Today’s readings: Amos 7,12-15; Ephesians 1,3-14; Mark 6,7-13.
Today’s gospel text from St Mark starts with the words: “Jesus summoned the Twelve”. There was a reason for this summoning, given that the Twelve had always been there with him. The reason is to be found in the immediate context of the text where Jesus is disowned and the community somewhat dispersed.
There was the need for a summoning, to put things in perspective again and start afresh. That is what Jesus was doing, opting for a new style of evangelisation. The old ways were no longer working. This is also what the Church at this point in time needs, a summoning to take stock of reality today and to make decisive options for a new energising of its tools and methods of bringing the gospel to people and of facilitating people’s access to God.
Jesus gathered a community around him first for companionship, but then for a mission. Now Jesus is sending them on their own. Chronologically, this sending came much later. But St Mark is writing in retrospective, already with the mission of the Twelve in mind.
Jesus, proposing a radically new missionary style, makes the Twelve aware of their being vulnerable, yet forbids retaliation in the event of rejection. Christianity was never meant to be imposed by force.
Coming to think of the tools and methods of evangelisation today, we cannot ignore that already throughout the 20th century the Church was undergoing a radical rethinking about its identity and its mission.
Bringing forth the gospel is no longer a matter of preaching, it is no longer a matter of providing religious services for those who still seek them. It is no longer the monopoly of those who hold office.
The Church is the people. In his letter to Ephesians, St Paul speaks of “the richness of the grace which has been showered on us in all wisdom and insight”. St Paul surely is not speaking of wisdom and insight in the intellectual sense. He is rather speaking of that sense or feeling for faith which the faithful possess and about which John Henry Newman already wrote at length in the 19th century and which Vatican II acknowledges as characterising common people who experience profoundly what they believe in.
In the first reading we read of Amos who did not belong to officialdom and was held to have no claim on prophesying. Yet he prophesied, and the strength of his word was not rooted in any office or position but in the fact that “it was the Lord who took me from herding the flock and said ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel’”.
Evangelisation is always the vehicle of a dream, a dream we all need to harbour in our hearts. Faith cannot be separated from its prophetic dimension. This is what the Church, through Pope Francis, is doing right now: seeking to listen to the people rather than just preaching to them.
Amos in the first reading was simply silenced because he held no office. Amaziah, the official priest, was diffident and sent him away from the temple. It was unheard of that someone who had been a shepherd could speak loud and claim to be spirit-filled.
There is what we may call popular theology, that theology which is not taught in our academies but which gives voice to the wisdom and insight of simple people whom the Spirit provokes in the Church and in the world at large. This is what Amos represents. This is what the Church is doing when it seeks to discern the ‘sense of the faithful’ in things which pertain to faith but which people experience profoundly in their day to day living.
The institution has always been diffident to the Spirit that speaks through the people. The concern has always been mainly orthodoxy, the purity of doctrine, ignoring where the Spirit was blowing and failing to discern the richness of grace showered on all.
How can the Church speak of new evangelisation if it fails to empower people to be prophets? People are the words with which God tells His story. The classic case in point is that in the Book of Numbers, when Moses, confronted with such diffidence, affirmed: “Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets!”