Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and less than four weeks away from Ash Wednesday (5 March 2025) and the beginning of Lent. The Calendar of the Church of England today (6 February) remembers the Martyrs of Japan (1597).
In 1597, 26 men and women, religious and lay, including Paul Miki, were first mutilated then crucified near Nagasaki. The period of persecution continued for another 35 years, and many new martyrs were added to their number.
After a long and demanding day in Milton Keynes University Hospital yesterday with consultations and hearing the results of a number of tests, I am planning to spend much of today in Lichfield, visiting the chapel in Saint John’s Chapel and attending the mid-day Eucharist and Choral Evensong in Lichfield Cathedral. Later in evening, I hope to be in the Old Grammar School on Saint John’s Street, which dates back to 1577 and is about to become home to the local history group Lichfield Discovered.
Over the coming years, Lichfield Discovered plans to transform some of the spaces at the Old Grammar School and to collaborate with local people, groups and the city’s museums and heritage sites to celebrate the history Lichfield.
Before today begins, however, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Mark 6: 7-13 (NRSVA):
7 He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. 8 He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; 9 but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. 10 He said to them, ‘Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. 11 If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.’ 12 So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. 13 They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.
Today’s Reflection:
In the Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (Mark 6: 7-13), Jesus sends out the 12 Disciples in pairs, two-by-two, on a limited commission, but advises them to prepare for rejection and to be ready to move on.
Going out in pairs was a well-known practice at the time. For example, Yose ben Joezer of Zeredah (first half of the second century BCE), is often paired with his colleague, Yose ben Johanan of Jerusalem. They are the first of the zugot(Hebrew זוּגוֹת, ‘pairs’; singular זוּג; zug), the name given to the pairs of sages responsible for maintaining the chain of the Oral Law from Antigonus of Sokho, the pupil of Simeon the Just, to Johanan ben Zakkai. They represent a link between the prophets and the tannaim or rabbinic sages whose views are recorded in the Mishnah.
Yose ben Joezer was the nasi of the Sanhedrin and his colleague was the av bet din. Because of their profound erudition and piety both Yoses were called ‘the grape clusters’. Yose ben Joezer says in the Mishnah (Avot 1: 4), ‘Let thy house be a meeting place for scholars; sit amid the dust of their feet; and drink in their words with thirst.’ The Midrash (Gen. R. 65: 22) says he was sentenced to death by crucifixion.
So, in this passage, Jesus echoes the wise sages of the Mishnah, in teaching and in practice. And, indeed, his death has many similarities with the crucifixion of Yose ben Joezer.
When Jesus tells the 12 they are to fasten their belts, put on their sandals and wrap themselves in their cloak, he is sending them out into the world on a limited mission. But in places that are not welcoming or receptive to their teaching, they are to leave and to shake the dust off their feet.
In this reading, we are challenged to see how being sent by God is always being in service and as being part of the ‘Sent Community.’
What do you take with you on a journey? What are the essential items you pack in your case? Is it a small bag for an overhead cabin on a Ryanair flight and a short overnight stay? Or was it a large suitcase or two for a two-week summer holiday, filled with towels, sun cream and swimwear?
Apart from my passport, the requisite toothbrush, plastic cards, phone chargers, presents for hosts and friends, and changes of clothes and sandals, I always need to take my laptop and more than enough reading: books, magazine, journals and newspapers.
And I always regret that I have packed too much – not because I do not wear all those T-shorts or read each and every one of those books, but because I find there is not enough room for all the books I want to take back with me, and because restrictions on overhead bags often mean I cannot return with a bottle of local wine.
In this Gospel reading, as the disciples prepare for their journey, we might expect them to take with them an extra wineskin, an extra tunic, an extra pair of sandals, some water, some spending money.
But Christ tells the disciples, as he sends them out in mission, two-by-two, to take nothing for their journey except a staff – no bread, no bag, no money, no spare shoes, no change of tunic, no coins for tips in the taverns or inns where they stay and eat.
Perhaps the disciples set out filled with doubts and uncertainty, full of fear and anxiety, rather than with full suitcases.
But what the disciples would soon learn is that for the people they are going to encounter along the way, it is not food or money or clothes that they need most. What those people need most, like the women in Tuesday’s Gospel reading (Mark 5: 21-43), is healing. And so, Christ requires the disciples to give what is the hardest thing in the world for us to give: the hardest thing to give is ourselves.
Sometimes, the moments when we put aside the comforts of home and step into uncertainty and risk are moments when we find we are closest to God.
Perhaps this Gospel reading is challenging me to ask myself: What baggage have I been dragging along with me in life, on my journey of faith?
Have I been carrying this baggage around not because I need it, but because I am comfortable with it?
What unnecessary junk am I still carrying around with me in life that I ought to have left behind long ago?
For the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933), in his poem ‘Ithaka’ (1911), the beginning of the journey is as important as the end itself, the journey as important as the destination.
In this poem, Cavafy transforms Homer’s account of the return of Odysseus from the Trojan War to his home island, and, after a long absence finding Ithaka disappointing. Cavafy tells Odysseus that arriving in Ithaka is what he is destined for, that he must keep that always in mind: one’s destiny, the inevitable end of the journey, is a thing to be faced for what it is, without illusions.
The meaning of Ithaka is in the voyage home that it inspired. It is not reaching home or again escaping its limitations once there that should occupy Odysseus so much as those elevated thoughts and rare excitement that are a product of the return voyage.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
Christ sends his disciples out, as he has been sent, with no real resources, but ready to rely on the hospitality of others for their basic needs, and depending on God for the power to fulfil their mission.
We are challenged to embrace the call of God, and go out as servants of Christ in dependence on God’s resources, God’s strength, to sustain us.
There is no shortage of work to be done in the world today. The issues of justice are many and diverse and require people of passion, commitment and with a sense of being ‘called’ or being ‘sent.’
But, for justice to become a reality in this world, in our country, in our communities, there must be a sense in which all the individual initiatives connect and form part of a larger whole. It is not just as individuals that we are sent out into the world, but we are sent out as groups and communities. As we work together, each with our own particular gifts or focus, we can make a significant difference.
Today’s Prayers (Thursday 6 February 2025):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Common Humanity and Love for Religious “Other”.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Reflection by the Revd Dr Salli Effungani, a minister in the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon (PCC), Programme Officer for the Programme for Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa (PROCMURA), and Adjunct Lecturer on Interfaith Relations at Saint Paul’s University, Limuru, Kenya.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 6 February 2025) invites us to pray:
We pray against discrimination, bigotry, and torture meted out by people because of their religious affiliations.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
by whose grace alone we are accepted
and called to your service:
strengthen us by your Holy Spirit
and make us worthy of our calling;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God of truth,
we have seen with our eyes and touched with our hands the bread of life:
strengthen our faith
that we may grow in love for you and for each other;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
God of our salvation,
help us to turn away from those habits which harm our bodies
and poison our minds
and to choose again your gift of life,
revealed to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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