Readings:
Mark 6:1-13
Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed.
“Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he is performing? Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him.
Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.” He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.
Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village. Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over impure spirits.
These were his instructions: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra shirt. Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.”
They went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them. (1)
Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven §4677:8-9
Because Divine Truth is singular – that is to say, it is derived solely from Divine Good – the twelve disciples were commanded, when they were being sent out to preach the gospel of the kingdom, not to have two tunics. All the individual instructions given in these places are representative of the celestial and spiritual things of the Lord’s kingdom which the disciples were sent to preach. The reason they were not to take gold, silver, bronze, bag, or bread with them was that those things meant different kinds of good and truth received from the Lord alone. […] Now because these things had to be not twofold but singular, they were forbidden to have two staves, two pairs of sandals, or two tunics. (2)
I don’t like to travel. Now, I totally like being in new and different places, that’s great. What I don’t like is the traveling to and from new places, especially air travel. I’m not afraid to fly, but rather, I do get anxious about all the moving pieces… Packing for myself and my family, leaving to get to the airport on time, finding parking, wondering will there be a huge line at security? Will I make it onto an overbooked flight? How will I navigate an unfamiliar airport? There are just so many variables…
I recall one time several years ago trying to make it back from Convention in California. As I touched down in Chicago, ready to make a connection, my phone dinged. The connecting flight was delayed two hours. Fine, that meant I had more time for lunch. But over the next several hours, I came to dread the buzz of my phone… *Ding.* One more hour delay. *Ding.* Another hour. *Ding.* Another two hours. *Ding.* Flight canceled. I checked into a hotel with nothing but my handbag and my clothes on my back, thinking of this text. No second tunic, or deodorant for that matter, for me.
This is what makes the Bible a timeless document. Instructions given to specific people in a specific time, for specific reasons, can also have something important to say to us now. Jesus had good reason to instruct his disciples as he did. The dangers of traveling in the ancient world (as chronicled for example in the story of the Good Samaritan) made pairing up a good idea. A staff, in particular, was necessary to protect against wild animals. They were not to carry money to make it clear that they were not charlatans or magicians looking to make a quick buck, as there were many of that kind around in those days. They were to stay in the first house they were welcomed to, in order to discourage an appearance of currying favor to procure fancier accommodations. They were not to carry a second tunic, something that would protect them against the cold of night, but rather, trust in the Lord that lodgings would be found. And finally, shaking the dust off one’s clothing has a precedent in the book of Nehemiah as a sign of renunciation. The disciple’s mission was urgent, and they were not to waste time in the towns that were not receptive to their preaching.
Jesus was combining common sense with a desire for accountability, integrity and resilience. His disciples would be able to adapt to their circumstances, bringing the good news to people with a sense of servanthood, not triumphalism or superiority. And they would respect people’s freedom, moving on when it was clear that they were not welcome.
We would do well to remember the simple beauty of these instructions and what they teach us. Like: Community is a good thing; so make a friend for the journey. Or: Be fierce and brave in protecting those we love from harm; and we might be called upon to protect the vulnerable too. Avoid making money an idol; recognize that it is incidental to the movement of God in the hearts and minds of individual people; we can always show love no matter how much money we have in our pocket. Be a humble servant; what we are given and who we are is enough; we need not strive towards an ever-increasing level of comfort and convenience because, really, it is not about us. Avoid trying to engineer all possible outcomes; for then there is no room for the movement of God and for grace to flow between people and into situations. And, always respect the freedom of others; we may not agree with them but we are doing no one any favors by being pushy. Gentle persistence born of love is about trusting the emergence of the image of God in all people, and that is very different from the kind of relentlessness that is often about our own agenda more than God’s.
As we read in Swedenborg, there are two additional spiritual dimensions to this teaching. In the Word, tunics (as do most clothing) correspond to truth, the true ideas that we clothe ourselves with, the ideas we slip into that guide our living in the world. We are not to have two tunics because Divine Truth is singular, it only ever derives its being from Divine Love. There are no other origins for Divine Truth, and the instruction to only have one tunic represents this fact. A second tunic would represent truths that we derive from our selfhood and our ego, truths and ideas that serve us, not Divine Love. And it is really easy to pack that second tunic, just in case. It’s really easy to clothe ourselves in divine truth until it starts to cost us something.
For example, we might believe in the equality of all people until it means that we need to give up our privilege. We might believe that God loves everyone until we ourselves are called to love everyone, including those we “other.” We might believe in the glory of creation, until it inconveniences us to care for our earth. Then, we reach for that second tunic to protect ourselves against the loss of whatever we think is indispensable to us. We start to think we deserve our unearned privilege, or that others are inferior or different, or that we can’t possibly make a difference. But these ideas involving superiority, power, apathy (and many others) do not serve divine love, they serve our self. They keep us feeling safe and comfortable and toasty warm.
The second idea from our Swedenborg reading is this: That all the things listed in the Gospel text, in Mark and the other Gospels, are all good things from the Lord. Gold, silver, bronze, and bread represent different shades and kinds of goodness in our lives. So it is not that the disciples were never to have any contact at all with these things, but rather that they were not supposed to pack them for themselves. They were not supposed to carry them along as if they owned them. And this is because the goodness and truth we receive from the Lord is from the Lord alone. We get into trouble when we start thinking that they are ours, that they originate in us, and we can and should control their coming and going.
I remember when my daughter was much younger than she is now, and I thought that I would start giving her some responsibility when we were preparing to travel. I gave her a backpack and told her to pack the things she thought she would need. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been, but I was a little surprised by what made it into the bag, and I had to sit down with her and pull things out one by one. I found myself saying things like: “You never use that headband, do you really think you will need it?” or “You can’t possibly need three different stuffed animals, how about just one.” (Let me say, with practice and age, she is a very competent bag packer now.)
But you can see how this is like us and God. When we pack our own bags, we will put lots of stuff in there that doesn’t belong. And so God will sit down with us and gently challenge us about what we think is necessary for the journey. This is actually the process of regeneration: The Great Unpacking. We all probably begin with one enormous unwieldy backpack, full of things that we have deemed necessary for survival, or things we picked up on the way. Sometimes we maybe let other people pack our bag and we never thought to look inside, or we were too afraid to. But, One by one, God will help us unpack the things we don’t need, the things that are too heavy and weighing us down, the things that prevent us from being the nimble and focused disciples that God knows we can be.
Do we need this armor? No we do not. Do we need this self-defensiveness? Nope. Do we need this fear? No. Do we need this self-focus, do we need this worry, do I need this self-hatred, do I need this distrust? No, no and no.
Just in case we think we can get around the idea of an empty backpack by choosing to only packing good things, like empathy, service, civility, well, it’s not that simple. Packing good things is better than unhelpful things, certainly, but this can only be transitional at best. Money and bread are good and helpful things, but the disciples were not supposed to pack them because the problem is our packing them into our backpack ourselves. The problem is us trying to control the goodness of God, to hoard it and use it for our own ends. And this is where it gets so hard; striving for achievement, keeping ourselves busy, pleasing other people, having enough, being healthy or accomplished—these all seem like good things. And they are. Unless we are using them to bolster our own sense of self-image, keeping them in our backpack because they make us feel good or important. And let’s face it, we all do this.
This is why it is important to sometimes take off our figurative backpack and take a look inside. Buddhist teacher Tara Brach quotes the sage Sri Nisargadatta saying
“Illusion exists…because it is not investigated.” She continues: “If we are attached to untrue beliefs, it is because we have not examined our thoughts. We have not met them with mindful investigation; we have not asked whether they truly represent our current, living experience of reality. Suffering is our call to attention, our call to investigate the truth of our beliefs.” (3)
Perhaps we are carrying around some things that we didn’t realize, things that prevent us from being present to our lives in its vulnerable and beautiful reality, that prevent us from opening our hearts in compassion to those around us, that prevent us from aligning ourselves with the influx of heaven.
Swedenborg’s book Divine Providence tells us:
“The Lord is at work in the center of our being, and works from that center into everything that depends on it all the way to our boundaries, and we are living at these boundaries while this is happening. As long as we are keeping these boundaries closed, then, no cleansing can take place.” (4)
The Lord is with us, in the center of our being, and is working for our benefit. But God will not take away our sins without our cooperation, just as it would have been unkind for me to empty my daughters carefully packed backpack without her permission. We need to purposefully and in freedom, lay our backpack down and look inside, and be willing to learn about the value and usefulness of what we have packed.
And one day, to our surprise, we might find that our psycho-spiritual backpack is empty, that our second tunic is neatly left in the closet, and we do not care, because we are so connected to our God that we know we will be given what we need in every moment to become an angel.
(1) Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica Inc.
(2) Swedenborg, Emanuel. Secrets of Heaven. West Chester: Swedenborg Foundation, 2022.
(3) Brach, Tara. True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart. United States: Random House Publishing Group, 2016., p116.
(4) Swedenborg, Emanuel. Divine Providence. Translated by George F. Dole. West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 2010.
Rev. Shada Sullivan is a graduate of United Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia and The Center for Swedenborgian Studies in Berkeley, CA. She grew up in Australia, and came to the United States in 1994 to attend Bryn Athyn College, a small Swedenborgian liberal arts college outside of Philadelphia. She has spent time as a chaplain as a stay-at-home Mom, and as leader of the sermon writing team at NewChurch Live (newchurchlive.tv). She now lives in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, with her husband and two children and serves the Church of the Holy City in Wilmington, Delaware as Pastor.