Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves;
Christians like to play it safe, keeping themselves surrounded by shepherds and sheep, avoiding the glinting teeth of predators. They don't typically want to upset anyone, much less become the targets of anger and animosity. But Jesus did not envision and Church that would hide in the shadows and only emerge after successful PR campaigns made her sufficiently popular or at lest palatable to society as a whole. Rather, he knew that the Church was always going to be at odds for the world since, "friendship with the world is enmity with God" (see James 4:4). He knew that his disciples would go many places where they would encounter rejection and need to shake the dust from there feet and try again.
so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves.
The point was not to be so naive as to throw themselves into danger. Rather, they were to be as shrewd as possible while remaining their focused on the mission. Their focus was not supposed to be pulled this way and that, but to be simple, meaning singular. This allowed them to ensure that they maintained dove-like innocence even whilst using such prudence as they had to make the best of difficult situations.
Their simplicity was the overriding necessity, since their cunning would not be enough to keep them from courts and synagogues, governors and kings, and wasn't meant to be. They needed their primary concern to be the witness they could offer, rather than staying safe at any cost. Sometimes it was an apparent failure itself that would become their opportunity to witness.
they will hand you ... as a witness before them and the pagans
When we discover that we can't necessarily control the results of the mission we tend to try to at least perfect our message and what we say in situations where we face hostility. If we can at least get that right, we believe, we will accomplish our purpose. But while we clearly are meant to say something, we are not to be the ultimate source of the message. Our words are not primarily to be the result of our own shrewdness so much as they are meant to be given to us by God himself. This is important since, however clever we may be, only God knows the hearts of others and what they most need to hear.
If we want to hear what God is saying in difficult circumstances when his still small voice must compete with the storm of fear and anxiety we should practice beforehand. We ought to regularly set time apart to be with Jesus and to listen to him since he said, "My sheep hear my voice" (see John 10:27). We may protest that we don't hear him often, or clearly, or at all. But how much time do we really spend listening? Even if we have trouble finding that voice during times of prayer we can at least know for sure that we hear it when we read the Scriptures. And this can help us learn what it sounds like so that we may hear and recognize it at other times as well.
How does the voice of the Lord sound? We can do no better in providing a representative sample than this morning's passage from Hosea:
I will heal their defection, says the LORD,
I will love them freely;
for my wrath is turned away from them.
I will be like the dew for Israel:
he shall blossom like the lily;
He shall strike root like the Lebanon cedar,
and put forth his shoots.
Paul Wilbur - Days Of Elijah / Kadosh
No comments:
Post a Comment