The Sánchez Archives FIFTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Year B

By
Patricia Datchuck Sánchez

Missionary Mettle

AMOS 7:12-15
EPHESIANS 1:3-14
MARK 6:7-13

In order to evaluate a prospective missionary, a pastor performed the following test. At 3:00 A.M. the candidate was summoned to his office for a selective interview; there she waited until 8:00 AM when the examiner arrived. “Let us begin,” said the examiner. Please spell dog. “D-O-G,” the woman replied.

“Good, now add two plus two.”

“Four,” answered the applicant.

“Fine,” said the examiner. “You have met the requirement, I’ll recommend you to the board.”

At the board meeting, the examiner spoke highly of the young woman. She has all the qualifications of a good missionary. First, I tested her selflessness. I told her to appear for a 3:00 a.m. appointment; as requested, she left her warm home and came out in the cold without a word of complaint. Next, I tested her patience by causing her to wait for five hours to see me. An ill-tempered person would have complained, demanded an explanation or gone home, rather than wait so long; she did none of these things. Then I tested her humility by asking questions that even a child could answer. She was not offended; I recommend her highly and without qualification.

Although, this sort of “testing procedure” or evaluative process may appear rather simplistic and even a little naïve, it does cut to the heart of the matter. The true mettle of an authentic missionary is measured in virtue and in motivation: selflessness, patience, humility, simplicity and perseverance are key.

In today’s liturgy, the church invites the gathered assembly to examine the quality of its missionary mettle while evaluating the effectiveness of its missiology. In the first reading from Amos, and in the pericope from Mark’s gospel, two different mettles and styles of mission are presented. On the one hand, there was Amaziah, who exercised his ministry within the royal sanctuary at Bethel. An institutional missionary, his services were rendered to those who came to him to seek him out. Reginald Fuller (Preaching the New Lectionary, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville: 1974) speculates that Amaziah thought of religion in “civil” terms; it existed to promote loyalty to the status quo - the royal house and nationalism. As the royal sanctuary, Bethel was like a national cathedral and Amaziah was its chaplain, whose job it was to prophesy “smooth things” and “make nice” so that the government would remain central, stable and in control. A card-carrying member of the clergy, Amaziah did not question the genuineness of a liturgy that had deteriorated into a staid ritual for satisfying religious obligations.

Amos, on the other hand, along with Jesus and his disciples, exercised an itinerant mission. Called and sent forth by God, these latter missionaries questioned and confronted injustice, inauthenticity and infidelity on its own turf. Father than remain attached to the traditional institutions of their day, Amos, Jesus, et al. heralded the good news wherever and whenever it needed to be heard and served the needs of others wherever and whenever these needs arose. As living sacraments of God’s love, they put people, particularly sinners and outcasts, in touch with the words and works that would save them. For these missionaries, liturgy was a celebration of salvation, confirmed and reflected in the lives of believers enthused by the abiding presence of a loving and forgiving God.

Today, the contemporary Christian community is challenged to decide between the missionary mettle and method of Amaziah and others like him who were entrenched in the status quo, or Amos, Jesus and the first disciples whose efforts allowed the good news to speak to every facet of the human experience. Once made, this decision demands continual evaluation and renewal if the church is to remain true to its purpose and identity.

AMOS 7:12-15

In his book, The Prophetic Imagination (Fortress Press, Minneapolis: 1978), Walter Brueggemann suggested that “the task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish and evoke a consciousness and perception alterative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.” Influenced by the sociological perspectives of Peter Berger (The Sacred Canopy, Doubleday, New York: 1967) and Thomas Luckmann (The Invisible Religion, Macmillan, New York: 1967), Brueggemann proposes that ministers who would be prophetic must be willing to: (1) criticize, i.e. to reject and delegitimize the present order of things, in as much as this order militates against the gospel; and to (2) energize persons and communities by holding out a vision of another time and another situation toward which the community of faith may move. While criticizing the contemporary church for its enculturation to the popular ethos of consumerism and its loss of identity through the abandonment of its faith tradition, the true prophet energizes the community to recover its vision of the reign of God and to allow this vision to foster an alternative way of living and dying, being and becoming in this world. . . an alternative that is at once true to the gospel, while allowing the gospel to challenge every facet of the culture in which it is lived and preached.

For his part, Amos was commissioned by God to criticize and to energize the eighth century B.C.E. community of Israel. A native of Tekoa in the southern kingdom of Judah, Amos did not aspire to the prophetic ministry, nor did he refuse the call of God when he perceived it. If his rugged life-style and frank, blunt manner of speaking are indicative of the prophet’s personality and character, it would seem that Amos was a straightforward individual who called sin by name and did not cower before difficulties or back down when confronted by power and prestige. A migrant worker, Amos alternated between raising a hardy breed of sheep in the lonely hill country and dressing sycamore trees in the lower slopes and valleys of Judah. The tree in question produced a small fig-like fruit which provided some nourishment for the poor. At one point in its development, the growing buds required pinching or nipping so that they would grow larger. Some botanists suggest that the pinching also released an injurious insect which, if left undisturbed would have ruined the fruit. An expert in both sheep and sycamores, Amos was, nevertheless, not a prophet; the fact that he was called by God and fulfilled his prophetic commission attests to the power of the Spirit to speak the message of truth through even the most unlikely messenger.

Confronted by the truth which Amos preached, Amaziah denounced him as ro’eh, hozeh a derogatory Hebrew term meaning a visionary. Refusing both this label and any alliance with those who made a living through prophesying, Amos thereby disassociated himself from the prophetic guilds. A motley group of true and false prophets, known for their frenzied behavior and ecstatic claims, these guilds traveled in groups, selling their questionable skills to anyone who sought them out. In contrast to these, Amos was sought out by God and had no vested interest except that the truth be preached so that his brothers and sisters of the northern kingdom would repent of their sinfulness and return to God.

As it happened, Amaziah and the Israelites turned a deaf ear to Amos, dismissing him because he did not seem to be of the caliber of prophet they expected. Within a generation, the northern kingdom fell to Assyria (722 B.C.E.). Today, Amos the “unlikely prophet” reminds us that ours is a God who speaks in unexpected ways through the most surprising messengers.

EPHESIANS 1:3-14

Amos in the first reading and Mark in the gospel lead the gathered assembly in considering the mettle of God’s prophetic ministers whereas the author of Ephesians puts us in touch with the prophetic message itself. A composition of prayers and paranesis, Ephesians resembles a discourse more than a letter. Because of its lack of personal references and the fact that the title, “To the Ephesians”, was a second century C.E. addition, a consensus of scholars agree that this deutero-Pauline work was intended as a circular letter to the churches of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey).

Today’s reading is a prayer which may have been drawn from an earlier liturgical hymn composed on the occasion of a baptism. Modeled on the Jewish berakoth or blessing, this hymnic prayer exhibits a typically Eastern pattern of concentric thinking as the author come full circle again and again to make his point, viz., Christ is the summit of all things. In Christ, we were called into being to become the loved children of God (vv. 3-6). In Christ and through Christ’s blood, we have been forgiven and redeemed (vv. 7-10). In Christ we have the hope of our pledged inheritance (vv. 11-14).

In response to the blessings afforded humanity in Christ, believers are to live in love and unity in Christ. Repeated more than 30 times in his discourse, in Christ was the author’s technical term for describing the incorporation of all the baptized into the person and saving mission of Jesus Christ. This incorporation is made possible because of the apolutrosis or redemption (v. 7) accomplished by Jesus; literally apolutrosis meant the setting free of a slave or someone held by another more powerful. God’s freeing of the Hebrew tribes in Egypt was termed apolutrosis (Exodus 15:13). The Ephesians’ author similarly described the freedom from sin and death won for all through blood of Christ (v. 7)

Having been thus freed or redeemed, those who are in Christ are privileged to know “the fullness of time” (v. 10) or kairos of Jesus Christ. Kairos refers to that great moment (or hour, as in the Johannine gospel) for which Jesus became incarnate and through which God accomplished the salvation of humankind, viz., the passion, death, resurrection, ascension and exaltation of Jesus. As a result of Jesus’ kairos or, in the fullness of time, all things in heaven and on earth, all the disparate, alienated, divided and presumed lost peoples of all races, cultures, socio-economic classes and political persuasions will come together under the auspices and through the efforts of the one Christ.

An ideal which may appear unrealistic, given the times in which we live and the barriers we erect against one another and God, this prayer for Ephesians, nevertheless, represents the end result of the process of redemption which was begun in Jesus and which will be realized when all of us accept and appropriate in faith the the blessings of God in Christ.

MARK 6:7-13

When I packed for a three-year stint as a missionary in Africa, my list of necessary items was longer than my arm. . . a far cry from the simple equipment Jesus advised his disciples to take as he sent them out to extend his ministry of preaching and healing.

A sense of eschatological urgency pervades this gospel pericope. The instructions to take the bare minimum is more than an exhortation to simplicity and ascetism. Belief that the messianic reign of God was imminent obviated the need for stockpiling provisions. Moreover, since the life of a disciple was to be motivated by trust in God’s constant care and providence, it would have been contradictory to have been loaded down with baggage. Like Jesus, who lived, not on bread alone, but on the word that came from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4), and whose food it was to do the will of the one who had sent him (John 4:34), the disciples were to satisfy their spiritual appetites in service, while humbly receiving physical, nourishment from those to whom they ministered.

Jesus’ order to “take no food” (v. 8) can also being understood as a preparation for the gift of bread which Jesus would soon give (6:35-44; 8:1-9). This bread which was shared by the crowds in a deserted place (6:34-35) prepared for an even more nourishing bread that Jesus would leave as a legacy for his own, the broken bread of his life, his death, his very self (14:22).

Additional instructions to the disciples called for the sparsest of travelling gear. Sandals, as opposed to shoes (which were usually won only by the wealthy or leisured classes), were a necessary protection against the stony roads and hot, dusty trails of ancient Israel. Rather than “call ahead” to reserve lodging, the disciples were to accept the hospitality afforded them. By not moving from house to house, they avoided any possible rivalry among their hosts and assured that the fare offered them would be simple rather than ostentatious. Rejection was to be met with a resolve to move elsewhere in order to preach the good news where it would receive a welcome. Shaking the dust from the feet was a symbolic action performed by Jews when returning to their home and after traveling through foreign territories. Jesus’ disciples were instructed to enact this ritual as a testimony or warning to those who had rejected them, and their message. It was hoped that this sign would cause those who witnessed it to reconsider and open themselves to the good news.

While not immediately self-evident, the mission of the Twelve affords contemporary believers a valuable lesson in discipleship. Recall the many instances during his gospel when Mark characterized the disciples as being doubtful, confused and lacking in understanding as to who Jesus was and what he was about. Nevertheless, and even without complete comprehension, or full faith, they were willing to join their efforts to his for the sake of the reign of God. Doubts, confusion and imperfect faith continue to befuddle Jesus’ twentieth century disciples but, like our ancestral brothers and sisters, we cannot allow these to dilute our resolve or hinder our mission.

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