I will never forget the day a bishop of the church laid
his hands on my head and told me to “take authority to
preach the Word of God and to administer the Holy Sacraments”—
filling me with Spirit-confidence and courage in
that moment. I felt equally overwhelmed with humility and
a good measure of anxiety. I imagine the eleven disciples on
that Galilean mountain experienced a combustible mixture
of boldness and fear when Jesus gave them authority to go
and make disciples of all nations.
It did not take me long to learn that the authority to “go”
did not reside in the words or sign-act of the bishop. The
authority came from going to the places where Jesus went.
Jesus went to where the wounds were and proclaimed
healing. As students and practitioners of the gospel, we are
charged to go with our loving presence to those forgotten
ones. We are charged to go with our prophetic witness to
those endangered ones for whom the gospel call to justice
and mercy has seemed far removed from their lives.
We are charged to go with our pastoral care to those broken
ones whose lives have been shattered by the storms and
accidents of life or by poor choices made by others or themselves.
We are charged to go with our joyful proclamation
to those hopeless ones whose souls have been crushed by
despair, doubt, depression and then to cry out for the Spirit
of God to be born within them.
We go, therefore, to where the wounds are with our loving
presence, our prophetic witness, our pastoral care, and
our joyful proclamation because that is where Jesus went
and that is where we are now called to go.
By Bruce R. Ough from The Upper Room: 60 Days of Prayer for General Conference 2016