Feast of Saint Luke, evangelist
I have moved many times in my adult life. In fact, if by this time next year I am still in Dayton (and I have no plans to move!) I will have lived here longer than anywhere else so far, and that will still only have been 4.5 years! I must admit that I like seeing new places, experiencing each new culture that each new place has to offer, making new friends and finding new treasures in each community. What is new is what is enticing. I think our culture is a bit like that: we seek new technology, new ice cream flavors, new fashions and so on.
What is it about new things and new places? Doing the same ol', same ol' ends up seeming boring so that it's difficult to remember what is good about remaining in the same place. I remember after one move, I complained to a friend: "I don't know if this is a good place for me to be. It doesn't feel right yet." She wisely said, "Bloom where you're planted. Feeling at home takes time." And she was right: it is hard to make friends, to feel settled, unless you give some space and time for that to happen.
Today's scriptures offer lessons in "blooming where we're planted," some meditations on the goodness of staying put.
The first reading (2 Timothy 4:10-17b) is Paul's letter to Timothy while he is in prison in Rome. He is writing just a bit before his death; he has had a trial and been charged and found guilty (likely, the Alexander he mentions here is one of the people giving witness to the charges). Paul writes about how so many of his supposed friends have deserted him, seeking the "world" rather than friendship with a man imprisoned. Only Luke, the author of the gospel, remains to help Paul. In this letter, the worldly disciples have moved on, abandoning Paul in his need, but also not seeing something crucial: that preaching the gospel can and should take place everywhere, even in jail. Note that even at his trial, Paul was chiefly concerned with witnessing to the gospel, and not much concerned with his own defense. The point of preaching the gospel is to be able to preach wherever and whenever you are - and not necessarily to be constantly on the move to do it. Though Paul spent a lifetime travelling everywhere, he was not travelling for the sake of seeing something new, but for the sake of preaching the same message at all times. Christ is died, but he is risen! I suspect that Paul is worried that some of the worldly disciples are more in love with the life of the nomad than they are with the message of the gospel. Staying put reminds us of the true aim of Christian discipleship: to follow Jesus and not the glamour of whatever new thing might come our way.
The gospel reading (Luke 10:1-9) reinforces the importance of staying put. Jesus sends out his disciples to do the same kind of work he does, but what is striking in this passage is that he tells them: "Do not move about from one house to another. Whatever town you enter and they welcome you, eat what is set before you, cure the sick and say to them, 'The Kingdom of God is at hand for you.'" Disciples who move about from place to place, and who complain about the food, are disciples who are concerned primarily with their own comfort - with finding the best food and the best bed. But Jesus suggests instead to learn to be where you are, and keep your focus instead on the gospel.
I think back to what my friend said, that feeling at home takes time. In these scriptures we are called to "feel at home" in the scriptures themselves, and to make our home in Jesus so that he will make his home in us. St. Luke the Evangelist, author of the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts, was an extraordinary author who was very much "at home" with the good news of Jesus Christ. May we, too, "stay put" in the gospel and allow our lives to be overcome by Jesus' good news.
- Jana M. Bennett