NewCreation

Homily for Sunday 15 in Ordinary Time, Year B

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time. And today, St. Mark's Gospel continues straight off from where we left it last Sunday. Last Sunday, if you remember, we were in Jesus' hometown, and his relatives and home's people did not seem to be aware of the gaps which their own storied names should have, let's say, enlightened them with as regards the possibility of a prophet being in their midst. For Miriam, for instance, had not understood Moses's presence as a prophet, and so she had been turned into a leper for a week. Immediately after that incident in the book of Numbers, Moses chooses twelve people, one from each tribe, and sends them out to spy on the land — the land that they're later, under Joshua, going to occupy, the land filled with milk and honey, the promised land. So when Jesus sends out the Twelve, this is very clearly the next moment in the enactment of Moses and Joshua which we're going to be following through the next chunks of Mark's Gospel. Remember, Moses sent the people out to spy. Jesus sends them out to preach and to heal, to preach and to cast out demons. He gives them the authority that he'd already given them in chapter 3 of Mark's Gospel. Here he repeats it. He sends them out to preach repentance and to cast out demons. In other words, this is not the spying — this is a visitation, this is to see if everything's okay in what should now be a promised land living the life that the Lord had wanted to give the Lord's people. That's the question, if you like: what's really going on in the land. So not spies, but people who are going to have to go very, very carefully. And we see that he sends them out two by two. Okay, this is very important, because for any announcement to be made it needed to be backed up by a witness. So they are going as witnesses. They're going to be angels — that's to say, messengers — and they're going to be acting as witnesses, and they're going to be giving a report of what they found. Now the most famous two angels who were going to be witnesses, who were going to give a report of what they found, were the angels sent to visit Sodom. And in fact that's in the background to today's story, as we'll see. So they're going to be making an angelic visitation. And he's asking them in fact to occupy a very angelic position. They're going to be very, very vulnerable. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff. It says here — that's the translation — but in fact the Greek says "except a single staff," except alone a staff. And certainly this is not a walking stick; this is a staff which is a symbol of authority. Moses had, if you remember, a staff; Aaron had a staff; and in fact both of those are being called to mind Here, I wonder whether, if you send out two people with one staff between them – a single staff – this is not actually key to the learning exercise that they have to undergo as preachers. Because they're going to have to work out for themselves, and agree peacefully, who is going to hold the staff and act with authority. But also, if they are set upon by brigands, there's only one staff. So who is going to defend the other? In other words, they're going to have to talk together to work out how not to be in rivalry with each other. I think that's part of the instruction that's going on here. Why do I think that? Because staff in the book of Numbers appears again, and it's Aaron's staff. Because people want to know who is going to be the one who's going to have authority, and so they all want to have a staff. And so the Lord has to say, "Well, okay, you all have a staff, and the one whose staff buds – that's the one who has authority." So Aaron's staff buds, to indicate that Aaron is the real high priest. Just remember that staffs bring with them issues of authority. This is a Mosaic preaching. This is to come to see whether Moses's law is being lived, and how well it's being lived, and to teach the two of them to work out for themselves how to give witness. No bread – they had to be fed by others, they had to be dependent. No bag, no money in their belts. Obviously some sort of oil they must be carrying, because it talks about them anointing people with oil, unless they borrowed oil in the house that they were staying. To wear sandals – so not boots, which were kind of a macho symbol – sandals: these are the vulnerable people's clothing. Not to put on two tunics. In other words, if anybody stole their tunic, they would be left naked. In Matthew's Gospel we have Jesus's instruction on what to do if someone steals your tunic: give him your shirt. In other words, allow yourself to be made vulnerable, because that's the only way that you'll disarm people. So he's asking them to go out and bear witness, preaching repentance and casting out demons. But in order to do that, they have to be in an angelic position – they have to be extremely vulnerable, as were the angels who went to work out what was going on in Sodom. He said to them, "Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place." And there's just a little hint here of the story of Rahab, which happens at the beginning of the book of Joshua. Joshua sends out two people to spy out Jericho, and they come to the house of Rahab, a prostitute – in fact, it may well have been a brothel, an inn run by a lady with a commercial sense, let us say. She receives them well, and then says, "When the invasion comes, please remember me and spare me." And they say to her, "Okay, but you've got to hang a red cord out of your window so that we know that this is your house, and I'll tell everybody not to do that to any of the people you…" want, they've got to stay in your place, they've got to be in your place against the judgment. So the arrival of these two spies, these two angels, these two witnesses, these two visitators, if you like — there's always a little sense that they're going to be vulnerable, and they're not to run away from vulnerability, hopping from one place to another. "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." That is, leave them as you and Lot's family left Sodom. That's the memory here. So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. In other words, they've been sent out to give this message of repentance in preparation for the coming of the kingdom. In other words, get yourselves ready, the great forgiveness, the great new kingdom is coming in. They cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them. What is it that put them in the position of being able to heal and cure? What is it that enabled them to tell the truth? Well, this extreme vulnerability — and that's something which is absolutely emphasized by Jesus in his instructions to them. Please notice this is the first sending out; this is Moses's initial spying out the land. Later, Jesus will enact Joshua and will cross over the sea to the land, and then we'll start having a different kind of visitation. But for the moment this is the pre-visitation. And in the middle of this mission, while they're away, the next chunk of the Gospel — John the Baptist is beheaded. And they then, after the story of John the Baptist and his beheading, come back to meet Jesus after their mission and give the good report of the land. It's after Moses's mission sending them out that Aaron, the high priest, dies, and that they then get ready to go under Joshua's leadership into the Promised Land. Incidentally, amongst the twelve whom Moses chose and sent, only two were faithful. Ten of them were unfaithful and gave terrified reports, saying we shouldn't go there, they're full of giants and things like that. Only two: one was Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and the other was somebody who at that stage was called Hoshea the son of Nun, but whom Moses renamed Joshua the son of Nun. So just as Jesus renamed Cephas to Peter amongst his twelve, Moses had renamed Hoshea as Joshua. And those were the only two who gave a good report. We'll be glad to hear that the Disciples came back giving good report. That's today's little stage. The reading we have from the Book of Amos shows just how difficult this going can be, because there Amos, who's a Judean prophet from Tekoa, is sent into Israel to prophesy, and the establishment doesn't like it at all. They're very upset, they want him to go back. No doubt there were many people for whom what the disciples had to say was challenging, frightening; they wanted them to move on. You don't know how well they were received. You know that in some places they were, in some places they weren't. But the vulnerable messenger only speaks truth in as far as they are vulnerable. This is one of the great secrets of the Gospel. The power of the Gospel is preached in weakness. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.