14th Sunday Year C - Homily 4

 Homily 4 - 2019

Last year the planning group for next year’s Plenary Council asked us all to think about and to answer a leading question: What is God asking of the Australian Church today? About a month ago the group issued its first lot of feedback, condensing our answers, grouping them under six major themes and using about sixteen different words to describe those themes. If only we can be the kind of Church we say we want to be, things look wonderful for the future.

Intriguingly, today’s Gospel passage provides a great setting to consider those themes and even the words that we used. Jesus sent disciples out with a job to forget about self-centredly saving their souls, and to focus outwards on others. God saves. People simply need to accept and cooperate; and to do that, it helps if they know that God is essentially a saving God, a loving, merciful God. As long as people are scared of God, they tend, naturally, to keep their distance.

The disciples’ message was to be simple, as we heard in the Gospel, “Let your first words be, ‘Peace to this house!’ Cure those in the house who are sick, and say ‘The kingdom of God is very near to you’.”

So, the Church is sent; it has a mission; and its message is good news. That is what we said we want our Church in Australia to be: missionary and evangelizing. Accordingly, we also said we want our Church to be healing and merciful, and ourselves to be joyful and hope-filled - showing our world what God is like.

Jesus also instructed his disciples, “Carry no purse, no haversack, no sandals…Stay in the same house…Eat what is set before you”. ‘Travel light’ seems to be his message. The Church need not be on about power. Outcomes are up to God. Instead, Jesus told them, “I am sending you out like lambs among wolves”. Apparently, vulnerability is intrinsic to the message. Two more of the words we chose to describe our Church of the future were humble and servant.

On this issue, history is not on our side. The Church over the centuries has been very prone to siding with the powerful, prepared even to force conformity on others. I am glad that, as we look to our Church of the future, we recognized the need always to be “Open to conversion, Renewal and Reform”.

I particularly like Jesus’ recommendation, “Whenever you enter a town and they do not make you welcome .. say, ‘We wipe off the very dust of your town that clings to our feet, and leave it with you’. Yet be sure of this, ‘The kingdom of God is very near’.”

Not surprisingly, since the disciples were sent out “like sheep among wolves”, Jesus warned them to expect at times a hostile response to their message. But his advice to them was beautiful: don’t let a trace of that hostility stick to you; wipe off every speck of dust. Don’t carry any of it in your own hearts. Instead, he said, reassure them, whatever their attitude to God, that they could never stop God loving them. “The kingdom of God is very near!”

A thought about Jesus’ enigmatic decision, “He sent them out in pairs”. I wonder why. It seems to have been important. In this case, might the medium be the message, a subtle illustration of the kingdom, an embodiment of the significance of togetherness? The lone-ranger disciple is an anomaly. God’s kingdom is about relationship – a movement away from self-centredness to the way of love. Significantly, when thinking about what kind of Church, along with the other words we mentioned, we also listed inclusive, participatory and synodal.

Finally, let us not forget Jesus’ recommendation, “Ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers in his harvest”. This was not prayer for priests, nor for an elite laity, but expressed the earnest desire that all disciples become alert, energetic, committed lay apostles working together, accompanying and supporting each other. We shall be that, as we said, provided we are truly prayerful and eucharistic.