| Sermon for Sunday, August 21, 2005
What Are You Hungry For?
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Scripture: Mark 6 1 He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. 2 On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, "Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! 3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him. 4 Then Jesus said to them, "Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house." 5 And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. 6 And he was amazed at their unbelief. Then he went about among the villages teaching. 7 He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. 8 He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; 9 but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. 10 He said to them, "Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. 11 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." 12 So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. 13 They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them. 14 King Herod heard of it, for Jesus' name had become known. Some were saying, "John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him." 15 But others said, "It is Elijah." And others said, "It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old." 16 But when Herod heard of it, he said, "John, whom I beheaded, has been raised." 17 For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, because Herod had married her. 18 For John had been telling Herod, "It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife." 19 And Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not, 20 for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him. 21 But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee. 22 When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, "Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it." 23 And he solemnly swore to her, "Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom." 24 She went out and said to her mother, "What should I ask for?" She replied, "The head of John the baptizer." 25 Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, "I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter." 26 The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. 27 Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John's head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, 28 brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. 29 When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb. 30 The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. 31 He said to them, "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while." For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 32 And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. 33 Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. 34 As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. 35 When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; 36 send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat." 37 But he answered them, "You give them something to eat." They said to him, "Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?" 38 And he said to them, "How many loaves have you? Go and see." When they had found out, they said, "Five, and two fish." 39 Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. 40 So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. 41 Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. 42 And all ate and were filled; 43 and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. 44 Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men. 45 Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. 46 After saying farewell to them, he went up on the mountain to pray. 47 When evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land. 48 When he saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind, he came towards them early in the morning, walking on the sea. He intended to pass them by. 49 But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out; 50 for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid." 51 Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, 52 for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened. 53 When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. 54 When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, 55 and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. 56 And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed. We are one third of the way through the gospel of Mark, the earliest of the four gospels and the shortest-some would say the most intense and power packed of the four gospels. I have asked you to read along with me in one of the new one-dollar paperback New Testaments that we still have copies of.
I want to review what we have seen so far in Mark’s first five chapters: Jesus spent most of his three years of itinerant ministry in a very small area, the northwest corner of the Sea of Galilee. The town of Capernaum was his headquarters and he had a house there. He would make some short trips away into gentile territory and that association with non Jews, pagans, was so troubling to the religious folks-along with the other ways that he seemed to be irreverent and challenged their conventional faith-that they began to plot his death. We need to remember that Jesus was, by their standards, irreverent, irreligious. He had his most trouble with the leading lights of Judaism and next week, he called them phonies and hypocrites-not a good way to win their friendship. We have learned other things about Jesus: he invites people to follow him and not to admire him or worship him. He subordinates himself to God, though Mark wants us to see that it is God who is at work through him. We see the humanness of Jesus very clearly in this gospel. He gets tired. He gets “peopled out”. (Does that ever happen to you?) He gets frustrated with his friends (Don’t you understand yet what I am doing?) He needed time apart to pray and replenish his spirit-in fact he sets an example for us as he does that and sets an example by worshiping every Sabbath in his synagogue. We see in Mark 3 and in today’s scripture that he had a family-brothers and sisters-and that they did not understand him; in fact in chapter 3 his family has come to Capernaum to get him because he is embarrassing them; they think he might be a little crazy. We have seen that most of the time when Jesus heals people he directs them not to tell anyone-last week’s story was an exception. There are conflicting ideas about why he wants people not to tell, and the one I like is that he believed that people would not understand the role he was filling as the suffering servant messiah because they expected the messiah to be a warrior king. Those are some things that we have seen so far in reading just five chapters together and I encourage you to keep reading a chapter a week along with me; pick up a copy of a Good News translation New Testament if you have not yet. The chapter for today is jam packed with important stories and we can only skim over some of them. Jesus goes to his hometown of Nazareth and is not able to do much good there. His lack of success is a marked contrast to the healing miracles he has performed in other towns, but the problem in Nazareth as we said last week is that people think they know him! Have you ever experienced that-going back home after being away for a while and maybe you have changed in some important ways and feeling like people think they know you but they really don’t. That was Jesus’ very human experience also. They saw him as the construction worker-the handy man-and they had no faith in him so he could not do very much for them! Jesus says that a prophet is without honor in his own hometown. He calls himself a prophet and that is significant. The prophets were people who spoke for God and they were controversial. They told the truth and while knowing the truth does make us free as Jesus says elsewhere, it first will probably make us uncomfortable! Jesus is right in the line of the Old Testament prophets like Isaiah and Micah and Amos who announce to God’s people that we need to get out of our comfort zones and stop just thinking about ourselves and live by God’s instructions. They say, the reason we are unhappy and frightened and bored is that we have not been living by God’s instructions and part of those instructions are to care for the vulnerable and the needy instead of favoring the rich and powerful. Jesus is a prophet. He is more than a prophet but he is also right in the tradition of the prophets who said these people just honor me with their lips instead of their lives and what God expects is for us to do justice and act in kindness and walk humbly with God. Which prophet was it who said that? Jesus has a bad experience in Nazareth. He then sends his close friends out in pairs like Mormon missionaries to go from town to town to do four things: to teach, to heal to invite repentance (change your direction in life) and to drive out the demons. They are to stay only if people are open to receiving them. They do this with some degree of success. Jesus is training and preparing them for when he is gone physically from their presence. Then we have this long story about the tragic end of John the Baptizer. This is the kind of story that if it happened today would be on the front of the supermarket tabloids. It has all the ingredients for the National Enquirer! It has royalty, a scandalous divorce, sex and violence! I even thought of sending out an e mail this week sort of previewing today’s sermon, saying that it will be about royalty, an erotic dance, and a beheading--to sort of pique people’s interest! I don’t know if you have noticed but frankly sometimes the Bible is R rated! This is a very human book about people like us and what God is able to do with us and sometimes in spite of us. The background for the story of John the Baptizer: Jesus has identified himself with John’s renewal movement by being baptized by John who is his cousin. John is like those prophets we talked about: he is blunt and plain spoken. He has dared to criticize Herod because Herod did something immoral. Herod coveted his brother’s wife and caused his brother and wife to get divorced while Herod also got divorced so he and Herodias could marry. John has publicly denounced both of them and now Herodias wants John killed. John is arrested and in prison but Herod is still intrigued by John and listens to him. But Herod gets himself in trouble by making a drunken promise to his stepdaughter that after she performed her R rated dance that she could have any wish, she tells him on behalf of her mother that what she wants is John’s head on a plate. He has to follow through and in the other version of this story in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus hears about the death of his cousin and is deeply grieved and goes off to be alone for a while. It is another example of the humanness of Jesus. That might be implied in what we heard in today’s verses. Jesus is taking his friends away for some retreat time because they have been so overwhelmed with the needs of other people. They try to go to a deserted place and what happens? The crowds see where they are going and go there ahead of them. What is Jesus’ reaction when this happens? He is tired, he is trying to get some “down time” with his friends, but he sees the crowds who are hungry for his guidance. In fact they are like sheep who need a shepherd. And he has compassion on them. The Greek word for compassion means literally he was moved in his gut. He was deeply touched by their neediness. And so he took time to teach them and speak to them. After a while it got late and people were hungry and the disciples wanted Jesus to stop teaching them. They wanted to send the people away to nearby villages so they could buy food. Jesus startles them: “You yourselves give them something to eat.” “WHAT??” they say. You want us to go a spend hundreds of dollars for food? We can’t do that. How much food do you have with you? A few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. What happens next is like a communion story. Jesus organizes the crowd. He takes the bread, looks up to heaven, blesses the bread with the prayer we use in communion, he gives it to his friends to distribute and there is not only enough bread and fish, there are twelve baskets left over ( twelve is an important Biblical number). How does this happen? We don’t know and that is not the most important question. It might have occurred when the people in the crowd who probably each had a little food with them also decided that when they saw Jesus friends sharing their meager provisions, they decided to follow that example of generosity also and lo and behold there was plenty. For some of those folks, that sharing might have been miraculous also if they had been taught to just look out for themselves! It can still be miraculous today when someone who has been self absorbed is moved to become more generous. This is a powerful story then and now. There are six version of this story in the four gospels and Mark will give us another version of it in chapter 8 when it occurs in gentile territory. I want to draw three lessons from it for us. In a situation of need and scarcity-food was not taken for granted in ancient times-the disciples saw scarcity and Jesus saw abundance. This is a crucial difference and you and I usually take one or the other of those postures in life. The posture we take will make an incredible difference in our quality of life. It is easy to always take a posture of scarcity. We want people to be prudent and cautious in life planning and in financial matters for instance. We have a dialogue in our church leadership circles meeting here at St Andrew often about how we should do our financial planning together. We have adopted the largest program and ministry budget ever in our history-$2.4 million by December 31 and we always worry about it every August and September and October! Will we make it? Will the money be there? I believe that the money our congregation needs to do what God is calling us to do is here! We have it! It becomes a matter of helping each person move beyond tokenism in our response to God and to see how important it is for each of us to do our best, to move beyond a dollar a week mentality or five dollar a week mentality and grow in the generosity of spirit that comes from following Christ. This is an ongoing training experience and it happens as people know the need and as we grow in our spirituality. We talked last Thursday about our budget line item for child care. We have already spent almost all of it and it is just August! And we said that we will inform the congregation and let people know that our child care staff is doing a great job and we are serving families with children and we need to find another $20,000 to be able to finish the year for just that line item. We know people will respond because we have a posture of abundance and not of scarcity. Jesus had an attitude of abundance and his friends had an attitude of scarcity. Each of those is appropriate under some circumstances but I think most often God sees things bigger than we do. The second learning in this story is that God feeds us when we are in the wilderness and when we are frightened about the scarcity around us. This is not the only story in the Bible about the people of God being in the wilderness and hungry and frightened and then God coming through. Do you remember any other Bible stories like that? The Israelites have left slavery in Egypt and are wandering in the wilderness and they are frightened and they are hungry and they are complaining to Moses and even are whining about maybe life was better when we were slaves! At least when we were slaves we had food and did not wonder about the next meal! Let’s just go back and be slaves again, they said! God says that God will provide food for them and God does that. What was that food called? Manna. And it still can appear in parts of the middle east. God has Moses tell them that they can only gather enough for each day. Why do you think? So they will learn to trust God every day for daily bread. See, when Jesus tells us its OK to pray Give us this day our daily bread, that was a serious prayer in ancient times. Most people were poor and did not take their food for granted as we do. And in Psalm 23 we are also assured that when we are frightened and in the desert times of life that God will give us the sustenance we need-maybe it’s physical nourishment and maybe it’s spiritual nourishment. Where does Psalm 23 talk about this? When I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil (not I will meet no evil! You will!) Your rod and staff comfort me like a shepherd does. And God you even set a table before me in the presence of my enemies. God is the kind of God who sustains us, feeds us, nourishes us, when we feel alone, deserted, in the wilderness and desert times of life. Tommy Dorsey was well known in the 1920’s as a jazz musician. He began to get interested in combining jazz and gospel music along with church music. In the 1930’s he wrote on of his best known pieces, “Precious Lord Take My Hand.”. That piece has been translated into 35 different languages and was Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s favorite piece of music. Tommy Dorsey wrote that song after a wilderness experience in his life, a time when he felt cut off from God, when he felt abandoned, when he did not think that God could or would feed him or sustain him or hold him up. In August 1932 Dorsey was appearing in a St Louis church. He was the featured soloist and he was unsure about being there because his wife was due any time to have their first baby. During the musical performance he received a telegram saying that his wife had died in childbirth. He rushed home to Chicago and the day after he arrived their new born son died also. Dorsey wondered where God was, how God could let that happen. He fell apart and did not want to serve God any more or ever write another gospel song. Then he found that even in his grief and his pain that God could sustain him and hold him up and nourish him. One day he was sitting at the piano. He felt God so close that he could reach out and touch God. His hands began to move across the keys in a tune that he had never heard before and suddenly the words came into his head. Precious Lord take my hand, lead me on let me stand. I am tired. I am weak. I am worn. And Tommy Dorsey in this song reaffirmed his faith in God and asked God to lead him through this wilderness time, this temporary storm of life. He went on to write other gospel music including the hymn, “There Will be Peace in the Valley For Me.” This story in Mark says that God cares abut us when we are lonely and when we are in the desert and God can be trusted to take care of us, to feed us, to nourish our bodies and our spirits. There is one more learning in this story for us. The disciples see that it has been a long time there on the hillside and the people are restless and hungry. What is their solution? Let’s send these people away to fend for themselves. Jesus has a different idea. You yourselves give them something to eat. It is your responsibility, not someone else’s responsibility. Jesus says, I am counting on you! In the stunning film Hotel Rwanda which Mike Ratliff recommended after we looked at Mark 6 in our staff meeting Tuesday the character of the hotel manager portrayed by Don Cheadle takes the attitude of Jesus and risks his own life to make room for over 1000 people in his hotel during the war in Rwanda between Hutus and Tutsis where 500,000 people are massacred. In this clip from that film he is taking in more people even though there is not much room because he sees it as his responsibility. There are so many applications for Jesus words to them and us. Eight years ago in our congregation we were working to discern our future. Stay where we were located after we had run out of space? Start a satellite congregation? Relocate to a new site and build a new building? What should we do with the people who were seeking us out but for whom we had no room? Some church members said the words in this story, the words that come from a posture of scarcity: Let’s just send these people away, send them somewhere else. Surely God you don’t expect US to care for them, to provide space for them? Look at how much that would cost us!! And some of us during that conversation eight years ago heard Jesus saying to us also: How about you yourselves caring for these folks instead of sending them away? The words still apply to us. We have the wonderful problem of an increasing number of children in Sunday school. Thank you Jesus for the chance to change and form the lives of more children and youth! AND…with that problem comes the need for more children. And it is easy to say, well, someone else can take that leadership role, I surely can’t take it because I know so little about the Bible and my schedule is so full and my resources are so scarce. And Jesus says to our excuses, “No, it’s time for you yourself to give them spiritual food.” Don’t look elsewhere; look first at yourself. We can say that about our need for additional funds for our increase in our childcare budget for the next four months. Yes, Lord, that does seem to be a problem, and you should find someone to do something about that! And God says, “You’re the one I am talking to. It’s time for you to do something about that!” Jesus who is the bread of life says to his friends then and now when they see people who are hungry spiritually and physically and when we want to have somebody else respond or to send those folks somewhere else; Jesus says, what about you? You have the resources the ability to help, to share, to teach, to invite. How about you? It’s your time. You give those folks something to eat. How will we respond to Christ? |
