Our Weird Wants

Eighth Sunday After Pentecost
July 30, 2006

Charles Barkley wants to be governor. He says he may run in the year 2010. I’d call that crazy, but then Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to be governor of California and Jesse Ventura wanted to be governor of Minnesota. Weirder things have happened, I suppose.

Weirder things like — well, like me becoming an ordained clergyman. Twenty years ago I would never have imagined my being an Episcopalian, much less a deacon in the church. Today, can’t imagine wanting to be anything else.

It’s hard to know what is going to happen in this life. It’s hard to know what we want in this life. Hard in the present, almost impossible for the future. We make decisions that seemed like a good idea at the time. Remember that hairdo? Ladies, you know the one I’m talking about. And gentlemen – two words: leisure suits. They all seemed good ideas at the time. But now? Well, we hope that today’s decisions will wear better, though no matter how long we live we’re to bound to occasionally want things that turn out to be not such good ideas.

Who do we want as our leader today, and will that choice prove to have been a good idea? Who will we want in 2010?

Who do we want? What do we want?

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus pretty much just wanted to be left alone. Last week, we talked about how Jesus often needed to go off by himself to pray. And how he encouraged his disciples to do the same. Today, we hear, Jesus “withdrew again to the mountain by himself.” But again, the crowds pressed in on Jesus, chased him, and he was left with no other choice but to deal with them and heal them, no matter how tired his human body had become. Jesus wanted what was right—a chance to replenish himself, a quiet sabbath in which to recharge.

What did the disciples want? Among other things, they wanted someone to do their thinking for them, to get them out of a jam. The crowds pressed in and were hungry. Five thousand of them had chased Jesus up the mountain and were stuck out in the middle of nowhere, apparently with nothing to eat. So the disciples turned to Jesus and said, in effect, “Oh Lord, we are weak and you are strong. Save us all.”

And what did the people want? Obviously, they wanted to eat—but strangely enough, the Gospel doesn’t record any of the people asking for food. You would think that if they were headed for a celebration, they would have brought food along with them. I don’t know. But I do know this: whether they asked for it or not, Jesus fed them all, the five thousand, with a miracle. And what they said in response is the good news and the bad news of this story.

The good news is this: the people were looking for a messiah and they found one. They always had been taught that there would be a deliverer, a son of God, an anointed one. They knew that some day—maybe, just maybe in their own lifetimes—that a messiah would come. And by this sign, the feeding of the five thousand, they recognized that this messiah was Jesus. Jesus, the Son of God.

We know that they believed this because they said the right thing. They said, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” In Hebrew, they called him the messiah. Those who spoke Greek said, ho christos—the Christ. In any language, he was the prophet foretold of old, the one who would come and deliver.
Now here is the bad news. The people jumped right past the messiah business and got onto the business of picking a leader. They made a bad decision. Instead of falling on their knees and confessing Jesus to be their savior, they got all excited and decided they’d make him their king. Not a heavenly king, but a real flesh-and-blood political leader right here on earth.

Jesus knew this would happen. He knew this would happen even before the miracle. We are told that when he asked Philip where to buy food, “he himself knew what he was going to do.” And I have no doubt that he knew how the people would react. History tells us that the Jews of this time had the habit of seizing on charismatic preachers and proclaiming them king.

Jesus had seen this, and he knew in his heart what they would draw from this lesson. He would later teach his disciples about the meaning of the bread, but the great mass of people would draw the wrong conclusion. “When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.”

I can’t blame the people. I can’t blame the Jews who wanted a king who would feed them. We want a leader who can promise a chicken in every pot, and we’ll often make political decisions we later regret out of this very temptation, this very human desire. There is war in the Middle East today – rockets and warplanes over Lebanon – not so much for food, but rather for safety. I don’t know who’s right and who’s wrong, and please don’t ask me about Iraq. But I do know that the desire for safety and security and prosperity can lead us to terrible decisions. Decisions that seemed like a good idea at the time.

So the people wanted to make Jesus a king. Later, Pontius Pilate would throw this in Jesus’ face: “Are you the King of the Jews?…So you are a king?” [John 18:33, 37] To which Jesus would simply say, “You say that I am a king.”

Pilate was trying to trap Jesus, but he too was caught up in the old ideas of kingship. There was the Roman idea of earthly kings who became worshiped as gods. And there was the Jewish idea of earthly kings whose reigns reflected the will of the heavenly God. And in the case of Jesus, all these ideas were wrong.

Jesus would tell Pilate, “My kingdom is not from this world.” [John 18:36]
Jesus was indeed a king, and in those words said as much. But the people misunderstood the kingdom. In the same way that we so often misunderstand the kingdom. The Kingdom of God cannot be found in any earthly organization—whether it’s an elected, Christian government or unelected Islamic regime. It can’t be found in a region or local way of life. Or even in the hierarchy of an earthly church.

But that’s where we tend to look for the Kingdom of God. In something we can touch and feel. But Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. [John 3:5]

In October, the Bishop of Alabama will make his visitation on the Feast of St. Luke. That is the day we set aside for baptisms and confirmations, the sacraments that symbolize the grace of God working in the lives of those who accept the Kingship of Christ. We all will reaffirm our baptismal promises. We will promise to persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever we fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord. We will promise to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ, to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.

And we will promise to strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being.

In those promises lies our contact with the Kingdom of God. We will want many things in this life, and will make many poor decisions. This is the one choice we can make that others have failed to make before—the five thousand, Pontius Pilate, and countless others. The choice to recognize Jesus as King and, fulfilling our baptismal promises, to renew our claim on a place in the Kingdom of God.

Amen.

Practicing What I Preach

Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
July 23, 2006

I found myself in a very strange position last night: On what should have been a day of rest, I was at my kitchen table writing a sermon about how all of us should take a day of rest.

To quote the book of Luke (4:23): “Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself.” Or rather, “Deacon, practice what you preach.”

Now to be fair to myself, I will say that I’m just about always writing. So it’s not as if I had put it off entirely. If you see me pacing around the cloister outside, or strolling over to Java Jolt three times in an afternoon, it’s probably because I’m writing. A sermon, a newsletter article, maybe a letter to the bishop. You see, you don’t have to be at a keyboard or have a pen in your hand to be writing.

So I’ve been thinking about these readings all week—especially about Jesus teaching his disciples. But, well, words never seemed to get put onto paper. And wouldn’t you know that the message that was on my heart from these readings was about – time management. How about that!

Let's take a look at how that came to be. You see, in today’s Gospel lesson we are deep in the Gospel of Mark. The Markan Jesus is always on the run. He doesn’t stand around philosophizing like he does in the Gospel of John. He likes to cross from one side of the sea and back again. Crowds are always chasing him. Mark ties together the highlights of Jesus’ frenetic ministry with phrases like, “and then” or “suddenly” or “then he set out.” Just flip through Mark and you’ll see what I mean.

In fact, I highly recommend sitting down and reading Mark all in one gulp. I’m serious—I’m not asking you to read Numbers or Deuteronomy. This is the good stuff. It’s exciting. It’s filled with action. In it, Jesus never seems to stop. Mark shows us that Jesus is not an abstract idea but an active and moving part of our lives. Mark shows us that Jesus is not a philosophical theorem but a constant actor in the world. In Mark, Jesus did this and Jesus did that and boom boom boom – heal, teach, preach, then start again. Jesus as action hero.

It’s easy to get the idea from reading Mark that Jesus wants us to be the same way. What would Jesus do? Apparently, we should do this, do that, boom boom boom—and start all over again. Christian as action hero.

But I think that’s a faulty reading of Mark. Our Anglican tradition teaches us to be careful and interpretive readers of Scripture. Mark, as you know, was written in Greek—and not in a particularly sophisticated use of the Greek. The fast pacing of Jesus’ story in Mark may come primarily from the fact that Mark is telling the story in a simple fashion. Mark is simply giving us the good stuff, the most important stuff.
Mark was not putting together the encyclopedia of Jesus’ life. He was not writing a systematic theology of Christianity. No. He begins and ends by telling us just what he’s doing: Telling us the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And giving us the “sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.” Nothing less, but nothing extra. And to do that in 16 short chapters is to put us through the paces quickly. It’s no surprise that Jesus comes off as a whirlwind.

So as masterfully as Mark does all this, it may leave us with the mistaken impression that Jesus never stopped to rest. And that’s what this pericope—this little snippet of the Gospel does for us today. It reminds us that Jesus wanted to stop and rest. And that he wants us to do the same.

In chapter 6, from which we read to day, Jesus does two incredible things. He feeds the five thousand, and he walks on water. Exciting. Miraculous. But not in today’s lesson. This reading begins at verse 30 right before the feeding of the five thousand—but then skips over that miracle and skips over the miracle of walking on water. It skips over that picks up again when they get out of the boat at Gennesaret.

Let’s look at what does happen in today’s reading. There is much frenetic rushing about. “Many were coming and going and they had no leisure even to eat.” The people “rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was.” The people are rushing. Not Jesus. Not the disciples. The people.

Jesus looks on these people rushing about and is filled with compassion. He is filled with compassion because they were like sheep without a shepherd. They were going about aimlessly, seeking a teacher, seeking a healer, seeking a leader. He was that teacher, but I find it interesting that he did not rush off to meet those who needed teaching. He was the healer, yet he simply waited for the sick to come to him. He was their leader, but he led by letting others come to him.

That’s not what it says to do in the management books. But Jesus was leading by example. Jesus was one with God and sought time for contemplation. Those who had not found God could not rest. Jesus knew that the spiritual man must take time to pray. Those without the Spirit did not know how to stop and pray. Jesus knew that time with his close, spiritual friends was important. Those who were alone in the world could only rush about, friendless.

Even though Jesus knew there was work to be done, he told his disciples, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” He did not say, let’s feed the multitudes first and then rest. He did not say, let’s have a miracle and then take a sabbatical. Importantly, he did not say let’s ignore our duties and do as we please when we please. No, he said, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”

You see, Jesus was reminding his disciples of the ancient Jewish Law. That one should rest every seven days. To take a sabbath day was to honor the Lord, but it also was to replenish men and women. Back in Mark chapter 2, Jesus said, “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.”

The great Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote a wonderful little book on this topic, entitled simply, “The Sabbath.” He says that God taught the world that Labor is a blessing, toil is the misery of man. In other words, work is a good thing. Too much work is a curse. This is part of God’s plan. Heschel says, “The duty to work for six days is just as much a part of God’s covenant with man as the duty to abstain from work on the seventh day.”

God created work—you remember Abel and Cain working on the farm— but God also created rest. A traditional Jewish teaching asks, “What was created on the seventh day? Tranquility, serenity, peace, and repose.” We always have been taught that the Sabbath and rest are vital parts of creation and of our lives, and Jesus was an exemplar of this ancient tradition.

Obviously, I work on the Lord’s Day. And so do many of you. Paramedics and nurses and police dispatchers can’t post “Gone Fishin’” signs on Sunday mornings. There are countless professions and businesses that demand labor in a modern economy—on Sunday here, on the Jewish Sabbath in Israel, on the Muslim Sabbath in Iraq.

So what do we do? Ignore the idea of sabbath if we can’t do it on Sunday? I don’t think so. I am required by my contract with St. Luke’s to take off 24 hours in a row, and Linda George does a good job of giving me a look if I come in on a day off. Last week, at a meeting of the clergy in Birmingham, a priest asked Bishop Parsley: “What are you doing to take care of yourself?” And he said he was conscious of taking quiet time with his wife, Becky.

Jesus and his disciples didn’t get that quiet time with each other, at least in today’s lesson. And we don’t always get the time we want, either. The crowds pressed in on Jesus. And for us, we try to stop but the phone keeps ringing, the babies cry and the pagers buzz and bills keep coming in.

But we try. We may not get an entire day for leisure. We may get a morning or a quiet lunch or, if we’re lucky, a nap on the couch on a Saturday afternoon. But that’s not going to happen by chance. It’s only going to happen and happen with regularity if we plan for it and put it on our calendars and tell people, “I’m busy Saturday afternoon.” Or, “I’m sorry, but I’ve got an appointment Thursday night.”

It might be an appointment with your husband for some quiet time, just the two of you. You might be busy going fishing with a friend. You might, just might, be taking time to read the Gospel of Mark, all at once in a gulp.

Whatever it is, do it. This is not some spiritual feel-good plan or New Age mumbo-jumbo. This is the Law of God from the time of the Prophets. This is the teaching of Jesus Christ from his word and example. This is about the gift of our bodies and, ultimately, about the care of our very souls.

Jesus asks us to come away to a deserted place all by ourselves and rest for a while. I’m going make an appointment this week to do just that. I pray that you will, too.

Amen.

A Homecoming

Fifth Sunday After Pentecost
July 9, 2006

In coming to Jacksonville, I feel that in many ways I am coming home. I haven’t ever lived in this town before. But my family roots are next door in Etowah County, and my grandfather is from over in Alexandria. I have lived and worked in Anniston at various times in my life. In fact, I did some of the research for my doctoral dissertation at the Jacksonville State University Library. Sure, I’ve spent more time in Chicago and New York and that fancy metropolis of Huntsville, but I think you can say that in many ways this is a homecoming.

So you can imagine my dismay upon discovering that the Gospel reading for my first Sunday here is on Jesus returning to his hometown. No big welcome for him in Nazareth. No potluck luncheon after service. No, they turned their backs on him. They said a local boy couldn’t amount to much. Which led Jesus to say that a prophet is given honor everywhere – everywhere, that is, except in his hometown.

Great. So much for homecomings. So much for the hometown spirit.

It is hard, in retrospect, to understand how people could have rejected Jesus. These days, many folks find it difficult to relate to a man who lived 2000 years ago. But when Jesus is right in front of you, healing and preaching and doing miracles? Well, I’d like to think that I would have been convinced. But many, in fact most, were not convinced. They were blind to the power of Jesus.

The typical Jew in that era had been taught that the messiah would be a military hero—so many were blinded by tradition. In Jerusalem a mob would later become so riled up by political and religious opponents that they would call for Jesus’ death—they were blinded by hate. And in Nazareth—in Nazareth they were blinded by familiarity.

You see, Jesus had gone away and begun his ministry elsewhere. When he came home, he wasn’t coming to visit his family. Jesus came with his disciples following after—so this was a business trip, part of his missionary travels. He came to Nazareth with every intention of preaching, teaching, casting out demons, and healing—all the things he would later commission his 12 disciples to do elsewhere.

But things didn’t work out as he planned….and that presents us with a theological difficulty. Why didn’t Jesus’ plans work out? Why couldn’t an all-powerful Jesus accomplish whatever he wanted to? It’s like the old child’s theological question: If God can do anything, can God make a rock so heavy even he can’t lift it?

I don’t want to answer that one right now. That’s why God invented coffee hour. But I think we can answer the question of why the missionary campaign of Jesus in Nazareth was such a failure. Two words: vision and faith. Or rather, the lack of vision and faith. The folks in Nazareth didn’t see the messiah; they saw Mary’s son. They didn’t see the Son of God; they saw the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon. They saw one of their neighbors.

It was easier for strangers to accept Jesus as the messiah because they were looking for a messiah, they were looking for a savior to walk into their lives. The messiah would be someone new and wonderful, not someone they already new. Certainly not the son of a mere carpenter who grew up right down that dusty street.

The problem for them, of course, was that this man was the messiah. He was the Son of God. They blew it. One or two people allowed themselves to be healed, but that was it. Notice that I said “allowed themselves to be healed.” The text tells us that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. The active voice—he did this to them. But the overall point of the gospel lesson is that only those who opened their eyes and their hearts to Jesus could be healed. Jesus did not go about healing people against their will.

So here’s the key: you have to recognize Jesus for who he is before you can invite him into your life. Remember the reading from last week? It was about the woman who reached out and touched the hem of his garment, begging to be healed. She recognized Jesus, recognized his power, and was willing to be healed. That’s how it works. Nobody is healed, nobody is saved, against their will.

And that was the problem in Nazareth—nobody was willing to be healed. Nobody was willing to be saved. Nobody was willing to recognize Jesus when he stood right there in front of them. Nobody there had faith.

Now this involves a fine point of doctrine that I should explain. We cannot decide to be saved and make it so. That’s something called the Pelagian heresy. We as orthodox Christians understand that Jesus makes the first move. It’s right out of Scripture: Jesus came into Nazareth, offering healing and salvation—and was rejected. Jesus comes to us first and we must respond, by faith with thanksgiving. Without that response, there is no healing. There is no salvation.

Well, that tells us about the Nazarenes, the neighbors who didn’t recognize the power of Christ, who were blinded by familiarity. What about us? What blinds us today?

Are we blinded by tradition? We live in a region that thrives on tradition, though we’re often very selective in what we pick out of that tradition to hang onto and celebrate. We are part of a religion and denomination that celebrates ancient tradition, but sometimes we end up just going through the motions because we’ve always done it that way. In our daily lives e can get into a rut in which we don’t recognize Jesus out of pure habit.

Or are we blinded by hate? On Wednesday night, we talked about the hard teaching of Jesus that we should love our enemies. Who is it that we hate? Who is that we simply dislike? Who is it that we would just rather not be around? People who look different? Speak differently? Live on the wrong side of the square? Who don’t I go out of my way to love?

Finally, are we blinded familiarity? I sure felt like I was doing something good for the Lord when I worked in a soup kitchen. Or spent the night in a homeless shelter. Or preached in a tiny mission church in Panama. That’s because I was somewhere exotic, somewhere gritty. I was somewhere unfamiliar and it’s easy to see Jesus in the unfamiliar.

But what a trap that can be. It’s easy to believe that the only time I serve the Lord is when I’m somewhere exotic or at least uncomfortable. It’s easy to come back home to Nazareth, back home to Jacksonville, look Jesus in the eye and say, “Nah, I see you all the time. You’re not the real Jesus.”

Don’t misunderstand. The far-away work was valuable and necessary. But the real Jesus is also right here, in this state, this town, this building. He is our neighbor, he is our enemy, he is our friend. He is here in our hometown to offer healing and salvation—but only to those who refuse to be blind. Healing and wholeness come to those who will look their neighbor in the eye, full of faith, and say, “In you, I see the real Jesus.”

Amen.