A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Mark. Jesus went up the mountain and summoned the men he himself had decided upon that he, our lord himself picked, who came and joined him. Jesus named 12 as his companions whom he would send to preach the good news. They were likewise to have authority to expel demons. Jesus appointed the 12 as follows.
Simon, to whom he gave the name Peter. James, son of Zebedee, and John, the brother of James, He gave these two the name Boaneritus or sons of thunder. Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Simon of the Zealot party, and Judas Iscariot who betrayed him. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
Please notice if you have recovered from that first reading of that wonderful story between Saul and David, that's enough to make any kind of a first class movie. I'm sure it's been tried but if it hasn't, somebody ought to think about it. But coming back to this, the reading from the New Testament. Notice when our blessed lord chose these men, notice that he had a group apparently And then out of the group, he selected these 12. They are enumerated one by one by one right down to Judas Iscariot.
Now, the one point I wanna want you to notice is this, Jesus named 12 as his companions, whom he would send to preach the good news. They were likewise to have authority to expel demons. So they had two charges. One was to preach the good news, and the second was to expel demons. What the second part means and who these demons were and all that, I leave to you just like I leave that first reading to you.
But the point I wanna make is our blessed lord didn't take a get a secretary and dictate a synopsis of the good news, and ship it over to a Xerox company and have 12 copies made, which he then gave to his 12 associates whom he was now going to send out to preach the good news. Do you notice he gave them nothing except to to preach the good news? Now remember, the good news in Greek is Evangelium, which becomes which becomes in English, our word gospel or or the notice our blessed lord didn't give them even the old testament. Did you notice that? Of course, that these men were well acquainted with the old testament.
But the thing is, he didn't give them a scroll. He didn't give them any memorandum. He didn't give them any specific instructions. Apparently, they already had it. You can't give what you don't have.
They couldn't preach the good news unless they had received the good news. What was it? Good question. Because our our blessed lord has given them authority to go out and and treat the good news. And they were on their own.
And they had the authority to expel demons. Now, you see, this comes constantly back to the same thing. That our blessed lord built his church on living human beings who were to be his living mouth teeth. Whether we like that or don't like it, I can't see how anyone can get out of the facts of the matter. Because if all they had was the New Testament in their hand, what did they have?
The New Test was nearly a hundred years away. Well, not quite that long, but it was a good seventy years or a little less maybe. They had nothing in writing. All they had to preach as the good news is the good news which they had received from Jesus Christ. That's all they had as far as we know from the dead.
Now remember, these men could read and write. You're not dealing with a bunch of illiterates. And notice, our blessed lord doesn't give them any commandment about teaching the old law. Did you notice that? He says, go out and preach the good news.
So the only good news I can figure out that that they had to preach was what they had received and what had they received. Remember, the time interval isn't very much. You're only talking maybe about a year or so. These are things you know worth thinking about. And and and remember, our blessed lord said, I will be with you until the end of the until the end of time.
He said, going and preach and teaching them all things that I have taught you. See, always he comes back to the same thing. It isn't it isn't just one instance. It's the consistent pattern of our lord's career, which at the most was three years. Keep well, keep all this in mind.
And so I keep coming back to it. It's the church, the living church. Father Bernard Bassett, when he gave that retreat down at Loyola on Potomac and said the greatest gift that Christ gave us was the church and is the church, and he is so right. He is so right. What else did Christ give us?
Christ didn't give us a book. Christ didn't give us the New Testament. He didn't give us the Old Testament. He didn't give us the epistles of Saint Paul and of Peter and James and John. Christ didn't give us any of those things directly.
They came subsequent to his his resurrection. All of them, about fifty years later, at the at the at the earliest. But what did Christ give us? He gave us a living truth to to to be transmitted by human beings, not by saints. Notice, one of the 12 was Judas, and of the other eleven, one was Peter.
And both of them, and neither one of them has a very good track record. He so he entrusted what he had to give to these 12 men, and notice that they weren't exactly the cream of the crop. Keep that in mind. They were not well educated men, they were not men of social position, they were not men of wealth, they were not men of prestige, they were not men of authority. For the most part, they were completely anonymous.
Nondescript fishermen from up around the lake country. And here they are they are to carry the good news to save the world. Think about that. You know, you come back to some things all the time. Christ said, my kingdom is not of this world.
And the way and the way he operates is not of this world. When when our blessed lord could tell us that everything you do to try to save your soul is a step towards losing it, and when you try to lose it, you gain it, how do you make sense out of this? Well, you see, I say it is absolute nonsense. If all you have is a defined life circumscribed by what we call the world, it makes sense only in the world of Jesus Christ. And he said, my world is not of this world.
My kingdom is not of this world. He told us that explicitly. So you see, it's impossible. It's absurd to try to take the good news of Jesus Christ and harmonize it with this world. He said you can't do it.
So why do we try to keep on trying to prove him wrong? And so this scene this morning of our blessed lord taking these notice, they're handpicked men. Our blessed lord picked them very carefully, I presume. He took them up on a mountain. Notice it's a very solemn occasion.
And he commissions to go and to preach the good news. And all they had to preach was what he had given them, what they had seen, what they had heard, and they were to transmit it as human beings. That's absolutely clear. He gave them no writings of any sort. He could have done it.
It may not have been Xerox, but they could have done it. They had ways of duplicating things in those days, plenty of ways of doing But he didn't. All he said was to go and to preach the good news, to give what they had received, and that's the way it has been down the centuries. And when you and you when you read a little bit of church history and see the the way the church, in spite of all its human weaknesses, has survived, it you've got to admit there is something very extraordinary here working. Just possibly, it is the church of Jesus Christ 1982.
In the name of the father, the son, and holy spirit. Amen.