“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.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
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.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Peace! Be Still!
Pastor Dave is about to confess an embarrassing childhood secret – one of my favorite TV shows growing up was Gilligan’s Island. You know the setup – a small group on a pleasure boat for a 3 hour tour encounter a storm – “the weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed, if not for the courage of the fearless crew the Minnow would be lost, the Minnow would be lost” – and get washed up on a remote island. It being a kid’s show, in watching it one often had to suspend disbelief – why exactly did the professor take his entire chemistry lab and Ginger and MaryAnn their entire wardrobes along for a 3-hour tour, and where did they put all that stuff – the pleasure boat would have had to have been the size of an aircraft carrier - but anyway the show was a relatively harmless way to pass the time between the end of school and my parents coming home from work.
I was reminded of this guilty pleasure from my childhood by today’s Gospel reading (Mark 4:35-41). Jesus had just concluded a long day’s teaching the crowds, speaking from inside a small boat on the sea of Galilee. He wanted to cross to the other side, and when indeed, when he got there, he was accosted by the demon possessed man from Gerasa, who lived among the tombs. But that’s not part of today’s Gospel – today’s Gospel is about how Jesus got from one side of the sea to the other. We’re told that while on the sea, a great windstorm arose. The tiny ship was tossed; if not for the courage of the fearless crew….sorry, wrong story. Actually, far from fearless, the crew was scared out of their wits, and the boat had taken on so much water that it was on the verge of going down. Jesus had missed all the drama to this point; tired out from teaching, he’d taken the opportunity to get some sleep. So in their panic the disciples woke Jesus up, saying, “Don’t you care that we’re about to die?” Jesus stilled the wind and waves, and chided the disciples for their lack of faith – “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
It is notable that accounts of this miracle appear in all four gospels. The early church considered this miracle so important that none of the Gospel writers could omit it. And it has been noted that perhaps this story of Jesus ministering to his disciples with a miracle is also the story of Jesus and the church throughout its history, from its fragile beginnings under Roman persecution to the present day, as the church periodically finds itself caught up in storms, nearly swamped by the waves, and wondering whether God notices their struggles, or whether maybe God has abandoned them. And yet, despite all, somehow Christ always arrives at just the right time to say, “Peace! Be Still!”
In Mark’s Gospel, this miracle comes at the end of an account of Jesus’ teaching, which included a series of parables in which the Kingdom of God is compared to a seed – something that looks small and unimpressive, but which has great life and vitality far beyond its size. So Jesus’ parables told his listeners that the Kingdom of God, while outwardly small and unimpressive, had great hidden power. And then today’s Gospel begins a series of miracle stories that demonstrate this hidden power of God in Jesus to tame the powers of nature, cast out demons, and overcome the power of disease.
At Emanuel UCC, we recently concluded a study of Mark’s Gospel during the church school hour. We saw that often, after his miracles, Jesus would tell those around him, “Don’t tell anyone.” Theologians call the “messianic secret,” and it’s a strong theme in Mark’s Gospel. We wonder why Jesus would have wanted to keep his miracles a secret. Maybe he was using reverse psychology – the surest way to get a message out is to tell someone to keep it a secret. But I think another reason for Jesus’ desire for secrecy was that his miracles could easily be misunderstood. If all we know about Jesus is the miracles, we can easily think of Jesus as a cosmic Dustbuster, waiting to vacuum all our troubles go away. And, indeed, this is exactly how many TV and radio evangelists preach about Jesus, telling their followers to “name and claim” God’s miraculous power to shower prosperity upon them, and to make all their problems vanish - Poof! - just like that!
But that was not Jesus’ message. Remember that when Peter confessed that Jesus was the Messiah, Jesus’ very next words were about suffering and death, about the cross. The cross is an inescapable part of the Gospel – the path to the Kingdom of God goes through the cross. So it is not God’s plan to remove all suffering from our lives, but rather to give us hidden power to bear up and overcome – like seeds who have to push up through the rocks and soil to bear fruit, like a small boat making its way through troubled waters. God surely did not remove all suffering from the lives of the early disciples – nearly all of them ended up as martyrs to the faith – and he doesn’t promise us calm waters either. There will be times when our lives, like small boats, nearly capsize amid the wind and waves. But he does promise that he will not abandon us, that even during those times when it seems as though God has fallen asleep, that when we’re nearly overwhelmed by our circumstances, God is still powerful and stands ready to say “Peace! Be Still!”
In the words of an old hymn – “When peace, like a river, attendeth my way; when sorrows like sea billows roll; whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, ‘It is well, it is well with my soul.’” So may it be well with our souls, in this congregation which for roughly 150 years has kept afloat in waters calm and stormy, and in our individual lives as believers. Amen.
I was reminded of this guilty pleasure from my childhood by today’s Gospel reading (Mark 4:35-41). Jesus had just concluded a long day’s teaching the crowds, speaking from inside a small boat on the sea of Galilee. He wanted to cross to the other side, and when indeed, when he got there, he was accosted by the demon possessed man from Gerasa, who lived among the tombs. But that’s not part of today’s Gospel – today’s Gospel is about how Jesus got from one side of the sea to the other. We’re told that while on the sea, a great windstorm arose. The tiny ship was tossed; if not for the courage of the fearless crew….sorry, wrong story. Actually, far from fearless, the crew was scared out of their wits, and the boat had taken on so much water that it was on the verge of going down. Jesus had missed all the drama to this point; tired out from teaching, he’d taken the opportunity to get some sleep. So in their panic the disciples woke Jesus up, saying, “Don’t you care that we’re about to die?” Jesus stilled the wind and waves, and chided the disciples for their lack of faith – “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”
It is notable that accounts of this miracle appear in all four gospels. The early church considered this miracle so important that none of the Gospel writers could omit it. And it has been noted that perhaps this story of Jesus ministering to his disciples with a miracle is also the story of Jesus and the church throughout its history, from its fragile beginnings under Roman persecution to the present day, as the church periodically finds itself caught up in storms, nearly swamped by the waves, and wondering whether God notices their struggles, or whether maybe God has abandoned them. And yet, despite all, somehow Christ always arrives at just the right time to say, “Peace! Be Still!”
In Mark’s Gospel, this miracle comes at the end of an account of Jesus’ teaching, which included a series of parables in which the Kingdom of God is compared to a seed – something that looks small and unimpressive, but which has great life and vitality far beyond its size. So Jesus’ parables told his listeners that the Kingdom of God, while outwardly small and unimpressive, had great hidden power. And then today’s Gospel begins a series of miracle stories that demonstrate this hidden power of God in Jesus to tame the powers of nature, cast out demons, and overcome the power of disease.
At Emanuel UCC, we recently concluded a study of Mark’s Gospel during the church school hour. We saw that often, after his miracles, Jesus would tell those around him, “Don’t tell anyone.” Theologians call the “messianic secret,” and it’s a strong theme in Mark’s Gospel. We wonder why Jesus would have wanted to keep his miracles a secret. Maybe he was using reverse psychology – the surest way to get a message out is to tell someone to keep it a secret. But I think another reason for Jesus’ desire for secrecy was that his miracles could easily be misunderstood. If all we know about Jesus is the miracles, we can easily think of Jesus as a cosmic Dustbuster, waiting to vacuum all our troubles go away. And, indeed, this is exactly how many TV and radio evangelists preach about Jesus, telling their followers to “name and claim” God’s miraculous power to shower prosperity upon them, and to make all their problems vanish - Poof! - just like that!
But that was not Jesus’ message. Remember that when Peter confessed that Jesus was the Messiah, Jesus’ very next words were about suffering and death, about the cross. The cross is an inescapable part of the Gospel – the path to the Kingdom of God goes through the cross. So it is not God’s plan to remove all suffering from our lives, but rather to give us hidden power to bear up and overcome – like seeds who have to push up through the rocks and soil to bear fruit, like a small boat making its way through troubled waters. God surely did not remove all suffering from the lives of the early disciples – nearly all of them ended up as martyrs to the faith – and he doesn’t promise us calm waters either. There will be times when our lives, like small boats, nearly capsize amid the wind and waves. But he does promise that he will not abandon us, that even during those times when it seems as though God has fallen asleep, that when we’re nearly overwhelmed by our circumstances, God is still powerful and stands ready to say “Peace! Be Still!”
In the words of an old hymn – “When peace, like a river, attendeth my way; when sorrows like sea billows roll; whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, ‘It is well, it is well with my soul.’” So may it be well with our souls, in this congregation which for roughly 150 years has kept afloat in waters calm and stormy, and in our individual lives as believers. Amen.
A Disturbing Trend
Today's blog entry could be considered a serious downer, and will not win me any popularity points. On Wednesday, June 10, a gunman in his late 80’s entered the US Holocaust Museum in Washington DC with a gun, killing a security guard. Three Sundays ago, on May 31, around 10 a.m., on Pentecost Sunday, just about the time I was standing up to go into the call to worship before our first hymn, at the Resurrection Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas, Dr. George Tiller was gunned down while handing out bulletins and greeting churchgoers as an usher. Scott Roeder, the suspect in his murder, has said that he saw Dr. Tiller – an ObGyn who performed abortions - as a murderer and felt justified in gunning him down. In April, a gunman who posted on the white supremacist site Stormfront gunned down 3 Pittsburgh police officers. In July of last year, at the Knoxville Unitarian in Tennessee, another church shooting; the gunman, Jim Adkisson, said that he’d have liked to gun down Democratic members of Congress, but they were far away, so the folks at nearby Knoxville Unitarian would have to do.
What I’m concerned about is that Roeder and Adkisson and the shooter at the Holocaust Museum and the shooter in Pittsburgh didn’t come to these decisions in a vacuum. Nationally prominent TV pundits, talk radio hosts, internet websites, political leaders and, yes, religious leaders maintain a constant drumbeat of hate that goes beyond disagreeing with opposing viewpoints, to dehumanizing the people who hold them – seeing Jews, muslims, racial minorities, immigrants, gays and others with whom they disagree as “not quite human” or at least not human on quite the same level they are.
One of the strengths – though it comes with many frustrations – in the United Church of Christ is that we don’t have to agree with each other to be in community with each other. As a former Association moderator, I can tell you that leading an association of 2 dozen or so Philadelphia-area UCC churches is like herding cats – our churches and our members are all over the place, but the covenant that binds us is stronger than our varied responses to the hot-button issues of our day.
When we think of terrorists, I think there’s a tendency for us to automatically think of Muslim terrorists – and, indeed, less than three weeks ago, a convert to Islam shot two soldiers at an Arkansas recruiting center. However, we’ve seen a string of “lone wolf” acts of terror by folks who are not Muslims, people who - at least until they opened fire - would not stand out in a crowd here in Bridesburg. Some of them consider themselves good Christians doing God’s work by killing evildoers. One of the dangers of fighting against people we may consider monsters is that we can in the process become monsters ourselves – as it has been said, when we gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into us.
I would urge us, as strongly as I can, never to lose sight of our own humanity and the humanity of those who differ from us, even those with whom we vehemently disagree. Everytime we overhear a conversation in which someone goes on a rant, spewing hate and says they’d like to line all those ______ (fill in the blank) up against the wall and shoot them, everytime we get some rancid email dripping with hate toward this group or that group, imploring us to forward to as many friends and acquaintances as possible, I’d ask that we take a minute, catch our breath, and consider whether we really want to participate in this.
I’ll close with these words of Martin Neimoller, a Protestant pastor in Germany during Hitler’s Third Reich who ended up in the concentration camps….perhaps you’ve heard them before:
"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak out for me."
What I’m concerned about is that Roeder and Adkisson and the shooter at the Holocaust Museum and the shooter in Pittsburgh didn’t come to these decisions in a vacuum. Nationally prominent TV pundits, talk radio hosts, internet websites, political leaders and, yes, religious leaders maintain a constant drumbeat of hate that goes beyond disagreeing with opposing viewpoints, to dehumanizing the people who hold them – seeing Jews, muslims, racial minorities, immigrants, gays and others with whom they disagree as “not quite human” or at least not human on quite the same level they are.
One of the strengths – though it comes with many frustrations – in the United Church of Christ is that we don’t have to agree with each other to be in community with each other. As a former Association moderator, I can tell you that leading an association of 2 dozen or so Philadelphia-area UCC churches is like herding cats – our churches and our members are all over the place, but the covenant that binds us is stronger than our varied responses to the hot-button issues of our day.
When we think of terrorists, I think there’s a tendency for us to automatically think of Muslim terrorists – and, indeed, less than three weeks ago, a convert to Islam shot two soldiers at an Arkansas recruiting center. However, we’ve seen a string of “lone wolf” acts of terror by folks who are not Muslims, people who - at least until they opened fire - would not stand out in a crowd here in Bridesburg. Some of them consider themselves good Christians doing God’s work by killing evildoers. One of the dangers of fighting against people we may consider monsters is that we can in the process become monsters ourselves – as it has been said, when we gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into us.
I would urge us, as strongly as I can, never to lose sight of our own humanity and the humanity of those who differ from us, even those with whom we vehemently disagree. Everytime we overhear a conversation in which someone goes on a rant, spewing hate and says they’d like to line all those ______ (fill in the blank) up against the wall and shoot them, everytime we get some rancid email dripping with hate toward this group or that group, imploring us to forward to as many friends and acquaintances as possible, I’d ask that we take a minute, catch our breath, and consider whether we really want to participate in this.
I’ll close with these words of Martin Neimoller, a Protestant pastor in Germany during Hitler’s Third Reich who ended up in the concentration camps….perhaps you’ve heard them before:
"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out--because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out--because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out--because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak out for me."
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