This passage in Mark concerns Jesus sending the twelve on their first mission to spread the Good News of the Kingdom of God. He gives them specific instructions about their missionary duties. As he sends them, two by two, he gives them authority over the unclean spirits. We are told at the end of this passage, “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” (vs. 12-13). This is a topic for another time.
The message to repent and the casting out of demons are the ends, or the goals of their mission. But for this reflection, we want to look at the means Jesus gives for how they are to carry out their mission, that is, the instructions that Jesus gives to each pair of the twelve. We must always keep in mind that the Gospel is a living word; these instructions are directed not just to the twelve then, but to us now. “He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff (walking stick); no food, no sack, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics…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” (vs. 8-11).
These are very specific instructions, and may seem rather strange to us, but they have a very real purpose. They have to do with the attitude that we are to have as we go about the mission that Jesus has sent all of his followers to carry out. We are to put our trust for success in God alone. It will be the power of God’s grace working through us that will bring about repentance, not our power or those of the material world. We are to keep our eyes on God, not on worldly concerns. We are to carry nothing with us but our love and our faith in the One who sends us. Those who come to know and believe in Jesus Christ will know his peace. Those who refuse to hear or who reject the Good News will not.
I learned the wisdom of traveling light four years ago as a pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago in Spain. The heavy backpack I took with me got lighter and lighter as I continued along the 500-mile-long journey. It was too heavy. I quickly began to ‘let go’ of excess clothing I had packed. I cut down to one pair of shoes, and dumped other items, large and small, that I found I didn’t really need. I cut everything down to the basics. By letting go of those ‘things,’ I found I was no longer focused on the pain of the heavy pack on my shoulders. My focus turned toward the beauty that surrounded me and toward the ongoing, interior dialogue God was having with me as the miles went by. Though the walk was long and often difficult, it became a true ‘pilgrimage’, a journey where I became more intimately aware of the fact that God was not only with me but all around me, in nature, and in all of the people I met along the way. When God became my focus, all else fell peacefully into place.
As Christians, called by Jesus to share the Good News, we must first let go of the “baggage” of material, worldly concerns, and of any ‘spiritual baggage’ like guilt for past sins by casting them upon the infinite mercy of our God. God will do the rest. This is what Jesus meant when he told the twelve to take nothing with them but their love and their childlike trust in God. If we truly believe in Jesus Christ and let go of all other distractions, it will show in our demeanor toward others, in how we speak to them and treat them with our words and our deeds. Through our demonstrable love for God and our neighbor, God will work his grace and bring others to desire to know what we know and believe, for they will see our joy through our love in action.
The psalmist gives us the focus and the attitude that we are to cultivate as missionary disciples of Jesus. “How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, God of hosts. My soul is longing and yearning, is yearning for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my soul ring out their joy to God, the living God. They are happy, whose strength is in you, in whose hearts are the roads to Zion. As they go through the bitter valley, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rain covers it with blessings. They walk with ever-growing strength; they will see God in Zion. One day within your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. For the Lord God is a rampart, a shield; he will give us his favor and glory. The Lord will not refuse any good to those who walk without blame” (Ps. 84: 2-3, 6-8, 11-12).
We walk a desert road to the Promised Land. Called and sent by Jesus, we pray that he will give us the graces we need to rise up onto our feet to begin walking in his way this day and all those yet to come, and to not grow weary as we go forward on our difficult yet marvelous journey in his name. Amen.
More to Explore
SKM: below-content placeholderWhizzco for FHB