Do you ever
wonder how the apostles felt? They’d
just come back from their first mission experience without Jesus by their side. It’d been hard, maybe harder than anything
they’d ever known; Jesus has sent them out without provisions, without anything
to keep them warm at night if they couldn’t find someone to take them in,
shabbily dressed, totally dependent on those they went to serve. And he’d warned them: they would encounter rejection,
being ignored, being turned out of town.
And I’m sure they did. But we don’t
actually read about any of that in Mark’s gospel; he just gives us a short
summary of their performance “they preached repentance, drove out many demons,
anointed many sick with oil and cured them.” It had gone great. They must be coming back at once energized and
exuberant with joy at their success, and at the same time completely exhausted.
And emotionally… they’ve probably missed
Jesus. So, when he invites them to come
away with him, just the 13 of them, for an intimate time of rest and refreshment…
that must be a dream come true! It’s the
two key moments of discipleship back to back: doing the work of Jesus, and
enjoying the friendship of Jesus, just wasting time with him.
So, I wonder
how they felt when the crowds came following.
I’m sure at one level, there was some joy, or at least some
satisfaction: other people valued, loved this Jesus as well as they! They were in demand. But, I wonder if there wasn’t some
frustration, or even some jealousy too.
The unpopulated place to which they’d gone for rest, was suddenly full
of people! And Jesus turns. Mark puts it positively, Jesus turns to the
crowd, he pities them, a deep, emotional, from-the-guts, pity, and lets his
pity find its expression in the charity of teaching. But, from the apostles’ point of view, Jesus
turned away.
Now, I’m sure
the apostles loved the people of God, but they loved Jesus too, and they sorely
needed rest. A parent who completely
loves their child can still feel frustrated when awoken in the middle of the
night. A sibling can feel that jealousy
when a much-loved parent seems to neglect the hard-won A-full report card, to
kiss better a grazed knee on a younger sibling.
That’s why we are so lucky to live now: in the aftermath of Jesus’ death
and resurrection, in the age of the Church.
I used to wish I had lived in Palestine in the 30s AD… Roman occupation
and brutal living conditions be damned, what would it have been like to have known
Jesus in the flesh!? It would have been
limited. In the incarnation, God took on
the limits of human flesh, including the limit to only be able to be close to
one thing at a time. As much as Christ
surely wanted that time of intimacy with his closest apostles, he also wanted
to attend to the needs of the crowds. He
was forced to make a choice between ministering to as many people as possible,
or building beautiful friendships in intimacy.
Now, he is
intimately present to us all. God dwells
within us as his Spirit, His Word reaches our ears as the Word is proclaimed, He
hears our prayers, counts every hair on our heads, feeds us with His own body
and blood, and calls us together, that we might together be the Body of
Christ. Intimate presence, universally
available. And when we go out of
ourselves to do the deeds of Christ, we don’t need to wait to come back to him,
because we encounter Him in those we serve just as surely as we encounter him
in our assembly gathered for worship.
Because so much
of what holds us back from the peace we heard of in the second reading, is the
divisions we encounter and erect, that fracture the body of Christ. And, as Ephesians puts it, Christ breaks down
the dividing wall of enmity, the us-and-them that leads to the anxiety of competition,
pride, jealousy, selfishness and shame. That
wall is shattered, it can’t survive the radical love shown on the cross. But, somehow our world hasn’t gotten the
memo. We can look at the big picture,
the divisiveness that pervades politics, where blocking the other side becomes
more important than advancing the common good.
We can look at the way that racism divides, promoting fear, hatred and
alienation, degrading all of us as a people.
We can look at families that can’t forgive and wrongs that aren’t
repented of, that splinter us. We can
look at any tendency in us to divide God’s world, to set the two parts in
competition, and degrade ourselves with pride when we ‘win’ or wallow in
jealousy when we ‘lose.’ The letter to
the Ephesians is talking specifically about division between Jew and Gentile,
but the point runs much deeper than that.
It runs to the sources of our disunity: the fear that breeds it. And it points to the perfect love that casts
out that fear, that erodes any possible reason for pride or jealousy… that
Christ is with us all. That all are immeasurably
beloved. That Christ, enthroned is
splendor, has shown that His love conquers even death, even death at our hands,
and is able to accompany each of us in a brilliant, intimate friendship. That he never turns away from anyone even as
he wraps each of us up in his embrace, and heals.
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