Twenty - second Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

When I was growing up in Montana, we used to observe “Ember Days” which came around four times a year. The name came from from the Latin term Quator tempora, which means “four times”. Each set of Ember Days consisted of a Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, in memory of the betrayal of Judas, the crucifixion of our Lord, and his time in the grave. You were supposed to fast on those days, which meant eating only three meals, and refraining from meat except for one meal on Wednesday and Saturday. You couldn't eat meat on Friday anyway. The winter set was in thanksgiving for the olive harvest, which provided the oils we use in our sacraments. The spring set was in thanksgiving for the flowers, which fed the bees who produced wax for our candles. The summer set celebrated the wheat harvest, which provides the raw material for the bread which becomes Christ's body. The fall set celebrated the grape harvest which provided the material that becomes His precious blood. Catholics began celebrating the ember days before the third century. In the tenth century Pope Gregory VI ordered that they be celebrated throughout the whole church.

But today, if you wanted to know when the ember days were, only the Farmer's Almanac keeps track. You don't find them mentioned in our missalettes or catholic calendars.

What happened? During Vatican II, the church fathers ordered that the Church review its traditions and see whether they were serving the purpose for which they had been instituted. The ember days clearly were not, since no one was observing them anymore, and no one remembered why we observed them. So this age old tradition, older than the Tridentine Mass, was eliminated as a universal practice in the Church.

Our readings this Sunday should be looked at together. We have Moses telling the Israelites, including Jesus, not to add or subtract a single thing to the commandments God that he put before them. One of the reasons to keep the commandments was to show the world the way a great and just nation behaves, a nation that is so close to God that God listens to them? Now although Moses received ten commandments on Mount Sinai, there are many more commandments attributed to Moses in the first five books of the bible. In fact Deuteronomy has several, including one which says that if you come across a bird nesting on her eggs or chicks, you can take the eggs and chicks, but not the mother; and if you do this things will go well and you will have a long life. The rabbis ultimately found 630 separate commandments, and of course the most Orthodox Jews try to keep them all, for no other reason than their belief that they came from God.

So then we get to James, who tells us that the essence of religion is to care for widows and orphans, and keep yourself pure and unstained by the world. So much for 630 commandments. And Jesus, of course, condemns the pharisees for pointing out that Jesus' disciples ate without washing their hands. Some of my grandchildren would be in big trouble.

Like the tradition of the ember days, the traditions the Pharisees were so adamant about, all the purity laws, for example, had lost their original meaning. The ritual washings, the detailed way to keep the sabbath holy, the dietary laws, the laws governing clothing – keeping these laws had become the essence of being Jewish, and you could measure how holy someone was by how well he kept the laws. Saint Paul even bragged about how diligent he had been when he was a Pharisee. But Jesus might have said to the pharisees, “why did Moses give you these laws?” And they would have to answer, “so that through them we would give evidence of our wisdom and intelligence and justice – and closeness to our God? Clearly the traditions of Moses weren't doing that anymore, if they ever did. The laws had become a way to keep the Israelites from interacting with the world; to the extent that you kept them, you became more and more isolated from the people for whom you were to be an example, the people who should have been so impressed that they too would want to follow that God of the Israelites.

Jesus is not against tradition, nor should we be. Jesus himself even uses a traditional mode of argument – to quote a prophet. That would not have been helpful if he had been arguing with Pagans. Jesus in fact, according to John celebrated the Passover with his apostles, and probably the other feasts of the Jewish people. But here he tells us how to look at traditions.

First, where did the tradition come from? Many of the laws attributed to Moses were no longer followed in Jesus' time. If you executed your son for talking back to you, the Romans didn't look kindly on that. If you stoned a blasphemer to death, best do it as part of a crowd, since it was against Roman law, but they couldn't pick one person to blame if a whole crowd was involved. And if your brother died you might not marry his widow so you could raise up children who would be legally those of your brother – again, because in addition to being impractical, monogamy had become the norm in Judaism as well as most of the Roman world. God may have given the laws to Moses, but they had to do with a particular time and place, and were never intended to be forever and ever.

Second, tradition means “handing down”. If the tradition no longer carries the message from generation to generation, it no longer has a purpose. That's the ember days. They were a good idea back when most people lived on farms and most people practiced Catholicism, but for a world wide religion a tradition rooted in western European agriculture didn't mean anything anymore.

Finally, even if traditions are harmless, if they aren't moving their practitioners to the kind of religion James talks about – a religion in which charity toward the poor and abandoned is foremost, and striving in our own lives to overcome our faults and failings and become more like Jesus, then maybe we need to find something else to do with our time, or at least remember how the tradition helps us in these areas. Jesus wants us to look carefully at our traditions – are they helping us or standing in the way of our spiritual journey?

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

John 6:60 – 69

When I was young we never heard about sexual scandals in the clergy. Once in a while a priest would leave the priesthood to get married. The biggest scandal, however, was the alcohol abuse. It wasn't something we talked about openly, but now and then a priest would be sent off to minister to a small hospital or a convent and it was usually blamed on him being unable to drink responsibly.

We are hearing about scandals concerning our Catholic clergy all over the world. Some of the things described in the Pennsylvania grand jury report are so awful that it's hard to believe any human beings are capable of such things, let alone priests. And there is the accusation that bishops and cardinals were asleep at the switch or covered up the crimes of those they supervised, and some were even abusers themselves. And of course with the press and social media the attention of the world is negatively focused on the the Church once again.

There have been many excuses offered as well. Some of the priests were sent to psychiatrists who after a period of time told the bishop that the priest had been cured and could return to ministry. Bishops as well as laity could not believe that priests were capable of such things – it was easier to believe that the children and young people were making things up. And people who were being victimized had no one to turn to – the report covers a time, many years ago, when people still thought that priests were walking saints.

There is a movement now to withhold all or part of one's support for the Church until the guilty parties are drummed out of the priesthood and safeguards are set up so this sort of thing never happens again. There are also people clamoring for an end to the obligation of celibacy – after all, if celibacy is a charism, a gift of God, then it can't very well be an obligatory gift, they say. In the Eastern Rites and Orthodox churches the bishops are selected from mature monks, and the priests are mostly married before they are ordained – in fact, someone who wants to be a priest who is not married is looked at with suspicion.

So what are we, those of us at the Parish level, supposed to think? What are we to do? In the face of this horrible scandal how can we be silent?

The first thing, I think, is to remember that there have been horrible scandals in every generation since the beginning of Christianity. Some were sexual and there were times in the middle ages when priests and bishops and even popes had mistresses And scandalous as well was the way the Church treated Jews and American Indians and many other indigenous people. And yet, even in the midst of the worst of these times, there were great saints; and the same is true today. Those causing the scandals make up a minority, and most priests and bishops are hard-working and holy and take their vows seriously. In the Pensylvania report covering 70 years more than 5000 priests served the Church in the dioceses of the state, while three hundred were accused – not proven, not convicted, but accused. We laity have to protect the good priests and stand up for them. And while what we are hearing is horrible, we need to remember that most of this took place more than forty years ago, and in most of the Church the policies put in place to restore the integrity of the Church are working – and they are being constantly reviewed and updated.

The second point is that we are not Catholics, I hope, because of a priest or a bishop. If our faith depends on someone like that, we can lose the faith just as easily. If we are serious about our Catholicism, we are in the Church because we want to know Christ better; we want to imitate his life and through our relationship with Him, gain eternal happiness. Our Church must survive if it is to continue down through the ages being the Mystical Body of Christ and to be there for the generations to come, including our children and grandchildren. We laity have to redouble our efforts to keep the Church going and growing. Priests and bishops can't do it alone, and in fact it isn't even their job. You and I are supposed to be the light of the world.

The third point is that we have to pray for our Church. When we pray, we are saying good things and asking God for his grace, but when we really pray we are seeking to understand what God wants for me in relationship to what I am praying for. That's why the Lord's prayer is such a great example of prayer; every petition is something God wants for the world and for his people. When we pray it, we align ourselves with God's will and that should be what we seek when we pray for the Church.

We laity are being challenged. How many young men who have considered the priesthood will choose not to become priests because of these scandals? And how will this impact on the moral authority of our bishops, who are charged with teaching not just the Church but the world? . On the parish level we are the Church, and whether Saint Mary's sinks or swims, whether our parish thrives or becomes a relic, is really up to us.

Two thousand years ago after hearing Jesus speak some scandalous words people who had been following Him turned to each other and said, “This is hard to listen to. How can we accept it?” And they went away. And Jesus asked, “Will you also go away?” And Peter spoke up for those who remained and said, as I hope you will say and I will say, “To whom can we go Lord, you have the words of eternal life.”

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

John 6:51 – 58

When I was first ordained I gave a sermon in which I referred to the symbolism of the Eucharist. One of our parishioners decided that I was a heretic and wrote a letter to the bishop, who passed it on to Monsignor Devine, who shared it with me having blocked out the name of the sender. I've had others criticize my sermons since then, but that was devastating. Because I do believe that the Eucharist is the body and blood, soul and divinity of Christ, the place where Jesus is sacramentally present, present in a unique way.

But when we feed on the Eucharist, when we eat his body and drink his blood, we are participating in a symbolic act. Saint Thomas said that if a mouse ate a crumb of the Eucharist, nothing would come of it. The mouse wouldn't go to heaven or hell, wouldn't change a bit except for being a little less hungry, I suppose. And unfortunately, many of us receive the Eucharist something like that mouse. It does not change us.

Today the gospel is a continuation of what we've been hearing for the lasts few weeks. It started with the miracle of the feeding of 5000. The next week we heard Jesus say that he was the bread of life. Last week Jesus insisted that he was the living bread that came down from heaven and those who ate it would never die. Now these passages all use the Greek word for eating. But today is different; when Jesus refers to his body and blood, the word used is more like the way an animal eats. If you've ever watched a hungry dog eating a bowl of dog food, that is the kind of eating Jesus is talking about – chewing, biting, gulping down, paying no attention to table manners.. And although all this talk about eating the flesh of Jesus and drinking his blood sounds very much like Jesus is talking about the Eucharist, I think it's important to listen to exactly what Jesus is saying – because if John's gospel was the only gospel we had, we would not hear anything about the institution of the Eucharist. John is writing his gospel to a Christian community 60 or 70 years after Jesus has been crucified, buried and rose again. John knew about the Eucharist, of course. It was, and still is, the sign of being a Christian. Even the most liberal protestants practice something resembling the Eucharist, and as far as we can tell, all of the early Christians did so as well.

We Catholics believe that the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ; the bread no longer exists as bread, the wine, no longer as wine. I don't know if John believed in transubstantiation because it was quite a while before our Church settled on this explanation of what happens during Mass; but I am sure John believed that the Eucharist became the Body and Blood of Jesus in some way. And that is why he is emphasizing Jesus' words.

The people John is addressing are probably like us. They are going forward to receive the Eucharist, But John notices that things aren't changing. They go back to their daily lives and when it's not Sunday you can't tell a Christian from a pagan; So in this discourse about the Bread of Life, John is telling his readers what all this means – he is talking about the symbolism of Holy Communion. Now don't send any nasty notes to the bishop.

John is saying that our relationship with Jesus, symbolized in the Eucharist, must be like our relationship with food and drink. If we want earthly life, we have to eat and drink, preferably every day. To eat and to drink require action. We have to use our hands and chew and swallow so that the food and drink become part of us. And Jesus is saying that if we want eternal life, our relationship with him is like that – it isn't just a matter of swallowing the host and taking a sip of the precious blood. For a Christian, as Saint Augustine pointed out, we must become what we eat and drink. We have to become Jesus, we have to “Put on” Christ as Saint Paul puts it in another way. We have to desire Jesus like a hungry dog eats a meal, wholeheartedly, with our entire beings, as though it is the most important thing in the world to become another Christ, because it is. And it is then that he will live in us, and we will share his life, which is the life which comes from the Father.

When you look at the saints, and I think we could find saints among our Protestant brothers and sisters as well as the saints of every kind who have been members of our Roman Catholic Church, what they have in common is that deep hunger for Christ, that desire to have him live through them, that need to put themselves in God's hands to do God's work, and this is what they want more than anything else. Billy Graham no less than John Paul II hungered for Christ in this way.

Do you hunger? Do I? Not as much as I would like to, I guess. After almost 76 years on earth, I am less pleased with myself now than I was when I was young. But maybe that's another way of hungering for Christ, to notice and be concerned about the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

And the Eucharist, that action of eating and drinking Christ, is indeed a wonderful gift to us, when Jesus literally becomes our food and drink. But let John the gospel writer remind us that Jesus gives us this sacrament to remind us that our goal as Christians is to become Christ, and the beginning of that process is to desire Jesus as a starving person desires food. Next week we will hear Jesus tell those who remain after hearing his shocking words, “It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail.” So today when you come forward to receive the body and blood of Jesus, remind yourself what it means – may Jesus be my first, my last, and everything in between. .

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

John 6:24 - 35

When I read this Sunday's gospel, I was impressed by how the vast crowd that had just been fed from five loaves and two fish seem to have missed the larger lesson Jesus wanted them to learn. But even when he explains, they continue to be obtuse. They are following him expecting that they won't have to worry about food anymore; He reminds them that there are more important things than food. He tells them that they should do the works of God which he defines as believing in the one who God sent. They suggest he do a sign, and of course it is for more food; God provided manna for their ancestors, why don't you do likewise? And these are the people that just experienced exactly that. Finally Jesus refers to himself as the bread of life. I'm not sure the crowd was any wiser.

But then I thought about Holy Communion, when we receive the bread of life. We don't understand what is going on any more than these people did. Of course we can talk about transubstantiation, the Real Presence; we can have various shades of faith in the teachings of the Church regarding this sacrament. Someone did a study once which showed that even Catholics who go to Communion regularly don't always believe that this is the real body and blood of Christ. And of course most non-practicing Catholics have ceased to believe in any meaningful way, or they wouldn't have stopped coming to Mass.

When I received my first Holy Communion at the age of seven, I'm pretty sure I had no idea what I was doing. The sisters who taught us made sure we knew that this was not just bread; only the priest could touch it with his hands. After the consecration, the priest would go through the rest of the Mass including the distribution of communion with his thumbs and first fingers touching, only to be used to touch the sacred host, until his fingers had been rinsed when the vessels were being purified. For us receiving, we held our hands over our hearts and received on the tongue; and we knew there would be serious consequences if we so much as let the host touch our teeth. I knew in a vague way I was receiving Jesus, but how that could be and why it was important I did not know.

And I'll share a secret with you. I still don't. I see Christians in other denominations who believe the Eucharist is just a symbol, and they still seem to act like Christians. And there are many theories about how Jesus can become bread and wine besides the official theory of transubstantiation. And there are many theologians who have written about why Jesus chose bread and wine, when he could have picked anything else. But that's all they are, theories.

I think it's interesting that those of us who follow Jesus and consider ourselves Christians kind of pick and choose what to follow; who among us turns the other cheek? There are very few Christians, including our priests and bishops, who literally sell all they have and give to the poor and follow him. And all that stuff about how we treat the least of our brethren? I think I fail pretty much on every count. A few bucks to feed to hungry, clothe the naked. … I do visit the sick now and then. I don't think I've ever visited the imprisoned. After all, with more than a billion Christians in the world, there shouldn't be any poverty or war or hunger anymore. Those of us who claim to follow Christ usually don't do it very well, and it clearly doesn't matter wear you are in the church; bishops and archbishops and cardinals as we see in today's headlines, are not necessarily paragons of virtue.

But maybe that's the point. One thing all Christians do in some form or another is celebrate the Eucharist. They may not believe what we believe, but they did hear Jesus say, “Do this in memory of me” and so they do, sometimes daily, sometimes only four times a year. I suspect the apostles didn't understand either; bread becoming Jesus' body? Wine becoming his blood? And then eating it? What did it mean?

Those of us who are Christians should be spending our lives trying to figure out what this means for us. It means that God became human, but more. It means that we become one with each other in space and time, because there is only the one body, the one blood – but much more. It means that we want not only our souls but our bodies to be changed by this miraculous food which we symbolize by receiving it – but much more. It means that in receiving the body and blood of Christ we demonstrate that we want to be one with him – but much more. And we could keep on going, because there is no exhausting this mystery.

Maybe in the end Jesus does not want us to understand; maybe in the end he wants us to approach the sacrament as his first apostles did – wondering what it means, what it means to me, today, now.

In fact, maybe explanations stand as barriers between us and what He wants for us. He said, “This is my body … This is my blood....Do this in memory of me.” He is saying, perhaps, “Spend your lives bringing divinity into the world, making the material world sacred, uncovering the divine in every being, human and otherwise. I want all to be one, as I and my Father are one.”

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

John 6:1-15

If you've ever thought about why the New Testament is so important, especially the gospels, it's because reading and understanding these writings is as close as we can get to the minds of the first Christians – the people who were formed by the preaching of the apostles. When we read the acts of the apostles or the letters of Paul, the basic message keeps coming through – God sent his Son into the world to suffer, die, and rise again, and in so doing, make it possible for those who become part of his people, part of his mystical body, to be with God forever. As the people who had walked with Jesus during his ministry went around preaching this message, they threw in stories about what he had said and what he did. That's only human; we all love to learn more about people in whom we have an interest. And so a large collection of stories existed before even the first gospel was written. When the gospel writers began to set down on paper the story of Jesus, the stories, parables, and even the details would reflect the author's particular take on Jesus – his theology. And we always have to think about who they are writing for, and why. Mark is writing to Christians in Rome who are being persecuted; and his gospel reminds us that Jesus was persecuted, and nobody really understood him during his lifetime. John, writing much later, probably to Christians in Turkey who made up of Jewish exiles and pagan converts, but who are all wondering why Jesus hasn't come again, and some of whom are being tempted to go back to Judaism, wants us to see that Jesus was indeed the Son of God come to earth, the Messiah predicted by the prophets. And that is the background for this story, which is told in different ways by each Gospel writer.

Notice that it begins with Jesus taking pity on the crowd. In those days the Romans were building a great city in Northern Israel, and it takes a lot of food to feed a city. Farmers all over the land were being conscripted to produce this food, leaving very little for their families. Failure to produce meant your land was taken and given to someone else, and that's one of the reasons there is a great crowd following Jesus in the middle of the day – they have no land, they have no work, they have no food.

John has Philip and Andrew both show us readers that feeding this crowd is impossible. Philip refers to mare than half a years' wages, but also the notion that they'd have no place to buy the food if they had the money. John tells us that a little boy offered to share his lunch, a few small barley pancakes and a couple of fish. But John has already given away the plot – Jesus knew what he was going to do.

Jesus tells the crowd to make themselves comfortable. In the Greek he tells them to recline. Now this is significant because people generally reclined to eat at banquet and formal meals. The rest of the time they ate standing or sitting. John also wants us to notice the green grass. John's readers who were familiar with the scriptures would hear an echo of a familiar psalm “The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want, he makes me lie down in green pastures ...”The Jesus does something that the host of a banquet or the father in a formal meal would do – he takes the food and blesses it. If you were at a formal banquet, the next step would be that the servants would serve the people invited to the banquet; if you were having a formal meal at home, like the sabbath meal or Passover, the serving would fall to the mother of the household. John surprises us, thought by telling us that Jesus handed out the food. In the other three gospels, Jesus gives the food to the disciples to distribute. John wants us to notice that Jesus takes the role of the host as well as the role of the servants.

So in this story which we've heard so often, John reminds us that Jesus is the good shepherd. The prophets predicted that there would be a banquet at the coming of the Messiah. Isaish says “And you who have no money come, buy and eat Come, buy wine and milk Without money and without cost.” John shows us that Jesus is the Messiah, who would call his people to be fed, and would be the servant who feeds them as well. And finally, there is the boy who brings the bread and fish. When Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell the story there is no boy. I think John wants to remind us that Jesus will see to it that whatever we do for him, no matter how small, He will use it to build up his kingdom, he will multiply our gift beyond measure.

John's audience, the exiles along the Turkish coast, the ones who were beginning to wonder when the Lord would return, the ones who were finding the new life of being a Christian difficult and perhaps longing a little bit for the old life – John is reminding them that the prophecies have been fulfilled, that Jesus is the promised one, the shepherd, the Messiah, the Lord of the banquet, to servant, and last but not least, the God for whom there is no such thing as scarcity, the God who promises to multiply our gifts beyond measure.

And we should be reminded as well.

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 6:30 - 34

When I was younger than I am now, I took a certain kind of pride in having too much to do. I had a demanding job, but felt that I should also be doing some research. I had a big family, and worried that I wasn't giving enough of my time to each of them. And I worried about other relationships which I had always planned to nurture - - friends from college, for example. In the midst of all this I took up guitar lessons, which I faithfully squeezed in to my day. I'm still this way but not so much. But I always have a vague feeling that I could have done more with my day, with my week, with my year.

Turns out that this attitude is not uncommon, especially among professional people. There just isn't enough time for all the stuff we want to cram into it. But in a way, that attitude is a little perverse. Someone called it an attitude of violence towards time. After all God made enough time, and we are trying to stretch it and squeeze more into it. We are doing violence to time.

The apostles, if you remember from last week, have just returned from their first mission trip. They have been healing and teaching and driving out demons. It must have really been exciting. There is a passage in another gospel that when the disciples return they report to Jesus all that has been going on and Jesus makes a comment which might have a touch of sarcasm in it. He says, “I saw Satan fall like lightening from heaven.” And then we come to today's passage. If I were an apostle, I'd be eager to get out there again, to do more, to wield the power I had been given. I couldn't wait. But Jesus says, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest for a while.” The gospel seems to indicate that they didn't make it, but I suspect this was merely the first of many times that Jesus told them to cool their heels and take it easy for a bit.

Last week we celebrated the feast of Saint Benedict of Nursia, who sort of invented western monasticism. Up till that time there were monks, especially in the eastern half of the empire. Being a monk meant that you spent all your time in prayer, you might wear a hair shirt, you did a lot of fasting – and Benedict started out that way when he organized his first monastery. The monks who followed him were encouraged to out do each other in the penances they took upon themselves. It got so bad that there was a rebellion and somebody gave Benedict a poisoned drink. Legend has it that he made the sign of the cross over it so it didn't actually kill him, but it wasn't too much longer before the band of monks dispersed. After a lot of thought, Benedict wrote a rule, much of which could apply to our lives, in addition to those of monks. The rule is all about balance.

Benedictine monks have as their motto “ora et labora” which means, “prayer and work” Benedict wrote a rule that went back and forth, between prayer and work. Penances were supposed to be light, and assigned by a superior. No more hair shirts, no more self-flagellation. Fasting was moderate, and broken with feast now and then. Benedictines brewed beer and made wine and consumed some of it. . You worked for a while, then you prayed, which meant meditation, contemplation, in addition to verbal and mental prayer.

And I think that's what Jesus is getting at today. He's saying, “there is enough time for God's plan to be carried out. It isn't something that depends on you and I. What is important is that you pause every now and then and think about what has been going on. Where do you find God in what you just accomplished? What lessons have you learned? How has the Holy Spirit spoken to you.? Are there things you should do more of? Less of? If you don't take these pauses, you may be a dynamo and impress all your friends, but you won't make any spiritual progress.

Jesus says, “come away” because we can't contemplate in the middle of the workplace. If nothing else, we have to come away in our minds and put aside the to-do list. He says, “by yourselves” because it goes without saying that we can't hear God's voice unless the other voices are temporarily silenced.

He says, “to a deserted place”. There was a movie a while ago about a woman who set up a spot in her closet where she would go to pray. She had the right idea. We should all have a favorite place to pray – preferably a place we don't use for anything else. Pope John Paul II, Bishop Fulton Sheen, Dorothy Day, Mother Theresa. And countless others made it a point to spend an hour a day in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Unfortunately, I guess, that spot tends to be deserted for most of the day.

He says, “for a while”. What Jesus is recommending is that we deliberately make time to recharge our batteries, but not forget that we have to get back into the world, into the world where we are all called to evangelize, to teach, to heal, to bring the good news of Christ into our workplace.

Jesus himself took his own advice. It seems as though he frequently went off to commune with his Father, and the apostles would have to go looking for him.

So today we are invited by our Lord not to more and more action, but if we don't do so already, to deliberately introduce into our lives a regular time for reflection. Only by alternating action with reflection can we hope to truly progress in our spiritual lives.

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 6:7 – 13

My wife loves to take pictures, especially of grandchildren. She has a digital camera and although she hates computers, she can do all kinds of things with the pictures before printing them out. The other day she painstakingly printed out two pictures she took on our recent trip so that she could bring them over to show our daughter. It suddenly occurred to me that she has a very nice tablet computer, and Amazon lets you put all the pictures you want in the cloud, and this means that you don't have to spend gobs of money on ink for your printer, and you could just download from the cloud when you wanted to show pictures. I realize that for anyone older than I am some of those words don't make sense. But that's not the point. As I was excitedly pointing out the advantages of this approach to my wife, she stopped me and said that I should write down the directions, then she would follow the directions, and we would keep modifying the directions until she could do it without my help. You see, for her, and for many people, it isn't enough to have something explained, nor is it enough to even read the directions. You have to actually do it over and over until it becomes second nature.

That's what is going on in today's gospel. Remember, we are only in the sixth chapter of Mark. So far the apostles have watched as Jesus preached, healed, driven out demons, and in at least one instance, raised the dead. And now it is their turn. The only way they can learn to be what Jesus wants them to be is by imitating him, by going out as he did.

He sends them in pairs, because each can reinforce the other. Jesus would later say, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am”. That's still true today. We make much better missionaries when we have companions. When we are working together in His name, not only is he present, but we draw courage from each other; and we begin to realize the qualities of the other, some good, some bad; but we break out of our own egos.. Jesus knew this, and so do the Jehovah's witnesses and the Mormons and the seventh day Adventists. They go out together, they go out reinforcing each other; and they succeed in now and then winning converts.

He tells them that they can take a walking stick and sandals. Walking stick were used in defense against wild animals and sometimes bandits that you might meet out in the woods. Sandals kept your feet from wearing out on the rocks and stones and thorns. A walking stick could be leaned on, and could help you get over obstacles. Matthew in recounting this same story, has Jesus telling the apostles not to take walking sticks and Luke has Jesus denying them sandals. They have their reasons but we are going to concentrate on Mark. The point Mark is making is that there is nothing wrong with being prudent, using things to help us in our efforts as missionaries.

But sometimes we spend all our time getting ready. A Presbyterian minister I know says that as our country expanded westward, Presbyterian missionaries had to wait till the railroads were bult because they had large collections of books they needed to set up churches in the new territories. But when they would get to these towns, the Methodists were already there. All they needed was a horse a bible. So Jesus, who understands all of this, tells the apostles not to take extra underwear, food, or money, or whatever you carried around in your sack. If he had allowed that, they would have asked, how much money is enough? Or maybe I should take two changes of underwear. But the mission is urgent.

Finally, we have Jesus telling them to depend on the goodness of others as they go – in other words, trust that God will prepare the way. God will make some people well disposed, who will offer hospitality. And when that doesn't happen, just move on.

The apostles went out at Jesus' command and as we learn later, they are elated when they return, because they themselves were getting the hang of being apostles, being sent by Jesus. By doing what he did, they could begin to see results. And that of course is the best way to get someone even more interested in being your disciple, in learning from you.

I think the lesson here is clear, but unfortunately still hard to follow. The steps to be an apostle for Jesus are first of all to be prepared. But that preparation does not need to be a theology degree. However, we should know what we are talking about, and we should be living a life that reflects our Christian beliefs. No one will believe a hypocrite. Second, we should be bold, and here is my particular hang up. I'm not bold. If someone else brings up the topic, I can talk all day about Jesus. But I don't seem to have the courage to just say to someone, even a friend, “I'd like to tell you about the most important person in my life”. Boldness has to be learned, and it is learned by doing what the apostles did – going fourth. And who is to be our companion? We married couples should be natural apostles, and you find a lot of married couples who minister together in some area or other. But most don't. And if you aren't married, it's still great to have a companion in ministry, a dear friend, another person who like you is just about ready to be an apostle, but needs a little push, so you push each other. Finally, we always have to remember that we are part of God's plan, not all of it. Maybe we are to sew the seeds and someone else will harvest; and maybe the seed we try to sew will be rejected. The important thing for an apostle is that the seed be sewn. The rest is up to God.

You can only become an apostle by doing what the apostles did. That's the real school, that's how the first apostles learned their vocation.