Desert Healing

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
Then the apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all that they had done and all that they had taught. He said to them, “Come away to a wilderness place all by yourselves and rest awhile.” For many people were coming and going and they had no time even to eat.

So they went in the boat to a wilderness place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them and they ran together by land from all the cities and arrived before them. Upon arriving he saw the great crowd and had compassion on them for they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began to teach them many things…

Upon crossing over to the land, they came into Genesserat and weighed anchor. When they got out of the boat, people immediately recognized him and ran about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. Wherever he went, into villages, cities or farms, they laid the ill in the markets and called to him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And all who touched it were healed.

The story takes place in the desert. And beyond. Jesus’ disciples have returned from their mission. Do you remember their mission? A few weeks ago we talked about the ministry of moving in and that’s what the disciples have been doing – moving into homes and villages and proclaiming the good news and healing the sick and casting out demons. They have amazing stories to tell of what has done. They all want to tell the story.

“Jesus, you’ll never believe what happened! Jesus, the demons obeyed us. Jesus, people walked. People spoke. People believed!”

But they couldn’t tell the story. Jesus had become so popular now that the crowds were gathering in every town he entered. They could not even sit down to a meal now. The crush of people was that great.

It was an ominous time. John the Baptist had just been killed by Herod. The disciples may have worried that if Jesus attracted the same sort of attention that John had attracted, his life would also be in danger. So when Jesus suggested that they head out into the desert, away from the crowds, so that they could tell their stories, they agreed eagerly.

So they got into a boat and set out from shore, headed to a deserted stretch of the lakeshore where they could be alone. It was just Jesus and the Twelve headed out to the wilderness, like Moses and the Twelve Tribes so many centuries before. But Moses discovered on that trip out of Egypt that going to the desert didn’t mean that things were going to get quieter. The needs of the people still remained. They complained because they had no water. They complained because they had no food. They complained when Moses went up on the mountain to receive God’s word. They seemed always to be in need.

Finally God led Moses up on a mountain, Mount Abarim, to look at the land towards which they were traveling. It was a land he would never enter and Moses knew it because God had told him that he would not go in. Moses was concerned about the people he had led these many years. He spoke to God and said, “Lord, the people need someone to lead them into this new land. They need someone to lead them into battle, to listen to their complaints, and to direct them in your ways. Otherwise the community of the Lord will be like sheep without a shepherd” [Numbers 27:12-17]

God heard Moses’ concern and told him to find Joshua, a man of charisma, to lead the people. So Joshua became a shepherd for Israel. Now you need to know that the name Joshua, when it was translated into Greek, sounded a little different. It was translated as Jesus.

So now here is a Jesus once again leading people into the wilderness. But it’s not just the disciples he’s taking. The people in the towns see him in the boat and they follow. They run along the shoreline. They head out into the wilderness with no food, no provisions for the day. Why are they running after Jesus? Because they have needs. They have hurts. They know that they need to hear his teaching, to feel his touch, to just touch the hem of his garment. These people – these thousands of people – follow because they have found life and they refuse to let it go until they are made whole.

So when Jesus and the disciples land, hoping for a quiet retreat, there are five thousand men there, plus women and children. Jesus looks at them and has compassion on them, because he sees, like Moses, that they are like sheep without a shepherd. He teaches them, feeds them (the whole crowd with five loaves and two fish!), and sends them on their way.

But they show up again in the next town. And the next. They show up on roadsides and on farms. They are in the city and in the desert. These poor, wounded, lost souls will always be seeking Jesus because they know what they need. They need to live. They need to really live.

Henri Nouwen, who was a great contemporary spiritual writer, talks about how awareness of our brokenness can lead us to life. We are all broken people, Nouwen says, and many of our conversations with one another are dominated by stories of how broken we are. But our temptation as human beings is to walk away from the pain and suffering we are experiencing when the path to healing is to step toward it.

Nouwen says, “My own experience with anguish has been that facing it and living through it is the way to healing. But I cannot do that on my own. I need someone to keep me standing in it, to assure me that there is peace beyond the anguish, life beyond death, and love beyond fear. But I know now, at least, that attempting to avoid, repress, or escape the pain is like cutting off a limb that could be healed with proper attention.”[i]

Why did all of those thousands go to the desert to see Jesus? Why did they seek him out in the streets, and houses and byways of the land? Because they sensed that Jesus knew. Jesus would not ignore their suffering or minimize it or pretend that it wasn’t there. It was safe for them to unbind their wounds in Jesus’ presence. They did not need to fear being vulnerable. They did not need to cover over the pain. If Jesus was coming into their lives, he was going to enter their lives at the point where they needed him the most.

But, of course, Jesus didn’t just heal them so that they could be relieved of their pain. Jesus is not content merely to take away something that we don’t want. Jesus is not some spiritual morphine making us forget the pain so that we can go on in lives that are prone to delusion and distortion. When Jesus heals, he wants transformation not pacification. Jesus wants new life not old habits. Jesus wants you to be a new person conformed to the image of Christ. Things will change.

There’s a Burt Reynolds movie that is now almost thirty years old called The End. In the movie, Reynold’s character, Wendell Lawson, receives word that he only has six months to live. Wendell decides that he doesn’t want to wait for the end to happen to him so he begins to contemplate ending his own life. The movie is actually a comedy and it ends when Wendell decides that he’s going to end it all by swimming out into the ocean and drowning. He’s that miserable.

As we see him swimming away from the shore we get to hear Wendell’s thoughts. Initially his thoughts are all about finally carrying out his plan to do himself in. He gets many, many yards from shore and he realizes that he has gone so far that he probably couldn’t get back now even if he wanted to. But he also realizes something else. He wants to live.

So he turns back to shore and he begins to pray to God. He’s bargaining hard: “Oh, God, help me! If you’ll only help me get back to shore I’ll change my life. I’ll start going to church. I’ll give fifty percent of my income to the church. Fifty percent, Lord! I’m talking gross!”

He’s starting to see the land get closer now and he suddenly realizes that he’s going to make it back. He says, “I’m going to make it, Lord! I’m going to live! I’ll start giving that ten percent, Lord!” Before he even makes it back to shore, Wendell is stepping back from changing too much. The question still remains, “Does he just want to escape the pain or does he want to really live?” If he really wants to live, he’s going to have to accept that God will do some messing around in his life.

What is it that you would take into the desert for Jesus to heal? What wounds are still open? What relationships are broken? What grief is still lingering? What anxiety is still unrelieved? What illness is holding you in its grip? What demons are keeping you in their power?

Maybe it’s something you’ve been praying about for a long time. Maybe you’ve asked others to hold you in prayer as well. And maybe it seems like these prayers have gone on for many, many days.

Maybe it’s something you’ve been trying hard to conceal and that you find it hard to admit even to yourself. You’re not sure how you can open your hands to offer it to God. You’re not sure you even want it to be taken away because if it were gone it would require some major changes and change is hard. But our choice is the same – Do we merely want to escape the pain or do we want to really live? To really live requires accepting the healing that Jesus has to offer.

Some say healing is something lost to early Christian history. They say it is a carryover from an age that still believed in supernatural power and transformations that could now be explained scientifically. But don’t tell that to people who have experienced healing – who know that what God wants is not us at our best but us as we are – with all the hurts and wounds that we must have from being human. If we conceal those hurts because we believe that’s the part of us God can’t do anything about, then we have given up the heart of the gospel. Christ came, not because of our merits, but because of our wounds. That is what we are called to offer to God.

So come to the desert. Come to seek the balm of Gilead. Come to seek the sun of righteousness that rises with healing in its wings [Mal 4:2]. Come to seek the Christ who walks among us, who has compassion on his people, and who will not leave us like sheep without a shepherd.

What do you have to bring? Jesus is waiting. For you. Thanks be to God.

[i] Henri J.M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved, [New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1992], p. 95.

On Being a Little Suspicious

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
David gathered all the young men of Israel, thirty thousand in all. David and all the men with him set off and went from Baalah of Judah in order to bring up from there the ark of Elohim which is called by the name of Yahweh, Lord of Hosts, who is enthroned on the cherubim. They set the ark of Elohim on a new wagon and brought it from the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. Uzziah and his brother, sons of Abinadab, were guiding the new wagon and they brought it from the house of Abinadab which is on the hill with the ark of Elohim on it and Uzziah's brother walked in front of the ark. Now David and the whole house of Israel were dancing with all their might before Yahweh with songs and with harps, lyres, tambourines, castanets and cymbals...
So David went down and brought the ark of Elohim from the house of Obed-Edom to the city of David with rejoicing. When those carrying the ark of Yahweh had taken six steps, he sacrificed an ox and a fatted calf. David danced with all his might before Yahweh. David wore a linen ephod. David and the whole house of Israel brought up the ark of Yahweh with shouting and the sound of trumpets.
Now, as the ark of Yahweh came into the city of David, Michal, daughter of Saul looked out of the window and saw the king, David, leaping and dancing before the Lord and she despised him in her heart.
They brought the ark of the Lord and set it in its place inside the tent that David had pitched for it, and David sacrificed burnt offerings and offerings of well-being before the Lord. After he had finished sacrificing the burnt offerings a and the offerings of well-being, he blessed the people in the name of Yahweh, Lord of Hosts, and distributed food among all the people, the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, to each a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins. Then all the people went back to their homes.

There was a time when I thought God was calling me to get a PhD. I went back to school at UVA and began to study philosophical theology, which, if I do say so myself, is about the most obscure degree you can get. There are not many want ads in the paper asking to hire philosophical theologians.

As part of my preparation for that degree I had to take German. So the first course I took in going back for my degree was a short summer course in German. Our teacher was a native German speaker and the entire class consisted of us struggling through several German texts while she guided us like some expert puzzle master. The whole intent was that we should READ German, so we didn't have to worry about pronunciation or writing. All we had to do was to ask questions of a text - to try to figure out how the words went together and what their significance was.

Now none of this is really new because this is also my favorite way of reading the Bible, too. Have you ever had this experience? You read a passage from the Bible and it is so strange-sounding, so foreign to your experience that you have to go back and read it again. Sometimes you find yourself saying, "It can't really say that, can it?" And sometimes it does.

I guess what I'm getting at is that the Bible is sometimes so foreign to us that it's like reading in another language, even though it's in English (assuming you're reading an English translation - if you've got the original, it IS another language). But this foreignness of the Bible is only natural when you consider that it is a very old book, 3,000 years old in some places. It was written by people who lived in very different times with very different social customs. And it's only when we take the time to enter the world of the Bible that we can sometimes see what's going on. That's why interpretation is still the responsibility of every responsible Christian. Every generation has to find the key that will unlock the pages so that the Bible can live.

So this morning I want you to help me do some detective work with the Bible and the passage we read from 2 Samuel. We've been hooking up with the stories of David for several weeks now - David and Goliath, David’s lament at the death of Saul - and today we read this strange little story that almost nobody has heard of - the story of David entering Jerusalem with the ark of God.

But you've only heard a piece of the story so far this morning. The lectionary, a list of Bible readings which I tend to follow, gives us two portions of the story and leaves out some in the middle and some at the end. Now let me warn you about that. Whenever somebody tells you, "I'm going to read selected verses from 2 Cauliflower chapter 13," you need to be suspicious, because those verses are in there for a reason and the reader is leaving them out for a reason. Hopefully they're only being left out so that the reading doesn't go on for hours and hours. But today, we need to be very suspicious, and I'll tell you why.

OK - first let's recap what's going on. The first part of the reading is 2 Samuel chapter 6 verses 1 through 5. David has become king following the death of Saul. He has managed to keep the tribes of Israel united, despite the fact that he is a southerner and the northern tribes don't get along too well with the south. I know, I know. Believe me, it was a problem in ancient Israel, too.

But David recognizes that to stay united the tribes need a new, neutral site as their capital. So he chooses the recently-conquered city of Jerusalem in the hill-country right near the border of the north and the south. A stroke of political genius. All he needed was a symbol to bring into the city - a symbol that would unify the people. What he needed was the Ark of the Covenant.

Now we tend to think of this as a very important symbol for our ancestors in Israel. After all, Raiders of the Lost Ark wouldn't have been nearly as successful a movie if the thing Indiana Jones was looking for - the ark - weren't so valuable. It was important. The ark contained those stone tablets given to Moses on the mountain top in the wilderness - those tablets with the 10 Commandments. Maybe you've heard about these.

Anyway - a very important thing, but somehow it had been languishing away in somebody's basement for several years before David decided to bring it up to his new capital city. Well, maybe not a basement, but it was an out of the way place. In the Bible story, the last time we've seen the Ark of the Covenant is after a disastrous defeat for the Israelites at the hands of the Philistines. The only reason the Israelites got it back then is that God's presence was so overwhelming that it caused the Philistines to break out with hemorrhoids. (You think, I'm making this up, don't you? 1 Samuel chapter 5. I'll get you reading this Bible yet!) Anyway, when the Philistines had had enough of this they sent the ark back to the Israelites and they had stuck it in the house of Abinadab who lived on the hill.

The ark was important to Israel because it was the place where God chose to be present among the people. It was considered God's traveling throne and when Israel held the ark they were blessed. The ark had accompanied them through the Jordan River after all those years wandering in the desert. The ark had been with them as they conquered the Promised Land.

But the ark was also considered holy and not only holy but powerfully holy. Holiness in the Old Testament implies being set apart and full of God's presence and God's presence is so great that human beings can not stand to be close to it. When Moses talked to God on the mountain, the people were told not to touch the mountain. When Moses asked to see God, God only allowed Moses to see the back, because God's face was too glorious and holy. And the ark was holy as well.

But somehow, in the midst of wars with the Philistines and intrigues in the palace, the ark had been neglected. So David decided to bring it up to Jerusalem, the new capital city of the new Israel. And that's where we began reading. David gathers thirty thousand men. They get a new wagon and place the ark of God on the wagon. Abinadab's sons, Uzzah and Ahio, were guiding the cart on the journey. David made a big spectacle of the procession. He danced along with all the attendants and they sang and there were lyres and harps and tambourines and cymbals and castanets. It was quite a festival as they left the house of Abinadab for Jerusalem.

Well, that gets us through verse five. Now the lectionary has us skip down to the second half of verse 12 where it says, "So David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of Obed-edom to the city of David with rejoicing". Sounds like just a continuation of the story, doesn't it? David is dancing with the instruments in verse 5 as they head to Jerusalem, they're rejoicing in verse 12 as they head with the ark to Jerusalem. The same big happy parade, right?

Wrong. Anybody else wonder with me how the ark got from the house of Abinadab to the house of Obed-edom? I know they're both long, unpronounceable Hebrew names, but they ARE different. Well, the answer is that there was a death along the way and this is actually the second parade. See? You miss all the dramatic stuff if you're not suspicious.

What happened in those verses that the lectionary skips is that the new wagon has to go over a threshold along the way and Abinadab's son, Uzzah, who is walking along beside the ark, reaches out to steady it and ZAP! - He is struck down on the spot. Now I know this sounds harsh. After all, the ark might have fallen if Uzzah hadn't reached out to hold it. But, remember this is holiness and Uzzah had reached in where mortals should fear to tread. It's very difficult for us to understand, but the holiness of God, the presence of God with that ark was so great that it could not be casually approached. Those who came to it needed to be ritually prepared. Uzzah and his brother were not just carting around a wooden box - this was the ark of the Lord.

But if it makes you feel any better, David didn't understand any better than us either. He was angry and more than a little upset with God. He was even afraid of God and he thought to himself, "How can I take care of something as dangerous as this ark is?" He was also probably thinking, this is really putting a damper on the parade and how's it going to look to take this ark into my new capital city under a cloud?

So he calls off the parade. He finds somebody who'd be willing to take the ark in, who happens to be Obed-Edom the Gittite. And he leaves it there for three months. He probably would have left it there a lot longer than that, too, except that he got the word that Obed-Edom the Gittite was being blessed by God because of his hospitality of the ark. Obed-edom was increasing in wealth. Obed-edom, a Gittite for crying out loud!, was getting the blessing David sought. So he orders up another parade and heads out once more to bring the ark up to Jerusalem. But, of course, you wouldn't know this if you weren't suspicious.

But this is not just an entertaining, and strange, interlude. Perhaps the preparers of the lectionary were trying to protect us from some real ugliness, but we really can't understand God or David without this interlude. David, who was so pious and so trusting in God as a twelve-year-old fighting Goliath, had grown up to be a complicated adult. At times he is daring, dashing and devoted to God. At other times he can be opportunistic, deceitful and even devious, as we see in the episode with Bathsheba. Politically he was nothing but successful. As a man of God, he is sometimes faithful and sometimes forgetful. In this case it seems that God is merely a tool to him, and the ark is an instrument that is useful when it seems to bring blessing and useless when it seems to bring a curse. David, it seems, can take it or leave it. And at any rate, the narrator keeps referring to Jerusalem as the "city of David" - not the "city of God."

God, on the other hand, appears in this missing passage more forcefully than anywhere else in the whole chapter. God is the holy one of Israel - the God who is so powerful that he demands full attention - or else!, as poor Uzzah found out. God refuses to be set aside or used for political games, even if they are the games of God's chosen king, David. God will be God, blessing whom God wants to bless, and continually calling for the love of God's people.

So that's the situation when we get to the ark's entry into Jerusalem. There is more dancing and singing and music. There are sacrifices to God and it all ends with David putting on the short linen outfit of a priest and blessing the people in the name of God while doling out gifts of food to all the people around. A wonderful ending in verse 19. The people go to their homes and you can just see them saying to themselves, "Yes, this David is going to be alright. Cakes and raisins for everybody. He's alright."

But the chapter doesn't end there. And neither does the story. Only the lectionary has you stop with the easy, happy ending. Remember - be suspicious. There's more here.

You do get a hint of what's to come in verse 16. That verse tells us that someone is watching this parade from a distance. Someone is not down among the crowd receiving the blessings and the goodies from David. Verse 16 says that "as the ark of the Lord came into the city of David (there's that reference to David's city again), Michal, daughter of Saul (the former king), looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart." Wo - now this is harsh! She despised him? It gets even worse when I tell you that Michal was David's wife!

What could cause this animosity? Well, you'd never know from just that one verse. It's only when you hear the rest of the story, (as Paul Harvey would say), that you understand what's going on. Verse 20 tells us that David returned home after the sacrifices to God in order to bless his household. But Michal comes out to meet him, and, as if to remind us what's important about her, she is described again as the daughter of Saul - not as his wife. So maybe the fact that David has taken her father's place has upset Michal.

But what she goes on to say is that David has embarrassed himself by putting on this skimpy loincloth outfit that the priests wore and dancing up and down in front of his maidservants like any old exhibitionist would. So perhaps it is David's lack of dignity that is disturbing her. That's what she says. Maybe the unspoken claim is that her father Saul would never have done something like this.

David seems to take it this way and he goes on to say to her that his dancing was not to display himself before the people, but to honor the Lord. "I danced for the Lord," he says. Then to rub in his position a little more he says, "You know, the Lord, who chose me instead of your father and all his household and made me prince over Israel. My maidservants do not hold me in contempt because of this dancing, but they honor me."

The next verse, verse 23, tells us of the complete silencing of Michal. "Michal the daughter of Saul had no child until the day of her death." If that nasty argument with David never got resolved, you can understand why. The atmosphere had definitely turned sour and the irony is that David, who was coming home to bring a blessing to the household, ends up with a curse - and his household was never at rest for his whole reign. If David thought he could control God's blessings by bringing the ark into the city, he certainly failed.

So the last scene in the story is not the contented walk into the sunset full of the blessings of the day - cakes and raisins and a glorious king. The final scene is of emptiness and strife. The only figure who stands uncompromised is God. Though God's story is often told through very fallible human beings - God refuses to be controlled or contained.

The God we come to know in Jesus Christ is one that we often talk about in soft ways because we like to think of Jesus as open and accepting and warm. Which is exactly how we are supposed to picture him. God does reach out to us.

But the story of the ark reminds us that God is also a wild and holy God who cannot be contained. But…God chose to be contained. God chose to come among us in Jesus Christ despite the fact that God is beyond every created being. One writer I read recently talked about wondering how painful it must have been for the God who created the universe to come to us in human form. God comes to confront us and to challenge us to be transformed and in doing that God won't be limited to the sweet sentimentality of a Hallmark greeting card. God will call us to confront that wild and holy spirit within us that calls us to something beyond ourselves.

The danger for us is that we have lost all sense that the words we invoke for God refer to actual holiness. Because we want so desperately for the world to make sense on a horizontal level, we have given up on the vertical level. Transcendence is a word we have lost hope in so that God seems to be more a term or a concept than an actual being overwhelming the universe with God’s presence.
There was a movie a few years ago about tornado chasers in Oklahoma. In Twister a scientist's girlfriend accompanies him on her first tornado chase. After a close brush with the funnel cloud of the tornado she looks at him and says, "When you said you were a tornado-chaser, I thought it was just a metaphor."

Well, in our day in age, to be known as someone who really believes in a God who is wild and holy and who wants to change us, is to be a tornado-chaser. When it stops being a Sunday morning thing and starts being an every day thing – this Christianity stuff seems a little too out of control to the rest of the world. When your faith stops being a socially acceptable thing to do, it’s a little too dangerous. When you try to change your life and change the world to reflect what God wants it to be, it’s a little too uncomfortable to the world around us. God is no longer a metaphor.
But if we downplay the faith we have….if we forget how powerful God really is…well, then we might as well be like David, content to let God languish in Abinadab's basement or Obed-edom's closet. If we only talk about God in here on Sunday, maybe God will stay locked up and unable to disturb our lives.

But God cannot be contained. And Obed-edom's blessings will never be ours until we take the risk of seeking the living God. Scary? Yes. But David, confused and conflicted as he was, did it dancing. So can we. If we're just a little suspicious of the too-easy endings, and a little more open to the God who wants to meet us and change us…forever. Thanks be to God.

The Ministry of Moving-In

Mark 6:1-13
He left there and came to his hometown. His disciples followed him. When the Sabbath came he began to teach in the synagogue and the many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this come from? And what is this wisdom given to him? How did he come to have such power in his hands? Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary, brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And aren’t his sisters here with us?” So they took offense at him.
Jesus said, “A prophet is not honored in his hometown and in his own family and in his own house.” And he could do no signs of power there except to lay hands on a few sick people for healing. He was amazed at their unbelief. So he traveled through the surrounding villages teaching.
He called the Twelve and began to send them out two by two. He gave them authority over evil spirits. He instructed them to take nothing for their journey except a walking stick, not bread nor bag nor money pouch, but to wear sandals and not to dress in two tunics. He said to them, “When you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place does not welcome you and refuses to hear you, leave there and shake the dust from under your feet as witness against them.”
So they went out preaching repentance. They cast out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

One of my favorite professors from seminary now lives in Philadelphia. My last year at Perkins was a time when I was finally enjoying school and one of the reasons for that was the teachers I had who helped me ask the right question and to listen for God is some new ways. Millie was one of those folks. She was very encouraging to me and after seminary we kept in touch. Our families grew at about the same time as Millie and Harold adopted a child from China and we welcomed Joel and Rachel into our lives. When they moved to Philadelphia we started to visit and that’s why I’m telling you this story.

I have discovered that there are people who need to have other people who will just invite themselves into their homes. I don’t think Suzanne is sold on this idea. I think she thinks that it’s just a way for us not to have to get a hotel room when we go places. But I am certain that it’s true. Millie and Harold need to have me come and visit every so often and I feel that it is my Christian duty to remind them of that about once a year. If I have a church conference in Philadelphia I’ll invite myself over. Or if we need a family trip, we’ll invite ourselves over.

Now I know this sounds self-serving, but it’s not. Millie and Harold are wonderful people, but they don’t get out as much as they should and they would never see us if we didn’t go to them. When we go, we bless them with a friendship that we won’t let go of. They bless me, too. I need to go visit just as much as they need me to come take up their third floor room for a season. But I’m really more aware of the ministry of moving-in I’m providing, which is really on the flip side of helping them to develop their ministry of hospitality.

I also should say that what I’m doing in inviting myself over is very biblical. If you ask yourself what Jesus would do, the answer is clear – he would invite himself over. It’s what he did with Zaccheus. (You remember the song, don’t you? “Zaccheus, you come down for I’m going to your house today.”) It’s what he did when making preparations for the Passover meal – he sent the disciples to follow a man into his house and to say to him, “Where’s the guest room?” It’s even what he did after the resurrection when the disciples were sitting in a locked room – he came right into the midst of them. Jesus knew something about the ministry of moving-in.

That’s why his instructions to the disciples in the passage we have for today are so interesting. Jesus is sending the disciples out two by two to preach repentance and to heal. But right before this happens there is an amazing story of inhospitality and it will be hard for us to understand what he is asking the disciples to do unless we hear the first part of this passage. You may want to follow along in your own Bible or in the pew bibles near you.

Chapter 6 of Mark’s gospel begins with Jesus returning to his hometown. He has been going throughout the region of Galilee teaching and healing the people. In fact, in the story just before verse one here he has just raised a little girl from the dead. He is a person of astounding power and he is attracting huge crowds. But then he decides to go home.

He came traipsing back into town with his disciples in tow and in any other town he might have expected a thunderous welcome and crowds of people pressing in on him for healing and to hear his teaching. But this was Nazareth. They’re not too impressed with what goes on elsewhere. It might be all well and good for Jesus to do those amazing signs over there across the bay…uh…across the lake, but here in Nazareth we have our own ways and we’ll just see about this one.

Jesus came to the synagogue on the Sabbath to teach. The people who heard it were impressed. “The kid has some pretty good insights. He’s saying some things we might ought to hear. But where’d de get all this? How’d he get to be so wise? And how’d he come about having the power he has in his hands?”

Then some of them reminded the group of his pedigree. “You know, he’s just a carpenter. He’s the son of Mary.” Interesting, isn’t it, that they call him the son of Mary and not son of Joseph? Maybe there have been some dark rumors floating around the village that perhaps Joseph was a little less involved in the birth than he should have been. Either way, the words have the ring of an insult in that society. “Don’t we know his brothers and sisters?” they said. “He is getting above his raisin’.”

Now from time to time I hear people say, “Oh, now if I had seen Jesus and not just heard stories about him, I would have had no trouble believing.” We imagine that Jesus must have glowed like a figure in a Thomas Kinkade painting or had a circle around his head for a halo as in the old medieval paintings. But this story is a good reminder that Jesus was not only accepted, he was rejected. And there were many who did not see a savior in Jesus – only a troublemaker, a radical, a charlatan, or a simple wood-worker forgetting his place.

The reaction he received from his own people even astounded Jesus. He didn’t do many signs there, though he did use his hands to heal a few sick people. But the passage says that he was “amazed at their unbelief” [6:6] and soon he was on his way to teach in the surrounding villages.

So that’s the backdrop to what happens next, because he gathers the disciples together and he gives them authority over evil spirits. They are going to be prepared for their work with the same authority Jesus has had in sending out evil spirits. But they are also going to have to learn to trust God as much as Jesus does. He tells them that they can’t take anything for their journey except a walking stick. No bread, no bag for possessions, no money in their belts. Just a stick and sandals. Like the Israelites preparing to leave Egypt, eating the Passover meals with a staff in their hands and sandals tied on their feet, these disciple were going to have to learn to rely on God and to rely on what God would provide them.

They were only allowed one tunic – a long shirt – to wear. Because if they had two they might be tempted to sleep out and risk the chill of the night. But Jesus didn’t want them sleeping out. This is the important thing they had to learn to do – if they were going to learn to be true disciples, they were going to have to learn to invite themselves into people’s homes.

In Luke’s gospel the directions are even more explicit. They are supposed to go in and eat with the people in the villages. But even here in Mark it’s pretty direct. Jesus says, “When you enter a house…” There is no word here about being invited into a house. They are to go into houses and stay there until they leave the village. Maybe after coming into a village they would discover that there were some nicer homes they wished they had wandered into but, no, they have a special place with the first family they come to.

What happens if the folks you go to stay with aren’t welcoming or if the village refuses to hear the good news? What if they are like the folks in Nazareth who wouldn’t accept Jesus? Well, then, leave but as you do shake off the dust from your feet as a witness against the town. The disciples are meant to be a blessing but if they are not received in that way, well, they have other places to bless.

This is the mission of the disciples. They are to go and tell the good news and they are to do it by inviting themselves over. It is not the case that the blessing they represented was self-evident. It is not true that everybody should have known who Jesus was and what he represented just from coming into contact with him. Jesus knew that the gospel had to be more invasive than that. It had to come into people’s homes and to disturb their equilibrium. The good news is not content to sit in the village square until people discover it, consider it and decide whether or not it’s worthy of a listen. Jesus comes to the door – “Behold, I stand at the door and knock”. Jesus invites himself in. Jesus meets us behind the closed doors of our lives and tells us that the deepest need of our lives, the deepest desire of our hearts, is to play host to the ruler of the universe and to know that we belong. It’s not a polite visit on the doorstep – this mission thing. It’s an invasive procedure.

Now what am I saying? That we ought to be inviting ourselves into the homes of all those who need to hear the good news? Maybe not literally, but certainly we need to be pushing our way into the lonely lives that so many of our neighbors (and maybe we, ourselves) lead.

Americans are lonely people. Just in the last month we had a major study conducted by Duke University where they tried to determine how many friends Americans have. They asked the question, “Who have you discussed important matters with?” in 1985 and then again in 2004 to see how many people we feel we have to share our lives with. 20 years ago, Americans reported that, on average, they had three people to talk to about the most important things they were facing. Now it’s two.[i]

That’s just one survey, but it’s affirmed by our sense that there is something missing. We are a hyper-connected culture. We throw our personal lives up on the web in blogs, we play out our basest instincts on Jerry Springer, we have cell phones and instant messenger and e-mail – but if the survey is right, we feel we have fewer places to take ourselves to be really heard. We’re talking a lot. We’re connected. But we’re still not connecting.

Maybe what many of us most need in our lives is a visitor who won’t let us ignore the deep hurts and wounds we try so desperately to hide. What was it that the disciples were given charge to do on these missions? To cast our demons, to heal sickness, and to preach repentance. We’ve got demons in our house. We’ve got things that possess us so much that it’s amazing they let us get out the door in the morning. The demons may be named unforgiveness or obsession or they may be wrongs we nurse or rights we feel are unjustly denied. Our demons can have many names, but we don’t want to let them go and we don’t want to let anyone know that they are there.

We’ve got illnesses the world knows nothing about. We’ve got gaping wounds we’re papering over with Band-Aids that need deep healing. We’ve got depressions and anxieties and loss and grief. Things we’ve done and things that have been done to us. Who are we going to show those to?

We’ve got sins that need repenting. We’ve gone a long way from home and we need to find a way back. We know God’s been calling us but we don’t want to listen. There’s just too much to lose or just too much to let go of.

You see, there’s a lot that needs a visitor to uncover. We are not those healers. We are not the ones who can set the wrong things right and release the captives. That’s what God does. We are people in need of just the same sort of healing. But when we tell someone about what Jesus is doing in our lives, when we invite them to open some doors they may be holding fiercely shut, when we defy the rules of the world which only create more barriers and not the things which make for peace, when we sit and eat with strangers and friends, we open a space for God to come in and what needs to be done.

One of the most healing nights I ever experienced happened during the World Series. It was 2001 and Arizona and the Yankees were playing. But I watched Game 7 sitting in the front room of a small house in Cortazar, Mexico. We were on a mission trip working with the Methodists in this small city and every night we split up to go to the homes of different families. I was staying with a family that welcomed me from the first day as if I were part of the family.

The family ran a small fruit stand out of the front room that faced the street. It was the living room at night. We sat among the guavas and avocados and talked and watched the ball game on an ancient portable TV with a grainy picture. Berenice, the 12-year-old daughter, got me to help her with her English homework. Her mother introduced me to guava juice and showed me how to make it. Her brother asked me about schools in the U.S. and invited me to go to his.

What struck me about the night was how normal it all was. Despite the language barriers, the cultural barriers, the entirely different worlds in which we lived – it felt like a normal night with baseball, homework, the smell of limes and cilantro in the air, and conversation among people who were strangers only days before, but who now felt like family. I would not have been in that room that night were it not for this gospel. I would not have known what God was doing in that place if the love of Jesus hadn’t led me into that house.

God is doing amazing things every day. God is still casting out demons and tearing down walls, healing the sick and telling good news. God was not content to tell us all this from afar; Jesus invited himself in, first into a manger because the doors were shut, but then, because God does not abide a closed door, into the most personal spaces of our lives. When are you going to invite the healer in? Who are you going to go visit? And what message will you bring them? Get your walking stick and get your sandals on and then trust that God’s going to show you the way. Thanks be to God.

[i] Americans Have Fewer Friends, Researchers Say, ABC News, http://abcnews.go.com/Health/print?id=2107907

The War - Can We Talk Here?

Tromaine Toy
2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27 (NRSV)
After the death of Saul, when David had returned from defeating the Amalekites, David remained two days in Ziklag... David intoned this lamentation over Saul and his son Jonathan. (He ordered that The Song of the Bow be taught to the people of Judah; it is written in the Book of Jashar.) He said:
Your glory, O Israel, lies slain upon your high places!
How the mighty have fallen!
Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon;
or the daughters of the Philistines will rejoice,
the daughters of the uncircumcised will exult.
You mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew or rain upon you,
nor bounteous fields!
For there the shield of the mighty was defiled,
the shield of Saul, anointed with oil no more.
From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty,
the bow of Jonathan did not turn back,
nor the sword of Saul return empty.
Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely!
In life and in death they were not divided;
they were swifter than eagles,
they were stronger than lions.
O daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,
who clothed you with crimson, in luxury,
who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.
How the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle!
Jonathan lies slain upon your high places.
I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;
greatly beloved were you to me;
your love to me was wonderful,
passing the love of women.
How the mighty have fallen,
and the weapons of war perished!

Last week, if you were here, you know that we told the story of a battle. We got our cheers going and some of you were Israelites and some of you were Philistines and some of you got into it way too much. Together we told the story of David and Goliath and it was a lot of fun. We all love the story of the underdog taking on the giant and winning. We love the story of David’s trust in God and how God used unlikely things—a 12-year-old boy, a slingshot and a stone—to bring about a great victory. And there was that subversive message in there – that the weapons and might that the adults relied on were the things that could not win this fight.

But some of you pointed out to me that I conveniently left out some things as we told this story. There were some gory details in there that we kind of glossed over. There was the disturbing implication that the will of God might involve the killing of another person, even if he was a monstrous giant. And there is the continuing challenge of lining up these ancient stories with the messages of peace we have from Jesus. David is an awfully human person who has, as we find out in the readings that follow this week, some very outsized flaws. There’s a reason people don’t wear bracelets asking the question, “What would David do?” We might be disturbed at the answers we get!

But there might be good reason for us to ponder that question every so often, particularly as a people who live in the United States. Jesus, by and large, was teaching a people who did not hold political power and who were not confronted with the problem of what to do with military might. In Jesus’ day, the people of Israel were subjects of the Roman Empire who saw soldiers and armies as alien forces occupying the land. When Jesus talked to them about the sword it was usually about the sword being wielded by someone else.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that what Jesus had to say about violence and war is irrelevant. It’s just that, by and large (because there were some soldiers and centurions in the mix), the people who heard his message heard it from a position of powerlessness. David, however, was the first great king of Israel, ruling over armies and governing a kingdom that had to struggle constantly with what to do with its military might. That is more like the environment that we Americans face in our day and age. One of the responsibilities that comes with being blessed with great wealth and great resources is a continuing debate about how best to use those resources and what values will govern our use of military force.

Which brings me to Iraq and the Long War. I really didn’t want to go into this and you know all the reasons why I didn’t. I know that you feel as beaten up and bamboozled by the way we have been talking about this war for the last five years as I do. And after all that time, maybe you feel as I do that all the talk has produced a lot of heat and not much light, a lot of rhetoric and not much change, a lot of heartbreak and a lot of failed leadership on every side.

We are divided as a nation on what is happening in this war, but we have done a pretty good job of not talking about it, or at least not talking about it in ways that matter. Opinion polls tell us that a majority of Americans think that going into Iraq was a mistake but a majority of us also think that now that we’re there we should ensure that we don’t leave the country a mess. But right now it is a mess. We have moments when we hope that things are going to get better, but every day there are headlines reporting another car bombing, another setback in building a government, another American dying or being injured. It’s a bloody mess.

But I wonder if we know how to respond to this crisis. I hate this war. I really do. I hate that young men and women are dying. I hate that we had to have a moment at the beginning of the Northampton graduation to recognize the sacrifice of Tromaine Toy. I was glad that we had the moment, but I hated that this young life and 2500 others like it have been lost. They made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of their country – in the name of you and me. I hate that this war has not asked much from those of us who have not had to go and fight. And I hate that we have not grown closer to one another and to the ideals our country stands for because of the war – we have only grown more deeply divided.

Now don’t misunderstand what I am saying. We have many people in this congregation who have served and are serving in the military. We have people very close to us right now, David Ellis among them, who are serving in Iraq. Military service is a high calling in a country that is looked to by the world for the ideals it stands for and the might it holds. What I lament is what war does to us and what this war is doing to us. Because our language for talking about peace and justice and the responsible use of power is so impoverished, we cannot honor our nation or honor our troops without falling into warring camps.

Here’s what I mean by that: The opinions on this war have become so entrenched that I don’t think I’ve heard anything new come out of either side for the last year and a half. If you oppose the war the argument seems to be that since the reasons we were told we were going to war for turned out to be false, we have no moral obligation to offer responsible alternative plans and the entire effort has been to discredit the administration and to uncover its hypocrisy. Any talk of national ideals and the advancement of those ideals and opposing the real threats to those ideals are far down the list of talking points.

On the other side, there has been a tendency to caricature any plan for Iraq other than the one being carried out as a “cut and run” strategy – a phrase that no one likes and which immediately cuts off any rational debate. Just as worrying on this side is the tendency to talk about this war only as a way of preventing a war over here. We hear the phrase, “We’re fighting them over there so that we don’t have to fight them here.” When we hear this it makes the people of Iraq and Afghanistan into shields protecting us from harm. They die so we don’t have to – that’s a position none of us should want to take. Again, what we long for is not phrases and talking points but an appeal to our basic ideals as a nation and how those are being advanced. We want to know that we are acting in harmony with “the better angels of our nature” and that we are not losing our basic values.

So I’ve wandered into the thick of it here. I’ve wandered into it because I am aware that I avoid talking about the war in this place because I know how conflicted we are and how we as a congregation are of different minds about what this war means. But if we can’t find a way to talk about the deepest questions facing our nation in church, then we are abdicating our role as Christians as truth-tellers. If we do not seek the truth in a nation that needs to hear truth, we are not servants of a God who confronts us with difficult questions of love and justice, asking us continually, “Are you on my side? Is this course of action you are considering something that reflects my will for the world or are you acting against it?” We can never stop listening to those questions because that challenge is always before us.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was someone who saw something prophetic in the ideals that bind us together as a nation. When he was confronting segregation and the injustices that were confronting the African-American population, he used the language of the Bible and of the American nation because he felt that there was something uniting them. He believed that when this country was at its best, living up to its best ideals, it was also striving to live up to God’s ideals.

Sitting in a jail in Birmingham, Alabama, where he was imprisoned for his work on behalf of black civil rights, King said of the protestors who joined him, “One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”[i] King chastised the church of his day and its leaders for refusing to join in the sacred work of calling the nation back to its roots.

I am afraid that we are in a similar day. Our nation has forgotten how to talk about life and liberty. We have forgotten how to speak to one another in a respectful way that is not trying to score points or win an argument but in a way that honestly strives after truth. We have forgotten how to listen for God’s challenging word. And so we have a broken political establishment that may not be strong enough to unite us again. When the democratic institutions that represent the people fail it is up to the people to reform them. The church should be asking the questions that help them to do that: Who are we? What is it we believe that we are called to be and do? How can we carry this out by doing the greatest good and the least amount of harm? How can we make sure that no one gets left behind?

There is a temptation, which I recognize in myself, to say that the church is the church and the affairs of the world should not concern us. We have a different language in the church and we should look different from the world, to the extent that we downplay the importance of what happens in the world. There is some truth in that. Our highest priority is to follow Jesus Christ and to be the church of Jesus Christ.

But even while we’re trying to get our discipleship straight in the body of Christ, we are also involved in the world and the most powerful nation in the world cannot be without its Christians in helping to determine who it is and what it should be. We need to take part in this dialogue. The world needs us. Our nation needs us.

We began this sermon with David and I want to end with David. Last week we saw him as a boy defeating one of Israel’s enemies. In this story today he is in a much more complicated setting. God had let him know that he would be Israel’s next king, but he refused to kill Israel’s current king, Saul, even when he was given the opportunity to do that. David respected Saul, even though Saul was trying to kill him. And David loved Saul’s son, Jonathan, who would have been considered next in line for the throne.

But as Saul pushed David away, David became more and more associated with Israel’s enemies. In fact, he receives word of Saul and Jonathan’s deaths as he is toying with an alliance with the dreaded Philistines. You would think that David might be happy to get word that the man who had tried to kill him was dead and that the obstacles to his being crowned Israel’s king were removed. But David’s response is a lament.

This lamentation in the first chapter of Second Samuel is one of the most beautiful in the Bible. David curses the Philistines and even the ground of the mountains where Saul died. He remembers the dead men as valiant warriors and strong leaders. He praises what they did for the nation of Israel and he weeps over Jonathan whose love “was wonderful, passing the love of women.”

But the most profound phrase of the whole poem is one which is repeated three times: “How the mighty have fallen! How the mighty have fallen and the weapons of war perished!” Here is the deep sense of regret and loss over what the war has brought him.

As we remember today the mighty who have fallen and what the weapons of war and the rhetoric of war have brought us, perhaps we can pray for a word from God that will help us stop talk past each other, that will help us stop talking so much that we cannot hear what God would have us to be and do, and ultimately that will help us stop this war, which, like every war, casts its casualties upon mountains, fields, deserts and city streets, until we can learn the ways of peace.

We’re not the only nation seeking God and we’re not the only nation God blesses. God loves Iraqis and Afghanis and Sudanese people, too. But on this day, as the United States celebrates its birth, we pray: God bless America so that we may bless the world. Thanks be to God.

[i] Letter from the Birmingham City Jail [1964]