Watching, asking, learning, growing
Ordinary Sunday 15: 12th July, 2009
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
Jesus summoned the twelve and began to send them out. (Mk 6:7)
The gospel today is about the Lord starting to share the load of ministry in this first instance with the twelve. This is a good model. He decides to give them a task and to send them out two by two into the surrounding communities. We are told that they preached the need to turn lives around; they (to use our own language) brought comfort and peace to people who were mentally and spiritually ill and similar healing to the physically ill. This was then an extension of what Jesus himself had been doing. These disciples had been gathered from the first — Peter, James, John, Andrew and the rest — and now against the coming time when Jesus would not be there, they went out.
As I noted in this morning's pew sheet, Amos the prophet in today's first lesson had not made himself at all popular at the royal court. He was advised to take his ministries elsewhere at once if not sooner. His reply was God had taken him away from looking after sheep and trimming sycamore trees for something bigger.
Similarly, the twelve disciples are sent out today by Jesus with a big task in the face of considerable opposition and plain cynicism. Furthermore, they are told just to take the minimum of material things with them, in a venture born of deep faith and trust. They are called to show in this most obvious of ways that they are not depending on their own resources. God is to speak through their example, as even at this earliest stage, the tasks of sharing the Good News are shared and spread out amongst those who have already responded to the call to discipleship. The goal is surely to result in the small groups of people whose lives have been changed for the good by this contact to continue to gather together in prayer and support, where they are.
Because hearing of the Good News is one thing. Coming to be part of a community of faith that lives out this gospel is even bigger. And harder: both for those who are coming fresh and for those already around who are urged to be welcoming and including, always.
From the earliest records, particularly in Luke's Acts of the Apostles, we can see these challenges and tensions; especially relating to the arrival in great numbers of people whose background was not Jewish but Greek. Around the whole Mediterranean basin this was to be the experience, firstly in the synagogues and then beyond in the new congregations left behind by Paul and many others. But always there was the call to live this response to the Good News out in community with others. A very considerable family of the community of faith, first just with ties locally and then with the growing number of similar congregations all over the known world.
I always find it helpful to remember that Paul's letters to the churches in places like Corinth or Ephesus were most unlikely to have been addressed to groups of more than fifty or sixty new Christians. These were followers who were, as often as not no doubt, a very unlikely composite group. So, if it comes to that, are we. Certainly so were the original twelve sent out by Jesus in the gospel for today. But they had each individually responded and already turned their own lives upside down. They had been alongside Jesus for some time — apprentices, watching, asking, learning, growing. These disciples had a remarkable impact. We have record of this both in the Scriptures and in the wider tradition, for example relating to Thomas in south Asia. And Paul was in a class of his own in this regard. Paul was constantly to assure the small and young communities of faith that he was nurturing that they themselves had everything, everything that was necessary, to live and to work and to grow as a community of faith.
And this proves true. Out of a diverse group of individuals can grow a group, a community. Out of disbelief can come faith, out of a lack of direction can come purposeful service. This is the language of covenant, of relationship, of the community of the people of God. The Scriptures are full of this language. For God's people are given grace and strength and help in time of need. Together, not as a collection of individuals, but together: sharing, supporting, encouraging, receiving, even a very small and inconsequential group can be given new heart and strength. They can step out again on that journey which is the way of being God's people, wherever they find themselves. People will look at them, people will look at us, and want to see something of God.
Week by week, the Scripture readings make the point that the lives of believers are to be shaped and expressed, not merely by that which is intellectually expressed in appropriate dogmatic forms that remain in the head, but rather by concrete actions of love. This is about the acceptance and recognition of God in Jesus Christ. This flows into discipleship. This finally reshapes lives. It is in lives shaped in prayer, nurtured in worship and characterised by loving service with a special care for the weak, the vulnerable and the marginalised that we see best exemplified the model that is presented to us by Jesus. Often the priorities lived out by Jesus seemed at odds with the priorities of the world around — an upside down gospel of expectations. But then the ways of the regular world so clearly do not work out, so often.
The great reforming times in the life of the Church, those great upsurges of renewal and reconsidered response to the radical implications of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth have been times of great turbulence and no little distress. We are in such times again. Today's gospel asserts that the best resource is utterly simple and bare. Francis received and lived that same message in his time. In the midst of all of this, there has always remained the never-changing challenge, put before a largely skeptical Church and world, of these fundamental gospel propositions and imperatives of other-regarding service and compassionate care — out of love for the Lord and out of his love for us.
The follower of Christ, any Christian person and any Christian parish, is not free from all trials and troubles, misunderstandings and hurts. But there is a focus, a centre, a heart, that comes from a life lived in the company of God. The gospel declares that we travel this journey in God's company and that we are infinitely the better for it. We know in our hearts that that truth needs to be affirmed and nurtured and cherished, as we like the disciples this morning are sent to live out our tasks and our responsibilities. May we go well.
The Lord be with you.
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