THE FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
July 9th, 2006
Ezekiel: 2:1-7
2 Corinthians: 12: 2-10
Mark 6:1-6
Year B/Proper 9
A true prophet is one who bites at our heels and pesters us to face the truth. But truth can be difficult to hear.
Ezekiel was a prophet bidden to tell Israel that if she didn’t shape us she would wind up in exile. She did wind up in exile – although that didn’t mean she necessarily shaped up. Another prophet, Ezra, told Israel things she didn’t want to hear, so Israel declared that Ezra was the last of the prophets. No longer would she put up with anyone harassing her. From then on she would settle for interpretations of what had already been written.
Four centuries later, a local boy, Jesus of Nazareth, began to act like a prophet. Just who did he think he was anyway? Didn’t he know the end of the prophets had been settled long ago? To make matters worse people were saying he was a prophet like none they had ever known. The people of Nazareth said, “Are you kidding! This is just Jesus, the kid from down the street. We know his whole family. Why would he have anything extraordinary to say? He’s probably just crazy!” So they took offense at him. It is the only time in all four gospels that we are told Jesus was able to do nothing, and it is the last time in Mark’s gospel that Jesus ever appeared in a synagogue on the Sabbath.
Well known Episcopal writer and biblical scholar Verna Dozier, says isn’t it interesting that the rejection of Jesus in Nazareth occurs in the religious place. It didn’t happen over wine and dinner at his mother’s home. It didn’t happen at the old carpentry shop or where the men gathered for conversation. It happened in the synagogue and it happened because his message was different from the traditional teachings they knew. Dozier says Jesus’ encounter with family and friends back home shows us how religious institutions don’t want the “old order” to give way to a “new order”.
That’s why Paul was always in hot water, in and out of jail, getting beaten up in public. Of all the charges made against him the one that cut him to the quick was the charge that he was not spiritual enough. So Paul shared a vision he had had. So worried was he that he would be thought to be bragging, he shared his experience in the third person.
The Hebrews felt heaven had seven layers. Paul said his experience was probably only to the third layer; not even half way. Still, he knew the experience he had was genuine. Paul came crashing back to earth only to be stuck by a thorn; either physical or emotional, that he dragged around with him his entire life. In spite of this affliction, whatever it was, Paul was able to have the most amazing and astounding of ministries the church has ever known.
As one Anglican writer declares: “The world tells us that power is everything, that whoever has the most weapons is on top, while Paul reminds us that the power of God is most evident in our weakness.”
Dozier declares that the new order always offends the old order; that in fact this is how the Holy Spirit lifts and moves us into new life. She declares that the limits we place upon God, reinforced by the idea that “this is the way we have always done it,” butts up against the Spirit-infused wisdom of Jesus who says, “You have heard it said…but I say to you”.
But if we worship the living God, then it is a given that God will continually be doing new things; sending prophets into every age and every life.
Jesus was not willing to change the truth God had entrusted to him just to be accepted by friends and family. He knew how easy it is to get caught in religion; allowing religion to trip us up, allowing it to keep us from God and God’s will for us. He knew what his hometown expected of him. He knew what his family expected of him. He was expected to make them proud and not embarrass them. Had that been more important to him than the mission God had called him to, we would not be here today.
New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen wrote a column once on Father’s Day, outlining both the blessing and the curse of her father’s high expectations. In doing this she said a strange thing happened. She realized that she and her father were two separate people, not mirror images, and much to her surprise she found this freed her to love him more than before.
Jesus knew the power of the family structure; whether it be the biological family or the religious family. He knew how easy it could be to be consumed by them; to the point that we forget who we are apart from them. Jesus always said that over and above everything else, over and above every other relationship or family structure, you are first and foremost God’s child, called into that holy relationship, with God given opportunities that are part of God’s ongoing creative purposes.
Barbara Brown Taylor writes: “..When you know that, chances are that you will not be swallowed up by an intact family whose love has a little too much control in it….your true identity can make all the difference. It can help save your life.” We do not have to hate our families, biological or religious, in order to remember who we are and what we are called to do and be apart from them. That is, perhaps, the first truth Jesus models for us.
I was only fourteen years old when I first felt certain that God was calling me to be a priest. I won’t even tell you what my family thought about that; let alone what my religious family thought when girls weren’t even allowed to carry candles in the Lutheran Church. I see it now as an issue that got in the way of the truth God had given to me. I have been very fortunate that I was able to answer God’s call in my lifetime. Others have not been so fortunate.
Years ago, when someone would ask my liturgy professor if he believed in the women priests he would say, “Believe in them? Why, I’ve actually even seen one!” It was an ‘issue’ then; twelve years after the Episcopal Church declared it believed the Holy Spirit had led us to ordain women to the priesthood and episcopacy. It is still an ‘issue’ today, now thirty years after that fact; among other hot issues. The great tragedy is that when we are consumed by issues we are not consumed by the gospel. Yet Jesus calls his disciples to go out and proclaim the gospel; the good news of the Kingdom of God, and to not waste time doing anything but that.
Someone once said: “I was hungry, and you formed a committee to end world hunger.
I was naked, and you debated the morality of clothing.
I was sick and you prayed for me.
You are so good, and I am still hungry, naked and sick.”
The new Presiding Bishop-elect said “Our invitation…as we go out into the world, is to lay down our fear and love the world, lay down our sword and shield, and seek out the image of God’s beloved in the people we find it hardest to love. Lay down our narrow self-interest, and heal the hurting and fill the hungry and set the prisoners free. Lay down our need for power and control, and bow to the image of God’s beloved in the weakest, the poorest, and the most excluded”.
If you object to that statement or fear acting upon it because you fear rejection by your family; church family or otherwise, then you simply have not heard Jesus’ words, and if you have not heard Jesus’ words then how can you know him as God’s own Anointed One?
Three years ago, when I was traveling in England, I happened to visit two parishes, both members of “Forward in Faith”, whose central issue seems to be keeping women out of the priesthood. Those churches were filled with brochures about their cause. The literature and the atmosphere in both those places felt oppressive and troubled me deeply.
Later that day I found myself sad and weary of it all, so I walked down to the little church in the village where I often stay. It was growing dark, so I really didn’t expect the church to be open, but as I pushed on the ancient door, the hinge creaked and it pushed open. Although it was very dim inside I was immediately drawn to the altar and its surrounding stained-glass windows, including a beautiful one of Hilda, Abbess of Whitby in 664, with crosier in hand and miter on her head. There were no pamphlets on any agenda or issue. There were only musty Prayer Books and bibles, posters at the back about that parish’s ministries. It was utterly quiet, but it was not empty. There was a Holy Presence there. When I left I signed the guest book. Although I could barely see I managed to write, “June 18th, 2003, 8:35 pm, Virginia Bennett, a priest who needed to pray. Thank you for the open door”. As I look back on those words now, I know that I meant more than just the open door to that building.
There was nothing there that blocked me from the Lord’s presence, nothing to keep me from seeking God’s truth and will for my life. That openness is the only way the church will ever be experienced in the way that Jacob experienced that place apart when he said, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it! How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” (Gen. 28: 17)
That is what God wills for us to know, collectively and individually. I pray that nothing will keep us from our holy calling.
AMEN
The Rev. Virginia L. Bennett, D.Min.
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
Edwardsville, Illinois