7 Pentecost Cycle B Proper 9 July 8, 2018
Ez. 2:1-7 Ps.123
2 Cor.12:1-10 Mark 6:1-13
Often the life of faith involves how we deal with what can only be called timing and mistiming. What do we do when the events in our lives seem to be plagued with the experience of mistiming? Wrong thing at the wrong time? When it comes to falling in love, we call such mistimings, unrequited love. And this is painful mistiming. "I love her and she don't love me." Such mistiming is good for writing poetry and love songs for Country Western music.
The Bible includes stories of mistiming, and the prophets often felt like they were given a message which had no agreeing audience. "God, why are you going to make me speak? The people won't listen. What I have to say is obviously total irrelevant to their lives. They are going to reject me. Why do you want me to preach?" Ezekiel was such an unrequited prophet. Elijah was the most famous pouting prophet; he ran in fear for his life and he complained to God about being the only faithful person left in Israel.
When the timing is good and connections happen and what we call "success" is experienced. We're all optimistically triumphant. "Woo Hoo. High Fives all around. Aren't we blessed!" And from such experiences we sometimes are tricked into believing that is all life is about favorable timing. And if the timing is not favorable we can feel not only rejected by other people but we can believe that God is not with us and that our calling is not valid. Anyone who has survived in any calling, vocation, career or any human relationship or endeavor at all has had to deal with different seasons of apparent good timing and seasons of apparent mistiming. How many people don't find their college majors until many attempts at something else?
The Gospel reading today is about how the early church understood Jesus dealing with the issue of timing and mistiming.
Jesus had good news. He offered a message about a loving God. He offered forgiveness. He offered healing. He did not practice religious segregation; he brought as many people with many different backgrounds together. If you had been enemies, he said you had love each other. What better message was there than the message of love as preached by Christ?
So Jesus, as anyone proud of his own hometown, wanted the neighbors of his childhood to get the full benefit of his special message and ministry. And what happened? His own family and hometown neighbors rejected his message and his ministry. How did he respond? "Oh well, prophetic mistiming, just like Ezekiel, just like Elijah." At the same time mistiming is sad, especially when prejudice, envy and small-mindedness prevents life changing experiences from happening. Some of the family of Jesus had to wait for better timing. His brother James eventually became the head of the church in Jerusalem so better timing occurred for him after the resurrection of Christ.
Jesus also gave the 12 disciples some mission instructions about timing and mistiming in the message in their mission. Go two by two, pack light, if they don't accept your message move on until the timing is right for people in realizing the benefit of your message and ministry.
St. Paul was an apostle who experienced lots of apparent good timing and mistimings in his ministry. He had great success and he also experienced great rejections. At Lystra, Paul was stoned and even taken for dead. Some people speculated that during his "near death" experience is when he had his OBE. What is an OBE? For New Age religionists, it refers to Astral Projections or "out of body experiences." St. Paul had an OBE during which he had such a profound divine encounter that he felt so confirmed in his relationship with God in Christ that he could endure anything. He could face anything because he experienced God as the profound equalizer for any apparent experience of "mistiming" in life.
Where does that leave us today in Gospel wisdom? All things considered, how many of us would like all events and connections to be experienced as pleasant and successful timing? But freedom in life does not exempt any of us from "apparent" experiences of mistiming? Life includes the experience of unrequited expectations. We came, we offered our very best and we didn't get the return that we had hoped for?
What we do with mistiming in life is perhaps the more profound lesson in faith. It is easy to have faith when successful timing happens but what about our faith when we do not receive the kind of affirmation, agreement and acceptance that we had hoped for? Many people drop out. Many people get misanthropic and down on people. Many people blame others. "They're idiots for not understanding me." Other people go into self blame. "It's my fault. I guess I'm not the right person for the job. I guess my calling to follow Christ was shallow and false." Many people leave the church because of mistiming. Many pastors leave their callings because of the experience of mistiming.
So how do we deal with both mistiming and good timing? We need to accept that first of all our call is to an everlasting God who will survive all times. So, we always have a future for better timing.
Second, the way to survive is with, just being continuously faithful. We take vows in our baptisms. Those vows are supposed to be supported with a rule of life. We get up in the morning. We pray. We read the scriptures. We ask what Jesus wants us to do today. We gather to prayer and share Eucharist. We love and we share love. Sounds like a boring pattern? No, it is just plain faithfulness. Faithfulness may seem as boring as keeping the trains running on time; but if the trains don't run on time everything falls apart. Bad timing is made worse when faithfulness is not observed.
Faithfulness expresses our relationship to God, to Christ, to each other and to our world. And if faithfulness to Christ comes before success or failure, we will be able to have the strength to survive apparent success and failure. Why? Because the most important success is our relationship with Christ. Amen.
Ez. 2:1-7 Ps.123
2 Cor.12:1-10 Mark 6:1-13
Often the life of faith involves how we deal with what can only be called timing and mistiming. What do we do when the events in our lives seem to be plagued with the experience of mistiming? Wrong thing at the wrong time? When it comes to falling in love, we call such mistimings, unrequited love. And this is painful mistiming. "I love her and she don't love me." Such mistiming is good for writing poetry and love songs for Country Western music.
The Bible includes stories of mistiming, and the prophets often felt like they were given a message which had no agreeing audience. "God, why are you going to make me speak? The people won't listen. What I have to say is obviously total irrelevant to their lives. They are going to reject me. Why do you want me to preach?" Ezekiel was such an unrequited prophet. Elijah was the most famous pouting prophet; he ran in fear for his life and he complained to God about being the only faithful person left in Israel.
When the timing is good and connections happen and what we call "success" is experienced. We're all optimistically triumphant. "Woo Hoo. High Fives all around. Aren't we blessed!" And from such experiences we sometimes are tricked into believing that is all life is about favorable timing. And if the timing is not favorable we can feel not only rejected by other people but we can believe that God is not with us and that our calling is not valid. Anyone who has survived in any calling, vocation, career or any human relationship or endeavor at all has had to deal with different seasons of apparent good timing and seasons of apparent mistiming. How many people don't find their college majors until many attempts at something else?
The Gospel reading today is about how the early church understood Jesus dealing with the issue of timing and mistiming.
Jesus had good news. He offered a message about a loving God. He offered forgiveness. He offered healing. He did not practice religious segregation; he brought as many people with many different backgrounds together. If you had been enemies, he said you had love each other. What better message was there than the message of love as preached by Christ?
So Jesus, as anyone proud of his own hometown, wanted the neighbors of his childhood to get the full benefit of his special message and ministry. And what happened? His own family and hometown neighbors rejected his message and his ministry. How did he respond? "Oh well, prophetic mistiming, just like Ezekiel, just like Elijah." At the same time mistiming is sad, especially when prejudice, envy and small-mindedness prevents life changing experiences from happening. Some of the family of Jesus had to wait for better timing. His brother James eventually became the head of the church in Jerusalem so better timing occurred for him after the resurrection of Christ.
Jesus also gave the 12 disciples some mission instructions about timing and mistiming in the message in their mission. Go two by two, pack light, if they don't accept your message move on until the timing is right for people in realizing the benefit of your message and ministry.
St. Paul was an apostle who experienced lots of apparent good timing and mistimings in his ministry. He had great success and he also experienced great rejections. At Lystra, Paul was stoned and even taken for dead. Some people speculated that during his "near death" experience is when he had his OBE. What is an OBE? For New Age religionists, it refers to Astral Projections or "out of body experiences." St. Paul had an OBE during which he had such a profound divine encounter that he felt so confirmed in his relationship with God in Christ that he could endure anything. He could face anything because he experienced God as the profound equalizer for any apparent experience of "mistiming" in life.
Where does that leave us today in Gospel wisdom? All things considered, how many of us would like all events and connections to be experienced as pleasant and successful timing? But freedom in life does not exempt any of us from "apparent" experiences of mistiming? Life includes the experience of unrequited expectations. We came, we offered our very best and we didn't get the return that we had hoped for?
What we do with mistiming in life is perhaps the more profound lesson in faith. It is easy to have faith when successful timing happens but what about our faith when we do not receive the kind of affirmation, agreement and acceptance that we had hoped for? Many people drop out. Many people get misanthropic and down on people. Many people blame others. "They're idiots for not understanding me." Other people go into self blame. "It's my fault. I guess I'm not the right person for the job. I guess my calling to follow Christ was shallow and false." Many people leave the church because of mistiming. Many pastors leave their callings because of the experience of mistiming.
So how do we deal with both mistiming and good timing? We need to accept that first of all our call is to an everlasting God who will survive all times. So, we always have a future for better timing.
Second, the way to survive is with, just being continuously faithful. We take vows in our baptisms. Those vows are supposed to be supported with a rule of life. We get up in the morning. We pray. We read the scriptures. We ask what Jesus wants us to do today. We gather to prayer and share Eucharist. We love and we share love. Sounds like a boring pattern? No, it is just plain faithfulness. Faithfulness may seem as boring as keeping the trains running on time; but if the trains don't run on time everything falls apart. Bad timing is made worse when faithfulness is not observed.
Faithfulness expresses our relationship to God, to Christ, to each other and to our world. And if faithfulness to Christ comes before success or failure, we will be able to have the strength to survive apparent success and failure. Why? Because the most important success is our relationship with Christ. Amen.
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