Community Parson: Tearing up the status quo

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Tearing up the status quo

Epiphany 4 B January 29, 2012

Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111

1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28

Rip.

That is the sound that opens and closes the Gospel of Mark. It is the sound of the heavens tearing open as Jesus is baptized, and it is the sound of the curtain in the temple being torn in two as Jesus dies on the cross.

Rip.

That is the soundtrack Mark gives us to Jesus’ life and ministry. Jesus is breaking through – Jesus breaks every barrier that gets in the way of us, and the fullness and abundance of life which is how God would have us live. Jesus is the last, and most effective, of all the prophets God sent our way. Straight from Deuteronomy to that synagogue in Capernaum, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the shoot that grows from the root of Jesse, is God’s ancient promise of a new beginning, the anointed leader who will begin it all again as the new David.[i] Will we finally get it right this time? Will we finally believe God’s promise that we will have life, and have it abundantly? That everyone will have it abundantly?

Things move right along in the Gospel of Mark. Jesus invited the fishermen to follow him, and they go right from the beach to the synagogue. Mark does not record what Jesus said in the synagogue, or what texts he read from; all that matters to Mark is that Jesus conveyed authority, and the first test of that authority comes when someone in the congregation rises up and challenges him. Something that Jesus has said has provoked the demons inside of him. This is a man who must have been otherwise unremarkable, a regular participant; only the “clean” could have been admitted to the synogogue. What was it about Jesus that the unclean spirit that he could have otherwise controlled screamed? What status quo, which kept this man together, was so threatened by Jesus that he had to cry out?

If we read this story literally, about someone who was crazy, or demon-possessed like in those sensational exorcism movies, then I think we miss the point. Although anyone who has ever been really ill will tell you that medicine is more of an art than a science, we human beings do understand more of how the natural world works than the ancients did. Our God-given curiosity and ability to figure things out has enabled us to make more sense out of things that were incomprehensible mysteries to our ancestors in faith. The people in the synagogue in Capernaum believed in a world of powerful spirits – spirits which were more powerful than humans, but less powerful than God – spirits that took over people’s lives, paralyzed them, prevented them from living with their families, prevented them from making a living, spirits that exploded from them in uncontrollable ways. When Jesus rebuked and silenced the spirit in the man in the synagogue, he demonstrated a power that was more than human, that was more even than these spirits. He demonstrated a power that proved that he was closer to God.

Remember: we are only in the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark. Jesus has collected a few followers, and said some things in the synagogue that are beginning to get attention – some positive, some negative. We do know something about Jesus’ context: that he has allied himself with John the Baptist, whose words of prophecy have attracted people who are yearning to change the status quo, who are yearning to break free from the restrictions of the society they live in. Up until this point, the proclamations of the Good News – that there is a different way to live – have been only promises. With what happened in the synagogue, people now see that these promises have real power behind them. Something real has happened.

Let’s shift gears, then, to our reality.

This congregation is in pretty good shape. With the Annual Meeting next week, and the celebration of new ministry the week after that, we have the opportunity right now to take stock of who we are, what we have, and where we want to go. A few weeks ago I showed you a map of the spiritual geography of the Gospel of Mark; that map is on the bulletin board in the hall. Today, we are going to make our own map: we are going to map our assets. And since are assets are blessings, are all the things that God has given us, this will be a map of our spiritual geography. This map of our assets will point us in a particular direction. Maps have signs, so think about it: what signs have you seen lately of God’s grace in the world? In this place?

[i] Richard Swanson, in Provoking the Gospel of Mark, quoted in Kate Matthews Huey, http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/january-29-2012-fourth-sunday.html

No comments:

Post a Comment

Missional church and the arts

What if we thought about church in another way, as "a small community that [moves] into a particular area (often one with a lot of deprivation and poverty) ... seeking to follow Christ but their focus is simply helping transform their community -- in arts, environment, in social needs, with youth and so on."

These are churches, as the English church missioner named Jonny Baker, "are not focused on growing big -- but more like the yeast of the kingdom that Jesus talked about infecting the wider batch of dough. ..." Such churches, Baker says, face "the challenge of weaning members off their addiction to consumer approaches to church where they get their fix of worship and teaching and meeting with friends before they could properly engage in this more local, outward-focused community approach (maybe we need a 12 step detox programme for leaving consumer church!?)"

We may benefit from thinking this way, as we explore how to connect our treasure, which is the Celebration of the Arts, into parts of the community that could use more art.

Thanks to the Patheos blog for sending this thought my way ...

"A prayer book even an atheist would love"

It does seem a teensy bit arrogant for a 21st century author to claim that he "edited" The Book of Common Prayer, but Brian Cummings seems to have added considerable value to familiar red book we find in our pews. In this 2011 volume (Oxford University Press), we can find the full texts of the 1549, 1559 and 1662 Prayer Books, along with introductions, explanations, notes and glossary. The review in the September 2012 issue of The Atlantic, gives the book a glowing recommendation -- both in its edited and "explained" form and in the original, which as the book upon which all prayer in our language is based "shaped the inner life and branded the tongue of the English-speaking peoples. Its phrases and rhythms did not merely enter the language. They largely defined the language. " Read more of the review here, and if you read it, let us know how you liked it!!

What I read - 2012

FINISHED:

At Simon's INSISTENCE I read The Hunger Games. Some parts I had to skim through, because the depictions of these young people fighting each other to the death was at times too gruesome, but it was overall well worth the read. NOW I have to get on with # 2 in the series

Dennis Lehane's A Given Day. Everything comes together in a slightly staged but effective way in 1919 Boston: anarchists, molasses, racism, repression and the Boston police strike. J. Edgar Hoover makes some unflattering cameos. I must say it is kind of Ragtime as it would be dramatized by Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg and Ben Affleck. It was in the days when you could tell what Boston block someone grew up on by the accent. The Irish don't come off all too well. Southie is a place to avoid in this prelude to The Depahted. It's good, though a little too graphically violent and written like a movie script. Let's just say Whitey Bulger came by his proclivities naturally.

Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman

quite charming and lovely; a peek into the modest domestic life and extraordinary yearnings of a summer community of Orthodox Jews in the Catskills

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Also saw the Swedish version of the first book.

The reminders of domestic terror in the most intimate sense are deeply unsettling. The author reminds of the percentage of Swedish women who are abused, beaten, left for dead, even. It is an all-too-steady drumbeat beneath human society.

Meanwhile, I found a new collection of stories, that is easier to read before bed. I heard the most astounding story on Selected Shorts: "The Mappist" by Barry Lopez. You MUST read it. Before you know it, you are in another world, that shines the most wonderful light on this place we inhabit and how we live in it.

I had a brief flirtation with a few of Joyce Carol Oates short stories. Bracing. I am always on the look-out for her perceptive comments about upstate New York.

Done with Cheever, and LOVED it. Again. If you read nothing else, read "The Death of Justina." Then again, I also like, "Goodbye, My Brother." Cheever; the chronicler of a world falling apart.

This summer ...
Middlemarch by George Eliot. This wonderful story of the intertwined lives of villagers contains the requisite English characters of pompous rectors, impoverished strivers and beautiful young women. It's like reading Trollope: you'll find someone you know in Middlemarch.
and
The Collected Stories of John Cheever. A perennial favorite. Poignant stories of families in mid-century middle America. Reading it again is a bit like Mad Men, where you are glued, almost in horror, at the train wreck you know is about to happen in these people's lives.

Responding to the Unspeakable

The shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, in the days right before Christmas, with the deaths of small children and the people trying to protect them, wrench our hearts like nothing else. However we respond to this tragedy -- with silence, with weeping, with anger, with resolve to work so that something like this will never happen again -- all of our reactions are understandable. We need ways to regain our footing and imagine how we will live in the world as it is now, in this world in which we experience yet more grief and sadness.

On Sunday, December 16, the Prayers of the People at St. David's Church were in the words of parishioners and preachers, some from the very day of the tragedy. Find the text of those prayers on our Forming Disciples blog.