Sermon for July 4, 2021, Pentecost 6B
Audio is here.
Video is here (following the Sunday service) at the YouTube channel of the Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR.
Mark 6:1-13
He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.
Then he went about among the villages teaching. He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.
“It doesn’t matter how other families do it, in our family, we do it this way.” — my mother used to tell us.
My parents had high standards for us kids which we often had a hard time living up to.
But most, if not all of those standards became ingrained in us, and we carry them with us now, as adults.
There will always be a gap between the standards we affirm, and the way we live. I believe in having a clean and tidy home and always showing respect and being kind, but I do not always live up to those standards.
The same is true of our country. We have high standards that we all learned as children and carry with us as adults. On the other hand, we all know that our country has never fully lived up to those standards.
Israel’s High Standards
Similarly, ancient Israel had high standards which, historically, they were not able to live up to. In their ancient national charter, the Law or Torah, ascribed, according to the story, to Moses, the standards set for their life together were remarkably enlightened.
For example, the Sabbath law provided a day of rest, every week for everyone, free people, enslaved people, resident foreigners, and even for animals.
The enslaved persons who worked inside the house at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello did not even get that benefit, we just learned, on the tour, on our visit there recently.
The Law of Moses also included a law providing for debt forgiveness every seventh year, and the return of all land to its original owner every seventieth year.
If those laws were practiced, there would never develop a permanent poor class.
In addition, every third year, the tithes paid to the temple were to be kept in the towns where they were collected for the support of the poor, the widows, and the immigrants.
I don’t want to paint an idyllic and incorrect picture; other laws about the role of women and sexuality, for example, would horrify us today. Nevertheless, those standards I mentioned were brilliant and noble aspirations.
But as soon as Israel evolved from a tribal confederacy into a monarchy, those ideals were left behind in the dust bin of history, never to be achieved.
It is tragically possible to give lip service to high standards without having the courage and discipline required to achieve them.
Jesus’ High Standards
Jesus also had high standards. He had a vision of what life could be like, and it was a beautiful, noble vision. He called it the kingdom of God.
The standards for life in the Kingdom of God included the requirement of forgiving each other in the community, instead of seeking vengeance.
Those standards included inclusive table fellowship with excluded, marginalized people, and people with bad reputations.
But because those high standards are not our default way of living, when Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God, he also included the demand to “repent.”
I hate the word “repent” today, because it has been freighted with concepts of guilt, shame, self-loathing, and judgmentalism. But originally, to Jesus, it simply meant “to change your thinking,” with the implication that when you think differently you live differently.
When you hold people to high standards, some of them get offended. In our text, we heard about how the people in Jesus’ hometown were offended by his teaching. How could a hometown boy be telling his elders that they needed to think differently? So Jesus took his mission out on the road, and sent out his disciples with the same vision. Some were inspired, others took offense.
Notice what Jesus was doing: he was holding his own fellow Israelites to the standards to which they all gave lip service as they read the Law of Moses and the prophets every Sabbath in the synagogue service. If anyone objected that no other nation acted according to those standards, I can just hear Jesus saying what my mother said:
“maybe in other nations, they do it differently, but in our nation, we do it this way.”
We forgive. We live inclusively. We provide for the poor and the immigrant. We practice justice and radical hospitality.
God’s Standards
We are different because we have a different understanding of God. We do not believe that God is our pet, tribal God; one among many. We believe that God is the God of all people; the Creator; the Source from whom all the families of the earth take their name.
We believe that all people are created in God’s image, and therefore must be treated with respect and dignity. God is the source of these high standards we affirm. God is the one who is ultimately calling us to live this way, even if no one else does.
Holding Us Accountable
And so, just like Jesus, and just like all of the ancient prophets of Israel before him, we too find it appropriate and even necessary to hold our nation accountable to her high standards. We have, in America, an amazing vision of a free and just society.
Thomas Jefferson wrote the words to our Declaration of Independence, which we celebrate today, saying,
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
As we toured Jefferson’s Monticello estate, we heard with sadness how far he was from being able to live up to those standards. Jefferson himself enslaved over 600 persons in his lifetime, and sired six children by one of them, Sally Hemings.
Today, we live with the legacy of 400 years of slavery, followed by Jim Crow laws, disenfranchisement, red-lining, segregation, and overt discrimination.
We know our history, including the lynchings, the massacres at Tulsa, Oklahoma and Elaine, Arkansas, and many other places.
Even today, in many States, including our own, laws are being passed that look, to fair-minded people, as though their intent is to limit opportunities to vote. Many believe that if black Senators were elected in Georgia, there must have been massive fraud, even though there has been no evidence of such.
So, we must hold our nation to high standards. If we love our country, as we say we do, we must do all that is in our power to make sure we fulfill the promises Jefferson wrote, and the congress adopted, even if they did not fulfill them.
If all people (not just men, and not just white, property-owning men) are created equal, and if they are all endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights, then let us be patriotic enough to demand that ideal be met at every level of our society.
Let us love our country the way we love our own families: enough to hold her accountable to the standards she has set for herself.
And let us go even further, loving the God that Jesus taught us to love, by living as if God were indeed king. Let us strive, not just for justice, but for the kind of sacrificial lives of compassion and service that Jesus called us to.
When we say, “In God we trust,” let us trust that God’s way of forgiveness, inclusion, and compassionate service is the key to having a community of joy and abundance, and a nation we can be proud of.
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