God needs Missionaries NOT Mercenaries: When Collaboration marks us out as God’s Children
Amos 7:12-15; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:7-13
Every human being is a potential slave to his/her desires. The moment one distances oneself from God and surrounds oneself with all that make one different from the other, one puts on a self-made chain. According to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains.” The chains in question are human-made. At birth, a child comes into the world carrying nothing, as a sign of freedom and dependence on God. For the Yoruba of South-Western Nigeria, every childbirth affords human beings the opportunity to teach the virtues of courage, community and sharing. As soon as a child is delivered from its mother, the midwife gives the little baby a gentle spank to remind it that life is a tough place to live in, and that only the courageous survive in it. The cry of the baby announces the arrival of an additional member of the human family, and all the women of the village gather around and with singing welcome the neonate, sharing in the joys of its parents. Then, a small quantity of honey is put in the mouth of the child to remind it about the sweetness of collective/communal work, like the work of the bees that made the honey – the importance of collaboration.
From our first reading, Amaziah was a royal temple priest which means that his ration of food and salary from the king of Israel were guaranteed; he was in no hurry to disturb the peace of the king and run the risk of economic poverty by falling out of favor with the king – the chain of wealth and importance shackled him. Amos, who had no stakes in the royal sanctuary of Bethel, had no qualms confronting the king with his iniquities because he (Amos) is free of the chains of entanglement. Lies and cowardice trump the truth when money and economic comforts becloud one’s mission from God, as it is the case with Amaziah: “Off with you [Amos], visionary, flee to the land of Judah! There earn your bread by prophesying, but never again prophesy in Bethel,” says Amaziah. In the case of Amaziah, the love of money and food had derailed his priestly mission before the king of Israel! For Amaziah, the “priesthood” became a profession rather than a vocation; a money making venture and not the service of God and humanity.
On the contrary, when selflessness and detachment – “I am neither a prophet nor do I belong to the brotherhood of prophets,” says Amos – become the hallmarks of one’s mission, one becomes like Amos who was convinced of the divine origins of his mission from God and the attachment to money making meant nothing to him, so he was not afraid to confront the King of Israel. In fact, Amos left behind him his business and source of income to embark on the mission of social justice and the creation of the awareness of God. Indeed, Amos teaches us how to free ourselves from self-made chains that imprison us to this world and its allurements. Concerning these chains, Christ forewarns us: “you cannot serve both God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24); a conscious choice must be made either for God or against God, to live free or in chains.
Above all else, what is sad, in today’s first reading, is the fact that the fight between Amaziah and Amos takes place in God’s house – Bethel (Beth-el means “the house of God”)! The house of God that should be the symbol of unity, holiness and righteousness is transformed into a battle ground for personal ambition (Amaziah) and making God’s attempt at salvaging his house from rogues like Amaziah difficult! In fact, if we believed that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit, according to Paul (1 Cor 3:16; 6:19), then, we can personalize the conflict between Amaziah and Amos, in case we think it was a status/class war/problem. Imagine the inordinate desires of our hearts that are the temples of God, the sins buried deep in our lives – the “amaziahites” hidden in us, and the Holy Spirit’s attempts, the “amosiac,” in every heart calling us to repentance, to lead us back to God and the paths of holiness! How many priests and bishops have been convicted and sentenced to jail for child abuse and sexual exploitation, like the two sons of the biblical priest Eli, Hophni and Phinehas (1 Samuel 2:12-26), who raped women even in the sanctuary and house of God? How many pastors and men of God swindle, scam and pillage the poor of their churches and parishes, in the name of God and religion? The external structural temple and the human temples have been messed up by sin and scandals! Yes, where are the Christians, the “born-agains” and the righteous-remnants of the 21 century?
Rivalry and competition kill missionary projects and enthrone the reign of mercenaries! The fact that Amaziah couldn’t see in Amos a fellow missionary with a mandate from God to preach and work for the common good of all, the mission of God suffered division instead of collaboration. Problems begin when “missions,” God’s responsibilities entrusted to each one of us, are not differentiated from “jobs” or “professions,” our desires for material accumulations and sustenance of our earthly lives. For example (parents fail in their responsibility), when fornication and adultery detract from vocation to parenthood via procreation and parental responsibilities; when money making and the search for wealth takes precedence over the quest for the salvation of one’s soul and the souls of those dependent on one’s care; when the crave for power and authority blinds one to service and sacrifice as a priest, politician and professional; then we create chains to takeover our freedoms.
Beyond our biological and genetic configurations, God has a mission for each one of us, God wishes to work with and through each one of us because he trusts us and in our abilities. Today’s gospel is proof that God needs our collaboration with him, that God is not a solitary being but a social motivator and initiator of common projects, projects for human salvation. The fact that Jesus invites and sends out his collaborators, in today’s gospel, tells us how he has also sent us out to be his missionaries and not his mercenaries. Jesus sends them out in twos and not as loners. Also, Jesus wanted them to preach with and through their lifestyles that was why he didn’t dictate to them what to preach to others. After all, they had lived with Jesus prior to being sent out, so they were to replicate the lifestyle they saw in Jesus. What is more? The mission of those sent out is to create a better world, by chasing out demons, healing the sick and breaking down the barriers of division. Since Jesus asked them to carry nothing with them, they were to trust in the power of God to sustain them, not material prosperity/chains!
It is very easy to think of missionaries and prophets as those men and women, priests and nuns/sisters, who have dedicated their lives to the work of the gospel. Being a missionary or prophet goes beyond those to include every human being. The birth of every child is the beginning of its missionary life. We all came from God as missionaries sent upon the planet earth, and we shall return to God someday. Each one of us has a missionary mandate through the gifts and talents that we possess, to transform the earth and make it a better place. Our missionary lives on earth must be lived in conformity with the mandate we received from God prior to our coming into the world. We must live our lives on earth in constant harmony and communion with God, otherwise we become mercenaries: those who do their own will and not God’s. The broken families, global warming, wars, greed, etc. these all bear the signature marks of human mercenaries, those who abandoned their missionary mandates from God – instead of making the earth a better place, they deplete and destroy the earth and human lives!
Jesus Christ, the missionary par excellence, came upon earth with one mission – to make you and I become sons and daughters of God. He did achieve that mission, and that is the point of our second reading – that you and I are sons and daughters of God. And, as children of God, we must imitate Christ in his fidelity to his mission; we must do our utmost to be faithful missionaries of God upon earth, and reject every temptation to transform ourselves into mercenaries and destroyers of God’s creation! As a matter of fact, our baptism not only confirms that we are children of God, but also it turns each one of us into prophets. Shouldn’t each one of us be prophesying against the ills of our society, like the prophet Amos? Why must we be indifferent to the sins of our times, like Amaziah? Shouldn’t a teacher be teaching, a student studying and a worker working? What more, prophets that we are by our baptism?
Let’s conclude with the story of little John. John was sent to a public school by his parents. At the end of the school year, John failed all his examinations and came last in his class. John’s parents decided to change school for him to save him the embarrassment of repeating a class in the same school. In his second public school, John failed all his exams and came last again at the end of the school year. Now, having tried two public schools with negative results, John’s parents sent him to a Catholic school. At the end of the school year, in this Catholic school, John passed all his examinations and came first in his class. His parents were curious to know what miracle happened, so they put the question to John: “John, you failed successively in two public schools and now you are top of your class in a Catholic school, what happened?” John answer: “in my class, in this Catholic school, there is a man hanging on a cross on the wall of the classroom. Mom, I don’t want to be hanged on a cross, so I worked hard this year!
May the love of the crucified Christ on the cross transform us into prophetic missionaries!
Assignment for the Week:
As a baptized person with a prophetic mandate, could you join a protest group this week to demand that a Christian value that has been flaunted be restored or could you join a discussion on the possible ways of restoring Christian values to our society or could you talk to your neighbor or friend about Jesus this week?