What criteria should sports team-leaders use when choosing their players?

Friday in the Second Week in Ordinary Time, Cycle II

I Sm 24:3-21 Mk 3:13-19

There is something special about being chosen. It means that whoever was doing the choosing saw something special, unique in that person. It is not like an open invitation addressed, "To Whom it May Concern" or " Dear Sir or Madam" or "Dear Patron." We can all recall our childhood years in the school playground where the football or volleyball team leader chooses whom he or she wants in his or her team.  For those of us who have ever been team leaders, we can recall the dilemma within ourselves, "What criteria shall I use to choose my team mates? Shall I choose first those who are my friends or should I choose those who are good at football or volleyball?"

For Jesus there is no dilemma. When Jesus chooses his team of apostles, his community of close collaborators, he uses just one simple criterion: they must be primarily his companions. We have just heard how Jesus chose his twelve apostles first and foremost "to be with him," then, almost as a result, "to send them forth to preach and to have the authority to drive demons."

The ability to spread the word of God, whether it is by actual preaching, or through the ministry of teaching, or through art or any other way depending on one's vocation must be the result of being with Jesus.

Likewise, the authority to drive out demons, that is, the ability to recognise and name the evil spirits oppressing so many people in today's society does not come simply from a critical outlook on society but comes from spending time with Jesus. It is this being with Jesus that gives us the authority to do so.

To be with Jesus means to spend time in prayer. True, but not only.

To be with Jesus means to be with him wherever he goes. We will find him in the peripheries of society, as we see him doing time and time again throughout the Gospel of Mark: now with the leper, then dining with the tax collectors and public sinners. We find him conversing and challenging with those who disagreed with him: the scribes and chief priests in the house where he taught or in the synagogue.

We often want Jesus to be with us wherever we go

but we seldom want to be with Jesus wherever he is!

We will not find Jesus in our ivory towers but we can be sure that we will find him among today's rejected and despised, among those whom society marks off as sinners, and even among those who do not yet embrace his values, because after all we are all on a process of growth. Is it only me that I find it easier to spend a few weeks working with people on the periphery of society rather than dealing with them day in day out, associating myself with them, and risk being called one of them? Yet Jesus calls us to be with him there too.

Only then can we proclaim the word of God in a way that it may bear fruit, in a way that is relevant and truthful. Only then can we denounce and disarm evil around us.

In a way, this is what David did: he disarmed Saul simply by showing him his fault and by showing him mercy rather than condemning him. We might be tempted - perhaps as David was - not to cut off just a corner of Saul's cloak but to take all his cloak, to affirm our power over others, to exert our convictions on them, to show them where and how they are wrong.

Instead, we are simply expected to acknowledge that like the football or volleyball team leader, Jesus calls us by name, one by one, each and ever one of us. He calls us not because of our abilities or credentials but simply because we are loved. We are called, simply to be with Jesus so that acting in his name, we may preach the good news and free those oppressed by evil.