A Hired Hand

​A Reflection on the Gospel for Sunday, July 14th, 2024:
Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Mark
​6.7-13

Jesus called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.

Jesus said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.”

So the twelve went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

I’m not really good at letting it go when someone does not welcome me or won’t listen to me. I want to be liked. I want to be heard. I want to be considered. I want to be appreciated.

When I perceive my thoughts aren’t being appreciated, I bristle. The rejection cuts me. I take it as an assault on me as a person, rather than a simple disagreement. I am tempted to stay and argue my point. I convince myself that they’re not listening because they’re stubbornly wrong. There’s something broken in them. They don’t have ears to hear. If I could just rephrase it, I could convince them. I am so assured of how very right I am that I become entrenched in the belief that I can make everyone see it if I just tried harder.

In some cases, I am possibly even right, although I know that isn’t the case every time I decide to dig my trench and start lobbing my intellectual grenades. 

But this Gospel speaks to the times when I am actually right. The times I have the real, Gospel truth, and when I speak it with beauty and conviction. When I have all the right words and the right actions. And yet, I still don’t convince the other person. As it turns out, it is not entirely virtuous to stay and badger someone. It doesn’t help them and, in all truth, it certainly doesn’t help me. My desire for rightness and self-assertion doesn’t belong in the middle of the Gospel.

What Jesus told the 12 was to move on. To leave. To let it go. To not get tangled up in their own egos and wills and plans. The reality is that, while God invites me into the work, the work is, in the end, entirely His. Conversions only happen because of the Holy Spirit, moving in that person and through me. No single conversion in all of human history happened because of my words or anyone else’s. The only Word that has ever moved a person is God Himself. 

When the Holy Spirit moves in someone and through me, I can witness true miracles. But the reality is that often my job isn’t to watch a plant bloom, but instead to be present to the planting of the seed. Other days, it’s to be there for the reaping of a seed I did not sow.

Every time I get stuck in the fight to be right, I have lost sight of the mission itself and how that mission is truly accomplished. I want to always be the person who reaps the harvest, not acknowledging that I’m just a hired hand. When I let God take the central role in the mission, I can set aside my selfish desire to win and let God work in and through me.




Stéphanie Potter​

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