The Twelve Apostles, Greek City Times.

Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits…..      Mark 6:7.

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Last year, a friend of mine, in her 80s, decided to up and move from New York to Delaware to be closer to her family. Well, the stress involved in that was significant. She had so much “stuff” that the project was overwhelming. She almost abandoned the whole exercise! Then we come to today’s gospel, which could be considered as the mirror opposite of all that. Jesus ordered (I think you could say that) his followers “to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick- no food, no sack, no money in their belts. They were, however, to wear sandals but not a second tunic”. Would I be right in saying that that would be a major challenge to everyone reading this? Another friend once commented that the closets in apartments built before, say, 1940 are almost always too small for the “stuff” we accumulate today, being wealthier and living longer. And trimming all that down to manageable proportions for a house move becomes massive. So what is Jesus driving at with this order to his disciples to take essentially nothing with them? At first sight, it seems like an instruction to depend entirely on and to trust in God and, as it were, the generosity of strangers.

Almost certainly it is a repetition of a well known theme based on the idea that the wealth of this world as a massive hindrance to admission to the next. Jesus said that it is very difficult for a rich man to gain eternal happiness, that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God (Matthew 19:24). Hence, it seems, the harder one’s life in this world is (and the way we deal with it), the more likely we will enjoy eternal happiness in the next. Remember also the reflection on the widow’s mite and the story of Lazarus the beggar. The poorer we are, the more we might rely on God. And the converse of that thought is that the more we have of the riches of this world, the less we might have of the thought of who is responsible for all that, and what our responsibility is with what we should do with it. So this warning of the perils of wealth in this world are very close to the heart of Jesus’ message. He had no condemnation of wealth as such in this world, I believe, but he had very much to say about what we must do with it if we have it. 

So today’s gospel seems to be yet another call for self-examination, with a very critical eye to what we do with our money. We must, it seems Jesus is saying, do all we can to help those who are not as fortunate as us, where we can bring health in mind and body (today’s gospel) to the less fortunate through our generosity of those causes that seek to provide them. That might mean a modest decline in the ability we may have to spend on ourselves, but Jesus clearly states that it is worth it; we are all brothers and sisters in the eyes of God.

Anointing the Sick, Ely Cathedral, Cambridgeshire, UK

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