Mass readings for 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Amos 7.12-15 Psalm 85.8-13 Ephesians 1.3-14 Mark 6.7-13
There’s most definitely a thematic connection among the gospel stories we’ve read and heard in recent weeks: evangelization, mission, the sending forth of the Church into the world that needs to hear the good news. And this is an imperative for Christians, for us; but it’s not driven by an ambition toward worldly success – “look, I’m part of the winning side in history, don’t you want to be a ‘winner’ too.”
No, we shouldn’t think that way, because in the near term, it’s not going to look that way at all, either to us or to those we speak with. The apostles, as they set out two by two, were under no impression that they were “winning” but merely starting on that long road to victory. When my grandfather stepped off a troop ship in England at Christmas 1939, no one had a sense that the Allies were “winning” what we’ve come to know as the Second World War – and as we know, in the following couple of years, the impression was very much that they were losing.
And with respect to the Apostles, at this point in the story, as confident and energized as they were, they weren’t even sure or agreed on what that victory was, what it looked like such that they could understand it. Most of them were still conceiving of humanity’s redemption in terms of Israel’s political revival and independence from Rome. They will eventually grasp what Jesus is about, but that will come only in the light of the resurrection.
But in the meantime, they are given a mandate and a message from Jesus to take on the road: a radical reliance on God’s grace, and the generosity of others; those who respond to the message with gratitude.
They’ve been given a ministry: one of healing, and of exorcism, a reparative ministry for a broken and hurting human society.
So, we have this example of the Apostles to emulate, but how to do this today? How do we call people to repent such that they will listen and respond favorably, not hear and dismiss it as just so much religious nonsense? How do we bring healing and peace of mind to the many who are suffering in these anxious times? The question from many back to us being, “can’t I just take a pill for it?”
Well, as you may detect from my past homilies, I share in the wisdom that as much as things change, they stay the same; and humanity’s situation, the “human condition” has not changed at all. The cycle of social division and despair keeps coming around. Looking at what’s going on in what we’ve come to call Western Civilization, we see the dangerous tendency to regard political opponents as more than that, but as existential threats; violence becomes predictable, in the form of riots, sectarian terrorism, and assassination.
What was once Christendom and the Christian anglosphere, is now a heavily indebted, morally degenerate society that, given the state of many of its major cities, the civitates that are the core of civilization, we are fast losing any semblance of civilization in any proper sense of that word.
This bears resemblance to 2000 years ago in the lands that were once Israel but are now fragmented into several jurisdictions either under Roman administration, or a local puppet ruler. There is the pervasive sense that things aren’t right, they’re getting worse, and whatever it is we’re doing isn’t helping.
All like sheep we’ve gone astray, each in his own way.
Political crises flow from social and economic crises that result from cultural crises, but at the heart of it all is the spiritual crisis. If we haven’t worked out our relationship with the transcendent, with God; and come to understand then who we are and what our vocation is as individual and communities, there will be no light to guide, no signs to follow, no sense of direction, or slightest notion of ultimate destination that makes of our lives a journey rather than a senseless wandering in the wilderness.
We see our leaders rushing about like a lot of wet hens, trying to put out the fires they themselves have set. The drug problem, the decline in family formation and fertility, the loss of industry, and so, meaningful work (we’ve been sold the idea that we don’t need to make things anymore; and the consequence is rapid loss of basic mechanical and manufacturing skills), the lobotomizing of our universities – no longer excited centres of inquiry and discussion, they’ve become stagnant, serving only to indoctrinate naïve youth in an ideology of violent resentment; there’s an overall loss of social cohesion as we grow more sectarian.
These have their analogues in the ancient world of 1st century Judea. The concentration of agricultural land into the hands of a landowning elite discouraged the majority of the populations from achieving anything more than survival from year to year. The scribal schools were dominated by the Pharisees who taught their stultifying take on the Law of Moses and the Hebrew scriptures such that one could only despair at the chance of spiritual redemption for the vast majority of the Jewish community. Roman domination of their economy and politics, and its creeping cultural corruption of the people, how was this to be resisted? The people, the leadership class, divided. We know that violence was something increasingly seen as the answer.
But Jesus’ answer? Go out there, and call the people to repentance, to a turning back to God. That will be the start of it; an end to wandering, and a beginning of a journey to the promised land, the kingdom, the holy mountain, to celebrate at the celestial wedding banquet the journey’s end.
Among the great documents of the Church of recent years is St. John Paul II’s encyclical, Redemptoris Missio – the mission of the Redeemer. It reframed our understanding of mission, and made plain that for the Church there is single missionary situation. That is, missionary work isn’t just done in distant, strange, unexplored lands. When we think of the word “missionary” we need to stop picturing the priest hacking his way through the jungles to bring the good news to head-hunters. We are in mission everywhere and always: in Dundas, in Rome, in the long since evangelized regions of Africa and those of North America. Indeed, I can’t help but regard my Nigerian colleagues who serve in the Hamilton diocese as missionaries to Canada; and so indeed, in a very real sense they are.
But the great value of what John Paul II wrote was in his guidance to us, the “how” of missionary work today among our neighbours, friends and family who’ve turned from God in their anxiety, in their anger, in their fear.
He tells us the first principle of missionary work is witness. John Paul II says, “People today put more trust in witnesses than in teachers, in experience than in teaching, and in life and action than in theories.” (RM 42) And the first form of witness is found in one’s life. Are we living the faith? Are we intentionally Christian in our private life, in our family life, in our working life, in our ecclesial life? So, this isn’t a matter of asking if you’re a “nice person” because, aren’t we all in our own estimation, with some exceptions among the miserable? No, ask, “am I building a relationship with God in Christ through prayer, study of the scripture, receiving of the sacraments?” If a parent, “am I leading my family into this?” At my place of work, “do I exemplify true citizenship in the kingdom by the gestures St. John Paul writes were characteristic of our Lord: “healing and forgiving”? (RM 14)” Ask, “am I actively part of the fellowship of faith by praying with my brothers and sisters in Christ, gaining strength in virtue through life in the Holy Spirit manifest in the assembly of the faithful?”
This is the necessary preparation, foundation, and authenticity we need. And then, of course, we go out into the world with the good news. Unlike political activists though, we’re to be careful about our conversation – don’t fall into a debate that must be won in the moment. We listen, we converse, we try to understand what’s been going on in people’s lives, but more importantly, we listen and so look, for those tattered vestiges of faith found among their doubts, their cobbled-together, jury-rigged personal philosophies, because from these threads and patches we might begin to renew the fabric of their faith, but mind you, not all in one encounter.
This work we have set before us will be felt at times like a long dusty road, with few comforts, but with many a happy experience of the generosity of others even as we encounter hostility as well. And there’s a reason Jesus sent out the Apostle’s in twos; we don’t do this alone. Like the Apostles, who started locally, and looked for lost sheep of Israel first, we are sent to those we’ve lost in recent generations – the nominally Catholic and Christian around us.
We’ve been called to this. And God wouldn’t call us if we weren’t going to be made capable of it by his grace and blessing. The prophet Amos was, as we hear him protest, no prophet – “I’m just a guy, a dresser of sycamore trees. But God told me to stop following the crowd and instead warn them to turn from their destruction.” So, it doesn’t matter if you’re a dry-waller, a dental hygienist… heaven’s my last job before this, I was one of the loathsome creatures known as a political assistant. We’ve stopped following the mindless herd, and are taking a different road, together, with a message of hope, healing and peace.
Amen.