Friday morning I went home to Bedford to have lunch with
Mom. I met her at Goose Creek Framing
where she has a studio to do her artwork.
As we were leaving a woman from town came in and we were
introduced. She asked, “So Loren are you
home for the summer?” As you can imagine
I have grown quite accustomed to people mistaking me for a high school or college
student but I have never had this question presented to me, so I tried to
respond graciously, in a way that would not embarrass this refined southern
lady. “Oh no, I am just in town for the
day” was my reply. But, my mother, bless
her soul, always wanting show pride in her little Presbyterian preacher stood a
little taller and said, “Loren is the minister of the Presbyterian Church in
Appomattox; she has been there for two years.”
Flabbergasted but ever-poised, I have to give the woman credit; her jaw
did not drop to the floor at this announcement.
Instead she asked how old I was and stumbled over a sentence of, “well…
I would love to hear all about your life.”
I assured her that it was a relatively quiet one. She then commented that she would love to
hear a message from me sometime.
Not that I should ever compare myself to our Lord and
Savior, but I have to wonder if this is how Jesus felt, returning to his
hometown. Did Mary walk with him through
the marketplace, anxious to introduce him to her neighbors, hoping they had
heard of all of his great work? Did
people comment on how he had changed since they last saw him or inquire how old
he was? Did he fight the urge to be
blunt with them, rather than humbly and simply answer questions, “No, I am no longer
doing carpentry with my Father.” “No I
have not returned home for good, just passing through.” Did
he hear whispers behind women’s hands as he walked to the synagogue? Did he hear the men in the market stalls
swapping stories about his family, his childhood, rumors of his current
ministry?
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| www.concordpastor.blogspot.com |
As we soon discovered in the gospel of Mark, accepting that
God’s power was at work in Jesus was not easy for the people of Nazareth to
wrap their minds around.
Surely, the
people have heard of the miraculous things that Jesus had been doing in the
surrounding villages, we all know that good gossip travels fast in small
towns.
But perhaps stories of healings,
exorcisms, and bringing a little girl back to life had a better ring to them
than the Word that Jesus preached! Everyone wanted to see miracles but not
everyone was ready to hear about the amazing and yet unsettling good news those
miracles proclaimed.
We are told in the gospel of Luke what Jesus said in his
hometown to make his old friends so offended.
Luke tells us that when Jesus came into the synagogue he was handed the
scroll of Isaiah, which he unrolled to where it read: “The Spirit of the Lord
is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has
sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Is.
61:1-2).”
Jesus then returned to his
seat saying “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
While it may have been reasonable to accept
Jesus as a man with the gift to heal, maybe even a prophet, his obvious
proclamation that he was the Messiah was ludicrous!
Jesus, obviously hurt by their rejection and lack of faith
left his hometown to spread the good news to people whose ears were more open
to hearing it, perhaps to people who did not have preconceived notions of him,
people who did not know him in the first thirty years of his life.
Beverly Zink-Sawyer reminds us that perhaps
we should put ourselves in the shoes of those villagers.
She begs the question, “How quickly would we
accept our next-door neighbor as a ‘miraculous teacher’, let alone the reputed
Son of God?” Perhaps this is a call to consider who we consider ‘worthy’ of
teaching us.
Katherine Huey asks, “How
do we even begin to look at one another with the eyes of God, to see in the
most unexpected of people, those whom God has chosen to lead?
Would we really have chosen the youngest one,
the one without the flocks to be anointed as the next king?
Would we really open our hearts and minds to
a hometown, homegrown boy, we’ve known all of his life?
Could anyone of importance really come from
here?
Who and what are we failing to
see, what and whom are we missing?”
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| www.pcusa.org |
When I read these questions I thought of our churches in
Appomattox. I thought about how this congregation,
without a doubt chose the youngest one, and a woman to boot! I thought about Rev. Rusty Small of Liberty Baptist and the facts
that he is indeed a homegrown boy who people in this community have watched
grow up. Perhaps in these ways
Appomattox is already ‘light-years ahead’ of Nazareth. But I have to wonder if the risk is greater
for us as part of the younger generation of pastors, to be run out of town, if
we make a mistake, if what we practice and preach challenges the status
quo? I think about our denomination and
our conviction that we as Christians are a “priesthood of believers,” that we
are all responsible for preaching the gospel.
But, do we really enable our members to live into such a call;
particularly when we are a denomination that has high standards for theological
education for its ministers. Not that I
think this is all wrong, I am the first to question a pastor’s theological
background, I am the first to fall into the trap of pride pertaining to my
seminary degrees. Over the past week our
denomination’s General Assembly has convened.
At GA there are a number of YAADs present; these are young adult
advisory delegates and they range in ages 17-23. As I have followed some of the
commentary on GA, I’ve seen some snide comments about YAADs and their love of
coming to the microphone on the floor.
My question is when did it become wrong for a person to put their voice
behind their beliefs? If 25 and older
this behavior is acceptable, but any younger and it is merely attention
seeking? Who is to say that Jesus can’t
work through ordinary people? Do we
stand in judgment of the evidently blind Nazarenes or do we hold up a mirror in
front of our faces?
Perhaps the truth is
that we Christians find ourselves in the place of the Nazarenes, rejecting
Jesus and to that end, the world’s population calls our bluff and rejects us! Rev.
Rick Morley puts it bluntly in his recent blog post that “Christianity in the
West is in trouble.”
In America 25% of
adults have left the religion of their youth and do not claim any religious
affiliation.
Rev Morley argues that the
central problem is not “secularism, pluralism, or the lack of a good bass
guitarist in the praise band.
The root
of the problem,” he writes, “is trust.”
Overwhelmingly and alarmingly the truth of the matter is that people do
not trust the Church anymore and why should they?
Consider the reports that we have heard on
the news in recent years.
The Roman
Catholic Church has been embroiled in one sexual abuse scandal after
another.
We have evangelical pastors who
have railed against homosexuality in their preaching but who have been found to
seek male prostitutes or have relationships with teens in their churches.
We have high profile church leaders making
sweeping statements about hurricanes being the result of homosexuals and
abortions. And if I may be so bold on my soapbox to say a word of our own
denomination, we argue incessantly about the definition of marriage while one
in six people created in the image of God go hungry!
We vow to create 1001 new worshiping
communities in the over the next 10 years when we can’t maintain the churches
we have, more rural congregations are closing their doors every day!
“Who would entrust their spiritual health, or
the spiritual health of their children to the church? Honestly, the fact that
anyone trusts us these days is quite
remarkable!”
“Jesus certainly faced questions of trust when he returned
home.
The congregation questions where
he gets this authority from because they know of his humble beginnings.
But Jesus has to earn their trust, to keep
going; he has to keep teaching and changing peoples lives. He has to die on the
cross, he has to rise again.” In Morley’s blog he reminds us that if we as the
church are going to survive we are going to need to do a few things.
The first of these is to fall on our knees in
humility, making it clear that we recognize that the church has made horrendous
mistakes in its distant and recent past.
We have to continuously repeat that while we are an institution with inspiration
by the Holy Spirit, we are also humans who are fallible and will fail again. We
must try to win back peoples’ trust and to do this we must remember who we
represent.
When we look bad, we make God
look bad!
Morley says, “We don’t need to
update our website or write some more praise choruses, we don’t need to look
more hipster and grow a soul patch.
We
need to gain people’s trust, and only then will they consider anything we have
to say.” Third, we must remember that God is faithful.
Jesus struggled to get the people to trust
him, but he was found most worthy of the trust that people put in him because
God is ultimately in charge. Finally, we have to accept that not everyone will
come to trust us or God.
Some will
receive us with open arms and some will reject our message and God.
Jesus knew this and prepared his disciples
for this.
And
when we get rejected, we are to wipe the dust from our feet and
keep going.
Morley closes with these
profound words. “Until we start showing the world that we are capable of
humility and some degree of trustworthiness, it will be us who are covered in
dust.”
And so I believe our challenge for today is to make the
shift from being the community who rejected the teachings of Jesus, to the
disciples who become representatives for Jesus.
Jesus not only left Nazareth, but he sent
forth his entourage two by two to expand his ministry, to be his field agents
in the world.
The disciples were sent
out and enabled to do amazing things through the power of Jesus.
Richard Swanson writes, “This is no rootless
wandering, the disciples do not look like itinerant preachers, they are sent
out to attach demons and heal.
Like
Jesus and John the Baptist before him, the disciples are sent out to call for
change (Provoking the Gospel of Mark).” Katherine Huey urges us that our call
is to do the same, “as those sent with power and authority to heal, to attack
demons that plague our society and the world God loves, to share the good
news.”
It would seem that Jesus gives us very little in the way of
material things for our journey.
Discipleship is a call to lead a simpler life it would seem, the clothes
on our backs, the sandals on our feet, a stick for protection or more likely to
lean on, and our most valuable resource, each other.
In truth, we don’t need much, material things
become crutches, security blankets that we cling to and hide behind.
In the sending out of his disciples the
message from Jesus is clear, you don’t need to depend on these material goods,
depend instead on God to give you what you need.
Eugene Peterson translates Jesus’ words this
way: “Don’t think you need a lot of equipment for this.
You are the equipment.”
And Henry G. Brinton provides us with the
imagery of serving Jesus by doing something tough, by performing the Lord’s
work in hard to reach places.
He says
that we have to “leave the comfortable road of conventional wisdom and face the
rocks, logs, and any other barriers that society might throw in our way.”
I would and to this the barriers we might
throw in our own way!
And so as the church of the 21st century, we must
cut through the tension and make sense of where we are at this pivotal moment
in history, and where we are going. How
do we open our ears to the prophetic voices of those whom we may not have
expected to hear? How do we make the
shift from the community that denies the truth of the good news, the community
which people are leaving and shaking the dirt from their sandals as they go, to
becoming the disciples that travel with the message of the gospel? Amen.
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| Project Burning Bush, 2008 |
