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Mark 6:6b-13
Jesus Sends Out the Twelve
Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village. 7 Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits.
8 These were his instructions: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. 9 Wear sandals but not an extra tunic. 10 Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. 11 And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.”
12 They went out and preached that people should repent. 13 They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.
This is Mark’s account of the instructions Jesus gave the twelve apostles when he sent them out for the first time to do ministry on their own. And you might have noticed that I referred to these men as apostles, rather than disciples. Jesus had other disciples, including a number of women like Mart Magdalene and Mary of Bethany.
It’s also worth taking a moment to note that since Bible scholars say that the Gospel of Mark is actually Peter’s account of the life and teachings of Jesus, this is a report of the sending of the apostles from someone who was actually one of them.
It’s interesting that we’re told that the Twelve were given authority by Jesus to cast out evil spirits, but we get no details about what they were supposed to be saying as they went. Not much of the message they were supposed to be preaching and teaching is set out here. The text does say that they “preached that people should repent.” When we hear that word repent, we think of repenting as making a decision to stop committing some particular sin – or maybe to stop sinning in general. And being a follower of Jesus definitely includes confessing our sins and striving to turn away from them.
But as you might remember, the word that’s translated “repent” in the New Testament actually has a broader meaning. It actually means ‘to get a new mind’ – basically to start seeing things from a different perspective – from God’s perspective.
It seems to me that’s the sense of this word that we really need to keep in mind as we read this passage. Jesus sent out the apostles to call people to a new and different understanding of what God was doing in the world – of what it meant to be God’s people. Jesus came to announce the establishment of a new and radically different reign of God, not just the revival of the old Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judea. God’s new reign would take root wherever people – Jews and gentiles alike – would open their hearts and minds to the good news of what was happening in Jesus. And the apostles were presumably announcing that new kingdom.
Jesus also instructed the apostles on how they were to conduct themselves as they went about performing their ministry.
First of all, Jesus told them to travel light. Carrying a bunch of stuff with them would have compelled the apostles to take care of that stuff so it didn’t get lost or stolen. That would have made their possessions a distraction from the work Jesus was sending them to do.
But there’s another reason for them to travel light, maybe one that’s even more important: If they took nothing with them, the apostles would have to trust that God would provide for their needs. So their faith – their trust in God – would be getting stronger as they went along on their mission.
Jesus also told them that when they got to a town and someone offered hospitality, they should stay at that house as long as they were in the town. The apostles weren’t to be looking to ‘move up’ to a richer household that could provide better food or more luxurious lodgings. The simple hospitality that first met their needs would be God’s way of providing for them as long as they were in that town.
And finally, Jesus gave the apostles what has sometimes been called “a sacrament of failure.” This is terribly important, it seems to me. When a town refused to receive their ministry, the apostles were to knock the dirt of that town off their feet and move on. By giving them this little ritual, Jesus was letting the apostles know that he expected them to fail sometimes. And knowing that their master expected them to fail sometimes would protect them from being paralyzed by the fear of failure. When things didn’t work, the apostles were given permission to leave their failures behind them and move on to the next town, instead of dwelling on the failures of the past.
Those of us who follow Jesus in the 21st century practice our faith in a very different world. But the principles Jesus passed along to the apostles in these few verses – principles like the importance of trusting in God to provide for us, the importance of sharing fellowship with those of modest means as well as the well-to-do, and freedom from the fear of failure – those principles are central to the life of productive disciples today, just as they were then.
Let’s pray. Lord, impress on our hearts the instructions you gave your apostles when you sent them into the world, and help us, also, to travel light, to welcome the fellowship of all people, and to go boldly without fear of failure in our lives of service to you. Amen.
Every Blessing,
Henry
(The other listed readings for today are Psalms 28 and 99; Isaiah 48:12-22; and Galatians 1:18 – 2:10. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.com, the website of the International Bible Society.)
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