Red Shoes, Funny Shirt

The Gospel of Mark is somewhat difficult to preach on.  The writer/storyteller of Mark was not given to detail.  You get the impression that s/he was in some enormous hurry, and couldn’t be bothered to tell you what anyone was feeling, or why they were inclined to do what they were doing.  It happened–that was enough.  (And then, IMMEDIATELY, something else is happening.)

So we get a pericope like this week.  Aside from my discomfort with Peter’s mother-in-law’s first action, post-miracle: begin to cook for a party (Because of course it is!), I felt like the story was somewhat of a rehash of what came before.  He heals people!  He proclaims things!  People are impressed!  And on we go at a breakneck pace.

Sometimes, the only thing to do in cases such as these is to consult with others.  For this, God has gifted the postmodern-day preacher with social media, which overfloweth with sermon fodder round-about Saturday night.  Also, you should count yourself as extremely lucky if you have fantastic friends (like I do) who listen to your incoherent ideas, and nod understandingly, and kindly offer their own (much better) ideas.

Seriously, what did the actual olden-day circuit-riders do when they were stuck for ideas?!

February 5, 2012

Epiphany 5, Year B

Mark 1:29-39

Stephen Colbert is a comedian.  He has a TV show, in which he inhabits the persona of a narcissistic pundit, basically all the worst traits of the media talking heads cast into sharp relief, and rolled into a single person.

It’s a funny show, it’s popular, his book sold well.  Most people would consider that a career well accomplished.  And then he decided to create a SuperPac for the 2012 election.  So far, said PAC has raised over a million dollars, made generous offers in the SC newspapers to both the Republicans and Democrats to sponsor their primaries, suggesting it would be not unlike the Doritos Fiesta Bowl, and run several very surreal campaign ads, including one that declared Mitt Romney was a serial killer, because if corporations are people, how many has he killed in his time at Bain Capital?!

For about a year, Colbert has basically been playing with the intricacies of campaign finance law on late night TV, something normally left to lawyers, and which has resulted in lots of confusion, and some anger, among actual media people.   And all of this ends up revealing several things– SuperPACs can do just about anything they want, satire did not cease to be potent after Jonathan Swift, and at this point, your average young adult in Colbert’s audience now has a better grasp of campaign finance law than the average American does.  Turns out, the comedy serves a purpose.

Jesus, by this point in Mark’s Gospel, has been healing all over the place.  He healed the man with the unclean spirit in the synagogue, as we heard last week, and so now, having finished with that, he heads home to Peter’s house, where he heals his mother-in-law. And then most of the town.  He’s on a roll.

But then, he up and quits.  Why?

Aside from being well- deserving of a break, at this point in the narrative, Jesus also needs a pause to regroup.  To refocus on his mission.  Which was not just healing sick people, although that was a part of it.  His mission was bigger, more inclusive than that.

For first-century Palestinians, healing was great!  But lots of people could heal.  It’s not like they had regularized medicine to any great degree– healing and cures tended to occur somewhat spontaneously and regularly, since the expected course of events was: you got sick, and that was the end of you.  Healers were a dime-a-dozen.

So were charismatic preachers.  So were political figures.  The crowd outside the door was used to people like that.  and it was perfectly content to have Jesus stay there in Capernaum, dispensing healings and miracles like a really awesome gumball machine.

But Jesus decides to leave.  Because for Jesus, the important part is not the healings themselves, the important part is what the healings point towards.  What the miracles signify.

These healings aren’t meant just to prop up life the way it was– -they signify a world that is beginning to be profoundly changed.  The healings of Jesus point to the ultimate reality where all creation is reconnected with God.  Where the signs of our brokenness, our failings disappear.  A reality where all humanity, all creation is redeemed, and functioning as a whole.  A holy creation, in harmony with itself and it’s creator.

Because the individual Healings are great, I have no doubt but that the people really appreciate it, but healings are only part.  They’re like signposts,  breadcrumbs.  They’re too small.  Jesus’s job wasnt to be the next magic worker in the Galilee, healing the comparatively few people who wandered by.  It was ultimately, to heal the whole world.

And we see this starting even in the story– Peter’s mother in law, once healed, gets up and serves them.  Aside from my immediate thought that the poor woman had just escaped death, and she couldn’t get a moments peace out of the kitchen? She sets a pattern that the other recipients of healing will follow.  Out of her healing comes caring for those around her.  She becomes an icon of a reality where all are cared for, as she feeds those who come to her.

Ultimately, we have to take over and play our part in holy creation.  We who claim to have knowingly received the healing love of God have to become similar icons of this new reality, where all are fed, all are welcomed, all are loved, and all creation is made whole. This is what we promised, right, at our baptism– will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?  Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

But so often, we too, get stuck in the ‘gumball dispenser” mode.  We perform the modern day- nonJesusy equivalent of individual healings,both as individuals and as a church.  We tell ourselves that the way it has been is the way it always has been, and always should be, Amen.  We tell ourselves that telling the truth  isn’t nice, and God wants us to be nice, above all else.  And we devote ourselves to the time honored work of making everyone like us, or at least, not publicly hate us.

And there is again, some value to this. It does  make a lot of people happy!  It’s safe!  Sometimes, it’s even helpful!  But is it what we are actually called to do?  Or are we still just performing for whoever wanders by our door, and not pointing to our wider message, not living our new reality.

Because we’re meant to be tiny little  outposts of God’s new world, each of us, and all of us together.   And this is a calling that will, at times, require us to be seen as not nice, and will confuse and befuddle people and may even make them angry.   But we’re called to live and proclaim the wide message of God’s redeeming work in the world to everyone, even if that gets us in trouble sometimes.  We’re meant to play our part in the drama of creation,and recreation that God is working out in the world, with our individual talents and strengths, and quirks and weaknesses, and foibles.  Each of us.   All of us.

Jesus can heal people.  You and I have proclaiming to do.

There are some things you experience, and you immediately think, “Yea, and verily! This shall be a sermon!”  (And then, you immediately vow to stop watching so much Downton Abbey, because it’s making you talk funny.)

For me, Into the Woods was one of those experiences, and I’m only amazed it took me ten (!) years to write a sermon about it.

Here is the sermon:

January 29, 2012

Epiphany 4, Year B

Mark 1:21-28

The musical “Into the Woods” tells the familiar fairy tale stories of

Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and her prince, Jack and his

beanstalk, and a baker in search of a child. All mixed together and put to

Sonheim’s music. Everyone pursues their wishes into the woods, crossing

paths as they go, their stories faithfully narrated by a trusty narrator, until,

as expected, everyone gets their happily ever after ending.

And hooray! Everyone sings and dances as they celebrate the fairy-tale

truism that the good have been rewarded, the naughty have been

punished, and those who sought their wishes have gotten what they

wanted, and the story is over.

The only hint that this might not actually be the end of the story, is the sight

of a beanstalk rising up into the sky, a figure of a giant descending, and the

narrator shouting, “to be continued!” as the curtain falls.

On the end of act 1.

Apparently, this was not enough of a hint for one preview audience, and this group

of senior citizens departed, all excited over this delightful, but short, new

show they had seen, before the director chased them to the parking lot and

brought them back so they could see the second Act.

Which is where it really gets good. The first act is about familiar stories of

getting what you want: the second act is about the consequences to

everything and everyone around you when you get what you want.

And that’s the part that we have the most trouble dealing with. Whether it’s

fairy tales, politics, sports, or whatever it is, we have a hard time

comprehending that the world is constructed like a pond, and actions ripple

outward– they don’t stay magically confined to one person or place. Throw

a rock into the pond, and the ripples extend on and on. The consequences

ripple out in all directions. You, me, rock, pond, water…

The world, as it turns out, is profoundly interconnected.

And so, when Jesus comes along, and starts talking to demons, like in

Mark tonight, remember that rock thrown in the water, and remember the

beanstalk rising in the sky. Because the reality that the world is in fact

interconnected and intertwined is something we tend to struggle with on a

good day, never mind when we are also trying to wrap our heads around

the good vs. evil stuff.

Jesus has come into Capernaum, which is sort of his home base in the

Galilee. He heads into the synagogue and starts teaching. In response to

his teaching, a man who is described as “demon-infected” comes in, and

the demons start yelling at Jesus.

“what have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to

destroy us? I know who you are– the son of the Most High.”

Its this weird quirk in Mark that the demons always recognize Jesus, when

no one else does, and also that Jesus himself really doesn’t want people to

know who he is– it’s the messianic secret.

It’s also this weird quirk, that upon recognizing him, the demon asks “Are

you here to destroy us?”

Now, there are a lot of ways to parse these stories of exorcisms in the

gospels. First century schizophrenia, some sort of mental illness, actual

demonic possession, or an elaborate metaphor that the writer of Mark

thinks is instructive. All of those explanations Work, sort of, more or less,

but as is usually the case when you start worrying about factual accuracy

over truth in story, they miss the big picture. All tree bark, and no woods.

But ultimately, there are two things at work here– big picture. The idea that

evil exists, and that evil is systemic, and can’t be so easily isolated.

And we know that evil exists. I doubt hearing me say that is a surprise to

anyone. Evil exists when people are made to suffer, when humans are

abused, when the goodness of creation is destroyed and shamed, when

the hope that is born in each of us is snuffed out by what we experience.

Evil exists– evil is what works against the will of God for a good and whole

creation.

And that’s tricky, because that’s not something that can be personified,

isolated, and easily eliminated. Hitler was evil, but Hitler didn’t pull off the

Holocaust by himself. Slavery was evil, but who, particularly, should we

blame for that? The slave owners, or the rest of the country who bought

the goods produced by the slaves so cheaply?

Whenever we start to believe that we can destroy all evil, just utterly

destroy this one person, group of people, this one idea, and it will all be

fine, and we’ll all be safe forever, then we have forgotten that the line between good

and evil runs not between people, not between political parties, or

ideologies, but straight through every human heart. And Jesus alone is in

charge of all that.

And in fact, that’s not what Jesus did. Jesus in these stories, confronts the

demons. He names them, he calls them what they are– evil that afflicts the

creatures of God.

But he always heals the person. These are as much healing stories as

they are exorcisms. Jesus always sees the child of God within and

redeems it.

Because ultimately, no evil is so bad that it can withstand God. No evil is

so bad that it cannot be redeemed by Christ. The demons always lose.

Always. They always get cast out in the end.

When we call out the evil we see, when we confront it, we are taking part in

the work of God that’s already been accomplished and done.

So no, we are never able to save the world, we’re never able to destroy all

evil, but we don’t have to– God’s done that bit. All we have to do is shine

the light of Christ.

And when we do that, as small as it may seem, and as insignificant as it

may feel, we’ve begun to participate in God’s own story in the world.  And nothing on heaven and nothing on earth, changes the way that story ends.

Amen.