To be a Christian is to be called. The Lord sends those he calls. In today’s Gospel, Jesus, having already called the Twelve, sends them. While he “gave them authority over unclean spirits” and they cured many sick people, they were primarily sent to preach repentance.1
Along with our Gospel, our first reading from the book of the prophet Amos provides some insight into who God calls as well as what he sends them to do. Amos was a shepherd “and a dresser of sycamores.”2 LLike Jesus, was also not of the tribe of Levi, the priestly tribe, Amos was not a priest. Nonetheless, God called him to be a prophet.
Amos lived in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, in Galilee. This is the area where, centuries later, Jesus came from. Judah is where Jerusalem is and, being the holy city, where the Temple was. The main Israelite shrine in the Northern Kingdom, as well as its capital, was Bethel. It was to Bethel that God sent Amos to prophesy. His prophesy was to call those prophets and leaders to repentance, back to fidelity to God’s covenant.
As you might imagine, Amos’ prophesying went over like a lead balloon. He was told to leave Bethel and go prophesy in Judah. In essence, the chief priest, Amaziah, told Amos, “Get out of here. Who do you think you are to speak to me, to speak to the king, like that?” This should take us back to our Gospel for last Sunday.
If you remember, after healing, casting out demons, and preaching repentance throughout the rest of Galilee, Jesus went home to Nazareth. On the sabbath, he taught in the synagogue. As a result of his preaching, the devout people in Nazareth, Mark tells us, “took offense at him.”3 Their offense caused the Lord to observe: “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house.”4 You see, being Messiah means that Jesus is a prophet.
Immediately after being baptized, a child is anointed with sacred chrism with the words: “As Christ was anointed Priest, Prophet, and King, so may you live always as a member of his body, sharing everlasting life.”5 “By Baptism,” the Catechism teaches, we “share in the priesthood of Christ, in his prophetic and royal mission.” Together, the Catechism continues, the baptized “are ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, that [they] may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called [them] out of darkness into his marvelous light.’ Baptism gives a share in the common priesthood of all believers.”6
Your being called and sent is no accident, at least if our second reading from Ephesians is to be believed: “In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ.”7 This is a clear reference to baptism, through which you are reborn, through Christ, by the Holy Spirit’s power, as a child of God. Through the blood of Christ, “we have redemption…, the forgiveness of transgressions…”8
Amos, the prophet, by Naomi, used under the rules of Creative Common License
It is only by experiencing the sweet fruits of repentance that you are able to share them with others. It is then, like Amos, like the Twelve, you are sent on mission, so that you can evangelize, share the Good News. Because it is only then than you can tell others what difference knowing Jesus makes in your life.
Living as we do at the intersection of time and eternity, truly knowing Jesus makes a lot of difference. It is easy to be mistaken about this difference and all too common to exaggerate it, often to an absurd degree. Michael Knott, who was a pillar of Christian alternative music and who passed away earlier this year, when asked the usual question during a lengthy interview, something like “Who are you?,” he replied:
Basically, I'm a human being and I believe in Christ, period. It doesn't make my life rosy, it doesn't make my life terrible, it doesn't do anything with that. I know Christ9What Knott nailed was that knowing Christ isn’t transactional. In other words, it doesn’t work by believing in Christ and neatly following all the rules in exchange for nothing bad ever happening to you, let alone a promise to live your best life now. As our Gospel from three Sundays ago showed us, Jesus is with us in and through the storm, even when, maybe especially when, it doesn’t seem like it, when it seems like he’s asleep. Rather, as the psalmist puts in Psalm 23: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”10
To know Christ, to really know him, means that being a Christian constitutes your identity, becomes who you are. As Saint Paul insisted, “whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.”11 Knowing Christ isn’t just a way to add a little morality, a little religion, to your life. That is old and dead, not new and alive.
Like Jesus in the garden, you must learn, to borrow the title of a great spiritual classic, to abandon yourself to divine providence. In other words, to trust him even when the chips are down and when the deck seems stacked against you.
The only way to really know Christ is to experience what I am trying to describe for yourself. Only then, can you fulfill your prophetic call. Only then can you be sent to proclaim the Gospel, that is, to tell others what it means, through experience, to say, “I know Christ.”
Only once you truly repent, can you preach repentance. For a Christian, repentance is just another word for redemption, another word for true freedom, another word for realizing what the Lord means when he says, “Blessed are you…”
1 Mark 6:7.13.12.↩
2 Amos 7:14.↩
3 Mark 6:3.↩
4 Mark 6:4.↩
5 Rite of Baptism for Children, “Rite of Baptism for Several Children,” sec. 62.↩
6 Catechism of the Catholic Church, sec. 1268; 1 Peter 2:9.↩
7 Ephesians 3:4-5.↩
8 Ephesians 3:7.↩
9 Doug Van Pelt & Daniel Johnston. “Michael Knott- A Candid Interview.” HM, 2003.↩
10 Psalm 23:4.↩
11 2 Corinthians 5:17.↩
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