A Playbook for Answering Hate--July 12, 2024

A Playbook for Answering Hate--July 12, 2024

"Then [Jesus] went about among the villages teaching. He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them. [Mark 6:6b-13]

Ok, let's just be clear about this from the very beginning: Jesus does not call people merely to learn the same set of facts about God that he knows. He is not recruiting students to memorize rules or propositions in a creed and then "graduate" from faith-school, only to forget it all over summer break.  Jesus is not interested in just pouring head-knowledge into our brains; he is gathering apprentices to live as he lives and to do what he does.

That's the key to understanding what happens in this turn from the Scripture passage many of us heard this past Sunday.  Jesus has just made his appearance at his hometown synagogue, during which he was met with a shrug of indifference, and after which a lot of his old former friends and neighbors walked out on him offended and upset. (As a side note, if you read the parallel story in Luke 4, it's especially clear that they are scandalized by Jesus' suggestion that God loves outcasts, foreigners, and enemies as much as God loved them.  But that's still the sort of thing that earns a person scorn from Respectable Religious people...) Anyway, having endured that rejection, he now sends his followers out to do the same thing they've seen him do.  They will announce the Reign of God like Jesus has; they'll cure the sick, and they'll cast out the powers of evil.  But significantly, Jesus has made it possible for them to attempt all this, because he's given them permission to fail.  After all, they've seen him fail first.  And I don't think that's a random detail or a sheer coincidence.  I think this is part of how Jesus equips his followers to find the courage to be vulnerable.

Imagine if all the disciples had ever seen before from Jesus was one utter success after another.  Imagine if every time Jesus spoke, he was met with nothing but fawning praise and a heavenly chorus in the background.  And then, imagine you're one of the disciples being sent out into the Real World to carry Jesus' message and heal others!  You'd be petrified!  You'd be scared out of your mind of either letting Jesus down, or not being good enough, or failing where Jesus had only ever shown you success.  It would make it intimidating to even try. So Jesus takes the hit first--he has not only shown his disciples the amazing things he can do, but he also models for them how to deal with situations that feel like failure.  He has gone into a situation he knew was likely to end with being rejected (notice how Jesus replied casually in the preceding verses with, "Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown..." like he knew what was coming), and he has thereby given his disciples a playbook for answering hate without resorting to hatred themselves.

That's precisely what this whole scene is: preparing his disciples for a particular way of being in the world--being like Jesus.  And crucially, Jesus' way is a non-threatening, non-confrontational, and decidedly non-colonizing way of being in the world.  Jesus doesn't send his disciples out to "conquer the world" or "take back the country for God" in his name. He doesn't even send them out equipped with lots of money or possessions to win over converts with promises of prosperity.  Instead, just like Jesus, his apprentices are sent out essentially empty-handed, daring to trust that God will provide for them through generous people who welcome them, and to trust that even with empty hands, God's power can work through them to help others.  They will bring only the power and message that comes from Jesus--no weapons to defend themselves, no cash to "persuade" people to listen, and no merchandise to peddle.  And that will turn out to be enough.  Whether the people in any given town or village welcome the disciples or not, their vulnerable presence by itself will be a witness to what Jesus is all about and what kind of kingdom he is bringing.  And in advance, Jesus has given them an example for how to respond to hostility without resorting to becoming hostile themselves.  They will know how to answer rejection without becoming bitter or vengeful, because they've seen that model in Jesus.  And that way, even if people reject Jesus' disciples when they come to town, the way they leave without resorting to violence or spite will be a witness to Jesus' kind of love.  

In other words, the disciples can be witnesses to the Reign of God either way: if people welcome them, the visiting disciples will show them the healing power of God at work through them.  And if people reject them, the departing disciples will show them Jesus' willingness not to respond to evil with more evil or hatred with more hatred.  Either way, they will be a witness to how God operates in the world.  Either way, their actions become a testimony to the vulnerable love of God.

And of course, this becomes the model for each of us as well.  Jesus didn't just send out those first disciples and then give up on the idea of his movement rippling outward.  Nor has Jesus changed his modus operandi, his strategy for being in the world.  We are sent out, too, as the people of Jesus, with the same approach of vulnerable love.  We aren't sent out to conquer anybody, and Jesus still has no interest in "taking our country back" (because Jesus' movement isn't confined to any nation, state, ethnicity, or government).  We aren't commissioned to colonize the world so that Jesus can build an empire. Rather, we are sent out as a small but potent presence--like yeast in the dough, like light from a lamp, like salt for the earth.

So we go out into the world--not only on faraway mission trips (which can feel like baptized tourism), but right in our own neighborhoods.  We go as a distinctive presence, showing love when people expect hatred or indifference... showing welcome when others would exclude or ostracize... showing gentleness when the conventional wisdom thinks it looks "weak" or "foolish."  And that's because Jesus has called us not merely to know the things Jesus knows, but to live and act in ways that reflect the character of Jesus, all the way down to his willingness to be gentle, gracious, and vulnerable in a world full of mean.  Being a disciple--an apprentice, so to speak--of Jesus isn't a matter of memorizing a textbook of correct answers for a test, but rather learning how to practice a playbook to answer the hate and indifference of the world with a love that catches everybody by surprise.  And to live out those practices, we need nothing but open and empty hands.

What will it look like for us today?

Lord Jesus, send us out into the routines of this day in the places where we find ourselves, embodying your kind of vulnerable love.