St. Paul’s On-the-Hill Episcopal Church

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector

5 Pentecost; July 5, 2009

Mark 6:1-13

OFFERING LOVE

With Friends, In This Country, With God

        Jesus was less effective than the disciples. Jesus was basically rejected. Jesus only healed a few people. The disciples were effective. The disciples healed a lot of people. The disciples drove out many demons. What’s going on here?
        The disciples were accepted by those around them. They were welcomed. Their ministry was effective and easy and possible because they were welcomed. Jesus said: “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.”

        But the disciples healed a lot of people and cast out demons. What gives? They must have been accepted, unlike Jesus.

        Perhaps Jesus was too divine, too imposing. It says: “What deeds of power were done by his hands!” They see the deeds of power. They are amazed. The disconnect between the deeds and little Jesus growing up among them is too amazing. They can’t receive him.

        Perhaps the disciples were the same idiots everyone expected. Perhaps they were all too human; there was nothing amazing about them – so people could listen to them person to person, one on one. They could sit down, discuss, argue, talk.

        Perhaps our weakness is the secret to our strength. Perhaps our vulnerability is the secret to our effectiveness. Perhaps our humanity enables us to do divine things. Divinity, strength and power would be a crutch, an ineffective crutch, a block to true power, a block to the relationship that could develop between one, all too human, vulnerable person and another. Amazement and awe doesn’t help, when the relationship God wants us to have with each other is one of love, fellowship, mutual vulnerability and dependency.

        So Jesus sends us out two by two, friend and friend, human and human. He does not send us out with ways to insulate ourselves from other people. He does not send us out with money so we could buy what we need so we wouldn’t need anyone. He wants us to need each other.

        He does not send us out with food; so that therefore we have to depend on their nourishment, their comfort, their hospitality. He wants us to need it. He wants us to expect it. He wants us to depend on it. He wants us to trust in it – to trust other people.

        He sends us out to trust and love – to give and receive love –  and he makes sure that we’ll have to do it, that we’ll have no alternative. We’ll even have to stay in their houses, be strangers in their towns, so we’ll have to experience their love.

        So, far from Christians being the ones with all the answers and all the love, he’s taught us that part of our contribution to society is to expect that other people have love and can give comfort and care. Other people are not just cogs in a social or economic machine. They can be agents of love whether they know God or not, whether they know us or not, whether they are Christians or not.

        The question simply is – how do they treat us when they see us? Their love is within them. Do they offer it?

        Jesus does send us out with one thing, one all-important thing more important than food, more important than money.

        This is Friendship. This is the testimony we show to the world. This is the gift we give the world. Friendship – says Jesus – is more important than food or money. It will outlast both. It will bring both. It will bless those who already have both of the others too.

        So Christians are called to show up for dinner – and bring a friend. When they do that – when we bring that – we invite others into something they didn’t have: Friendship. We invite them into something they didn’t enjoy: Friendship.

        Perhaps they ate their dinner in their nice house, all alone. Now they have a friend – you – normal, easy to live with, you.

        Then they are invited into the pre-existing friendship between you and that other person you bring with you. They are made comfortable in that house of love that the two of you have established. They are made welcome in the well-worn relationship that the two of you have built up – or the three of you, or the congregation of you, have built up – and they are not so lonely. They are introduced to the idiosyncracies and private jokes that are usually only known after years of relationship.

In the hospitality of friendship, it only takes days.

        This is the gift we share. It is the gift of love and inclusion; unalloyed, not held back, complete, abundant.

        Come, share our love – we say as guests to our host; and so make her a guest in our love, and so increase it for all, because remember; Jesus said strangers can show love too. Trust that!

        So we sit in communities of welcome – Christians, non-Christians – anyone whom Jesus has sent us to, anyone whom Jesus has brought us to. Trust them to welcome you, he says. Share your love.

        Find that your love – your God-given, divine love you carry in a human vessel – heals and changes broken lives, and invites them into the love of God, the kingdom of God, which all may share, which they can share and give when they turn from their self-serving ways to the divine love which you and your friend carry together and enjoy together. Give them that love which will redeem their life and make it whole.

        I once saw this happen. The two groups between which it happened were almost unaware of each other until that moment.

        I was sitting at a diner in Manhattan – not an unusual occurrence – waiting for an appointment, with a friend, as it turned out.

        I was looking out the window; and down the street came a whole line of little pre-schoolers, all holding a rope so they would stay together, chatting and talking and having a high old time. Down the street another way came a solitary individual, looking a little glum, on his way to work or something. They passed. The kids continued up the street one way. The lone stranger came closer towards me, walking in my direction. He had a big smile on his face – after having seen the kids.

        Even though there was no introduction, he had been transformed by being brought into their relationship with each other, their happy, chatty, overflowing relationship.

        That’s how effective it is. That’s how transformative it is when we go out together as friends, as a congregation; when we visit in two’s, rather than in one’s. We introduce them to the Risen Christ, the Peace of God in our midst, the Peace of God which travels with us wherever we go when we go with some friend.

        We also get a chance to experience the gift of God present in that other person, that stranger if they welcome us and reach out to us, if we do not insulate ourselves with too much food, too much money, too much self-sufficiency.

        There is a chance we will wear out. There is a chance we will have nothing left to give – no divine love in these all too human hearts – if we do not stop here first, if we do share first in the unalloyed, inescapable love of God we feel here from all our friends, from worship, fellowship and music. We carry that with us.

       There is a story of a city priest, who noticed that every morning a working man stopped in his church for about 5 minutes on his way to work. He didn’t do much. He just sat. Then he went on.

        One morning the priest asked the man what he did. He said; “Not much. I just say – ‘Hi Jesus, this is Joe.’ Then Jesus says – ‘Hi Joe, this is Jesus.’ And that is enough.”

        That is enough to get Joe going in the morning, and to give him some of that divine love to give to others or to invite others into. It is a love without doctrine. The only necessity, is to give it.

        We celebrated freedom yesterday – freedom in a country to speak, to believe, to write, to gather – to love. No one is going to stop us from doing it – unless of course we stop ourselves for the easy lure of bread, bag, money in our belt.

        But nobody is going to stop us from this belief, this sharing, this speaking, this loving. People have died so that we might live this way. Many of our ancestors or friends have died that we might live this way.

        But we do, of course, have to live this way. We can’t just plan to do it some time, when life gets so easy we have nothing to lose, or when life gets so hard that we have no choice.

        Start loving now. It is not so hard, because Jesus has not sent us out alone, not sent us across the sea to this country alone, not left us alone.

        Here we are with friends or we meet friends. We are sent to others, who perhaps have no friends; who perhaps have money, food, shelter, but no friends. They have everything, except the essentials, which is love.

        Invite them to share yours.