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FIFTEENTH
SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (15th
July 2018)
A
reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark
6:7-13
He
called the twelve and began to send them out two by two,
and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered
them to take nothing for their journey except a staff;
no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear
sandals and not to put on two tunics. He said to them, “Wherever
you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place.
If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear
you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet
as a testimony against them.” So they went out and
proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons,
and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.
OTHER CHRISTS
In
today’s Gospel (Mark 6: 7-13) when Jesus sends the
disciples out two by two, he orders them to take nothing
for their journey – no bread, no bag and no money in
their belts. This ‘no bag’ restriction reminds
me of the instructions for a Ryanair flight – if you
exceed the specified weight, one could be charged steeply
for the extras! But perhaps Jesus is speaking of a heavier
kind of baggage that we need to leave behind if we are going
to follow him – and that heavy bag is fear. The fear
of feeling unqualified, of not being able to perform, of
not knowing what to say or do, fear of being rejected and
the humiliation of failure. We must leave that heavy bag
of fear and ’fly’ free.
To the doorsteps of the people the disciples were to bring
God’s message, it was not their own opinions they were
to air, but God’s truth. Like the prophets of old,
who championed the freedom of God, they always began with
the words, ‘Thus says the Lord…’ so, whoever
receives an effective message, must first receive it from
God and Jesus’ message was that people must repent.
Clearly, that was a disturbing message, because repent, ‘metanoia’ means
to change, to change one’s mind and to fit one’s
actions to that change. One thinks of a minister of the environment
urging us to reduce our carbon emissions so as to avert global
warming. A change of heart, a change of action and that’s
bound to hurt because it involves the realisation that the
way we were living was wrong. It involves a reversal of life
and that is why it is so hard to repent as most of us hate
to be disturbed.
But to the people, the disciples also brought the King’s
mercy, the balm of healing. They brought liberation to poor
demon-possessed men and women, the elimination of evil. From
the beginning Christianity has sought to bring health of
body as well as of soul, not only a hand to lift from moral
wreckage, but also a support to lift from physical pain and
suffering.
Today’s Gospel tells us that the disciples anointed
with oil (olive oil). In the world of Jesus’ day oil
was regarded as a cure-all. The Good Samaritan poured wine
and oil onto the wounds of the mugged victim on the road
from Jerusalem to Jericho. The Greek Dr. Galen wrote of oil
as ‘the best of all for healing diseased bodies’.
And now in the hands of the servants of God, the old cures
acquire a new virtue – the power of God becoming available
in ordinary things like oil and water to enhance the faith
of humanity – the love of God coming to us through
symbols.
By the call and power of God the disciples did what Jesus
had being doing up to this – preaching repentance,
casting out evil spirits and curing sick people. From this
the disciples would have a foretaste of later spirit-filled
days when the mission of Jesus was to become the mission
of the Church. The Second Vatican Council has increased our
awareness that the entire Church, and that’s us, is
now missionary and the work of evangelisation is not the
special reserve of priests and religious. In this battlefield,
the frontline troops are the People of God, the lay faithful.
During the Korean War in the early 1950s a village came under
artillery fire that destroyed a Catholic Church, leaving
an outside statue of Our Lord on a pedestal in smithereens.
A group of American soldiers helped the priest to collect
up the fragments and carefully put the statue together again.
They found all the pieces except for the hands, so they offered
to have a sculptor replace them. But the pastor had another
idea, - ‘Let’s leave it without hands and we’ll
write on the pedestal, the words, ‘FRIEND, LEND ME
YOUR HANDS’.
Kevin
Lyon
Archdeacon of Glendalough
