A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The Lectionary readings for the third Sunday after Pentecost are here.
It’s just an ordinary Sunday in June. And, yet, we are here, gathered together to celebrate our extraordinary God who gave us this ordinary day to live our life to the fullest and be who God created us to be.
As we continue our journey with Mark’s version of the Good News this year, today we find Jesus in the midst of a large crowd. Jesus has been walking around Galilee preaching and teaching of God’s Kingdom, healing and proclaiming forgiveness, and hanging out with those whom the religious leaders have labeled as sinners. And the crowds coming from all over to hear and see him are getting larger and larger.
They came from all over Galilee, from Jerusalem, from Idumea, from beyond the Jordan, and from Tyre and Sidon. This wasn’t just popping over from Wimberly or Bulverde, more like if folks walked here from Dallas or Houston to see a preacher their neighbor’s cousin’s brother-in-law told them about. It was a bit wacky, it definitely wasn’t ordinary. Jesus was disrupting how things are supposed to be. He’s not fitting himself nicely into the roles his family thinks he should and he’s definitely not conforming to the tight behavior boundaries of the local Roman or Religious authorities.
And so his family comes to him and says, “be a good son and come with us; quit stirring up these crowds that draw attention. Quit being who you are and be who we need you to be to keep ourselves comfortable.”
The religious leaders do their best to discredit him by using a common weapon of mass distraction* – they try to convince everyone that the good Jesus does isn’t from God but from the Adversary. The good that Jesus is doing, the sharing of God’s love with everyone is making those who try control everyone and everything for their own personal gain look bad in comparison. They don’t want to face their own unhealthy behaviors so they try to distract themselves and the crowd by saying look how “bad” Jesus is.
Some modern day versions of this is when we post a prayer or verse of scripture one minute and a meme that mocks who we are against the next. Or when groups we think we should be against are actually doing the things Jesus does such as tending to the poor and the immigrants with love and we say they are really trying to take away all that we have. What we are revealing when we do this is that we believe that Jesus’ command to love our enemy is only for our enemies to obey and that his command to care for others doesn’t apply if it means giving up our own comfort.
We attempt to distract ourselves and others from our own bad behavior by pointing out the bad behavior of others as we define it. But I cannot make myself any better by pointing out how bad others are. Jesus tells us to love and pray for our enemies, not spend our energy explaining to others how bad they think are. Jesus tells us to care for the poor and the immigrant without exception.
We see the same unhealthy behaviors in the bit we read from Genesis today – Adam and Eve have done the one thing God said not to. Instead of being satisfied with the whole orchard they had to have the one forbidden to them. And when God asks “Where are you?” it isn’t because God can’t find them. God is asking about the orientation of their hearts. And instead of accepting responsibility for their behavior, they play the blame game and step further and further away from God.
The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, said that the “decisive, heart-breaking “fall” away from God isn’t the point in the story when humanity eats the forbidden fruit, but rather the moment when they hide from God afterwards, in effect turning away from their Creator and at the same time from their true identity*.”
And when God calls to them, instead of opening up to the transformation and healing, they grasp for more and more control, believing they can do for themselves what only God can do. They refuse to let the Spirit of God reorient their heart toward God.
This is the warning Jesus gives the scribes from Jerusalem about the dangers of attributing the work of the Spirit to the Adversary. Our hearts – the core of our being, that place in us from which our behaviors come – can be shaped by the Holy Spirit or by the Adversary. We are always being made into disciples of something or someone. We have the responsibility to be intentional about who we are discipled by, toward whom we orient our hearts. When we label loving compassionate acts as bad, we are orienting ourselves not toward God but toward the Adversary.
Do you remember our conversation about the Trinity a few weeks ago? The role of the Spirit is to transform us, to open our eyes and ears to see and hear Jesus’ teaching of God’s way of love. If we refuse to see and hear and do not admit we’ve lost our way, what we call repentance, we cannot receive God’s gift of forgiveness.
The crowds who sought out Jesus knew that what Jesus offered them was more not less of a life; they were willing to risk everything to receive God’s healing love. Those who already believed they had the best life were threatened by Jesus and so they tried to label the Good News of God’s Love as evil so they didn’t have to step out of their self-created comfortable life. They chose to be people of their own making rather than people of God.
When we orient ourselves toward God, we are continuously transformed by the Spirit to be Whose and who we are created to be. And often times people will think we are losing our minds, even those in our own families, and they will attempt to constrain us as we grow because it’s more comfortable for them.
When we make the choice to follow Jesus, our family includes everyone else who are doing their best with God’s help to follow Jesus, too. God’s Kingdom is always expanding and growing because that is the nature of God’s Love. When we are shaped by Jesus’ command to love God with our whole being and love our neighbor as ourself we accept the responsibility of using our energy to change our own behavior so that our life reveals God’s love.
And yes, there are days it does seem futile. There is so much violence in this world it seems absurd to think that love has the power to overcome it all. But this is precisely what Jesus proved – the world did it’s worst form of evil against him with the false notion they were in control by killing him. But Jesus gave himself willingly. And by the power of God’s Love rose from the death they thought was the final answer. It may be challenging to accept some days, but Love is the most powerful force in all of God’s creation. This is the Good News that Jesus shows us in flesh and blood how to live, what we are here to celebrate on this ordinary Sunday. We are all God’s beloved children and the more love we share the more love there is.
Do not lose heart. Our inner nature is being renewed day by ordinary day as we follow Jesus into God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven. Amen.
- a phrase borrowed from Brian McLaren as I heard it in his podcast “Learning how to see”.
- https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/lectionary-commentary-for-third-week-after-pentecost
Mother Nancy's Coffee Thoughts 