May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: PENTECOST 8
PROPER: 10B
ST. JOHN’S CHURCH
DATE: JULY 13, 1997
TEXT: Mark 6:7-13 - Jesus called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. . . . . So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.
SEE ALSO: Amos 7:7-15 - “See I am setting a plumbline in the midst of my people Israel. . . .
ISSUE: Following Jesus’ rejection in Nazareth, he perhaps anticipates that his rejection in Jerusalem will come as well. In preparation he begins the training and commissioning of his own disciples who are sent out two by two. They are to preach repentance, a turning back to God, and to offer healing in a world that is dangerous, where people are fallen and subject to evil spiritedness. All who are baptized Christieans share in that ministry of discipleship. We are to call people to God and godliness and be non-anxious healers focused on the mission of Jesus Christ.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
In last week’s Gospel account in Mark, Jesus visited his own home town of Nazareth. He met with great resistance. While the people listened to him in the synagogue they took great offense at him and insulted him. He in turn shook the dust off his feet saying, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own hometown.” where these people did not know a good thing when they saw it.
Today the story continues. Jesus is well aware of his rejection in Nazareth, and he may well expect and anticipate the rejection he will be met with in Jerusalem and the Temple there. While carrying on his ministry and continuing to move on from Nazareth, Jesus now commissions his disciples, and begins their training as apostles, men sent to the towns and villages to carry on the work of his ministry. He actually shares his powers with them to be able to cast out evil spirits and to have a healing ministry.
Jesus gives the disciples some very specific instructions. They are not to carry any excess baggage. They are not to wear two tunics. They are to take no bread, nor carry any money in their belts. You get the distinct impression that the ministry they are about to accept is urgent. Little time for packing up, and they are to be as unencumbered as possible. They are to be very basic and in keeping with a ministry that will be appealing to the poor, for they themselves will be poor.
The disciples are directed, according to Mark, to carry a staff and to wear sandles. The staff according to some biblical scholars hints at their having a pastoral image, the shepherding image. But the staff carried and the wearing of sandles may also be in preparation for the fact that they will be facing some rough terrain.
The disciples are sent out two by two. People in Jesus’ time rarely traveled alone. It was much too dangerous. Bandits were lurking everywhere. In fact most people traveled in larger groups than two by two. Caravans were the safer way to travel. Remember the story of the Good Samaritan. The man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho alone is attacked by bandits and left for dead along the side of the road. Being in community was extraordinaryily important
When the disciples arrive at their destination, they are directed to settle in the place where they are welcomed. Hospitality was important in these days. It was honorable to take in travelers and sojourners and provide hospitatity. You might be traveling someday yourself. While the stranger was welcomed you hoped they would depart as friends. The disciples were dependent upon this rule of hospitality. However, if they were not welcomed they were to shake the dust off their feet. This custom of shaking the dust off the feet was done by Jews who had traveled into Gentile territory. On returning home they would shake the dust of alien territory off their feet before re-entering Israel so as not to bring in pagan impurity. Thus, Jesus uses this familiar custom. If the disciples meet with inhospitality in a particular place, they are simply to shake the dust off their feet as a warning - not a curse - and move on to more hospitable territory.
And so following these directions the disciples, two by two, unencumber and moving with urgency go off at the command of Jesus to proclaim the Kingdom of God. They preach repentance, that is the call to change or a turning back to to God. With the authority of Jesus they cast out evil spirits and cure the sick.
The tradition in Judaism and Christianity of people feeling and beinging called or commissioned to carry a Godly proclamation of some kind is very deeply rooted. In the Hebrew Scriptures reading from Amos there is again the commissioning of a very simple person. In the account, Amos receives a vision of God holding up a plumbline against the nation of Israel. What that image reveals is a nation that is out of plumb. God’s nation is crooked and warped. And Amos the dresser of sycamore trees is commissioned to be a prophet to speak out against this proud and presently affluent nation’s corruption and injustice. Amos is sent inspite of the great opposition of government officials, namely Amaziah the priest of Bethel, to call the nation back to God. They are to be warned that if they do not change the nation will fall. Amos feeling dreadfully unequipped and hardly thinking of himself as a prophet is sent forth anyway: “Go, prophesy to my people Israel.”
These stories of commissioning are indeed a part of the the Judaic-Christian tradition. When we baptize a person or child they are marked as Christ’s own. We welcome them saying: “We receive you into the household of God. Confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection and share with us in his eternal priesthood.” These are the words of calling the person into the shared ministry of which we are all a part. It is the lay persons ordination and commisssioning if you will.
What we as Christians need to be aware of and wonder about is just how out of plumb our nation and culture is today. It is a troubled world with many evil spirits that attract people to drugs, violence, the inability to be committed to lasting relationships, attracted to pornography and child abuse, the insidious racial prejudices that resist change. The culture knows many evil spirit that play havoc in people’s lives. The terrain is rough, very rough. But the mission is truly an urgent one. And we by virtue of our baptism are called to go and call people back to Godliness, to relationship with God, and to be healers. Perhaps that seems such a high calling when we think of ourselves as unprepared and ill equipped. But strangely enough, the disciples went and by the grace of God accomplished what Jesus had told them to do.
This past week I saw a film called “Eulee’s Gold.” It was about a man who was a bee keeper by trade. The great torment in Eulee’s life, however, was his family. He had a son who got mixed up with a bad crowd and landed in jail for a stupid robbery. His daughter-in-law had become severely addicted to drugs, and Eulee had to care for his grandchildren, one of whom was a rebelious teen-ager. In the midst of all this family tension, Eulee had to maintain his bee keeping business. He was constantly threatened with being stung. But Eulee maintained that you simply had to keep calm around the bees. They sensed you fears and anxieties and would become stirred up and sting. What Eulee had was a deep sense of calm and a moral and faithful commitment to what he believed to be right. Through Eulee and a loving friend, which he actually resisted at first but finally accedes to accept, there is a healing that takes place and the evil spirits are eventually cast out. Together the family carries on.
We live in a world where we are all by our human nature are fallen and subject to the evil spirits of the world. We are at risk everywhere of being stung and we get stung. We are tempted and succumb. We rage and complain. We often feel unequipped and unprepared for being ambassadors for anything much less than being the ambassadors of Christ in the world. Yet God persists in calling simple people: shepherds, dressers of sycamore trees, fishermen, and tax collectors. Those simple men and women of faith proclaim a faith of hope and resurrection that causes people to take note of Godliness.
It is important that we embrace Christ and that we stay in community with one another for support. It is important that we embrace the faith of God revealed in Christ and see the quiet determined calm of Jesus Christ, who perseveres in the midst of rejection and rebellion, but who carries on faithfully and lovingly. The terrain of life is often rough. We get bogged down in many encumbering distractions. We let our feelings be easily hurt. We complain of being ill-equipped and unprepared. Yet Christ still calls and sends his people. He bears witness to unencumbered life that is focused. It’s a rough road but it is manageable. There is rebellion and rejection. Just shake off the dust from your feet and move on. But to those who responded, who trusted God in Christ, and humbly walked with God - to them he gave the power and authority to be the people of God who in their fallenness were themselves raised and they turned others toward God and healed the sick and cured them.
Sunday, July 13, 1997
Sunday, July 6, 1997
PENTECOST 7
May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)
SEASON: PENTECOST 7
PROPER: 9B
ST. JOHN’S CHURCH
DATE: JULY 6,1997
TEXT: Mark 6:1-6 - And they took offense at him. Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”
ISSUE: The church today, as well as the country which was founded upon religious principles, needs to avoid a familiarity and casual attitudes that keeps us from intimate awareness of the mighty acts of God in Christ. The passage reminds the church both then and now, that without faith, trust, a personal loyalty in Christ we cannot accomplish anything. In the passage, Jesus accomplished very little without the faithful response of the crowd.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
So far as we know and so far as it is recorded, Jesus made only one visit to his home town in Nazareth. According to the story as we have it today, the occasion gets mixed reviews. In the end, however, it we get the distinct impression from Mark’s Gospel account that the visit was something of a disaster.
Apparently in Jesus travels, he returns to make a visit in his home territory in the town of Nazareth. He was invited to participate in the worship in the local synagogue. I suppose that this is similar to our having people from the congregation participate in the reading of scripture and leading the prayers. Certain male members of the community would be asked at times to lead and do some of the teaching. Jesus was invited to lead and teach under these arrangements. The Jewish community and synogue had no ordained ministry as such, except that some men had rabbinical training which was more than likely a part of their family background.
According to Luke’s account of this story (Luke 4:16-30) Jesus reads a passage from Isaiah relating to the prophets’s call to proclaim liberty to the captives and sight to the blind. (Isa. 61:1-2) The passage read so far as we are concerned would seem harmless enough, but to the people of this period Jesus’ teaching may have seemed to presumptious. His teaching must have had a more penetrating twist to it. It had apparently a refreshing sense of deep wisdom. He may have challenged the community. While he is at first welcomed, he is somewhat threatening to his own.
In the middle eastern culture it was important that people maintain their place. For a person to “get ahead” in that culture was frowned upon. It was seen as grabbing at honorable statue to which the person was not worthy. If you were born into a certain social status. You were expected to maintain that place. Jesus was expected to be a carpenter, a craftsman. Craftsman were indeed needed, but that did not have a high standing. Wood was scarce in these days, and a carpenter would have to do some traveling leaving his family behind, which was seen as a dishonorable way of life. They were not expected to be wise or to assume teaching positions. From the book of Sirach (or Eccesiasticus, 38:24-39:5) it is written:
A scholar must have time to study if he is going to be wise; he must be relieved of other responsibilities. How can a farm hand gain knowledge, when his only ambition is to drive the oxen and make them work, when all he knows to talk about is livestock? . . . . It is the same with the artist and the craftsman, who work night and day engraving precious stones, carefully working out new designs. They take great pains to produce a lifelike image, and work far into the night to finish the work. . . . These people are not sought out to serve on the public councils, and they never attain positions of great importance. . . . They have no education and are not known for their wisdom. You never hear them quoting proverbs. But the work they do holds this world together. When they do their work, it is the same as offering prayer.
For Jesus to move into the realm of being wise and to move into a higher social standing, or even a different social standing was met with suspicion and resentment. He was scandalous. Some of the people raise the issue of “Who does he think he is?” They are extraordinarily insulting of him in the Markan account. When they say, ‘Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary . . . .” they are insulting him. They are calling him a bastard, and questioning his status as a legitimate person. Person in good standing were identified by their father. People of questionable status were identified by their mother. To the insults of the community, Jesus responds with his own insult. To put it in a modern idiom, “You people don’t know a good thing when you see it.” or “Prophets are not without honor except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and the own house.” What is that we also say: “Familiarity breeds contempt.” The story goes on to say that Jesus could not do any significant work there, except a few healings. The point is made that without faith and trust, the power of God is ineffective in the community.
Mark is attempting to reveal and maintain in the early chruch that in fact Jesus was unique. That from meagre beginnings, God has taken what was lowly and was raising it up. God had come to the lowly and among them in Christ. Jesus was the prophet, teacher, and healer of God among them. Just as many of the prophets of the past were met with hostility and contempt Jesus is meeting with the same kind of rebellion. Jesus brought a new relationship with God for the outcast and the poor. He came to restore love and forgiveness as the important values in the world. Jesus is expression of God’s redeem and restoring power in the world. Without faith and trust and personal loyalty as we saw last week in the story of the woman who touch Jesus’ garment, and Jairus who comes in great faith to Jesus, they will miss out on the heaing presence and renewing presence of God in their midst. Cultural ways rules, standards, man made laws get in the way of this new hope.
This story and account of Jesus’ rejection among those in his own community is important to us as individuals and members of the church today. We live in a country whose independence we have been celebrating this week. It is a country that began with some very basic religious principles. We say our nation is “under God” and that our motto is “In God we trust.” Yet perhaps in our familiarity with the traditions of our country we are inclined to forget the important of religious faith and God . The appreciation of faith and worship as a religious right as Americans is seen as an eroding principles among many people in our culture. Church and worship are often seen a secondary. In so much of the culture, particularly that which is revealed on Television religious emphasis is often completely missing or demeaning. On so many of the sit-coms and drama few show people as going to church or involved in church membership and community. Shows that do sometimes portray “religious’ people as fools or hypocrites. Religious institutions are often portrayed and perceived in a negative sense. However, the fact of the matter is that there are many religious people attending churches in our culture. There are many creative things going on in churches. People do have spiritual needs and are spiritual. We must all be cautious that we don’t become attracted to forms of spirituality that go so far astray from the orthodox faith that they are harmful and destructive. As unpopular as the institutional church may sometimes seem, it does maintain and have a close relationship to the authentic Christian faith.
Our familiarity with the church sometimes gives us a sense of knowing all there is to know. Religious education becomes something limited to Sunday School for children and confirmation class. There is, I think, a familiarity or boredom that sets-in that keeps us from being seekers, of renewing our relationships with Christ, with our understandings of the mighty works of God as something buried in the past.
There is too an infatuation with materialism in our culture that keeps us busy achieveing more things and stuff. We have to be busy maintaining our importance, our status, and our social standing in the community. As a result the faith, the foundations, the core of our being, the spirituality of our lives may become neglected to the point that the importance of being a loving and forgiving human being of God’s get lost. People describe a feeling of emptiness and loneliness.
I am asking all of our various groups here in the parish, and all the various committees to open each meeting with prayer and scripture reading. It is important for us to know who we are and what we are about. It is important that we keep rooted in the faith with all of its rich teaching and vitality. It is important that we do not become so secularized that we forget what we are about. I ask each and everyone of us to re-examine our own personal spiritual lives of prayer and scripture. I hope that as we begin a new acadamic year together in the fall we will continue a commitment to being a church that has a theological foundation rooted in study and open to new re-vitalizing understandings of the importance of the church and the faith in the world today.
The passage reveals to all of us that there is the temptation to become familiar with religious things that we miss their ongoing importance of them to keep our lives alive and vital with the presence of God. We may miss opportunities to be channels of grace through which God’s love may flow. Good old Jesus becomes merely a figure in the Bible. One of the good old guys of the past and not the living Lord of our lives who died and rose again that he might be with us always. The Church and Christ may well be the prophet without honor in our homeland. Yet as Ezekiel in the Hebrew Scriptures was called and told to persevere in a rebellious generation, Jesus did the same in his own rebellious and hostile generation. He carried on even to the cross. Out of that experience his glory was revealed.
Our prayer must be that we remain faithful, trusting, and loyal. Without that faithfulness, God will not intrude, and we become unable to allow hope and healing to work through us. God is at work around us. Many churches and people are allowing some very creative things to be born in the church that bring hope and healing to the world. The kingdom was stifled in Nazareth. But to those of faith healing and hope prevailed.
SEASON: PENTECOST 7
PROPER: 9B
ST. JOHN’S CHURCH
DATE: JULY 6,1997
TEXT: Mark 6:1-6 - And they took offense at him. Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”
ISSUE: The church today, as well as the country which was founded upon religious principles, needs to avoid a familiarity and casual attitudes that keeps us from intimate awareness of the mighty acts of God in Christ. The passage reminds the church both then and now, that without faith, trust, a personal loyalty in Christ we cannot accomplish anything. In the passage, Jesus accomplished very little without the faithful response of the crowd.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
So far as we know and so far as it is recorded, Jesus made only one visit to his home town in Nazareth. According to the story as we have it today, the occasion gets mixed reviews. In the end, however, it we get the distinct impression from Mark’s Gospel account that the visit was something of a disaster.
Apparently in Jesus travels, he returns to make a visit in his home territory in the town of Nazareth. He was invited to participate in the worship in the local synagogue. I suppose that this is similar to our having people from the congregation participate in the reading of scripture and leading the prayers. Certain male members of the community would be asked at times to lead and do some of the teaching. Jesus was invited to lead and teach under these arrangements. The Jewish community and synogue had no ordained ministry as such, except that some men had rabbinical training which was more than likely a part of their family background.
According to Luke’s account of this story (Luke 4:16-30) Jesus reads a passage from Isaiah relating to the prophets’s call to proclaim liberty to the captives and sight to the blind. (Isa. 61:1-2) The passage read so far as we are concerned would seem harmless enough, but to the people of this period Jesus’ teaching may have seemed to presumptious. His teaching must have had a more penetrating twist to it. It had apparently a refreshing sense of deep wisdom. He may have challenged the community. While he is at first welcomed, he is somewhat threatening to his own.
In the middle eastern culture it was important that people maintain their place. For a person to “get ahead” in that culture was frowned upon. It was seen as grabbing at honorable statue to which the person was not worthy. If you were born into a certain social status. You were expected to maintain that place. Jesus was expected to be a carpenter, a craftsman. Craftsman were indeed needed, but that did not have a high standing. Wood was scarce in these days, and a carpenter would have to do some traveling leaving his family behind, which was seen as a dishonorable way of life. They were not expected to be wise or to assume teaching positions. From the book of Sirach (or Eccesiasticus, 38:24-39:5) it is written:
A scholar must have time to study if he is going to be wise; he must be relieved of other responsibilities. How can a farm hand gain knowledge, when his only ambition is to drive the oxen and make them work, when all he knows to talk about is livestock? . . . . It is the same with the artist and the craftsman, who work night and day engraving precious stones, carefully working out new designs. They take great pains to produce a lifelike image, and work far into the night to finish the work. . . . These people are not sought out to serve on the public councils, and they never attain positions of great importance. . . . They have no education and are not known for their wisdom. You never hear them quoting proverbs. But the work they do holds this world together. When they do their work, it is the same as offering prayer.
For Jesus to move into the realm of being wise and to move into a higher social standing, or even a different social standing was met with suspicion and resentment. He was scandalous. Some of the people raise the issue of “Who does he think he is?” They are extraordinarily insulting of him in the Markan account. When they say, ‘Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary . . . .” they are insulting him. They are calling him a bastard, and questioning his status as a legitimate person. Person in good standing were identified by their father. People of questionable status were identified by their mother. To the insults of the community, Jesus responds with his own insult. To put it in a modern idiom, “You people don’t know a good thing when you see it.” or “Prophets are not without honor except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and the own house.” What is that we also say: “Familiarity breeds contempt.” The story goes on to say that Jesus could not do any significant work there, except a few healings. The point is made that without faith and trust, the power of God is ineffective in the community.
Mark is attempting to reveal and maintain in the early chruch that in fact Jesus was unique. That from meagre beginnings, God has taken what was lowly and was raising it up. God had come to the lowly and among them in Christ. Jesus was the prophet, teacher, and healer of God among them. Just as many of the prophets of the past were met with hostility and contempt Jesus is meeting with the same kind of rebellion. Jesus brought a new relationship with God for the outcast and the poor. He came to restore love and forgiveness as the important values in the world. Jesus is expression of God’s redeem and restoring power in the world. Without faith and trust and personal loyalty as we saw last week in the story of the woman who touch Jesus’ garment, and Jairus who comes in great faith to Jesus, they will miss out on the heaing presence and renewing presence of God in their midst. Cultural ways rules, standards, man made laws get in the way of this new hope.
This story and account of Jesus’ rejection among those in his own community is important to us as individuals and members of the church today. We live in a country whose independence we have been celebrating this week. It is a country that began with some very basic religious principles. We say our nation is “under God” and that our motto is “In God we trust.” Yet perhaps in our familiarity with the traditions of our country we are inclined to forget the important of religious faith and God . The appreciation of faith and worship as a religious right as Americans is seen as an eroding principles among many people in our culture. Church and worship are often seen a secondary. In so much of the culture, particularly that which is revealed on Television religious emphasis is often completely missing or demeaning. On so many of the sit-coms and drama few show people as going to church or involved in church membership and community. Shows that do sometimes portray “religious’ people as fools or hypocrites. Religious institutions are often portrayed and perceived in a negative sense. However, the fact of the matter is that there are many religious people attending churches in our culture. There are many creative things going on in churches. People do have spiritual needs and are spiritual. We must all be cautious that we don’t become attracted to forms of spirituality that go so far astray from the orthodox faith that they are harmful and destructive. As unpopular as the institutional church may sometimes seem, it does maintain and have a close relationship to the authentic Christian faith.
Our familiarity with the church sometimes gives us a sense of knowing all there is to know. Religious education becomes something limited to Sunday School for children and confirmation class. There is, I think, a familiarity or boredom that sets-in that keeps us from being seekers, of renewing our relationships with Christ, with our understandings of the mighty works of God as something buried in the past.
There is too an infatuation with materialism in our culture that keeps us busy achieveing more things and stuff. We have to be busy maintaining our importance, our status, and our social standing in the community. As a result the faith, the foundations, the core of our being, the spirituality of our lives may become neglected to the point that the importance of being a loving and forgiving human being of God’s get lost. People describe a feeling of emptiness and loneliness.
I am asking all of our various groups here in the parish, and all the various committees to open each meeting with prayer and scripture reading. It is important for us to know who we are and what we are about. It is important that we keep rooted in the faith with all of its rich teaching and vitality. It is important that we do not become so secularized that we forget what we are about. I ask each and everyone of us to re-examine our own personal spiritual lives of prayer and scripture. I hope that as we begin a new acadamic year together in the fall we will continue a commitment to being a church that has a theological foundation rooted in study and open to new re-vitalizing understandings of the importance of the church and the faith in the world today.
The passage reveals to all of us that there is the temptation to become familiar with religious things that we miss their ongoing importance of them to keep our lives alive and vital with the presence of God. We may miss opportunities to be channels of grace through which God’s love may flow. Good old Jesus becomes merely a figure in the Bible. One of the good old guys of the past and not the living Lord of our lives who died and rose again that he might be with us always. The Church and Christ may well be the prophet without honor in our homeland. Yet as Ezekiel in the Hebrew Scriptures was called and told to persevere in a rebellious generation, Jesus did the same in his own rebellious and hostile generation. He carried on even to the cross. Out of that experience his glory was revealed.
Our prayer must be that we remain faithful, trusting, and loyal. Without that faithfulness, God will not intrude, and we become unable to allow hope and healing to work through us. God is at work around us. Many churches and people are allowing some very creative things to be born in the church that bring hope and healing to the world. The kingdom was stifled in Nazareth. But to those of faith healing and hope prevailed.
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