parables. Luther had said that grace alone could save; his followers took up his doctrine and repeated it word for word. But they left out its invariable corollary, the obligation of discipleship. —Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chapters 10 and 11, studied while he was in military service and on maneuvers in Lower Alsace in the summer of 1894, were crucial for the development of Albert Schweitzer’s “eschatological” theology. It puzzled Schweitzer that nothing came of Jesus’ two predictions: that his disciples would be persecuted on their journey, and that the Son of Man would appear before their mission was completed (10:23). He rejected two current explanations, that this was a later addition to the text (for why would anyone attribute to Jesus events that had not taken place?), or that these predictions should be “spiritualized,” in the sense that Jesus was actually speaking, not about the end of the world, but about his own death and resurrection, and that he was inaugurating not a real but an “ethical” kingdom of God. So for Schweitzer the persecution of chapter 23 referred to the “tribulation,” the traditional period of suffering that would immediately precede the coming of the messiah; and here Jesus must have felt it was about to happen and that then his messiahship would be recognized and acknowledged. But it did not happen at once (the disciples are back with him in chapter 12). So according to Schweitzer, Jesus took it upon himself to make it happen through the tribulation of his passion, leaving be- hind the Sermon on the Mount as a moral instruction to help his disciples prepare for the coming kingdom. He could counsel them not to be anxious about their earthly condition, for it was soon to end.1 Chapter 10 is Jesus’ “Mission Charge” to the twelve disciples, although readers know of only five by name. Only here (v. 2) are they called “apostles,” since Matthew prefers the more inclusive “disciples,” which can also be understood as extending to his own followers. (Ironically, “Apostles” was also the name of a Cambridge University society, founded in 1820, that was often highly critical of Christianity, counting among its members, always twelve in number, the philosophers G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell.) The listing of the apostles by twos is more “Matthean doubling,” and the number twelve is meant to symbolize the twelve tribes of Israel (19:28: “ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel”). It is odd that Jesus says so much about his disciples’ conduct and activities, so little about the content of their preaching. How did they present and develop their message of the approaching kingdom to those they were proselytizing ? Did they try to organize proto-Christian groups in the villages they visited? It is odd, too, that nothing more is said about the progress or success of their mission after they return at 12:1. In any case, their evangelizing must have produced the first transmission of “gospel” materials to prospective converts , and some have thought that their preaching of Jesus’ words was the basis of the “Sayings Source” known as Q. For now the disciples’ mission is limited to other Jews (v. 5), not to “all nations ” (28:19), and the only Gentiles they will meet are the officials at verse 18, though even before (not “against,” as in the KJV) them they can bear witness to Jesus. In a 1522 sermon, Zwingli saw this as evidence that Jesus, who most often moved among the humblest, “does not overlook anyone, and least of all the greatest.”2 And missionaries often found that first converting local rulers was a convenient way to bring their subjects into the church—a Christian version of the “trickle-down” effect.3 At verse 11 Jesus mentions “city or town,” so it is strange that...

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