15^th Sunday in O.T. (B); July 11, 2021

Am 7:12-15.  Ps 85.  Eph 1:3-15.  Mk 6:7-13

Deacon Jim McFadden

         When college and NFL coaches prepare for the upcoming game, they just don’t wing it, especially if they want to keep their lucrative jobs!  Rather, they develop very specific game-plans, working with their offensive and defensive co-ordinators as they strategize to realize their optimum outcome: a big ‘W’!

            In todays’ Gospel we see something similarly happening as it offers rich detail about Jesus the strategist as he prepares the Twelve Apostles for the missionary work to bring about the Kingdom of God.  As Jesus puts together his “team” and shares with them his game-plan, he will give them a heads-up as to obstacles they will encounter and give them the inspiration they will need to get through the rough stretches as they meet resistance.

            Let’s first look at how Jesus assembled his missionary community.  We hear, “Jesus assembled the Twelve and began to send them out two by two…”

(Mk 6:7a).  Every team is going to have a set number of participants: 5 persons on the basketball court, 9 on the baseball diamond, and 11 on the gridiron.  Jesus chose 12, which is not a random number but harkens back to the Twelve Tribes of Israel, which is to be the light to the world.  O.K., that’s an interesting biblical tidbit, but what relevance does that have for us Christians?  What is the Church, fellow Christians, but the New Israel.  What was Israel’s purpose—it was by its own unity, praise, and love become a magnet to the world.  Israel was meant to be a gathering place for the whole world to encounter the one true God.  That’s the essential marching order, the game-plan if you will, given to the Church to this day.  That’s the significance of Bernini’s colonnades  emanating from St Peter’s Basilica: the Church opens her arms to the world so that people may come into the presence of Christ Jesus.  The Church is the new Twelve, the New Israel, which has the same purpose: by the very compelling power of our love and praise, people will be drawn to the true God.  So, that is our identity—that’s our team colors.

            He sent them out “two by two.”  This small detail reveals a profound truth.  Christianity is inescapably a communitarian religion.  We’re implicated in each other’s lives in a communion of a shared life.  How so?  God himself is a communion of three Persons who distinctly share in one divine nature.  We are made in the image of that communitarian God.  The Church is not a collection of 1.2 billion individuals; rather, it is a mystical Body, a living organism.  Therefore, it is important that the members go out “two by two” and not as individuals.  Ours is not a private, individualized religion; it’s not a private, interior spirituality where I luxuriate in a Me-and-Jesus relationship.  Our Church is always about communion because God is communion!  And, the purpose of the Church, why we exist as the People of God, is to draw the whole world into this divine family.  That’s why it’s so important that they and we go out “two by two.”

            Next, it says that “he gave them authority over unclean spirits”

 (v. 7b).  Christianity is a fighting religion; we are involved in spiritual combat with the forces of darkness and evil.  Look at the gospels, and what we see is a struggle, a fight.  Yes, Jesus is “meek and mild,” but he’s also a warrior.  Is he battling personal sin?  Yes!  Is he up against collective dysfunction and social injustice?  Yes! 

            Jesus, and by extension his Church, is going to do battle, as St. Paul says, with these powers and principalities.  The Church is a fighting Church because whenever we see cruelty, injustice, and corruption, we fight with the weapons of Gospel values.  We sense behind these dysfunctions is a spiritual disorder and we are sent out to battle those dark forces.  And, in the name of Jesus, the Church breaks the power of these evil spirits because “He gave them authority over unclean spirits.”

            Then “He instructed them to take nothing for the journey—no food, no sack, no money in their belts” (v. 8).  What do you need for the journey, for the mission?  You need a keen sense of God being the absolute center of your life.  In a word, you need to bring with you a deep and abiding prayer life, a “full, active, and conscious participation” in the sacraments, a biblical literacy in which you listen to God on a daily basis, and a commitment to Matthew 25 in which you embrace the ‘preferential option for the poor.’

            Moreover, you need a healthy dose of the fear of the Lord, which does not mean that you afraid of God, but you intentionally exercise one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  What this means is that nothing to you is more important than God, that everything in your life centers around Him and is subordinated to your love for God.  Along this line, you need to be equipped with piety, which means you honor God above everything else, that you worship him alone and not some thinly disguised God-substitute as consumerism, self-aggrandizement, hedonistic pleasure, and dominative power, such as militarism. 

            All of these spiritual gifts will enable you to find your true balance; they’ll give you all that you need to know what your life, your mission, is about. 

            Equipped with these gifts, you are ready for mission.  Having received the fire of the Holy Spirit, you are ready to set the world on fire.  Game on!   Amen.