July 22, Ordinary 16B (Mark 6:30-34, 53-56)

Whenever I sit down with a Gospel passage, I notice how Anabaptist and Mennonite I am as a reader.

I become very aware of Anabaptism’s strong missionary consciousness, which expects the faithful church to be in some kind of unresolvable tension with “the world.” This consciousness is coupled with a theological vision that emphasizes discipleship, voluntary community, and the way of love. I also notice the eclectic marks of my midwestern Mennonite tribe: a strong sense of communal discipline, a critique of liturgical worship and sacramentalism, and an insistence on boundaries between community and society—boundaries that both provide sociological cohesion and preserve religious identity. (I am drawing on missiologist Wilbert Shenk’s distinction between “Anabaptist” and “Mennonite.”)

When I read this week’s Gospel passage with my Anabaptist-Mennonite hermeneutical bifocals, my first reaction is to be very impressed with what the apostles are up to. It’s a powerful and attractive picture: a community of people deeply occupied with vital pastoral, life-saving work. Who doesn’t want to be involved in something as pleasantly exhausting as bringing a new, hopeful message, with tangible results, to towns and villages suffering debilitating oppression and violence? And who among us hasn’t skipped a meal here or there because there was more important work to be done? I wonder what it would take for my congregation to be on fire like this.