I can only imagine the late night conversations that the family of Jesus must have had once he left home and started going all over Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.
With no TV or cell phones, or Twitter or Facebook, the family must have kept up with what Jesus was doing through the reports of others.
“You’re not going to believe this, Mary!”
“Not only is your son Jesus wandering around like a prophet, but several fishermen have taken up with him and they follow him wherever he goes—we heard that he’s casting out demons and healing people in Capernaum.”
“Hey, James, I’m just back from Galilee, and I heard your brother proclaiming in the synagogue that the kingdom of God has drawn near. Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?”
And the women at the well are obsessed by what they’ve seen and heard. A woman reports to a sister of Jesus that she’s seen a man running down the road raving about how Jesus has healed him of leprosy. The gossip around the well is that Jesus is not only healing people but claims to be forgiving their sins as well.
His family worries. Has Jesus gone crazy? Is he getting any rest, does he even have time to eat? They’d better go and check on him.
So in Chapter 3, Mark tells us that the family of Jesus leaves Nazareth and goes to Capernaum to try to restrain Jesus.
Mary, the Jewish mother, says, “Come on home, son. You need some time to calm down and rest. Stay a few days. Let me cook your favorite lentil stew for you. I’ll make some fresh bread. The olive oil has just been pressed—it’s a good time to be home and relax for a while.”
Much to their surprise, Jesus doesn’t welcome his family with open arms. In fact, he says flat out that his true family is made up of people who do the will of God. And he doesn’t let their worry about his “condition” derail his work.
The family gives up and goes back to Nazareth.
Jesus, meanwhile, continues to heal people, and to cast out demons. The family hears that he has mysteriously calmed a storm on the Sea of Galilee, and that he has brought a dead girl back to life.
The whole village is buzzing.
And then, one Sabbath day, Jesus himself shows up in the synagogue in Nazareth, and the villagers get to see and to hear him in person.
And it doesn’t take long for them to decide on what they believe is the truth.
“Where does this man get all this?”
Yep, he’s crazy.
Mark tells us that they took offense at him, this former villager who has deserted his family—not even plying his trade as a craftsman to support his mother.
In fact, the negativity is so powerful that Mark reports that Jesus could do no deed of power there in his hometown, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.
In a culture where people’s lives often depended on the hospitality of others, Jesus found no hospitality at all in Nazareth,
But undeterred, he left, and went about among the other villages teaching.
And not only that, but he began to send out the twelve two by two—and in what the unbelievers must have considered to be the height of arrogance and ego, Jesus gave these twelve disciples authority over unclean spirits.
And is he setting the disciples up for failure, sending them out with no provisions?
One staff, one tunic, a pair of sandals—that’s it.
No money, no bread, no bag to carry the provisions that people might donate to the disciples as they go through the countryside proclaiming that all should repent.
They will have to depend on the hospitality of the people they meet. Hopefully someone will take them in and let them stay while they teach and cast out demons and heal people who are sick.
So what does this gospel have to say to us today?
Jesus said that his family is made up of people who do the will of God. As his present day disciples, we try to do God’s will. In fact, that is the mission statement of St Peter’s, “To do God’s will.”
The temptation for us, though, is to be just as leery of who Jesus is as the villagers were when they heard him speak in the synagogue that day.
We tend to define our Lord in things like a pretty picture in a stained glass window in an air conditioned church, where Jesus gently gathers children in his arms, or we’ve come to think of him as someone who will grant our every wish if we pray hard enough and long enough. We’ve roped him in, calmed him down into a relaxing, hospitable presence who just gently approves of us most of the time, and who instantly forgives us when we goof up.
But if we are his disciples, then we’ve decided to follow someone that the world considered crazy and ended up putting to death.
We’re putting ourselves at risk, because Jesus is not that gentle stained glass God, who never leaves the church building, but the man who expects his disciples to follow the Way that God set out for him, a way of witness, of service, and of healing out in the world.
What does this expectation of Jesus for his disciples require of us? Three things that are essential for discipleship today jump out at me from this passage.
We know, and are reminded again as we see Jesus sending out the disciples two by two that Christian community is necessary for good discipleship. Two disciples together can offer one another encouragement and hospitality even when those two things are in short order otherwise.
In Christian community, we discern together the will of God, hopefully avoiding the trap of taking up a human agenda that co-opts God’s will. And that old cliché is so true—“Two heads are better than one.” Facing risks and unexpected situations is easier together than alone. Jesus made sure that the disciples had companionship in place before he sent them out.
Second, borrowing from Alcoholics Anonymous, Let Go and Let God. The disciples found out that when they set aside their own power, and let God work through them, they really could proclaim the good news, and that God really could cast out demons, and heal the sick through them. God can work through us as well if we are willing to set aside our own need for power and let God’s healing power flow through us.
Third, and one of the most important lessons for us, who live in such a materialistic and self sufficient society is to travel light. We can’t seem to risk leaving home today without taking with us all of our electronic devices and our chargers, and our stash of water, and all of the other particular clothes and shoes our trip might require.
And yet, Jesus sends the disciples out on their mission trip dressed in one tunic, a pair of sandals, and carrying only a staff—just as Moses and Aaron, sent on a mission from God to free the Israelites, went before Pharaoh wearing sandals and carrying only a staff.
The point is that they were not to depend on their own self-sufficiency, but on God. As Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”
When God sends us out, hopefully we trust God enough to go out dependent on God’s grace, rather than our own self-sufficiency.
In our petitions in the prayers for the newly baptized, we ask God “to send them out into the world in witness to your love.” As disciples of Jesus, that is the calling for each and every one of us here today.
So when you leave this place, go out into the world in witness to God’s love. Go with God and with your Christian companions.
Let Go and Let God.
Travel light.
Amen.