If You Build It....

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

July 22, 2018

I.

After his disciples return from their missionary journeys, and after the gruesome death of his mentor, John the Baptizer, Jesus seeks a quiet and secure place to go for what we would call a time of debriefing.  They have a lot to talk about.  Mark does not tell us how successful the disciples’ mission is, just that they reported back what they had done.  

I wonder if this isn’t because Jesus is less concerned about measuring the success of what they were doing in terms of how many new disciples they gain, and more interested in the quality of their discipleship.  In other words, their job is to do what Jesus told them to do.  Whether it works or not is completely up to God and not their concern.  

It reminds me of the most famous words of Mother Theresa, who, when asked if she wasn’t concerned that her ministry among the poor in Kolkata wasn’t very successful, quips that “God doesn’t call us to be successful; God calls us to be faithful.”  God calls on us to trust and follow and obey.  Whether this achieves our desired results is immaterial.  All we are responsible for is what we are responsible for: our own words and actions.

Discipleship is not a means to some other end.  It is itself the point.  Doing it is its own reward.  We’re not trying to get anywhere or achieve some goal.  Even the Kingdom of God is not an objective.  Rather, the Kingdom of God is realized in discipleship itself.  When we follow Jesus we are manifesting God’s Kingdom.  Even if completely unsuccessful by the world’s standards, even if we’re fewer and fewer in number and poorer and less influential, nevertheless if we are obedient to the Lord it is enough.   

So they all get into a boat intending to sail to a deserted place for a retreat.  Sometimes we need a little distance.  We need perspective.  We need a break from the pressing demands of discipleship.  A time to reflect, assess, recharge, pray, and share experiences is often necessary.  We cannot function for long in discipleship without reconnecting with Jesus and with other disciples.  Without that we burn-out.  Jesus himself would regularly go off alone for prayer.

Any cohesive entity needs boundaries, just as our bodies need skin.  In the early church only the committed, baptized disciples were permitted to share in the Eucharist.  You can’t go to an AA meeting unless you’re an addict yourself.  Building and maintaining a group identity means at some point closing off outsiders, especially toxic and hostile influences.  We can’t be sent unless we are first gathered.

But as they sail along, people see them from the shore, word gets out, and crowds show up.  In this passage we hear about two incidents of this.  Jesus’ reputation at this point is that he attracts a large number of people wherever he goes.

Obviously, Jesus has something that the people value, something that makes a big difference in their lives, something that changes for the better the way they look at the world and the way they actually live.  Jesus does not set out to be popular; but he has become so as a by-product of his ministry. 

II.

Mark is careful to point out the diversity of the crowds.  He says they come from villages, cities, and farms.  This makes it a multi-class group.  Some commentators suggest that the crowds even include both Jews and Gentiles.  We know that there are include men and women, and even children, in the crowds.

In other words, this is not a movement limited to one class or one group of people.  Jesus infamously reaches out even to suspect and outcast groups, like prostitutes and tax collectors, showing no anxiety about who that might offend.  Granted, not many of the elite ruling class in either government, the economy, or religion tend to show up, except to challenge Jesus.  They were doing fine and had no need of his message.  They certainly didn’t want the social order overturned as Jesus implies is necessary.  But at the same time, they do sometimes come to Jesus for healing, and when they do, Jesus heals them without question. 

If you have what Jesus calls “the ears to hear,” that is, if Jesus’ message resonates with you and speaks to you, you are welcome.  

And Jesus tends to do his work publicly in the local market-places, which is interesting because he appropriates the places of commerce and business to basically give away his teaching and his healing.  It would be like going to the mall and setting up a kiosk with free merchandise.  He uses the market-place to establish a kind of anti-market-place.  He takes the area intended for buying and selling, and transforms it into a place of freely giving and freely receiving.  He exemplifies a sharing model.  

The Lord does two things with these diverse crowds in the market-places, Mark tells us.  He teaches and he heals.  

His teaching is not just the passing along of information.  It’s not merely facts and dates and statistics. We know that what Jesus teaches is thought of as “new,” and that it carries its own authority, which is considered more authentic than the derivative authority they are used to from their religious leaders.

Mark includes very little of actual instruction from Jesus.  In Mark Jesus says almost everything in the form of parables.  Parables are deliberately difficult to understand, which is a point he makes back in chapter 4.  This begs the question of why people would go to such trouble to gather to hear someone relate parables they did not understand.  Mark’s point is to let Jesus’ teachings be visible and apparent in his actions.

And the main actions of the Lord that Mark tells us about are his healings.  His healing is an outward, tangible expression of his teaching.  In Mark we get this more indirect view of Jesus’ message; we hear it in the parables, and in his responses to others’ questions, and we see it in his healing ministry.  

III.

Jesus is moved to set aside his intention of finding a secluded space for a retreat because he is filled with compassion for the people who come out to him.  Compassion overrules Jesus’ agenda for taking his disciples on retreat.  He has them land the boat, and he ministers to the needs of the people.  

Compassion ought to overrule just about everything, as we see in Luke’s story of the Good Samaritan.  Indeed, we see this in Jesus’ ministry generally as his healing work gets activated whenever someone in need approaches him.  Jesus automatically identifies with individuals in their brokenness and pain, and that identification itself unlocks the trust within them, enabling them to be restored to wholeness.

Compassion is the key to Jesus’ ministry.  Therefore, it is also the key to ours.  It is God’s compassion, God’s loving identification with us, God’s overflowing mercy for us, God’s heartbrokenness at our suffering and lostness, God’s gift of grace and forgiveness, that is expressed in the Incarnation in the first place.  It is not our achievements and skills and triumphs that bring God close to us so much as our failures, defeats, losses, and hurts.  

It is like with our own children.  We gush with joy and pride when they do something excellent.  But there is something deeper and more gut wrenching we feel when we see them struggling, lost, confused, or broken.  The word that Mark uses for compassion here is literally that: it says Jesus is “moved in his guts” when he sees the people coming to him in their need and pain.  “They were like sheep without a shepherd,” he says, meaning that they were vulnerable and liable to be attacked by wolves.

This kind of empathic response we see in Jesus is an indication of the true humanity we share with him.  We cannot ignore, we cannot but be moved by another’s suffering.  It touches and affects us deeply.  

Most of the time we have to block out the suffering of others just so we can function.  This is when we are locked in our own egocentricity and not accessing our humanity.  When we step over a homeless woman, or are barely conscious of the people injured in a car accident as we pass by, or even when we hear of the parents and children separated at our own border, or of civilians being bombed in Yemen, or Syria, or Gaza, or any of the constant flood of horror and misery that technology now allows into our daily experience, and don’t react to or worse react only with careless judgment, condemnation, or rationalization, then we are rejecting Jesus himself.  We are separating ourselves from God’s compassion and forgiveness, and from life.  

Compassion has always been the place where we identify most with God.  Compassion without prejudice, without conditions, and without limit: that is the example of Jesus and the calling of every disciple.

IV.

It is this compassion that is the big attraction for people.  That’s why they come to Jesus, even way out in the middle of nowhere.  His compassion is active and effective.  

It is commonly and accurately said that the church has to go out to where the people are, and this is true to Jesus’ ministry.  He has just sent his disciples out in twos to the villages of Galilee.  

At the same time, when the word gets out, people come to him. 

There was that movie years ago called “Field of Dreams” in which Kevin Costner has this odd vision that if he just builds a baseball field on his farm all these dead players would come back to life and play there.  “If you build it, they will come,” his little girl tells him.

I think it is the same with Jesus.  If Jesus builds through us a house of compassion, a place of acceptance, forgiveness, and love, a temple of peace and joy, will they not come?  If Jesus builds by us a place of healing and renewal, where people are built up and brought together, will they not come? We are the Body of Christ and individually members of him.  Why aren’t people coming to us in droves as they came to him?

Well, we have a lot of bad history — and bad current events — to live down, for one thing.  Christians have a miserable reputation, and unfortunately it is mostly deserved.  Historically, Christians are often notorious for having nothing whatever to do with what Jesus is about, and even for working for all kinds of evil things that Jesus rejects.  

But through it all there is always Jesus Christ.  Remarkably, he still has a sterling reputation.  And he is the One we need to be.  He is the One we need to follow, trust, and obey.  The more in tune we are with him and his mission of boundless compassion and healing, the more the love of God is allowed to pour through us into our world, the more we will find people coming.

It’s not easy.  It’s not something we can decide to do.  But we can let go of ourselves and fall into God’s grace, so that God’s goodness and forgiveness and justice emerge in us.  So that Jesus himself may emerge in us, and through us into our world.

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A Homeless Prophet.

Mark 6:1-13

July 8, 2018

I.

In the first part of this passage, Jesus goes back to his home town, which in the other gospels is identified as Nazareth.  He has developed a reputation as a wonder-worker and teacher.  But these people in the village that has known Jesus since he was a boy, don’t accept his new mission and his apparent powers.

They basically reject him.  “Where did this man get all this?” they ask, rhetorically.  He has gone from being the Jesus they knew for a couple of decades, to “this man,” a stranger.  “What is this wisdom that has been given to him?  What deeds of power are being done by his hands!”  This is not what he would have learned at Nazareth High School!  “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” 

“They took offense at him,” Mark tells us.  They want the Jesus they remember.  They want the guy who took over his father’s carpentry business.  They expect the loyal son, who should have stayed home in the first place and not gone off to live in Capernaum, which is no doubt where he learned “all this.”  

You’d think they’d be proud of him.  You’d think they’d put a sign at the entrance to the village that said, “Welcome to Nazareth, Home of Jesus Christ.”  (Actually, I think there’s a sign like that there now.)  But, like all prophets, what he is doing is dangerous and could jeopardize their reputation and security.  

Jesus didn’t go off and become a rock star or an NFL quarterback.  He identifies with the prophets, and he is claiming to be the Messiah.  These are politically charged titles liable to attract the negative attention of the Roman Army, which had no problem razing whole villages to the ground and slaughtering whole populations if they were suspected of producing or harboring seditious figures.  That is just a basic part of the playbook for conquering, colonialist regimes that have to subjugate people by mass terror.  They destroy such villages in order to “save” them.

No.  The people of Nazareth preferred that Jesus leave them out of his mission of proclaiming the Kingdom of God.  They would be happy to affirm that they had no king but Caesar if it kept them off Caesar’s radar.

That’s why Jesus reflects that “prophets are not without honor except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”   Prophets are problematic for their own people.  Not only do they nearly always aim their prophecies first at them, but too often the retribution the authorities visit upon prophets manages to engulf their families and friends as well.  Other people — on other times or places — who do not have to suffer the consequences of guilt by association with a prophet, they will admire and revere prophets, but not their own.

II.  

Unfortunately, I wonder if this little incident cuts a little too close to us.  After 2000 years of Christianity dominating western culture, sometimes I wonder if we aren’t like the people of Nazareth.  I wonder if we often don’t prefer the domesticated, normal, easily defined and controlled Jesus we used to know.  We act like he’s our guy.  We call ourselves Christians, we wear crosses, we come to church, we read the Bible.  There are churches in every town.  Jesus is one of us!  We’re a Christian country in a Christian civilization.  We grew up with him.  We know his family.  

It reminds me of that scene in the movie, Talledega Nights, where Will Ferrell and family gather around the table to say grace to “the Baby Jesus.”  We like the dependent, harmless, unthreatening Jesus we can just carry around with us.  The Jesus who needs us more than we need him.  The Jesus who fits in with our agenda, our society, our laws, and our family.  The Jesus whom we can mold into our image and who isn’t going to say anything challenging for 30 years. 

Over the centuries we have counted on this Jesus to provide a blessing on whatever we want.  He approved and encouraged our wars.  He was okay with slavery and even lynching and torture.  He supported our laws and our government.  He advocated the subjugation of women and the supremacy of white people.  He was fine with cutting down forests, burning fossil fuels, and driving species’ to extinction.  In other words, this domesticated Jesus, whose work and family we all know, is basically fine with whatever ever we want to do.  Because why wouldn’t he be?  He’s one of us!      

The problem is that the church has always had within it this time-bomb called the New Testament.  As long as we had that there was always this chance that someone would read it, and then Jesus himself might actually show up.  Not the Jesus we conveniently remember.  Not the Jesus we grew up with.  The real, living, grown-up Jesus; the Messiah and prophet of Israel.  That Jesus, the Jesus who is fomenting apocalyptic revolution everywhere he goes, healing, exorcizing, commanding the weather, raising the dead, proclaiming a new kingdom… that Jesus could arrive.  And that’s a problem.

Because when the real Jesus actually shows up, we often don’t quite recognize him.  When he doesn’t say what we think he’s supposed to say, we get confused.  Forgiving sinners? Turning the other cheek?  Giving up our wealth?  Accepting Gentiles?  Kingdom of God?  What?  

What happened to the nice, middle-class, Anglo boy we all grew up with?  What happened to that caucasian guy with the flowing hair looking vaguely into space, like the famous picture of him that was in every church when I was a kid?  What happened to the guy who supported all our projects and overlooked or even helped us rationalize all our atrocities?  What happened to law-abiding, patriotic Jesus?  What happened to the Jesus who conveniently hated all the people we hate?  What happened to the Jesus who was so popular in the 1950’s that we couldn’t build churches fast enough?

III.

What happens is that the real Jesus comes and shows that the Jesus we remember wasn’t real.  The safe Jesus, the Jesus that tells you what you want to hear, the Jesus that supports all your plans and projects, the Jesus it costs you nothing to follow?  That version of Jesus is imaginary.  We made him up.  In fact, the case can be made that that Jesus is really a kind of demon, an evil spirit designed to block God’s mission.  Jesus was not able to do many deeds of power in Nazareth, among those who were so nostalgic for the fantasy Jesus they remembered that they didn’t trust the real One when he walks into town.  

So Jesus turns to people who have no corrosive distorted memories of him.  He shrugs off Nazareth, and goes to the other villages of Galilee where they are able to listen to him and accept who he is.  

He also sends his 12 disciples out in groups of 2, giving them strict rules about poverty, insisting that they maintain their dependence on the local people they are serving.  This is not a colonialist project.  There is certainly no violence involved.  On the contrary, the disciples have to bring enough value in their ministry itself, that is, what they are doing has to make their lives so demonstrably and tangibly better, that the local people, poor as they are, will gladly support them.

He gives the disciples “authority over the unclean spirits.”  This is generally not what we see in the movies.  Rather, “unclean spirits” may be seen as the foul and toxic ideas that divided and stratified society by reducing some to “uncleanness.”  These are the demons of exclusion and inequality, that leave some people outcast, destitute, silenced, and disenfranchised.  

Jesus has them lead people into repentance, which means having new and different ways of thinking and acting.  He has them modeling and teaching after his own example these actual practices of inclusion and welcome, sharing and generosity, forgiveness and peace… the same things we have seen Jesus do himself.  In this way, by gathering people together into real communities characterized by equality, the real Jesus heals, transforms, liberates, and renews the life of the people.

Not everyone is going to go along with this.  Some villages will be like Nazareth and prefer the oppressive “safety” of the states quo.  They will prefer the stability of inequality and social stratification.  They will prefer to wallow in their fantasies about the way things used to be, back when Israel was great.  Jesus says that in those cases they should just shake the dust off and move on to the next town.

IV.

Jesus preaches a gospel that “works if you work it,” as they say in 12-step groups.  The evangelism described here brings actual good into people’s lives and relationships by encouraging sharing and equality, and discouraging the idea that some are more clean, and therefore more worthy, than others.  It dissolves the enmity and competition, the constant comparing and assessment, that divides a community and keeps it enslaved.

This model of the gospel community has to start in the churches, the outposts of God’s Kingdom, in which people are gathered and healed, and from which people are sent to share with others the power and goodness of God’s love.  This mission is so effective in making life better that those who participate in it will support it.

The negative example of when this doesn’t work is Jesus’ own hometown of Nazareth, that would rather retain their conventional memories of Jesus than risk trusting him and his mission.  For them the cost and potential downside of legal jeopardy is too great.

But Jesus’ mission works when people realize they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by following his teachings.  Thus they live together, not in some defective vision of the way things used to be, but according to God’s vision of the way things really are, in a politics of equality, an economics of sharing, and a spirituality of repentance that express and embody the Kingdom of God.

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Waking Up Daughter.

Mark 5:21-43

July1, 2018

I.

Jesus and his disciples are back on their home side of the lake.  As soon as their boat hits the beach they are surrounded by a crowd of people, many of whom probably need healing.  That’s what Jesus is known for.  That’s why people come out to see him.

But among them on this day is one important man named Jairus, who is one of the leaders of the local synagogue.  Jairus bows down to Jesus according to the custom, and begs Jesus to come heal his daughter who is dying of an unknown disease.  The fact that he has to do this repeatedly indicates perhaps that Jesus was reticent to abandon all these people for the sake of one important guy.  But eventually, perhaps because he demonstrates such abject humility, Jesus decides to follow Jairus home.  So they start to make their way through all the people.  They’re trying to hurry because the girl is in such desperate condition.

Meanwhile, in the crowd there is a woman who is sick with gynecological hemorrhages that have continued non-stop for twelve years.  She is legally excluded from the community.  She has spent herself into destitution on doctors who only made her malady worse.  But hearing that Jesus is here, she convinces herself that all she has to do is touch part of his clothes, and she will be healed.  So she pushes herself through the throng until she gets close enough to Jesus so that she can stretch her arm between a couple of people and just barely feel the fabric of Jesus’ robe.

When she does this she feels immediately in her body the change.  She is healed.  The pain and discomfort disappear.  The blood stops flowing.  Something in her adjusts, firms up, and settles in.

At the same time, Jesus also feels something in his body.  He perceives “that power had gone forth from him.”  So he stops, looks around, and asks about who touched him.  To the disciples this is a ridiculous question, since they’ve been pushing their way through this mob of people.  Everybody is touching him!  

Jairus is no doubt freaking out over this unnecessary delay, as Jesus scans the crowd for the person who touched him.  Finally, the woman comes forward, also bows down before him, and tells Jesus her story.  After patiently listening, Jesus finally says to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”  He doesn’t yell at her for delaying him or taking liberties with his powers; he doesn’t say she could have waited because he is on his way to a life and death emergency for an important man.  

He pointedly calls her “daughter” in order to place her on the same level as Jairus’ daughter, intentionally erasing the differences of class and status between the two.  The older, poor, sick woman is just as important and precious, just as much of a daughter of Israel, as the dying girl.  No one should imagine that Jesus is neglecting everyone else in order to do this favor for Jairus, the important man.

II.

Both of these people are “daughters.”  One has been sick for as long as the other has been alive, 12 years.  The number 12 represents the tribes of Israel, from which we are to infer that they stand in some sense for the nation.  Jesus has just attended to an older poor woman, apparently neglecting the girl of status and privilege.  In doing so Jesus has placed all the daughters of Israel on a level.

Jesus is still speaking to the woman when someone arrives from Jairus’ house to report that his daughter has died.  In other words, never mind, Jesus.  You’re too late.  You had to detour and take up precious time that that presumptuous old bag lady.  Now the girl, who had so many beautiful years ahead of her, is dead.

Jairus is inconsolable.  But Jesus turns to him and says, “Don’t be afraid.  Just trust me.  Like she did.”  Maybe he points to the healed woman whom everyone is beginning to blame for the girl’s passing. 

Jesus takes his three closest disciples, Peter, James, and John, and goes into the house.  The household is apoplectic with sorrow, grief, anger, remorse, and probably some denial and bargaining.  People are weeping and wailing loudly over the dead girl.  Jesus tries to calm them all down.  “Why do you make a commotion and weep?  The child is not dead but sleeping.”  So says the guy coming in off the street before he even sees the body.  So they mock his naivety and his refusal to face the cruel facts.  He’s giving false hope to Jairus, who at this point probably doesn’t know what to think.

Then Jesus kicks everyone out of the house except the girl’s parents, and he and his disciples finally go into the girl’s room.  The six people stand over her inert body.  Jesus kneels down next to her.  He takes her cold, small hand and says to her, “Little girl, arise!”  It is the same word, arise, that will be used about him when he is resurrected in chapter 16.

Mark even makes a point of giving us Jesus’ exact words, in his own Aramaic language here.  Jesus actually says, “Talitha, cum!”   

Hearing these words, the girl’s body warms, she inhales, opens her eyes, and begins to sit up.  Indeed, she gets out of bed and starts walking around, to the amazement of everyone.  Jesus instructs them to stick with the “just sleeping” story, and to feed her something.

III.

The combined story of Jesus healing an older woman and “awakening,” indeed, raising from the dead, a young woman tells us first that he is intentionally bringing women into the center of his new gospel community.  If Paul’s insight holds that we are all one in Christ, and “there is no longer male and female,” then female lives have to start mattering.  Because in his culture, as is still largely the case in ours, though not to the same extent, male lives matter more.

Thus, contrary to those who lift up out of context a few passages which seem to shove women into a subordinate role, we know from the New Testament itself that in the early church women were important leaders.  Indeed, they are the primary witnesses to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.      

Secondly, Jesus rejects the familiar “zero sum game” used by the establishment to keep everyone else divided against each other.  It is the lie of scarcity, which tells people there is not enough of anything to go around, therefore we have to be in conflict and competition with each other.  We only have so much, we are told, and if I give something to you it means someone else has to get less.  To help one person is to harm another.  It’s a jungle out there and you have to fend for yourself because only the strong survive.  And so on.  

The people who perpetuate this kind of falsehood tend to be sitting on hoarded, stored, regulated, and unequally distributed resources.  The more they can cause artificial “scarcity” the more valuable their stash becomes.  So when Jesus stops to engage the women who surreptitiously “steals” some power from him to heal herself, he was supposedly endangering the life of the girl who dies waiting for him.  

But Jesus is not subject to the scarcities we invent and impose on God’s world of abundance.  He dwells in the living present, worrying neither about the past nor the future.  He is the Word of God, the Way, the Truth, and the Life: he owns the past and the future.           

Thirdly, Jesus commends the woman and her faith!  She does what she needs to do, breaking laws and conventions, going against common civility, for the sake of her own healing and wholeness.  Apparently, selfishness and conniving, even stealing, are okay for poor, sick, and oppressed people.  They are unconsciously witnessing to God’s kingdom of justice and equality in which everyone gets what they need.  She shoves her way into Jesus’ presence, and he not only approves, but delays his urgent mission to the dying girl in order to reassure and praise her.

Finally, Jesus kicks out of Jairus’ household the voices of death, derision, doom, and defeat, especially when they mock the truth and his message of hope and faithfulness.  He purges the family from the home, except for the parents, and with the new family of his disciples around the bed, he brings the girl back to life.  

Life and healing cannot happen if we surround ourselves with defeatist narratives.  We are what we tell ourselves about ourselves, and if we our language only stokes our own anger and resentment, if we are ever ready to place blame and find scapegoats, if we are resigned to an unjust, unfair, existence which is “just the way it is,” then we are perpetuating the dominion of death among us.

IV.

But.  If we can adjust our attitude and our orientation and learn from, follow, trust, and obey the Lord Jesus, things will be different.  Because Jesus shows us the way things really are.  He opens our eyes to a reality which he creates at the beginning.  He shows us that we are all one together.  

In this reality, the only reality, people are not excluded because they are sick.  They are not second-class or expendable because they are female.  In this reality our inner bleeding, our remorse, our regret, our life-gone-wrong, is healed and secured.  In this reality there is plenty to go around, and we witness to fair modes of distribution based on need, not greed.  In this reality not even death can separate us from God’s love.  In this reality we give thanks to God in all circumstances, knowing that in God’s economy nothing and no one is ever lost.

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