6 Pentecost Cycle B Proper 9 July 5, 2015
Ez. 2:1-7 Ps.123
2 Cor.12:1-10 Mark 6:1-13
When one gets so many different sorts of topics and themes given in the appointed readings from the Bible for the Eucharist, it sometimes is difficult for a preacher to force a unity on such diverse readings. One tries to find a harmony in the intuitions of faith in the Bible readings even while one tries to understand the different contexts, context often separated by hundreds and hundreds of years.
I think it is important to recognize biblical writings as evidence of social forces at work among the people who wrote the biblical literature. Human behavioral patterns and community practice tend to repeat themselves over and over again and that is why ancient literature can provide insight on our own behaviors today.
If we are honest about the writings of the New Testament, we must admit that they record the origins of religious disagreements within Judaism in the ministry of Jesus which grew into the separation of the followers of Christ from the synagogue communities.
So here we are today in a country which was founded upon honoring religious freedom and we can still be tempted to read the religious disputes between Christians and Jews as represented in the New Testament to be the basis for continuing religious disputes between Christians, Jews and all other people of other faiths in our world today.
Rather than making absolute the details of ancient disputes, let us endeavor to look at why disputes happen. People explore within their life situations the freedom of creative advance beyond what they once knew and practiced in how they articulate their faith in their lives.
The Bible includes a record of the loudest religious complainers, the prophets and the reformers. The prophet Ezekiel felt like he was called by God to his own people whom he believed were misbehaving and unfaithful to his God. He felt he was called by God to a losing cause because lots of his fellow country people would refuse to take his free and enlightened advice to repent and change their ways.
Jesus came to people as a reformer within Judaism just as the prophets before him were reformers and he was in the succession of John the Baptist who was also such a reformer. But the reality is and was that not everyone is wanting reform or can even see the need for reform.
Part of the reason reform cannot happen is because people are comfortable with what they know. Also people can be so familiar with the personal lives of the reformers that they cannot accept their reforming advice. In our families, how many of us want to think of brothers and sisters as reformers of enlightened change? What my brother? If you knew him like I knew him, why would anyone listen to him?
Reform from within often produces the behavior expressed in the cliche, "familiarity breeds contempt." Jesus had a hometown reunion and they had him speak at the synagogue. "Wow! Joe and Mary's boy has become quite a big talker; why should we listen to him? He's gone and built himself a reputation outside of his hometown. That doesn't mean that we have to buy what he's saying."
The New Testament writings are evidence of the separation of Christianity from Judaism and so this hometown reunion story of Jesus highlights his early rejection by those who were most familiar with him. New Testament writers were trying to inform their communities about the troubled relationship with Judaism. They are presenting the source of this troubled relationship going as far back as the hometown of Jesus rejecting his message.
So what happens if one's message is not received in one's hometown? If Eskimos are not buying ice cubes; you find a way to sell the ice cubes in other places, places where ice is not so available. So, hometown rejection results in spreading the message to other villages. The early evangelists were to travel light and fast and they were not to get bogged down when they did not find a receptive audience. They were to keep on moving to find the people who were ready for the relevance of the message to their lives.
They were to go to the people who wanted the message; those who would find the message as a event of creative advance in their lives. And what was the end result of this mission strategy? Gentile Christianity. The Gospel message moved on from the Jews who remained in their synagogues still looking for the messiah who was not Jesus. The Gentiles who were living in the cities of the Roman Empire found the message of Christ to be the reason to form universal fellowships not limited to ethnic religious and liturgical customs of Judaism.
More than any known person within the Christian tradition, St. Paul's faith identity was formed by living on the border between Judaism and Christianity. But for St. Paul, the border area between Judaism and the Gentiles became the new country of Christianity. That border area was receptive of all people. But St. Paul was also involved in many border disputes because of this attempt to blend Jews and Gentiles within this new community of Christ.
He suffered in his missionary efforts to blend aspects of his Judaism with the acceptance of Gentiles who were not required to conform to the purity rituals of Judaism. What kept Paul going was his own spiritual experience; he confessed that he had an out of the body experience. It could be that he had this experience of "walking towards the light" when he was nearly stoned to death in Lystra.
Reforms and the births of new communities are often accompanied with persecutions by those who have the power to persecute. If we as Christians know that in our histories there has been persecutions, and if we know that in our Christian past, Christians have persecuted other Christians for believing differently, we should have the freedom today to advance beyond making differences justification for acts of violence, hatred and prejudice.
We celebrate this weekend the birth of our country which has given this world one of the greatest efforts of human government: Inviting so many different people from so many different parts of the world to live together and experience a Oneness arising from diversity, e pluribus unum, from the many one.
We have inherited in our religious tradition the record of people who do not take the rejection of their teaching well, who even threaten people with hell for not agreeing with them. It is so easy to deify one's own understanding and interpretation of God and Jesus that one is falsely compelled to threaten with eternal punishment those who are not persuaded by us in how one believes.
We should express the insights of the founders of our country as being revelation which can transcends how biblical people often dealt with their disputes and disagreements. God does new things in new times. And let's face it; all religious traditions have expressions of narrow chauvinism because people's most dear beliefs can be rejected by others. "There must be something terribly wrong with those who don't agree with something which has been life changing for me." So, religious traditions often have very harsh language for their opponents because it really hurts when people reject or even deride one's dearest beliefs. And it hurts if one's religious opponent has the political power to limit one's freedom. America has been a experiment for people to have different beliefs and yet have a system of law which respects justice to allow people of contrasting differences to live together without excommunicating another from the citizen's rights of our country.
One of the reasons that I became Episcopalian is because I feel that I have the freedom to be not just Episcopalian but to be open to all insights which enrich my life of growing in faith. Just as I accept the fact that my faith as a child was expressed differently than my faith now, I accept that others will have different faith expressions and that I will continue to work at the articulation of my expressions of faith as I hope to be further informed and understand what love and justice means in the teaching of Jesus Christ.
Today, I pray that all of us will have many "out of the body experiences" of the love and justice of Jesus Christ but not stay out of the body in that state of utopia, rather, let us come back into our bodies do the work, often the messy work to build an inclusive community of love and justice informed by the example of Jesus Christ. Let us not get bogged down in disputes and end up perpetually feeling hurt by people who don't agree with us. Let us always be going to the people who want what we have to offer in how we understand the Good News of the love of God in Jesus Christ. Amen.
I think it is important to recognize biblical writings as evidence of social forces at work among the people who wrote the biblical literature. Human behavioral patterns and community practice tend to repeat themselves over and over again and that is why ancient literature can provide insight on our own behaviors today.
If we are honest about the writings of the New Testament, we must admit that they record the origins of religious disagreements within Judaism in the ministry of Jesus which grew into the separation of the followers of Christ from the synagogue communities.
So here we are today in a country which was founded upon honoring religious freedom and we can still be tempted to read the religious disputes between Christians and Jews as represented in the New Testament to be the basis for continuing religious disputes between Christians, Jews and all other people of other faiths in our world today.
Rather than making absolute the details of ancient disputes, let us endeavor to look at why disputes happen. People explore within their life situations the freedom of creative advance beyond what they once knew and practiced in how they articulate their faith in their lives.
The Bible includes a record of the loudest religious complainers, the prophets and the reformers. The prophet Ezekiel felt like he was called by God to his own people whom he believed were misbehaving and unfaithful to his God. He felt he was called by God to a losing cause because lots of his fellow country people would refuse to take his free and enlightened advice to repent and change their ways.
Jesus came to people as a reformer within Judaism just as the prophets before him were reformers and he was in the succession of John the Baptist who was also such a reformer. But the reality is and was that not everyone is wanting reform or can even see the need for reform.
Part of the reason reform cannot happen is because people are comfortable with what they know. Also people can be so familiar with the personal lives of the reformers that they cannot accept their reforming advice. In our families, how many of us want to think of brothers and sisters as reformers of enlightened change? What my brother? If you knew him like I knew him, why would anyone listen to him?
Reform from within often produces the behavior expressed in the cliche, "familiarity breeds contempt." Jesus had a hometown reunion and they had him speak at the synagogue. "Wow! Joe and Mary's boy has become quite a big talker; why should we listen to him? He's gone and built himself a reputation outside of his hometown. That doesn't mean that we have to buy what he's saying."
The New Testament writings are evidence of the separation of Christianity from Judaism and so this hometown reunion story of Jesus highlights his early rejection by those who were most familiar with him. New Testament writers were trying to inform their communities about the troubled relationship with Judaism. They are presenting the source of this troubled relationship going as far back as the hometown of Jesus rejecting his message.
So what happens if one's message is not received in one's hometown? If Eskimos are not buying ice cubes; you find a way to sell the ice cubes in other places, places where ice is not so available. So, hometown rejection results in spreading the message to other villages. The early evangelists were to travel light and fast and they were not to get bogged down when they did not find a receptive audience. They were to keep on moving to find the people who were ready for the relevance of the message to their lives.
They were to go to the people who wanted the message; those who would find the message as a event of creative advance in their lives. And what was the end result of this mission strategy? Gentile Christianity. The Gospel message moved on from the Jews who remained in their synagogues still looking for the messiah who was not Jesus. The Gentiles who were living in the cities of the Roman Empire found the message of Christ to be the reason to form universal fellowships not limited to ethnic religious and liturgical customs of Judaism.
More than any known person within the Christian tradition, St. Paul's faith identity was formed by living on the border between Judaism and Christianity. But for St. Paul, the border area between Judaism and the Gentiles became the new country of Christianity. That border area was receptive of all people. But St. Paul was also involved in many border disputes because of this attempt to blend Jews and Gentiles within this new community of Christ.
He suffered in his missionary efforts to blend aspects of his Judaism with the acceptance of Gentiles who were not required to conform to the purity rituals of Judaism. What kept Paul going was his own spiritual experience; he confessed that he had an out of the body experience. It could be that he had this experience of "walking towards the light" when he was nearly stoned to death in Lystra.
Reforms and the births of new communities are often accompanied with persecutions by those who have the power to persecute. If we as Christians know that in our histories there has been persecutions, and if we know that in our Christian past, Christians have persecuted other Christians for believing differently, we should have the freedom today to advance beyond making differences justification for acts of violence, hatred and prejudice.
We celebrate this weekend the birth of our country which has given this world one of the greatest efforts of human government: Inviting so many different people from so many different parts of the world to live together and experience a Oneness arising from diversity, e pluribus unum, from the many one.
We have inherited in our religious tradition the record of people who do not take the rejection of their teaching well, who even threaten people with hell for not agreeing with them. It is so easy to deify one's own understanding and interpretation of God and Jesus that one is falsely compelled to threaten with eternal punishment those who are not persuaded by us in how one believes.
We should express the insights of the founders of our country as being revelation which can transcends how biblical people often dealt with their disputes and disagreements. God does new things in new times. And let's face it; all religious traditions have expressions of narrow chauvinism because people's most dear beliefs can be rejected by others. "There must be something terribly wrong with those who don't agree with something which has been life changing for me." So, religious traditions often have very harsh language for their opponents because it really hurts when people reject or even deride one's dearest beliefs. And it hurts if one's religious opponent has the political power to limit one's freedom. America has been a experiment for people to have different beliefs and yet have a system of law which respects justice to allow people of contrasting differences to live together without excommunicating another from the citizen's rights of our country.
One of the reasons that I became Episcopalian is because I feel that I have the freedom to be not just Episcopalian but to be open to all insights which enrich my life of growing in faith. Just as I accept the fact that my faith as a child was expressed differently than my faith now, I accept that others will have different faith expressions and that I will continue to work at the articulation of my expressions of faith as I hope to be further informed and understand what love and justice means in the teaching of Jesus Christ.
Today, I pray that all of us will have many "out of the body experiences" of the love and justice of Jesus Christ but not stay out of the body in that state of utopia, rather, let us come back into our bodies do the work, often the messy work to build an inclusive community of love and justice informed by the example of Jesus Christ. Let us not get bogged down in disputes and end up perpetually feeling hurt by people who don't agree with us. Let us always be going to the people who want what we have to offer in how we understand the Good News of the love of God in Jesus Christ. Amen.
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