Saturday in the Octave of Easter
At the end of today’s gospel passage the Apostles are given a mission. You and I are reading this reflection because they took on that mission and “proclaimed the Gospel to every creature.” And yet they were not your picture-perfect candidates. How did these dismissible men, receive such an ambitious mission and achieve it with such conviction that, as we see in today’s first reading, they became undismissible?
Let’s start with the hard, honest truth. The Apostles would not have made the cut if Jesus had used ZipRecruiter to find them. They were “uneducated, ordinary men.” They had poor planning skills (as they never had enough food with them) and did not have the strongest track record as disciples. Then you get to thei performance review as we see it in the gospel today. Two times, witnesses come to tell them about the Risen Lord and they don’t believe. The first is Mary Magdalene who’s deliverance from demons by Jesus should make her fairly credible in the Apostles’ eyes. They don’t believe her. Then the two who met Jesus on the road (probably an abbreviated reference to the disciples on the road to Emmaus) are dismissed by the Apostles. And yet, when Jesus comes to them again, he looks at them and says, “I’ve got a job for you.”
The first reading is them doing that job and here I think we begin to see some of the secrets to why they were undismissible.
First, they were bold. They weren’t brash, arrogant or prideful. They didn’t speak to what they didn’t know, but what they knew, they shared with confidence, and that amazed the leaders, scribes and elders. Where can we be bolder? Where does our temptation to speak on what we don’t know, discredit our voices when we speak on what we know?
Second, they had the witness of signs and wonders. We have access to this too. We should not allow the ease with which we dismiss Mary appearing in someone’s toast to cause us to dismiss the true signs and wonders that are present even into this age. We should know about some of these things, not because they are the object of our faith, but they bear witness to the belief that the object of our faith, Jesus, is alive and active in the world today. Is there a miraculous story from moderntimes to which you have been attracted? Do you know it well enough to share it?
Third, they accepted human consequences with docility rather than betray the Gospel. This is the power behind non-violent protest. This is the witness of the cross. Is there an area where you could grow in meekness? This same kind of bold meekness that we see in the Apostles and in Jesus.
Finally, they knew their story. The Apostle’s owned it that they were uneducated, and even sometimes failures. Mark’s Gospel advertises that even the Apostle’s struggled to believe at first. But their ownership of their story is powerful, and it is hard to refute someone’s personal witness. How well can you share the story of your discipleship?
The ambitious mission is still on. How can we help make it undismissible?
- Spencer Hargadon