TWELFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME A

[cappie]

In today’s Gospel, the tail-end of a speech of sorts, Jesus prepares his twelve closest followers for their first mission apart from him. 

You can imagine Jesus on the cusp of sending his twelve naïve disciples when he pauses to equip them with a final spiritual gift: the ability to persevere in the face of resistance. He doesn’t sugarcoat the dangers of the mission; he gives it to them straight: “Some people will welcome the Good News, others won’t. They’ll resist the message and the change that comes with it. And you’ll be the target of their resistance.” Then, he reminds them that our Heavenly Father is both incredibly powerful –pronouncing judgments that yield life or death – and incredibly tender – noticing every sparrow that falls and counting every hair on our heads. By remembering the character and faithfulness of God, the disciples have what they need in order to endure beyond their fear of rejection and violence. As Jeremiah tells us, we must expect that God will challenge our faith in Him, and probe our minds and hearts, to test the depths of our love. “Do not be afraid,” Jesus assures us three times in today’s Gospel.
Jesus’ speech before the sending of his disciples is only one moment of their lifelong process of character formation – one moment in a life full of learning what it means to follow Jesus. Jesus shows the twelve: who they truly are – children of God; what they are capable of when they are aligned with God’s grace – healing others and reconciling communities; and how to hold onto that truth even when the going gets tough – by remembering God’s character, God’s faithfulness, God’s goodness.

It took years of being with Jesus, eating with him, watching him heal others, speaking truth to power, listening to his teachings, and overhearing his prayers for them to become the kind of men – and women, for we know Jesus had women disciples, too – who were willing to lose their lives as martyrs, testifying to God’s peace, in a world still enraptured by powers and principalities. Christian identity and character formation are lifelong processes.

They are to demonstrate what God’s Kingdom looks like, interrupting life-as-they-knew-it with new possibilities for healing, wholeness, truth-telling, and repaired relationships. Earlier in the chapter, Jesus empowered them to do the things Jesus does: cast out demons, heal people with every kind of sickness, teach about God’s ways. It is a small miracle that Jesus trusts them with such spiritual authority so early in their understanding of who he really is. This miracle of Jesus’ confidence in his twelve disciples offers us hope. We, too, struggle to comprehend Jesus’ power and “keep the faith,”   yet we are sent out anyway to proclaim the Good News amid daily life.

As we follow Jesus, as we become more and more devoted disciples, we are shown ever more clearly that true life is to be found along the way of the cross. As we follow Jesus we are enabled to live in the fallen world, without falling victim to it ourselves. As we follow Jesus, we are empowered to be the Church.

In answering our call to be the Church, we are led to see our lives from God’s point of view. From that new point of view, we see that our lives have ultimate worth in Jesus Christ. We are assured that God cares intensely about each of us. We are further assured that God wants each of us to find our way, at last, to complete and intimate union with God, by living faithfully, as Jesus lived faithfully.

By the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, we are called to live with confidence. We are called to walk faithfully, in God’s light, even among the world’s wolves.

We are called to walk faithfully, because the light in which we are walking is the cross of Jesus Christ. That cross, the symbol of the worst the world can do, is our symbol and our ultimate assurance that God has overcome the world 

[BarbTherese]