WEEK 15, YEAR B

July 12, 2009

Mark 6, 7-13

GO DOWN AND LIVE AMONG THE PEOPLE

This is the story of twelve men, who were sent out in pairs by Jesus, to continue and develop his own work. Jesus is beginning to expand his movement (though still in lower Galilee).

It was a very diverse, even bizarre group. Some had names that were originally Greek, (Philip and Andrew), some had Hebrew names (James, Bartholomew, Thaddeus, Simon). They were anything but an elite. Nothing qualified them from an intellectual or religious point of view, to follow an itinerant prophet. They were just prepared to break all their social connections and leave house and family, to follow him.

For some of them, such as Thaddeus, we know no more than a name. Others, like Peter and James, became leaders of the first Christian generation. Like Jesus, Peter wrote nothing. Peter left the direction of the Jerusalem church to James, to begin in Syria an open mission to non-Jews (pagans). The missionary par excellence was Paul, a contemporary of Jesus who never met Jesus, who was not one of Jesus’ 12 apostles. He had been his persecutor before becoming his propagandist. Judas Iscariot - ‘ish kerioth’ – did he come from Kerioth, a town of Judea, or did he belong to the sicarii, whom Josephus calls zealots? Jesus gathered around him a lot of men who were not alike. The only thing they had in common was their trust in Jesus who called them.

In reality, there were three circles of adherents around Jesus. The first is this group of 12. In the second circle there were women: Mary of Magdala, the sister of Lazarus at Bethany, Joanna the wife of Chuza (Herod’s minister), Mary the mother of James. The gospels have rather scrupulously kept their names. They followed Jesus, shared in his teaching, helped the group with material goods. They are around the crucifixion scene and at the empty tomb – when the inner circle of the 12 had gone up in smoke through fear and/or the sense of failure. It was a scandal for the contemporaries of Jesus that these women followed him, a male master, without their husbands. Jesus deliberately went against the social conventions of his time.The third circle is that of sympathisers who participated from time to time in the activity of Jesus. For example, Lazarus, Nicodemus, Zacchaeus, Joseph of Arimathea. They did not break links with their families or society, nor did they leave home.

The women were never called ‘disciples’, but there is an explanation. The term for disciple, talmid in Hebrew, talmida in Aramaic, has no feminine form. There is no Aramaic word for ‘woman-disciple’ as distinct from ‘man-disciple’. In Paul’s communities, women were equal with men, and prayed, shared in worship, and prophesied.

The 12 became more and more important from Paul’s time onwards. They took on an ideological role. Israel had 12 tribes. The 12 enabled the church to claim the heritage of the promises to Israel. The 12 were an Israel in miniature, a micro-Israel. Jesus wanted it so. He wanted to reconstitute the Israel of the 12 tribes. He wanted to reform and renew the faith of the people, starting from 12 individuals chosen (like Israel) by pure grace.

Jesus sent the 12 out, but they did not go very far….They are sent to nearby places – small village communities in the rural areas, and their local households. These social units are the basic forms of social life around the ancient Mediterranean. [It is interesting that he did not send them to the cities. In Galilee, there were two cities, Sepphoris (an hour’s walk from Nazareth), and Tiberias (on the lake, near Capernaum. Jesus, as far as we know, never went to either of them. They were foreign and unfriendly places to him and to his followers.] These places did not have synagogue buildings, but they did assemble regularly – at least every Sabbath – in the market square, or a shady spot, or in one of the homes. They assembled to deal with the regular running of the community in the right spirit (of covenant). Jesus told them to build up that sense of community, that sense of being ‘Israel’, in these places. He did not tell them to establish new communities or new voluntary associations. There was already a community in place. He did not tell them to pull people out of their own homes and villages, and become itinerant followers of Jesus. Very few people did that. He did not tell them to teach them new laws – the ‘common law’ of the villages was enough. He did not tell them to focus on individuals – but on the village community as such. He did not tell them to make people ascetics or teach them spirituality. In fact he did not tell them to ‘teach’ them anything! He just wanted the people to hear the message, be healed, be forgiven, and go back home with a new lease of life. These simple people are the real ‘Israel’, and Jesus wanted to renew Israel, namely, them.

These villages were close to one another, and most of the people in and across them were inter-related somehow. But each village functioned on its own, except for major or national crises. It was hard for a foreigner to get accepted in a village, to be seen as ‘paysan’. To do that you had to come in a very unthreatening way. Jesus sent his people in harmless groups of two. [Two are more credible than one; and more accountable.] They were to take no food (no bread), no collection bag (haversack), no money (coppers for purses). They were to have only one tunic (people wore two pieces of clothing only…). They were allowed a stick (for safety on the roads), and sandals for the long walk. They travelled light. They were to come as poor men, unable to hurt anyone. The ancient village ‘law’ of hospitality would look after them. They were told to stay in one household, not move around. To eat whatever they were given. To behave with respect, to those who welcomed them, to those who rejected them.

They had conversations. They shared their stories. About the closeness of God in a new healing and forgiving way, as Jesus had shown them. And the healing happened all over again, and the guilt disappeared as it had around Jesus. The kingdom of God came to the villages, to improve village life. What they wanted, and got, was a change of attitude, a new point of view, a seeing things upside down in relation to the usual way of seeing them – they called it ‘metanoia’, which literally means turning accepted common sense on its head. [Don’t translate it as conversion, or repentance.] People bought it. They ‘believed’, with this kind of ‘faith’. The result was ‘shalom’, peace.

This gospel story in Mark is located in the midst of stories about actions of Jesus that renewed Israel. It is hard to transpose all this to today’s church. Bishops claim to be the successors of the twelve. I don’t think this gospel would persuade them to give up their Ford Falcons and go on foot! Or to put their dry-cleaners out of business!! Perhaps the real question is for all of us, and not just them. It is: how do we live the simplicity of Jesus and the early disciples, in today’s complex modern world?

Maybe there is one clue. Jesus and the twelve accepted the going patterns of living of ordinary people. They did not try to impose another structure on them. This is what we call the principle of incarnation – go down and live among the people. The contemporary church has a few journeys to make to get down there…. Perhaps a gospel like this can kickstart it into those journeys… And perhaps it can say to ordinary simple people who are down there anyway, that it is they who are the Israel of God…