Every year, our youth go on their summer mission trip. They’ve gone to Buffalo, Syracuse, Ohio, New York City. This year, we didn’t quite know how things were going to stand with the pandemic and what that would mean for things like accommodations and travel, so both 2021 mission trips are taking place here in Rochester.
Which I love.
There are so many amazing things to encounter right where we are. And we can miss them if we’re not looking.
A few years ago, a friend of mine came to visit from another state. He hadn’t been to Rochester before. I asked him what he wanted to see, and he said he’d like to go to the Susan B. Anthony house. But then he immediately took it back and said, “Ah, but you live right around the corner — you’ve probably been there 100 times.”
Of course, I hadn’t been there even once. Precisely *because* I lived right around the corner. I was used to thinking of it as familiar, that I’d never actually stopped to take it in; to go into that holy place, and see what I could learn.
It’s becoming easier and easier for us to trace the same routes every day— without ever passing through most of the place we live; without ever encountering most of the people we live near. Each person’s story is holy ground. How much are we missing, when we do this?
In today’s Gospel, Jesus sends his disciples on a kind of mission trip.
They’re also going out — not to a faraway place, or another country— but to the neighborhoods that surround them right where they are. Like our youth, they’re being sent out to serve, yes; to heal the world. But also like our youth, the expectation is that *they* will be changed, too. They’ll be learning solidarity and social justice. And one of their goals will be to stay present: to connect with each other, and with neighbors, in a way that transforms everyone involved.
Maybe you have gone on a trip like that at some point in your life.
If you have, you know that beforehand, there is the all-important list of What to Pack. What to bring, what definitely not to bring, if you are to thrive on this new adventure that’s about to start.
Packing was a cause of great anxiety in my house, growing up. Whenever my family went on a trip to a place we hadn’t been before, loading the car was an hours-long process. We had to have a coat in case of snow (it didn’t matter if we were going to the tropics— that winter coat had better be packed!), a raincoat in case of rain, a hat in case of sun, and layers to accommodate every temperature imaginable. We had to have endless snacks and bottles of water. We had to have a blanket in case the car broke down and we were forced to spend a cold night stranded by the side of the road. The glovebox was full of folded maps, to make sure we could plot out exactly where we were going, how to get there, and how long it was going to take.
Why did we haul along all this stuff? Mostly because it gave us the feeling of being protected.
We wanted to feel secure for any eventuality.
As most of us do, when starting out on a new journey.
Whether that journey is becoming a parent, or grandparent. Starting a new job, or retiring from one we’ve held for a long time. Navigating our way through unexpected grief. Navigating our way through unexpected love.
We want to feel that we’re prepared— not just materially, but spiritually. We want assurance that we have the “right stuff.” We often doubt that we do. We think maybe there is some special skill or wisdom that others have packed away inside them, that we don’t. And we wonder: what if my energy just runs out, and I’m left stranded in unfamiliar territory, not knowing how to do this, how to proceed?
One of life’s lovely secrets, is… You never need as much as you think you do.
Whenever my family would set out, with our car so carefully over-packed— inevitably we would find that we hardly used any of it. The flat tires, the wrong turns we feared, the fluke snowstorms we anticipated… they almost never happened.
With inward journeys, it’s the same way.
We never know what’s ahead, when we come to a major turn in our life.
But once we start down the road, we find—almost every time— that we have everything we need. Just bringing ourselves is enough.
*
Jesus tells his disciples, “take no food, no bag, no money in your belts.”
They’re to wear sandals, but not a second tunic. A second tunic is what protected you from the rain, and the elements. It was what gave people that sense of being ready for any eventuality.
No, Jesus says, none of that. Leave it behind; leave your need for security behind. Take nothing but a walking stick. In other words, trust the journey.
One of my favorite ministries is a group called the Faithful Fools in San Francisco. They’re a ministry of accompaniment with people living on the streets in the Tenderloin District— one of the city’s most hurting places. The Faithful Fools’ mission is simple: to be good neighbors in that place. To listen. To connect. To pray, read, sing, eat, and be together with neighbors living outdoors. To hear each other’s stories, with no other agenda.
From this, amazing things have happened. The Fools have become a source of social change, first on their block, then in the whole city. It all started with people simply BEING with each other. No one trying to fix anyone else. Just being, and witnessing each other’s lives.
Youth groups often visit the Fools to participate in a “street retreat” — that is, a day of walking around the Tenderloin, and joining in their ministry of meeting people and listening to them. When they’re getting ready to go out, the teens are instructed on what to leave behind— including their cell phone, and their wallet. Two things most of them are used to never being without.
They probably feel like the disciples did, being asked to take nothing in their belts, and no bag or food. People were used to always carrying those things with them, at that time. They must’ve focused a lot of attention there— the way we can end up centering our lives around our phones and our wallets. But we know, too, that these things also distract us. Jesus’ instructions to the disciples are to “stay with” the people they cross paths with. Not to let anything take their attention away, as they go out to meet their neighbors. They’re to BE in the moment as they enter into their world, their story.
For visitors to the Faithful Fools, that prospect feels pretty scary at first. The gulf between the kids’ experience, and that of a person living unhoused on the streets of the Tenderloin, always starts out looking too wide to cross.
And so the teens are invited to lay a few more things down.
Before they go on their walk, they are asked: “what words come to mind, when you think of someone living with homelessness?”
Slowly, they begin to answer, one by one.
They call out: “Drugs,” “Depression,” “Isolation.” As they speak, their trip leader writes the words on newsprint tacked on the wall. The labels keep coming. “Loneliness,” they say. “Lost,” “Disrespected,” “Invisible.”
They look at the newsprint sheet together: all the assumptions and stereotypes they have set down, to leave behind before they go out. Once, during a session like this, the youth looked at the list of words in silence for a long time. Then, in a clear voice that resonated across the room like a bell, one of the kids remarked, “That’s also how people talk about teenagers.”
Just like that, the whole energy of the room changed.
There were nods, and murmurs of agreement. Everyone appreciated the truth and power of that observation.
With that, the gulf between the kids and the people they would soon meet on the streets became bridgeable. Now they were not strangers but companions— people sharing some common experience of what it means to be human. [1]
*
This is the great gift of being a follower of Jesus.
You might be asked to leave many things behind— including things you are fairly attached to. Your distractions. Your sources of security. Your assumptions. Your stereotypes.
You might feel, for a time, like you have lost your center.
But then you find again. You find it in God, and you find it in other people. People who become a part of you.
*
What a beautiful way of moving through the world.
We could read this Gospel at the beginning of every day. It’s good to call ourselves back to this guidance, and ask:
What would it mean, for me to be fully present with each person I meet today? To really STAY with them in this moment, and not let my mind rush ahead, or distractedly wander off?
What would it mean to risk connecting with them, even if I didn’t feel totally secure or in my comfort zone? To meet them without assumptions, or labels?
What if I decided to treat every person— without exception—as holy ground?
Jack Kornfield is a Buddhist teacher. He wrote the book After the Ecstasy, the Laundry – some you probably read that. When he was a young man, he went to study at a monastery in Thailand. It was the practice at this monastery to bow to each person that you passed, as a sign of respect.
This was really hard for Jack, sometimes. It was easy enough when the person he passed in the hallway was an elder monk, who he knew to be wise; who had lived much longer than he had, and radiated a deep spiritual presence. But when he had to bow to a 21-year-old monk— someone roughly his own age— who he knew to be full of pride and arrogance; or a sort of pretender monk who he suspected had never actually meditated a day in his life— it was all he could do to incline his head a little bit. It took all of his willpower. But as the only Westerner there, he didn’t want to give a bad impression by refusing to honor the culture and tradition, so he did his best to keep trying this practice.
At last, he found a way to do this happily. He said, “I began to look for some worthy aspect of each person… Some worthy aspect… I bowed to the wrinkles around the [pretender monk’s] eyes, for all the difficulties he had seen and suffered through… I bowed to the vitality and playfulness of the young [prideful] monk, the incredible possibilities life had yet ahead of him.” [2]
There was always something to bow to.
Something sacred in each person, a spark of the divine, that asked for respect— even reverence.
Jesus invites his disciples to honor everyone—even those people we find it difficult to love, who aren’t hospitable, who don’t welcome them at first, who are difficult to get along with.
He sends them out, and he sent us out now, to be his hands and feet in the world; his compassion; his attentiveness; his warmth; his humanity.
Our life is meant to be one long mission trip,
Where we’re challenged over and over again
To see no one as a stranger
And everyone as a companion.
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