Pentecost VI, Proper 10, Year B
Amos, 7:7-15
Ephesians, 1:1-14
Mark, 6:7-13
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In last week’s gospel, we heard about Jesus offending the community in which he grew up. They wouldn’t listen to him, and he marveled at their unbelief. His ministry appears to be at a standstill. The very next moment, today’s gospel, Jesus is gathering his disciples and then sending them out to preach repentance and to heal. It’s almost as if Jesus is thinking, “Well, I’ve failed. Maybe my disciples can do better.”
The disciples are hardly paragons of faithfulness. Indeed, one of the most prominent themes in S. Mark’s gospel is that the disciples are bumblers, that they don’t understand what Jesus is doing, and that when they do know what they should do, sometimes they don’t obey him. They pledge to follow him. But they fight among themselves about who’s the greatest; they rebuke Jesus and tell him how to conduct his ministry; they lose nerve on the road to Jerusalem and want to turn back; they sleep, instead of pray; and, of course, they abandon Jesus on the cross. Despite their abundant flaws and character deficiencies, Jesus loves them and sends them out in his name.
He tells them that if people do not receive them, if people do not listen to the good news, shake off the dust from your feet. It’s a sign of judgment to them: this is the bed you made; you sleep in it. The disciples’ faithfulness is not in the results, not whether people listen to them, but in their obedience to the task. The outcome, the results do not determine their faithfulness. It’s: did you do your part? We can’t make the decision for another person.
Our part is to deliver the good news, and we deliver the good news in how we live more than in our words. As S. Paul would put it, Do we turn away from trying to get our own way all the time; away from frenzied and joyless attempts at happiness; away from religion as entertainment; away from dissension; away from cutthroat competition; away from all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied desires; away from a brutal temper; away from petty, small-minded pursuits? Instead, we show the good news through things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.1
Today’s gospel shows us essential elements of effective evangelism. Jesus sent the disciples out to do what he had been doing: preaching, teaching, healing. He does not work alone. He enlists every follower, every ordinary Christian, to be part of his mission, to work for his goals. He is not a control freak; he shares the task. He coaches and encourages the disciples, and then he gets out of the way.
At our baptism, we become part of Christ’s royal priesthood. We promise to proclaim by word and example the good news of Jesus and to seek and to serve Christ in all persons. We become Christ’s ministers – everyone of us. I did not become a minister of Christ at my ordination, but at my baptism. Ordination conferred upon me the gift of saying mass, but I was already a full-time minister of Christ. Every Christian is a full-time minister of Christ; that’s our chief responsibility in life. All that we do should serve that primary responsibility.
God gives each of us a vocation, calls each of us to be his minister. We come to church not to receive ministry, not to consume ministry. Rather, church is a place where we find our ministry, where we receive strength and encouragement and inspiration to engage in ministry. It’s where we are reminded of God’s love and trust for us, despite our lack of qualification, despite our short-comings. Jesus really does want us to represent him to other people.
Jesus gets into some of the particulars about how we are to minister and preach repentance and good news. He instructs us to live simply: take no bread, or money, or a second change of clothes. Trust in God who provides. I have found part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount to be enormously comforting to me. Jesus says, “Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on... Consider the birds of the air and lilies of the field... Your heavenly Father knows you need these things. Seek first his Kingdom and all these things shall be yours.” (Mt 6:25-33)
Jesus knows that we are prone to allow a lot of baggage to encumber us. At Friday’s mass, we celebrated S. Bonaventure, one of the great medieval leaders of the Franciscans, who devoted themselves to simplicity of life, who forsook most creature comforts, who took a vow of poverty. Pope Gregory X made Bonaventure a cardinal, and the Pope sent a delegation to present him with a new cardinal’s hat. Medieval communication was unreliable, to say the least, and when the delegation arrived, Bonaventure wasn’t expecting them. Bonaventure told them to hang up the hat. He couldn’t get it at the moment because his hands were wet and greasy. He was doing the dishes.
While the story sounds apocryphal – another sentimental legend, that’s not important. What’s important is the striking imagery of a cardinal doing dishes. It suggests a simplicity of life. The cardinal’s finery, however, juxtaposes poignantly with the simple poverty of Francis – and the command of today’s gospel! Jesus doesn’t associate his ministry with symbols of luxury and honor and princely power.
Now lest we think the hypocrisy of the Church has nothing to do with us, each of us might reflect on how we allow material comfort, physical security, and worldly power to influence us, even to enthrall us. Most of us should know that we are deeply bound to wealth, its illusion of security and independence that leads us away from fully trusting and relying upon God.
Besides directing the disciples to trust God and to live simply, Jesus gives them two essential things for the mission. First, he sends them out in twos. He gives them one another. Mission is done in community. Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there.” (Mt 18:20) Together we take Jesus to the world. We need one another.
Second, Jesus gives the disciples authority. He gives them power over unclean spirits. Unclean spirits are things that divide people, social and religious barriers that prevent us from associating with one another, that make us esteem other people beneath us, or above us. In ancient Israel, the unclean were people with afflictions and illnesses; they were thought to have demons. Jesus accepts these people and calls them back to the human family. For Jesus, there aren’t classes of clean and unclean, worthy and unworthy, sacred and profane. Jesus accepts all, welcomes all, includes all, especially the forgotten and the alienated and the suffering.2
Jesus tells his disciples to cast out the devils that divide and to anoint the sick. In the sacrament of anointing the sick, we are praying for restoration of physical health. Even the last rites, even at death’s door, we pray for physical wholeness and strength. But our prayer is also for a more profound wholeness and strength, for corporate and spiritual healing.
Just before his crucifixion, a woman with an alabaster flask of precious ointment poured it on Jesus. The disciples, as usual, didn’t understand what was happening and objected to her extravagant kindness. They’re indignant: “Why this waste?” Jesus, of course, told them she had done a beautiful thing, preparing his body for burial. But even more, Jesus was grateful for this anointing as encouragement not to give into bitterness, anger, loneliness, despair during the Passion. The anointing told him that he was loved.3
And here we get to what Jesus was telling his disciples as he sent them out to cast out devils and anoint and heal. He’s telling them – he’s telling us – to be his presence with people and to let them know they are loved. Our call to evangelism is not to hand out religious tracts and to make people squirm as we talk about a sentimental or a judgmental Jesus. Our call to evangelism is “to radiate the compassion and love of God. . . in our faces and in our actions.”4
Garry Wills tells a story of his young son waking up with a violent nightmare one night and going to comfort him. Wills writes,
When I asked him what was troubling him, he said that the nun in his school had told the children that they would end up in hell if they sinned. He asked me, “Am I going to hell?” There is not an ounce of heroism in my nature, but I instantly answered what any father would: “All I can say is that if you’re going there, I’m going with you.” If I felt that way about my son, God obviously loves him even more than I do. Perhaps the Incarnation [God becoming man] is just God’s way of saying that, no matter what horrors we face or hells we descend to, he is coming to us.5
God became man because he loves us and wants to be with us, and that’s the reason why Jesus sends you and me out into the world. We are here to bring his presence and love into all things.
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
1 Paraphrase of Galatians 5:19-22 from The Message, NavPress Publishing Group (1993).
2 This paragraph on the ‘unclean’ derived from Garry Wills, What Jesus Meant, Viking (2006), pp. 26-31.
3 Richard Rolheiser, Seeking Spirituality, Hodder & Stoughton (1998), p. 86.
© 2006 Lane John Davenport
