In today’s Gospel from St Luke, we hear
about Jesus sending out the disciples two by two as they bring his proclamation
of God’s kingdom to the world. Jesus is
certainly a minimalist as to what he wants the disciples to bring on their
missionary journey. He tells them to
bring no money bag, no sack, and no sandals – I guess he expects them to go in
their bare feet!
I used to travel a lot as a missionary,
as most of you know. When I was working
with the Comboni Missionaries in the rainforest jungles of northern Ecuador in
South America, I used to travel to a village every Friday afternoon from our
mission site. I would spend the entire
weekend working in one of these small villages.
The journey would be about 4 hours in a canoe in the hot equatorial
sun. I did not think I was taking very
much with me by modern American standards for this weekend journey, but in
light of Jesus’ commands in today’s Gospel, I was pretty high maintenance in
what I brought with me. Let’s see what I
would have here:
1)
A
large backpack to carry everything
2)
Bottles
of water to drink
3)
A
small bottle of iodine or bleach with which I would use for treating water
4)
A
swimsuit, a towel, and soap for bathing in the river
5)
A
Bible in Spanish that I would use in my Bible study classes.
6)
A
change of clothing.
7)
A
sleeping bag, to keep the creatures away from me.
8)
A
shortwave radio with which I could listen to the Voice of America or the BBC in
English (you can see that this radio is all rusted out from the humid tropical
weather).
9)
Normal
hygiene items, like a tooth brush and tooth paste
As I mentioned, I did not think I was
taking a lot with me – I thought I was just taking the essentials that I would
need for the weekend. I don’t think
Jesus’ idea was for the apostles to be martyrs or to starve to death on their
journey or to practice bad hygiene.
Rather, I think Jesus’ instructions dealt with who and what we are to
rely upon on our journey of faith. If we
have a lot of stuff with us, we can become slaves to our possessions and rely
on them too much. Jesus wants us
completely dependent on God, which is why he instructed the disciples to be
such minimalists. If you notice, I did
not take any food with me. I could have
brought cans of food with me each weekend to provide for all my meals. However, relying on the people for food in
the communities where I stayed and sharing a meal around the table with them –
that could be very challenging at times, especially eating the jungle creatures
that the people usually ate for lunch or supper. However, it helped me grow closer to them, it
pushed my boundaries and my comfort zone, and it made me feel like a true
missionary, that’s for sure.
We live in a modern world where our
material possessions control us much more than we think. Going unplugged for a
while can be very freeing. I remember
when I was preparing for my pilgrimage to Spain last spring. My secretary asked me about getting in touch
with me by phone, and I told her that I was not even bringing my cell phone
with me. She couldn’t believe that I was
going to be that far away from all the forms of technology that I use each
day. I told her – no cell phone and no
laptop, that I might have the chance to check my email once or twice a
week. To be honest, I did not miss it at
all, and it really helped me focus on my faith during the pilgrimage with fewer
distractions.
Does our faith should mean so much to us that we are willing
to make sacrifices and put up with inconveniences. Maybe we can ask ourselves: What do we need
to do to become more dependent upon God, to grow and develop during our journey
of faith?
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