Sandaled but Stinky

Send-off scripts are fairly standard: “Got your phone? Don’t forget your keys/lunch/directions!”  That’s why Jesus’ parting with his disciples seems a bit off: he tells them what not to take. Some Christian churches will hear this weekend from Mark 6: no money, no food, no sack and no second tunic. Whoa—no clothing change in the heat of the middle east? They must’ve been a fragrant bunch when they returned!

Perhaps he wants them to avoid entanglements with the crutches that often buoy us up: our achievements, possessions, treats like the granola bar tucked away in the backpack.  Instead he focuses on what they do need: each other. Or as Pooh said to Piglet, “Life is so much friendlier with two.”

Although Jesus never mentions it explicitly, he too will accompany them. They must’ve suspected that presence and power when they cured the sick and cast out demons, actions way beyond their human scope. As Henri Nouwen points out, Jesus in John 15:15 doesn’t say he’ll reveal some of what he knows about the Father, but “everything that I have heard from my Father.” Furthermore, he promises: “You will do greater things than I have done.”

Life is often a balance between going forth and coming home. One wonders about the other bookend for this passage: the return. The disheveled bunch must’ve been hungry, eager to shower, relax, have a beer and tell tales of their adventures. Let’s hope they didn’t boast, but wondered what sort of mystery enfolded them. And who this was who’d sent them?

They may have remembered the psalm, “you lead me along right paths…” Totally unexpected, but absolutely marvelous trails. Do we have similar questions, parallel awe? We too can look back at stirrings in childhood or seeds in adolescence that materialized into lifelong attractions, interests or careers. We can recall familiar ways taken so often they wore grooves in our psyches and shoes—or those so breathtakingly new we had to read signposts in a foreign language. All the journeys of feet or mind part of a longer arc, pathways into God.