(Mark 6.1-6)
A sermon preached by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time – October 25, 2009
Last Sunday, I said God’s love is the strongest force in creation. And I said God’s love fills us and carries us into the world to show the world another way of doing life (italicized image from Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution, Zondervan, 2006, p. 117). To live in the way of Jesus – with compassion, non-violence, forgiveness, and justice.
In response to that sermon, one of you told me this week, “The notion of God’s love is kind of a big umbrella.” Which is why this morning I want to focus on God’s love some more. And ask the question, When is God and God’s love most real for us?
I think God is most real for us when we are doing what God calls us to do. When you and I are doing whatever God has put us on this earth to do, that is when God feels closest to us. When God’s deepest desire for us is our deepest desire, and we’re committed to make that desire real, then God is most real to us. At such times, God isn’t just a concept. We don’t just talk about God, or think about God. We don’t wonder if God exists. When we’re doing what God made us to do, we are so alive that we feel God totally alive in us. When we feel God really alive in us, God fills us and carries us out into the world. God’s love flows through us bring light to a dark place in the world. To water a thirsty place.
The Gospels tell us Jesus is God with skin on. Jesus’ call is to carry God’s light and water into this world. Jesus does that in lost of different ways. He heals and teaches. He talks and eats with people everyone else curses or ignores. Jesus speaks hard truths in love. Though he is God’s love, many people still reject him. We reject him because the truth makes us uncomfortable. And when Jesus speaks the truth to us in love, it makes us really uncomfortable. Because we can’t attack Jesus’ motives. So to avoid having to accept the truth, and make the changes that the message demands, we come up with a reason to reject the messenger. Then we don’t have to pay attention to the message. We don’t have to examine our lives. We don’t have to change.
In our Gospel story for this morning, that’s what the people who’ve known Jesus since he was a baby do. They reject the messenger. So Jesus has to decide what to do. Do I try to please the hometown crowd by giving them the power to limit how I follow God’s call? Or will I keep doing what I believe God wants me to do?
Listen for a Word from God.
Jesus, Peter, James, and John left Jairus’ house and went back to Nazareth. On the Sabbath, he gave a lecture in the synagogue. He made a real hit, impressing everyone. “We had no idea he was this good!” they said. “How did he get so wise all of a sudden? How did he get this ability?”
But in the next breath, they were cutting him down. “He’s just a carpenter – Mary’s boy. We’ve known him since he was a kid. We know his brothers, James, Justus, Jude, and Simon, and his sisters. Who does he think he is?” They tripped over what little they knew about him and fell, sprawling. And they never got any further.
Jesus told them, “Prophets have little honor in their hometown, among their relatives, on the streets they played in as children.” Jesus wasn’t able to do much of anything there – he laid hands on a few sick people and healed them, that’s all. He couldn’t get over their stubbornness. He left and made a circuit of the other villages, teaching (Mark 6.1-6, adapted from The Message © 1993-96, 2000-02. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group).
For a while, the hometown crowd is so proud of him. They tell everyone who visits Nazareth, “You know Jesus is from here, right? I’ve known him when he was knee-high to a scorpion.” So they listen to him speak in the synagogue. And they’re amazed at his wisdom. Each one wonders, “Maybe he learned that from me…”
But as they listen more, they start to realize something. Jesus is telling them God fills them and carries them out into the world. Jesus is telling them they need to show the world another way of doing life. God’s love flowing through them asserts that no one is unclean. And they will welcome whoever is in need. God’s love flowing through them asserts that they are to love their enemies and never react to violence with violence. And the hometown crowd decides that’s not how they want to live, thank you very much. So they turn on Jesus. “Jesus, who are you to talk to us about what God wants? Who do you think you are, Jesus?”
All Jesus is trying to do is live like God wants him to live. He’s just trying to follow God’s call. And be light and water for a dark and thirsty world. But the people who’ve known him the longest are doing everything they can to get him to ignore God’s call. They’re not cheering him on. They’re not supporting him as he tries to live his life like God wants him to. They’re not reminding him his name is Beloved, Graced, Gifted, Holy. They don’t like what he’s saying. So they’re trying to convince him his job is to make them feel happy and unthreatened. They’re trying to limit him to grow into their image of him. They don’t care what he feels God wants for him. They just know who they want him to be. So when he says and does things they don’t like or expect, they reject him. Be like we want you to be, they say. Or get outta town.
So Jesus has to choose. Do I stay with these people who raised me…and let them decide what God calls me to do with my life? Or do I change my relationship with them…and create a new family made up of those who truly are my people? Do I leave the people I grew up around, and create a new family? A family who reminds me I am most fully me when I am most fully doing what God made me to do? This is the choice Jesus needs to make. The end of this morning’s story tells us what he decides: “[Jesus] couldn’t get over their stubbornness. He left and made a circuit of the other villages, teaching” (Mark 6.6).
If someone asked you today, “What is God calling you to do with your life?”, how would you answer? What do you most truly and deeply want when you are most really and truly you? When you are at your best, what is it that you most truly desire (John Neafsey, A Sacred Voice is Calling, Orbis Press, 2006, p. 78)? This is what gives you a glimpse of God’s desire for you. That is what gives you a glimpse of what God wants for your life. When you’re doing this is when God feels most alive to you. And when God’s presence is filling and carrying you. So God’s love flows out of you. To bring light to a dark world. And water to a thirsty world.
Hearing God’s call can be hard. And following it can be harder. A lot of us aren’t very much in touch with our deepest desires. As a Christian writer says, “Our strongest feelings revolve around our wants and desires, and we have been taught since our first summer to give these only slight attention, so that when we thing about drawing close to our real longings we have feelings of guilt and shame. It is as though our deepest wishes were unworthy and, if pursued, would get us into all kinds of trouble, and at the very least cause us to feel or be called selfish. The opposite, of course, is true” (Elizabeth O’Connor, Cry Pain, Cry Hope, Word Books, 1987, p. 82). It is selfish not to touch our deepest desires. Because unless we do that, we will never know God’s desire for us. And then our lives are limited to our shallow desires, or to what others desire us to be.
I think the church needs to be the group of people who helps us get in touch with our deepest desires. Church needs to be the group of people who encourages us to feel God stirring inside us. The people who remind us what our gifts are. The church needs to remind us who we are. Beloved, Graced, Gifted, Holy.
This is the church’s work. This is our joy. To create ways we can get to know each other so well that we know each other’s desires and dreams, each other’s brokenness and beauty. So we can remind each other that every one of us is named Beloved. And every one of us, no matter our age or condition, has a call from God to make real. We remind each other God is not served by small dreams and timid disciples. So we give each other whatever each of us needs. To be fully alive in our following Jesus. A story from the fourth century tells the church what we need to do for each other. [The very cautious] Abbot Lot came to Abbot Joseph and said: ‘Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, my meditation and contemplative silence; and according as I am able I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts: now what more should I do?’ The elder [monk] rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said: ‘Why not be changed totally into fire?’ (John Neafsey, A Sacred Voice is Calling, Orbis Press, 2006, p. 80).
We’re taught to be afraid of fire. Maybe that’s because people know if we catch fire, they won’t be able to control us and confine us to who they want us to be. But when we let ourselves be changed totally into fire…when we’re so passionate about something we’re on fire, then we’re fully alive. Then we’re in touch with our desires. We become fully alive. And God becomes fully alive in us. Filling us, carrying us into this world. To make God’s call real.
The miraculous thing about following God’s call is that, while we’re bringing light and water to a hurting place in the world, hurting places in us are being healed at the same time. Filled with God, carried by God, we live our deepest desire. And God multiplies healing through us.
I learned this again last Thursday working at the Recovery Café. I am helping to teach a class there on having healthy relationships. There’s a woman in the class I’ll call Gloria. She never talks when the whole class is meeting; she’ll say a few words when we break into small groups. Last Thursday we were talking about building and keeping healthy boundaries. I wasn’t teaching the class that day. At one point, I noticed she had her elbow on the table, and was holding her pen up. She actually wanted to say something when the whole class was together. The facilitator that day didn’t notice her pen up. Someone else in the class did, though, and pointed it out. Gloria said, “I’m crying out for help. I don’t know anything about setting boundaries. And I am desperate to be able to do that.” Then she put her arms on the table, and put her face into her arms, and cried quietly. We were quiet for a moment, until it became clear Gloria didn’t want us to focus on her. So we went on. After four or five minutes, Gloria got up and left the room. I went out after her. When she came out of the bathroom, I asked her if she wanted to sit down and talk. She said she did.
She talked about how hard it was to be in the class. She said, “I don’t know anything about setting boundaries. And when someone talked about child abuse, all I could think of was how my dad abused me from when I was little up until the day before my wedding. My parents didn’t teach me anything about setting boundaries. I wonder if it’s too late for me to learn.”
I said, “Gloria, I don’t know who has taught you the lie that you don’t know how to create boundaries. You raised your hand in the class. That was a boundary. You kept your hand up when the leader of the class didn’t see you. When you were called on, you decided to speak. After you spoke, and you started crying, you stayed in the room.” At that point, Gloria interrupted me and said, “Yeah, before I’ve always left a room when I started to cry. I didn’t want anybody to see me.” I said, “Exactly. And this time you stayed. That was a boundary. And after a while, you decided you would be more comfortable leaving the room. That was a boundary. And when I asked you if you wanted to talk, and you said you did, that was a boundary. It seems to me like you know a whole lot about creating boundaries.”
Then Gloria started talking about how one of her husbands started looking at her kids like her dad looked at her when he started to abuse her. And she told that husband to leave. She divorced him. I said, “And you don’t think you know how to set boundaries? Who told you that lie? It sounds like you’ve been creating boundaries for 20 years.” Gloria smiled at me. And said, “Actually, it’s been more like 29 years!”
For Gloria, the Café is kind of like church. The Café is one of the few places in her life where people remind her who she is. Beloved, Graced, Gifted, Holy. And that love helps her go deep inside. And touch God’s desire for her. God is calling her to teach others about how to create boundaries. God is calling her to stop believing the lie that she doesn’t know how to set boundaries. And to feel God filling her and carrying her. So she can go out into the Café, and show us how it’s done. And be healed of some of her fears and brokenness at the same time. Gloria is my teacher about boundaries. And about the miracles that happen when people who love us encourage us to go deep inside. And let God’s desire become our desire. And catch fire to make that desire real.
Henry David Thoreau said most people “lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them” (Neafsey, p. 175). No one in this room, no one who comes into this body of Christ, should go to their grave with God’s song still in them. Because we are here to remind each other who each of us is. We are here to help each other catch fire, and come alive. So we feel God alive in us. Because when we catch fire, when we are fully alive, no force on earth or in heaven can silence our song.
