Don’t Let the Crowd Decide Your Mission

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

In today’s Gospel,  Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law, and immediately she gets up and begins to serve. Then, by sunset, the whole town seems to arrive at the door. People are sick, suffering, possessed, desperate and Jesus heals them. You can almost imagine the energy of that moment. Everyone wants something from Him. Everyone has a need. Everyone has an opinion about what Jesus should do next. And then, early the next morning, Jesus does something surprising: He leaves. He goes to a deserted place to pray.

That matters, because the crowd goes looking for Him. And when they find Him, they try to keep Him from leaving. In other words, they are saying, “Stay here. Keep doing this. We need you here.” And from the outside, that sounds like a good thing. People love Him. His ministry is successful. He is needed. But Jesus says, “To the other towns also I must proclaim the good news of the Kingdom of God, because for this purpose I have been sent.” Jesus knows something we often forget: being needed is not always the same thing as being called.

Sometimes we can become so busy responding to everyone around us that we forget to ask what God is actually asking of us. We can spend our whole life trying to meet expectations – family expectations, work expectations, parish expectations, even our own expectations. And because people are pleased with us, we assume we must be doing God’s will. But Jesus shows us another way. Before He listens to the crowd, He listens to the Father. Before He allows other people to define His mission, He returns to prayer. That deserted place is not an escape from His mission; it is where His mission becomes clear again.

And maybe that is the challenge for us. There will always be people who want something from us. There will always be another problem to solve, another message to answer, another responsibility to carry. But if we never enter the “deserted place,” we can slowly lose ourselves. We can become very busy, very useful, very exhausted, and still miss the thing God is asking us to do. Jesus was not controlled by urgency. He was guided by purpose. That is a huge difference.

So today, maybe the question is not simply, “What needs to be done?” Maybe the deeper question is, “Lord, what have You sent me to do?” Not every opportunity is your mission. Not every demand deserves your yes. And not every disappointed person means you have failed. Jesus Himself walked away from people who wanted Him to stay, because He knew where the Father was leading Him next. Holiness is not about doing everything. It is about learning to say yes to the right thing.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, there are so many voices around me and so many things asking for my attention. Teach me to find You in the quiet. Help me not to live only by pressure, expectations, or the need to please others. Give me the courage to know what You are asking of me, and the freedom to follow where You lead. Amen.

– Homily by Rev Fr Patrick Agbeko