OT XV [B] Am 7:12-15, Eph 1:3-14, Mk 6:7-13

George Sweeting, in his book The No-Guilt Guide for Witnessing, tells us of John Currier who in 1949 was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.  Later he was transferred and paroled to work on a farm near Nashville, Tennessee.  In 1968, Currier’s sentence was terminated, and a letter bearing the good news was sent to him.  But John never saw the letter, nor was he told anything about it.  Life on that farm was hard and without promise for the future.  Yet John kept doing what he was told even after the farmer for whom he worked had died.  Ten years went by.  Then a state parole officer learned about Currier’s plight, found him, and told him that his sentence had been terminated.  He was a free man.  Sweeting concluded that story by asking, “Would it matter to you if someone sent you an important message—the most important in your life—and year after year the urgent message was never delivered?”  We who have heard the Good News and experienced freedom through Christ are responsible to proclaim it to others still enslaved by sin.  Are we doing all we can to make sure that people get the message?

In today’s Gospel (Mark 6:1-13), the evangelist tells the story of Jesus’ commissioning of the twelve apostles for their first missionary journey. They are to preach the “Good News” of repentance, forgiveness of sins, liberation and salvation through Jesus.  Just as God sent the prophet Amos to preach repentance to ancient Israel and St. Paul to preach the Good News of salvation to the Gentiles, so Jesus sends forth his followers to proclaim the Good News of God’s Kingdom and to bring healing to those who need it most.

Jesus sends out the Apostles in pairs.  Because according to Jewish law, two witnesses were needed to pronounce a truth.  Going two by two carries with it the authority of official witnesses. Jesus knew that when his disciples went to any place to evangelize, a family or house would take them in, welcome them and give them what they needed because hospitality was an important religious tradition in Palestine.  By His stern instruction, Jesus seems to be saying, “If people refuse to listen to you or to show you hospitality, the only thing you can do is to treat them as an orthodox Jew would treat a Gentile or a pagan.”  The Rabbinic law stated that the dust of a Gentile country was defiled, so that when a Jew entered Palestine from another country, he had to shake off every particle of the unclean land’s dust from his clothing and sandals.

Jesus’ disciples were to preach the Good News that God is not a punishing judge, but rather a loving Father who wants to save men from their bondage to sin through Jesus His Son. As apostles, we are to evangelize the world.  We are called to share with others not just words, or ideas, or doctrines but an experience, our experience of God and His Son, Jesus. 

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was one of the most influential religious thinkers of our time. In one of his writings, he said these startling words: “If there are no witnesses there is no God to be met…. For God to be present we have to be witnesses… There are no proofs for the existence of God; there are only witnesses.”  The English word “martyr” comes from a Greek word which simply means “to witness.” The word became associated with death because that was the end result of one’s witnessing during the first centuries of the Christian Era. This is not to suggest that God’s existence depends solely on our witnessing. The point here is that God’s reality for us, God’s relevance in our lives, God’s reality in the world, is dependent upon our witnessing to Him. So God should not be found at the end of a philosophical or theological argument, but in the midst of life.

We Catholics cannot avoid the demand of evangelization, of proclaiming the faith. Vatican II couldn’t be clearer on this score, seeing the Church itself as nothing but a vehicle for evangelization. According to Vatican II, it’s not so much the case that the Church has a mission, but rather that a mission has the Church. Bringing people to Christ is not one work among many; rather, it is the central work of the Church, that around which everything else we do revolves.

The fastest-growing "religious" group in the United States is the "nones"—that is, those who claim no religious affiliation? In the latest Pew Research Center survey, fully 25 percent of the country—80 million people—say that they have no formal religion. When we focus on young people, the picture is even more bleak. Almost 40 percent of those under thirty are nones, and among Catholics in that age group, the number rises to 50 percent. Of all the Catholic children baptized or confirmed these last thirty years, half no longer participate in the life of the Church.

A prison chaplain went to talk with a man sentenced to die in the electric chair. He urged him to believe in Jesus Christ and be baptized; that forgiveness and eternity with God awaited him if only he would turn towards God. The prisoner said, “Do you really believe that?” “Of course, I do,” replied the chaplain. “Go on,” scoffed the prisoner. “If I believed that I would crawl hands and knees over broken glass to tell others, but I don’t see you Christians making any big thing of it!” He had a point.

An important part of evangelism is the simple act of inviting a friend or family member to join us in worship. This is where reconciliation between persons and God is most likely to take place. We do not have to commit verbal assault on someone with our convictions. A simple invitation offered out of a loving and joyful heart is the most powerful evangelistic message of all. We will be starting our RCIA sessions in a few months. We need to personally invite someone who needs the message of the gospel in their life. A Christian who is not witnessing his faith is like the dead sea where there is no living being in it. In Israel, both the sea of Galilee and Dead sea are fed by river Jordan. But one is full of life but the other is totally dead. Because one lets out its water and the other doesn’t. If we don’t preach our faith, and keep our faith like the Dead sea, we are dead Christians.

Jesus is inviting us today to cooperate with him.  He wants us to be his instruments of liberation, to help others recover their freedom. We are meant to help people to cure their sicknesses – not only the bodily sicknesses but psychological and emotional illnesses as well.  More than just physical or emotional healing one needs Christ in his or her life for eternal life. Let’s resolve today to take the message of Gospel to someone and help his find Christ.