You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly!
Jesus,
son of Joseph the carpenter, has given up the family business. Woodworking and construction was just not his
thing. He has gone off on his own - leaving his parents and siblings high and
dry and breaking up his family. He has
taken his small part of the world by storm.
Jesus the Rock Star: He is a man
on a mission.
In
the whirlwind that characterizes this Gospel of Mark that we are reading, in a
mere three short chapters Jesus has boomeranged from his hometown to the
wilderness to Galilee to Capernaum to the sea to deserted places, to synagogues
and fields of grain and back to Capernaum – and now he is home again. But not like the Prodigal Son of which he
would one day speak but rather just passing through.
He
has had all manner of peasants and lowlifes crowding about him, begging for
healing, wanting for touch, hoping to hear him, demanding that his attention be
paid to the demons that rocked their souls.
He has reached out to the lowest of these low, embraced all manner of
disease and disability, brought a little girl back to life, and exorcised evil
spirits – and now he is home again.
He
has argued with the intelligentsia, put up with the naysayers, broken most of the
rules, and ignored the critics constantly carping on and picking apart
everything he did: “He heals on the
Sabbath. He eats with sinners and tax
collectors. He does not fast when he
should.” And so on and so on. And now he is home again.
Home: home is where the heart is. I’ll be home for Christmas. “Home is the place where, when you have to go
there, they have to take you in,” as Robert Frost wrote.
Home: Perhaps Jesus was hoping for some peace and
time alone there. Perhaps he was
relishing the thought of a quiet and undisturbed meal. Perhaps he was looking forward to some
quality time with his family.
Home: All of the above, but none of the above
because such was not to be. Home: But the chaos continued. The naysayers nattered. The critics carped. The crowds clamored, bringing their human
suffering and laying it all at his feet.
And so he continued to touch – and embrace – and argue – and
exorcise. And his family looked on –
horrified.
They
were horrified because they feared the rumors that were starting already. “That Jesus: He’s crazy.”
They
were horrified because of the fingers that, sooner or later, would be pointing
at the whole lot of them – and how embarrassing would that be? “That Jesus:
You know, Mary’s son? He’s
bonkers, gone over the deep end.”
They
were horrified because they were concerned for his welfare. “That Jesus:
he’s totally gone beserk, wigged out.
He’s got a screw loose.”
They
were horrified because they feared for his very safety, “That Jesus:
The only reason he can drive out evil spirits must be…must be because he
has one – or is one.”
They
were horrified because, well, because maybe he really had lost his marbles. Maybe he needed a good long rest, some quiet
music, a hammer, some nails, and a couple of pieces of scrap wood to tinker
with.
And
so they did what any good and loyal family would do. They tried to sequester him away. The disciples saw it all unfolding - his
siblings pushing their way toward him.
Peter leaned over toward Jesus and, in a stage whisper, said behind his
hand: Psst!
“Your mother and brothers and sisters are outside
looking for you. They want you.”
Well,
Peter was right about that! They did
want him – most desperately. That was
why they were going to – not exactly “fetch” him – because the Greek word used
is the same one that is used when the Romans come to get Jesus in the Garden of
Gethsemane. It was more like they were
going to seize him or grab him. In
short, Jesus’ family was attempting to stage an intervention.
It
failed, however, because when Jesus got wind of it, well, that was when he
really flipped out, became unraveled, and proceeded to take on the very
foundation of Jewish society, which, of course, was the family. It was the
basic unit of the economy. It was the
core of conventional social and religious mores. And Jesus shot it down when he answered:
“Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” He
looked at the people sitting around him and said, “Look! Here are my mother and
my brothers! Whoever does what God wants is my brother, my sister,
my mother.”
Wow! His outburst should not surprise us, however. After all, Jesus never put much stock in the
way the economy worked – the rich getting richer and the poor getting
poorer. So much for his thinking that
the family was the cornerstone of the economy. Nor did he ever cow tow to
convention – what with his dining with tax collectors and chatting with
whores. Family values were really never
a Jesus thing. In fact, if you could
call Jesus anything at all, you could easily call him a “home wrecker.”
As
Methodist pastor, William Willamon reminds us, “In his ministry, Jesus thought
nothing of destroying a family business with a terse, ‘Follow me,’ demanding
that these fishermen abandon their aging father in the boat and join Jesus as
he wandered about with his buddies. Jesus' invitation to hit the road broke the
hearts of many first-century parents who were counting on the kids for help in
their old age.
‘I
have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother,’
Jesus threatened. ‘Whoever comes to me
and does not hate father and mother, and wife and children, and brothers and
sisters, yes, and even life itself, can't be my disciple.’ That's a text rarely
used by the church on Mother's Day.
‘I'll
follow you,’ a man said to him, ‘only first let me go give my recently deceased
father a decent burial.’ ‘Let the dead bury the dead!’
replied Jesus. ‘Follow me and let somebody else do the funeral!’’
So
much for Jesus the traditional family man!
But then, Jesus was seldom in synch with tradition anyway. He was always redefining and reframing – and
the concept of family is no exception. Family
– true family – God’s family is not determined so much by blood and kin, he
seems to say, but by belief in and commitment to the role one plays in ushering
in the Kingdom of God.
When
it comes to family, he seems to say, draw the circle wide and rid yourself of archaic structures that
narrow your perspective and shut out the love of God. When it comes to family,
he seems to say, align yourself with those who are passionate about God’s dream
for humanity – passionate about justice and peace, passionate about service,
passionate about the lowlifes in the back allies of the world. Align yourself with those who are passionate
about the Gospel – and that they may not be your kith and kin – your mother and
father and brothers and sisters.
For
us, then, when it comes to family, Jesus challenges us to join with the ones
who are like him, a little bit crazy, maybe even possessed – by the Holy
Spirit, that is. Of course, we sitting
here in these pews this morning hope that he had the church in mind when he
spoke about true family – though, for many folks, the jury is still out on that
one. Either people remember the church
of 30 years ago as boring then and irrelevant now or they associate the church
with anti-intellectualism complete with a disregard of science in favor of
dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden. That is
why it is so important for us here not to be fearful of letting the world know
that our faith demands that we be a little bit bonkers and at times over the
deep end – bonkers for justice and over the deep end for peace.
Because,
you see, Jesus set the bar pretty high for us when it comes to being crazy,
being Christian crazy. As Episcopal
priest Michael Curry reflected, “…those
who would follow him, those who would be his disciples, those who would live as
and be the people of the Way, are called and summoned and challenged to be just
as crazy as Jesus.
I
don’t want to be too quick to judge Jesus’ mother and the whole family (he goes
on to say). They had good reason to be concerned. (After all, consider the gist
of) what Jesus taught:….“Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse; but, on
the contrary, repay with a blessing” (1 Peter 3:9). That’s crazy.
In
the Gospel reading from Matthew, Jesus says, “The greatest among you will be
your servant” (Matthew 23:11). That’s crazy.
What
the world calls wretched, Jesus calls blessed. Blessed are the poor and the
poor in spirit. Blessed are the merciful, the compassionate. Blessed are those
who hunger and thirst that God’s righteous justice might prevail. Blessed are
those who work for peace. Blessed are you when you are persecuted just for trying
to love and do what is good. Jesus was crazy. He said, “Love your enemies,
bless those who curse you, pray for those who despitefully use you.” He was
crazy. He prayed while folk were killing him, “Father, forgive them; they know
not what they do.” Now, that’s crazy.
But
Jesus expects us, in our own lives and in the actions we choose to take, to be
that crazy too. It is the bottom line
because crazy like Jesus is the heart of Christianity.
When Steve Jobs, one of the founders of Apple Inc., died,
an old Apple commercial went viral on YouTube. In the commercial, photographs
of people who have done all manner of things to improve the world and make a
difference rolled by as voice read this poem:
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels.
The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond
of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or
vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see
genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough
to think they can change the world,
are the ones who do.
That
is what the church is supposed to be, you know – a place for the misfits, the
rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see
things differently and have no respect for the status quo. The church is supposed to be a family for
crazy Christians, the gathering place for the ones bonkers enough to think they
can, with God’s help, transform the world.
God
knows we need such a family. As Michael
Curry concluded, we need “Christians crazy enough to believe that God is real
and that Jesus lives. Crazy enough to follow the radical way of the gospel.
Crazy enough to believe that the love of God is greater than all the powers of
evil and death. Crazy enough to believe, as (Martin Luther) King often said,
that though ‘the moral arc of the universe is long, … it bends toward justice.’
We
need some Christians crazy enough to believe that children don’t have to go to
bed hungry; that the world doesn’t have to be the way it often seems to be;
that there is a way to lay down our swords and shields, down by the riverside;
that, as the slaves used to sing, ‘there’s plenty good room in my Father’s
kingdom,’ because every human being has been created in the image of God, and
we are all equally children of God and meant to be treated as such.”
We
need families of Christians crazy enough to believe that God’s dream for the
world can be real – and it is up to us – the crazy ones - to make it so.
by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine
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