“As you go, make this proclamation:
‘The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.’
This had been the message of Jesus himself since Matthew 4:17. In fact, John the Baptist had been making this proclamation as well as he prepared the way for Jesus (see Matthew 3:2). It came hand and hand with the call to repent, to embrace a new and spiritual way of thinking. But it was not simply a matter of words.
Cure the sick, raise the dead,
cleanse the lepers, drive out demons.
The Kingdom Jesus proclaimed was opposed to the kingdom of darkness. It could not help but oppose the works of darkness as it spread. To this end the spread of the Kingdom demonstrated the authority of the Kingdom's King, who taught with authority and not like one of the scribes (see Matthew 7:29). It was now the Apostles who were invested with this same authority. Those who heard them heard Jesus himself. Those who refused to hear them refused to hear Jesus (see Luke 10:16). This strategy of proclamation with the proof of authority was also used by Paul, who said, "my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power" (see First Corinthians 2:4).
We too are recipients and beneficiaries of the good news of the Kingdom. We too can say that he "has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son" (see Colossians 1:13). Yet, what does this imply, except that there are many in the world still in the grip of darkness, people who very much still need to hear this message, and to see demonstrated in their own lives the power of the Kingdom of God over the works of the kingdom of darkness?
Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.
Do not take gold or silver or copper for your belts;
no sack for the journey, or a second tunic,
or sandals, or walking stick.
Because the message is so necessary the enemy looks for any way he can find to undermine missionaries who might otherwise bring it to the world. We are therefore often tempted to make our mission about what we can get out of it, even if it is just to feel good feelings. Or we may often narrowly constrain the situations in which we will evangelize, making it necessary for those interested to go above and beyond to make themselves available to us, rather than us freely and generously making the good news available to them. When we impose such constraints we ignore the fact that there are many in the world that are desperate for this good news. We should not make them pay some kind of equivalent cost to the comfort or entertainment we may need to sacrifice in order to meet them. In short, we should be generous with the good news, willing to bring it to others, not only to give it if they manage to seek us out in the comfortable hiding places of our routine.
Do not take gold or silver or copper for your belts;
no sack for the journey, or a second tunic,
or sandals, or walking stick.
The laborer deserves his keep.
We are called to trust in God's providence over and above our limited human perspectives, even if he calls us above and beyond what we might consider prudent. If God calls us to undertake a journey it may seem that we are underequipped. But we should be confident that he does not so much call the qualified as he does qualify those whom he calls by his own power. Our question should not be so much 'Can I do this?', as, 'Does God want to do this through me?'.
Whatever town or village you enter, look for a worthy person in it,
and stay there until you leave.
As you enter a house, wish it peace.
Christians are meant to have a peace that transcends understanding that the world can neither give nor take away. We are meant to be filled with the same shalom that Jesus proclaimed to his disciples after his resurrection, a peace that not even death can destroy. This is the gift we have to give, not because of anything we ourselves have done, but purely by grace. True, not every house wishes for this gift. Not every house will receive it. We should be mentally prepared for this, and steel ourselves for the fact that if they rejected Jesus, we haven't much hope for improving on his message. But though he was rejected at times, that did not stop nor even hinder the spread of the Kingdom. Our job is not to know in advance who will accept the message and only give it to those who seem to us to be safe bets. Our role is rather to allow the Spirit to lead us to give people a chance to respond for themselves. This means that we don't necessarily blast the message at those who are not disposed to hear it. But neither should we limit it to only those where success is all but certain. We should be ready to speak whenever someone seems free enough and self-possessed enough to give us a hearing.
if not, let your peace return to you.
We may experience rejection in our attempts to tell others about the good news of Jesus. But we do not have to let this take our peace from us. If we are operate in the peace that is a gift of the Spirit, and not merely the worldly peace based on circumstance, we can receive a renewed burst of that charismatic peace from knowing that we allowed God himself to do what he desired through us.
We are sometimes slow to evangelize because we are not sufficiently grateful for what we ourselves have first received. We fail to remember how dark is the kingdom of darkness and therefore take for granted the light in which we live. Those who do not know Jesus suffer because of the works of darkness and of the evil one and we seldom even notice. Thanksgiving for our own salvation and compassion for others can be powerful motivations to stir us to action. We are, after all, meant to be mirrors of the compassion of Jesus himself.
My heart is overwhelmed,
my pity is stirred.
I will not give vent to my blazing anger,
I will not destroy Ephraim again;
For I am God and not man,
the Holy One present among you;
I will not let the flames consume you.
No comments:
Post a Comment