Daily Gospel Reflection

Meet Them Where They Are

Do you feel like you're on a mission? Do you feel like your life has a mission? In this reading, Jesus sends the disciples out into the world. He says, "I'm leaving, and I'm leaving you here to carry this mission on." We call this the Great Commission. Was it just for the Twelve? No. It's for you and me as well. This mission is our mission. Your mission, my mission, our mission to carry on every day of our lives. There's a famous line attributed to Francis of Assisi, "Preach the gospel at all times and only when necessary use words." I think people use this line very often to hide behind. Should we live lives that speak? Absolutely. Should we live lives of integrity and generosity and compassion and patience and courage in a way that speaks to the people around us and inspires them to embrace the gospel in new and dynamic ways? Absolutely. But we also need to use words. We also need to encourage people with our words. But we also need to use the words of the gospel to bring truth into people's lives. That's becoming rarer and rarer in our society.

We talk a lot about meeting people where they are and leading them to where God is calling them to be. This essentially was Jesus' model of evangelization. Jesus never preached to somebody before he fed them, healed them, comforted them. This was his approach. He went out to the people. He met the people where they were, physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. He met them where they were. He ministered to them usually first in their human need, and then he ministered to them spiritually. He met them where they were and led them to where God is calling them to be. We all have people in our lives that we know would benefit from a deeper experience of God, a deeper experience of the gospel, a richer spirituality in their lives. We need to search our hearts and ask ourselves, "Are we really meeting them where they're at? Or are we standing down the road and saying, 'Hey, guys, come down here, come down here. Life will be better if you come down here.'" Because that's not what God calls us to. He calls us to walk back down the road, to meet them where they're at, to say, "What is troubling your heart? What's troubling your heart?" And they may say, "Hmm, I got a whole bunch of credit card debt." They may say, "Hmm, I just lost my job." They may say, "Don't like my job. Don't get on with my colleagues at work. I'm worried about my son's health. I'm worried about my daughter's education. My mom's sick. My dad's sick." The things that are heavy on people's hearts.

What's troubling your heart? Because when we meet people where they are, we are first concerned with what's troubling their hearts. And there are so many ways that we can help people carry their burden. But the first way is just to recognize that people are carrying a burden, to listen to the burden that they're carrying and then to do an inventory of our lives and say, "Okay, how can I help this person? What talents or resources do I have available to me that can help this person?" The person may say, "I'm struggling with this." We may think, "Hmm, I know this person who's really good at that or an expert at that. Maybe I can connect the two and they can help each other." We're here to help each other. It's the beginning of the Great Commission. The Great Commission is not about just putting a Bible in every person's hand. The Great Commission is not just about baptizing every person. The Great Commission is about bringing God's grace to each other's lives. It's about being people for people, about being people for people.

And I think when we try to bring a message to people in a way that lacks humanity or ignores the humanity that they're wrestling with at that moment in their lives, then the message falls on deaf ears because you cannot preach to a starving person. A starving person cannot hear the message. You have to feed the starving person and then their ears become open. What we have to realize is any person in our life who we think their life would be improved if they moved closer to God, if they had a deeper experience of the Gospel if they had a richer spirituality, they're all starving in some way. They're all starving in some way. And the Great Commission is about you and me going out and working out how are people starving? How can we feed them so that they can hear the life-giving, life-changing words of Jesus in the gospel?