THE SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

October 1, 2006

 

Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29

James 4:7-12 (13-5:6)

Mark 9:38-43, 47-48

Year B/Proper 21

 

Anthony Price, writing in his book “The Memory Trap”, says “The Devil himself had probably re-designed Hell in the light of information he had gained from observing airport layouts”. Anyone who understands that analogy will, no doubt, know what it means to be confused and feel in a quandary about which way to turn; whether it be at the airport or in your own life.

 

To live means to be constantly reassessing your journey, which direction you are to go from here on out. Most of us remember the scene at the end of Cecil B. DeMille’s movie “The Ten Commandments”, when the Hebrews finally started out on their amazing journey to the Promised Land. In the movie it is a joyous and exciting time. But those feelings didn’t last; not only for the people trudging behind Moses but for Moses himself.

 

It wasn’t long before Moses found that the people’s toleration for discomfort was low, their capacity for complaint high. Throughout most of the wilderness journey Moses was a model of patient leadership. When the people complained of thirst he found water. When they complained of hunger he pointed out the manna God had provided. But it wasn’t long before the people said they were sick and tired of manna thank you very much and why couldn’t Moses provide them with a nice big juicy Kosher steak? And it was about then that Moses snapped. He said to God, “Why have you laid these whiney people on my back? I just can’t take it anymore. If you really love me just kill me now and get it over with”.

 

Instead of killing Moses God answered his cry by providing a practical solution. It was called delegation.

That’s what Jesus did when he commissioned the disciples to do God’s work, but faster than you can blink an eye they started to think they owned that ministry. And the reaction Jesus had to their attitude was nothing less than astounding.

 

When I was in seminary in Chicago one of the first times that I was asked back to preach at the Church of St. Michael and St. George, I was so delighted I didn’t even bother to look up the readings. But when I did  I discovered it was this gospel. And I could just see the smirk on the face of the priest who did the preaching schedule as he rubbed his hands together and thought, “Let’s give her the one where Jesus talks about cutting off all your bits. Let’s see what she does with that one!”

 

When the disciples saw someone casting out demons in Jesus’ name they took offense because they weren’t part of the group. But Jesus tells them that anyone found doing God’s work is guilty of nothing more than doing God’s work.  We might have expected him to say, “If he doesn’t affirm our creed, if he doesn’t pass our test, then out with him!” Instead Jesus’ words to the disciples are stinging. Nowhere in the New Testament is he so graphic about interfering with God’s purposes.

 

It’s always made me wonder what those who take every word of scripture literally do with this passage. Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t see many self-mutilated Christians around. Yet, Jesus said that would be better than being thrown into fires of hell.

 

Jesus spoke often of the fires of hell but he was not speaking of the place the Italian poet Dante wrote about in “The Inferno”. He was talking about an actual place outside of Jerusalem; Gehenna. Centuries earlier supposedly unfaithful Israelites offered up child sacrifices to the pagan gods Molech and Baal. By the time of Jesus it had become the town dump, where rubbish, bones and decaying carcasses, rotted and burned continually. No wonder he said it would be better to rip out your eye or tear off a limb, than have your entire body thrown into that awful place. But notice that when Jesus speaks of hell he speaks not as one who condemns people to it, but rather as one who rescues people from it.

 

Today’s Gospel is a reminder that claims to the possessiveness of the Gospel of Christ actually not only undermines our credibility, it endangers our own spiritual life. Jesus tells the disciples they are either part of the Good News or part of the bad news. They can’t have it both ways.

 

Too often people on the outside of the church aren’t drawn in because they see the same bad behavior in the church as outside of it. As one young woman told her priest, referring to struggles within the Anglican Communion right now, “If I wanted to fight I’d move back home”. No doubt she and others like her, are fed up with people who are absolutely convinced they know and own God’s truth.

 

At the turn of the century there was a cartoon character created by a man named Dr. Dooley in Chicago. The cartoon character once was featured as saying, “The fanatic is the person who knows he’s doing exactly what the Lord would do if God were also in possession of the facts”.

 

As one theologian writes, “The Holy Spirit is not the creation of the Church…The phenomenon of defining the limits of God’s goodness..who is entitled to it, or who is allowed to express it, has plenty of adherents. As the “rightness” of belief sets in, the light of Holy Love grow dimmer and dimmer. Pretty soon the python of judgmentalism wraps itself around the Body, and the oxygen of grace is squeezed out. The Christian life gets more and more restricted – and homogenous.”

 

The church always seems to have an active “Back to Egypt” Committee, ready to trade God’s promises in for the false promises of slavery. It wants to keep the church a closed affair instead of God’s love affair with the world. Disagreements turn into divisions. Principles become more important than people – or God. The back to Egypt mentality applies to individual lives as well, which always favors keeping things as they are - even if that means slavery. But no matter how you cut it Egypt is bondage and always will be.

 

It’s the kind of blindness that cries out in the wilderness ‘We have nothing to eat’, while surrounded by manna. It’s the kind of blindness that would rather feast in bondage than eat the bread of life in freedom. To that fear Jesus says whatever keeps you bound and away from God’s will should be cut loose before it spiritually kills you.

 

The world is full of people who have no idea that God calls them to live without the baggage they have been dragging along for years; whether the baggage of poor decisions, poor choices; our mistakes. But God is in the business of redemption and that is what we are called to as well.

 

Jesus neither needs nor wants bouncers guarding the door to the Kingdom of God. We were never invited or commissioned for any such job. No doubt the early church had to struggle with what it meant to say one was a follower of Jesus. It had to struggle with how to know a true disciple from a cardboard copy. Jesus does not say that anyone who works under a religious banner is immune from accountability. The proof test is the gospel. And the gospel, unlike some religions, puts high value on concrete visible acts of compassion and love, even a cup of cold water in Christ’s name. As Jesus told his disciples, “Not being one of us” is not an adequate criterion for determining who is or who is not a Christian.

 

You see what Moses needed to realize was that it wasn’t his job to get people to the Promised Land. That was God’s job. His job was to point to the manna that gave them life along the way. And that is our job as well.

When the church feels broken we need to remember we worship the water, not the pitcher. Salvation is not our job. That belongs to God. Our job is to bring the lost, the spiritually starving, into the feast of God’s love, to point to the manna along the way.

 

One day a Sunday School class began doing that little finger exercise we all did as children, “Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the doors and see all the people”. As the children began to lace their fingers together the teacher suddenly remembered that a new little girl only had one hand. She felt herself panic worrying about what was going to happen when a little boy close to the little girl moved his own hand over to hers, laced his fingers through hers and said, “Here, let’s make a church together”.

 

That is how God goes about the business of turning bondage into freedom and brokenness into redemption. It has to begin with us, each of us, in this church we love, chosen and commissioned as we are to heal and make whole – in Christ’s name.

 

                                                                                                              AMEN

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Rev. Virginia L. Bennett, D.Min.

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church

Edwardsville, Illinois