Quick Summary:

Today’s gospel is a two-act play. In the first act, Jesus returns for the third time to his hometown and experiences first hand the rejection of those who once knew him. The experience, Mark tells us, leads Jesus to send his apprentices out on a missionary journey of their own; a journey which they seem ill-prepared to make. Perhaps he wants them to know that rejection and failure simply come with the territory of this journey on which he’s invited them; that the only way they can understand this is by experiencing it themselves.

The church that has grown up on American soil has come to so identify Jesus’ mission with success and with strength that it’s hard for us to imagine placing ourselves in the vulnerable position Jesus puts the apostles in. American culture is all about upward mobility, and, especially these days, the upward mobility being championed includes sticking to your tribe and stoking fear and suspicion of those who are different, who are “other.” How did it come to this? Jesus’ own public witness was never based on fear or resentment, nor was it designed to retain or retrieve earthly power for himself and his companions. The journey to which Christ calls us is one of vulnerability and risk, of both welcoming the stranger—and being the stranger—that Christ himself was.