Pentecost 7 B: God’s Partners
Dear Partner in Preaching,
I don’t know about you, but I think it was rather gutsy of Mark to share this story. I mean, he didn’t have to tell his readers about a time when Jesus seems nearly powerless. Some writers might have omitted this story for fear it undermined their larger portrait of Jesus. Not only that, but it stands in such sharp contrast to the previous chapters where Jesus’ power – over illness and evil spirits and even over death itself – seems nearly limitless. No, he didn’t have to tell this story.
Or did he?
This week we have, on the one hand, two rather discreet stories from Jesus’ ministry that could easily be separated, yet together they form a really interesting, cohesive and, I think, compelling narrative about how God acts in the world and what ministry in the name of Jesus looks like.
First, the story of Jesus in his hometown. Perhaps the reaction of Jesus’ townsfolk shouldn’t surprise us. When someone just like us makes it big, for some reason, rather than rejoice, we tend to dismiss. I’ve lived in communities, primarily academic, where one person’s gain was assumed to imply a loss for others (as if life is a zero-sum game and there’s only so much affirmation and acceptance to go around) or where one person’s success reflected unflatteringly on everyone else (as if life is an endless competition where we are measured relentlessly against each other). Either way, their reaction is all too painfully human.
Mark records that, because of their lack of belief, Jesus can do no acts of power (except to cure a few people which, of course, if you’re one of those people cured is no small matter!). Why? While Mark doesn’t answer this question, I wonder if it simply reflects that we are participants in God’s work in the world to a degree far greater than we might imagine.
I realize that, to some, asserting that human will or effort somehow limits God’s power borders on heresy. But this isn’t a judgment about God’s power in the abstract, but rather about our willingness to be a vessel for God’s love and healing in our own lives and in the lives of our neighbors. Nor is it a verdict on the ultimate irresistibility of God’s grace or God’s freedom to elect. I am not, that is, trying to draw conclusions about the content of our salvation but rather about the character of our lives. Do we, from day to day, have a desire participate in God’s work to bless and care for creation or do we resist that? And do those decisions make a difference in how God’s power to heal and care takes expression?
Think about it. Up until now, a dominant feature of all the stories Mark shares is the keen desire of those petitioning Jesus to be healed and restored. Yet in this story, all the bystanders can see if a local kid who’s made it big and who, from the vantage point of scarcity and insecurity, has grown too big for his britches. Trapped in their comparisons and complaints, they are not remotely interested in receiving his blessing. Even Jesus cannot believe it.
Such a view makes space for the possibility that God actively enlists us in God’s work. This creates the unfortunate, at times tragic, possibility for resistance, certainly, but it also invites our partnership and, in this way, hallows our daily activities and actions in the world. God shares God’s ministry of reconciliation and healing with us, which means that each and every day we have before us the opportunity to be channels of grace and mercy to people and a world desperately in need of grace and mercy.
Read this way, this scene sets the stage for making sense of the second story as well, as Jesus equips and commissions his disciples to carry on his ministry. They are now, that is, partners in his ministry in a way they have not been up to this point in the story. Further, the instructions he offers demonstrate the mutuality, even interdependence, of his disciples on those to – and, as it turns out, with – whom they minister. They go out in pairs – this work can’t be done alone! – and they do not take their own provisions but rather depend on the hospitality of those they meet. And while some will receive them and be blessed, others will refuse their ministry and blessing. Shaking the dust off one’s shoes is sometimes interpreted as a matter of cursing those who reject you, but perhaps in this story it falls somewhere in between washing one’s hands of responsibility for another’s faith and acknowledging the inherent limitations of any ministry borne of grace.
If you venture in this interpretive direction, Dear Partner, then this Sunday might be the perfect occasion to remind your people of how much their actions matter. Not as works that earn God’s favor but as a response to God’s holy invitation. God has chosen them in Baptism, you might remind them, not only for salvation but also for purposeful, consequential lives here and now, and that each day they have a choice between resisting God’s activity and partnering with God’s intent and action to bless and care for God’s world. These stories, we might share with our folks, testify that our acts of kindness and compassion are holy and our moments of unkindness or indifference tragic. What we do matters, and once again this week God equips and commissions us to be agents of grace.
Probably the dominant feedback I’ve received from you across the years, Dear Partner, is gratitude for my words of affirmation at the close of these weekly missives. As I almost always say in response, I realized early on that this is an easy and important thing to do. After all, I know what it is like to pour yourself into your sermon, to struggle to find an insight worth sharing and words to carry that message to expression. And I know that preaching can be a lonely effort, and so it is, indeed, both easy and important to let you know that I see your work and am grateful for it. It’s also, I will admit, a joy to do so.
This week, you get the chance to do the same with your people. They, also, struggle at times to sense God’s grace, to share it as they might, to make a difference in this world. And you can tell them that you see them and are grateful for their efforts. Moreover, you can also promise them that God invites them to a life of holiness rooted in everyday acts of kindness that are simultaneously so ordinary as to be easily overlooked yet extraordinary in the difference they make to those around them. But God does more than see them, God also blesses them. Blesses them to be a blessing and works through them to love, bless, and care for this world.
It’s a good message, easy and important to share, and I look forward to the joy you will experience as you do. Thank you. Even more, thank God for you.
Yours in Christ,
David
As a student that is just learning to preach, I am so grateful to be able to read your messages and interpretations of scripture. I have found new ways to look at passages and messages that I can convey.
Thank you so much.
Maybe Jesus, in his humanity, just got frustrated with the lack of / negative response from the homefolk and said all right, have it your way. You don’t want what I have to offer. I will go someplace where people do. And not only that, I will send out my followers to find those places.
I think the corresponding Lucan passage supports your point.
David, thank you for these reflections each week. I followed you on “Working Preacher” and am still a fan. I’m a baby priest, after years as a deacon when I did not preach regularly. Now, I’m preaching weekly and I’m so grateful. Keep up the good and thoughtful work.
I’ve been preaching for over 40 years and still appreciate all that David offers in these weekly blogs.
David, thank you for faithfully offering your insight and perspective, affirmation and encouragement week after week after week. Yes, serving a smaller congregation is indeed “a lonely effort” and so your words of ‘being with’ your fellow preachers mean more than I can express.
That the wiping the dust off our feet is not a cursing of those people, but perhaps a reminder that you’re not expected to “save” all people and this person isn’t one of them was such a freeing concept for me to learn a few years back. It allowed me to stop fretting about “Marge” who I will never connect with and allowed me to focus more of my energy on “George” who is responding. Focusing on those “successes” is much more energizing and helps minimize that lonely feeling we get in ministry.
I like that Brad, it also plays out in our interpersonal relationships, family, community, etc. Some people will never respond no matter how hard we try so it’s better to just shake it off and move on to the next.