Fr. Jim Sichko, a traveling evangelist priest, told this story as part of his homily at Good Shepherd on Sunday. “I was traveling with several other priests. Our flight into Chicago was delayed, but our flight out of Chicago was on time. When our first flight reached O’Hare Airport, we had seven minutes to make it to the next flight. As I ran through the airport I heard my name called on the PA system. I had one more minute to make the flight. As I sped around a corner I ran headfirst into a fruit kiosk. Apples, oranges, Caesar salad went everywhere! Nonetheless, I got up and made it through the airplane door before it closed!”
Fr. Jim continued, “But then, as I caught my breath in my seat, I thought about the chaos I had created. I had a choice, a choice with a consequence. I chose to get off the plane and return to the kiosk. (The pilot also had a choice, and he chose to take off without me.) When I returned, fruit was still everywhere. None of the mess had been cleaned up. I began to pick up the fruit. I began to clean up the mess. I saw a woman sitting on the floor. She was the owner of the kiosk. She was crying. I also could tell that she was blind. I apologized and kept on picking up fruit. Finally I had done all I could do. The woman called out to me to come over by her. She said, ‘Are you Jesus?’ I was taken aback by the question. ‘Lady, If I were Jesus I wouldn’t have knocked over your fruit stand,’ I replied. She said, ‘When the fruit went flying, I called out for Jesus, and you came. You must be Jesus.”
The Gospel today from Luke (it is St. Luke’s feast day) tells of Jesus sending 72 disciples to go out ahead of him into towns he intended to visit. He noted “the harvest is plenty, but the laborers are few.” He told them to go “as lambs among wolves”—in peace. They were to take next to nothing with them, stay with people who would have them, and live on what they were given. They were to cure the sick and proclaim the Kingdom of God. Jesus told them not to expect that everyone would welcome them. If they were not welcomed, they were to shake off the experience (and the dust off their feet) and move on.
Our Oremus prayer group prayed a couple of weeks ago from this passage and the verses following it (Luke 10: 17-20) when the 72 returned. Our assignment was to use imaginative prayer to become one of the disciples. Where did Jesus send us? What did he call us to do–in our own 21st century circumstances? What caused us to rejoice? We were to do this for three days in our prayer.
The results of this assignment were very interesting! Usually each of us gets a unique, personalized message from our meditations each week. Each week we all meditate on the same passage for three days. It has been amazing how we have each gotten different applications of the scripture to our lives. But all our meditations on this passage led us to the same message:
YOU ARE APOSTLED TO BE WHERE YOU ARE.
An apostle is one who is sent. We are being sent to be where we are. When we met the next week to discuss our prayer, we all talked about how we thought (and hoped) that God would give us some new mission, some new ministry or direction. Some of us even presented to God some things we had thought of doing. But each of us found the same answer: BE AN APOSTLE WHERE YOU ARE. For some of us that meant within our family—“camping out” on the floor with a seven year old granddaughter and talking about praying to saints; being patient with a not-well spouse, or simply being available to help. Some of us had confirmations that the cantoring, serving, praying, and teaching we are doing is what we are sent to do, at least for now.
I think each of us was both surprised and comforted by this—especially when we found that we all had received the same message. As one person put it, “I guess I am already doing what God wants me to do.” We all nodded in agreement.
As a traveling evangelist, Fr. Sichko likely intended to proclaim the Kingdom of God in some far away place. Yet he discovered that he became Jesus when he accepted the circumstances of an accident and simply did the caring, just thing: he went back to clean up his mess. God then used that simple choice to proclaim the Gospel to the fruit stand owner, to us at Good Shepherd on Sunday—and perhaps to many more. He was apostled to be where he was.
The three Teresa’s come to mind as I let this message sink in. St. Teresa of Calcutta said, “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” St. Therese of Lisieux taught the “little way of love.” St. Teresa of Avila, whose feast day was Saturday, taught, “Christ has no body now but yours, no hands nor feet on earth but yours.”
God does not apostle me to O’Hare airport today, but to small town Frankfort, Kentucky. There are no especially interesting or important items on my to do list for today. I honestly hope I will not upset anyone’s applecart, but I might. But none of that prevents me from proclaiming the Kingdom of God; none of that prevents me from being sent.
I am apostled to be where I am today. Are you?
Prayer:
Lord, thank you for sending me to be where I am today. Thank you for giving me opportunities in the choices of caring and justice I make today to be one of the 72—a disciple who can prepare the way for you to touch hearts and minds. Or maybe even to BE you, to be the one who comes when someone in need calls out. Make me attentive to opportunities, Lord, so that I can do what you send me to do. As today’s psalm response says, “Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.” Let me be your friend today. Let me do what you command of your friends: “Love one another as I have loved you.” In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Link to Today’s readings: 2 Timothy 4:10-17, from Psalm 145, Luke 10: 1-9
