Take Nothing for the Journey

Take Nothing for the Journey

Mk 6: 7 -13

15^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

In today’s Gospel, Mark narrates to us how Jesus sent his disciples on a mission, giving them specific instructions on how they were to conduct themselves during the course of their work as missionaries.  

The Gospel begins with Jesus summoning the twelve. Apparently, as Mark puts it at the end of this reading, Jesus intends to send the twelve off with the objective of preaching repentance, driving out evil spirits and healing the sick and the infirmed. It was to be a mission of mercy and a call to repentance. But before sending them off, Jesus gives them some instructions on how to go about the mission.

First of all, Jesus sends them off two by two. They were not to be alone. Mission is meant to be a collective and not a solitary pursuit. He then instructs them to take nothing for the journey except a walking stick. A walking stick would have instilled in them the idea that the mission was to be a journey, a constant moving from one place to another.

Then Jesus elaborates further his instruction to them to take nothing for the journey; they were to take no food, no sack, no money in their belts.  He even instructs them what to wear; they were to wear sandals but not a second tunic. A tunic was an upper garment that was a common apparel in those days. This meant that they were not to worry about basic and important provisions like food and clothing.  Their focus was to be the mission itself and not so much their personal necessities.

He also gives them instructions regarding their accommodations, saying: “ wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave.” This means that people who welcome them into their homes become collaborators in the mission and become partakers in the work of the disciples.

Jesus also instructs them regarding people who reject them. To this Jesus says: “ Whatever place does not welcome you or listen to you, leave there and shake the dust off your feet in testimony against them.” They were not to waste time staying with people who don’t welcome their message.
“Shaking the dust off the feet” was to become a symbolic gesture of leaving a place that rejected the disciple. At the same time, it was also meant to be a gesture that signaled to the disciple that it was time to "move on." Disciples need not harbor ill feelings against people who have rejected them. There is to be no emotional baggage even for the disciple. 

The work of preaching repentance and of healing and casting out demons is the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. In this reading we see him somehow empowering the disciples to do the same. But more than simply giving and enabling them to do the same work, he also gives them instructions that would help them develop the same mindset as his.
They were to make themselves free from whatever concerns they had  regarding basic provisions. They were to free themselves from whatever emotional baggage the mission may bring. Their ability to do the work of Jesus depended largely on their willingness to subordinate material, physical and even emotional concerns to the task of preaching God’s kingdom.

Jesus himself was to be their example. He did not concern himself over anything; not food, not shelter, not even his clothes; not even the rejection he suffered from his own native place. He was just concerned about preaching the Kingdom, doing the Father’s will. 

The power of the mission lies not in the resources we have but on the sole dependence we have on Jesus who sends us. When Jesus sends us, he empowers us with what we need. He takes care of our provisions. He supports us even in times of rejection and gives us the strength to move on in difficult times.

As Christians, we are all called by Jesus to do his work. We are all called and sent in his name while traveling through life, taking care of our families, encountering different people in all walks of life.

But the work of Jesus in and through us becomes ineffective and weak especially when we refuse to free ourselves from all the concerns that hinder his power working in and through us.

Free yourself from all the baggage that life may bring. Remember Jesus telling us: “ take nothing for the journey.”  Amen.

“ For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. “  - 2 Corinthians 8: 6