The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 21B] - September 27, 2009 (Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29; Mark 9:38-50)

God’s kingdom will come, by hook or by crook! By hook or by crook will the justice and peace in Jesus come on earth and rule throughout eternity. By hook or by crook will God overturn the systems of sin and death that plague us now and usher his creation into eternal life.

First, the crooks, which are played so well by Eldad and Medad this morning in our delightful text from Numbers: Eldad and Medad—maybe not exactly crooks in the strict sense of the term, but certainly two unsuspecting ordinaries with no claim to authority, get hit with the Spirit of God out of all those hundreds of Israelites. All the usual suspects for Spirit-driven leadership, the certified and recognized elders and leaders, are in a confab with Moses to figure out a solution for everyone’s complaining. The Israelites are complaining about the food on this journey, remembering the delicacies of their former slavery, and Moses is complaining about the Israelites, and is one step closer to giving it all up. This huddle of the certified and recognized leaders and elders is God’s attempt to get things back on track, to bring his people into the Holy Land in one piece. But, back in the leadership vacuum at camp, Eldad and Medad get zapped with what is apparently some extra Holy Spirit and they begin to prophesy.

What exactly happens when these crooks start prophesying is not recorded in Scripture. The term “prophesy” could have meant many different things, from giving orders and commands to discerning the proper direction for the whole group. Up until this point, the gift of prophecy through the Spirit had been reserved for Moses as God guided them through the wilderness. Whatever Eldad and Medad do gets Joshua all worked up. And like a panicky and eager-to-please associate pastor, Joshua runs off to the tent to let Moses know of their shenanigans. Yet Moses’ surprising response shows that God chooses to work through the unlikely uncertified ordinaries from time to time. "Would that all the LORD’S people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!” For Moses knows that God’s kingdom will come, by hook and especially by crook. Even though they’re unknown and uncertified, Eldad and Medad are simply animated by God’s Spirit, prophesying in the way they are led to do. Unconcerned with safeguarding his own sphere of influence, and unassuming in his role as leader, Moses shows an awareness that all the peoples’ Spirit-given gifts have a role to play in God’s kingdom.

There is a similar scene with crooks in the gospel text, when the anxious and eager-to-please disciples come running to Jesus complaining of the shenanigans of some other person who was casting out demons in Jesus’ name that they didn’t know. “Let him be,” comes Jesus’ surprising response, “for his gifts are not working against us.” Jesus, too, knows that the works of God’s justice and grace will be embraced and performed by people even he won’t know. In fact, Jesus points out, anyone who does so much as gives them a cup of water because they bear Christ’s name, is participating in the in-breaking of the kingdom. God’s kingdom will come, yes, even by crook.

It is an important message for the disciples as well as for the church of today, when unlikely crooks like you and me are baptized and sent out to spread the word. It is an important message for a church of today which often finds itself drawn into competition and conflict with itself and with denominations and congregations all over the world. Modern-day Christian missionary expert Lesslie Newbigin phrases Jesus’ and Moses’ admonishment for the Church in his book The Open Secret in this way: “If we love the light and walk in the light, we will also rejoice in the light wherever we find it—even the smallest gleams of it in the surrounding darkness” (Eerdmans, 1995).

I remember that look of rejoicing on the face of an elderly woman who sat with us one sunny day in a plain brick church with open-air windows in the far interior of China. I was with a group of seminarians on a trip with Luther Seminary to China and Hong Kong, fulfilling our academic requirement for a cross-cultural experience. We had been flown into some of the most remote regions of inner Yunnan province, an area near the border with Myanmar. The villages we were visiting were comprised of impoverished ethnic groups who had been converted to Christianity over a century before. Our guide had informed us that we were likely the first westerners since those missionary days to cross the threshold of their villages. The woman I remember was probably in her seventies or eighties. She was sitting in the church with us as our host, along with a dozen or more of her companion villagers who had been selected to share their experience of being Christian during years of isolation and oppression by the government.

We had been told plenty about our hosts before we showed up, but I’m not quite sure what had been told to them about us because when it became apparent that we were, in fact, fellow Christians visiting from America, this woman’s face lit up with joy, and a bit of puzzlement. She immediately began to shout out at us, looking back and forth between her church leader, the interpreter, and us. “She is utterly amazed…and overjoyed” the interpreter explained, striving hard to convey her surprise and shock. “All these years she has lived in this village, faithfully following her Lord Jesus. She has heard many stories about America and how great it is, but only now has she learned that there are baptized people in America, too…just like her!”

What faith! What surprise! Not one, but two sets of crooks in this remote backwater, gathering in the name of the same beloved Light. "Would that all the LORD’S people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!”

For all these years, God’s Spirit has been pouring onto people all over the place, from poor Eldad and Medad to the inner wilds of China. An important part of our task as disciples, is not to stifle the unmistakable evidence of Christ’s light in others, but to rejoice when we see God’s acts of mercy and sacrifice being done in Christ’s name.

But then, at that point, Jesus’ admonishments to his disciples take a macabre turn. God’s kingdom will also come by hook—like the hook of a pirate who has slashed off his hand, or the patch that covers a gouged-out eye. Or the hook that appears to remove a terrible performance from the stage. Sounding somewhat negative, Jesus further emphasizes the seriousness of their own gospel ministry with a series of rather violent commands. Hanging millstones around their necks for drowning. Cutting off limbs when they sin too much. Tearing out eyes. Being thrown into the pit of hell, “where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.” Come to think of it, these high-price demands are probably the kind of stuff Joshua had in mind for crooks like Eldad and Medad on account of their shenanigans, not as a warning for the elite, religious, certified few of Jesus or Moses.

While, on the one hand, Jesus wants his disciples in every day and age to be aware of the Spirit-led works in his name both within and without one’s immediate gospel community, Jesus is also clear about the unity and sanctity of the disciples’ own message. God’s kingdom will come by hook, and if there is someone or some faction within the disciples’ community that is engaged in something that is directly contrary to the gospel message, it must be addressed. The methods mentioned here may sound a little drastic, but the point is we bear a responsibility in paying attention to our message, of being clear about who Jesus is, for example, what his death and resurrection mean, and what the nature of repentance and salvation is.

The arrival of God’s kingdom—which comes in Christ to redeem a broken creation—is not exactly dependant on us, but yet we do play an important part in it by not setting stumbling blocks for others to believe. It is Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection from the tomb that leads to the complete up-ending and re-making of a sinful world, but the community that follows him becomes the primary vessel for that world’s new beginning. As such, we are to have salt in ourselves, and be at peace with one another. Our community’s life together is important.

Here Jesus mentions salt not so much for the way it brings flavor, but for its preservation qualities (Virginia ham, anyone?). Part of what the community of the baptized is to do—through its diversity and its giftedness, as well as through its quarrels and missteps, is to help preserve the gospel message and the peace it offers. And we do this not principally for our own sake or our own blessed life together, but for the sake of the world. For the sake of the little ones who will see evidence in us of God’s grace. We maintain our gospel-saltiness for the sake of those who have not heard about Jesus yet, but whom God fully intends to have in his kingdom.

And so, even Jesus seems to realize that separating people or even groups from the community may at some times be necessary, even at great cost to the whole community. I should think those times would be few and far between, and undertaken with great forethought and concern, for the community is never the same after it happens. I do think it is worth noting, especially in these particularly tricky times for our denomination, when many people are talking of splitting or transferring membership or lopping off benevolence for mission support to the wider church that, in Jesus’ lesson, the state of the body that goes on to enter the kingdom is not whole and sound. The part that is preserved is still maimed and lame and partially blinded. Everyone suffers the pain that ensues when a member is severed from the body, and the part that survives no doubt bleeds. So often we’re prone to think our moral purity is what comprises our saltiness, when in reality, the ways in which we treat each other in our disagreements can cause us become a bigger stumbling block for those yet to believe.

In all of this, the message stands: by hook or by crook God’s kingdom will come, because it is God’s kingdom. Ultimately God loves the world far too much to let our sin or our stubbornness obstruct the path. By hook or by crook, God decides, will every last child hear of his forgiveness and will his people reach the Promised Land. “It is by hook or by crook”, God must think, as he then watches his own Son’s body, tormented by crooks, be beaten and pierced on the cross. “By hook or by crook,” God declares, as his body is passed around and his blood is poured to the very ones who should be fitted for a millstone. By hook or by crook, God pronounces—with every last Eldad and every last Medad and every last bickering Joshua and every last woman in the dark of China boldly bearing gifts of the Spirit in God’s glorious plan to take over the world in love.

Thanks be to God!

(photo: ethnic Tai group in traditional garb welcoming a missionary delegation, 2000)

The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 18B] - September 6, 2009 (Mark 7:24-37)

If there is one thing I have learned about living in my new city, Richmond, it is that crossing the James River is a big deal. Nevermind that the River has been traversable since the Mayo Bridge on 14th street was completed in the late 1700’s, or that both sides of the city are virtually the same in just about every way. Nevermind that the beloved Ukrops can be found both north and south of the River. To lifelong Richmonders and newcomers alike, such a big deal is made about going to the other side it is as if they are venturing into Indian territory, the untamed wastes of the land “over yonder.”

Conveniently, this attitude is familiar to me, for Pittsburgh, the city from which we relocated, is divided by three rivers, forming three regions that are, in many ways, psychologically cut off from one another. When Melinda tried to order our wedding cake from her favorite bakery in our little borough of Pittsburgh, the baker immediately ripped up the order in front of her once Melinda told her that it would be delivered to the reception site downtown. “Ma’am, I’m sorry to say that Mr. Barkus, the bakery owner, doesn’t let his cakes cross rivers,” the bakery attendant announced matter-of-factly, and then shrugged. No reason was given, and, rather disappointed, Melinda left the store to look for a bakery on the other side of the rivers.

Oh, we laugh, but we are very good at drawing boundaries, aren’t we? It’s one thing when we joke about people on the other side of the river in our own town but really stops being funny when we think people should stay there, on the “other side of the tracks,” or in that below-standard school district, or behind that concrete and barbwire fence. Our playful ribbing about people from another neck of the woods can turn hurtful quickly, and the river—or the language barrier, or the social boundary—becomes a border we’ll never cross.

Well, if there’s one thing we learn about Jesus in the gospel lesson this morning, it’s that he’s not afraid to cross the river! Jesus has left his familiar territory in Galilee and ventured out to the untamed wastes of Gentile territory. Being extraordinarily specific, Mark, the gospel writer, places him in the region of Tyre, Sidon and the Decapolis. Normally, to the modern reader, such geographical descriptions might seem like superfluous detail, but for the ancient reader, this was newsworthy. If you try to map out Jesus’ route in the seventh chapter of Mark, you will notice two things. First of all, Jesus is not in Israel anymore. He is delivering his cake far beyond any region that has ever been Israel, or even marginally so.

Secondly, Jesus’ itinerary really doesn’t make much sense. To return from Tyre “by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis” hardly makes any geographical sense. It’s like saying you’ll return from Norfolk by way of the Outer Banks towards the Chesapeake Bay in the region of the Valley. I mean, I suppose it could be done, but it sure wouldn’t be a direct route. Scholars have long argued that Mark got something wrong, that he was altogether unfamiliar with the topography of ancient Israel and its neighbors. But I think the point doesn’t matter, and the peculiar, meandering nature of Jesus’ travels proves Mark’s point: Jesus has crossed the river. He has left his comfort zone. Or, to put it differently, he is showing us that his comfort zone is larger than we think it is.

That’s the deeper story of what’s going on here in these texts, both in his testy exchange with the Syrophoenician woman, and with the deaf-mute in the Decapolis. Neither of them is from Jesus’ Jewish homeland—the woman is explicitly named as a “Gentile,” and it is entirely likely that the deaf-mute and the deaf-mute’s companions are not Jewish, as well. In both cases, we see example of people who would have little reason to look to Jesus for healing become exemplars of faith. In fact, some translations of this text have the Syrophoenician woman address Jesus as “Lord,” rather than as “sir,” something that would have clearly sounded strange to the ears of Jesus’ fellow travelers who are probably just thrilled that he started delivering his cakes to the unclean folk on the other side of the river. After ignoring Jesus’ initial rebuke of her, she responds with faith and humility, confident that he is the Savior in whom she may trust.

Perhaps even more surprising than this conversation between Jesus and the Gentile woman is the miracle of the healing of the deaf-mute. As can be heard from our prophet Isaiah this morning, the arrival of God’s kingdom will be marked by the “eyes of the blind being opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, and “the tongue of the speechless singing for joy.” The people of ancient Israel had long been looking for these specific signs to mark the arrival of God’s kingdom: the granting of sight to the blind and, especially, the granting of speech to the dumb. It was the ultimate turnaround, you see: those who could not otherwise be understood by anyone could finally respond in praise to the Creator, the highest form of speech around. Therefore, in the healing of the deaf-mute, we have the most profound illustration of God’s in-breaking kingdom to date occurring outside of God’s earthly kingdom of Israel.

And the crowd goes crazy. Even against Jesus’ commands, the Decapolis by-standers are overly impressed: “He has done everything well. He even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak!” Can you hear their sense of awe? “He even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.” Even here, on the other side of the river. Even here, demons are cast out, tongues are loosed, and Jesus’ lordship is proclaimed to the nations.

The news from Jesus and the news about Jesus are things around which boundaries cannot be drawn. Everyone will hear about it. Everyone will be able to speak about it, even those we may not now understand. And what Jesus sighs to the deaf-mute is what God in Jesus is saying to the whole world: “Ephphatha! Be opened! You, with all your boundaries…be opened!” Be opened to what you can see and learn in Tyre and the Decapolis and from the people at the margins, from people you think are unworthy and unimportant. Be opened to the power of God’s kingdom to transform and renew us in spite of our shortcomings and dumb sinfulness. Be opened to the great life of baptism—where we are made one by Jesus’greatest miracle and where the last great terrifying barrier is crossed for good. Maybe that is what this venture into Tyre and Sidon is—a foreshadowing of Jesus’ journey on the cross, a prophecy, of sorts, that with Jesus as Lord, no part of our existence will be too distant for God’s grace to reign there.

As you’ve heard by now, next Sunday is Rally Day. We will kick off another year of Sunday School and youth ministry and music programs at Epiphany Lutheran Church. Those of you who haven’t taken the chance to see what happens at our Sunday School, both in the adult classes and the children’s classes, are missing the chance to “be opened” to the wideness of God’s reign, because that is what Christy Huffman and Kevin Barger and the dozens of Sunday School teachers and youth group advisors and musicians are doing every Sunday. They, and others, are working hard to “open us up” to the love and healing relationships in Jesus’ name. “Ephphatha,” they say each week, as they open up the Bibles and open up their craft boxes, and open up their instrument cases as they open up our hearts to the surprising ways God works and moves in our world.

When I was in Sunday School as a kid, our classes were grouped according to age (which I suppose is another boundary, but it helps when it comes to teaching). Because we were grouped according to age, however, we had Sophia in our class. Sophia was, technically-speaking, two weeks older than I was, but Sophia was severely mentally retarded, and had been since birth. She actually had the mental ability of a two-or-three year old, and could not speak intelligibly to us, but she was in our class and we learned alongside of each other. Her behavior was erratic and jerky, and we often interpreted her actions as aggressive, although they probably were not meant that way. Our Sunday School teachers consistently helped to mold us, as Jesus would have done, into one class. I often felt very uncomfortable with Sophia, especially in my younger teenage years because, truth be told, I was insecure, and she just seemed too different.

It wasn’t until I was much older when I realized how profoundly formative and rare that experience was. In every other aspect of society, people like Sophia were separated and sequestered from me. My middle school, for example, had separate classes for handicapped and mentally-challenged people, as they called them. They ate at the far tables of the lunchroom—over there in Decapolis and Tyre—so as not to disturb the rest of us. Sophia actually went to that middle school with me. Occasionally I would pass her in the hall, and I doubt she even recognized me. But in church, in Sunday School, we were in the same class. In worship, we ate at the same table, took crumbs from the same hand. In the world, we were often on opposite sides of the river. But in the church, we were together. Jesus himself had grouped us that way in baptism and had given us a Sunday School teacher who was with tender mercy constantly saying, in many and various ways, “Ephphatha! Be opened. “Be opened to the gifts of one another.”

That is what she said…and that is what we hear. And that is what the community of Jesus is supposed to do: proclaiming his power and traipsing wherever he’ll take us in his mission to open the world up…we, the community that crosses rivers.

Thanks be to God!

(image: ruins of Mayo covered Bridge, Richmond, VA )

The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 15B] - August 16, 2009 (John 6:51-58)

© Peter Menzel www.menzelphoto.com from the book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats

After four consecutive weeks of readings from the sixth chapter of John and being reminded that Jesus is the Bread of Life, I feel as though we are never going to get the chance to digest anything else. At this point it just seems like bread, bread, and more bread.

It reminds me of my astonishment years ago at my young cousin, Amanda, when she was barely 18 months old, and we went to visit her family in Germany. In restaurant after restaurant, meal after meal, Amanda used her infant grasp of vocabulary to order the same thing, over and over: bread and butter. Occasionally she would branch out and try something small from someone’s plate, but for the majority of that trip she seemed to subsist on nothing but bread—mind you it was good, hearty, fresh-baked European bread—but bread nonetheless. Bread, bread and more bread. I had never seen anything like it, and wondered whether her health would be the worse for it.

And yet, to our unpleasant surprise, we find out that this is how so much of the world survives. As a Christmas gift this past year I received a large coffee-table cookbook entitled Hungry Planet: How the World Eats, which is the result of a huge project by a husband and wife team of photojournalists who wanted to create a culinary atlas of the world at a time when the world’s food habits are changing dramatically. To do this, the authors ate dinners with 30 families in 24 different countries and then documented it. Each family in the book is photographed in their kitchen (or whatever room or fire-pit that happens to function as their kitchen) surrounded by all the food they would typically consume in one week. Each family also shares one of their typical family recipes. I introduce to you the Aboubakar family of the Breidjing refugee camp in Chad, population 30,000: In a typical week, over 90% of the Aboubakar’s diet by weight comes from grains and other starchy foods that are rationed out by various aid organizations. Here is the recipe that the mother, D’jimia offers for us to cook in our own homes. Aiysh, it is called; “bread” in Arabic.
• Approximately one pound of millet flour
• 2 quarts of water
• A dab of vegetable oil
Bring water to boil in a pot.
Add millet flour in small amounts until it begins to thicken and bubble.
Stir constantly, pulling mixture toward you in the pot until it holds together in a gelatinous mass.
Press mixture into an oiled bowl to make round shape. Invert onto plate or tray.
Serve.

Maybe I’ll cook it for you some time if you come over, since I have the recipe.

The Aboubakars eat aiysh two times a day, most of the time by itself. They, like the thousands of others in refugee camps and food-poor areas across this hungry planet, subsist on something like aiysh not because it’s the only thing on the menu they like, but because there simply is nothing else to eat. And one must only look at the rounded bellies and sunken eyes of malnutrition to know that bread isn’t really enough. Funny thing, then, that aiysh is also an Arabic word for “life.”

So, you can imagine my wonderment when I hear Jesus say over and over again that he is the bread of life who is come down from heaven. Images of pots of bubbling, gelatinous aiysh and a rosy-cheeked infant clutching buttery toast in each hand pop into my head as Jesus makes the further outlandish claims that his flesh—no less—is true bread and his blood is true drink.

And that he gives this bread for the life of the world.

And that the one who eats it will never be hungry.

And that the one who eats it will live forever.

Like the disciples and the Jewish leaders who have followed him to hear more about the bread that was multiplied for the thousands, I am drawn in to dispute: Surely Jesus does not mean his body? How can he be bread and drink? Will he suffice? Are we missing something in the translation?

And yet it seems we do understand him correctly, for the church’s practice from the very beginning included at the center of its own life this exact practice of eating and drinking elements which give eternal life. Justin Martyr, a Christian leader writes in the second century something about Holy Communion that we all could recognize, explaining that those who worship God in Christ “do not receive these things as common bread and common drink, but as Jesus Christ our Savior who became incarnate by God’s word and took flesh and blood for our salvation" (1 Apology, 65).

Just as bread is an essential menu item for most of the world, Jesus’ own body and blood is a staple for the community of the baptized. A photograph of them around their supper table with their rations for one week would depict them with nothing but a small plate of what looks like pita bread and a cup of what looks to be wine. They eat it and are rejuvenated. They experience the joyous rebirth of their baptism once again. No malnutrition to speak of here. It is suffices.

For the incredulous religious leaders who argue with Jesus, the only workable comparison they have is manna, the flaky stuff that fell from heaven to feed their ancestors in the wilderness as they made their way to the Promised Land. They remember it as the unlikeliest type of sustenance, appearing mysteriously before the Israelites each morning and only lasting long enough to be consumed on the day it was gathered. Jesus relates that he, too, has been mysteriously granted by God from heaven above, his own body and blood as life for the world to gather and eat and drink.

But, as Jesus points out, there is one big point where the comparison to manna breaks down: they ate it and eventually they died. The manna sustained them for their life on earth, but no further. On the other hand, Jesus’ body and blood—the true food and true drink—offers eternal life. Those who eat of it, he says, live forever. It is an exciting proposition, to live forever. And, if we take the Bread of Life at his word, it is here—on our supper table—for the taking.

There was a provocative movie that came out in the mid-1980’s called “Cocoon.” Directed by Ron Howard, it was a science-fiction film that tells the story of a group of senior citizens who happen accidentally upon a swimming pool that magically restores them to youthful vigor. As it turns out, the pool is storing the cocoons of some aliens who are about to be transported back to their home planet. When the aging senior citizens swim in it, the life-force from the alien cocoons makes them feel young and healthy again. In fact, it even reverses the effects of one man’s cancer. At the end of the movie, the aliens end up offering the extra places on their space ship to whomever wants to come. If they go, the humans will climb aboard, never to return to earth, but also never to face death or disease because they will live forever.

The suspense of the movie hangs not on what happens with the alien cocoons in the swimming pool or whether they return safely, but how many—if any—humans beings will be on that spaceship when it flies away that final night. The promise of eternal life is hard to turn down, even when there are sacrifices.

Yet, the eternal life promised in eating Jesus’ own body is not that storybook kind of eternal life that forestalls death or that takes us to a special place where our bodies are returned to youthful vitality. Rather, this eternal life takes us beyond death, to that last day when he rules all in all. When we eat of this meal, we are taking part in the one flesh in the history of creation that has already succumbed to the power of death and the, by the power of love, lives beyond it. It may, at times, sound a little science-fictionlike, but here’s the deal: at Holy Communion, our very bodies become united on a cell-by-cell level with that life that has conquered death. His flesh and his blood are already eternal, because he has already been raised.

Yes, he has been raised, and the eternal life to which that points is free from sin, filled with forgiveness, and replete with love that surrounds us forever. And as we partake of him, we partake in the very source of the Divine, since, as Jesus reminds us, he himself has come from the Father. This is not simply a ritual of eating and drinking, but it is a simple act of partaking in that which assures something vitally important: that our faith is not something that just rumbles around in our heads, confined to the ways we think about people or feel about the world, but becomes rather a real, physical life that we live, a connection to the One whose body really hung on the cross for us.

Just as the family of D’jimia Aboubakar grab for her plate of aiysh to get them through another day in the camp, Christ’s body and blood strengthen our bodies and blood for another day of participating in the physical acts of forgiveness and compassion in the world. In the form of bread and wine, the Holy Spirit grants us the ability to live that eternal life now, living out the healing and reconciliation he has brought. We are, it turns out, exactly what we eat, and we go from our family table here to embody his love even in the face of our own death.

Perhaps, then, at this point we are not much more than a kind of refugee on this hungry planet, or an infant eating bread from the hand of our parent. Weary and worn, yet by God’s good grace hungry enough and simple enough to step up to Wisdom’s table. Hungry enough and simple enough not to board some spaceship, but rather to take that which looks like highly a unlikely sustenance, but which, from our Father’s good hand, is the true bread and true drink that helps us truly live.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 11B] - July 19, 2009 (Mark 6:30-34, 53-56)

As you are no doubt aware by now, a group of our youth will travel this week to the city of New Orleans in order to attend the ELCA Youth Gathering, an event so large that it can only be held every three years. This year an estimated 37,000 Lutheran youth and adult volunteers will stream into this humid, flood-damaged, but beautiful city in order to worship together, learn together, and serve together. During the Gathering, every youth group from across the nation will be volunteering in New Orleans in some way through a community-building environmental program. Some will be helping to rebuild from Hurricane Katrina.

No matter what we all will be doing, I’m sure that coordinating service projects for 37,000 youth volunteers within the span of three days must be an enormously complicated undertaking. In fact, although it would be difficult to verify this, it is highly probable that the 2009 ELCA Youth Gathering in New Orleans will be the largest service community in the history of the United States, and maybe the world. Some are suggesting, that is, that never before have that many people come together at one time for the express purpose of doing volunteer service work. We will be a mob with a mission.

There is a mob with a mission in today’s gospel text: get to Jesus at all costs. He gathers with his disciples; the mob finds him, ignoring even their hunger. The disciples whisk him away to the other side of the lake; the mob sees where they’re going and beats him there. They are relentless in their pursuit. Later, once Jesus crosses the lake again and lands at Gennesaret, the crowd recognizes him at once and rush at him and press in on him wherever they get wind of his presence. In village, town, or marketplaces, Jesus is the target. It’s a little bit like celebrity-status for him, and I imagine that if the camera had already been invented back then, some paparazzi would have been involved, their mopeds buzzing around and flashbulbs flashing. Overwhelmingly, though, this mob wants to get to Jesus because he can heal, he can feed. He can give hope. He can make a difference. “If we just get close enough to touch the fringe of his cloak,” some even think, “we’ll get a piece of the action.”

And this is how it continues for awhile. Their presence has been growing steadily for quite some time, but now it’s out of control, and the adoring mob will continue to grow, essentially pushing him up to and through the gates of Jerusalem.

One of the issues with this crowd in Mark’s gospel is that there is really nothing organize them or coordinate them in their mission. They are one giant, disorganized multitude. Mark describes them as “sheep without a shepherd,” an image which would have resonated strongly with Mark’s early readers. Here are likely thousands of people wandering around in the hills and towns of northern Israel, a place not only home to hundreds of flocks of real sheep, but also the historic home to God’s own flock of people. Many of these folks are, in fact, God’s chosen, and yet they are vulnerable and strewn about all over the place, haphazardly brought together by nothing but their own feverish desires. They had suffered at the hands of too many abusive and unfaithful shepherd-kings throughout their history, and here they are again, coarsing over the hills and through the streets to get to someone who can lead and guide and love.

And yet, for all its impressive size and energy, there is still something pitiful in this scene, something all-too descriptive of our own circumstances. The image of mad crowds straining and falling all over themselves to get to Jesus is reminiscent of our own desperate searches for meaning and healing. We may not understand ourselves as a part of a definable crowd with a mission, but there is something hectic and frantic and disorganized about so much of the human existence. So often, like sheep without a shepherd, we wander about aimlessly, following the flock in a loose-like fashion, drinking from any number of water sources and grazing in any type of pasture until something threatening scatters us apart from each other. And even in our more passionate moments we throw ourselves wantonly at whatever new-fangled remedy promises us fulfillment, happiness. Oh, at times, to have a mission! To sense that we have a life purpose or a goal that would never fail and then to have the stamina to follow it! Yes, this crowd that Mark describes with such vividness is really us. And we are altogether pitiful, pathetic, in our need for togetherness, in our need for guidance and loving care. Altogether pitiful, and it’s almost gut-wrenching.

In fact, that is exactly what our predicament is: gut-wrenching. Our clear need for rescue from all our isolating circumstances turns out to be truly gut-wrenching for Jesus. He stands there, looking out over this sea of humanity and instinctively feels compassion for us. In both the Greek and Hebrew understanding of the human body, compassion was rooted in the gut, in the innermost part of the body. In fact, the Greek words for “compassion” and “intestines” are almost the same. So often we attempt to stifle or deny those unpredictable deep feelings of compassion and empathy, but Jesus doesn’t. Like our hymn says, “his heart has never known recoil” ("Where Cross the Crowded Ways of Life," words by Frank North) His response when he continually meets this crowd that presses in on him at every twist and turn is to reach out in teaching and in healing, to stand up as their shepherd as selflessly as possible.

And just as we may understand compassion as being rooted in the gut, in the dark center of the human body, we realize that Jesus, himself, is placed in the the dark center of the whole human experience. He is there, pressed in among the sick and downtrodden, offering healing and wholeness. He is there, pressed alongside the sorrowful and guilt-laden, offering hope and forgiveness. And he is there, pressed up against the cross, offering love and salvation with all those who trod the ways of death and abandonment. As Jesus responds to the crowd that has gathered, we see that his compassion may be his most defining characteristic, the emotion that guides him away from solitude and further into the people he loves.

This is how he will respond to us: knowing what we need even before we do, his gut-reaction is to love us and teach us and guide us in the midst of the dark valley of the shadow of death. That is true compassion, my friends, and we learn it only by pressing in among him as often as we can.

The crowd we had at church this week wasn’t quite of the same character as the crowd in today’s gospel lesson, but Vacation Bible School can come close to it at points. Amidst all the merriment, there are hurt feelings, skinned knees, snotty noses, and several cases of homesickness. Even as early as Wednesday, there are adult volunteers who are starting to show signs of exhaustion, who begin to understand why, as fun as it is, Vacation Bible School is only attempted once a year. It is always amazing to me how much gets undertaken in a week of VBS: the elaborate set designs, the music, the incessant hand-motions that go with the songs, the games, the Bible storytelling, the snacks, the coordinated outfits, the skits.

Yet I would venture to say, from experience, that the main thing the children take away from this experience is not a particular song or a specific craft or even a favorite Bible story. It is, rather, the compassion and attention of the volunteers they receive. They will remember the youth group members, pressed in among the kids, who selflessly allowed themselves to become human bean bags and jungle gyms for the week. They will be formed by the adult who, pressing themselves down to floor level, gave them extra attention as they struggled with the science lesson. They will, on some subconscious level if nowhere else, never forget the loving way they were brought into line after breaking the rules. These, more than anything else, are the things that they will take with them from this week. A congregation who knows that Christ has pressed himself into the center encourages these types of compassionate interactions, not only with children, but with all of God’s people. His compassion for us leads us to display the same urgent compassion for others, right up close.

I used to hear a song on the radio years ago called, “God is Watching us from a Distance.” The intention of that song, I believe, was to preach peace, to speak out against conflict and war and have us recognize our common humanity. Those are noble objectives, I suppose, but, as a friend of mine once pointed out, I’m not sure that telling us God is at a distance will ever achieve those aims, for a shepherding God could never lead from a distance. The God I have come to know—the God you have taught me more about—is the one who looks upon the scary, swarming mass of humanity and yet presses himself in among them, nonetheless. It is the God who continues to press in among his needy, hungry people in the form of bread and wine. God is watching us from a distance? Someone tell that to the children this week who learned about Jesus. Someone tell that to the people sitting in the hospital room, waiting for treatment. Someone tell that to the mob of 37,000 who will be led into the streets of New Orleans later this week. A God who dies on a cross is not a distant God.

Each time I used to hear that song come on the radio, I wanted someone to replace it with a recording of the 23rd Psalm, because I have come to understand that our God is in the crowd, close-up and with compassion. Tired, worn, and weary, but still reaching out and leading us to salvation. He’s holding high a rod and staff, pouring your cup so that it is running over. Goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of our life, and you will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.


Thanks be to God!


The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 10B] - July 12, 2009 (Mark 6:14-29 and Amos 7:7-15)

Every now and then in society’s general ongoing conversation about religion and matters of faith you may have heard the criticism, as I have, that the Bible is out-dated, irrelevant, and boring. It seems that some feel, for whatever reason, that it is trapped in an era so removed from ours, that it speaks of philosophies and histories that have too little in common with our own to make any modern sense. Others get fooled by the long, poetic passages and tiresome prophecies from a world so distant or ancient that they write its message off entirely.

To tell you the truth, I’m ashamed to say there are times I’ve been prone to think it, too. Even the gospels of the New Testament, where my head, by necessity, spends so much of its time buried, start to take on a museum-exhibit-like quality, and I’m like an archaeologist trying to uncover hidden facts and truths about a magical land long ago. It can seem, under even this well-meaning microscope, that it’s just not real.

And then—surprise!—against all the criticism that our Scriptures are tedious or unrelated or old-fashioned comes today’s gospel text, situated right in the middle of Mark’s gospel. It has all you need for an “R” rating: exotic dancing, lust, love triangles, violence and gore. Power politics are present, as is a dirty dungeon cell where torture no doubt takes place, and, at the end of the story, a real human head served up on a platter. Isn’t this reality, folks? Shocking, explicit …and all too normal. Turn on the television—either to a movie or the daily news or even CSPAN these days—and you’re not likely to find anything more graphic or less relevant to our time than this. Mark’s report of the scenes surrounding John the Baptist’s murder is as lurid as the stories that fascinate us in the tabloids. In fact, we had a difficult time finding an appropriate image for the front of this morning’s bulletin because most of the ones that were suggested depicted a young woman with a severed head on a plate—and that just doesn’t seem churchy. Within the context of our delicate “churchiness,” or our stereotypes of the Biblical world, and even within the context of Mark’s own gospel, this story of John’s sad fate offends us, or at least catches us off-guard with its very real-ness.

As the story goes, Herod Antipas—who is here named “King”—hears the reports of Jesus and his disciples acts of mercy and power on behalf of God’s kingdom, and how the townfolk all around are starting to get stirred up, and begins to fear that John the Baptist, whom he himself has had murdered, has come back to haunt him. Herod is afraid, you see, that justice is about track him down and find him, Night-of-the-Living-Dead style. John was murdered by Herod, somewhat begrudgingly, as the result of a rash vow Herod had made—now follow this!—to his wife’s daughter. He had seen this young woman dance at his birthday party and it pleased him so much that, like so many other crazy, intemperate monarchs, he offered her anything in the world, even half his kingdom.

As you could guess, this tiny dancer whom Herod wants to hold close is not likely his actual biological daughter. It is probably his step-daughter and niece, (yes, still eww), the child to his new wife, Herodias. She, as it turns out, was also married to Herod’s brother, Philip. Herodias has it in for John the Baptist because John has functioned like some type of Billy Graham-cum-Ken Starr, publically calling their relationship into account and letting them know it wasn’t lawful. Herod, ever keen to garnish his religious credentials with the local Jewish population, is a little afraid and mesmerized by John, and so instead of actually knocking him off and thereby angering John’s devoted throng of followers, Herod merely imprisons John in his dungeon. With John at a safe distance, Herod can continue to keep tabs on John and also listen to his intriguing preaching.

Herodias, on the other hand, has no subjects to please, and she develops quite the need for revenge. So, when she gets wind of this lust-induced vow that her husband makes to her daughter, the tiny dancer, she immediately sees it as the perfect opportunity to disconnect John the Baptist’s body from his ever-preachy, ever-pontificating head. The daughter, who certainly seems to be under the thumb of her mother, passes up the sweet offer of half of Herod’s kingdom gallops off to Herod with the request, and, pretty soon…voila! Head on a plate!

Nope, this isn’t what we’re used to every Sunday, is it? In fact, next Sunday we’ll hear nothing of Herod and Herodias, and, to be sure, Mark never mentions them again at all in his gospel. So why, all of the sudden, do we switch gears like this? Why do we go from Jesus and his merry band of disciples, now fully incorporated and commissioned in his ministry of God’s kingdom, making their way through the Galilean countryside, casting out demons and healing the sick, to this, something that comes straight out of a bad soap opera?

Some have always noticed that it is a bit of foreshadowing. That is, John, the forerunner of Jesus—the one who came before him to prepare the way for Jesus’ ministry—meets the same fate that Jesus will. His disciples don’t know it. Jesus hasn’t breathed a word about his death yet, either, but John’s imprisonment and quick demise become a glimpse into what might happen with Jesus when he comes before the authorities. Notice, too, how Mark explains how John’s disciples come and remove his body from the prison and place it in a tomb. This will all sound strangely familiar in a few more months.

But I think there is something more at work here with this dose of treachery at the hands of the rulers. The story of John’s beheading stands in the middle of Mark’s gospel, and in the middle of our conscience, as if to say, “This is what Jesus is up against.” This kind of scary, dangerous, murky sense of justice and what’s right and wrong is always what God’s grace is up against.

Interestingly, the scene in Herod’s palace follows the part in Mark’s gospel where everything is finally going so well. It is where our episode left off last week, when our heroes—Jesus and his disciples—are making their rounds through Galilee with roaring success in the ministry department. They are healing and preaching, and people are repenting and joining the cause of God’s kingdom by the hoards. In fact, when the camera fades away on our scene today as the decapitated body of John being moved to its tomb, it resumes on the happy, verdant banks of Lake Galilee where, we are told, the disciples gather around Jesus and regale the stories of their success. Yes, with that type of framing, the picture at Herod’s macabre birthday feast becomes a harsh reminder of what God’s grace is up against.

Centuries before, a young orchard worker named Amos had discovered what God’s word was up against when God appointed him a prophet and told him to go stand in the courts of Israel’s corrupt and depraved King Jeroboam and preach repentance. The word that Amos bears of justice and concern for the poor find itself up against a whole system of fraud and dishonesty like a plumb line finds itself up against a crooked, tottering wall. How distressing to find that John the Baptist’s words, and Jesus’ disciples’ works of mercy—in that time and in ours—find the same thing: that creation is magnificently out-of-whack. Like ancient Israel’s leaders had long begun to build their society on warped concepts of justice and mercy, treating the poor and oppressed as commodities or property rather than as humans loved by their Creator, we find that our own notions of fairness and equality often fall far short of God’s intentions.

This kind of crookedness and wickedness is always what God’s grace is up against, whether it is in our own national institutions, or entrenched economic systems, or our church structures and policies. It’s the kinds of things that some of these quilts and shawls will no doubt find themselves up against, wherever they go: Victims of homelessness or terrorism and war, the training children for suicide bombings, the day trafficking of humans for the sex trade. Governments with apartheid systems in place, as well as ones whose racist policies are more subtle. Agricultural policies that keep some nations perpetually poverty-stricken. And we must not forget ignorance and indifference in our own hearts.

This—and more—is all what God’s grace is up against, but it is also what God came to save. This—and so much more—is what God’s goodness is up against, but it is also what God came to love back into line. Ephesians, chapter one: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us.”

Herod, he lavished money, sex, power on his subjects. God, he has lavished his grace on us, his children. And perhaps the big challenge of our journey together is not to let the crooked nature of what we see in the world, the corrupting connivance of sin, become the standard. The big challenge is not to get so accustomed to the ways we all fall short that we start thinking that’s just the way it has to be, to see the fallen specter of God’s creation and call it normal.

No. Rather, it is God’s plumb line of and love and forgiveness and Jesus that is now normal—that is dynamic and timely and not boring and very, very real. It has been lavished on us, and we are to lavish it on the rest of the world. The standard for what is real this world is not our sin, but God’s grace in Christ.

And what about the rest, then, that world of hurt we call “reality” from time to time? Well, that’s just the old, irrelevant, part crumbling away because it cannot stand. It cannot stand against the plumb line of grace. It, too, is being torn down and then gathered up in him for the new, grace-filled kingdom God’s people are building in Christ. It is being torn down--even by things like quilts and shawls--and rebuilt in an eternal palace of justice fit for our King.

Thanks be to God!


The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

(image: "The Beheading of John the Baptist," Carel Fabritius, ca. 1640)

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 9B] - July 5, 2009 (Mark 6:1-13)

“O beautiful, for patriot dream…”

Jesus is a patriot in this morning’s gospel text, although not necessarily a patriot in the sense that comes to mind in national songs on Independence Day as we wave our flags and eat our flame-grilled hot dogs. Here Jesus is a patriot in the strictest sense of the word; that is, Jesus travels to his hometown and there he comes face to face with the people of his ancestors. In Greek, “hometown” is patris, the very root word that gives us patriot and patriotism. Logically, it is related to the root word for “fathers,” and we often still think of our homeland—our hometowns—as the place of our forefathers and foremothers. These things stir feelings of patriotism in us, for example, because we feel connected on some deep level to the people who came before us in this particular place.

Nazareth is just that for Jesus, and then some. In the social milieu of first-century Israel, a person’s hometown was little more than one, large, extended family, a wide network of strong bonds based on bloodlines and marriage contracts. Inextricably linked to this network, and with a less-developed sense of individuality than we have today, a person’s clan was his or her identity. And so, in his hometown, Jesus encounters this clan, this community who made him who he was. The synagogue he preaches in would have been the synagogue he attended as a kid. The worshippers he reads to would have been the rabbis and elders who would have taught him the Law. The people he reaches out to would have been the members of his own extended family: siblings, cousins, uncles and aunts once and twice and three times removed. In fact, we are told Jesus is instantly recognized by his compatriots, properly identified by his traditional role in the community and immediate relations: “Is this not the carpenter, Mary’s boy?”

But whereas we might expect to be lauded and applauded—even as prophets—by our hometowns in this day and age, Jesus meets fierce resistance. This is anything but a patriot’s dream. Almost no one in his own tribe is convinced by his message of God’s coming kingdom, and, in sharp contrast to what had happened in the other Galilean villages, few people are healed and Jesus performs no deeds of power in Nazareth. His townspeople are first astounded and then scandalized by his words and teaching. “Who does he think he is, anyway?” they mutter under their breath. In fact, that’s probably what the Nazareth Town Council would have printed on their city limits sign as you came into town: “Nazareth, Population 550. Home of Jesus. Who does he think he is, anyway?”

The truth is, in finding himself rejected by his own compatriots, Jesus falls into a distinguished group of prophets who had also been tormented or doubted by the very people from which they had arisen. Almost all of the house of Israel’s own prophets met insurmountable odds when bringing God’s word to bear upon them. Moses, Jeremiah, Ezekiel...one after another, they dealt with the stiff-necked, close-minded nature of a clannish people. For those who have come to view Jesus as a biblical Superman guy who can always work a wonder in the most hostile of situations, who can make a believer out of even the most reluctant sinner, Jesus’ dismissal in Nazareth comes as a shocker. As it turns out, his own kith and kin couldn’t care less about his kingdom. Even Jesus, we are told, is surprised at their thick-headedness.

One of sin’s most effective tools is to get us to divide ourselves into different groupings—whether they be nations, towns, races, families, political parties—and then convince us that we can’t learn anything new, that those who don’t think exactly as our group does are a threat that must be ignored or done away with. All human communities—even countries as noble as ours—run the danger of adopting a tribal mentality, an outlook that teaches we are essentially broken down into these different “hometowns” where identity is entirely wrapped up in who your forefather or foremother is. In such communities, we end up thinking the liberating word of Jesus has nothing new to say to us, or, if it does, it only serves to reinforce our sense of specialness, that our family, or our town, our party, our race, our nation has it all figured out.

But, in truth, he is a stumbling block, for he comes to remind us of our need of grace. His word is a scandal, because through it we discover his kingdom will include all—most especially the sinners like me. And a community that cannot come to terms with its own sinfulness—and therefore its morbid unity with all of humankind—runs the risk of never knowing the full embrace of his kingdom.

In the story of Jesus’ rejection in Nazareth, it would be somewhat fitting to have the story end there, as the stories of so many other prophets do. We could see Jesus standing at the edge of the town that refuses to claim him for who he is, cursing the stiff-necked people in the vein of Moses or Jeremiah or Ezekiel. But Jesus, the new prophet, takes a different approach. He, on the other hand, gathers together his disciples and entrusts them with the message. Sending them out in pairs into even more villages where they would doubtless be rejected from time to time, he empowers his own followers with the news of the kingdom. Equipped with nothing but the authority of his word, they would go in his stead, and their success in the surrounding towns would be a contrast to Jesus’ failure in his own. And so, word by word, healing by healing, anointing by anointing, we see an entirely new community taking shape over the hills of Galilee, one that is built on Jesus’ grace and mercy, one that is founded on repentance and forgiveness, rather than a Constitution or military might or family pedigree.

As part of that cadre of disciples who are called to go out and carry his message, we’re talking about a much larger communion here, a family tree with more branches than we can ever imagine, extending far past any national or racial boundaries we could ever set up. It involves those who live in Nazareth and those who live in its neighboring towns. It involves those who may live in America, and Canada…and Iran and Afghanistan…in each and every country on this planet, as well as those who have no country on this planet to call home. It is the community of those in each and every hometown who have been claimed by the word of Jesus, the prophet who doesn’t just talk but who dies to set us free from the grip of sin. The sheer size and scope of this community can catch us off guard at times.

A few weeks ago I made a quick run to the Wal-Mart over on Parham Road. I was making a quick trip to buy a pizza for the babysitter to cook for the kids. As I was walking in from the parking lot, I was observing and making note of how many different ethnicities and races and languages seemed to be right there in the parking lot with me. Were they my new compatriots in this great land? When did they arrive here? Were they fitting in? Were we as a nation being hospitable enough?

And then, as I was placing Laura into the shopping cart, I felt the pressure of a large hand on my shoulder. I turned around to a tall, dark-skinned man looking down at me. “Excuse me,” he said, “are you Pastor Phillip, from St. Andrew’s Church in Cairo?” There, looking at me in the eyes, was one of my former parishioners from my internship congregation in Egypt. He was a Sudanese refugee who had attended our church and sought shelter through our ministries in downtown Cairo after fleeing war and persecution in southern Sudan. As it turned out, he had been resettled by the United Nations and U.S. Immigration Service a couple of years after I left here to Richmond, Virginia. A Presbyterian congregation had helped set him and some other Sudanese refugees in an apartment less than a mile from my house on Patterson Avenue.

Now, I could chalk this experience up to random chance, an outcome of a statistical probability that throughout my life I am bound to run into a certain number of people I’ve run into before. But I can’t do that. In light of how I know our Lord works in spite of the rejection and dismissals from the stubborn Nazareths of this world, and in light of how I know he is methodically and persistently using ordinary disciples like you and me to spread Christ’s embrace to all villages and nations, I know, rather, that meeting my refugee friend in Walmart was just another powerful reminder that the Spirit is knitting us all together into one big baptismal hometown where Jesus is the true patriot dream that sees beyond the years. I was not so much looking at a new member of my American tribe, but a brother from another village who had nevertheless received the same wonderful message about Jesus that I have.

It was a powerful reminder of the size of God’s community. I pray that my eyes would be opened to even more of these wonderful reminders of our one Forefather in heaven who is embracing us all.


Thanks be to God!


The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Third Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 7B] - June 21, 2009 (Mark 4:35-41)

My parents always told me to respect a storm. Lightning does strike people, they’d tell me. Every year it does. Trees can be taken down by the wind. When we were little I distinctly remember we were never allowed to take showers or baths when there was a thunderstorm doing its thing outside. It was a useful bit of wisdom, I suppose.

Perhaps, then, they’d be mortified to learn that just a couple of years ago I went on a jog on an afternoon when the news reported that a storm might be brewing. Thinking I could outrun it, I started off when there were only a couple of small clouds in the sky. About a mile or so into my run, I noticed that it started to get really dark. I thought to myself, “No big deal. I’ve run in the rain before.” Before I knew it, a lightning bolt struck nearby that stopped me in my tracks. I was at the top of a high hill and figured I was like a human lightning rod, even though I knew the statistical chances of getting hit were very low. Within a few seconds, the bottom fell out of the clouds and lightning was flashing all around me. Not wanting to stand underneath the tall trees that were lining the street, and knowing I was too far from home to turn back, I made a mad dash for a covered porch on a house across the street. I did not know these people, so I rang the doorbell when I got there just to ask their permission to bide the storm’s passing. I didn’t want to be asked inside, but I wanted them to know I was there. To my dismay, no one answered. For fifteen whole minutes I waited on that stranger’s covered patio for the storm to pass. I felt safe and I kept dry, but I just kept hoping that some other neighbor wouldn’t see this strange sweaty man on a porch he didn’t belong and report him for trespassing. Well, you know what they say…any porch in a storm!

The disciples in this morning’s story have no such safety or place to watch the rain and lightning, but they do ring the doorbell and get no response. Jesus, their teacher and leader, the one who would know what to do in this frightening situation, sleeps soundly through the chaos. They begin to try to rouse him, but with what hope? What is it exactly that they think he’ll do for them? Chart the quickest path to some stranger’s front porch to wait it out? Devise some system for reducing the boat’s watery ballast mid-storm? Lead them in a psalm for safety? He had healed so many already…do they hope he can bring that power to bear on them now in some way? After all, they are perishing! Can’t he save their lives?

It’s difficult to say for sure, but it occurs to me—based on their final reactions—that the last thing they would ever expect him to do is make the storm stop. They look to him in this moment where everything is out of their control because they have come by this point to respect his leadership. He is their Rabbi, their Teacher. It is likely they want him to solve the issue of their boat, but Jesus will end up solving the issue of the storm.

Mark paints a very vivid picture of what happens next. Jesus does not consult anyone about emergency procedures or take stock of people’s feelings. Jesus gets up from his cushion and stops the storm. The word in the Greek for what Jesus does when he wakes up—diegeiro—suggests that he goes to the uppermost point in the boat, the bow. I imagine Jesus doesn’t look all that different from that scene in Titanic when Leonardo DiCaprio’s character stands out on the point of the bow, wind blowing through his hair, and shouts out onto the open sea, “I am the king of the world!!”

Interestingly, the same Greek word for Jesus’ act of rising up is used to describe seas when they get rough and choppy. So here we have Jesus, the sleepy-headed rabbi, “growing rough and turbulent” in an answer to the seas that have grown rough and turbulent. He rebukes the wind—angrily scolding it for the tempest that it is—and the word of God commands the waters to be still. Standing up there in the bow, no doubt looking like some silly King of the World, Jesus tells the chaos to come under control.

And it happens! There is dead calm. The storm vanishes, and the boat of disciples continues to the other side of the lake.

What always catches me a little off-guard about this story is the disciples’ reaction at the end. Their prevailing sense of mind is not one of relief that their life has been spared or thankfulness for the calm seas, but rather awe, amazement, fear for who Jesus is, who he might be. Mark describes them as “fearing a great fear,” saying to one another, “who is this man, that even the wind and seas obey him?” Jesus has just essentially ridiculed them for a lack of faith, and they are still getting over the fact that their rabbi—the one who was just sleeping there on the cushion—has just demonstrated a power known to be possessed only by God the Almighty. They fear him. In fact, he is the only thing they really ever fear in this text.

So often this story of Jesus and the storm is used to draw a comparison to the various storms of our lives in order to bring relief, to assure us of God’s presence with us and power for us in the midst of calamity. And certainly we are reassured, on some level—through the cancer treatments, the loss of the job, the marriage that seems to founder—that Jesus can take our rocky boats and glide them safely through the storm. Yet in the stilling of the storm on Lake Galilee, Jesus is not simply a steady hand at the tiller. He is very God. By commanding the seas to be quiet and then invoking fear, rather than relief, in his disciples, Jesus is cast undeniably in the role of God—the God who commanded creation into existed with his word, the God who controlled the crashing waters at the first creation. Jesus is this same God who answers Job out of the whirlwind, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? [When I] shut the sea with its doors?” Jesus, our Teacher, speaks on behalf of and, in fact, embodies, this God who alone set the stars in their courses and set the measurements of the universe.

We have the temptation in the midst of crisis—whatever it is—to develop a myopia of misery, a nearsightedness that causes us to fixate purely on the storm and our place in it, to ask the question, “Why me?” or “Don’t you see that I’m perishing?” The challenge for faith is to remember God has the long view, the entire picture in mind. Just God was there at the beginning, God will be there at the end and into eternity. God knows how we got into the storm and how it fits into whatever comes after. God deserves our thankfulness and our devotion for our steps along that path, but God also deserves our fear.

Martin Luther begins every one of his explanations to the Ten Commandments with the words, “We should so fear and love God, that we should…” The First Commandment, for example, for Luther, means “We should so fear, love, and trust God above all things.” As we encounter our Lord in the Words of Scripture, in the sacraments, the point is not that our overwhelming reaction to God is to be afraid of him, but that we, through whatever happens, develop a profound respect for God’s ability to mould the universe and all the little events in it.. In this Galilee boat, like so many other times in the gospel story, Jesus is prodding his disciples to a deeper faith, a more profound respect, a deeper realization of how God engages and then declares authority over the winds and waves of life. Choppy and turbulent, chaotic and destructive, the waters rise up and threaten to do us in, but he rises up, too, and puts them in their place.

Yes, he rises up too. On the third day he rises, standing there, glorious, like the King of all Creation. In the storm that is Good Friday, even Jesus submits to the waves of abandonment and suffering for the sake of the God who alone can take the long view that sees through to Easter morning…and beyond. A deeper faith and trust in this God of Jesus makes us confident that no matter what, no matter what, God has the final word with the resurrection.

As Luther suggests, a faith based in fear and awe of God moves us not to question God’s whereabouts as we ring the doorbell frustratedly, wondering, “Are you there?” “Are you asleep??” Neither does such a faith lead us to consider God’s obliviousness to our plight, frantically asking, “Don’t you care that I’m dying?” Instead, it leads us to trust in the midst of the whirlwind that God is victorious over it, that there is no way, now that Jesus is in our boat, that we can be completely overcome. No way. Never. He rises up.

And, so, today our boat gains a new crewman. His name is River Jacob. A great watery name to remind him, perhaps, of the crashing river that birthed him, the waters that birth all of us in that new creation free from sin that Jesus brings. It is the water that washes up at the feet of the saints among whose great company we all will stand some day. Until then, River, pick up some wisdom along the way, from us, your rivermates, and, of course, your loving parents.

Like: respect a storm. They can be kind of dangerous.

But mostly: respect One who can still it.


Amen!


The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.