Matthew 10a

The Gospel according to Matthew

1-2.  The ancestry and birth of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.

3-4.  Jesus’ ministry begins; John’s baptism, Satan’s temptations, first disciples called.

5-7.  A summary of Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, crowds are astounded.

8-9.  An account of Jesus’ healings; the authority of Jesus is questioned and defended.

10-12. Jesus sends apostles on short-term mission trip; then continues his own ministry.

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Jesus has demonstrated that he has authority, and that includes the authority to delegate his mission. The last few lines of Chapter 9 reveal Jesus’ compassion for the lost of Israel and his human limitation in not being able to be everywhere at once. He gathers his students, then commissions them to go to the villages as his special agents to spread the good news of the Kingdom and to do representative works. 

10: 1-4.  Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus/Lebbaeus, Simon the Cananaean and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.

Notice the shift here from ‘twelve disciples’ to the ‘twelve apostles’. The Greek word that we translate as ‘disciple’ also means ‘student’. The word that we translate as ‘apostle’ is related to the word ‘epistle’ which means ‘a letter’ that one sends to another person. So, in the language here, we can see a major shift in the status of the 12; Jesus has trained them and now Jesus sends them out as his personal representatives to minister to the people. They will meet people who have only heard about Jesus. 

Some of these names are pretty standard to us now: Simon Peter, listed first in a nod to his position of leadership among the disciples, and his brother Andrew; John and his brother James, both of whom will become significant leaders in the early church.

                                                                                                                                                              Philip also shows up in all the lists; however, Bartholomew is named in the Synoptic Gospels and in Acts but not in the Gospel according to John. There Philip is followed by Nathanael, who appears to be a friend of Philip if not a relative. Philip goes and finds Nathanael to tell him about Jesus the Messiah (John 1: 43-51). 

When the lists do not agree there are several possible explanations. One, a person could have two names. Nathanael Bartholomew might be like the name Simon Peter. Two, the final list of the 12 may not be settled until the crucifixion, and so a few disciples may yet float in and out of the group. Remember that a replacement had to be found for Judas. 

Thomas, also known as Didymus, ‘the twin’, and Matthew, also known as Levi, show up in one way or the other in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts. Judas Iscariot shows up last in most lists; his surname means ‘from Kerioth’ or perhaps ‘the betrayer’. Thaddaeus appears in Matthew and Mark, but Luke and Acts have instead Judas the son of James. Again, this could be a person with two names, or someone with an aversion to having the same name as the traitor. Some later Greek manuscripts substitute Lebbaus for Thaddaeus, and I don’t know why. 

Finally, our translation, the NRSV, implies that Simon was a Cananaean, which could mean ‘from Cana’ or ‘from Canaan’, but the latter might imply that he is a Gentile, which cannot be the case. It is better to go with the traditional ‘Simon the Zealot’, as written in Luke 6: 15 and Acts 1: 13,  assuming that Cananaean is Aramaic in origin but means the same as the Greek zelotes.   

10: 5-15.  These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not take a road leading to gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan town, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff, for laborers deserve their food. Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. As you enter the house, greet it. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it, but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.

This is a long section, but it is a coherent teaching unit, a full commissioning of the new 12 apostles, at least here in Matthew. In Mark and Luke these same teaching points are scattered in different places. It has been characteristic of Matthew to lump together teachings or healings in one longer section, like this.

The first point here has to do with the schedule or timetable. At the present time, between the coming of the Messiah and his crucifixion, it is necessary to preach repentance to Israel because the Kingdom of God comes first to the Jewish people. They should be ready because this ‘time of refreshing’ was predicted by the prophets. After the resurrection, in the last chapter of Matthew, Jesus re-commissions the apostles to go to all the world, to “make disciples of all nations.” 

The list of tasks for the 12 reflects the teaching and healing practices that Jesus himself performed. That supports the view that the apostles are not to ‘wing it’ on their own, but rather they are ambassadors of Christ. They speak not for themselves but for Jesus, just as an ambassador speaks for the government that sent him or her.

The practices that they are to follow are based on the understanding of hospitality extant in Israel at the time. That is, in First Century Jewish culture, when strangers come to a village, they are welcomed and someone offers them a place to stay. For the visitors to move around would be an insult to the original host, implying that the first host was not hospitable enough. The host was honor-bound to take good care of the guest; thus leaving would shame the host. 

The apostles were to offer a greeting and blessing to the house and household and it should be returned by the host family. 

This customary hospitality is also why the apostles are to pack light for this trip. If they break a sandal, someone will repair it or give them a replacement. If they lose their staff, then someone will give them another one. The apostles are the ‘harvest workers’ that Jesus talked about in 9: 37-38, and workers deserve to be taken care of. On the other hand, this ministry is not a money-making gig, so they are not to take a purse or plan on being paid for their work. They, and we, did not have to pay money for this good news, therefore they, and we, should give it away without charge. This is, of course, quite a contrast to TV preachers who more resemble shopping channel hucksters. 

But, there is the possibility that no one will offer hospitality, that the proper greeting will not be returned, and they will not be welcome. In that case, they are to use the traditional symbol for disengaging from that village; ritually shake the dust off of their sandals and move on. This is the time that has been prophesied for the call to repentance, but if people don’t accept it and take the opportunity to renew their relationship with God, then they have lost their chance and things will not go well with them. 

Notice that Jesus did not tell the disciples to go only where they knew they would be welcomed by people just like them, but rather go everywhere in Galilee, and only leave if they are not welcomed. Just an observation; notice how much understanding the rest of Scripture and customary behavior adds to the interpretation and the application. 

Up to verse 14, this seemed like a rather positive ‘preach the gospel’ and ‘spread the good news’ short-term mission trip. But the possibility that the message and the messengers might be rejected becomes a turning point in this teaching. From verse 14 on, the issue is not how the ministry can be liberating for the people, but rather how the ministry can engender opposition, invite persecution, and even cause divisions in society. 

The reference to Sodom and Gomorrah should be familiar. Remember that God came down to see if what he had heard was true about the evil in those towns. Abraham thought that he was bargaining for the lives of the people there, including his nephew Lot, but God was always one step ahead of him. Remember the time table; the people of Sodom and Gomorrah had their appointed time, but they rejected God’s message and messengers; so they suffered the consequences (Genesis 18 and 19). The point of Jesus’ reference to this story is that the appointed time is now for the people of Galilee, but if some of the villages reject the messengers, they may end up worse than the people of Sodom and Gomorrah in the final judgment. 

We prefer to think about God’s love, and the salvation that God has provided in Jesus Christ, but as the second half of this chapter will remind us, the free gift of salvation is an offer that cuts both ways.