Third Sunday after Pentecost (5B), June 10, 2018; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1 So we do not lose heart.
Mark 3:20-35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.
O God of glory, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
Sometimes the lectionary just puts much too much on a preacher’s plate. This morning feels like something of a dog’s breakfast – a confused mash up of 1 Samuel, 2 Corinthians, and a peculiar section of the Gospel of Mark. (Well it confuses me, anyway.) The story in 1 Samuel of Samuel’s warning that the people’s desire to be like the other nations and have an autocrat is going to backfire (the more things change…). Then we hear the Apostle Paul’s encouragement that enduring affliction is going to be rewarded by God. According to the notes for this passage in The Jewish Annotated New Testament, Paul was articulating a Rabbinic Judaism idea that overcoming adversity reveals the presence of divine power, and Paul was taking it one step further asserting that affliction of those that God loves assures their greatest reward in the next life. [1] I’d say that idea has backfired too. It’s one thing to offer encouragement and comfort to not lose heart, which I think is what Paul was doing. It’s quite another to start glorifying suffering.
In the Gospel of Mark, we’re still very early in the story. Jesus has been baptized, driven into the wilderness to be tempted by the Accuser or Prosecutor (also called Satan), and has called for help – first from four friends, and then some more – the text says that “he made them twelve.” His work has consisted solely of healing various diseases and casting out many demons, and he has been drawing very large crowds. He has retreated to get some time alone, but his companions have hunted him down. He’s gone around the Galilee and twice come home to Capernaum. Our passage today really should start with the words: “Then he went home and the crowd came together again so that Jesus and his disciples couldn’t even get something to eat.” Then the Greek says that “the ones alongside him” came to take him. Maybe that was his family, maybe his people, but it doesn’t say that. That’s an interpretive translation move. It says, the ones along side him came to take him because they thought he was “beside himself.” The lawyers from the big city were saying, “he’s possessed by the ruler of all demons.” Jesus’ enigmatic response is a kind of incredulous, “well if the demons are getting cast out, why does it matter who is accomplishing it? We should all be rejoicing!” [2]
Then Jesus said something chilling. He said, “you know what? Everyone will be forgiven – all the sins, all the blasphemies, except one: insulting words or vocalized contempt for the spirit of holiness, the breath of God.” Mark says that Jesus said that because people had accused him of being possessed by an unclean spirit. That’s when his mother and his brothers and sisters said, “oh boy. We’ve got to get him out of there!” But they couldn’t get inside because of the crowd. When people told Jesus that his mother and siblings were there, he looked around and said, “Here is my family. Whoever does the will of God is my family.” Notice that Jesus doesn’t say that his mother and brothers and sisters weren’t his family. He says that his family is larger than biological. His family is larger than tribal. His kin are those who do the will of God. What is the will of God? The will of God is healing. The will of God is freedom from oppression. The will of God is reconciliation and restoration to community. In other words, the will of God is Love. That’s worth remembering when we hear anyone declaring that something is the will of God – if it has to do with well-being, with freedom from cruelty or harassment, with repair and renewal – if it has to do with Love, that’s right. Otherwise, as one of our beloved parishioners is fond of saying, don’t drag God into it.
Jesus was teaching the crowd around him that Love is what makes a family. At the end of Pride Week in Boston, I’m recalling the power of that assertion in my early years of coming out as queer. The refrain, “Love makes a family” meant so much to me and to so many others because there was not much else to protect us – not laws, not biological families, and certainly not the Church, not much anyway. Emmanuel Church was one of the early exceptions in the Episcopal Church. Coinciding with Pride Week this year (in my world) was a ceremony this past Friday at the former Episcopal Divinity School in Harvard Square. (EDS is my alma mater.)
The seminary has departed Cambridge and merged (maybe sub-merged) with Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The Cambridge campus is being sold, and so this past Friday, St. John’s Chapel at EDS was secularized, that is, having been consecrated or set apart for worship nearly 150 years ago, it is now no longer a dedicated place for worship and other sacred rituals. In short, that means that the holiness of St. John’s Chapel is no longer “located” at 99 Brattle Street. It is now wherever people carry it.
Worshiping in that place had a most profound effect on my theology and praxis. Serving as liturgical coordinator during my middle year meant facilitating the planning of eight services per week with a large rotation of students, faculty and staff – I learned some things about liturgy and I learned many things about pastoral care. It was the first place I ever heard my own voice chanting the prayers, and the first place I ever dared to imagine that I might really be ordained an Episcopal priest. There are many people at Emmanuel who also have deep connections with EDS – for instance, Jane Redmont, was baptized and confirmed there, and Ann Roosevelt grew up there because her father, (Carolyn’s grandfather) was once President and Dean.[3]
The people who planted the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, as it was called then, were the same people who planted Emmanuel Church in the City of Boston. It will not surprise you that they had some radical ideas: the board of trustees was originally limited to lay persons, and even after priests were permitted to serve as trustees, no bishops were trustees until The Rt. Rev. Barbara C. Harris was elected to the episcopate while she was serving a term as trustee and they didn’t want to ask her to step down! Episcopal Theological School was the first Episcopal seminary to teach historical biblical criticism and they kept doing it even after it was denounced by the House of Bishops. That probably just encouraged them! (The rest of the church eventually came along).
The thing is, I wouldn’t have gotten to an Episcopal seminary at all if it hadn’t been EDS’ eagerness to accept and support people who were not already officially in a diocesan ordination process and who were queer (those two things generally went hand in hand). EDS was the only one of eleven seminaries at the time that would matriculate someone like me in a Masters of Divinity degree. Twenty-two years ago, I was a refugee from a state where being in a same-sex relationship was a felony, and where the most liberal and progressive Episcopalians adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
So as I was sitting in St. John’s Chapel on Friday, prior to the secularization service, listening to others’ stories and remembering some of my own, and giving thanks for the rich and radical witness of the seminary that has been such a wonderous gift to the Church, my friend, colleague and sister alumna, who was sitting next to me whispered, “Guess what? Right now, my seven-year-old son is at the birthday party of his best friend who is also seven. His friend told the party guests that instead of bringing gifts, or toys, or games, he wanted them to make donations to Boston Warm!” My colleague said she was so surprised. They live in a Boston suburb and she didn’t know how they would have any connection with Boston Warm. She asked, “How do you know about Boston Warm?” He said, “I make sandwiches with my grandma for people who come to Boston Warm to get something to eat!” Seven years old.
It seems to me that that seven-year-old boy is doing exactly what Jesus was teaching. In the act of making sandwiches with his grandma, he has grown in his sense of who is a part of his circle of concern. And he wants his friends (and their parents) to extend their circles of concern as well. He is asserting that Love is what makes a family. He is calling on his friends and their parents to healing and freedom from oppression (especially the oppression of accumulating stuff in the form of birthday gifts). He is calling his community to reconciliation and restoration. I urge you to recommit yourselves to be a part of this kind of community too.
Listen to this poem of benediction from May Sarton: [4]
Return to the most human,
nothing less will nourish the torn spirit,
the bewildered heart,
the angry mind:
and from the ultimate duress,
pierced with the breath of anguish,
speak of love.Return, return to the deep sources,
nothing less will teach the stiff hands a new way to serve,
to carve into our lives the forms of tenderness
and still that ancient necessary pain preserve.
Return to the most human,
nothing less will teach the angry spirit,
the bewildered heart;
the torn mind,
to accept the whole of its duress,
and pierced with anguish…
at last, act for love.