Mark 6:6-7 Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village. Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over impure spirits.
One of my boyhood idols was the Lone Ranger. I never saw the recent remake but the TV hero of the ‘50s was a masked good guy who rode around the old west and righted wrongs using his silver bullets (in case of vampires?). As his name implies, in fact demands, he was a solitary figure- except he wasn’t. The “Lone” part of his title was not because he was alone. According to Wikipedia, “The Lone Ranger was named so because the character is the only survivor of a group of six Texas Rangers, rather than because he works alone (as he is usually accompanied by Tonto).” If you’ve never heard Bill Cosby’s routine about the Lone Ranger stop reading this and find it somehow- it is hilarious. But I digress. The point is that the Lone Ranger was not the “alone” Ranger and when Jesus sent out his followers he didn’t send them alone. They went two by two. They were not expected to go it alone and neither are we. Not many of us have a trusted person with whom we feel that we are “in it together” regarding our spiritual life or ministry. Maybe it’s because we are too worried about who gets to be the Ranger in the relationship and who has to be Tonto. Whatever the reason, it is not the way Jesus designed it here. Where in your spiritual life do you need a partner? How would you go about finding one?
Logan Memorial Presbyterian Church 