Month: July 2021

– We are back today in John’s Gospel – actually in the chapter 6 of John’s Gospel and we are going to spend the next four weeks reading from it. I was almost tempted to read the whole thing today, but it’s almost a ten minutes read, so I hope you get a chance to read it at home, it would be really helpful to have the whole thing in mind as you hear those different passages in the coming Sundays.

Interestingly, although we aren’t reading from Mark’s Gospel anymore, we pick up exactly where we left off. If you remember from last week, I told you that in our lectionary we had two short extracts of Mark that left aside what was in the middle – the feeding of the 5000 and Jesus walking on the water. Well, this week, the lectionary comes back to those stories, but we will hear them from John’s point of view.

So why do we have such a thing? Well, as you may remember from our previous study, John is the most developed Gospel of all – it does not only tell stories, it explains stories. And this is certainly very true of this very Chapter. Jesus feeds the 5000, and then the rest of the chapter is dedicated to explain the miracle. In fact, we don’t have “miracles” per se in John’s Gospel. John calls them “signs”, for this very reason that the wonderful deeds Jesus perform are not performed for the show (that’s also true in all the Gospels), moreover, the signs aren’t only an expression of Jesus’s care and compassion – the signs Jesus performs in John’s Gospel have a spiritual significance, and each time John speaks about a “sign”, we will have a long discourse after the sign so we can understand, so we can believe, what’s it’s all about – and that is exactly what happens in this Chapter. Jesus gives the bread to all people to make understand that he himself is the true bread that comes down from heaven.

Our lectionary invites us to spend five weeks on this because, of course, we are a liturgical church, we receive every week the body of Christ – so we want to think deeply about what it means. And it’s especially interesting that we think about it now because this time of pandemic, and the changes in our worship that have occurred because of that, have certainly raised concerns in our minds as we have had to think differently about the way we celebrate communion: receiving “spiritually” rather than “sacramentally”, receiving only the bread, not the wine and so on…We’ll spend more time on that the two last weeks of August, when I would like to really dedicate time the meaning of communion.

For now, we have the story, the “facts”, what happened on that day by the Sea of Tiberias, we’ll come later with John to the spiritual significance. Yet if we want to understand the meaning, we have to be attentive to the story, and so today I would like to point out a few things we really need to notice:

– First thing we need to notice is that the feeding of the 5000 has been reported in all four Gospels, and each time it’s at the center of the Gospel – which gives us a cue that it is a very important passage. Yet John, tells it in a very unique way if we pay attention to the details.

First of all, John places the story close to the feast of the Passover, which is of course this time where the Jews remembered their liberation from Egypt and how they had been fed by the manna sent by God in the wilderness. So we know the story here is not only about material bread.

Then, in John’s story, Jesus takes the initiative of the miracle. If you remember from Mark’s Gospel, each time Jesus does a miracle is when people beg him, fall at his feet. In this case, Jesus asks a question to Philip about how to find bread for the people, when nobody has asked Jesus for food. Besides, in other accounts of the story, people have spent three days listening to Jesus in the wilderness – they would have been really hungry – here people are surrounded by villages and everything happen in the same day, they certainly must have been hungry, yet they were “regular hungry” if you will, not starving, and they would have been able to find food on their way back. They didn’t need a miracle.

So what’s important to notice is that John shows us that Jesus does not act out of compassion in this account of the 5000. It does not mean that Jesus wasn’t compassionate of course, but here it wasn’t his main motive for action.

– So then our question should be, like in a proper investigation: “What was the motive?” Well, we don’t have to look for an answer for very long, we have it in verse 6 of our passage: Jesus asks in order to test Philip, and actually, all the other disciples. And of course, when he does so, he tests us as well, so I would like us to think a bit about that today.

First we have to understand what is a “test”. I guess, for most of us, when we say that a problem, a trial or a temptation in our lives is a “test”, we understand “test” as a student in school, kind of a “pass or fail” thing. We imagine that God wants to see if we are good or bad students, good or bad disciples, good or bad people. Will we overcome the difficulty, or will we be overcome by it? Well, it’s surprising that this kind of thinking is so well spread among Christians because it isn’t what the Scriptures are about. When God “tests” or Jesus “tests”, there is no ready made answer we have to find out, a correct one among all the wrong ones. Rather, tests of faith are opportunities to deepen our relationship with God, to grow and to mature spiritually: There comes a problem, a trial or a temptation in our lives and the level of faith we have seems to not be enough to cope with what’s going on, we have to come closer to God.

In this case, we see that Philip is quickly overcome by the difficulty. A problem shows up – We need to feed all those people says Jesus – Well, there is not enough money to do that replies Philip, so you know, “thanks for bringing that up” but basically there is no way to fix the problem. I guess Philip is a realist, which is not always bad, but from our point of view, we realize he still does not get it. Jesus had turned the water into wine at Cana – and this, Andrew seems to remember. Andrew turns to the boy who can only provides five loaves of barley (the cheapest ones) and two fish. Not very realistic, as he himself notices, but it’s at least something and that gives Jesus a place to start. Instead of renouncing because they don’t have enough, they give what they have and they trust Jesus to take over.

Instead of renouncing because they don’t have enough, they give what they have and they trust Jesus to take over. Well, I think this is very true for all of us. Certainly they are times we feel overwhelmed by a problem or a difficulty, in our personal lives,in the life of our church, when we see what’s going on in the world…

Yet each time, Jesus still ask us if we are:
– willing to help
– willing to share what we have, as individuals but mostly as a community
– willing to give even if we have very little (he does not ask us to give what we don’t have)
– and if we trust him to do something with it.

It may be financial or material resources, it can also be intellectual or spiritual resources, it can be about giving a little bit of our hearts or a little bit of ourselves. He won’t do it without us, but he will use whatever we give him when we give generously. Yet are we willing to help, or are we waiting for God to fix our problems and other people’s problems? Our desire to help is our prayer and our offertory.

So I said that this story is about the Eucharist, right? We have stopped bringing offertory to the altar during this time of pandemic, but it is exactly to this part of the story that it relates: As the young boy, as Andrew, we bring the little we have: the bread, the wine, our money offering, and we expect God to transform them through Jesus. And of course, bread, wine, donations are only what’s visible. The offertory is this time when we are asked to offer ourselves to God in prayer, so God can use us in the same way Jesus used the bread to feed the people. Jesus gives thanks, bless what has been given, and then there is enough for everybody.

So, this is the test: Will we seek for enough faith to be willing to help? Will we seek for enough faith to give the little we have? Will we seek for enough faith to trust God to take over, or, as one theologian puts it: Do we believe that God is big enough for ours problems?

– We’re at the end of our cycle of readings with Mark today (We covered Chapter 3-6). The disciples – it seems – have learned what they had to learn, they have been sent and, in our passage today, they come back from their mission as “Apostles” (If you have noticed the words Mark uses). As their Master, they, too, have performed “mighty deeds” and offered “power words”. They come back to Jesus proud and excited, they have so much to tell him, and it really feels that we have come full circle to a happy ending.

And yet, it is interesting to notice that as the Apostles tell Jesus about all they have said and done, Jesus does not offer a word of congratulations, or even fill them in on their new assignment, but instead, Jesus invites them to rest: “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while”.

It is interesting we hear this passage today, because at first sight it is really not what seems to be the most impressive about Mark’s Chapter 6. Actually the lectionary skips two important episodes: The feeding of the five thousands and Jesus walking on the water. (Yet – fear not – next week we will start a cycle of five weeks on John’s Chapter 6 – a chapter dedicated to the meaning of the bread as the body of Christ, so we will have many occasions to reflect on this). But for now, we are, as the Apostles, invited to leave the extraordinary to sit in the ordinary, and maybe, with them, to go to a deserted place.

So I would like to spend a little time with you to try to understand what it means and how it is relevant for us as well.

It’s important to notice, I think, that Jesus is talking about a certain kind of rest. I have read many commentaries about this passage and was surprised to notice that, most of the time, the authors of those commentaries mentioned the need of balancing work and play, job and family life, ministry and leisure. I am not saying that those things aren’t important, but to me, this is not what the Gospel is about. Jesus does not tell the Apostles to take a nap, attend a party, or even to go home to their families, rather Jesus invites them to “go away in a deserted place all by themselves”. As often in the Bible, activity is followed by a time of “rest” (Think about the story of the 7 days of creation), where “rest” is understood as “sabbath”, a time dedicated to God exclusively. In the Bible, activity, creation, is always followed by sanctification.

There are three things I would like to notice about that:

– The passage underscores the importance of prayer in our daily lives and also in our ministry. As I have mentioned many times, in Mark’s Gospel, there is always something going on. We see today that the crowd never let go of Jesus and of the Apostles. There is always something to do, always a need for healing, teaching, feeding. And for the Apostles – as for us in the church, or when we strive to follow Jesus in our daily lives – we may very well get caught in this never ending cycle of demands and needs, thinking it’s our call to do it all, to answer it all, to care of it all. And yet, Jesus is very clear today that the work is not complete without the time of rest. Rest is not there to balance ministry, rest is an essential part of ministry as it sanctifies and offers to God our activities. Jesus himself used to retreat on his own for prayer time and examination. This is the heart of ministry.

So of course today, we could wonder what part of our days we dedicate to prayer. I assume it would be a mistake to add it as “another thing to do”, rather, it’s indeed a time of “rest” – not a nap – but a “rest” as to “put back everything into God’s hands” – sanctifying the work we have done and offering the work that is to come.

– The second thing I notice, is that, as the disciples rest, Jesus takes over. He notices that the crowd is following in great distress and so, Mark tells us, he starts teaching them – only Jesus. The Apostles have disappeared. To me, it speaks to us as well that we are only followers and sent ones. In the end, we are reminded that whatever “mighty deed” we perform, whatever “powerful words” we may pronounce, it’s in the end Christ who works in the hearts, bodies and souls of the people. Resting is offering up our work to God and also letting go of it. Not clinging to our ministries and activities but “allowing”, if you will, God to use what we have said and done. The Apostles are not meant to be “clones” of Christ – they are meant to point to Christ. In this way, when they retire to a deserted place – they do what’s expected of them – They have, at some point, to get out of the way to let God act.

In the same manner, I wonder how it is for us, if we think that God expects us to do it all, or if we may come to this awareness that not only we need to let go because we certainly cannot do it all, but we are even expected to let go for our ministry to work out. Letting go does not mean letting down or not caring, it means not clinging to it, not assuming we have to do it all and all by ourselves. We have to trust God to finish the work we have started.

– Third remark: When Jesus invites the Apostles to go to a deserted place all by themselves, I think he does not speak only a bout a physical place. Rather it’s an emotional, spiritual place. We see that when they come back from their mission, the Apostles are very proud, and excited – and I think it’s a good thing they feel happy about it. Yet, there is also a warning in Jesus’s words. There is a thin line we have to walk when we have a full schedule, because we risk to become full of ourselves as well. Jesus invites his friends to reconnect with their poverty, their own neediness, to reconnect with God and to reconnect with themselves (“go by yourselves”). They, themselves, are in need of healing, are in need of grace, are in need of God. Sometimes we can also get lost in serving others. We may end up thinking we don’t need God anymore, or that there is nothing broken in us that needs attention.

So, do we dedicate time for our own healing? Are we able to sit with this emptiness we may find when we are alone – and how do we invite God in this? How can we do ministry if we carry with ourselves our own insecurities in everything we do? But are we ready to face our own brokenness and do we allow God to step into it?

I think it’s very interesting that Mark notices – again – that all those who touched the fringe of Jesus’s cloak were healed – We have talked about that a few weeks earlier with the story of the bleeding woman. To me, it does not mean that people thought Jesus was magic – well, maybe they did – but, deeper, in Mark’s words it means that people were at Jesus’s feet (Re-read our three chapters, and you will be surprised to realize how many people fall at Jesus’s feet). It’s an act of trust, abandon and humility. People are healed because they are humble in front of Christ. It looks like the Apostles are heading the wrong way when they come back to Jesus to boast about all they have done. Jesus gently invites them to reconnect with this humble attitude – and so are we. If you remember from our last sermon series, Jesus says in John’s: “Without me, you can do nothing”

– And now, I would like to finish on a question we have explored in this cycle of Mark and I told you it was Mark’s main question: Who is Jesus?

Well, isn’t it interesting, as we first glance at this text, that it seems there is no answer to this question? We have mentioned Jesus is first presented as a teacher and the healer, but then, as we dig deeper, we understand that he is the savior, the servant, the suffering one and the risen one, but what to make of this passage? Are we back to our starting point, Jesus teacher and healer and should we leave aside all we have learned going further? Well, I think Mark is still telling us who Jesus is, but instead of telling us who is Jesus by showing us what Jesus does, Mark gives us a peek into Jesus’s heart. Mark shows us a little bit of Jesus’s heart. And he says that Jesus had compassion, and we understand that this compassion is at the root of all he does for the people. Now maybe it’s a little less, or maybe it’s much more than what we expected. To me, it says that, much more than a teacher, a healer, and even a savior, Jesus is the one who has compassion. And if you notice, the crowd knows. Mark mentions that they recognized him. The Apostles still aren’t sure who is this Jesus because they try to fit him in a category (Prophet? Messiah? Son of David? Son of God?), but the crowd knows Jesus is the one who loves them with a compassionate love. And so he loves us with this kind of love, and that’s how we are invited to discover who he is – should we take the time to rest in him, naturally…

This week again, we follow the thread in Mark’s Gospel about Jesus’s identity. As I’ve mentioned several times before, the Gospel keeps on asking who is Jesus and it seems to be digging deeper each time. We have seen that Mark presents Jesus as a teacher and a healer, then shows us that Jesus is actually a savior (the resurrection of Jairus’ daughter, the calming of the storm) and then Mark narrows down the question to find out what kind of savior Jesus is. Last week passage was about demonstrating that Jesus wasn’t a rescuer – as he expects openness and collaboration in his ministry (see last sermon). And today, we are heading even more closer the cross – Jesus is a savior, and not a rescuer, and rather a “suffering servant” as John the Baptist was.

– This long and detailed story about John the Baptist seems to be interrupting the narrative flow about Jesus’s ministry, and yet it gives us important cues to understand what’s coming next. This story does not mention Jesus, or the disciples and yet we see the point. It is, if you will, a little bit like the story of Esther in the Old Testament. Not only because Herod offers to Herodias’ daughter “half of his kingdom” as did the King for Esther – an explicit reference – but also because the Book of Esther never mentions God, although we understand it is all about God. In the same way, we have to understand that if the story never mentions Jesus, it is all about Jesus.

So it looks like a “moralistic” story, and at some level it is, but if we look more deeply, it is also theological story – a story about Jesus.

First of all – what is it with this story as a moralistic story?

Well, I think we can comfortably say that it isn’t moralistic in a traditional sense because in the end, the evil ones aren’t punished. Rather, they win and the holy man loses. Yet, their victory probably does not sound good to any of us. So it’s this kind of story that, instead of telling us directly that something is right or that something is wrong, it’s the kind of story that provides a moral teaching by showing us a situation, handing us a mirror in which we can look at ourselves and question our own lives.

So how can we see ourselves through the lens of this story?

– Well, first of all, Herod is presented as a complex character instead of being just singled out as a “bad guy”. He is first of all conflicted. He likes John actually, he likes his teaching, and maybe there was some kind of religiosity in Herod: He was a Jew, he knew the Torah, he probably had admiration and respect for the prophets. We understand his desire to be good or even to be close to God – certainly because we also have this desire inside of us. Yet we quickly discover that, for Herod as it is for us, doing the right thing is uncomfortable. To really “hear John” instead of just listening to him, Herod would have to separate from his wife – but it was no easy. It’s not sure that he was insanely in love with her, rather it looks like she was a dominating person and he was under his influence.

To me, we can certainly relate to this very human side of Herod. Like him, we may like to hear about justice and righteousness and God’s will, but of course when it comes to put it in action it’s rather uncomfortable, mostly because doing the right thing is likely to displease people we would like to have on our side. And it’s something that is easy to forget when we preach love and the love of neighbor: We have a tendency to think that it means we should make everyone happy. But we see in the story that it is hardly the case, and that, in order to do the right thing, Herod should have taken the risk to displease his wife and his hosts.

More deeply, the story mentions that Herod had John killed “out of regard for his hosts”, but also “out of regard for his oath”, and I think it’s even more interesting. It looks like honoring an oath is the right thing to do, correct? Yet in this case, do you think that Herod should have honored his oath? No, we understand that he should have acknowledged in front of everyone that it was not a good idea to offer Herodias’ daughter whatever she wanted. I find it interesting because we see that, contrarily to what we often assume, leading a moral life is not just about following rules or sticking to some principles. Rules are there to guide us, but they should not be an excuse to do something awful! We have to use our own judgment all the time to do the best thing in any given circumstance.

But then the story asks another question: how do we use our judgment? Certainly there are situations where our judgment is impaired – and this is exactly what happens to Herod here. He is surrounded by the wrong persons, everybody is getting drunk and excited, included himself. It is to be noticed that the story does not seem to condemn the party itself, or even the drinking, or the sexual attraction Herod experiences, but it shows us that this context leads him to make bad decisions. I think this is certainly something we can relate to. If we want to make moral decisions, we have to remove ourselves from situations we know can impair our judgment. It may be different for each one of us. Many situations in themselves aren’t sinful or that sinful, but they can lead to sin because we are weak.

To me, this is really the point the story makes about Herod’s character – he is not a bad guy, but he is weak, makes bad decisions, and since he is the king, his bad decisions have terrible consequences. The story shows us that we need to be aware of our own weaknesses so they don’t take control of our lives. If you think about it, all Herod had to do was to say no…to declare that he promised more than he could afford, that John was off limits. But he doesn’t do that because he does not want to look stupid. How often do we do the same? We do something stupid and to hide the fact that we have done something stupid, we do something even more stupid? Leading a moral life requires humility and the ability to acknowledge that we need to change and to change our minds.

In this we find ourselves at the frontier between morality and theology because we see in action what it is to “repent” – the very thing John was teaching and Jesus taught after him. Change your minds from what you are currently doing to follow God’s righteousness. Herod incarnates the tragedy of not being able to repent, to turn back to God. Herod gets caught in a situation where he ends up having no choice (He was “greatly perplexed” actually means “He didn’t know where to turn). And so in the end John the Baptist loses his life, but Herod loses his soul. This story is a scary story, to say the least.

– Now a few words about the theological aspect of the story.

First, we talked about Jesus’ “mighty deeds” and “powerful words” in Mark’s Gospel and in this sermon series, but our theme is also a “rising opposition”, and the story shows us where the Gospel is heading. John appeared first, opening the way, but he is also the first to leave, and we can guess that’s the way things are going to be for Jesus too. Jesus is a savior, but also a suffering servant. He does not promise victory in this world, he just calls people to do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing as did John. John was willing to speak truth to power, just because it was what he had to do, even at the cost of his life. The scene of John’s burial is very powerful to me. There is a poverty and a vulnerability in doing the right thing, not knowing what the consequences will be – it includes John, his disciples, but it will also includes Jesus himself.

Yet – and this will be my conclusion – in all of this there is a promise of a Resurrection, oddly spoken by the mouth of Herod himself, who fears that Jesus is “John raised from the dead”. Jesus is not John reincarnated (that would be impossible since they are the same age), but it is the same spirit of truth working in him. It is scary to Herod because he fears judgment and condemnation for what he has done, yet there would have been for him another chance for repentance – even when all seemed said and done. We know that Herod didn’t take this opportunity to repent and that, a few years later, when faced with Jesus he will also let Jesus be put to death. Herod had sealed his fate. The evil ones win and the holy man loses, but only in this realm. Jesus’s story is not complete if we don’t look all the way towards the Resurrection.

– Our Gospel today continues right after the passage we have heard last week, after the Resurrection of Jairus’ daughter (“Jesus left the place” = Jairus’ house). And you would expect that people would be very excited with Jesus after the mighty deeds he performed, healing a woman who had been sick for 12 years, raising back to life a little girl – and yet today we come across one of those passages where Jesus is harshly rejected (and it happens many times in the Gospels).

Of course, we know that Jesus was rejected by religious leaders – and we can, to some extend, understand that. Jesus did not always go “by the book” (The Torah/ God’s Law), or at least Jesus did not understand it in the way it was often taught at the time. So Jesus threatened some of the religious authorities’ power. Yet what we see today is a bit more surprising: Jesus was also misunderstood by his people (He finds himself in his home town), simple folks who don’t have positions to be protective of. In this, Mark comes back to a theme already developed in Chap 3 when Jesus’s family goes out to look for him because he has “gone out of his mind”, according to their own words. Here, things get worse though: Not only is Jesus misunderstood, he is also rejected and put down. Indeed, calling Jesus “The son of Mary” could be a way of saying that they don’t know who is father is. At the very best people wonder aloud who does Jesus think he is.

And actually, maybe that’s what Mark wants us to think about too: Who is Jesus? And I think I’ve already mentioned that this question is actually the thread throughout his Gospel. We have noticed that as we progress in the Gospel, Jesus is increasingly presented not only as a teacher and a healer, but also as a savior. In Chap 4 and 5 in Mark, Jesus saves people from the hostility of nature (by calming the storm), from the power of the demons (exorcised the Gerasene man) and he saves a woman and a girl from the power of disease and death (what we read last week).

And yet, as we see today, Jesus is rejected. If you think about it, it does not make sense, right? Why would people reject a Savior? I am currently reading a book that was released last year, a book by Barrie Wilson and it talks about the quest of a Messiah. The author notices that we all have a longing for a savior, not only in religion, but also in pop culture (Superheroes). When I read this passage of Mark, I wonder though. Do people really want a Savior? Or is it that they don’t want the kind of Savior Jesus was? And maybe this is the question Mark invites us to explore today: What kind of Savior was Jesus?

Well to me, the thing is, in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is presented as a Savior, but he isn’t a rescuer. Yes, he helps those who cannot help themselves, yet contrarily to most of our superheroes, Jesus doesn’t just save little girls and people from accidents and then goes back to his cave! Jesus expects openness to his teachings, readiness to put them in practice and Jesus expects collaboration in his ministry. We saw last week that Jesus couldn’t do miracles when people didn’t take him seriously – he had to drive them out of the house – Today Mark says plainly: “Jesus could not do any deed of power there”. Jesus does not save people in spite of themselves, does not impose himself to people, he does not do it without us even if his grace is offered to all. We saw how Mark invites us to make ourselves vulnerable to Jesus, but Jesus made himself vulnerable too, and he paid the price.

– So why would people reject Jesus, if really we are all longing for a Savior? People who don’t compete with Jesus’s power but are from his village, and his family?
Maybe they didn’t like his fame – it can be annoying to have a childhood friend or a former classmate who makes it when we don’t.
Maybe they were jealous of his closeness to God – Why would God have picked him over them?
But maybe what was really “offending” them, as Mark puts it, was Jesus’ teaching.

According to Mark, Jesus’s teaching and preaching was all about repenting and changing. Obviously, these people didn’t like it that Jesus has changed, and they didn’t want to change either.

– To me, this is what we find in this passage is that Mark made the point that Jesus was a Savior, but he is the type of Savior people don’t want, even if he is the Savior we need. We want a Savior who can fix things when things go wrong, and I guess everybody could agree with that, but are we ready to welcome a Savior who show us that we have to acknowledge our shortcomings, change and amend our lives?

And so when Mark says that Jesus could no do any deed of power there…except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them”, we have to understand that, mostly, what Jesus was prevented to do was not in his healing ministry, rather he could not, or would not, change people’s mind about him. Jesus cannot repent for them. It is their decision to make to “repent”, to turn back to God.

– And so, what about us? Is wisdom or faith or holiness something we are really looking for, or do we cling to our habits and old patterns as long as we’re doing okay?

Are we using our relationship with God to control outcomes in our lives, or are we looking for real closeness with God and let God save us from hurting ourselves, our neighbors, non human creatures and our planet – because this is really what we need to be saved from?

Again, we see in Mark’s that familiarity with Jesus leads to domestication. People’s closeness to Jesus prevents them from taking him seriously. They think they know him but they don’t. For us as well, sometimes our closeness (as Christians) is a way to keep him at a distance – we think we know what Jesus is about and we don’t let him surprise us or lead us to change. We see that often in the Mark’s Gospel – and that’s the case today, Jesus marvels the faith of people who don’t know him, and is amazed at the faith of those who knows him – a serious warning for us!

– Now to the second part of our Gospel today. We see that Jesus does not ask only for welcome and openness, but also for collaboration in ministry. Jesus is not this kind of rescuer who wants to do it all by himself. He wants his disciples to “graduate” and to be able to do what he does! It’s the second time in Mark’s Gospel that we hear that Jesus sends out his disciples. As I’ve mentioned before, they learn by doing, but also they are supposed to share what they have learn – and I guess this passage asks questions more specifically to us as a church.

The disciples are appointed for a mission. Jesus picked his disciples so he could send them out to make Jesus known and make a difference in the world, Jesus did not pick his disciples so they could have a nice time together. As we rejoice today to be finally “back home” in the sanctuary, let’s remember that the church is “an institution that does not exist for the benefit of its members”. We have to keep on wondering where is Jesus sending us today, to whom, and for what purpose – this is what church is about. Of course we need to come to the sanctuary to receive the teaching and the sacraments, but our real work as Christians starts on Monday morning, in the midst of our daily activities and in our encounters with others.

– The last part of our Gospel today respond to the question on how we are to carry this mission. Jesus asks his disciples to take with them the minimum – and to me it says two things, materially and spiritually.

Materially: There is actually very little the disciples need, and what they need will be mostly provided by the generosity of strangers and/or God’s providence. They have to remember that the most important is to share the message. What about us today? In our churches, we can focus on many details about leadership, organization, communication and so on…Yet we need to have this question in minds: How does it serve the Gospel? Maybe we don’t need as much “stuff” as we think we do.

The advice Jesus gives is mostly spiritual though: Jesus does not want his disciples to get stuck. He tells them to move on when they encounter rejection. As so the question for us could be as well: Where is it that we lose our time and our energy, and where do we have to re-focus our mission? Where is it that we are needed, heard, welcome and how could we focus on those areas of ministry?