Go Forth and Clean
James 2:15-17; Mark 6:30-44
February 20, 2011
So late last week I was walking around in here, looking at the windows, thinking about the history of the place, thinking about where each of you typically sits, thinking about the years that I’ve been here, and, basically, looking for some inspiration for this sermon.
You’d think that with Mark’s account of one of the great feeding stories of the gospels and the immortal words from James – faith without works is dead – that have been watchwords of progressive, engaged, social-justice seeking Christians throughout history – well, with all that before me you’d think inspiration would come easily.
In fact, I was so convinced that it would be easy that I’d already written a sermon title and printed out the bulletins, fully confident that I would write a sermon that would fit under the title “Faith You Can Eat.” It was not working out like that – and, as you’ll hear, it never did.
I was thinking about feeding stories and remembering the beautiful and powerful stories that several of you shared last fall – James and Ron finding fruit along the side of the road in Spain, Peg receiving unexpected hospitality in the Holy Land. I’ve been on the receiving end of unexpected abundance many times in my life.
But none of that was speaking to me at all. And frankly, I was a bit impatient with the whole process. I’d figured that with these texts this was going to be an easy week for preaching.
So, as I often do, I came in here and walked. Up and down and around these aisles. I thought about you, and lifted you up in my prayers. I gave thanks for you, and the joy it is to be in ministry with you.
And while my spirit was full of gratitude, my brain was dull and empty.
So I started cleaning up a bit.
These little candles have been in the windows since Christmas. Time to pack them away. Oh, and if they’ve been there that long, it’s past time to dust the window sills.
An old bulletin? That can go.
Last week’s sermon. Recycle bin.
I walked out to get a bag to put some stuff in, and I wound up picking up some glasses that have been lying around for a while and some Tupperware that I hope someone will claim.
I think these reeds probably belong to our friend, Peter, the clarinetist.
I have no idea where this door closer came from or why it was in the building at all.
This book mark is a lovely reminder of the eternal truth that organizes our lives, but it clearly hadn’t organized the space or it wouldn’t have been lying around.
And gradually it dawned on me – faith without works is not only dead, it’s downright dirty, too.
The disciples in Mark’s telling of the feeding story really seem to think that the situation they found themselves in would just take care of itself – thousands of hungry people in a deserted place far from the nearest 7-11, the hour getting late. It would all be just fine if those pesky, hungry people would just leave and go take care of themselves.
Then the disciples could hang out with Jesus, have some more stimulating conversation, feed themselves and call it a night. Kind of the attitude I had about the whole sermon-writing thing. It will just take care of itself.
But then Jesus says, “these people are hungry, so you feed them.”
For their trust in Jesus to have any real effect in the world, for it to matter at all, for it to change anything at all, they had to act on it.
So they did. They organized. They broke the thousands into small groups. That may be the single most important step of all – break the huge, impersonal, unmanageable crowd into small groups where people have a chance to get to know each other, build some relationships, recognize their commonalities – including hunger, feel that shared suffering and experience real compassion – suffering with – and act to relieve it by sharing resources such that all have enough.
That is, to be sure, a beautiful, compelling, powerful, accurate vision of nascent Christian community – as far as it goes.
But there’s a part of the story that mostly gets glossed over or, worse, “miraclized.” That is to say, reduced to the realm of miracle and thus easily dismissed. I’m speaking of the penultimate verse: “and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish.”
It’s easy enough – and correct, for that matter – to hear in this line an image of incredibly, even ridiculous abundance. Out of their individual poverty they discover that, in fact, they share this common abundance. All of that is true enough and worthy of our attention, but I want to point out something a bit homelier this morning.
They picked up all the trash! They cleaned up after themselves.
I have often observed that ministry today has a great deal in common with janitorial services. To be in ministry means to clean up other people’s messes. And I don’t actually mean any of this stuff.
To be in ministry in our time means cleaning up the colossal messes that churchmen – and I use that term pointedly because, let’s be honest, it’s mostly men – the messes that churchmen have made of God, of scripture, of sexuality, and of religion itself.
Theologically speaking, to be in ministry in our time means, for example, cleaning up the mess that’s been made of God. I’m not sure just how we got here, but somewhere along the line, we moved from the God whom Jesus called “daddy” to one whom the church came to call, in all capital letters and spoken in a stained-glass voice, “OUR HEAVENLY FATHER.” If the “father” image of God works for you, that’s fine, but we should all know quite well by now that it is not the only Biblical image of the Divine, and, more to the point, whatever image of God resonates with your spirit, the central and defining understanding of the God whom Jesus points us to is simply this: love.
Somewhere along the line, we made a mess of that and we turned God into a wrathful, capricious, violent judge, and then took that God and aimed him at everyone we don’t like.
To be in ministry in our time means cleaning up that mess.
As people of the Book, to be in ministry now means cleaning up the mess we’ve made of the Bible. Somewhere along the line we tried to make a biology or cosmology textbook out of stories that are supposed to bind us to God and to each other, not to prescientific worldviews. Somewhere along the line we unlearned how to read poetry and allegory and parable, and have made mess out of scripture.
To be in ministry means cleaning up that mess.
Of course that scriptural mess led us to make a huge mess of human sexuality. When, for example, you take a handful of isolated passages that are bound by their own culture and history and use them to oppress and exclude women or take another handful and use them to oppress and exclude gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons, then you leave behind a huge mess that has real consequences.
Broken families, broken lives, abuse, self-loathing and all of the myriad dysfunctions that flow forth from that vile stew of hate – to say nothing of the more general mess we’ve made of human sexuality by adopting a frankly Greek distinction between mind and body instead of the more Hebraic unity of body and soul.
Ministry means cleaning up that mess.
We know that messed up lives lead to messed up communities and societies, and somewhere along the line we employed religion itself to serve as a way of making our own messed up tribe somehow sacred while demonizing some other equally but differently messed up tribe. We made a mess of religion itself and we turned it into a weapon.
Ministry means cleaning up that mess.
It is simply not enough to show up to our services of worship or to our daily prayers or to our offices of devotion. It is simply not enough to say the right words of faith or to claim the correct beliefs. Faith without works makes too much mess.
Walking around the building last week reminded me of this quite concretely – and it was an especially self-reflective reminder because more than a little of the mess that I clean up was mess that I, in fact, had made. Sermons left behind. Water glasses – or coffee cups – left stashed here and there. Sheet music left lying about. To name but a few of my own messes, and not even to touch on my study!
To be sure, I mean this far more figuratively and expansively and significantly than merely cleaning up the church building – though that is also important.
You see, cleaning up these theological messes is important because the biggest mess of all is us. Jesus understood this. He looked around at the crowds and saw individuals, scattered and isolated, flung apart by circumstance, alone in their hunger, stuck in a huge mess without any hope.
He saw that reality, but he imagined something completely different. He imagined a beloved community in which the people would come to feel God as close to themselves as the air. He imagined a community of faith in which the people would hear in their sacred texts the simple and eternal message that God loves the whole of creation including every human creature. He imagined a community in which people would use for the good of all the particular gifts they had been given irrespective of their differences. He imagined the kingdom of God – a community bound by love.
I doubt that he could have imagined all of the messes that we would make over the centuries out of that, but I am pretty sure that he’d understand that the work of faith right now involves a whole lot of cleaning up.
So, go forth and clean! Amen.
February 20, 2011
So late last week I was walking around in here, looking at the windows, thinking about the history of the place, thinking about where each of you typically sits, thinking about the years that I’ve been here, and, basically, looking for some inspiration for this sermon.
You’d think that with Mark’s account of one of the great feeding stories of the gospels and the immortal words from James – faith without works is dead – that have been watchwords of progressive, engaged, social-justice seeking Christians throughout history – well, with all that before me you’d think inspiration would come easily.
In fact, I was so convinced that it would be easy that I’d already written a sermon title and printed out the bulletins, fully confident that I would write a sermon that would fit under the title “Faith You Can Eat.” It was not working out like that – and, as you’ll hear, it never did.
I was thinking about feeding stories and remembering the beautiful and powerful stories that several of you shared last fall – James and Ron finding fruit along the side of the road in Spain, Peg receiving unexpected hospitality in the Holy Land. I’ve been on the receiving end of unexpected abundance many times in my life.
But none of that was speaking to me at all. And frankly, I was a bit impatient with the whole process. I’d figured that with these texts this was going to be an easy week for preaching.
So, as I often do, I came in here and walked. Up and down and around these aisles. I thought about you, and lifted you up in my prayers. I gave thanks for you, and the joy it is to be in ministry with you.
And while my spirit was full of gratitude, my brain was dull and empty.
So I started cleaning up a bit.
These little candles have been in the windows since Christmas. Time to pack them away. Oh, and if they’ve been there that long, it’s past time to dust the window sills.
An old bulletin? That can go.
Last week’s sermon. Recycle bin.
I walked out to get a bag to put some stuff in, and I wound up picking up some glasses that have been lying around for a while and some Tupperware that I hope someone will claim.
I think these reeds probably belong to our friend, Peter, the clarinetist.
I have no idea where this door closer came from or why it was in the building at all.
This book mark is a lovely reminder of the eternal truth that organizes our lives, but it clearly hadn’t organized the space or it wouldn’t have been lying around.
And gradually it dawned on me – faith without works is not only dead, it’s downright dirty, too.
The disciples in Mark’s telling of the feeding story really seem to think that the situation they found themselves in would just take care of itself – thousands of hungry people in a deserted place far from the nearest 7-11, the hour getting late. It would all be just fine if those pesky, hungry people would just leave and go take care of themselves.
Then the disciples could hang out with Jesus, have some more stimulating conversation, feed themselves and call it a night. Kind of the attitude I had about the whole sermon-writing thing. It will just take care of itself.
But then Jesus says, “these people are hungry, so you feed them.”
For their trust in Jesus to have any real effect in the world, for it to matter at all, for it to change anything at all, they had to act on it.
So they did. They organized. They broke the thousands into small groups. That may be the single most important step of all – break the huge, impersonal, unmanageable crowd into small groups where people have a chance to get to know each other, build some relationships, recognize their commonalities – including hunger, feel that shared suffering and experience real compassion – suffering with – and act to relieve it by sharing resources such that all have enough.
That is, to be sure, a beautiful, compelling, powerful, accurate vision of nascent Christian community – as far as it goes.
But there’s a part of the story that mostly gets glossed over or, worse, “miraclized.” That is to say, reduced to the realm of miracle and thus easily dismissed. I’m speaking of the penultimate verse: “and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish.”
It’s easy enough – and correct, for that matter – to hear in this line an image of incredibly, even ridiculous abundance. Out of their individual poverty they discover that, in fact, they share this common abundance. All of that is true enough and worthy of our attention, but I want to point out something a bit homelier this morning.
They picked up all the trash! They cleaned up after themselves.
I have often observed that ministry today has a great deal in common with janitorial services. To be in ministry means to clean up other people’s messes. And I don’t actually mean any of this stuff.
To be in ministry in our time means cleaning up the colossal messes that churchmen – and I use that term pointedly because, let’s be honest, it’s mostly men – the messes that churchmen have made of God, of scripture, of sexuality, and of religion itself.
Theologically speaking, to be in ministry in our time means, for example, cleaning up the mess that’s been made of God. I’m not sure just how we got here, but somewhere along the line, we moved from the God whom Jesus called “daddy” to one whom the church came to call, in all capital letters and spoken in a stained-glass voice, “OUR HEAVENLY FATHER.” If the “father” image of God works for you, that’s fine, but we should all know quite well by now that it is not the only Biblical image of the Divine, and, more to the point, whatever image of God resonates with your spirit, the central and defining understanding of the God whom Jesus points us to is simply this: love.
Somewhere along the line, we made a mess of that and we turned God into a wrathful, capricious, violent judge, and then took that God and aimed him at everyone we don’t like.
To be in ministry in our time means cleaning up that mess.
As people of the Book, to be in ministry now means cleaning up the mess we’ve made of the Bible. Somewhere along the line we tried to make a biology or cosmology textbook out of stories that are supposed to bind us to God and to each other, not to prescientific worldviews. Somewhere along the line we unlearned how to read poetry and allegory and parable, and have made mess out of scripture.
To be in ministry means cleaning up that mess.
Of course that scriptural mess led us to make a huge mess of human sexuality. When, for example, you take a handful of isolated passages that are bound by their own culture and history and use them to oppress and exclude women or take another handful and use them to oppress and exclude gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons, then you leave behind a huge mess that has real consequences.
Broken families, broken lives, abuse, self-loathing and all of the myriad dysfunctions that flow forth from that vile stew of hate – to say nothing of the more general mess we’ve made of human sexuality by adopting a frankly Greek distinction between mind and body instead of the more Hebraic unity of body and soul.
Ministry means cleaning up that mess.
We know that messed up lives lead to messed up communities and societies, and somewhere along the line we employed religion itself to serve as a way of making our own messed up tribe somehow sacred while demonizing some other equally but differently messed up tribe. We made a mess of religion itself and we turned it into a weapon.
Ministry means cleaning up that mess.
It is simply not enough to show up to our services of worship or to our daily prayers or to our offices of devotion. It is simply not enough to say the right words of faith or to claim the correct beliefs. Faith without works makes too much mess.
Walking around the building last week reminded me of this quite concretely – and it was an especially self-reflective reminder because more than a little of the mess that I clean up was mess that I, in fact, had made. Sermons left behind. Water glasses – or coffee cups – left stashed here and there. Sheet music left lying about. To name but a few of my own messes, and not even to touch on my study!
To be sure, I mean this far more figuratively and expansively and significantly than merely cleaning up the church building – though that is also important.
You see, cleaning up these theological messes is important because the biggest mess of all is us. Jesus understood this. He looked around at the crowds and saw individuals, scattered and isolated, flung apart by circumstance, alone in their hunger, stuck in a huge mess without any hope.
He saw that reality, but he imagined something completely different. He imagined a beloved community in which the people would come to feel God as close to themselves as the air. He imagined a community of faith in which the people would hear in their sacred texts the simple and eternal message that God loves the whole of creation including every human creature. He imagined a community in which people would use for the good of all the particular gifts they had been given irrespective of their differences. He imagined the kingdom of God – a community bound by love.
I doubt that he could have imagined all of the messes that we would make over the centuries out of that, but I am pretty sure that he’d understand that the work of faith right now involves a whole lot of cleaning up.
So, go forth and clean! Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
9:55 AM
<< Home