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Pentecost V- Proper 10B July 13 2003
H o m i l y G r i t s
The Fifth
Sunday after Pentecost
Year
B Proper 10 - July 13, 2003
(© 2003 by Grant Gallup -
permission given for free distribution in fair use or quotation )
O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you,
and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do,
and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through
Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
¶ Book of Common Prayer Lectionary:
Amos 7:7-15 I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people
Psalm 85 Benedixisti, Domine, or 85:7-13
Ephesians 1:1-14 A plan for the fullness of time
Mark 6:7-13 He ordered them to take nothing for their journey
¶ Revised Common Lectionary
2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19 They carried the Ark of God on a new cart
and Psalm 24 Domini est terra - The earth is the Lord's
or Amos 7:7-15 as above
and Psalm 85:8-13 Show us your mercy, O Lord
Ephesians 1:3-14 as above
Mark 6:14-29 Prophets are not without honor except in their home town
¶ Lutheran Book of Worship
O God our defender, storms rage about us and cause us to be afraid,
Rescue your people from despair, deliver your sons and daughters from
fear, and preserve us all from unbelief; through your Son, Jesus Christ
our Lord. Amen.
Psalm 107: 1-3, 23-32 They beheld the works of the Lord.
Job 38:1-11 The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind
2 Corinthians 5:14-21 From now on we regard no one from a human point of
view
Mark 4:35-41 Let us go across to the other side
¶ Roman Catholic Lectionary - 15th Sunday/Ordinary Time
Amos 7: 12-15 as above
Psalm 84 (i.e., Ps 85 BCP)
Ephesians 1:3-14 as above BCP
Mark 6:7-13 as above BCP
I have preached for many years--in poor Nicaragua as well as in the rich
los Estados Unidos--against the patriotic habits of acquisitiveness, of
getting more and more things--muchas cosas bonitas--of surrounding
ourselves with gadgets and geegaws, the flood of merchandise which
beckons from the TV screen and the Sunday supplement. 'Though I lived in
a Chicago slum apartment for thirty years and ignored the advertisements,
yet I filled my space with furniture from resale shops, soldered silver
tableware retired from the stalled Pullman trains, photographs, framed
pictures, and books! Books! Books! Clarence Day wrote, and I had it
framed for my library wall: "The world of books is the most remarkable
creation of man: nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall,
nations perish, civilizations grow old and die out. After an era of
darkness new races build others; but in the world of books there are
volumes that live on, still as young and fresh as the day they were
written; still telling men's hearts of the hearts of men centuries
dead." When I left Chicago for Managua in 1990, to continue in ministry
among the poor, I sold, gave away, or abandoned all, except half my
books, which followed on a freighter, and with them I brought the framed
motto which still reminds me of its truth. But within a few years, I had
once again acquired kitchens and dining rooms, rooms full of stuff,
walls full of Nicaraguan primitivista paintings, and beds and chairs for
more and more guests. Five years ago, as if to convey a further message
from the Lord to "take nothing for your journey", an electrical fire
obligingly destroyed the Casa and most of its contents--except half the
Books!
Jesus had said to the apostles as he sent them out, "When you enter a
house, stay there until you leave the place." A reluctant gypsy, I have
tended to squirrel in with my possessions and stay put for years. When
I moved from Chicago to Managua, my books whispered among themselves
terrible tales of which would be left behind, which put up for adoption,
which sent off to the Goodwill store. Clothes I hadn't worn in years
taunted me with quotations I had used from Basil and Chryostom, that they
actually belonged to the poor, and were tired of my closets and wanted to
move on. Packages of macaroni and cheese, wild rice and cans of oyster
stew on my pantry shelves cackled "hypocrite" at me as I passed through
the kitchen for they knew I had preached often about the beggar at the
gate. When Jesus called the Twelve to him to create the apostolic
ministry he preached to them "take nothing for your journey, except a
staff". Some people say this was for self-defense against jackrollers
and thugs. Others say that it was to have something to lean on when
you're tired, or to whack at a junkyard dog. Any case, it symbolized
walking, not riding. It's a walking or whacking stick, not a stick
shift, that Jesus delivered as the instrument of ministry. It gave
simplicity with mobility. But he bestowed no bread, no bag, no money
belt. If you didn't carry bread, that meant you had to beg it, and if
you had no money bag, you had nothing worth stealing. So the apostolic
ministry, Jesus said, is to be dependent, not self-sufficient. This is a
hard saying. It is hard to be dependent. "God bless the child that's go
her own." But Rabboni Jesus says, "Expect hospitality." Don't take
along your own, but expect hospitality. If they don't give you
hospitality in exchange for your healing and your homilies, if they
don't hear you, shake the dust of the highway off your zapatos or your
sandalias, and leave. The point of that is there wouldn't be any dust on
your shoes if they had shown you proper hospitality, because one of the
signs of hospitality in that world was to bathe the feet of visitors, and
clean their shoes at the end of their journey. Expect to be fed and
clothed and given a bed: that's the point of not taking two tunics. The
over-garment, the chiton, the chasuble which we now only see in damask at
the Eucharist, was the second tunic, and it's the one you slept under at
night. Or slept on, for it could be the pallet. Jesus says, don't take
your bed roll, because you should expect bed and breakfast on the Way.
Simplicity and Interdependence, Jesus says, are to be the lifestyle of
the apostolic ministry. And it is this ministry which has authority
over unclean spirits. Such a ministry has authority over the foul
spirits of the age which are spirits of "gimme" and "grab it here" - the
spirit of self-sufficiency, selfishness, inhospitality. Such a lifestyle
of sharing ministry is able to heal the illness and ennui of the age, and
to anoint with cooling balm the fevered sickness of the spirit. Jesus
sends the Twelve to do his own work, after his rejection at Nazareth.
The apostles are not called to do a different thing from Jesus, but the
same thing. So are all of us, but like them, in tandem. Jesus sent the
Apostles two by two, and here is an important clue also to the style of
ministry. We're not called on to do spectacular solo flights, Super Man
or Wonder Woman shows, but we are called in tandem, coupled in the
spirit, for the upholding of each other in ministry. It's a practical
provision, and you never see the Testigos de Jehovah or the fresh-faced
and necktied Misioneros Mormones come one-by-one like bill collectors to
your door. They move to uphold and protect each other, and to say
"Amen" to each other's witness.
Years ago I was told of a parish church in the suburbs of Chicago which,
it was suggested, I might be interested in being the pastor of. I asked
the former pastor what it was like and he said, "Comfortable. Very
comfortable." To such a place it would probably be indeed easy to "take
nothing for your journey" for everything was already there. I asked
another question, "What is their apostolate?" And the answer was, "Their
what?" I said, "Their apostolic ministry, what is their work, their
project?"
He said, "Well, they go to church, they have a good Sunday school, a good
vestry. They don't much care for sermons, 'though." (My soul-friend
Father Rex Bateman used to say, "They are dead from the ass both ways.")
Jesus in his gospel shows us that the church is not something we go to,
but something we are sent from, with healing for bodies, hearts and
minds.
He asks us to preach with our lives and to heal with our touch. So
Jesus calls us out of our squirrelling in, to a ministry of mobility, of
sent-ness, to go out from the mass ("Ite, missa est--Go! You are sent!")
as electricity from a dynamo, as postal workers from the post office
(apostle is the etymological cousin) carrying Jesus and good news and
good health with you.
In Central America, I have slept on the floor, or in a bunk a foot above
flood water, and I have bathed from a barrel and in a waterfall. I have
often shared the banquets of the poor--rice and beans and tortillas, and
we ate together with glad and generous hearts. In Managua, I am gladly
becoming known as the Tooth Fairy (Hada de Dientes) because in random
acts of spontaneous generosity, poor folks with broken smiles--students
and neighbors, even naufragos (shipwrecks of street people) --go off with
me to an evangelical dentist at the Maranatha Clinic to have their
lifetimes of bad teeth tended to. Dr Greg Houston--a dentistry professor
from St. Louis, brings students from the University there to work on
hundreds of patients at Dorothy Granada's clinic in Mulukuku, in
campesino country. Every year Dr Gayla Jewell brings her class of
nursing students from Grand Valley State University to run clinics in the
mountains for people who otherwise never see a doctor or a nurse. Phil
and Elsa Schaeffer come from Rochester with a delegation every ;year to
baptize them into the waters of Two Thirds world reality. For a while,
in their "social justice tourism", these great-hearted believers join the
happy band of women and men who came up from Galilee with the Nazarene to
share his ministry of compassion.
We are called to dependence. Too often the church has taken this to mean
only that the clergy shouldn't have to worry about pension premiums, and
the clergy shouldn't have to keep houses or provide establishments for
their families, like others do.
Manses, rectories, parsonages and "perks" were provided. But
privatization is ending all that and it won't be cheaper for the Church
or make the ministry more interdependent, more apostolic. The other half
of dependence is that the community needs to be dependable. All of us
ought to be able to depend upon each other in times of need, for our
basic needs. The New Testament and the apostolic teachers are firm in
this, and we need to pray about the social dimensions of that, for a
socialized church and a socialist state, to replace the capitalist church
and capitalist state we have become, that we may become in plumb with the
city of God at unity in earth and heaven.
Amos's message was heard as a threat to the state and its religion, yet
he said, "I am not a prophet, I am not of the clergy, I am a shepherd and
a fig-plucker". Amos was "up north" to denounce the injustice of the
land, of its privileged classes, its wage slavery, its religion as a
cover for official lies. Yet his ministry in humble fig-lucking
circumstances, remains of cosmic significance, and he limns the justice
of Yahwheh in Palestine 2003 as surely as in Israel 2003: " Prepare to
meet your God, O Israel! For lo, the one who forms the mountains,
creates the wind, reveals his thoughts to mortals, makes the morning
darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth-the Lord, the God of
guerrilla armies, is his name!" The one who made the Pleiades and Orion,
and turns deep darkness into the morning, and darkens the day into night,
who calls for the waters of the sea, and pours them out on the surface of
the earth, Yahweh is his name, who makes destruction flash out against
the strong, so that destruction comes upon the fortress." The simple
person that Amos was is caught up into the wisdom and insight of the
mystery of God's will for the fullness of time. The first Biblical
prophet whose words were to be written down, hundreds of years before
Jesus, he still speaks to us of social justice and of God's purpose for
us to the end of time. Paul says it is the Holy Spirit--surely the same
Spirit which sealed Amos for his ministry, which moves us in our
ministries where we are: "You also, who have heard the word of truth,
the good news of your wholeness, your liberation, your salvation, you
who have believed and trusted this news, are sealed in the Spirit, which
is the guarantee of your inheritance, until we actually take possession
of it, until we occupy the actual inheritance God has for us."
So remember the message about your ministry. Amos says, keep it honest,
and use the plumb line to test it. See if it's going up right as you
build it. And Paul says: Remember its incredibly lofty purpose, its
cosmic significance. And Jesus says, keep it simple, interdependent, and
expect hospitality. Keep it cooperative and communitarian, mutual and
supportive. Remember to live and preach radical change, for that's what
repent means. Out with the false, shabby, phony, demonic,acquisitive,
and greedy. Let your touch, your intimacy, be healing and restorative and
glad. You are all apostles of Christ Jesus by the will of God. You are
full-faith saints, so grace to you now and peace from God our
Father-Mother, and the Lord Jesus Christ. He chose us in God before the
foundation of the world. He destined us in love to be siblings. We have
been destined and appointed to live for God's praise and God's own joy
and glory.
Paul's vision of God's calling is cosmic in its scope, and the language
he uses, that God chose us before the foundations of the world and
destined us to be God's children, and has made known to us the wisdom and
insight of a plan for the fullness of time, that all things in heaven and
on earth are to be united in Christ--this is a somewhat higher purpose
than we usually think of when we hang a sign at the corner saying "The
Episcopal Church Welcomes You." We are invited, as Job was, as Amos was,
to reflect on where we were when God laid the foundations of the earth,
to tell if we have understanding. Who laid its cornerstone when the
morning stars sang together and all the heavenly chorus shouted for joy?
To that reflection, as well, the Episcopal Church Welcomes You..
GRANT GALLUP
Apartado RP-10
CASA AVE MARIA
Managua, Nicaragua C.A.
Tel. 011-505-2662165
gallup@tmx.com.ni
GRITS 3rd series now on-line:
http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits