THIS IS URGENT
Mark 6:1-13
I have had the experience from time to time of what I could only describe as “lost opportunity”.
I have had the feeling, or an inner urging that I should see a certain person and haven’t acted on it missing an opportunity to help another person in time of need.
Sometime in the midst of a conversation with someone I have missed an opportunity to minister to them in a creative way. One time when I was in conversation with a friend I had the distinct feeling when he talked about his family that he wanted share something extremely important with me. It was almost as if he had put up a certain flag, and wanted me to notice it and pursue that area of concern with him. However I let it go, and he did too, and we went on to other subjects. Later, I discovered that there were many difficulties in the family and in fact it was so serious that it was breaking their family apart. It was too late for me to pursue this by then. I had the opportunity, but had missed it.
I have felt the same about a certain job opportunity at one time in my life. It was one of those jobs that only come up every once in a long while, maybe only once in a lifetime, a job that fits you like a glove, a job that uses all your skills and allows the development of other skills a job that is new and challenging so you can see yourself working out something that has not been done before. It was offered and after some struggle, I decided not to go for it. Then I felt a great loss. I could not change the decision. It was a lost opportunity.
In the course in the course of everyday living, there is an urgency in some decisions. You must decide or lose the opportunity to decide.
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That is the kind of urgency that we have in this Gospel passage today. The Twelve are sent out two by two with authority over unclean spirits and a message to the people of their time to repent, to turn from the direction that they were heading. You can t help but have the feeling of urgency. How do they go out expresses urgency? They don t carry a purse, bag, sandals. When people didn’t carry those things, it was a sign that they had urgent business. Also, they were not to linger. They were to move from place to place and if people did not welcome them, they were to leave quickly and not waste any time there. They were preoccupied with something that was more important. A NEW AGE has arrived. The sign of the New Age is in healing acts. Healing acts have always been considered to be signs that the New Age is breaking in. You see the miraculous healing in the New Testament is beyond personal needs of those healed. It was a sign, a symbolic act that the New Age had come in Jesus. It meant a change in attitude and lifestyle. It was urgent.
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What has this to do with us? I believe that it is just as urgent for us to repent, to turn from the direction that we are heading and to center our lives in Christ and His Way. O yes, we may in fact even now give verbal assent to Christ and his way of life, but not really orient our lives to him. We may center our lives around a hundred other things.
So much of our life in this society is spent in pursuit of possessions, status, money and power. We cant help but be effected by this. It is a hollow pursuit because when we do reach the point where we thought we would find happiness and satisfaction, it is like mist. Its there for a while and then its gone. However the pursuit goes on. The real thrust of people in our world today is to possess more and to control more.
Now, there isn’t really anything wrong with ownership and having some control, as long as we recognize that there is another more ultimate owner and that our lives are affected by a set of higher values. But there are many people inside and outside the church that believe that happiness, meaning, and fulfillment in life lies in consuming more and more goods, and the accumulation of more and more wealth.
Together with this is a the growth of an uncaring attitude in our society. When you read the papers you get stories of people showing evidence of not just an uncaring attitude but doing just plain nasty things to one another. There was an article awhile back in one of news magazines in which it was reported that in a certain city an angry woman shopper hurled a box of shoes at a clerk and stalked out of the store. In another city, two elderly women were spun out of revolving door and thrown into the lobby of an apartment building by young people whirling the revolving door too rapidly evidently on purpose. Also, a women waited in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles for 45 minutes, only to have the clerk slam the window down in her face. Joggers report their share of unpleasant encounters with drivers, having to often dodge things like beer cans being thrown at them. Road rage, air rage, bus rage, supermarket rage and all kinds of other rages are on the increase. There are all kinds of stories in our local newspapers about people being treated badly by the all the levels of government bureaucracy. You probably have stories of your own to tell about these kind of things.
There is increasing violence and disrespect for people’s property. As one comedian said recently in one of his routines:
“Now they don’t ask you the time, they just take your watch”,
or
“we have no protection – in our communities, in our public buildings, in public transportation, on our roads – only under our arms do we have complete protection.”
This uncaring that pervades the lives of ordinary people. People are asking more and more, “What can I get?” and less and less “What can I give?” or even “What can I do?”. It almost seems like greed is the basis of our economy and our future depends on greed.
Scott Peck in his book A World Waiting to be Born ( Bantam Books, New York, NY 1993) describes the illness of our ailing society as incivility , which is more than the want of politeness, but includes morally destructive patterns of self-absorption, callousness, manipulative, materialism ingrained in our society. Incivility is a powerful force that affects all of us in some way or another.
We even begin to equate money making and the accumulation of goods with the Christian Morality. This is a complete turn around from the style of life of the first Christians. There are those who believe that if they believe , they ought to be prosperous. You see how subtle that can be. People actually say, “Since I started to believe in Christ, everything has turned out for me. The lord has prospered me. I have more money and more goods than ever before.” Pretty soon people start believing in Christ because of what they get out of it. But the true Christian morality is based on giving, sharing, love and concern for others. You remember the story of a person who said, “The Lord has given me a Cadillac” To which the preacher said, ” That s odd that he should give you a Cadillac. He gave his Son a Cross”.
It is a time for repentance, a change of direction. It is as urgent as the message of repentance that the Twelve sent out by Jesus were to present to the world.
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There is certainly urgency today on what life style we choose as Christians. That’s why I think that the work of stewardship is the mission of the church today. I don’t mean raising money, but a belief that all things are given by God. We are not owners but stewards and I mean stewards of “all things” . The Steward is a powerful image which I believe has come of age in our world today. I learned years ago in a workshop conducted by Paul Dieterich of the Centre For Parish Development in Naperville, Illinois to think of three categories of the gifts that have been given us : (1) The Gifts of Creation, (2) the Gifts Redemption, and (3) the Gifts of Empowerment
The Gifts of Creation. This means that we become with others in the world responsible stewards of creation, the environment, our bodies, our minds, our time, our talents are God given life.
The Gifts of Redemption. This implies that we become responsible stewards of the Gospel that has been given to us through Christ, and the gift of the Church as an effective instrument of God’s reconciling Grace. As stewards we share the Gospel with others individually and corporately through word and example
The Gifts of Empowerment. It means that we also become responsible stewards of the gifts of the Spirit and that we attempt to live our lives under the influence of God’s Spirit, truly responding to the covenant that we made in Baptism, working for Peace, Unity, Justice and the Well-being all people in this fragmented world.
We are responsible for them all and they need to effect every area of our lifestyle. The prayer that we pray for couples in the marriage service relates to all of us in our Christian communal witness, that we may live in the world in such a way that our “togetherness may be a sacrament of (God’s love) to this broken world, that (our) unity overcomes estrangement, (our) forgiveness heal(s) guilt and our joy overcomes despair.”
I think that true stewardship development, resulting in a change in thinking is the most crucial area of concern that we face today.
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It was urgent in today’s Gospel when the Twelve went ahead of Christ and announced his imminent Coming. To those who ignored him or rejected the call or choose to move in another direction accepting other priorities and values, it became a lost opportunity. To those who accepted, it became a source of hope and joy, a totally changed way of life.
It is equally urgent for us today. We have a chance to change direction. We have the opportunity to follow Christ and his way of giving, sharing and caring in a world that seems to be increasingly uncaring, greedy, and self absorbed, before we lose the opportunity to decide.
Who calls? Christ calls
We listen Who cares?
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