A way to live a mission in your daily work (paid or volunteer):
Do you work well even if others do not value it.
Based on Mark 6:1-13 (see a readable retelling below); a reading that comes from the Revised Common Lectionary for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, 7/8/18.
Jesus and his disciples come to his home country and he starts to teach in the synagogue. His hearers are astonished at his wisdom and his healings – “mighty works wrought by his hands.” [Stilling the storm; healing a mentally ill man; healing a woman’s hemorrhage, and restoring a dead child to life – Mark 4:15 – 5:43.] However, since the villagers know his family and his trade as a carpenter, the villagers discount Jesus as the Messiah. [Many expected the Messiah to be wholly glorious, even supernatural.] He leaves having been able to heal only a few. He comments that a prophet is not honored in his home town because people know him. [This pattern of rejection by his own people continues throughout Mark’s Gospel.]
It is time now to send out the twelve to spread the word of God’s coming and the need to repent [turn your life around] to receive it. He sends them out equipped to travel light not weighed down with extra clothing. When ill treated somewhere, they are to shake the dust off their feet is a way to say the villagers are unbelieving and to be avoided. The disciples cast out demons and heal many with oil [believed to carry miraculous power].
A theme: Jesus is rejected by his own people and his followers also need to be prepared for rejection.
