7 Pentecost Cycle B Proper 9 July 4, 2021
Ez. 2:1-7 Ps.123
2 Cor.12:1-10 Mark 6:1-13
We can often regard revelation as something that happens with big flashy events, like clouds and thunder and fire on Mount Sinai.
But the meaning of revelation is actually an unveiling or an uncovering to see things as they are. The Bible is a record of events in uncovering how things have been, are and will be, and because uncovering happens within time, it is not finished; it is and will continue to happen at many times and in many ways. You and I within our communities are having insights uncovered for us as we live and learn. Learning is in fact an uncovering of important meanings for the benefit of practicing better living.
What does the biblical record uncover? That we are made in the image of God. But we have experienced the cover up alienation of sin, and we have lost being in touch with our original blessing. And our lives have been diminished and particularly when we have treated each other in oppressive, suppressive, or generally unkind ways.
God gave us Moses and the law to help us uncover the recommended behaviors on best expressing the image of God in our lives. The Hebrew Scriptures record the many failures of people to live up to the image of God planted within them.
The prophet Ezekiel was one who tried to call Israel to their origins in the image of God by uncovering what they had lost in their practice in loyalty to God and to best community behaviors. But Ezekiel did not have success or honor among his own people.
The Psalmist noted that it was the proud and indolent rich who oppressed and kept people from the living of true equality in the image of God. The Psalmist asked for deliverance from the proud and the indolent rich.
Given the truth of our original blessing of being made in the image of God and given the fact that people generally live in alienation of this original blessing, what was the central message of another hometown boy, who was a prophet from the highest heaven, sent to help people return to the original blessing? Jesus of Nazareth was all about health and salvation. Health and salvation came from recognizing that we live and move and have our being in the realm of God whose image is stamped upon our lives. But Joe and Mary's boy of Nazareth was too threatening. "Imagine this hometown boy who should have stayed home and worked in his daddy's carpenter shop, thinking that he's some great uppity prophet." The original blessing, health and salvation could not be revealed or uncovered by persons so cynical about obvious goodness. So, Jesus did not stay home; he sent his followers to help him uncover the original blessing, known as health and salvation. And he taught his followers to be people whisperers who like vacuum cleaners sucked the sense of inner uncleanness from people and offered them the renewal of right spirits and clean hearts.
Human history has known many events when important things have been uncovered or revealed. Sometimes though, our current situations are so dominated by habits of bad practice, we cannot live up to what has been uncovered. I believe that the Declaration of Independence of our Founders was a great uncovering of this truth about being created equal by God which guaranteed a corresponding pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all. This was an incredible uncovering even though it was uncovered by persons who could not yet grant this great truth to the Black persons who were their slaves, and to women and poor persons who did not enjoy full access to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Abraham Lincoln, again tried to address our American hypocrisy of being proud of our great ideal, but willingly failing to live up to this ideal in granting full justice to all within our borders. Martin Luther King, Jr. did the same thing by saying, "People of America, be unhypocritical Americans by practicing your ideals in granting black people, brown people, poor people the full benefit of the self-evidence of being created by God in the divine image. Lincoln was opposed by a large portion of the country of people who did not want to give up their slave economy. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who practiced the weakness of peaceful resistance, was rejected, and killed by the proud racists and indolent rich, who did want to share equally the American pie. Yet his "weakness" was a witness to the power of God in uncovering the obviousness of the image of God upon all people.
St. Paul was another prophet who was rejected by his people because he thought that it was obvious as Abraham that all people were included in the original blessing. He believed that this is what the dignity of the Risen Christ through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit meant. How could anyone who could be indwelt by the Holy Spirit be regarded as inferior? How could anyone who could have faith be regarded as God-rejected? St. Paul was once stoned near to death for his belief. Some scholars believe that in his near-death experience, he had this out of the body experience which he hints at in our reading today. He wrote about the elation of such an experience.
His words reminds me of Dr. Martin Luther King's, "I have been to the mountaintop" sermon on the eve of his assassination: "Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
Many people have lost honor among their hometown people for pointing out the obvious. The dignity of God upon every human being is being threatened in our country. We have not attained Lincoln's, Jefferson's, or Martin Luther King's Jr.'s ideal, and certainly not the vision of health and salvation which Jesus of Nazareth uncovered for us in the restoration of dignity for all people.
On this Fourth of July, let us return to the great prophets who confronted us about our hypocrisy. They uncovered, they revealed the original blessing of being created in the image of God and the health and salvation of living in God's image means Life, eternal life after death, qualitative life while we live, liberty and access to the equal means of being happy for full well-being with God and with each other.
On this Fourth of July, let us return in full practice to the image of God upon the life of every human being. Let us look closely and see Christ in all and accord them the dignity of Christ. Amen.
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