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\u201cI am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.\u201d (Matthew 10:16)

I\u2019m not quite sure why, but this phrase from Jesus has been rattling around in my head often these past few weeks.\xa0 He spoke it to his disciples who he was sending out on mission.

As we ponder how to enter into our everyday world as those who don\u2019t just work, study, volunteer, or live in it, but who actually minister in the name of Jesus to it\u2014these words of Jesus remain potent.

Firstly, we are sent.\xa0 We don\u2019t go following Jesus in our daily lives because we necessarily want to go about our daily chores in his name.\xa0 We go because Jesus Himself has sent us.\xa0 \u201cI am sending you,\u201d he says.\xa0 And so we go with the label of \u201cChristian\u201d stamped across our foreheads whether we want it there or not.\xa0 People just discover in due course that we\u2019re Christians.\xa0 Somehow they always find out.\xa0 And then we remember: despite our attempts to conceal it, we cannot get away from this identity.\xa0 A city on a hill cannot be hidden.\xa0 It is who we are. \xa0And in fact, it is exactly what Jesus has sent us to be and do in our daily lives: that is, to live our lives as open witnesses to him.\xa0 \u201cI am sending you,\u201d he says.

How is he sending us?\xa0 As sheep.\xa0 We don\u2019t go out into the world in wolf-like worldly ways: with violence, force, coercion or control. We don\u2019t arm-twist anyone into the Kingdom.\xa0 Nor do we try to force or cajole the society around us into giving us our way on things.\xa0 No.\xa0 Our Lord is the lamb, and we follow him in this by humbling ourselves in a way befitting of sheep.\xa0 We go about our Jesus business in Jesus\u2019 way: quietly, gently, trustingly, and also perhaps somewhat stubbornly.\xa0

Because we are also called here to be shrewd as snakes.\xa0 Not to be poisonous like snakes and not to go out strangling or biting like snakes: but to be wise, cunning, and intelligent like snakes.\xa0 Shrewd.\xa0 \xa0\xa0

But we are called to that snake-shrewdness in a way that remains innocent and pure, like a white dove.\xa0 Smart, without overstepping boundaries.\xa0 Wise, without puffing ourselves up.\xa0 Sharp-eyed in a way that remains at the same time good-hearted, loving, and encouraging.\xa0 We are called to use the tools of the Kingdom with sharp-witted clarity and prudence, but to never use anything beyond those tools whether in real life or online.\xa0 Violence, abuse, control, slander, put-downs, coarse talk, gossip, fraud, lies\u2014even the white kind\u2014are all out of bounds.\xa0 Our snake-shrewd wisdom begins in the fear of the sinless Lord.\xa0 The only means available to us to achieve shrewd kingdom ends are innocent kingdom means. So that we might be like doves.

This mission Jesus sends us on invites us deeper and deeper into the heart of things.\xa0 On the one hand to know with shrewd clarity how deep the misery of our world is, what liability we hold for it, and what privilege and power we wield to address it.\xa0 On the other hand, to let Jesus purify our heart and motivations even as we surrender our every action to him so that we might be found innocent in all things, as he was.\xa0

Now maybe those are lofty words, but I think they impact every one of our lives.\xa0 The emails I write, the conversations I have, the way I act in the grocery store, what I post online, and the way I carry out my work all falls under the scope of Jesus\u2019 command and commission.\xa0 Every one of you is a priest presiding over the parish of your everyday world.\xa0 Go to that work like Jesus\u2019 kind of sheep: shrewd as snakes, innocent as doves.\xa0

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