Sermons

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This week we continue our slow, yearlong liturgical journey through the remarkably fast-paced Gospel according to Mark. It may be said without too much overstatement that Mark is like a Hemmingway novella to John’s Tolstoy. The author of Mark didn’t have time for John’s high-flown theological discourse, Matthew’s apologetics, or Luke’s beautiful storytelling. There’s a striking immediacy to Mark. Indeed, the word “immediately” was historically frequently deleted in our English translation of Mark, as it shows up so frequently in the Greek as to make the English virtually unreadable at points.

This immediacy is evident in today’s Gospel reading, which actually comprises three separate narratives in the course of ten verses. While some scholars try to explain this fact about Mark on its writer’s lack of sources or authorial ability, I think there’s something much more intentional at work. I think Mark’s fast-paced style is, at least in part, meant to highlight the immediacy, the urgency, of the Good News itself. We see this not only in the style but in the substance of the book. Jesus called the first apostles immediately, and immediately they forsook their nets in order to serve their Lord. What I find most astonishing about today’s gospel reading is that as soon as Simon’s mother-in-law is healed, she jumps out of bed and begins to serve Jesus and the apostles.

When do we begin to attend to the work of God? The voice of the Gospel is singular: the answer is “now.” It is often tempting to delay following God’s will in our lives. “I’ll do what charity demands when life is a bit less hectic.” “I’ll get really involved in the life of the church as soon as I sort out everything at home.” “God’s calling me to serve, but I’ll do that as soon as I become the exemplar of moral rectitude.” These sorts of attitudes are natural and often quite reasonable. We sometimes feel that we must be totally together to undertake any kind of ministry. But God meets us where we are–busy, confused, sinful creatures that we are. We needn’t be so loath to serve God in these times, due to our perceptions of our own unworthiness.

Some of the greatest champions of our faith heard God’s call to serve when they were leading lives that were anything but exemplary. From David in the Old Testament to Paul in the New, when he met Christ and was converted on the road to Damascus was, as Acts says “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.” Yet, Acts tells us “immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying ‘He is the Son of God.’” This is not meant to suggest that personal behavior doesn’t matter; quite to the contrary, Christ is constantly calling us to repentance and amendment of life. Once we do this, though, it does no good to dwell on our former trespasses when there’s work to be done. Paul repented, but he didn’t spend time bemoaning his former sins. He began serving immediately.

One of my favorite stories along these lines is that of St. Ambrose, who also followed God’s call despite his own apparent unworthiness. In the fourth century, Christendom was racked by heresy, schism, and general unrest. Milan, Ambrose’s hometown, was one of the battlefronts, as it were, of the dispute amongst Christians. In A.D. 374 Auxentius, then bishop of Milan, died. Upon convocation of all the Christians of Milan, then the means of electing a new bishop, the masses mysteriously and univocally began shouting “Ambrose for bishop!” This was particularly odd as Ambrose wasn’t even a priest–he was a Roman official and a relatively new convert to CHristianity. Ambrose made known his misgivings, but the people continued to call for his election and, as Ambrose soon realized, the Holy Spirit continued to call him as well. Ambrose was ordained a deacon and a priest and consecrated bishop in the span of a week and began with much prayer and self-sacrifice to mend a Church which was torn by strife. He didn’t dwell on his inexperience and fear. He began serving immediately.

None of this is meant to suggest that the work of God should be undertaken haphazardly. In this week’s gospel reading we see Jesus himself stopping and taking time to reevaluate the situation. “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” We too must realize that the process of discernment, of figuring out to what God is calling us, must be undertaken carefully. Sometimes God’s will is not readily apparent, and we must, like our Lord, retreat to our own wilderness and listen for His still small voice. Sometimes we must take some much needed time to rest and recreate in order to undertake the work of God and to execute it more effectively. And we must take time to determine if what we are already doing is really God’s work on God’s terms, or if we’re actually doing our own work on our own terms.

The important distinction here is between preparation and procrastination. The distinction between them is sometimes a bit blurry and sometimes we can convince ourselves that we are doing the former when it’s really the latter. How easy it would have been for Simon’s mother-in-law to linger in bed a bit longer! How easily she could have justified it to herself! “I’ll rest up just a half an hour longer,” she might have said, “and afterward, I’ll surely be ten times more efficient ministering to this man who just healed me.” This is much like my own internal monologue every morning at about 5 o’clock, by the way. But Simon’s mother-in-law knew to what she was being called, and she knew that she was being called to it then and there.

This is awfully daunting stuff. God is calling each and every one of us to something all the time, and each of us is obliged to respond. It’s daunting, but it’s also reassuring. We are never so far out of God’s will that He stops calling us back. On our own road to Damascus, which is this earthly pilgrimage, we like Paul are being summoned by God to be continually converted, to die every moment to ourselves and the cares of this world and to be reborn to the concerns of the Kingdom of God and to the work God has given us to do. And though none of us is a David or a Paul or an Ambrose, we may each of us, like Simon’s mother-in-law, be a humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord. Than this there is no greater joy save heaven itself.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

More than occasionally I meet somebody who doesn’t know too much about the Episcopal Church, and almost inevitably I’m asked about rules. The questions are largely what one might expect. Evangelical types tend to ask if we’re permitted to drink, dance, and gamble. Roman Catholics tend to ask questions like can our priests can marry.

I, for one, am grateful that, despite the fact that we do have moral obligations, the Gospel is not about rules but about Grace. The larger culture, as evidenced by those sorts of questions I just mentioned, seems to associate religion with rules, but that’s not the primary message, the primary message being that we are all sinners and we’re all saved. Even so, I think we must take into consideration Paul’s words to the Corinthians in today’s epistle before we go too far with this freedom we have in the Gospel.

Paul was writing, as he often did, in response to a disturbance in the local church, and in the passage we heard a moment ago, he was writing specifically about a controversy regarding food sacrificed to idols. What Paul ultimately says is that there’s no inherent harm in eating such food, since there’s not really any god behind the idol. The problem arises when others, who are less knowledgeable in the faith see it, and it becomes a crisis of conscience for them.

But, since most of us won’t be offered food sacrificed to an idol anytime soon, how does this effect us? I think the lesson is larger than the particulars Paul faced.

Some years ago a friend of mine told a story about going into a movie theater to watch what was a rather edgy film, and another cinema-goer (a stranger) horrified enough to see somebody in a clerical collar watching this particular movie (I don’t recall what it was) that she acosted him about being there. It seemed not to occur to my friend’s interlocutor that she was there to watch precisely the same film he was. Now, yesterday, Annie and I went to see a movie which turned out to be rather explicit; I was grateful that I wasn’t wearing my collar, lest I have a similar experience to my friend, though perhaps I shouldn’t have been.

Now, we are all representatives of Christ’s Church, as we are all members of the Body. It is not the sole responsibility of the clergy to serve as examples, so replace the priest in the story I just told with yourself. You see, our actions are seen by others, and they can cause others to question their own consciences. This can be a very good thing, as we should all strive to determine what that inner voice tells us is right and wrong. But it can also be confusing. Even when we know we’re not doing anything wrong, it can cause others to stumble, and St. Paul says, “Only take care lest this liberty of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.”

Now, don’t take all of this to mean that we must always be walking on eggshells, as it were, fearing that somebody might be offended by our actions. Don’t take all of this to mean that anything we do which might possibly cause offense must be done covertly. “If you’re doing something you need to hide, you shouldn’t be doing it at all” is probably a good rule of thumb.

The point is that we need to be sensitive to others’ sense of propriety, even if we don’t agree with it. We need to “take care” as Paul put it. We ought not to rub our freedom in others’ faces. We ought not to go out of our way to scandalize our brothers and sisters whose consciences might be weak.

A little bit of charity in this regard may well be reciprocated, but even if it isn’t, it is nonetheless our obligation to be a wholesome example and to respect those whose sense of wholesomeness is more rigid than our own. The key in this regard is charity, and that should be our driving principle no matter what the particular circumstance.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In both the Epistle and the Gospel appointed for this morning we encounter a rather upsetting theme. St. Paul instructs the Christians in Corinth “from now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none.” Then in the Gospel we heard that John and James left their father Zebedee in the boat (in the middle of a work day!) to follow Jesus. Are we then to understand that family obligations get in the way of following God’s call, and they are to be abandoned?

Well, it should be no surprise, that it’s rather more complicated than that. Let’s begin with the Epistle. The three short verses we heard were lifted from a whole chapter devoted to the discussion of marriage. Looking at the context, St. Paul’s admonition takes on some nuance.

Paul was ambivalent about marriage. He recognized the need for the institution and affirmed it’s life-long, indissoluble nature. Even so, Paul strongly recommends that those who can manage it should never marry and instead opt for a life of single celibacy. This is because he believed that singleness was a happier estate and freed one to focus on spiritual matters. He saw that marriage could lead to a great deal of stress and anxiety which could ultimately distract the believer from his or her own spiritual life and commitment to the church.

As a side note, I think we tend to reject Paul’s advice here a little too quickly. While there is certainly a generational shift happening now, it is still popular in many parts of our society to see singleness at a certain age as an aberration. Too often is the single man or woman seen as being odd or assumed to be hiding something, because marriage (some subconsciously believe or even explicitly say) “is just something normal people do.” What if we assumed, instead, that God might be calling that person to a life of single celibacy because He meant for them to lead that kind of life. Assuming that somebody who’s single must be lonely, is pitiable, and should really get out there and find somebody doesn’t recognize that God can call His children to different estates than we, due to some cultural influence, perceive as “normal”.

Anyway, Paul’s view of marriage is complicated, and his command to “let those who have wives live as though they had none” should be seen in the context of his broader view. His primary concern is the anxiety created by marriage, and it seems to me that in his command to act as though one had no spouse, he does does not mean abandonment of the spouse but abandonment of anxiety. He means that we ought not let the difficulty of being married distract us from giving our best for God. Indeed, a marriage defined by peace in the home can be of great benefit to one’s spiritual life. It’s when the relationship is defined by the stress and anxiety it creates that there is a problem.

But then what about the Gospel? Here we see the brothers John and James literally leaving their old man to follow Jesus. One wonders how Zebedee felt about this turn of events. In this instance, I think the truth is harder than the one we’re given in the epistle, but it’s no less true. These young men and so many of us must at some point cut ties and move on in order to follow our Lord’s call.

Perhaps this is less shocking today as we live in a more migratory society than we ever have, but it’s still a challenge for many. There is sometimes thrust upon our children inappropriate expectations of how their lives will develop which have more to do with parents’ desires for stability than God’s call to an individual. It is hard for me to talk about this, because it’s not my experience. I think my parents would have been disappointed if I chose to stay close to home when there was another course I felt obliged to take. But for so many, there is a desire (I’d go so far as to say a “God-given” desire) to take on some new adventure, to let one’s life follow a sense of call, a vocation, wherever it takes that person, which meets with less than rousing support at home.

But what if when the boys left the boat, their father Zebedee didn’t feel betrayed or abandoned? Perhaps he looked on their departure with pride and hope. They had found their Lord, and though it would take them far away from the fish in Galilee, far away from their home, I bet Zebedee knew in his heart that they had bigger fish to fry, as it were, and that they’d find and found a new home, the Church, which would have room for billions of children in the years to come.

I think that this is an important thing for all of us to realize. We cannot stand in the way of God’s call (if it truly is God’s call) to any other, no matter how dear they are to us. We cannot burden another with an obligation to ourselves which they never chose for themselves. This is not to say that children have no obligations to parents; they most certainly do. It is, however, to say that we are all obliged to wait upon God’s call, to follow His Will and to allow it to be followed, even if that becomes uncomfortable. We can do this when we are able to truly believe that God will see us through the pain of loss and that He can and will do more marvelous things in our lives and in the lives of those whom we love than we could imagine, if we only let Him.

+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.