A homily for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 14, 2024
Am 7:12-15, Eph 1:3-14 or 1:3-10, Mk 6:7-13
Let’s start with a story about how not to evangelize.
When I was in the third grade at St. Leo the Great School in Lincroft, our teachers told us of the great rewards that awaited us in the afterlife if we brought other people into the faith. If we made converts.
Most of us, myself included, expected a shorter stay in Purgatory or, better yet, coconut cream and key lime pies for dessert at every meal in the Heavenly banquet.
The notion was so transactional that some of us wondered if it were possible for us to convert too many people, and thereby owe St. Peter a refund of some sort. Nonetheless, we were willing to take the chance.
And so, all fired up, we set off, the way Jesus dispatched his first-century disciples we’d learned about via Scripture.
I didn’t have to look far.
Right before the start of that school year, a new family had moved in next door. A rabbi, his wife, and their son and daughter. God’s chosen people, still waiting for the Messiah, as far as I knew. I could fulfill their longings and get a great table at the everlasting Ruth’s Chris Steak House at the same time.
So I invited David, the son, over to our house and I hauled out the family Bible. He said he’d seen a Bible before; his house was full of them.
But mine has this, I said, opening the book to the New Testament. I was convinced that, once he’d seen the Gospels and Epistles and Acts and Revelation, some supposed fog would lift from his eyes and those of his family and all of Judea.
“Yeah, I know about Jesus,” he told me. “We don’t believe that. And my Bible doesn’t have that stuff in it.”
That evening, David’s father gently suggested to my dad that I could use a lesson in pluralism. Such tolerance continues to be a lifelong lesson.
When Jesus sent forth The Twelve, as Mark recounts in today’s Gospel passage, he gave the pairs specific instructions on what things to do and how to do them. Travel light. Hitchhike and couch-surf via the kindness of strangers. Teach and preach and heal.
Excellent! Practical! Doable!
But then Our Lord throws in the shake-off-the-dust slap at the people who slam their doors (the way some of us may whenever we see politicians or itinerant missionaries approaching our homes).
Harsh.
Jesus seems to be saying
Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.
(I’ve heard that attributed to Mark Twain, but its provenance is widely debated.)
Yeah, definitely harsh.
I can understand Emmanuel’s concern about unproductive encounters, especially long ago, when communication was person-to-person via shoe-leather express. No network or cable TV broadcasts on Sunday mornings from megachurches. No memes or IGs or X’s or blogs like this.
No, every encounter with a stony-hearted person would mean less time to meet and embrace a warmer someone yearning to welcome Christ into their heart. Even with the disciples’ most efficient and hard-charging efforts, the going was slow. The Law of Love may have had a mustard seed as its symbol, but it grew less like a weed and more like an ancient Lebanon cedar. Slowly and steadily, but slowly nonetheless.
So: Waste. No. Time. I get it.
But — sorry — I do question the wisdom of thumbing your nose at someone who, today, says no thanks. Because what about tomorrow? What about the power of conversion? What about the power of love and wisdom that comes from the Spirit to change hearts and minds?
Also, what about human nature and the tendency of some people to hold a grudge, which we probably instigated by flicking real or figurative donkey dust in their general direction? The Hatfields and McCoys were real people, let’s not forget.
This, I believe, is where modern marketing techniques come in. (Who’d have thought something spiritual could come from the madness of Madison Avenue?) When someone says no, no thank you, not interested, we don’t need to be rude or caustic or dismissive.
No, we can thank them for their time, apologize if it seems we irked them, and, if we have a card or a flyer or a tract, offer it to them in case they reconsider. Honey, not vinegar.
We can show that we live lives of kindness and tolerance and acceptance and good temper. That we live the Law of Love.
That we, through our example, can show that God’s arms are always outstretched.
Always and eternally.
