CAUTION? WORKING GOD HERE AND NOW!
Mark 6:1-13, with II Corinthians 12:2-10 in the b.g.
Pentecost 5b, July 5, 2009
Life is amazing. Reflect on this truth for a moment (Pause). Today we come to celebrate the life that God gives Rylan Whitfield and Henry Bassman. They are young. They haven't been recorded much in the annals of history, at least yet. Nevertheless if you were to speak to their parents or to their grandparents asking if their lives matter you would discover that in many ways their young lives have already brought new life, new ways of being, thinking and loving to many around them. Today, thanks be to God, Henry and Rylan are being baptized.
Life is amazing in so many ways. I remember first seeing Michael Jackson perform with 4 of his brothers when he was only 12 years old. He was the star of that show not just because he was cute or the youngest. Michael Jackson was the star because he was gifted! Even as a 12 year old he could sing. And man could he dance. On stage he had a presence and poise that exceeded many, regardless of age. As Michael's voice matured, the exposure to his talent increased and his fame began to explode exponentially. He became known as the king of pop. I don't think this was an exaggeration. Wherever I went this last week and a half Michael Jackson's music filled the air.
But life is also difficult. Michael Jackson died at the age of 50 in many ways a tormented human being. I do not know the details. I suspect few do. But all of Michael's gifts, and they were considerable, all of his wealth and it was substantial – and his millions of fans especially those closest to him who truly loved him, did not, perhaps could not prevent him from self destructing. Again, there may have been many reasons for this. Whatever they are, Michael Jackson's early death is incredibly sad.
At times life is incredibly difficult. We all have desires and dreams. Many of them are important, pushing us to work, to develop, to experience others. Yet even as our dreams or desires are fulfilled, perhaps especially then, they can consume us.
Years ago when our own children were very young, I had this burning desire to protect them. I wanted to shield them from anyone or anything that might harm them, from the many dangers that just are: speeding drivers, others who would take advantage of them to further their own desires; even from a culture that says that one must be thin or successful or popular to have any "worth". Often such efforts bordered on the desperate. Regardless of all my efforts, of all your efforts, many things wash over our lives that are beyond our control. We cannot protect our children from all such dangers – perhaps even ultimately from any.
Having just spent time with two close friends who are critically ill and still in what most of us would call early middle age, two people who have worked in disciplined ways at maintaining both physical and emotional health – and one of whom has striven to obey God in all the aspects of his life, I can attest from heart felt experience that life is difficult. One moment everything seems stable. Then, almost in the next instant everything changes.
Jesus had been spending time with many who were sick, even dying. He entered into their lives by touching them physically, emotionally and spiritually. He refused to keep his distance but cared about them by investing himself in them. Now he comes to his hometown. He goes to worship at the local synagogue – a place where he had probably spent time every week for much of his life. The people there knew him. They knew his mother, his siblings. They knew that Jesus came from lower-class folk. Those people who knew him also were convinced like so many people today that there is only so much to go around. So they believed that lower class people were lower class for a reason. They believed that lower class people were only capable of so much. Often these people themselves were part of the so-called lower class.
So they asked, "How can Jesus teach like that? How can Jesus quote scripture giving such an incredible interpretation? Today we are not at all sure that Jesus was literate. Having all of this in their experience, embedded in their minds, these local people took offense at Jesus. They do not trust what he says, or what he does. They are not open to the gifts that he brought to so many others just a few days earlier: a freedom from what had held them captive before - mentally, emotionally, spiritually. These local people didn't see God working in Jesus right there in their synagogue that day. They thought they knew Jesus because they were familiar with his siblings and his mother. But their familiarity and their accompanying preconceptions of limits impeded their perception of God working right there and right then.
What are your preconceptions of God? High and lifted up? Absent? Only interested in spiritual things? Not concerned with peoples' food and drink, income or expenses, or the environment, politics or our sexuality? Oh, really!
Have we not heard, do we not know that God is the Creator of the universe: all creatures, all things, all people, including you and me, Rylan and Henry? Have we not heard, do we not the incredible claim that is at the very center of all who have been marked with the cross of Christ? We are children of God. This same God, the creator of the universe, chooses to take on flesh, to become a human being in Jesus of Nazareth. In our baptism, through that seemingly simple even foolish thing – of some water being poured or dabbed on us, or immersing us, accompanied by some words, "I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit", we are joined to Jesus Christ's life, death and resurrection. Yes, in our baptism we are joined with all others who have gone before us and been so marked, so washed, so immersed in Him. We dare to claim that through this seemingly simple act, often carried out before any conscious understanding on our part, we are chosen by God as God's own sons and daughters. And we further claim that through the action of God that which is self centered, insecure, apathetic, hateful, filled or controlled by fear is being drowned in an ongoing way. In all of this we believe that God is birthing within us and through us a new person again and again and again. Make no mistake, this new emerging person is the result of God's Spirit's work. This is the Spirit that came upon those early disciples after Jesus had died and been raised. This Spirit works to give us love, trust of God, openness to new possibilities. This Spirit works to open our eyes to see as Paul did that even in the midst of our mortality, our own destructive desires, that the love of God in Christ still comes through. Or as Abraham Lincoln once supposedly said, " I am often driven to my knees by the realization that I have nowhere else to go".
Life is amazing. It is a gift from God. Life is also more than difficult. We human beings are mortals. We suffer, often as a result of our own doing but sometimes also as a result of being part of the human fabric that is broken. In that fabric we are bandied about by the realities of good and evil engaging in a cosmic battle. At such times all of our feelings, hopes and dreams are seemingly dashed. We may feel and even think that thee is no hope. But then we are profoundly mistaken.
For Christ Jesus has come. He has come historically. And He continues to come through the work of His Spirit reminding us, pointing us to His life, His suffering and death, His resurrection. Will we trust Him? Will we trust that His love, his death and resurrection are for us, for all people, for all creation? Will we trust that God's reign is being worked out even in the midst of our weakness and our pain? Do we see that even now God calls us to be open to parts of ourselves dying, so that new parts of us can be born anew in Him?
You see something amazing is happening right here and now. God promises this. Will we see it? Will we be open to God? Will we go out with Christ's love, Christ's courage to speak truth in hope – to serve – yes, to be weak and vulnerable, trusting that even through whatever happens God is doing something amazing. God is ushering in new life, now and forever through Jesus Christ, who suffers, dies and is raised! Lord, we believe. Help our unbelief to see you working right here, right now! Amen.