– a sermon for Sunday July 5, 2009
at First Congregational UCC,
Las Vegas, Nevada
– based on Mark 6: 1 – 13
Prayer – May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
I like good sermons. They come in all different styles – some are fairly expository –that is– talking about a text and laboriously explaining it. Some are really enthusiastic – like last week the sermon in the opening worship service of the General Synod was done by Otis Moss III who is clearly a black preacher and he got wound up and excited and executed his sermon with great enthusiasm. One time when I was privileged to attend the annual gathering called the festival of homiletics – my favorite preacher was a man named John Claypool who was a professor who had grown up in real fundamentalist traditions and then became an Episcopal priest. He spoke in a measured manner but with an earnestness that was unmistakable. Unfortunately John Claypool died a few months later. I do have recordings from that event and from time to time listen to some of those sermons. They were done by the best in the preaching traditions and they are truly memorable and they are worthy as guides on how to preach well.
Among the challenges of doing a sermon is to look at the text and to let it seep into who you are and then to let its impact kind of roll out of your mouth. It is very challenging to be responsible in interpreting the word of God for the people of God. It is also challenging to give your sermon a name. During this process I noticed that there is a book entitled – Elvis, Willie, Jesus and Me. (you know the characters - Elvis Pressley, Willie Nelson, Jesus and each of us – that would make a catchy title. I thought that could be an interesting source of some church stories. Some of you who may be hard core baseball fans who were around in the 50’s and 60’s might appreciate a title like Willie, the Duke and the Mick and Jesus. I am not sure that any of those three gentlemen would have represented themselves as particularly godly, but they were heroes who were followed by baseball fans including myself. They were good players and were well known nationally because they played for three good teams who were in the media capital of the country when the Dodgers and Duke Snider were in Brooklyn, when Willie Mayes shagged balls and hit homers in Manhattan with the Giants, and when Mickey Mantle roamed center field in the Bronx in the house that Ruth built. I am not sure that you could isolate three characters who are quite like those three these days – maybe Albert Pujols in St. Louis, Alex Rodriquez in New York, and Manny Ramirez in Los Angeles? Albert is a devout Christian, and these days we may have some questions about Alex and Manny . I chose rather to call a message for today Servants, misfits, and Martyrs. I have had a book for a few years which has those words as its title. It tells the story of theologians and Christians who were extraordinary in their impact and in the ways they chose to carry out their message. I am fascinated by these stories and wish to share with you short vignettes of two of them including Clarence Jordan and Millard Fuller.
Visiting these stories of faith is a way of turning our attention to the positive effects of our faith. I offer that we should focus our energy on positive things which we may do in the service of others and pay attention to the poor and outcasts after the example and teaching of Jesus. In recent years it has been popular to use the letters WWJD – to mean - what would Jesus do - as we face difficult situations. I am not a fan of that movement – I believe Jesus came here to save us and did that well -- but that is not our calling. Our calling is to serve our world and especially those who have great needs. Sometimes I like to say what would Jesus drive! And speculate that if he came today maybe he would drive a simple hybrid or a small electric scooter. We might like to have a strong image of Jesus as one who might come charging into town in a Hummer or a big SUV which in our culture symbolize success and worldly power. The fact is that he came riding a borrowed animal when he rode in to celebrate a high point of his ministry a short time before his crucifixion.
The scriptures that we shared a few minutes ago start out with a story of a visit of Jesus to his hometown. It offers us the truth that people in his hometown were skeptical about the son of the carpenter who they doubtless remembered as a little kid who worked with his father at times. They probably remembered other things that would forever freeze in their minds an image that detracted from the authority of the Jesus whom we worship. The passage offers an exposition of how things are in our world, about how difficult it is at times to recognize people for whom they are rather than through a lens which only allows certain images to come through. Often the image which is allowed is not an accurate one.
I was watching the proceedings of General Synod and was struck by our President John Thomas’ story about sharing DVD’s from the 2007 general synod with his mother. She watched one a day and would tell John about how wonderful each of the speakers was. She especially expressed her admiration of Bill Moyers’ moving speech. Now John knew that the next DVD was of a sermon by him. He wondered what her reaction would be to his sermon. The next day when he spoke to his mother she remarked about his haircut and told him that she didn’t remember it being quite like it was that day.-- Isn’t that the way it is. I remember that when my mother was still alive I would go visit her and within a few minutes I would feel like a little kid and she would move into her role as a mother. I know that I think somehow that persons in my past should be as I remember them from high school or college or seminary and when I see them after many years have gone by, I often find it difficult to recognize them.
We are told in our scripture that the only thing Jesus managed to do in his own town was to lay his hands on some sick folks and to cure a few people and he was amazed at the unbelief of the people in his hometown. From there he moved out with his disciples to nearby territories and sent them out. It seems apparent that he really did expect more rejection for as he sent out the disciples in pairs he prepared them and told them to brush the dust off their feet when people don’t accept their testimony.
One of the interesting instructions to the disciples was that they take little with them – in fact he told them that the only acceptable items were a staff, sandals and a single tunic – he told them not to carry bread, and no bag, and no money in their belts. That is pretty light. The Rev. Peter Marty interprets the passage as "Provisions for the journey can substitute for faith if we're not careful," "He just doesn't want people disappearing beneath the weight of their treasures when they have something as important as the good news to live and share" (The Lectionary Commentary). Eugene Peterson translates Jesus' words this way: "Don't think you need a lot of extra equipment for this. You are the equipment" (The Message). Don’t you like that – YOU ARE THE EQUIPMENT.
I offer to you a few stories of people who set a terrific example of how it is supposed to be done. They are stories that offer us some guidance about how we may serve the mission of Jesus.
One of God’s wonderful modern servants was a gentleman by the name of Clarence Jordan. He was an amazing man who formed a community in Americus, Georgia known as Koinonia Farms. Clarence’s community included other people and was what today we would call inclusive. It went along peacefully in its early years until the era of the civil rights movement in the south. In the early 1950’s Clarence petitioned President Eisenhower requesting that the federal government intervene. President Eisenhower refused and rather referred the matter to the Governor of Georgia. The governor was a staunch segregationist. After that, Clarence got to experience the full blown wrath of those who didn’t like the idea that our society should be integrated. Clarence was harassed and even beaten. Yet the community persisted.
Among other things Clarence was a biblical scholar – early in his life he taught Greek and New Testament at the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky for a number of years. He used those skills to produce the translation of parts of the New Testament into what we know as the Cotton Patch versions of the various books and used nicknames and used the names of towns in Georgia instead of biblical place names. His versions made these books come alive. They are regarded as authentic translations because of the skills of Clarence who crafted them so that they were true to the Greek manuscripts.
In his later life Clarence always dressed in overalls so that it was clear that he was a farmer and a person who adored and followed Jesus with every fiber of his being.
Another person who is an example for us is Millard Fuller. I think of him as a miracle worker – as one who in his own way walked on water. You see he had the conviction that it was possible to eliminate substandard housing in this country. He died about 6 months ago – but in the space of time from the mid 1970’s until 2009, he created Habitat for Humanity which he led for many years. When he left that organization he formed the Fuller Center for Housing. Those two organizations resulted in the placement of about 300,000 families into homes which they helped to build or rehabilitate. Habitat has worked in many countries and served all kinds of people all over the world. Think of that number – to me that is as great of a miracle as I can imagine – creating 300,000 places for people to live in safely using mostly volunteer labor. The long term effect of his work includes the fact that because of his inspiration other organizations are engaged in similar activities.
Millard got to this position in a bit of a circuitous route. He was as a young person a leader in the youth organization of the Congregational Christian Churches in the southern region of the country. He became educated and was a lawyer and a businessman. At one point in the early 60’s his accountant informed him that he was worth a million dollars. For many of us that would be a cause for great celebration. The creation of his wealth was done by working very hard and neglecting his wife and family. For Millard his accumulated wealth became a wakeup call - his wife, Linda, informed him that she intended to leave him. And she went off to New York City to get away from him and her family and to think things through. Millard followed her and they spent time seeking the counsel of the Rev. Lawrence Durgin of Broadway United Church of Christ in New York. They made a joint decision to live more simply and their marriage and children were more important than working to accumulate wealth. Before they had left New York they began the process of giving away many of their assets. Eventually they disposed of most of their worth and sought ideas for what their future would look like. They lived for a while with Clarence Jordan at Koinonia Farms. They also spent a few years in Zaire in Africa helping with a project there to build simple houses out of clay blocks which they made and designed. After that they returned to the U S and began the work project which became Habitat for Humanity. Millard and Linda lived for many years in housing at the headquarters of Habitat and drew a modest salary. I have told this story to some skeptics to whom these ideas seem very strange. One acquaintances reaction was that he wished he would be around for the fire sale of the assets of a person like Millard. You see while Millard lived for a while in what we might think of as luxury, he was ultimately a misfit in the world of material values and instead became a servant of the least and last among us.
There are others whose stories we could tell – you will have to come another time to hear the rest of the story. There are lots of great stories about servants – about St. Francis, about Mother Teresa, about others who are not that well known – Jean Vanier who started a network of communities called L’Arche where developmentally disabled people live in community paired with dedicated folks who assist them and pay for the support of the communities. They don’t get huge government subsidies. And there is a gentle scholar named Henri Nouwen who had a career teaching at places like Yale and Harvard and spent his last years as a community member in Toronto in partnership with his handicapped friends in a L’Arch community. Nouwen’s writings are still very popular especially among clergy.
These scriptural texts challenge us as they talk about Jesus and his disciple’s healing people. I know that for most of us the healings that are described here are mysterious. When I see these stories I try to accept them and to live as if they were true. On a rational basis I think our difficulty in understanding them is because we have a certain view of reality conditioned by our scientific materialism. We are children of the enlightenment. We mostly live in a culture derived from Western Europe and the approach to life in that part of the world derived from Greek and Roman culture. Well, one of the problems with that is that Christianity in its roots is not a Western religion. Jesus lived in the mid-East and was dark skinned. I am convinced that he was well trained in the learning of his day and conversant with the great thinkers of his world – not all of them were Greeks and Romans. I know the bible doesn’t say that is so – but I think that his teachings say that he was bright and well informed.
I recently have been listening to some audio books and one of them is called a guide to optimum health by Doctor Andrew Weil. In his book I was deeply moved by his story of two female patients who had the immune deficiency disease we call Lupus. One of them fell in love and got married. The other experienced a religious conversion to a conservative Christian group. Both women experienced a remission of their lupus. That was surely a bit of a miracle – Dr. Weil says that he does not have the ability to have his other patients fall in love or to experience unusual religious experiences. I relate these stories because it seems that there are aspects of healing and health that we are not likely to get from our local doctor. Some of the good health may be explained by a positive environment and great relationships. Dr. Weil mentions that one of his observations is that most people have within themselves the ability to heal and have within themselves the desire for health. One of his emphases is to offer his patients some optimism and to tell them about the possibilities that they have rather than being completely cold and clinical.
I leave with you wishes that in your daily lives that you may be able to seek to know Jesus through devotion and service. I wish for you that you may be able to experience the joy of following the one who did so much for us.
In closing on this 4th of July weekend – I share with you the titles of two songs from one of my favorite musician. My favorite musician is a tall wild New Orleans style pianist named Marcia Ball – and among the songs on her most recent album is one called – “Peace love and barbeque” and the final song on that album is entitled- “I wish you well!”
So my wish for each of you this week – is may you may know Peace, that you may always love passionately, and that you may have your fill of Barbeque.
And – I Wish you Well – may you appreciate and enjoy the possibilities of your lives!
Prayer – We offer you thanks, O Lord, for our many blessings. Amen.