(Audio of this sermon available here)
Proper 9B
Mark 6:1-13
07/08/2012
St Paul's Episcopal Church
About ten years ago my mother heard what she thought was a cat bird crying outside during an awful April freezing rain storm. When she finally went to check she found a four week old kitten huddling under a bush, with a cry that was about a hundred times bigger than he was. She sent me a message at work that said: “I just found a kitten, do you want him?” Do I want him? Long story short: I drove two hours North after work to my parent’s house to retrieve the kitten. But before he came home to my place where my cat already ruled as queen he had to go to the vet. So off to my old home town vet we went to get a checkup.
Now the vet I’d known growing up had long since retired and instead I found myself handing this tiny injured kitten over to… a girl I had done kindergarten through high school with. I kind of carefully looked around to see if there was a real vet present. You know, someone who hadn’t teased me on the playground, or picked her nose, or had that crush on the class clown in high school. There wasn’t. Gavin is still ruling the roost at our house so I suppose I should have had a little more faith in that silly pigtailed little girl I’d grown up with.
Jesus returns to his home town this morning, walks into the synagogue and begins to teach. And all this friends and neighbors begin looking at one another with the same look I gave my classmate/vet.
“Wait,” an older man whispers to his neighbor, “isn’t that the kid who used to get into trouble with your boy?”
“I guess… he seems to know what he’s talking about…”
A woman leans over and says a little too loudly: “Hey, thats’ just the guy who made my table, what makes his so special?”
They’ve listened for a while but the rumbles are starting, and they’re getting louder. “That’s Mary’s kid! I’m sure of it! Does she know what he’s doing? Who does he think he is?”
I have a friend who is a young woman, and a Presbyterian Pastor up North. She was sitting in her office when she heard a gentleman come in and ask if any of the pastors were available. The secretary told him: “Mike and Dan are out, but Mary’s in her office, I’ll let her know!”
“Nah,” the guy responded. “I’ll wait until a pastor is available.”
My Grandmother used to say that people see what they expect to see, and hear what they expect to hear. The warning of today’s Gospel is the warning of denied grace. Of a world view too small to see the way God is acting, or to hear what God is doing in the world. I had a professor in seminary who would ask us to tell her what our Jesus looked like, to describe the Jesus who was our friend. The answers were as many, and as varied, as the students in the class. And of course that meant we began to wonder. If Jesus could be so many faces, how many of Jesus’ faces had we missed because we had been so focused on what we expected.
Today our youth will leave Waco for Taylor Texas. They’ll paint houses, help at a therapeutic riding camp, and much more. But most importantly, they’ll interact with the people of Taylor. What will those people see? When they see a group of teenagers gathered around a sagging house with peeling paint will they assume those teens are there to make trouble for the elderly owner? I know that if they spend the time to get to know our youth they’ll meet bright, caring, energetic people whose care for others and love for life lights up a room.
How often do we discount an opinion because of the person who expressed it? Because they are too familiar, or not familiar enough? Because they are too young to possibly understand, or to old to possibly get it?
But this isn’t just a story about missing out on God because we misjudge the messenger. That would be too simple for Mark. Immediately Jesus responds to the blindness and unbelief of his home town by sending out twelve doofuses to do his work. He sends out a bunch of fisherman, and tax collectors who have proved their block-headedness over and over again to do his work. To preach repentance, and to heal. Surely he can’t expect them to have much better luck. Who is going to listen to fisherman who wander into town without a boat, or a staff, or anything else to their name?
But that’s just the point. Because we, the whole church, everyone has listened to Mark’s story for two thousand years has been those fishermen. Those sailors without a boat, without even a net. I can think of few people sent on a mission who seemed less suited to their task, less credible. Who is likely to listen to them? How will they know what to say? What if no one listens or wants them around? Yet, but what they have been sent out for is what everyone of Jesus’ apostles (we call them Christians now) is charged to do. Apostle just means witness, nothing more, nothing less.
Jesus sends them out to bear witness. To who they are, to who he is, to who they have become because of him. There is no mention of expectation of success. They weren’t sent for the be heard, though that was the hope. They were sent forth to speak. It is the same for us. For whatever reason Episcopalians have a reputation for being down right bad at evangelism. And I think part of the reason that’s so is we’re worried about the results. About embarrassment, and rejection, about inserting ourselves where we are not wanted.
But what if we changed the way we think? What if we focused on simply speaking, rather than the results of being heard. What if, instead of worrying about inviting someone to church (and expecting a response) we simply shared with others when a brother or sister here did something that raised our spirits, made us smile, brought us light in a dark place? What if we sat across from a friend and just said “Wow, this amazing thing happened to me, let me tell you about…” and let the seeds of that story fall where they may?
Peter and James and John. Known now as some of the greatest apostles, the greatest church builders in history. But they didn’t start that way. They started as illiterate fisherman from a tiny village on the shores of a rather unremarkable inland sea in a poor dry part of the world, far from anywhere important. Just folk, who had only their own stories to tell. To be Christian is to do two things: to be willing to listen for God in unexpected places, and to speak.
That listening is faith, to trust. To trust that God is so beyond our human assumptions and social structures that God is not bound by them. That God can speak from the unremarkable, the embarrassing, or the strange. To trust that we human beings might not have the final word on who can be wise (a carpenter from a small town)! Or who could have kingly power and authority (the son of a local girl who skinned his knees in the street)! Who might be the voice of God in our lives? Who might be the hands of Christ? And are we willing to surprise ourselves? Can we each trust that God has indeed given us ministry to do, witness to bear? How easy it would be to say surely God doesn’t have anything for someone like me to do. The first apostles had nothing to recommend them for their work but an experience of God in their lives. They had nothing to qualify them but friendship with Jesus.
My friends, if good old “foot in mouth” Peter can be an apostle, everyone of us is definitely on the hook! Let us go forth with ears and eyes open for God at work in the world, speaking our own stories of love and grace. May we trust that they will be heard, for God has opened hearts and ears that need to hear each of our stories. Have faith and speak!
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Proper 9B
Mark 6:1-13
07/08/2012
St Paul's Episcopal Church
About ten years ago my mother heard what she thought was a cat bird crying outside during an awful April freezing rain storm. When she finally went to check she found a four week old kitten huddling under a bush, with a cry that was about a hundred times bigger than he was. She sent me a message at work that said: “I just found a kitten, do you want him?” Do I want him? Long story short: I drove two hours North after work to my parent’s house to retrieve the kitten. But before he came home to my place where my cat already ruled as queen he had to go to the vet. So off to my old home town vet we went to get a checkup.
Now the vet I’d known growing up had long since retired and instead I found myself handing this tiny injured kitten over to… a girl I had done kindergarten through high school with. I kind of carefully looked around to see if there was a real vet present. You know, someone who hadn’t teased me on the playground, or picked her nose, or had that crush on the class clown in high school. There wasn’t. Gavin is still ruling the roost at our house so I suppose I should have had a little more faith in that silly pigtailed little girl I’d grown up with.
Jesus returns to his home town this morning, walks into the synagogue and begins to teach. And all this friends and neighbors begin looking at one another with the same look I gave my classmate/vet.
“Wait,” an older man whispers to his neighbor, “isn’t that the kid who used to get into trouble with your boy?”
“I guess… he seems to know what he’s talking about…”
A woman leans over and says a little too loudly: “Hey, thats’ just the guy who made my table, what makes his so special?”
They’ve listened for a while but the rumbles are starting, and they’re getting louder. “That’s Mary’s kid! I’m sure of it! Does she know what he’s doing? Who does he think he is?”
I have a friend who is a young woman, and a Presbyterian Pastor up North. She was sitting in her office when she heard a gentleman come in and ask if any of the pastors were available. The secretary told him: “Mike and Dan are out, but Mary’s in her office, I’ll let her know!”
“Nah,” the guy responded. “I’ll wait until a pastor is available.”
My Grandmother used to say that people see what they expect to see, and hear what they expect to hear. The warning of today’s Gospel is the warning of denied grace. Of a world view too small to see the way God is acting, or to hear what God is doing in the world. I had a professor in seminary who would ask us to tell her what our Jesus looked like, to describe the Jesus who was our friend. The answers were as many, and as varied, as the students in the class. And of course that meant we began to wonder. If Jesus could be so many faces, how many of Jesus’ faces had we missed because we had been so focused on what we expected.
Today our youth will leave Waco for Taylor Texas. They’ll paint houses, help at a therapeutic riding camp, and much more. But most importantly, they’ll interact with the people of Taylor. What will those people see? When they see a group of teenagers gathered around a sagging house with peeling paint will they assume those teens are there to make trouble for the elderly owner? I know that if they spend the time to get to know our youth they’ll meet bright, caring, energetic people whose care for others and love for life lights up a room.
How often do we discount an opinion because of the person who expressed it? Because they are too familiar, or not familiar enough? Because they are too young to possibly understand, or to old to possibly get it?
But this isn’t just a story about missing out on God because we misjudge the messenger. That would be too simple for Mark. Immediately Jesus responds to the blindness and unbelief of his home town by sending out twelve doofuses to do his work. He sends out a bunch of fisherman, and tax collectors who have proved their block-headedness over and over again to do his work. To preach repentance, and to heal. Surely he can’t expect them to have much better luck. Who is going to listen to fisherman who wander into town without a boat, or a staff, or anything else to their name?
But that’s just the point. Because we, the whole church, everyone has listened to Mark’s story for two thousand years has been those fishermen. Those sailors without a boat, without even a net. I can think of few people sent on a mission who seemed less suited to their task, less credible. Who is likely to listen to them? How will they know what to say? What if no one listens or wants them around? Yet, but what they have been sent out for is what everyone of Jesus’ apostles (we call them Christians now) is charged to do. Apostle just means witness, nothing more, nothing less.
Jesus sends them out to bear witness. To who they are, to who he is, to who they have become because of him. There is no mention of expectation of success. They weren’t sent for the be heard, though that was the hope. They were sent forth to speak. It is the same for us. For whatever reason Episcopalians have a reputation for being down right bad at evangelism. And I think part of the reason that’s so is we’re worried about the results. About embarrassment, and rejection, about inserting ourselves where we are not wanted.
But what if we changed the way we think? What if we focused on simply speaking, rather than the results of being heard. What if, instead of worrying about inviting someone to church (and expecting a response) we simply shared with others when a brother or sister here did something that raised our spirits, made us smile, brought us light in a dark place? What if we sat across from a friend and just said “Wow, this amazing thing happened to me, let me tell you about…” and let the seeds of that story fall where they may?
Peter and James and John. Known now as some of the greatest apostles, the greatest church builders in history. But they didn’t start that way. They started as illiterate fisherman from a tiny village on the shores of a rather unremarkable inland sea in a poor dry part of the world, far from anywhere important. Just folk, who had only their own stories to tell. To be Christian is to do two things: to be willing to listen for God in unexpected places, and to speak.
That listening is faith, to trust. To trust that God is so beyond our human assumptions and social structures that God is not bound by them. That God can speak from the unremarkable, the embarrassing, or the strange. To trust that we human beings might not have the final word on who can be wise (a carpenter from a small town)! Or who could have kingly power and authority (the son of a local girl who skinned his knees in the street)! Who might be the voice of God in our lives? Who might be the hands of Christ? And are we willing to surprise ourselves? Can we each trust that God has indeed given us ministry to do, witness to bear? How easy it would be to say surely God doesn’t have anything for someone like me to do. The first apostles had nothing to recommend them for their work but an experience of God in their lives. They had nothing to qualify them but friendship with Jesus.
My friends, if good old “foot in mouth” Peter can be an apostle, everyone of us is definitely on the hook! Let us go forth with ears and eyes open for God at work in the world, speaking our own stories of love and grace. May we trust that they will be heard, for God has opened hearts and ears that need to hear each of our stories. Have faith and speak!
