Walking In Peace

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This week the readings see Jesus finally sending out his disciples to be fishers of men. Mark has them going out in pairs. It would be interesting to know who went with who. Did he keep the brothers together? Who went with Judas (not yet identified as the betrayer)?

What did they preach? They had heard the sermon on the mount but had not had Peter’s assertion that Jesus was the Christ. The only thing in Mark’s account is that they preached repentance, so maybe what John the Baptist had to say when he was in the desert.

Some of this passage deals with hospitality and rejection. Since there was no mass media, traveling missionaries were the norm. In the early church, the instructions given in this passage would have been a checklist for missionaries. This all seems to be a decision by Jesus to go and preach outside his native town because the rejection he received there hoping that his apostles would be better treated. But if not they were to shake the dust from their feet and move on.