SENT FORTH

Reflections Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Amos 7:12-15, Ephesians 1:3-14, Mark 6:7-13

Jesus sends forth his disciples with the instruction to take nothing along. If welcomed into a house, they are to stay there; if they are not, they are asked to leave again shaking the dust off their feet. This mission mandate finds its echo in Pope Francis’ repeated call in Evangelii Gaudium (nos20-23) for a missionary Church that goes forth: “In our day Jesus’ command to “go and make disciples” echoes in the changing scenarios and ever new challenges to the Church’s mission of evangelization, and all of us are called to take part in this new missionary going forth” (no20). Sent forth for the mission, the Church follows the footsteps of her master to where he wishes to go today. Today’s readings reveal three dimensions of being sent forth.

1. Sent forth to create Church not clubs: 

Jesus sends his disciples not to create clubs or parties but to sow the seeds of his Church. He does not send them forth to become an exclusive community of elite members with exclusive and absolute access to the Gospel and the Kingdom of God. A Church differs from a club in three ways. While a club’s purpose is to serve its own members, the Church’s sole purpose is to serve God by serving the entire humanity. A club’s modus operandi is decided by majority votes, while the Church operates by discerning God’s will. A club unites people based on their social, economic, and ideological identities while the only identity that unites a Church community is its common belongingness to the Lord.

As a community of disciples gathered by a common identity that is rooted in their master, the disciples are sent forth to discern creative ways of serving God by serving all humanity. Being sent forth means embracing a radical kind of poverty that liberates them from everything that can hold them back or imprison them in an ‘inward-looking’ vision. To go forth without taking anything means to leave our comfort zone and risk following the master. As Pope Francis points out, “I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security. I do not want a Church concerned with being at the centre and which then ends by being caught up in a web of obsessions and procedures” (Evangelii Gaudium (no.49).

2. Sent forth to reach the peripheries: 

Jesus sends forth his disciples to meet those in the geographical, human and existential peripheries. Their mission mandate was to heal the sick, liberate those suffering the oppressive hold of the evil spirits and spread the message of mercy. This mission of reaching the peripheries, quite understandably, involves experiencing the concrete life realities of those in the periphery. Meeting with the marginalised, the disciples are destined to face oppression, inequality, injustice, and violence just as those in the peripheries of our societies do.

The first reading provides a perfect example of this truth. Prophet Amos, as God’s messenger of liberation sent to the peripheries, denounces the economic and social injustices of his time, the abuse of power and the widely prevalent hatred. In the process, he crosses paths with the powers that be, both religious and political and is eventually expelled from Northern Israel. Jesus prepares his disciples for a similar experience of rejection and marginalisation. He warns them that when they are sent forth to the peripheries, they will not meet with an enthusiastic welcome everywhere and always. However, while rejections come their way, they are asked to move on, not to go into hiding but to bravely meet the same challenges elsewhere.

3. Sent forth to become the message: 

Do not take anything for the road, says the Lord! We are not to take anything for the road because the message of the Gospel is not carried in a suitcase filled with prepared speeches, neatly predefined doctrines, or formulated responses to all life’s questions. We are to take nothing with us because the efficiency of our proclamation does not depend on the oratory skills of the messenger but on the radical richness of the message that is proclaimed and the concrete effect it has on the life of the messenger.

Jesus does not send forth his disciples to captivate their audience with flowery apologetic speeches. He does not send forth his disciples to scream dogmas and doctrines into the faces and ears of those we dialogue with. Instead, he sends forth messengers who know the value of the message they carry. By taking nothing with us, we are called to resist the temptation of making idols out of absolute and eternal truths and let the radical newness of the Gospel unfold its richness in the concrete contexts of our mission. The message is the messenger. We are not owners of the Gospel but its servants and committed missionaries.

We are sent forth again to engage in the permanent process of building up the Church, starting from the peripheries, letting the message of the Gospel shine through its messengers.