The Task Before Us

Gospel: Luke 9: 1-6

Jesus sends out his disciples to do two things: to proclaim the Kingdom of God, and to heal the sick.  The disciples are to do so while living a life of simplicity - owning few possessions and moving about from place to place.  And wherever they go they are to proclaim peace to those in the places where they are residing.  All of these aspects of their mission are in imitation of what Jesus did in his public ministry while on earth.

First, we proclaim the kingdom of God, not the kingdom of an empire, nation, or political party.  The kingdom of God is a place where all are served, all are healed, liberated, and fed.  Just as Jesus cared for every single person he met, refusing no one and even caring for people when urged not to do so by crowds and his disciples - so the disciples are to bring that same healing without distinction to all the places where they find themselves.  

All of this may sound foreign to us.  We have grown accustomed to religion being about having great amounts of property and possessions, to its pastors serving as chaplains to empire or revolution.  But Jesus was about none of these things, and he calls his disciples to be about none of these things.  The task remains unchanged: we are to proclaim the kingdom of God not men, and we are to go about healing others while living simply and offering peace wherever we go.