Isaiah 2:1-5 / Ephesians 3:2-12 / Mark 16:15-20
There is one thing that we all have in common right now, and that one thing comes in pairs.
That one thing that we have in common right now is that we are wearing a pair of shoes. No one came here barefooted. Even if we have taken off our shoes a bit for whatever reason, we will still put them on again.
Shoes are not just something we put on to walk about and to protect our feet. Shoes reveal quite a bit about the person actually. And quite often we make shoe contact first before we make eye contact.
And although it is not that polite to stare, but to stare at a pair of gorgeous shoes can be quite a compliment.
For men, shoes show who they are, because shoes change the way they walk and the way they carry themselves, such that it can be said “If I ever let my head down, it will be just to admire my shoes”
For women, they will go by this saying: “You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy shoes, and that’s more or less the same thing!” So most women will say this: Roses are red, violets are blue, keep the flowers, I rather have shoes.
We can remember the fairy tale of Cinderella. Well, Cinderella is a story of how a pair of shoes can change your life.
So what do shoes have to do with Mission Sunday, which the Church is celebrating this weekend?
The gospels begins with this: Jesus showed Himself to the Eleven and said to them, “Go out to the whole world, proclaim the Good News to all creation … “
And the gospel ends with: And so the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven. There at the right hand of God, He took His place, while they, going out, preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word by the signs that accompanied it.
Jesus commanded His apostles to go out to the whole world and proclaim the Good News to all creation, and they went, preaching everywhere.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, and that would be to step into a pair of good shoes.
Shoes, no matter how gorgeous they look, the most important part of the shoe is often not visible, and that part is the sole of the shoe.
We may not realise how important it is until when the sole begins to disintegrate and leave crumbs all over the place. It often happens to those spongy running shoes or tennis shoes.
Or when the sole just separates from the shoe without much of a warning. They really become like flip-flops. No matter how good they look on the top-side, when the shoe loses its sole, that’s the end of the shoe.
In a way, the sole of the shoe is quite like the soul of a person. When the soul of a person starts to crumble or disintegrates, then the person also loses direction in life and it is the beginning of the end.
Mission Sunday reminds us that our primary task as Christians is to save souls, a term which we seldom hear of nowadays. We don’t hear much of the “salvation of souls” and hence we seldom speak about it and so after a while it is also forgotten.
So we slowly forget to pray for the salvation of the world, the salvation of souls, we slowly forget that we have mission to bring souls to heaven.
We even might forget to pray for the departed. In the past, there is this prayer invocation: “May the divine assistance remain always with us, and may the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace.” We seldom hear of it now.
Yes, we must pray for those who are in living here in this world, as well as for the souls in Purgatory.
Because heaven is for real, and Jesus wants us all to be in heaven with Him, and we have that mission of bringing souls to heaven.
But how real is heaven for us? Do we long to go there, and will we help others to go there too?
There is this book “Heaven is for Real”, which was also made into a movie with the same title.
It is about a true story (true or not it is left us to believe) of a young boy's astounding story of his trip to Heaven and back. The book documents the report of a near-death experience of the four-year-old boy Colton Burpo.
Todd Burpo is a pastor and his son Colton had a life-saving emergency surgery on March 5, 2003 at the age of four. During the months after surgery, Colton began describing events and people that seemed impossible for him to have known about. Examples include knowledge of an unborn sister miscarried by his mother in 1998 and details of a great-grandfather who had died 30 years before Colton was born. Colton also said how he met Jesus riding a rainbow-coloured horse and sat in Jesus' lap while angels sang songs to him. He also saw Mary kneeling before the throne of God and at other times standing beside Jesus.
Among the many profound and intriguing dialogues in the movie was this:
Colton: "Mommy"
Sonja: "Yes, Colton"
Colton: "Did you know I have a sister?"
Sonja: "Don’t you know that Cassie's your sister?"
Colton: "No, I have two sisters. You had a baby die in your tummy, didn't you?"
Sonja: "Honey, who told you I had a baby die in my tummy?"
Colton: "In heaven, this little girl came up to me. She told me she died in your tummy."
And then when the mother asked her son what was that little girl’s name, Colton replied: She didn’t have a name. You didn’t give her a name.
It is a good story to read and a good movie to watch. To believe the story or not is another matter.
But as the title says it “Heaven is for real”. And that’s the Good News that is proclaimed on Mission Sunday.
We must believe that Jesus wants us to be in heaven and He also wants us to help others go to heaven.
We may not have a great or dramatic story to tell but our mission is to walk with others and to even walk in their shoes so that together we walk in the paths of the Lord and journey towards heaven.
Let us share with others the good shoes of faith and walk with them that journey of a thousand miles. Let us remember that the salvation of their souls are our responsibility.