[Propertalk] 1 Lent b RCL - homily

[Robert P Morrison]

Here's what's going for review before tomorrow!

I hope you all have fun with Jesus! Thanks to Lane Denson and Jenny Holmes!!

Bob


THE EPISCOPAL PARISH OF ST. JAMES, LINCOLN CITY               1 LENT B RCL
GENESIS 9:8-17                 1st MARCH, 2009       
1 PETER 3:18-22                PSALM  25:1-9
MARK 1:9-15

	This morning’s Gospel passage was the one used in the Bible Study portion of this past Wednesday’s Lenten Programme. When it was read to us then, the phrase that leapt out at me was, “After John had been arrested”. Jesus’ public ministry didn’t begin until a crisis occurred in the religious marketplace.
	John had been doing a pretty good business of pulling people out of the cities and villages to listen to him. Some had even submitted to baptism. One way or another, though, both cynics and seekers flocked around the Baptist. Until he was arrested. Then they probably melted away. They didn’t want to risk getting sucked into the black hole of death surrounding the preacher. After all, Herod could be pretty mean, and his wife was even worse! There’s no telling what might happen to those caught in the periphery of John’s revival meetings.
	It makes me wonder all the more about Jesus. He never comes across to me as a visiting fireman, ready to douse the flames of jealousy, or power-struggles, or misunderstanding. So the first thing we note about Jesus is that He launched His ministry right on top of one of the biggest religious crises of the day. Jesus seemed to pick up right where John left off, and didn’t seem to mince words. He called a spade a spade; He called an abusive legalist an abusive legalist; He called a self-righteous individual a self-righteous individual. And, more to the point, He called the poor poor. He made sure that everyone took notice of those who were being picked on, and talked about. Jesus brought them right into the centre of His conversations and said that God’s reign was present right there. It was really hard to miss His point. Jesus may have been slightly less abrasive that His cousin - although we have little reportage about John. But Jesus didn’t seem to pull any punches.
	That’s what makes His timing seem all the more noteworthy. As soon as the crisis hit for John, Jesus leapt right in. It’s as if they were tag-team Kingdom fighters.
	In a sense they were. Both wanted everyone to know that observance of God’s law and of God’s desire was the most important thing to life. Both wanted people to realize that money, or social status, or verbal skills, or anything of that sort counted for nothing when it came to measuring Kingdom-readiness. So both John and Jesus seemed to be on a collision course with those who liked to think of themselves as the establishment.
	It’s little wonder than John was arrested. What IS surprising is the way that Jesus didn’t even let the newspaper ink dry, or the TV headlines fade off the screen, before He started inviting folk to listen to Him, and to follow Him, and to get involved in every imaginable community matter with Him. There was to be nothing that would be off-limits to Jesus’ scrutiny.
	So here we have this story, this eye-opening, mind-blowing little description carefully embedded in what might seem like an otherwise innocuous report. Here we see Jesus, fitting Himself into the very history which He Himself had initiated. And with the water of the River Jordan hardly dry on His back already He’s presenting Himself as a candidate for a cross. He’s not going to let John’s memory slide away as some sort of a footnote. Right from the start He sets down the pattern which He’ll follow for the rest of His life: the arrogant, self-puffed-up will be exposed and warned; those whose lives are ignored, and needs unmet will be drawn into the warmth of His embrace.
	This ministry of Jesus’, then, began as a response to an act of gentle welcome and affirmation, but came to flower through an act of violence. First baptism and the welcome of God, then the stifling arrest by an administration terrified about the loss of control.
	The Environmental Director of Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon sent out an e-mail yesterday in which she said, “These are times of great challenge. Many of us feel pressed just maintaining just our own lives and families.  More of us than ever are concerned about job security.” 1
	She could have been talking about Jesus at the beginning of His ministry. He could have been so much more low-key. He could have stuck around home, worked away in the carpenter’s shop, maybe made a few trips to see what was happening in other communities, and on Saturday spoken every now and again at the local synagogue - but not too often. That would have been the safe thing to do. With His cousin secluded in some first century Guantanamo - think for a moment. What would YOU or I do?
	In Portland, yesterday, Jenny Holmes went on, “However, it is also a time of great opportunity.  Along with the shaking of the foundations of our social and economic systems is an invitation to explore possibilities for more sustainable just ways or organizing our community and economic life in ways that nurture people, communities and Creation.”
	Wasn’t THAT what Jesus took up? John had been calling people to discover a new way of relating to God. John had been asking people to consider how they were living out their vocations. John had been insisting that people look at the way their individual actions made a different - for good or ill - in their own circle of friends, in the wider community. He’d even expected them to cast a thought to how what they did in their rural areas impacted the folk up in Jerusalem. And this was precisely what Jesus took up. “Believe the Gospel,” He said. “Understand that God wants to have everything to do with you,” He said. “Take heart from the fact that you’re not alone, but you’re part of a community of faithful folk whom God wants to draw together so that you can make a difference for every single individual in the country.”
	THAT’S the Gospel - THAT’S what Jesus will think worth dying for - THAT’S what’s worth immediately picking up from where John left off, no matter what the danger, no matter what any secret police may do.
	This journey which each of us has undertaken to make, when we signed on at our Baptism, and at the re-affirmation of our vows at Confirmation and again as recently as six weeks ago, this journey isn’t the most comforting in the world. Sometimes it seems downright lonely. Often we may feel that we’re being pushed out into the desert to face unknown dangers. And - perhaps most unnerving - sometimes those who’re pushing us away into the unknown are those whom we thought would stand alongside us. However, it’s this Lenten-life which forms our characters and strengthens our soul’s resolve.
	Through folk like Noah, God has called to people down through the ages to be prepared to meet challenges. The wonderfully assuring thing about the Noah story isn’t that the flood didn’t come. It’s that God enabled those who’d listen to find a way to ride out the storm, and, at the close of the story, we find God drawing everyone together and saying “I’ll be there for you. Every generation will be able to see, from the signs I give you, that I’m present and that I’ll never forget you.” All God asks is that we listen; that we consider what we hear; and that we respond in trust and love.” God simply wants us to be human to the fullest extent possible.
	Lane Denson of Nashville put it, “God has modeled here for all to see what he means by human being. This is the image of God we hear about, that we, indeed, are, ourselves. This is the Christ-in-us touted in the Baptismal Covenant. It’s almost as if God is a sculptor of sorts and stands back from his creation, admiring, pleased, smiling, laying down his mallet and chisel, walking around to get different, perhaps better perspectives. Yet, not completely finished with Jesus — nor neither now, not with us.
	“Our tradition confirms that to be human, to be imagined by God, is to be free to choose… to be free to choose to love, to create, to reason, to live in harmony with all of creation — the atmosphere, the spotted owl, the great redwoods, the wetlands, the wretched neighbors next door and the ingrates over in the middle east, the works — and with God. Lord, how many times have I beat this old horse? But I suspect I shall never tire, for it is so true. And then,” wrote lane, “to take it another step, there’s this:
	“There’s church. Church is not the Smithsonian Institute for the preservation of the Lambeth Quadrilateral. Church is not parchments vacuumed under glass. Church is not a place just for the warm and fuzzy confirmation of Aunty Sizzle’s nostalgia.
	“Church is a gathering of worldlings with all our warts and languages and biases and ethical stumblings, holy and spiritual to the core precisely because that’s the way God makes us. Church is all this humanity cobbled together with one mighty calling — to take this spirit God gave us and, with God’s always inclusive grace, shape it, inform it, and build it in partnership into and with the human being God imagines us to be and to become.” 2
	We sometimes find ourselves wishing that the Church, or the neighbourhood association, or the city council, or any of the other groups which stimulate and involve us - we sometimes find ourselves wishing that everything there would be safe, and nice, and without argument and dissention certainly without disagreement. We tend to forget that Jesus didn’t begin till John was hauled off.
	If I were to be beamed up, somehow; if the Vestry were to disappear or be disabled; what would the congregation do?
	If this congregation were to be disbanded, what would happen in Lincoln Coity?
	If the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon were to be no more, would anyone notice? Or the multitude of religious and Church friends you and I have across the State and nation; and The Episcopal Church nationally… what about them?
	I hope I’d be missed. I hope Lincoln City would miss this congregation. But the point is that we shouldn’t sit around to worry about whether what we’re doing might put us in danger of any sort. The point is precisely that we should respond whenever there IS danger, or distress, or discouragement, no matter what the cost. The Gospel is that serious.
	Jenny Holmes wrote about how we ought to think about our lives as disciples and apostles of Jesus called to respond to take up the challenge when people are arrested; when people are dispossessed of their livelihoods; when people have their homes taken away from them; when families are split up. She said, “Faith communities can play” - I’d say, ‘MUST play’ “important roles in developing new ways of meeting community needs in a sustainable fashion as well as creating the space for  … discussions (about creative ways to minister) to happen while lifting up visions of a better world.” She talked about the way that congregations can work together to provide not only for one another, but for those in the entire community with “food for this (physical) journey (on which the economy has thrust us right now), as well as (food for) the inward journey, as we are nourished by nature’s renewal and the special seasons of our faith traditions.”
 	As Lane Denson concludes, “God's spiritual energy and love creates us and says, ‘These are my beloved children in whom I am well pleased.’ Then God stands back and smiles. The church’s vocation is to take this clay and to make us human, to help us find our way, to get on with becoming these loving, reasoning, creative, harmonious stumblers, these canonized Slobs that God has in mind, but maybe most of all our vocation is to keep God smiling, maybe even laughing in surprise whenever — on our way to the wilderness — we get it right. 
	“So again, it's Lent, welcome to the wilderness. Welcome to Satan's incredible skill at tailor-made temptations.
	“That’s all.”

NOTES:
1	Jenny Holmes, Eco-Notes, March 2008 Faith and Environment Events, Resources and Action  inec at emoregon.org  
2	Lane Denson, Nashville Tennessee, “Out of Nowhere”. To subscribe write covpubs.org/oon/  
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Robert P. Morrison
The Episcopal Parish of St James,
PO Box 789
Lincoln City, Oregon, 97367

541-994-2426 (Church)