NotaBen

Sermon for July 19, 2009: "On the Fringe"

[GOSPEL: Mark 6.30-34, 53-56]

One of the things I dislike the most in the Church is when a perfectly good story in the Gospel is sliced and diced.  Most of the time, we never notice how destructive the editing is, because either we have the text written out in the bulletin for us, or when we hear the Gospel read aloud and parts of the story are omitted, we are simply unaware of anything missing.

It would be like going to the Opera to watch Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which we did last night, and seeing only the first part of the first scene where Don Giovanni enters into a brief sword duel with the father of the woman he has just seduced and kills the father … and then skipping to the end where Don Giovanni plunges into the burning fires of Hell, the reward for a hedonistic life taking advantage of thousands of women … reducing the entire opera to 25 minutes and leaving out the 3 hours of arias, recitatives, and some chorus numbers … (although some might say perhaps that just such an editing would improve the Opera immenselyJ) … still what you would have done is to dissect the story so much as to miss the very meat, the very centre, the very thrust of why Giovanni is who he is.

Well … just such a thing has taken place in the reading of the Gospel this morning [these selected 4 verses and these selected 3 verses from the 6^th Chapter of the Gospel According to Mark].  19 verses are missing!  But those 19 verses provide a whole and complete understanding of the story without which, yes, we can hear a part of the Gospel and, yes, we can preach a kind of sermon, but we miss out on what the author of Mark’s Gospel is trying to convey to us.

In fact, today’s paltry gospilization doesn’t make too much sense at all unless we understand what we have been reading all along … and by “all along” I mean that we have been reading rather continuously in the Gospel of Mark these last several Sundays, week after week, section following section with only a couple of mishaps along the way. 

Let me provide for you a tiny review of what Mark has been telling us … up to today’s reading … and then draw it all together by including the verses that were left out this morning.

You will remember that several weeks ago beginning in the 4^th Chapter of Mark, we had the teaching of Jesus to his followers about the Kingdom of God (in fact when we read Mark’s Gospel front to back, we discover … it’s all about the Kingdom of God … a kingdom, a reign, a rule of God which has to do not with a future distant reward for the trouble of human existence on earth … but with the present … that is Mark’s whole point …

In Jesus is the presence of God such that when we follow Jesus we participate in the Reign of God which is all about loving one’s neighbor, healing the world of its brokenness, and ushering in a realm of peace.

In Chapter 4, Jesus tells his followers about this kingdom using parables … the Parable of the Sower and the Seed, the Lamp not put under a Basket, and the Parable of the Mustard Seed.

Then Jesus gets into a boat in the evening and goes across the Sea of Galilee
heading to the country of the Gerasenes.  A storm comes up suddenly and Jesus quiets the storm on the lake and the disciples who were with him are truly amazed.

Now following that episode is one that was omitted from this year’s readings … it is called The Healing of the Gersasene Demoniac whereby Jesus commands a certain man’s illness to enter into a herd of pigs and the pigs go drown themselves in the sea.  It’s quite an exciting story, and one which indeed should have been included in the Readings.

People take note of this miraculous thing and begin to talk about Jesus on this East side of the lake (one should notice it is the gentile side, the western side being the jewish side of the Sea of Galilee).

Jesus gets back into the boat and goes now back over to the other side, to his homeland.  There, one of the leaders of the synagogue, Jairus, approaches Jesus asking him to come to his home and lay hands on his daughter who is dying. 

Jesus sets out to do that, but he is interrupted by a woman who has had a hemorrhage for the last 12 years.  This woman is so in need of healing that she pushes her way through the crowd of people surrounding Jesus and reaching out one finger touches just the fringe of Jesus’ clothes … and she is healed.  Jesus takes up some valuable time (the daughter of Jairus is still dying) talking with this woman and some of the others, and, while he is doing that, word comes from the home of Jairus that his daughter has died.

Jesus is not stopped from his mission by the news, but rather goes with a few of his disciples, and the girl’s parents, into the her bedroom.  He tells everyone that the girl is not dead but simply sleeping, and taking her by the hand, he wakes her up.

After this, Jesus leaves and goes to his hometown, Nazareth. 

When he arrives, it is Shabbat and he begins to teach/preach in the synagogue with the result that people dismiss him with rather backhanded snide comments like, “Isn’t this the carpenter?  This is the son of Mary right?” 

Sometimes we can’t hear the ridicule that is implied in those epithets like … “son of Mary” … there is no Father mentioned you see … but then that’s another sermon …

Jesus leaves the place commenting that a prophet is held with honour except in his home town. 

Then he sends his followers out into the villages around the countryside to do the work of the kingdom … healing, teaching, bringing love to the people.

While all this is happening we learn that Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch of Galilee, has heard about it.  Herod murmurs that this [Jesus] must be John the Baptizer come back to life. 

Mark then proceeds to tell us the back-story of what happened at Herod’s Birthday Bash ending up with the beheading of John the Baptist.  

And that was where we stopped reading last week.

When we read the Gospel aloud today, then, we began with a few verses of this tail end of the 6^th Chapter of Mark, learning that so many people were come up to Jesus telling him about their needs and asking for his care and compassion that he had no time to rest or even eat …

The result is that Jesus and some of his followers get into a boat and head out along the shoreline to get away.  But, people see them and they run along the shoreline ahead of the boat so that when the apostles land, the people are all there waiting and the oft-quoted comment is made, “They were like sheep without a shepherd.” 

And now then comes the part that was left out.  Listen:

³⁵When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; ³⁶send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.’ ³⁷But he answered them, ‘You give them something to eat.’ They said to him, ‘Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii^* worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?’ ³⁸And he said to them, ‘How many loaves have you? Go and see.’ When they had found out, they said, ‘Five, and two fish.’ ³⁹Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. ⁴⁰So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. ⁴¹Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. ⁴²And all ate and were filled; ⁴³and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. ⁴⁴Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.

 

45 Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, to

Bethsaida

, while he dismissed the crowd.⁴⁶After saying farewell to them, he went up on the mountain to pray.

 

47 When evening came, the boat was out on the lake, and he was alone on the land. ⁴⁸When he saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind, he came towards them early in the morning, walking on the lake. He intended to pass them by. ⁴⁹But when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought it was a ghost and cried out;⁵⁰for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’ ⁵¹Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, ⁵²for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.

 

Now we come to the end of this part of the whole story that we began several weeks back in Chapter 4 … the boat lands again on the other side (back on the

Galilee

side of the lake).  Nothing much has changed concerning the needs of the people …  in fact, it has gotten worse.

54When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him,  55and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was.  56And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

I don’t know if you caught the little word in the last verse we read, but it is the word that explains this whole section of the Gospel of Mark completely; it makes the good news of the kingdom, the reign of God come alive … it brings the sense of what God is about in Jesus and just so in the followers of Jesus … it brings the sense of that right up before our faces.

It’s the little word “fringe.” 

Remember where we heard it before?  The woman with a hemorrhage … touched the fringe of Jesus’ garment.  Here at the conclusion of this long story, people beg just to touch the fringe of Jesus’ clothes … just touching will bring the healing.

The whole story hangs together now from Chapter 4 to the end of the Chapter 6.

Everyone who has met Jesus has been living on the fringe, the edge, the outside, the “not in the centre.”  And those who have touched Jesus or been touched by him (or by the Disciples) have simply touched the fringe/edge of Jesus … and with that they found their healing.

That is Mark’s story: the Gospel, the Good News, Jesus, the presence of God, the reign of the Eternal One is for everyone … and especially for those who are on the edge, walking along the outside, wondering if they are worthy, wondering if there is a bit of healing for them, daring to maybe just step inside and see … and it’s there, it’s always there, it’s always been there.

Just touch the fringe and find in that touch the wholeness, the comfort, the hope, the understanding, the compassion, the abundance, the grace, the acceptance, and most of all … the love.

Deo Gratias +

The Rev. Benjamin Larzelere III

Sermon for July 12, 2009: "Don't Lose Your Head"

+ In nomine Domini. Amen.

On three Sultry Summer Sundays this year we find ourselves in the 6th chapter of the Gospel According to Mark.  

• Last Sunday Jesus has been rejected in his home town and the disciples have been sent out with the mission of healing.
• Next Sunday Jesus will engage in a feast, where (Mark tells us) 5,000 people were fed with the bread of life.
• And in between, on this Sunday, we find another feast taking place, it is in fact a Birthday Bash put on by Herod Antipas the Tetrarch of Galilee. 
  

Now to say the word Herod when reading through the Christian Scriptures can be a bit confusing. Readers often assume that when we hear the word Herod it means Herod the Great, the ruler when Jesus was born, but the Herod in our story is not that Herod. Here’s a brief outline of the complex history:

The Herod in our Gospel Portion this morning is Herod Antipas, son of King Herod the Great who ruled at the time of Jesus’ birth. Herod the Great was the one who, according to the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, slaughtered the children.  

Herod Antipas is not really “king” as Mark calls him, but rather he is a Tetrarch (ruler of a fourth, literally) … tetrarch of Galilee … the land of Jesus.

The first wife of Herod Antipas was the daughter of Aretas, king of the Nabateans, the same one whose commander was trying to catch Paul that we read about in II Corinthians. Herod Antipas, while staying with his half brother, also called Herod (Mark calls this half brother, Philip), on route to Rome, had an affair with Herodias, the wife of this half brother, and later he (Herod Antipas) divorced his first wife (the daughter of Aretas) and married Herodias. married her, divorcing his first wife, the daughter of Aretas. 

Aretas became Herod Antipas’ enemy. And when he defeated Antipas in battle, popular opinion saw that as divine vengeance for the divorce. That Herod (‘Philip’) and Herodias already had a daughter, called Salome. Mark’s story appears to assume she is daughter of the new marriage to Herod Antipas. This is unlikely, because there would not have been enough years to produce a child of that age. In fact Salome was married to someone called Philip. Hence the confusion. Mark even seems to call her also Herodias, like her mother.

The Herodias whom Herod Antipas married was in fact his niece, being the daughter of another of his half brothers, Aristobulus, son of Herod the Great and the daughter of Simon the high priest. 
The issue, the whole reason for John’s imprisonment, was John’s criticism of Herod Antipas’ marriage to the wife of his half brother which broke the biblical laws set out in Leviticus 18.16.
Now, the Birthday party begins in typical fashion for this time period. The women are in an adjoining room, which is why Salome must go there to consult her mother. The story turns horrible and gory. The promise of Herod Antipas to give away half of his kingdom is the stuff of legend (read the book of Esther).

But the meaning of the story is much deeper. It is not, as preachers of the past have often proclaimed about female wiles … not at all. Rather it is a story of exploitation … the exploitation of women, citizens and slaves … and it is a story about silencing the critical voice, the cry for justice.  

John is not the last prophet that the wielders of power will put away … the story will take place again on Golgotha … and continue and continue and continue … more than one proclaimer of justice and freedom will lose his head/lose her head in the process of calling out for a better world, a world formed of love and not hate.

We have only to recall that last Monday, July 6th was the commemoration of Jan Hus (early reformer of the Church, predecessor of Martin Luther, and who was burned at the stake by the Council of Constance in 1415 for his so called heresy of wanting the church to reshape itself around the body of Christ).  

We saw it just a few weeks ago in the murder of Dr. Tiller in a Lutheran Congregation in Kansas, and the slaying of a security guard at the Holocaust Museum … if it is different, and if we do not like it, then why not kill it?

Nothing of course could ever be further from the Gospel, and the message of the Gospel, and the living out of the Gospel.

And we who are called to follow Jesus are called to not only hear the Gospel, read the Gospel, study the Gospel, and learning the Gospel … we are called to live out the Gospel.  

Last evening the opera was La Traviata. As I saw and listened to the opera unfold I realized that what I really wanted was for the story to change, to come out differently. Perhaps we all do. We want Violetta not to die in the final scene of the last Act, we want her to live, to join Alfredo and run off happily ever after … and yet, every time the opera is performed Violetta dies. We cannot change it, we cannot make it come out any other way.

In the same way, as I thought about this morning’s Gospel Portion, every time we read these verses from the 6th Chapter of Mark’s Gospel … John the Baptist is beheaded, in spite of our desire for it not to be so.

The story is not there for us to rewrite it in the past – as if that were possible! The story is there to teach us, that it can be (and I would daresay as a follower of Jesus) must be rewritten in the present, in the future.

Our job, you see, is not to read the story of John the Baptist and his demise at the hands of the tyrant Antipas and tsk-tsk our way out of the church … our job, if indeed we seek to be faithful to our calling as followers of Jesus, is to make sure that the cry for justice (the cries for justice) are never (never) dismissed nor destroyed. Our job is to make sure that the lives devoted to love of God and love of neighbor are never (never) snuffed out. Our job is to live out the Gospel every day of our existence so that the world may be healed, and everyone within it made whole.

Dear God, grant us grace that we may find the courage and the wisdom to celebrate your love inclusive of all, exclusive of none. Amen.

+ Deo Gratia. Amen.
The Rev. Benjamin Larzelere III, Pastor

Sermon for July 5, 2009: "Unlikely Servants ... Ministry of Rejection"

 

+ In nomine Domini.  Amen.

After a simple, beautiful, somewhat plaintive Overture … the lights come up revealing a small Italian village where two people are opposite each other, on stage and in life: a poor auto mechanic named Nemorino and the woman he loves, the pretty coquettish Adina, the women he loves, who torments him with her indifference and the fact that she falls in love not with him but with the military wonder Sergeant Belcore.

There is a scene where Adina is reading aloud the tale of Tristan and Isolde and the potion of love (which always reminds me of that song of my adolescent past sung by the Clovers, the Searchers, the Drifters, the Beatles … “Love Potion Number 9).

Nemorino decides that what he needs is just such a potion which is sold to him by a traveling snake oil Doctor Dulcamara.

I am describing of course the 19^th Century Opera, Elixir of Love, written by Gaetano Donizetti) which we saw last evening at the Santa Fe Opera.

If you have tickets to see this comic opera this season, I guarantee you will not be disappointed with the production.  And, without giving away all its secrets, I do have to say that I was most jealous of the priest (played by our own Paul Horpedahl, Production Director, Santa Fe Opera) who arrives in the beginning of the second act upon a chartreuse Vespa™!

It occurred to me last night that Donizetti’s opera is all about an unlikely person who is “chosen” (chosen, if you will, to be the one falling in love with someone who toys with his affection) and finds himself rejected.  And, in spite of the rejection, in fact, from the rejection itself … searches, struggles, does not give up with his quest, his purpose, his calling … and finally achieves the love he so earnestly desires … a love which comes, not easily nor without problems and trials, but comes because of his persistence and belief in that love.

Back about Wednesday of this past week, I entitled the Sermon for this Sunday, Unlikely Servants … Ministry of Rejection, because it seemed to me that this is exactly what today’s Readings have in common … the profound ways that unlikely people are involved in God’s purposes; and the rejection that so often comes in the face of such involvement …

David, the quite attractive hero of the Goliath Episode, who captured in marble by Michelangelo’s skill stands in the Effizi in Florence all beautiful and innocent … it is this David who has an affair with Bathsheba, effects the death of Uriah, her husband and is condemned by Nathan the Prophet.

Paul, the great articulator of faith in Jesus, the great 1^st Century missionary who is able to convince multitudes that in Christ was the very Presence of God … this one who begins his work not as a follower of Jesus, but as a persecutor of Christians, is also, and perhaps always throughout his ministry … afflicted, tormented, doubting, and the most unlikely candidate for convincing others of faith.

And Jesus, the one who is not without honour … except among those who question him … “This is the carpenter, right?  The son of Mary, the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon …?” and curl up their noses as they speak.

Even the disciples, the ones called by Jesus to be the Band of Truth-Tellers, the Allegiance of Compassion, the Affiliates of Healing … they come from the lower classes, the workers, the ignored, the “let us walk away from them because they smell of fish”  … yes, these who occupy our stain-glass windows and icons with such boldness are the unlikely servants who get sent out into the world to face rejection and refusal.

I am reminded of that wonderful scene in Jesus Christ Superstar where the 12 are sitting around drinking too much wine, their own Love Potion of the Gospel, and sing:

Look at all my trials and tribulations

Sinking in a gentle pool of wine

Don't disturb me now I can see the answers

Till this evening is this morning life is fine

 

Always hoped that I'd be an apostle

Knew that I would make it if I tried

Then when we retire we can write the gospels

So they'll still talk about us when we've died.

 

These stories of faithful devotion are there for us, not because they are cute and funny and often absurd, but because they are true.

All 13 of us standing and sweltering in the un-air-conditioned Augustus Lutheran Church in Trappe, Pennsylvania and waiting our turn to be Ordained on May 21, 1972 … all of us realized I think how unlikely we were to face the task of Ministry.  Standing there, we knew our sins all too well, they stood out before us in the bold print of our minds; we knew our inadequacies, our shortcomings, our complete unprepared-ness – despite all those years of education – for the Ministry … and yet, we all spoke our “Yes, by the help of God” responses as we faced the Bishops of the Church, and hands were laid upon our heads, and stoles upon our shoulders.

We learned as we were “sent out” that it is the Gospel that calls us, not the other way around, it is the Gospel that brings healing and love into the world, not our ideas of wonder, nor our imaginations of how great we would become, how many people would flock to hear our words, our thoughts … no, it was and is the Gospel.

Where are the unlikely servants of God today?  They are sitting here this morning … you and me.  The teachers, mentors, helpers, healers, companions, parents, grandparents, greatgrandparents, children, relatives, partners, singers, writers … and on and on and on.  We are the most unlikely candidates for the position of “ministry” and yet it is through us that the Gospel comes into the world, through us that the light comes into the darkness, through us that world learns to love God and each other.

May God grant us the strength and power of the Gospel.