Homily: Tips for the Trip

Year B / Ordinary Time / Fifteenth Sunday

Readings: Amos 7.12-15 / Psalm 84.9-10, 11-12, 13-14 (R/v 8) / Ephesians 1.3-14/ Mark 6.7-13

Do you like to travel? Do you travel to discover new places and meet new people, to see new sights and hear new sounds, even to savour new tastes? Or, do you travel to visit relatives and friends, to catch up on old times and to share new beginnings? Perhaps, you travel for work and business, or even to escape.

A metaphor we often use to describe traveling is “journey.” A journey  from A to B. An adventure from beginning to end. A route that meanders; a trek over mountains to scale and into valleys to forge. In all these journeys, the traveler is always moving forward towards his destination. 

We use the Christian metaphor “pilgrimage” to express what more a journey, this travel, in life can mean: our way home to God. If Christian life is a pilgrimage to return to God, we should not be afraid to ask Jesus for what we need to make this journey well.

In today's gospel passage, Jesus gives us three teachings on traveling well: travel to preach; listen to travel; and be empowered for travel. “Tips for the trip” is how I would describe these lessons. 

Lesson 1: Travel to preach  

Jesus calls his disciples to travel not for themselves but to preach and serve others. He gathers them, and then missions them to proclaim the Good News. They extend Jesus’ work of bringing God’s kingdom to the frontiers. It is when these disciples say “yes” to this journey that they are transformed into apostles. The root word for apostles in Greek means “to send out.” A disciple’s’ “yes” allows Jesus to send him out as God’s messenger. With Jesus, he can then proclaim that God is love and God is with us.  

Lesson 2: Listen to travel

Jesus instructs his disciples on how to carry out the mission on their travels. He does this because traveling in the world can be difficult. There are thieves and bandits who waylay travelers. There is poverty some struggle with to complete their journeys. And there are burdens, sometimes too many, that travelers carry. So Jesus sends his disciples out in pairs for safety. He tells them to travel light so that they can better complete the journey. And he instructs them to welcome the hospitality others will give them along the way. 

Lesson 3: Be empowered for travel

Jesus also empowers his disciples to transform the world into God’s kingdom as they travelled. He empowers them to proclaim repentance, to dispossess the possessed, and to heal the sick. His power helps them to uplift the people they encountered. These people learn that they are not unknown or unwanted. Rather, they are God’s sons and daughters, loved by name. This is the Good News that the apostles proclaim. 

To travel to preach; to listen to travel; and to be empowered for travel.  What do these lessons have to do with you and me, you might ask?

I'd like to suggest something important because we are travelers in life and pilgrims to God. We might miss out on what Jesus is offering us if our attitude today is “well, it’s another Sunday Eucharist, one in the repetition of many Sunday Eucharists in life. So, I come, I listen, I pray, I receive communion, I go back home, and tomorrow I go to study and to work. Just the same old same old.” 

What we’d miss out on if we have this outlook is the opportunity Jesus is offering us to travel purposefully as Christians. That is, to travel through life with Christ-like significance. 

How many of us have had the opportunity to travel for the good of others? To heal broken relationships? To free and uplift those in need? To announce good news? This is the opportunity Jesus gives his disciples in today’s gospel passage: that possibility to go out for people's ultimate good. This is what I mean by traveling through life with a Christ-like significance. 

And Jesus is offering us this chance too. This chance to travel through life and to make God’s love, God’s life real for someone else in every community we inhabit, not just in St Ignatius parish and in our church ministries. 

And we can make our travel, our journey, our pilgrimage significant for others by acting in such Christ-like ways as these: by laying down our lives like Jesus did to save others; by giving more charitably to the poor as Jesus commanded us; by forgiving our enemy and healing the suffering like Jesus did; and by being thankful for the ordinary things in life, like food, friendship and sleep, as Jesus did by thanking God.

Amos heard the call to travel with significance in our first reading: though a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores, the Lord called him to prophesy to the people. Jesus’ disciples responded to the call to mission. And saints, missionaries, and all those who have transformed our lives with God’s word and action live out this call daily. 

But what allowed them to respond to this call to travel with Christ-like significance? What do you and I need to do likewise? 

I'd like to suggest that we can glimpse an answer in Pope Francis’ motto: “By having mercy and by choosing him.” Francis chose this line from a homily by Bede the Venerable who reflected on Jesus calling Matthew, the tax collector. At the heart of Jesus’ call is the loving mystery of God’s mercy that still values the sinner worthy for God’s work. 

And the right and only response such a person need make when he is called by God is to be totally dependent on God. Take nothing: no food; no sack; no money; just a walking stick, sandals, and a tunic. Jesus reminds his disciples and us that radical dependence on God is indeed the just and human attitude for traveling with Jesus and for Jesus. Like Jesus, dependence is what keeps us truly open to serve in God’s ways and through God’s providence. 

Don’t we know this truth deep down in our hearts in each confession and at every mass: that though we are sinners, Jesus tells us again and again how worthy we are to continue his work of making God alive and real for others?

It is precisely in our dependence on God, that we can let Jesus’ Spirit -- not political, economic, or social power -- give us God’s life to evangelize  through lives of service. And it is this same Spirit that will lead us home to God in each other’s good company.

At the end of this Eucharist, you and I will leave this holy space. We will travel to our homes and return to our everyday spaces. Some of us will go outward to the world. As we make the travels we must to wherever we go this week, the question I think we have to answer is this: how do you and I want to spread Jesus’ message about God in our journeys of life and faith? 

Hopefully, with a lot more Christ-like significance as Jesus teaches us today.

Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore

photo: tomales point, point reyes national park by adrian dankers, sj