Carrying Our Load

A Reflection on the Gospel for Sunday May 16th, 2021:
The Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord

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Mark
16.15-20

Jesus appeared to the eleven, and he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and proclaimed the good news everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that accompanied it.
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Pause. Pray.

And then read more...

I’ve taken to parking at the chapel door instead of the office door on my way into work.   I always seem to enter a room or a building carrying an armload of things. My dad called it “a lazy man’s load.” Rather than taking two trips carrying a reasonable amount of things, I tend to pile it all on until I look like a caricature of a one-man-band hobbling away from my car toward a locked door. Next question — where did I put my keys? This is why parking near the part of the church where me and most of my stuff need to go makes sense. But lately what I need most isn’t the proximity of a place to lay down my physical load, it’s the proximity of a place to lay down the things people can’t see — the intangibles. My invisible one-man-band of everything I try to carry for myself and everyone else at once. What I need is Him. Time with Him. To place it all before Him. So I park at the door nearest to that, leave my bags and bobs in the hall, and go sit on the floor of the chapel and talk with Him.


At the start of this week I noticed something new as I hobbled toward the door. The statue of St. Lawrence has a curtain of silver and white and rose at his back — the magnolia buds have popped. What strikes me is that there is something timeless about this image. The eyes of St. Lawrence could be looking out at a cart being pulled over cobblestones on the way to a town market in a spring farther and further away, rather than seeing the cars and the pavement and the streetlights of Dunbrack. Another time and place. As I lock the door behind me and see the back of the statue through the curtain of colour, I have a feeling of connection to what has come before, to the many others who have come to lay down what they carry and sit with Jesus. Right back to Mary sitting there listening to Him while Martha and others are passing by.


Jesus asks something of those who sit and listen. He asks us to go and to proclaim. Actually, let’s fine tune that a little. The grammar for “go” in the language written first on papyrus is more akin to “being gone.” Jesus is only giving me one thing to do once I get up off the floor. Proclaim. He wants me to announce Him through all the ins and outs of the rest of this day. He wants me to let all of creation know. He wants me to let the person on the other end of the phone who is about to lose her mom know. He wants me to let the friend who has cancer know. He wants me to let the person walking by Him, blinded from seeing His offer, hearing His knock, know. He is here. He has not left us alone!


We come to Him for the people driving by our Dunbrack, wherever that may be. Jesus wants them. He wants them all. His love is not satisfied with less. And when we bring Him with us as we get up from being with Him, wonders happen.




Noreen Smith

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