Sending of 70 DOK Province VII Shreveport
Mark 6:1-13. March 16, 2024
Here we are in church a week before Holy Week at this glorious Daughters of the King meeting with old and new friends, as Jesus keeps reminding us how we are called to our order’s vow of prayer, service, and evangelism.
Jesus says, “Here’s what I need you to do: preach the kingdom, anoint with oil, heal the sick, and cast out demons. I only have one more week before Holy Week. I need a little rest before all the next events occur. Could you take over for a couple of weeks!”
This call from Jesus sending us out does not happen only today but happens every Sunday at all our churches. At the end of every service, while the last word of the last hymn is still ringing in the air, the deacon from the back of the church says, “Let us go forth in the name of Christ! Go in peace to love and serve the Lord! Let us go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit!”
These are not words for the consumers of God’s love. These are words for the providers.
We have heard this story about the sending of the disciples so often that we may take our job description for granted. In short, Jesus gives us precisely the same jobs he was sent to do. It did not have to be that way. He could have pointed out that none of us is the Son of God. None of us was born under a blinding star, had angels sing hosannas over our cribs, or received exotic gifts from foreign dignitaries before we cut a tooth.
Barbara Brown Taylor1 tells us that Jesus could have reminded us all that and insisted that we remain his ASSISTANTS for our own safety, you understand, avoiding malpractice suits. He could have let us mix the mud while he heals the blind or spray Lysol while he cleanses lepers. He could have done that, but he does not. Instead, Jesus TRANSFERS his ministry to us while he is still alive. He entrusts it to us. With little training and very little advice, he sends us out to heal wounds and restore outcasts. But he does not send us out alone, but in community, which daughters know so well./
When I was growing up, our country’s darkest enemy was the Soviet Union, as it still may be today. In school, we regularly participate in air raid drills, hiding under our desks in the event of an impending atomic bomb attack by Russia. It is hard to believe that the powerful old Soviet regime was torn apart when it fell in August 1991, giving way to a new social order, even though it did not last. James Billington, the Librarian of Congress studying Russian history, was in Moscow and gives an eyewitness account. Boris Yeltsin and a small group of defenders occupy the Russian White House. They successfully manage to face off an enormous number of tanks and troops poised to attack, stop the rebellion, and restore the old Soviet guard.
The Babushkas, the “old church women,” and their courageous public Christian witness play a vital role in this successful resistance. These bandana-wearing older women, who kept the Orthodox Christian church alive for years during the Soviet period, were the butt of many jokes by both Russians and Westerners. No persons could have seemed more powerless or irrelevant than they were. These grandmothers were widely regarded as evidence of the inevitable death of religion in the Soviet Union.
And yet,/ on the critical night of August 20, 1991, when martial law was proclaimed, and people ordered to return home, many of these women disobey and go to the place of confrontation. Some feed the resisters in a public display of support. Others staff medical stations, others pray for a miracle, while still others astoundingly climb up onto the tanks, peer through the slits at the crew-cut men inside, and tell them, “There are new orders,/ those from God: Thou shalt not kill.” The young men stop the tanks. “The attack,” said Billington, “never comes, and by dawn of the third day, the tide has turned.”/
Let’s come closer to home.2 Little Rock, summer of 1958. Governor Faubus invokes a hastily passed state law to close high schools, rather than obey the federal order to integrate after the 1957 crisis at Central High. Three women, Adolphine Fletcher Terry, a prominent “old family” in her seventies, Vivion Brewer, and Velma Powell, meet while organizing a dinner party honoring Harry Ashmore, the Arkansas Gazette editor and recent recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. In addition, they organize the Women’s Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools (WEC). WEC becomes a highly effective organization that bombarded the city with ads, fliers, and statements challenging Faubus’s actions. At peak membership, WEC musters 2000. Largely inexperienced in politics, these women become articulate, confident public school promoters and help others understand that schools must remain open and integrated.///
So, take a break this weekend, but remember that we are baptized and have taken a vow to pray, serve, and evangelize for Christ. Somewhere along this journey, we will take a deep breath and head out into places we never imagined in the name of Christ. Maybe we will go to comfort a friend in the hospital, take communion to the sick, speak a word of reconciliation in a neighbor’s living room, or stand up for injustice at work. Maybe we will visit our crowded prisons or talk to someone about recovery. Perhaps we will start a food ministry. Maybe we will become healers in distant places or take a courageous stand at a public forum./ We will carry only ONE thing:/ Jesus’ gospel of peace and love and the power of our daily prayers. The way may not always be easy, and the path is sometimes uncertain, but by the grace of God, our work will become a part of God’s work and (will help knock the powers of evil off the throne. Satan will fall from the sky like a flash of lightning, and names will be written in heaven). God will help us change the heart of stone into a heart of flesh /in ourselves/ and the world ./
May you have a blessed Holy Week and Easter./
Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
1Barbara Brown Taylor, “Heaven at Hand” in Bread of Heaven, pp. 151-155.
2Sara Alderman Murphy, Breaking the Silence ( University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, 1997).
Joanna Seibert