2-2-18 - The Neighborhood

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The people of Capernaum, where Jesus stayed when he wasn’t traveling, must have been thrilled that someone of such wisdom and power should settle among them. They wasted no time bringing to him everyone in need of healing and deliverance, and when he went off to pray in private, they went looking for him. But Jesus’ mission was much larger than one town. When his disciples found him and said, “Everyone is searching for you!,” he answered,

“Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do." And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.  (Sunday's gospel is here.)

As we know, Jesus’ mission was greater than Galilee too, greater than Israel and the Middle East, greater even than the boundaries of this world. He did not belong to any one community, but to all. Jesus’ mission was to redeem all of creation, to proclaim the reign of Life over death, disease, despair, the demonic. That is the message he proclaimed and that is the message he demonstrated over and over again as he set people free.

The phrase, “Let us go to the neighboring towns” snags my attention. An early theologian, John of Damascus, used the Greek word perichoresis to describe the active, ongoing, interrelated life of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This word has connotations of movement, of swirling, even of dance – and one definition is “circulating about the neighborhood.” It suggests that the triune, relational life of God is not static but circulating, bringing life to the whole cosmos.*

We might say that that Jesus, the incarnate Son, or second person of the Trinity, continued to live out that principle of perichoresis, circulating with his followers among the neighborhoods of his region. And his followers continued to live out that principle of perichoresis, circulating among the “neighborhoods” of the Roman Empire, starting new churches and baptizing new believers, who circulated among their neighborhoods – until even we received this proclamation of Good News and transformed Life.

This moving, communal life of the Trinity is our inheritance too. We are invited, called to circulate among the neighborhoods in which we find ourselves, proclaiming the message of renewed life to the people we encounter, casting out demons of fear, injustice, complacency, disease, despair.

Where do you feel called to exercise the ministry of an apostle? Among what people? In what neighborhoods? The Love of Christ is desperately needed in every neighborhood, poor, rich, urban, suburban, blighted or beautiful and in between, and we are called to make it known.

And we need not go alone. Jesus goes with us. Once he was no longer confined to a body in time and space he became available, as it were, to indwell every single person through his Holy Spirit. We carry him “around the neighborhood,” and he directs us when to speak and when to listen, when to challenge and when to offer healing.

I pray we will all get moving out of our comfort circles and church life, moving with Jesus to the “neighboring towns,” eager to proclaim the gospel of peace – for, like him, that is what we are sent to do!

*Many thanks to Dwight Zscheile for making me aware of this translation, in People of the Way: Renewing Episcopal Identity (2012, Morehouse Publishing), pp. 46-7

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