Just in Case

Text: Mark 6:6b-13

In a few days, Jennell and I will head off for a Scotland adventure. But before we go, we will face the great Charles challenge – “what to pack.” Throughout our 48 years of marriage, the prevailing packing mantra has been “just in case.” So, even though there is little chance of ever needing certain items of clothing, in they go – “just in case.”

In our story from Mark’s Gospel today, the disciples are also getting prepared for a travel adventure. They are being sent off by Jesus to minister in his name. And, readers of Mark’s Gospel are not likely to anticipate great results. For the disciples of Jesus most often do not inspire confidence. They shoo away children who are trying to come to Jesus. They silence a blind beggar who happens to be a doorkeeper to the reign of God. Peter brags about his fierce loyalty to Jesus only to choke on that promise three times in less than an hour. James and John demand special status from Jesus for their exemplary discipleship, never quite understanding that to follow Jesus is reward enough for a lifetime. And, then there is Judas, who betrays a treasured friend for a pocketful of coin.

  In Chapter 6, though, Mark shines a brief ray of hope for this less than stellar band of believers. We hear that they were successful beyond expectation. And yet, Jesus seems more interested in telling them what to pack than in hearing about what happens. His packing instructions fly in the face of my longstanding “just in case” traveling motto that often leads to suitcases so full that it takes both of us to sit on them to close them.

Jesus tells his merry band of followers to reject “just in case” packing and instead, to travel light. That made little sense then and it makes even less sense in our market economy in which we pledge allegiance to “just in case.” We not only pack for trips “just in case,” we pack our lives “just in case.” We pack our chargers, our Kindles, our bug spray, our sunscreen, an extra pair of everything – “just in case.”

Jesus tells his class of slow learners: “Don’t pack a lunch.” Don’t even bring a clean change of underwear.” “Leave your money in the bank.” “Wear sandals.” “Carry a walking stick and get going.” “Avoid the trap of ‘just in case’.” So, what happens when they do as they are instructed? Well, the story is sparse on details, but Mark makes one point clearly. The disciples, who everywhere else in Mark’s Gospel are a dense and bumbling lot, here, for one fleeting, shining moment trust in the sure provisions of God. They do exactly as Jesus says, and the results are breathtaking. 

  Well, good for them. They probably did have much to take on trip with them anyway and they were not traveling vast distances. When carried across a couple of millennia, these packing instructions from Jesus grate against my “just in case” instincts and experience. And education! – for I have learned my “just in case” philosophy not only from society, I have learned it from the church and from my seminary training.

“Gary, learn to write well, ‘just in case’ a grammarian in your congregation tries to pick apart your best efforts.” “Gary, learn to pray well, ‘just in case’ someone in your church doubts that you are spiritual enough.” “Gary, learn to speak well, ‘just in case’ weary members are tempted to sleep through a sermon.” My seminary professors taught me to pack my pastor-bag to the maximum weight limit to be ready for every “just in case” situation.

After four years of college and my first two years of Seminary, off I went to serve as an intern pastor for a year in a rural congregation in southern North Carolina. I was fully armed with a compendium of biblical and theological knowledge and was ready to use it. Asked a Bible question, I had the answer polished and ready to deliver. Asked about an ethical quandary, I could recite the complexities of the issue and suggest a definitive solution. Asked how best to provide pastoral care, I knew all the right counseling phrases. I was armed and ready for ministry, packing a suitcase full of handy wisdom – “just in case.”

The first week there, the phone rang. I was told to come quickly and I did. I jumped into my car and sped to their home. I rang the doorbell, the door opened, and a body collapsed into mine, exploding into a pool of tears. “Why?” was the only word he could utter and he uttered it between every gasp for breath. Faced with a senseless, accidental shouting of his young child with a gun he kept in the house for “protection,” all he could speak through his tears was “Why?” 

As I fumbled through every nook and cranny of my well-prepared, fully loaded, “just in case” theological brain and handy bag of pastoral assurances, it was as if my mind was no longer connected to my lips. Every pat phrase I had ever spoken or heard sounded like so much rubbish in that moment and every theological concept felt far removed from this fierce field of pain.

I must have shot off ten thousand prayers to God for help during that one embrace. And, thank God, those prayers did not return unanswered. They were answered not with the right words, but with a true sense of calm that this situation was not about me and my overpacked bag of ministerial tools. As I held this broken soul and he dampened my shirt with his tears, I was reminded that God knew both my panic and his pain, and in those silent moments I learned firsthand that the promise of Emmanuel, of God with us, is not a promise ever to be packed away the week after Christmas. 

  By any standard, then or today, Jesus sent the disciples off sorely unprepared and with questionable travel instructions. They had little formal education and even less theological education. But Mark’s point is that Jesus had given them what they needed in that moment, his blessing and the promise of his presence, and would not have sent them off otherwise.   

I urge anyone who often or always bows before the throne of “just in case,” to read all of Mark’s Gospel. When you do, you will see that to “travel light” is not Jesus calling us to lead a life of naïve simplicity and to live as if we do not need to add much more to our Christian understanding of the faith. Even after their first successful mission tour, every disciple of Jesus had much more to learn and Jesus had a great deal left to teach them.    

To “travel light” does call us to trust first in something more reliable than our carefully honed “just in case” philosophy. To “travel light” is to trust that our lives consist of more than the degrees we earn, the stuff we accumulate, the job we do, the titles we hold, the places we live, the gadgets we manipulate, the Bible verses we memorize, or the church fights that we win. To “travel light” is to trust that Jesus has not yet taught us or anyone else all there is to know, and to believe that God never sends us out alone and ill-equipped to love and heal and fight against every vestige of evil. To “travel light” is to trust that you and I can hold God to God’s Word, to learn as did the prophet Ezekiel that God’s Word is as sweet as honey.

The 16th century Heidelberg Catechism begins with the question: “What is your only comfort, in life and in death?” The answer to that question has nothing to do with how many “just in case” tools we have packed in our Christian faith travel bags. The answer has everything to do with God and how God’s Son could send out disciples equipped with so little, but with all they needed.

The answer to that first Heidelberg question is: “That I belong – body and soul, in life and in death – not to myself but to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”  When you know to whom you belong and you know this not as a dry intellectual assent, but you know it in the pit of your gut and in the deepest place within your soul, then and only then will you and I be able to put all our theological knowledge and church doctrine in their due place and “travel light” to where darkness and despair still rule unchallenged. We will travel with those like us and those vastly different from us into the mysterious and grace-charted way of our Lord.

So, friends, not only this summer but in every season, travel light – just in case!

                                                                                          AMEN