Beginning with today’s Gospel, we take a detour from Mark’s Gospel to John’s Gospel. Today’s Gospel marks the first of a series of readings on “Jesus as the bread of life,” which we will continue through the month of August.
The miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is found in all four Gospels. Evidently this miracle was crucial to the early church’s understanding of Jesus’ identity. John’s Gospel, however, takes this miracle in a different direction from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In those Gospels, the Last Supper is where Jesus instituted the sacrament of Holy Communion, and during next week’s celebration of Holy Communion, I will be using words of institution adapted from those Gospels. John’s Gospel is different. While John’s account of the Last Supper includes the washing of the disciples’ feet, John places his version of the words of institution of Holy Communion much earlier in his Gospel, after the feeding of the five thousand. We will hear these words during our Gospel readings for August. In John’s Gospel, those words were not just for the disciples, but for the crowds as well – though the crowds misunderstood and turned away.
John’s account of the feeding of the five thousand begins as it does in the other gospels, but with some details unique to John. As in the other Gospels, Jesus has been teaching the crowds. He crosses the sea of Galilee, but the crowds keep following him, similar to Mark’s account that we read last week. John’s account contains the interesting detail that the festival of the Passover was near. In the other Gospels, the disciples urge Jesus to send the crowds away so that they can eat, but Jesus tells the disciples, “you feed them.” In John’s Gospel, Jesus takes the initiative, asking Philip, “where will we buy bread for these people to eat.” As in the other Gospels, a boy’s lunch of five loaves and two fish is offered. Jesus directs the crowd to be seated, takes what is offered, gives thanks, and distributes it. All are satisfied, and there are twelve baskets left over. All this would have reminded the crowds of Elijah’s miracle from our Old Testament reading. John’s Gospel tells us that, in their gratitude for being fed, the crowds wanted to take Jesus by force to make him their king – but Jesus rejected this and went by himself to a mountain to pray.
The disciples take off in a boat to the other side of the lake, without Jesus. Having finished his time of communion with God, in the dark of night, with a strong wind tossing the boat, Jesus comes walking on the water to them. The disciples are terrified, but Jesus reassures them, “It is I, do not be afraid.”
The psychologist Abraham Maslow was best known for his theory of the “hierarchy of needs.” For Maslow, the most basic needs were those of survival – food and drink. Next in the hierarchy is the need for safety and security. Then come needs for social interaction and belonging. Then come needs for self-esteem. At the top of the hierarchy were what he called self-actualization – meeting one’s potential – and then transcendence – the feeling that our individual lives are part of a greater whole. According to Maslow’s theory, if one’s most basic survival needs are not met, one is less likely to succeed in fulfilling one’s higher-level needs for belonging and so forth. And that likely jives with our own experience; if it takes all our effort just to get enough food and water to get through the day, hanging out with friends is way down our list of priorities, perhaps the last thing on our mind.
In today’s readings, we see Jesus meeting the most basic need of the crowds – for food – and of his disciples – for safety and security. On that basis, the crowd is willing to follow Jesus anywhere, to crown him as their king – at least so long as the next meal keeps coming. But Jesus is always trying to draw the crowds and the disciples – and us – beyond our own obsession with self-preservation to relationship with our neighbor, and ultimate into communion with God. When we hear the word “communion” we think of the eucharist – and so it is – but the communion God desires for us which begins by the sharing of bread and wine, leads to the sharing of ourselves with one another and with God, to knowing and being fully known by God. As St. Augustine prayed, “God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.” In the eucharist, bread and wine are elements of the covenant of salvation between God and followers of Jesus, a covenant that we live into over the course of our lives as we grow in faith, as, in Paul’s phrase, we grow up into Christ. In this sense, Jesus is the bread of life, that which makes the difference between existing and truly living, between just getting by and the life of the spirit that Jesus yearns for us to experience.
In our Gospel, we saw that Jesus was not defeated by scarcity, by the limited resources of the boy’s lunch of loaves and fish. Jesus was not defeated by the wind and the waves, or by the terror of the disciples. Jesus likewise is not defeated by our limited resources or our personal limitations. We do not have to struggle and strain to make ourselves better in order to make ourselves good enough to be acceptable to God. God accepts us as we are, with all our weakness, sin, and limitation, if we are open to God’s call, if we are willing to turn ourselves over to his direction. Inevitably as we follow Jesus over time, sin will have less of a role in our lives and we will begin to transcend our former limitations, but this is the fruit of the Spirit’s work in us, not something we need to do ourselves in order to qualify for God’s mercy – God’s work in us, not our own work for God. Jesus is victorious over the brokenness in all of our lives – if we’re willing. Like the loaves and fish, God can use our small numbers and limited resources to do mighty works here in Bridesburg – if we let him. If we get out of God’s way with our fear and worry, and allow God to do what God does best.
Let me close with Paul’s words from our Epistle reading today, slightly adapted for our own situation: For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that we may be strengthened in our inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith, as we are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that we may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that we may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. May God’s divine abundance of grace be with each of us, and with Emanuel Church, now and always. Amen.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Hungry?
“Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty…Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away.’” John 6:35,37
Our lectionary readings for the month of August take us into John’s Gospel, into a series of meditations on “Jesus as the bread of life.” Jesus miraculously feeds the crowd of five thousand, and then begins to interpret this miracle in Eucharistic terms. While the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke place Jesus’ words of institution for Holy Communion at the Last Supper, John’s Gospel places them here, following the miraculous feeding of the crowds. (By contrast, John’s account of the Last Supper in John 13 includes the washing of the disciples’ feet.) Following the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus refers to himself as the “bread of life” who will satisfy us at our point of deepest need.
This series of readings begins with crowds thronging to Jesus because he fed them. It ends with the crowd becoming disgusted with Jesus’ words, “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” The crowds were glad to receive that which satisfied their physical needs. When Jesus offered himself to those same crowds to satisfy them at their point of deepest need, they turned away.
How about us? We, too, have spiritual needs and yearnings that go far beyond the physical requirements of getting through each day. A prayer of St. Augustine went thus: “O God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.” Each of us has a “God-shaped hole” in our being, which we sometimes try to fill with financial security, possessions, careers, relationships. These can bring fleeting satisfaction, but like the proverbial Chinese dinner that leaves us hungry an hour later, ultimately the emptiness remains, unless we turn to Jesus and feed on the bread of life.
The words of an old hymn can be a prayer for us in these days:
Guide me, O thou great Jehovah / Pilgrim through this barren land.
I am weak, but thou art mighty / Hold me with thy powerful hand.
Bread of heaven, bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more.
Feed me till I want no more.
Our lectionary readings for the month of August take us into John’s Gospel, into a series of meditations on “Jesus as the bread of life.” Jesus miraculously feeds the crowd of five thousand, and then begins to interpret this miracle in Eucharistic terms. While the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke place Jesus’ words of institution for Holy Communion at the Last Supper, John’s Gospel places them here, following the miraculous feeding of the crowds. (By contrast, John’s account of the Last Supper in John 13 includes the washing of the disciples’ feet.) Following the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus refers to himself as the “bread of life” who will satisfy us at our point of deepest need.
This series of readings begins with crowds thronging to Jesus because he fed them. It ends with the crowd becoming disgusted with Jesus’ words, “those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” The crowds were glad to receive that which satisfied their physical needs. When Jesus offered himself to those same crowds to satisfy them at their point of deepest need, they turned away.
How about us? We, too, have spiritual needs and yearnings that go far beyond the physical requirements of getting through each day. A prayer of St. Augustine went thus: “O God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.” Each of us has a “God-shaped hole” in our being, which we sometimes try to fill with financial security, possessions, careers, relationships. These can bring fleeting satisfaction, but like the proverbial Chinese dinner that leaves us hungry an hour later, ultimately the emptiness remains, unless we turn to Jesus and feed on the bread of life.
The words of an old hymn can be a prayer for us in these days:
Guide me, O thou great Jehovah / Pilgrim through this barren land.
I am weak, but thou art mighty / Hold me with thy powerful hand.
Bread of heaven, bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more.
Feed me till I want no more.
Sheep Seeking A Shepherd
I think we’ve all been in this situation at one time or another – we’ve had a long day at work, or a long day of housework. By the end of it, we’re satisfied at what we’ve accomplished, but we’re tired. We’re looking forward to sitting down, propping our feet up, maybe watching a little television. But the phone rings. A close friend or family member needs our help, and wants us to go and meet them. Our long day has just become yet longer, and it’ll be a while before we have a chance to catch our breath, let alone put our feet up. We heave a sigh, put our shoes on, and prepare for our mission of mercy.
This is somewhat the situation Jesus and the disciples found themselves in. The disciples had just returned from their first mission, excited at what they’d accomplished; Jesus had just finished feeding the multitudes – and they were played out. They hadn’t even had time to eat. It was long past time for some serious downtime. So they pile into a boat and paddle off to a deserted place.
Or at least it was deserted when they set out. Mark’s Gospel tells us that the crowds apparently figured out where Jesus was planning to land, and by the time Jesus landed, crowds were lined up along the shore to greet Jesus. Or, more like, ask Jesus to do things for them. For Jesus and the disciples, a long, exhausting mission trip had just gotten longer and more exhausting. Mark’s Gospel tells us that, when Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he taught them many things, and did many healings.
Mark’s words about Jesus also hark back to our reading from Jeremiah today. Jeremiah is chastising society’s leaders – the political and the religious establishment – for being bad shepherds, scattering the sheep, caring for their own welfare rather than those in their charge. God promises that he will raise up shepherds who will care for the sheep. And in today’s reading from Mark, we see Jesus beginning to gather the flock that had been scattered.
Sheep without a shepherd. What a picture of our society. As we’ve heard from time to time, sheep are not the brightest animals on earth, nor the most aggressive. Basically, in order to thrive, they need to be kept together, and they need to be led. Absent these factors of togetherness and leadership, they are vulnerable to wolves and other predators.
The phrase “sheep without a shepherd” may grind on our ears as Americans. After all, “rugged individualism” is our American creed. The romantic picture of a pioneer blazing a trail through the wilderness resonates strongly with us, even though the closest we may see to that today is a commercial about an SUV driving off-road. We tell ourselves that we are the masters of our destiny and the captains of our fate. Nobody tells us what to do.
And yet, we’re more easily led than we think. While our society recoils at anything like central planning and grumbles about regulation, still we’re led in other ways by the wiles of the marketing industry. Far from being sheep without a shepherd, all too often we meet all manner of folks auditioning to be our shepherds. Marketers have us, the public, sliced and diced, by age, gender, race, residence, buying habits, and other signifiers. They know how to play on our fears, our hopes, our vanity, our dreams to get us to buy their wares. It may be funny to watch teenagers assert their individuality and differentiation from their parents by their choice of hairstyle and clothes – which turn out to be the same as what all their friends are doing – so much for individualism - but as adults, marketers play on our individual hopes and fears to induce us to make choices that seem very conformist. Marketers play on our desires for security and love to convince us to spend ever more money on cars and homes and electronic and networking gadgets that we can’t live without. When is enough ever enough? Where exactly are these shepherds leading us?
We’re also more easily scattered than we may think. We have more diversity in media than ever before. When I was growing up, you had the radio – AM - with a limited number of stations, and you had one or two city or small down newspapers. You had 3 TV channels – ABC, CBS and NBC – in black and white - - that everyone with a TV watched. During the years when the Fairness Doctrine was in effect, broadcasters endorsing a political point of view had to allow time for the opposing view to be presented. Now our TV stations are slanted to particular viewpoints – Republicans watch Fox TV; Democrats watch Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. (And if you want to know what’s really going on, go over to Comedy Central and watch Jon Stewart on the Daily Show.) You have cable stations for every demographic – Spike TV for the guys, Lifetime for the ladies, the Military channel, the History channel, National Geographic – and internet sites for every demographic. When I was growing up, everybody heard pretty much the same news – everyone heard or watched the reporting of legendary reporters such as the late Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite on the major events of the day. Many of a certain age remember sitting around the TV at the same time watching Walter Cronkite’s coverage of landmark events such as the coverage of President Kennedy’s assassination and the Apollo moon landing. Now with such a variety of media, we can choose to see and hear only information that reinforces our point of view, in a constant feedback loop, with the result that we may as well be living in alternative universes from one another. Viewers of Fox TV and viewers of Keith Olbermann, followers of the Red State website and followers of the Daily Kos website are seeing such different information and interpretations of current events that they may as well live on different planets. Or are like different flocks following shepherds who are at odds. Occasional disasters such as 9-11 may bring us together for ephemeral, fleeting moments of common purpose, but the marketers and broadcasters quickly work to divert us back to where we were, to where they want us. No wonder our society is so polarized on political and social issues.
And the church has its own share of bad shepherds who prey upon or scatter the sheep. Examples that come readily to mind are those clergy, even locally, who have abused children or who financially rip off their congregations. But more subtle examples are those pastors and churches who through their attitudes and actions make it clear that the only people welcome in their congregation are those who resemble the current membership, pastors and churches who not only fail to gather the sheep, but run off those who manage to find them. A few years ago, the UCC’s national office ran its “bouncer” and “ejector pew” commercials, satirical advertisements showing a large, prosperous suburban church turning away anyone who did not fit its prosperous, suburban upper-middle class image. The point was that the UCC is – or at least aspires to be – a place where all are welcome, even those who may not find much of a welcome anywhere else in society.
And so perhaps we resemble Mark’s picture of sheep without a good shepherd, indeed, sheep scattered and preyed upon by bad shepherds – scattered and preyed upon by our national business and political leaders and sometimes even our religious leaders – who are out for themselves, and couldn’t care less about the ordinary people on whom their livelihood depends. Sheep without a shepherd, scattered by bad shepherds who are aware of us only to the extent that they can prey upon us.
In Jesus, God gathered together the sheep that had been scattered. Paul, in his letter to the church at Ephesus, speaks of God gathering together Jew and Gentile. Paul writes “For he – Christ – is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups – Jew and Gentile – into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace….So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near, for through Christ both of us have access in one spirit to the Father.” And that process of bringing together the scattered sheep still goes on today. Christ is still breaking down the dividing walls in our own society, the dividing walls between the haves and have nots; Christ is still proclaiming peace to those who grew up in the community of faith and those who feel alienated from the church and all its doings.
Our task is to gather, not to scatter. In the Kingdom of God, on this side of eternity, Jesus has appointed us to the invitation committee, not to the selection committee. A few years ago, when I was visiting churches seeking to join the UCC, I visited one Pentecostal church in North Philadelphia that had only 3 members. Now the church had many more than 3 people show up for worship; they probably got close to 100, and this was in a small storefront. Worship services were packed. But the pastor had very high – and probably fairly peculiar – qualifications for membership, and she only considered 3 of those who showed up as good enough to be members of her church. But that’s not the way we do things in the UCC – we want to offer extravagant hospitality to all.
We must not become weary in well-doing. Like Jesus and the disciples, people may come seeking help at times when we’ve already given our all, when we’re exhausted, when all we want in the world is to rest. But like the Jesus and disciples, we can push past our exhaustion to push through to the blessings that God has for his faithful followers.
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. May Emanuel Church be a dwelling place for God, and a place of hope and healing for a neighborhood in need of both. Amen.
This is somewhat the situation Jesus and the disciples found themselves in. The disciples had just returned from their first mission, excited at what they’d accomplished; Jesus had just finished feeding the multitudes – and they were played out. They hadn’t even had time to eat. It was long past time for some serious downtime. So they pile into a boat and paddle off to a deserted place.
Or at least it was deserted when they set out. Mark’s Gospel tells us that the crowds apparently figured out where Jesus was planning to land, and by the time Jesus landed, crowds were lined up along the shore to greet Jesus. Or, more like, ask Jesus to do things for them. For Jesus and the disciples, a long, exhausting mission trip had just gotten longer and more exhausting. Mark’s Gospel tells us that, when Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he taught them many things, and did many healings.
Mark’s words about Jesus also hark back to our reading from Jeremiah today. Jeremiah is chastising society’s leaders – the political and the religious establishment – for being bad shepherds, scattering the sheep, caring for their own welfare rather than those in their charge. God promises that he will raise up shepherds who will care for the sheep. And in today’s reading from Mark, we see Jesus beginning to gather the flock that had been scattered.
Sheep without a shepherd. What a picture of our society. As we’ve heard from time to time, sheep are not the brightest animals on earth, nor the most aggressive. Basically, in order to thrive, they need to be kept together, and they need to be led. Absent these factors of togetherness and leadership, they are vulnerable to wolves and other predators.
The phrase “sheep without a shepherd” may grind on our ears as Americans. After all, “rugged individualism” is our American creed. The romantic picture of a pioneer blazing a trail through the wilderness resonates strongly with us, even though the closest we may see to that today is a commercial about an SUV driving off-road. We tell ourselves that we are the masters of our destiny and the captains of our fate. Nobody tells us what to do.
And yet, we’re more easily led than we think. While our society recoils at anything like central planning and grumbles about regulation, still we’re led in other ways by the wiles of the marketing industry. Far from being sheep without a shepherd, all too often we meet all manner of folks auditioning to be our shepherds. Marketers have us, the public, sliced and diced, by age, gender, race, residence, buying habits, and other signifiers. They know how to play on our fears, our hopes, our vanity, our dreams to get us to buy their wares. It may be funny to watch teenagers assert their individuality and differentiation from their parents by their choice of hairstyle and clothes – which turn out to be the same as what all their friends are doing – so much for individualism - but as adults, marketers play on our individual hopes and fears to induce us to make choices that seem very conformist. Marketers play on our desires for security and love to convince us to spend ever more money on cars and homes and electronic and networking gadgets that we can’t live without. When is enough ever enough? Where exactly are these shepherds leading us?
We’re also more easily scattered than we may think. We have more diversity in media than ever before. When I was growing up, you had the radio – AM - with a limited number of stations, and you had one or two city or small down newspapers. You had 3 TV channels – ABC, CBS and NBC – in black and white - - that everyone with a TV watched. During the years when the Fairness Doctrine was in effect, broadcasters endorsing a political point of view had to allow time for the opposing view to be presented. Now our TV stations are slanted to particular viewpoints – Republicans watch Fox TV; Democrats watch Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow. (And if you want to know what’s really going on, go over to Comedy Central and watch Jon Stewart on the Daily Show.) You have cable stations for every demographic – Spike TV for the guys, Lifetime for the ladies, the Military channel, the History channel, National Geographic – and internet sites for every demographic. When I was growing up, everybody heard pretty much the same news – everyone heard or watched the reporting of legendary reporters such as the late Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite on the major events of the day. Many of a certain age remember sitting around the TV at the same time watching Walter Cronkite’s coverage of landmark events such as the coverage of President Kennedy’s assassination and the Apollo moon landing. Now with such a variety of media, we can choose to see and hear only information that reinforces our point of view, in a constant feedback loop, with the result that we may as well be living in alternative universes from one another. Viewers of Fox TV and viewers of Keith Olbermann, followers of the Red State website and followers of the Daily Kos website are seeing such different information and interpretations of current events that they may as well live on different planets. Or are like different flocks following shepherds who are at odds. Occasional disasters such as 9-11 may bring us together for ephemeral, fleeting moments of common purpose, but the marketers and broadcasters quickly work to divert us back to where we were, to where they want us. No wonder our society is so polarized on political and social issues.
And the church has its own share of bad shepherds who prey upon or scatter the sheep. Examples that come readily to mind are those clergy, even locally, who have abused children or who financially rip off their congregations. But more subtle examples are those pastors and churches who through their attitudes and actions make it clear that the only people welcome in their congregation are those who resemble the current membership, pastors and churches who not only fail to gather the sheep, but run off those who manage to find them. A few years ago, the UCC’s national office ran its “bouncer” and “ejector pew” commercials, satirical advertisements showing a large, prosperous suburban church turning away anyone who did not fit its prosperous, suburban upper-middle class image. The point was that the UCC is – or at least aspires to be – a place where all are welcome, even those who may not find much of a welcome anywhere else in society.
And so perhaps we resemble Mark’s picture of sheep without a good shepherd, indeed, sheep scattered and preyed upon by bad shepherds – scattered and preyed upon by our national business and political leaders and sometimes even our religious leaders – who are out for themselves, and couldn’t care less about the ordinary people on whom their livelihood depends. Sheep without a shepherd, scattered by bad shepherds who are aware of us only to the extent that they can prey upon us.
In Jesus, God gathered together the sheep that had been scattered. Paul, in his letter to the church at Ephesus, speaks of God gathering together Jew and Gentile. Paul writes “For he – Christ – is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups – Jew and Gentile – into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace….So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near, for through Christ both of us have access in one spirit to the Father.” And that process of bringing together the scattered sheep still goes on today. Christ is still breaking down the dividing walls in our own society, the dividing walls between the haves and have nots; Christ is still proclaiming peace to those who grew up in the community of faith and those who feel alienated from the church and all its doings.
Our task is to gather, not to scatter. In the Kingdom of God, on this side of eternity, Jesus has appointed us to the invitation committee, not to the selection committee. A few years ago, when I was visiting churches seeking to join the UCC, I visited one Pentecostal church in North Philadelphia that had only 3 members. Now the church had many more than 3 people show up for worship; they probably got close to 100, and this was in a small storefront. Worship services were packed. But the pastor had very high – and probably fairly peculiar – qualifications for membership, and she only considered 3 of those who showed up as good enough to be members of her church. But that’s not the way we do things in the UCC – we want to offer extravagant hospitality to all.
We must not become weary in well-doing. Like Jesus and the disciples, people may come seeking help at times when we’ve already given our all, when we’re exhausted, when all we want in the world is to rest. But like the Jesus and disciples, we can push past our exhaustion to push through to the blessings that God has for his faithful followers.
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. May Emanuel Church be a dwelling place for God, and a place of hope and healing for a neighborhood in need of both. Amen.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Tuning Forks, Plumb Lines, and Prophets
Before coming to Emanuel UCC here in Bridesburg, I sang in the choir of my former church for nearly 20 years. Sometimes at rehearsals when the choir practiced an anthem, we’d practice one part of it a capella – with no accompaniment, just the choir singing. Sometimes if we were tired at the end of rehearsal, the choir didn’t quite stay on key during those a capella portions – we’d be singing away, and at the end of it, the organist would play the note we should have been singing – and we discovered that, in the course of singing just one verse of a hymn, just a few lines of music, we’d gone flat, off-key. Of course, the organ and piano likewise needed to be tuned from time to time, or they’d go flat – the piano tuner would bring tuning forks, which maintain perfect pitch, and compare the sound made by the piano to that made by the tuning forks, and make adjustments in the piano’s sound.
Both our Old Testament reading (Amos 7:7-15) and our Gospel reading about John the Baptist (Mark 6:14-29) remind us of the hazards of being a prophet – of being the person God chooses to send to a messed up situation with the words, “Thus says the Lord.” In a way, a prophet is a person whom God uses as a tuning fork, to show the rest of society how far off pitch they’ve gone.
Amos is considered one of the minor Old Testament prophets. He was active during the time of the divided Kingdom, about 200 years after the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom, which collectively took the name of “Israel” had rebelled against Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, over excessive taxation, and split off from Judah and Benjamin, the remaining two tribes of the Southern Kingdom. At the time Amos prophesied, the 10 tribes of the Northern Kingdom were experiencing a time of great prosperity. They had constructed a national mythology that they merited God’s special blessings, which would continue until the coming of the “Day of the Lord” when God would finally vindicate them against their enemies. Yet in reality, with the prosperity came great inequality, with the elite living in ease while the poor starved. (Sound like anything you’ve read about in the newspaper lately?)
Into this situation walked Amos. He was not part of the religious establishment – not a prophet or a prophet’s son – but a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees – he had a day job. The book of Amos begins with prophecies against the nations surrounding the Northern Kingdom of Israel, moves on to a prophecy against Judah – and then prophesies against Israel: “for three transgressions of Israel and for four, I will not revoke punishment, because they sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and push the afflicted out of the way; father and son go into the same girl, so that my holy name is profaned, they lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge, and in the house of their God they drink wine bought with the fines they imposed.” Amos prophesies that the longed-for day of the Lord, far from vindication, will bring disaster, exile, and destruction of the Northern Kingdom - what the people think is the light of God’s vindication at the end of the tunnel is really the headlamp of the oncoming train of God’s wrath. The bottom line of Amos’ message: “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies….take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” In modern terms, Amos is saying “Stop playing church and start changing society for the better!”
And then Amos has a vision of the Lord, standing beside a wall, with a plumb line in his hand. A plumb line would be used by builders to make sure that the wall is vertical. Similar to the tuning fork mentioned earlier in my sermon, the plumb line is a device used to make sure that the builder is not wandering off track – because a wall that’s not vertical will not long remain standing.
This prophet with his harsh words and dire predictions comes up against the religious establishment, in the form of Amaziah, the priest of Bethel. Amaziah tells Amos to take his words of doom and gloom elsewhere, and calls Amos a traitor, a conspirator against the government, because he’s prophesying against the king at Bethel, the king’s sanctuary.
“Let justice flow down like a river.” Amos preached against the national mythology that Israel had built up for itself, that its prosperity was God’s reward for their faith. Amaziah and the other court prophets had accommodated their message to the political winds of the day, saying that God was blessing and prospering the king. Amos had a very different message – while their prosperity was indeed a gift from God, that prosperity was being unjustly denied to all but the elite, and therefore it would not last.
I actually wish this text had been in the lectionary readings for last Sunday, Independence Day weekend. One of the most difficult but most important duties of the church in general and pastors in particular is to provide a word from the Lord in a society that has lost its way. And churches and pastors have struggled with this duty down through the centuries. Many pastors resist speaking out at all. Other pastors, like Amaziah in today’s reading, tend to align themselves with national policies in a sort of “God and country” stance, that is to say, to be a good citizen is to be a good Christian. The failure of both of these approaches became obvious in Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s, when many German churches declared that there was no incompatibility between Hitler and Christ. Talk about losing your way! Sometimes, as in the case of Amos, true patriotism – truly working for your country’s highest good – means saying things that the folks in charge don’t especially want to hear. The Gospel reading about the beheading of John the Baptist – who “went from preachin’ to meddlin’” in speaking out against Herod the Tetrarch’s divorcing his first wife to marry his brother’s wife, Herodias – shows that those in power will often respond to prophetic words by (metaphorically if not literally) killing the messenger. In Germany, pastors such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer who spoke out against Hitler likewise faced the 20th century equivalent of “dungeon, fire, and sword.” Still other churches limit their prophetic witness to one or two hot-button “family values” issues while remaining strangely silent about the economic injustice about which Amos and many Old Testament prophets spoke. I have no doubt Amos would have some choice words to offer about today’s economic injustices, where CEO’s are paid – I won’t say “earn” – hundreds of times the wages of their entry level workers.
It is rare person with the gift of prophecy to be able to size up a situation, approach it with the whole counsel of God’s word – not just proof-texts taken out of context – to bring the situation before God in prayer and listen to God’s still small voice, and then speak a word from the Lord. It is in this sense that theologians tell us that prophecy is not necessarily “foretelling” – not about being a fortune teller – but “forth telling” – telling forth what God has to say about the present, and how our course of action may play out in the future. As people of faith we need to be thinking theologically about the issues of our day, trying to discern God’s will in our individual lives and in society. As theologian Karl Barth put it, we should have the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.
“Let justice roll down like a river.” May we, like Amos, resist the path of conformity to the powers and principalities of the world, but rather to allow ourselves to be transformed by the renewing of our mind, so that we in turn can be God’s instruments in the transformation of the world in which we live.
Both our Old Testament reading (Amos 7:7-15) and our Gospel reading about John the Baptist (Mark 6:14-29) remind us of the hazards of being a prophet – of being the person God chooses to send to a messed up situation with the words, “Thus says the Lord.” In a way, a prophet is a person whom God uses as a tuning fork, to show the rest of society how far off pitch they’ve gone.
Amos is considered one of the minor Old Testament prophets. He was active during the time of the divided Kingdom, about 200 years after the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom, which collectively took the name of “Israel” had rebelled against Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, over excessive taxation, and split off from Judah and Benjamin, the remaining two tribes of the Southern Kingdom. At the time Amos prophesied, the 10 tribes of the Northern Kingdom were experiencing a time of great prosperity. They had constructed a national mythology that they merited God’s special blessings, which would continue until the coming of the “Day of the Lord” when God would finally vindicate them against their enemies. Yet in reality, with the prosperity came great inequality, with the elite living in ease while the poor starved. (Sound like anything you’ve read about in the newspaper lately?)
Into this situation walked Amos. He was not part of the religious establishment – not a prophet or a prophet’s son – but a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees – he had a day job. The book of Amos begins with prophecies against the nations surrounding the Northern Kingdom of Israel, moves on to a prophecy against Judah – and then prophesies against Israel: “for three transgressions of Israel and for four, I will not revoke punishment, because they sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, they who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and push the afflicted out of the way; father and son go into the same girl, so that my holy name is profaned, they lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge, and in the house of their God they drink wine bought with the fines they imposed.” Amos prophesies that the longed-for day of the Lord, far from vindication, will bring disaster, exile, and destruction of the Northern Kingdom - what the people think is the light of God’s vindication at the end of the tunnel is really the headlamp of the oncoming train of God’s wrath. The bottom line of Amos’ message: “I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies….take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” In modern terms, Amos is saying “Stop playing church and start changing society for the better!”
And then Amos has a vision of the Lord, standing beside a wall, with a plumb line in his hand. A plumb line would be used by builders to make sure that the wall is vertical. Similar to the tuning fork mentioned earlier in my sermon, the plumb line is a device used to make sure that the builder is not wandering off track – because a wall that’s not vertical will not long remain standing.
This prophet with his harsh words and dire predictions comes up against the religious establishment, in the form of Amaziah, the priest of Bethel. Amaziah tells Amos to take his words of doom and gloom elsewhere, and calls Amos a traitor, a conspirator against the government, because he’s prophesying against the king at Bethel, the king’s sanctuary.
“Let justice flow down like a river.” Amos preached against the national mythology that Israel had built up for itself, that its prosperity was God’s reward for their faith. Amaziah and the other court prophets had accommodated their message to the political winds of the day, saying that God was blessing and prospering the king. Amos had a very different message – while their prosperity was indeed a gift from God, that prosperity was being unjustly denied to all but the elite, and therefore it would not last.
I actually wish this text had been in the lectionary readings for last Sunday, Independence Day weekend. One of the most difficult but most important duties of the church in general and pastors in particular is to provide a word from the Lord in a society that has lost its way. And churches and pastors have struggled with this duty down through the centuries. Many pastors resist speaking out at all. Other pastors, like Amaziah in today’s reading, tend to align themselves with national policies in a sort of “God and country” stance, that is to say, to be a good citizen is to be a good Christian. The failure of both of these approaches became obvious in Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s, when many German churches declared that there was no incompatibility between Hitler and Christ. Talk about losing your way! Sometimes, as in the case of Amos, true patriotism – truly working for your country’s highest good – means saying things that the folks in charge don’t especially want to hear. The Gospel reading about the beheading of John the Baptist – who “went from preachin’ to meddlin’” in speaking out against Herod the Tetrarch’s divorcing his first wife to marry his brother’s wife, Herodias – shows that those in power will often respond to prophetic words by (metaphorically if not literally) killing the messenger. In Germany, pastors such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer who spoke out against Hitler likewise faced the 20th century equivalent of “dungeon, fire, and sword.” Still other churches limit their prophetic witness to one or two hot-button “family values” issues while remaining strangely silent about the economic injustice about which Amos and many Old Testament prophets spoke. I have no doubt Amos would have some choice words to offer about today’s economic injustices, where CEO’s are paid – I won’t say “earn” – hundreds of times the wages of their entry level workers.
It is rare person with the gift of prophecy to be able to size up a situation, approach it with the whole counsel of God’s word – not just proof-texts taken out of context – to bring the situation before God in prayer and listen to God’s still small voice, and then speak a word from the Lord. It is in this sense that theologians tell us that prophecy is not necessarily “foretelling” – not about being a fortune teller – but “forth telling” – telling forth what God has to say about the present, and how our course of action may play out in the future. As people of faith we need to be thinking theologically about the issues of our day, trying to discern God’s will in our individual lives and in society. As theologian Karl Barth put it, we should have the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.
“Let justice roll down like a river.” May we, like Amos, resist the path of conformity to the powers and principalities of the world, but rather to allow ourselves to be transformed by the renewing of our mind, so that we in turn can be God’s instruments in the transformation of the world in which we live.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
On A Mission From God
The 1980 movie “The Blues Brothers” starring Dan Akroyd and John Belushi, told the tale of Jake Blues, just released from prison, who learned that the Catholic orphanage where he and his brother Elwood were raised, would be closed and sold unless an overdue tax bill was paid in 11 days. Jake and Elwood put together their old band to raise money for the bill, explaining in a deadpan voice to anyone who asked, “We’re on a mission from God.” Braving pursuit by police and a flamethrower-wielding Carrie Fisher, among other obstacles, they manage to get the orphanage’s tax bill paid, just before being sent back to prison.
All three of today’s readings (Ezekiel 2:1-5; 2 Corinthians 12:1-10; Mark 6:1-13) tell of people – Ezekiel, Paul, and Jesus and the disciples on various missions from God. Despite – or maybe because of – the divine nature of their missions, all encountered obstacles and opposition – no flamethrowing Carrie Fisher, thankfully, but obstacles just the same.
Over the past few Sundays, we’ve seen Jesus during the early months of his earthly mission. He had taught the crowds, using the parable of the sower and the parable of the mustard seed, among others. Jesus then crossed to the Gentile side of the Sea of Galilee, healed the demoniac man, and was strongly encouraged by a number of pig farmers, agraid and angry that their swine herds had just run off a cliff, to take his healing powers elsewhere. In last week’s Gospel, we saw Him recross the sea of Galilee, heal the woman with the hemorrhage and raise Jairus’ daughter.
After all these successes, Jesus returned to his hometown. Riding the momentum of all these successes, he comes to teach in his hometown synagogue. He soon learned that the people who knew him best would prove to be the toughest crowd of all. “Where did he get all this stuff. Just who does he think he is? Hey we knew him when… He’s the carpenter, Mary’s son – Joseph is not mentioned, just a slight hint of scandal there about who exactly was the father – and his brothers and sisters still live here. He’s gotten too big for his britches” Mark’s Gospel doesn’t give us the content of Jesus’ teaching, but Luke’s Gospel has him saying that God’s grace extended beyond Israel, using Elijah’s miracle at the widow of Zeraphath in Sidon and Elisha’s healing Naaman the Syrian. Mark’s gospel says, “They took offense at him.” Apparently for all of his having grown up among them, they knew him just well enough to discount him. Jesus, for his part, was amazed at their unbelief, and could do no great miracles there, except curing a few sick people.
This lack of belief limits the church to this day. We who commit their lives to Christ may have our most frustrating conversations with those who know us best, who knew us when we were growing up, when we weren’t fully mature and were still learning how to navigate in the world, or who knew us before our call to follow Jesus. It’s a dynamic that we’ll struggle with as we continue to walk with Christ…..God will keep leading us into new territory, new ways to live by faith, and those who know us best will keep trying to drag us back into the roles with which they’re familiar and comfortable. For example, those struggling against alcoholism or addiction are cautioned to avoid people, places and things that will be triggers to remind them of drinking or drugging…because those people will say things like, “what do you mean, you can’t have a drink? You may have a little too much now and then, but you don’t really have a problem. What do you mean you can’t have just one….” So when God is calling us forward, we need to be careful not to be seduced into slipping back into old ways.
Coming off of a less than triumphant homecoming, Jesus sent his disciples out on their first mission. Normally when we travel, we follow the Boy Scout motto – be prepared. Some people prepare so much that they’re like the characters on Gilligan’s Island, taking their entire wardrobe along for a three hour tour. But Jesus instructed the disciples to travel light – a staff, sandals, and the clothes on their back, no more. In the memorable words of Blanche DuBois, they were to depend on the kindness of strangers, or more accurately, to live by faith. If a place failed to welcome them, they were not to call down fire and brimstone on the place, but only to shake the dust off their shoes as a testimony. And their mission met with some success; we’re told that they cast out many demons and anointed and healed many who were sick.
As Mark tells it, Jesus spends more time telling his followers what not to take than he did telling them what to do. Why such a heavy emphasis on traveling light? Perhaps on this mission from God, Jesus wanted to be sure that his followers’ possessions didn’t get in the way. The focus was to be on the mission – casting out demons, healing, proclaiming good news – and not on self-preservation. As Paul said in another context in today’s Epistle reading, for the disciples, God’s grace would be sufficient, and God’s power was made all the more evident in the weakness and modest circumstances of the disciples.
May we, like Jesus and the disciples, have faith to step beyond our comfort zones, out of the familiar boxes into which our family and friends and neighbors would like to confine us, into the “mission from God” that we are called to. We aren’t called to have everything figured out – indeed, we’ll often be given just enough light for the next step or two ahead, and no more. We are called to walk by faith, not by sight. Like Paul dealing with his thorn in the flesh, God’s power among us will be all the more evident for our own weakness. Like Ezekiel, we may or may not experience a positive response to our efforts, but at least people will know we are here and that God is with us in this place. On our journey we will meet with obstacles, and we’ll be tempted to return to that which is comfortable. But if we push past the pushback, we will push through to the blessings God has in store, for us, and for those to whom we minister.
All three of today’s readings (Ezekiel 2:1-5; 2 Corinthians 12:1-10; Mark 6:1-13) tell of people – Ezekiel, Paul, and Jesus and the disciples on various missions from God. Despite – or maybe because of – the divine nature of their missions, all encountered obstacles and opposition – no flamethrowing Carrie Fisher, thankfully, but obstacles just the same.
Over the past few Sundays, we’ve seen Jesus during the early months of his earthly mission. He had taught the crowds, using the parable of the sower and the parable of the mustard seed, among others. Jesus then crossed to the Gentile side of the Sea of Galilee, healed the demoniac man, and was strongly encouraged by a number of pig farmers, agraid and angry that their swine herds had just run off a cliff, to take his healing powers elsewhere. In last week’s Gospel, we saw Him recross the sea of Galilee, heal the woman with the hemorrhage and raise Jairus’ daughter.
After all these successes, Jesus returned to his hometown. Riding the momentum of all these successes, he comes to teach in his hometown synagogue. He soon learned that the people who knew him best would prove to be the toughest crowd of all. “Where did he get all this stuff. Just who does he think he is? Hey we knew him when… He’s the carpenter, Mary’s son – Joseph is not mentioned, just a slight hint of scandal there about who exactly was the father – and his brothers and sisters still live here. He’s gotten too big for his britches” Mark’s Gospel doesn’t give us the content of Jesus’ teaching, but Luke’s Gospel has him saying that God’s grace extended beyond Israel, using Elijah’s miracle at the widow of Zeraphath in Sidon and Elisha’s healing Naaman the Syrian. Mark’s gospel says, “They took offense at him.” Apparently for all of his having grown up among them, they knew him just well enough to discount him. Jesus, for his part, was amazed at their unbelief, and could do no great miracles there, except curing a few sick people.
This lack of belief limits the church to this day. We who commit their lives to Christ may have our most frustrating conversations with those who know us best, who knew us when we were growing up, when we weren’t fully mature and were still learning how to navigate in the world, or who knew us before our call to follow Jesus. It’s a dynamic that we’ll struggle with as we continue to walk with Christ…..God will keep leading us into new territory, new ways to live by faith, and those who know us best will keep trying to drag us back into the roles with which they’re familiar and comfortable. For example, those struggling against alcoholism or addiction are cautioned to avoid people, places and things that will be triggers to remind them of drinking or drugging…because those people will say things like, “what do you mean, you can’t have a drink? You may have a little too much now and then, but you don’t really have a problem. What do you mean you can’t have just one….” So when God is calling us forward, we need to be careful not to be seduced into slipping back into old ways.
Coming off of a less than triumphant homecoming, Jesus sent his disciples out on their first mission. Normally when we travel, we follow the Boy Scout motto – be prepared. Some people prepare so much that they’re like the characters on Gilligan’s Island, taking their entire wardrobe along for a three hour tour. But Jesus instructed the disciples to travel light – a staff, sandals, and the clothes on their back, no more. In the memorable words of Blanche DuBois, they were to depend on the kindness of strangers, or more accurately, to live by faith. If a place failed to welcome them, they were not to call down fire and brimstone on the place, but only to shake the dust off their shoes as a testimony. And their mission met with some success; we’re told that they cast out many demons and anointed and healed many who were sick.
As Mark tells it, Jesus spends more time telling his followers what not to take than he did telling them what to do. Why such a heavy emphasis on traveling light? Perhaps on this mission from God, Jesus wanted to be sure that his followers’ possessions didn’t get in the way. The focus was to be on the mission – casting out demons, healing, proclaiming good news – and not on self-preservation. As Paul said in another context in today’s Epistle reading, for the disciples, God’s grace would be sufficient, and God’s power was made all the more evident in the weakness and modest circumstances of the disciples.
May we, like Jesus and the disciples, have faith to step beyond our comfort zones, out of the familiar boxes into which our family and friends and neighbors would like to confine us, into the “mission from God” that we are called to. We aren’t called to have everything figured out – indeed, we’ll often be given just enough light for the next step or two ahead, and no more. We are called to walk by faith, not by sight. Like Paul dealing with his thorn in the flesh, God’s power among us will be all the more evident for our own weakness. Like Ezekiel, we may or may not experience a positive response to our efforts, but at least people will know we are here and that God is with us in this place. On our journey we will meet with obstacles, and we’ll be tempted to return to that which is comfortable. But if we push past the pushback, we will push through to the blessings God has in store, for us, and for those to whom we minister.
Persisting in Faith
The Gospel for June 28 (Mark 5) builds on the theme of the miracles of Jesus that we began last week with Jesus calming the storm. In today’s healing of Jairus’ daughter and the woman with the hemorrhage, Jesus heals not only physical disease, but also social ostracism.
Last week, we watched Jesus calm the storm while he was crossing the Sea of Galilee. He was crossing from the Jewish side of the sea – the area where his community of faith lived – to the Gentile side, where non-Jews lived. On the Gentile side of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus healed the demon-possessed man who lived among the tombs – and greatly upset some pig farmers whose livestock ran wild off a cliff. He then re-crossed the Sea of Galilee back into Jewish territory. By including all this crossing and recrossing in the story, Mark is making a point – not subtly either, but practically highlighting and underlining it and drawing arrows around it – that Jesus’ ministry was to both Jews and Gentiles. The culture of the time dictated strict boundaries between Jew and Gentile, but Jesus crossed those boundaries repeatedly – literally crossed them by sailing back and forth from the Jewish to the Gentile communities that were divided by the Sea of Galilee. We’ll see him crossing other boundaries in today’s Gospel.
Anyway….so Jesus is back on the Jewish side of the Sea of Galilee, back in familiar territory. He’s accosted by Jairus, leader of the local synagogue. Jesus was already drawing negative attention from many of the religious leaders, so Jairus was risking his standing in the community by approaching him –but his 12-year old daughter is dying, and he’s desperate, so he’s willing to put his reputation aside to save his little girl. Desperation has forced Jairus out of his comfort zone. And so Jesus begins the walk to Jairus’s house, with a crowd gathering as he proceeded.
On the way, Jesus is quietly approached by another desperate woman, one who has been afflicted with continual hemorrhages for 12 years. We’re told that she spent everything she had on physicians, but was worse rather than better for the effort. Imagine how exhausted and drained this woman would have felt after having been ill for so long. Remember that according to the purity guidelines of the day, she would have been considered ritually unclean – by the guidelines, should have been isolated from the rest of society - and would have ritually contaminated everyone she inadvertently bumped into as the crowd jostled its way along. Given her status, obviously she did not want to draw attention to herself. “If I can just touch his clothes, I’ll be healed,” she thinks. So she touched his cloak, and was healed immediately. Jesus felt healing power going forth from him, and asked, “who touched me.” The disciples responded “what do you mean, ‘who touched you’; the whole crowd is jostling against you.” But the woman approached him in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told Jesus what she’d done. Jesus took the time to face her and say, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” And she was healed, not only of her physical illness, but of the ritual uncleanness and isolation that had come with it. It was a holy interruption to Jesus’ journey, a holy interruption that forever changed the course of this woman’s life.
Good for the woman. At first glance, not so good for Jairus. While all this is going on, he tries to maintain his composure while becoming more and more frantic for Jesus to get to his home and heal his daughter. And then messengers come from Jairus’ house with the dread words, “Too late! She’s dead.” In his frantic effort to seek healing from Jesus, he had apparently missed the last, precious moments of his daughter’s life, had been away from her bedside during her last conscious moments.
In the midst of Jairus’ grief, Jesus responds with what one writer called his shortest sermon – “Do not fear. Only believe.” They arrived at the house, where the hired mourners are holding forth. Jesus asks why all the commotion: the little girl is not dead, but sleeping. The mourning turns to bitter laughter, and so the paid mourners are put outside. In the presence of Peter, James and John, Jesus calls to the little girl, “Little girl, get up.” The girl begins to blink her eyes and look around, and Jesus asks the family to get her something to eat.
Two women, nearly cut off from community by illness. Two desperate seekers for healing. In both cases Jairus and the anonymous woman crossed boundaries of ritual purity to reach Jesus, Jesus crossed boundaries of the ritual purity laws in order to heal each woman, and in both cases the healed women were restored to their communities. In these stories, healing is not just the removal of illness, but the wholistic restoration of wellness and right relationship in all aspects of life.
There are a number of ways of looking at this Gospel. One of the more traditional is to lift up the persistence of each of these seekers. Both had to go out way of their comfort zones to seek after Jesus; both had to overcome significant obstacles and great discouragement in their respective quests for healing. In effect, both through faith sought a “way out of no way,” sought the proverbial window of faith that opens when all doors have been slammed shut. Both refused to let those around them discourage them – remember the crowds that blocked the woman from easy access to Jesus, and the hired mourners who laughed at Jesus - and both were rewarded for their faith.
The difficulty comes when we think our prayers can control God – if we just pray enough, or fast enough, or believe enough, or tithe enough, God will give us the desire of our hearts. This mindset very nearly reduces faith to a commercial transaction – God, I’ll send up x number of prayers, and you’ll send down our heart’s desire. At the bottom of this type of thinking is fear, fear that God really doesn’t desire our good, fear that God needs to be bribed somehow by our prayers to act. Yet Jesus said, “Fear not; only believe.”
Along with the lesson of persistent faith, this Gospel teaches that God is always in control. Faced with Jairus’ request, Jesus moved with steadfast purpose. The anonymous woman’s interruption provided another opportunity to glorify God, but it did not deflect Jesus from his original purpose. Faced with the desperate anxiety of Jairus, the curiosity of the crowds, the perplexity of the disciples, the mockery of the professional mourners, and the apparently hopeless state of Jairus’ daughter, Jesus moved forward with purposeful, unhurried steps. And so it is with God’s response to our prayers. I believe God answers all prayer – sometimes yes, sometimes “not yet”, often, “no, but here’s something better.” God can see past our limited vision, the advertising and culture-induced wants that masquerade as needs, our sin that prompts us to ask for that which would hurt us, in order to give us what we truly need.
Jesus told Jairus – and tells us – do not fear; only believe. Fear not, though the wind and waves may come. Fear not, though life’s circumstances may leave us feeling depleted and alone. Fear not, though it seems all our efforts have come to naught, and our journey of faith has brought us to a dead end. Fear not. God has not left the building – indeed, God is waiting to do amazing things still, if we’ll get out of the way with our need for control. Despite all appearances, it is the God who loves us and loves our neighbors who is in control. Fear not. Only believe.
Last week, we watched Jesus calm the storm while he was crossing the Sea of Galilee. He was crossing from the Jewish side of the sea – the area where his community of faith lived – to the Gentile side, where non-Jews lived. On the Gentile side of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus healed the demon-possessed man who lived among the tombs – and greatly upset some pig farmers whose livestock ran wild off a cliff. He then re-crossed the Sea of Galilee back into Jewish territory. By including all this crossing and recrossing in the story, Mark is making a point – not subtly either, but practically highlighting and underlining it and drawing arrows around it – that Jesus’ ministry was to both Jews and Gentiles. The culture of the time dictated strict boundaries between Jew and Gentile, but Jesus crossed those boundaries repeatedly – literally crossed them by sailing back and forth from the Jewish to the Gentile communities that were divided by the Sea of Galilee. We’ll see him crossing other boundaries in today’s Gospel.
Anyway….so Jesus is back on the Jewish side of the Sea of Galilee, back in familiar territory. He’s accosted by Jairus, leader of the local synagogue. Jesus was already drawing negative attention from many of the religious leaders, so Jairus was risking his standing in the community by approaching him –but his 12-year old daughter is dying, and he’s desperate, so he’s willing to put his reputation aside to save his little girl. Desperation has forced Jairus out of his comfort zone. And so Jesus begins the walk to Jairus’s house, with a crowd gathering as he proceeded.
On the way, Jesus is quietly approached by another desperate woman, one who has been afflicted with continual hemorrhages for 12 years. We’re told that she spent everything she had on physicians, but was worse rather than better for the effort. Imagine how exhausted and drained this woman would have felt after having been ill for so long. Remember that according to the purity guidelines of the day, she would have been considered ritually unclean – by the guidelines, should have been isolated from the rest of society - and would have ritually contaminated everyone she inadvertently bumped into as the crowd jostled its way along. Given her status, obviously she did not want to draw attention to herself. “If I can just touch his clothes, I’ll be healed,” she thinks. So she touched his cloak, and was healed immediately. Jesus felt healing power going forth from him, and asked, “who touched me.” The disciples responded “what do you mean, ‘who touched you’; the whole crowd is jostling against you.” But the woman approached him in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told Jesus what she’d done. Jesus took the time to face her and say, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” And she was healed, not only of her physical illness, but of the ritual uncleanness and isolation that had come with it. It was a holy interruption to Jesus’ journey, a holy interruption that forever changed the course of this woman’s life.
Good for the woman. At first glance, not so good for Jairus. While all this is going on, he tries to maintain his composure while becoming more and more frantic for Jesus to get to his home and heal his daughter. And then messengers come from Jairus’ house with the dread words, “Too late! She’s dead.” In his frantic effort to seek healing from Jesus, he had apparently missed the last, precious moments of his daughter’s life, had been away from her bedside during her last conscious moments.
In the midst of Jairus’ grief, Jesus responds with what one writer called his shortest sermon – “Do not fear. Only believe.” They arrived at the house, where the hired mourners are holding forth. Jesus asks why all the commotion: the little girl is not dead, but sleeping. The mourning turns to bitter laughter, and so the paid mourners are put outside. In the presence of Peter, James and John, Jesus calls to the little girl, “Little girl, get up.” The girl begins to blink her eyes and look around, and Jesus asks the family to get her something to eat.
Two women, nearly cut off from community by illness. Two desperate seekers for healing. In both cases Jairus and the anonymous woman crossed boundaries of ritual purity to reach Jesus, Jesus crossed boundaries of the ritual purity laws in order to heal each woman, and in both cases the healed women were restored to their communities. In these stories, healing is not just the removal of illness, but the wholistic restoration of wellness and right relationship in all aspects of life.
There are a number of ways of looking at this Gospel. One of the more traditional is to lift up the persistence of each of these seekers. Both had to go out way of their comfort zones to seek after Jesus; both had to overcome significant obstacles and great discouragement in their respective quests for healing. In effect, both through faith sought a “way out of no way,” sought the proverbial window of faith that opens when all doors have been slammed shut. Both refused to let those around them discourage them – remember the crowds that blocked the woman from easy access to Jesus, and the hired mourners who laughed at Jesus - and both were rewarded for their faith.
The difficulty comes when we think our prayers can control God – if we just pray enough, or fast enough, or believe enough, or tithe enough, God will give us the desire of our hearts. This mindset very nearly reduces faith to a commercial transaction – God, I’ll send up x number of prayers, and you’ll send down our heart’s desire. At the bottom of this type of thinking is fear, fear that God really doesn’t desire our good, fear that God needs to be bribed somehow by our prayers to act. Yet Jesus said, “Fear not; only believe.”
Along with the lesson of persistent faith, this Gospel teaches that God is always in control. Faced with Jairus’ request, Jesus moved with steadfast purpose. The anonymous woman’s interruption provided another opportunity to glorify God, but it did not deflect Jesus from his original purpose. Faced with the desperate anxiety of Jairus, the curiosity of the crowds, the perplexity of the disciples, the mockery of the professional mourners, and the apparently hopeless state of Jairus’ daughter, Jesus moved forward with purposeful, unhurried steps. And so it is with God’s response to our prayers. I believe God answers all prayer – sometimes yes, sometimes “not yet”, often, “no, but here’s something better.” God can see past our limited vision, the advertising and culture-induced wants that masquerade as needs, our sin that prompts us to ask for that which would hurt us, in order to give us what we truly need.
Jesus told Jairus – and tells us – do not fear; only believe. Fear not, though the wind and waves may come. Fear not, though life’s circumstances may leave us feeling depleted and alone. Fear not, though it seems all our efforts have come to naught, and our journey of faith has brought us to a dead end. Fear not. God has not left the building – indeed, God is waiting to do amazing things still, if we’ll get out of the way with our need for control. Despite all appearances, it is the God who loves us and loves our neighbors who is in control. Fear not. Only believe.
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