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Between the Scenes with Jesus - The Rev. Barbara Ballenger
Sermon by the Rev. Barbara Ballenger for the eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 11.Today's readings are:Jeremiah 23:1-6
Psalm 23
Ephesians 2:11-22
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.nethttps://www.lectionarypage.net/.../Pente.../BProp11_RCL.htmlYou know that part of the play between scenes when curtains close and the lights go dark, and you can just make out the stage crew moving the set around, or see their feet running back and forth behind the curtain in that space where it doesn't quite touch the floor?
I feel that is where our Gospel takes us today -to the scene changes only, without the high drama that occurs in between.
That's because these excerpts from the 6th chapter of Mark's Gospel cut out about 20 verses that include some of our favorite stories about the power of Jesus. So we do not hear about how Jesus uses five loaves and two fish to feed 5,000 hungry men and their families. And we do not hear about Jesus walking out upon the waves of the Sea of Galilee later that night, getting into the boat with his terrified disciples, and calming the winds.
Instead, we have Jesus and his disciples on either side of these big events, exhausted and famished from the non-stop need of Israel for teaching and feeding and healing. When his disciples gather to tell him all they have done at the start of today's Gospel, it's because he had sent them out two by two several verses earlier "with no bread, no bag, nor money in their belts" to try their hand at preaching repentance, casting out unclean spirits and healing the sick. And Jesus knows what they need next - a vacation, a retreat to some deserted places where most folks don't go. But as soon as they get there, it's only to have a voice in the wings shout, "There they are, we've found them" - enter the 5,000, stage right.
I have this picture of Jesus and his followers huddled in the dark, scarfing down some bottled water and a hummus plate, trying to get some sleep, hoping no one recognizes them. And in the dimness, you can just make out the gathering of a crowd, you can hear the sliding of mats across the stage floor, the carrying in of stretchers. So when the lights go up, Jesus and his followers will wake up startled in the middle of an expectant and waiting crowd.
But then the scene in today's Gospel jumps to our heroes pulling their boats up on the beach, after a terrifying night-time crossing of the Sea of Galilee, embarked upon once the crowd had been fed and sent on their way. I can just see them staggering on to the beach and collapsing. And then that voice again, "Hey, is that who I think it is?"
It makes for strange theater, these moments with Jesus between the scenes. They probably far outnumbered the big spotlight events of the Gospels. Here we catch a glimpse of an exhausted messiah, if not a reluctant one. And we see the fragility of God's servants, the weaknesses of the shepherds, their limits, their own need for food and healing and rest.
But we also see the need that drives the sheep right to them. And that is Israel's need for God. It is the background noise of all the stories of the Scriptures, the feet moving behind the curtain. We think the star of the show is Jesus, but really it may just be the crowd. Because that is who God wants to save, and not just Israel, everyone.
And in these two little quotidian moments in the saga we learn something about that crowd as well: it is determined. It is fueled by hope. These people expect God to respond to their need because they have no recourse other than to get themselves to a place where they believe God will hear their cry. Israel didn't really have professional healers, the way they did in Egypt. That's where you had to go if you wanted sutures, or splints or cauterizations. For the members of Israel, you went to the temple, or to a prophet, because healing was from God and the hope of future healing was with God.
So when the crowds gather, dragging mats and carrying stretchers with their sick friends and family members on them, they are bringing them to the place where they believe God will hear them. They are expressing the age old faith of Israel in her God to bring restoration and repair. And that is precisely Jesus' role in the Gospel of Mark. As a former pastor of mine used to say: Jesus would melt in the presence of faith. Find where Jesus is, that is the place where God will hear their cry.
And I think it's this faith, the crowd's expectation that God is in control when they are not, that prompts Jesus to end his break early, roust up his followers, and begin preaching, and teaching, feeding and healing all over again.
Because what Jesus says yes to, God will not say no to. The crowd knows this.
I mean, just stop for a minute and think about the faith of the crowd. It can look grasping at times. I can only imagine what it must have been like for Jesus to wade through that crowd where everyone wanted to just grasp the hem of his cloak. But just think about the press of people, that much need. And that much determination.
It might be hard for us to put ourselves in a group that desperate when we consider these crowd scenes. After all, in this day and age we could generate and pay for treatment, vaccines, medicines for every sick person in the world, if we wanted to. The fact that as a species, we don't, says more about our lack of mercy than about God's.
Still, our little gathering here at church probably does not need to rely on Jesus alone for our healing, or our next meal, or our liberation from an oppressive regime. We have non-divine sources for these things, for the most part. Don't we?
But the story is not ultimately about extracting healing, or food or weather control from Jesus. It's about handing over our control to God, voicing our constant need for God. It's about admitting that our solutions, as genius as they are, don't really fix most things, not completely. Despite all that we have, and expect, and succeed at, what does it mean to admit that in the end we are really powerless over the big picture?
Take a moment. Just call to mind the things that you do not have control over in your life right now. What would it take to bring those things to the place where Jesus and his followers are? Where is the place where you are most confident that God will hear your cry?
Might our liturgy, our act of worship, also be the place where we drag our mats, drop our stretchers, and bring our pain before Jesus? Is this where we might come searching for a shepherd that won't disappoint, or stumble or get the answer wrong, in the one who beckons us around his table of communion?
What the crowd found time and again was a bedraggled and somewhat misfit crew of tired, hungry disciples following a leader who could not say no to faith. They probably wouldn't have lived up to Jeremiah's expectations of shepherds either, as we heard in our first reading. And in the next chapter of Mark, these healers and wonder workers will be admonished by Israel's leaders for not washing their hands properly.
Still, the crowd came anyway. And I think, some days, that's the best we can do: get ourselves to the place where we believe God will hear our cry, find our way to the spot where Jesus was last seen, drop our mat and wait for him to arrive. Because our Gospel reminds us that it takes two for a divine healing to happen: the divine one who brings the repair, the reconciliation, and the ones who wait, throwing their hearts open to receive it when it arrives. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
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By St. Martin-in-the-FieldsSermon by the Rev. Barbara Ballenger for the eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 11.Today's readings are:Jeremiah 23:1-6
Psalm 23
Ephesians 2:11-22
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.nethttps://www.lectionarypage.net/.../Pente.../BProp11_RCL.htmlYou know that part of the play between scenes when curtains close and the lights go dark, and you can just make out the stage crew moving the set around, or see their feet running back and forth behind the curtain in that space where it doesn't quite touch the floor?
I feel that is where our Gospel takes us today -to the scene changes only, without the high drama that occurs in between.
That's because these excerpts from the 6th chapter of Mark's Gospel cut out about 20 verses that include some of our favorite stories about the power of Jesus. So we do not hear about how Jesus uses five loaves and two fish to feed 5,000 hungry men and their families. And we do not hear about Jesus walking out upon the waves of the Sea of Galilee later that night, getting into the boat with his terrified disciples, and calming the winds.
Instead, we have Jesus and his disciples on either side of these big events, exhausted and famished from the non-stop need of Israel for teaching and feeding and healing. When his disciples gather to tell him all they have done at the start of today's Gospel, it's because he had sent them out two by two several verses earlier "with no bread, no bag, nor money in their belts" to try their hand at preaching repentance, casting out unclean spirits and healing the sick. And Jesus knows what they need next - a vacation, a retreat to some deserted places where most folks don't go. But as soon as they get there, it's only to have a voice in the wings shout, "There they are, we've found them" - enter the 5,000, stage right.
I have this picture of Jesus and his followers huddled in the dark, scarfing down some bottled water and a hummus plate, trying to get some sleep, hoping no one recognizes them. And in the dimness, you can just make out the gathering of a crowd, you can hear the sliding of mats across the stage floor, the carrying in of stretchers. So when the lights go up, Jesus and his followers will wake up startled in the middle of an expectant and waiting crowd.
But then the scene in today's Gospel jumps to our heroes pulling their boats up on the beach, after a terrifying night-time crossing of the Sea of Galilee, embarked upon once the crowd had been fed and sent on their way. I can just see them staggering on to the beach and collapsing. And then that voice again, "Hey, is that who I think it is?"
It makes for strange theater, these moments with Jesus between the scenes. They probably far outnumbered the big spotlight events of the Gospels. Here we catch a glimpse of an exhausted messiah, if not a reluctant one. And we see the fragility of God's servants, the weaknesses of the shepherds, their limits, their own need for food and healing and rest.
But we also see the need that drives the sheep right to them. And that is Israel's need for God. It is the background noise of all the stories of the Scriptures, the feet moving behind the curtain. We think the star of the show is Jesus, but really it may just be the crowd. Because that is who God wants to save, and not just Israel, everyone.
And in these two little quotidian moments in the saga we learn something about that crowd as well: it is determined. It is fueled by hope. These people expect God to respond to their need because they have no recourse other than to get themselves to a place where they believe God will hear their cry. Israel didn't really have professional healers, the way they did in Egypt. That's where you had to go if you wanted sutures, or splints or cauterizations. For the members of Israel, you went to the temple, or to a prophet, because healing was from God and the hope of future healing was with God.
So when the crowds gather, dragging mats and carrying stretchers with their sick friends and family members on them, they are bringing them to the place where they believe God will hear them. They are expressing the age old faith of Israel in her God to bring restoration and repair. And that is precisely Jesus' role in the Gospel of Mark. As a former pastor of mine used to say: Jesus would melt in the presence of faith. Find where Jesus is, that is the place where God will hear their cry.
And I think it's this faith, the crowd's expectation that God is in control when they are not, that prompts Jesus to end his break early, roust up his followers, and begin preaching, and teaching, feeding and healing all over again.
Because what Jesus says yes to, God will not say no to. The crowd knows this.
I mean, just stop for a minute and think about the faith of the crowd. It can look grasping at times. I can only imagine what it must have been like for Jesus to wade through that crowd where everyone wanted to just grasp the hem of his cloak. But just think about the press of people, that much need. And that much determination.
It might be hard for us to put ourselves in a group that desperate when we consider these crowd scenes. After all, in this day and age we could generate and pay for treatment, vaccines, medicines for every sick person in the world, if we wanted to. The fact that as a species, we don't, says more about our lack of mercy than about God's.
Still, our little gathering here at church probably does not need to rely on Jesus alone for our healing, or our next meal, or our liberation from an oppressive regime. We have non-divine sources for these things, for the most part. Don't we?
But the story is not ultimately about extracting healing, or food or weather control from Jesus. It's about handing over our control to God, voicing our constant need for God. It's about admitting that our solutions, as genius as they are, don't really fix most things, not completely. Despite all that we have, and expect, and succeed at, what does it mean to admit that in the end we are really powerless over the big picture?
Take a moment. Just call to mind the things that you do not have control over in your life right now. What would it take to bring those things to the place where Jesus and his followers are? Where is the place where you are most confident that God will hear your cry?
Might our liturgy, our act of worship, also be the place where we drag our mats, drop our stretchers, and bring our pain before Jesus? Is this where we might come searching for a shepherd that won't disappoint, or stumble or get the answer wrong, in the one who beckons us around his table of communion?
What the crowd found time and again was a bedraggled and somewhat misfit crew of tired, hungry disciples following a leader who could not say no to faith. They probably wouldn't have lived up to Jeremiah's expectations of shepherds either, as we heard in our first reading. And in the next chapter of Mark, these healers and wonder workers will be admonished by Israel's leaders for not washing their hands properly.
Still, the crowd came anyway. And I think, some days, that's the best we can do: get ourselves to the place where we believe God will hear our cry, find our way to the spot where Jesus was last seen, drop our mat and wait for him to arrive. Because our Gospel reminds us that it takes two for a divine healing to happen: the divine one who brings the repair, the reconciliation, and the ones who wait, throwing their hearts open to receive it when it arrives. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org