6 Pentecost

 July 4, 2021

 

2 Corinthians 12.2-10; Mark 6. 1-13

+ In our gospel reading for today, we find Jesus coming to his hometown and people taking offense at him.

 

He seems to shrug that off with a simple, “‘Prophets are not without honour, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house

 

And to a large extent, that is the truth.

 

Prophecy can be a good thing, and prophecy can be a bad thing.

 

It depends on where you end up on the receiving end of prophecy.

 

We hear a lot of about prophecy  in scripture of course.

 

And we hear a lot about prophecy in our society.

 

But we need to be very clear here:

 

Prophets are not some kind of psychics or fortune tellers.

 

Yes, they see things and know things we “normal” people don’t see or know.

 

They are people with vision.

 

They have knowledge the rest of us don’t.

 

But, again, prophets aren’t psychics or fortune tellers.

 

Psychics or fortune tellers tend to be people who believe they have some kind of special power that they were often born with (if we believe in such things)

 

Prophets, as we see in scripture again and again, aren’t born.

 

Prophets are picked by God and instilled with God’s Spirit.

 

God’s Spirit enters them and sets them on their feet.

 

And when they are instilled with God’s Spirit, they don’t just tell us our fortunes.

 

They don’t just do some kind of psychic mumbo jumbo to tell us what our futures are going to be or what kind of wealth we’re going to have or who our true love is.

 

What they tell us isn’t just about us as individuals.

 

Rather, the prophet tells us things about all of us that we might not want to hear.

 

They stir us up, they provoke us, they jar us.

 

Maybe that’s why we find the idea of prophets so uncomfortable.

 

And that’s what we dislike the most about them.

 

We don’t like people who make us uncomfortable.

 

We don’t like people who stir us up, who provoke us, who jar us out of our complacency.

 

Prophets come into our lives like lightning bolts and when they strike, they explode like electric sparks.

 

They shatter our complacency to pieces.

 

They shove us.

 

They push us hard outside the safe box in which we live (and worship) and they leave us bewildered.

 

Prophets, as much as they are like us, are also unlike us as well.

 

The Spirit of God has transformed these normal people into something else.

 

And this is what we need from our prophets.

 

After all, we are certain about our ideas of God, right?

 

We, in our complacency, think we know God—we know what God thinks and wants of us and the world and the Church.

 

Prophets, touched as they are by the Spirit of God in that unique way, frighten us because what they convey to us about God is sometimes something very different than we thought we knew about God.

 

The prophet is not afraid to say to us: “You are wrong. You are wrong in what you think about God and about what you think God is saying to you.”

 

Nothing makes us angrier than someone telling us we’re wrong—especially about our perception of God.

 

And that is the reason we sometimes refuse to recognize the prophet.

 

That is why the prophet is not often accepted in their home town.

 

That is why we resist the prophet, and resist change, and resist looking forward in hope.

 

We reject prophets because they know how to reach deep down within us, to that one sensitive place inside us and they know how to press just the right button that will cause us to react.

 

And the worst prophet we can imagine is not the one who comes to us from some other place.

 

The worst prophet is not the one who comes to us as a stranger.

 

The worst prophet we can imagine is the one who comes to us from our own neighborhood—from the very midst of us.

 

The worst prophet is the one whom we’ve known.

 

Who is one of us.

 

We knew them before the Spirit of God’s prophecy descended upon them.

 

And now, they have been transformed with this knowledge of God.

 

They are different.

 

These people we know, that we saw in their inexperience, are now speaking as a conduit of God’s Voice.

 

When someone we know begins to say and do things they say God tells them to do, we find ourselves becoming very defensive very quickly.

 

Certainly, we can understand why people in Jesus’ hometown had such difficulty in accepting him.

 

We would too.

 

We, rational people that we are, would no doubt try to explain away who he was and what he did.

 

But probably the hardest aspect of Jesus’ message to us is the simple fact that he, in a very real sense, calls us and empowers us to be prophets as well.

 

As Christians, we are called to be a bit different than others.

 

We are transformed in some ways by the presence of God’s Spirit in our lives.

 

In a sense, God empowers us with the Spirit to be conduits of that Spirit to others.

 

If we felt uncomfortable about others being prophets, we’re even more uncomfortable about being prophets ourselves.

 

Being a prophet, just like hearing the prophet, means we must shed our complacency.

 

If our neighbor as the prophet frightens us and irritates us, we ourselves being the prophet is even more frightening and irritating.

 

The Spirit of prophecy we received from God seems a bit unusual to those people around us.

 

Loving God?

 

Loving those who hate us or despise us?

 

Being peaceful—in spirit and action—in the face of overwhelming violence or anger?

 

To side with the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized when it is much easier and more personally pleasing to be with the wealthy and powerful?

 

Or BE the wealthy and powerful!

 

To welcome all people as equals, who deserve the same rights we have, even if we might not really—deep down—think of them as equals?

 

To actually see the Kingdom of God breaking through in instances when others only see failure and defeat?

 

That is what it means to be a prophet.

 

Being a prophet has nothing to do with our own sense of comfort.

 

Being a prophet means seeing and sensing and proclaiming that Kingdom of God—and God’s sense of what is right. 

 

For us, as Christians, that is what we are to do—we are to strive to see and proclaim the Kingdom of God.

 

We are to help bring that Kingdom forth and when it is here, we are to proclaim it in word and in deed.

 

Because when that Spirit of God comes upon us, we become a community of prophets, and when we do, we become the Kingdom of God present here.

 

Being a prophet in our days is more than just preaching doom and gloom to people.

 

It’s more than saying to people: “repent, for the kingdom of God is near!”

 

Being a prophet in our day means being able to recognize injustice and oppression in our midst and to speak out about them.

 

And, most importantly, CHANGE those things.

 

Being a prophet means we’re going to press people’s buttons.

 

And when we do, let me tell you by first-hand experience, people are going to react.

 

We need to be prepared to do that, if we are to be prophets in this day and age.

 

But we can’t be afraid to do so.

 

We need to continue to speak out.

 

We need to do the right thing.

 

We need to heed God’s voice speaking to us, and then follow through.

 

And we need to keep looking forward.

 

In hope.

 

 And trusting in our God who leads the way.

 

We need to continue to be the prophets who have visions of how incredible it will be when that Kingdom of God breaks through into our midst and transforms us.

 

We need to keep striving to welcome all people, to strive for the equality and equal rights of all people in this church.

 

So, let us proclaim the Kingdom of God in our midst with the fervor of prophets.

 

Let us proclaim that Kingdom without fear—without the fear of rejection from those who know us.

 

Let us look forward and strive forward and move forward in hope.

 

I don’t know if we can be truly content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities, as we heard from St. Paul’s in his second letter to the Corinthians today.

 

But having endured them, we know that none of these things ultimately defeat us.

 

And that is the secret of our resilience in the face of anything life may throw at us.

 

“For the sake of Christ,” let us bear these things.

 

With dignity.

 

With honor.

 

Let us be strong and shoulder what needs to be shouldered.

 

Because, we know.

 

In that strange paradoxical way we know that, in the way of Christ, whenever it seems that we are weak, it is then that we are truly strong.

 

 

5 Pentecost

 June 27, 2021

Mark 5.21-43

+ If you’re anything like me—and I know some of you are on this one—you know how awful being impatient can be.

We want certain things—and we want them NOW.

Not tomorrow.

Not in some vague future.

NOW!

And it no doubt drives those of around us crazy.

But I am impatient.

I want to be doing certain things.

And I have never liked waiting.

Waiting is one of the worst things I can imagine.

Many years ago, I studied a famous play by Jean-Paul Sartre called No Exit.

I’m not going to go into the whole plot of the play, but the essence is this.

Three damned souls arrive in hell, expecting torture and fire and unending pain.

Instead, they’re brought into a plain room.

And they wait.

And wait.

And wait.

There’s more to the play than this, but essentially, it’s about hell being simply a waiting room in which one waits and waits and waits.

To me, that play has always been terrifying.

I understand it.

I get it.

Yes!

That’s what hell would be like (if I believed in hell)

Impatient as I am, ultimately I know that waiting and being patient is a good thing sometimes.

I’ll give you an example.

If you have lost anyone, due to death especially, but also due to divorce or any other type of separation, you are going to mourn.

Mourning is a terrible thing.

It is something none of us want to go through.

It is so deeply and unrelently painful.

And the pain doesn’t seem to go away.

For any of us who goes through it, we have all come to  that moment when we simply want to be done with mourning.

We want to be past it.

We want to escape this thing that we simply cannot escape.

We feel trapped by it—walled in on all sides by it.

 So, we want to be done with it all and move on.

We realize that death and mourning and grief are all part of our own experience of hell here on earth.

Because, right there, right then, in the midst of it all—it’s truly the most terrible thing.

In fact, it’s very much like Sartre’s hell.

We want to be done with mourning and sadness and all that goes along with losing someone we love.

The fact is, as much as we want that—it doesn’t work this way.

We can’t rush these things.

Things happen in their due course.

Not OUR course.

Not MY course!

But the proper course.

God works in God’s own time.

Now I know that sounds like a platitude.

And I know that those sound like empty words when we are in midst of our own personal hell.

But it really does work that way.

And this is probably the most difficult thing for us.

Because we don’t see things the way God sees things.

Rabbi Harold Kushner, who wrote that classic, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, used the analogy of a carpet.

There are two sides of a carpet.

There is the top side of the carpet, where everything is beautiful and orderly.

The top side of carpet is that way the carpet should be seen.

But there’s also the underside of the carpet.

On the underside of the carpet, we see the stray strands of yarn, the ugly dried glue, a distorted view of what the carpet actually is.

While we are here, we are living on the underside of the carpet—the carpet being our life and the world.

It often feels like things don’t make sense.

It’s because we’re seeing it from this undersided view.

But God sees things from the upperside of the carpet.

And one day, we too will see our lives from that perspective as well.

And somehow, in some way, it will all make sense.

I truly believe that!

But the key is: we need to be patient.

 Impatience is present in our Gospel reading for today, but in a more subtle way.

Our reading from the Gospel today also teaches us an important reflection on our own impatience and waiting, and also about how the hell of death is ultimately defeated.

We have two things going on.

We have Jairus, the leader of the synagogue, who has lost his daughter, even though he doesn’t know it yet.

The hell of death has drawn close to Jairus.

While Jairus is pleading with Jesus to heal his daughter, we encounter this unnamed woman who has been suffering with a hemorrhage for twelve years—twelve years!—is desperate.

This so-called unnamed woman actually, according to tradition, has a name.

Veronica.

And she is, it is believed, to be the same woman we encounter whenever we do the Stations of the Cross.

At Station #6, she is the one who wipes the face of Jesus as he carries his cross toward Golgotha.

So, Veronica is impatient.

She wants healing.

I can tell you in all honesty that as I read and reflected and lived with this Gospel reading this past week,  I could relate.  

I can relate to Jairus, who is being touched with the darkness of death in his life.

And when I read of the woman with a hemorrhage grasping at the hem of Jesus’ garment, I could certainly empathize with her impatience and her grasping.

Many of us have known the anguish of Jairus.

We have known the anguish and pain of watching someone we love die.

And many of us know the pain and impatience of Veronica.

We often find ourselves bleeding deeply inside—and I don’t mean just physically but emotionally and psychologically too—with no possible hope for relief.

For us, as we relate, that “bleeding” might not be an actual bleeding, but a bleeding of our spirit, of our hopes and dreams, of a deep emotional or spiritual wound that just won’t heal, or just our grief and sadness, which, let me tell you, can also “bleed” away at us.  

And when we’ve been desperate, when we find ourselves so impatient, so in need of a change, we find ourselves clutching at anything—at any little thing.

We clutch even for a fringe of the prayer shawl of the One whom God sends to us in those dark moments.

When we do, we find, strangely, God’s healing.

And in this story of Jarius’ daughter, I too felt that moment in which I felt separated from the loved ones in my life—by death, yes, of course.

But also when I felt that a distance was caused by estrangement or anger.

And when I have begged for healing for them and for myself, it has often come.

I have shared with you before the pain of the estranged relationship I had with my sister, how for years we had little or nothing to do with each other, due to what we later realized were outside, nefarious forces in the guise of “family.”

But someone, in God’s own time, after years of praying about that relationship, it was healed.

It was truly a miracle in my life.

And I am very grateful for it.

But it came in God’s own time.

Not in mine.

It is a matter of simply  sometimes waiting.

For Jairus, he didn’t have to wait long.

For the woman, it took twelve years.

But in both cases, it came.

Still, I admit, I continue to be impatient.

I probably will always be inpatient.

But even now, even when the pain of mourning comes back, when I truly mourn still, after many years for loved ones I’ve lost, in the midst of it all, I can hear those words that truly do comfort me:

 “Why do you make a commotion and weep? Your loved one is not dead but only sleeping.”

Resurrection comes in many forms in our lives and if we wait them out these moments will happen.

And not all impatience is bad.

It is all right to be impatient—righteously impatient—for justice, for the right thing to be done.

It is all right to be impatient for injustice and lying and deceit to be brought to light and be revealed.

And dealt with.

It is all right to be impatient for the right thing to be done in this world.

But we cannot let our impatience get in the way of seeing that  miracles continue to happen in our lives and in the lives of those around us.

I know, because I have seen it again and again and, not only in my own life, but in the lives of others.

We know that in God, we find our greatest consolation.

Our God of justice and compassion and love will provide and will win out ultimately over the forces of darkness that seem, at times, to prevail in our lives.  

Knowing that, reminding ourselves of all that, we are able to be strengthened and sustained and rejuvenated.

We are able to face whatever life may throw at us with hope and defiance and, sometimes, even joy.

We are not in Sartre’s hell.

Trust me.

We’re not.

At some point, the doors of what seems like that eternal waiting room will be opened.

And we will be called forward.

And all will be well.

That is what scripture and our faith in God tell us again and again.

That is how God works in this world and in our lives.

So, let us cling to this hope and find true strength in it.

True strength to get us through those impatient moments in our lives when we want darkness and death and injustice and pain behind us.  

Let us be truly patient for our God.  

If we do, those words of Jesus to the woman today will be words directed to us as well:

“your faith has made you well;

go in peace;

be healed.”

 

 

 

Let us pray.

Holy God, the God of life, we are impatient. We are impatient for so much in this life. We are impatient for an end to suffering and injustice and pain. We are impatient for all things to be restored to fullness and goodness. But mostly we are impatient for your presence in our midst, for your blessings and your joy. Help us to be patient, and in our patience, help us to be aware of the needs of those around us who also, in their impatience, are need of love and care. In Jesus’s Name, we pray.