Pentecost 7, 7/8/18: In Here, Out There

Sermon for Pentecost 7, 7/8/18                         Mark 6: 1-13                       In Here, Out There       

            It’s Friday night at the Nazareth synagogue, and Jesus is preaching for the home crowd. The place is jammed. They can’t even park all the donkeys outside. The ushers are running out of bulletins. They’ve had to open up the narthex for latecomers. The “local rabbi made good” is in town, back in church, and it’s standing room only. 

 

You can hear small talk about Jesus as a boy, Jesus as a carpenter’s apprentice, Jesus leaving home to find his calling. Someone chuckles and comments to a neighbor, “Wonder if he’ll talk about the time that bully pushed him into the trash heap……” Someone else remarks, “Remember that rickety little boat he built—it sank the moment it hit the water!”

The Gospel writer Mark tells us the rest. The sermon didn’t go well. Now I’m not talking about a sermon that’s a sleeper, when people start doodling on their bulletins; I mean the kind that makes them mad enough to walk. What was Jesus saying, exactly? Picking up John the Baptizer’s theme, ‘Repent!’? Or maybe giving them a preview of what he would say later to his disciples: the one who is first among you must be your servant? Whatever it was, the crowd wasn’t buying it. 

Jesus heard the whispered questions, “Where’d he get all this? What makes him think he’s so smart?” But he knew he was in real trouble when folks started to shuffle about, some even walking out. By the time he finished, he was feeling worn down, powerless. It’s a preacher’s nightmare. 

Several years ago I preached at my home congregation in Raleigh, for their Thursday night Epiphany Service. I hadn’t preached there since seminary, and of course the climate had changed a lot since then. That year they were in transition, between pastors. 

I wanted to encourage them, and so created a whimsical sermon built around the wise men’s long journey and God’s surprising gift of the savior born in a stable. I loved it. But two minutes into it I knew that they were not ‘with me.’ My rhythm wasn’t catching them, my light tone not hitting them quite right. Whatever that hometown crowd was expecting from the preacher they’d sent off to seminary, this wasn’t it. 

No doubt I am not the preacher that Jesus was, but I do know how it feels to have a sermon fall flat. Writer Barbara Brown Taylor says if you’ve ever pressed a lit match to a pile of wet sticks, you know that no matter how strong your flame, it will not catch fire. Jesus’ solution, she says, was to go and shine his light somewhere else. 

He had wanted to wake them up, shake them up, and offer them something more—something powerful and liberating. But in that first century culture no one had reason to believe anything could change. You were who you were, on the top or the bottom. Your identity, status and security were firmly based on family stability and the established pecking order. You couldn’t attempt to move up without risk of losing the support that kept you from being pushed further down. 

The hometown preacher seemed to be stepping out of his place—and they weren’t having it. So Jesus picked himself up, dusted himself off and played another card, his 12 disciples. 

But instead of sending them to the synagogue INsiders, he sent them OUT. He taught them the lesson of the synagogue sermon—connecting with people is a two-way street. It takes partnerships, a willingness to be vulnerable, and a plan B if your work isn’t working. 

[Partnerships] He sent them out two by two because in that time and place, travel alone was just plain dangerous. More than that, though, Jesus wasn’t interested in lone rangers. Even today, lone rangers are only TV legends. Disciples need to take partners and be partners.

[Vulnerability] Why no bag, no money, no extra tunic? They’d need to be humble—the kind of humble that having no clean clothes for tomorrow and no money for your own lunch will make you. No one could accuse them of showing off. No one could say of one of them, “Who does he think he is?” Jesus wanted the kind of prophets have nothing to sell, nothing to lose, nothing to hide. 

[Plan B] And if the plan wasn’t working, Jesus wanted them to know what to do—what he had done in that synagogue: leave that place and go shine their light somewhere else. So they went out together, humble but strong. And they succeeded!

If you were here for last week’s sermon, you might be asking right about now, “Where’s the beef?” The beef of this story is Jesus’ method for reaching a society filled with suspicion and guardedness—where people are slow to welcome strangers, and where change does not seem possible. He sent his disciples armed with a message of love that was stronger than the powers of their time. 

… and stronger than the powers of our time. Divisiveness, fear, stereotyping, exclusion, suspicion—they are the same powers that kept 1^st century people from believing that change was possible. But it IS. God’s love promises inclusion, abundance, true forgiveness, and real change. 

And God knows (don’t we know?), the world needs these gifts. Our society is grindingly tense. We are not at peace with one another—in this country, in our community, even in our churches. 

As followers of Christ, the place where we are together is at his feet, his loving presence within each of us.

·      What better PLACE to start, then, if we truly want the world to change, than right here where we are gathered in his name?

·      What better TIME than now to rise above taking sides and work together from the foundation of Jesus’ love?

·      What better ACTION than this: to explore here, together, our next steps, then move out there with both humility and boldness.

I am so grateful that in these times I continue to find in our church inspiring worship, warm fellowship and many opportunities to learn and to serve. But friends, God never lets us stay in a comfortable place for long. Just as Jesus did in that synagogue, God lights the match of transformation in hopes that we will catch fire. 

We have begun to catch the fire of transformation through our recent renewal efforts: we’ve strengthened our public presence through social media,, updated our worship and gathering spaces, and improved our property in some beautiful ways. And we are growing. But I believe God has more in store—a communal transformation among us, one that can spring from deep listening. 

Jesus made listening a priority, remember? He said to the twelve, if any place you enter refuses to HEAR YOU, move on. He knew that as you truly hear another person, you catch that person’s rhythm and you yourself are changed. Once we are able to hear one another deeply, we cannot be anything less than partners.  

That’s reason enough to practice listening well and deeply. Let’s hear one another. And let’s speak honestly to each other, noting our differences but remembering what we share—the strong foundation of God’s love in Jesus Christ. With that strength and the partnership it creates, we’ll be more Christ-like IN HERE, and OUT THERE, we’ll be unstoppable! 

Let’s get at it! Amen.