Like Water for Those Dying of Thirst

Brad Sullivan

Proper 20, Year B

September 20, 2015

Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX

Mark 9:30-37

Jesus’ disciples must have been pretty darn disillusioned and disheartened by the end of today’s Gospel.  Jesus had just told them for the second time that he was going to die.  This was not long after they had failed to cast a demon out of a little boy.  “Why could we not cast out the demon?”  They asked Jesus.  He replied that the demon could only come out through prayer.  Perhaps the disciples were relying on themselves and their supposed power, rather than relying on God.

So, they’ve got this question of power and greatness already brewing.  Then, when Jesus told them that he was going to die and on the third day rise again, they still didn’t quite understand, at least not about him rising again after three days, but they did seem to understand that he would die because they seemed to be working on a succession plan.  They were arguing about who was the greatest among them, and in light of Jesus’ declaration that he was going to die, it seems that they were trying to figure out who was going to take over once Jesus was gone.  Who would be the new messiah?

They didn’t think of messiah in terms of being God’s co-eternal Son who spoke the world into existence.  They were thinking of messiah in terms of military might and a king like David to drive the Romans out and conquer everybody else.  To this, Jesus replied that they needed to be last of all and servant of all.  Welcome a child in my name, and you welcome me.  Welcome a child in my name, and you welcome God. 

Well that probably didn’t make a lot of sense to them.  We see children as wonderful, innocent, delightful, the apple of God’s eye.  We see Jesus dwelling within all of us, so if you welcome a child you welcome God, ok we get that.  I don’t think the disciples understood.  “God is all powerful and mighty,” the disciples were likely thinking, “and children are not.  How can welcoming a child be anything like welcoming God?” 

Again, they were likely looking for Jesus to be a messiah to rule through military victory.  They were wondering who among them was mighty enough to carry his mantle.  Children weren’t going to win battles or rule, and so we have the disciples’ disillusionment.  Rather than glorious victory, Jesus is telling them that the way of discipleship is the way of the cross, the way of Jesus’ crucifixion, and that welcoming the least important in their society was like welcoming God.  Was God even mighty anymore?

In thinking about Jesus’ words about the cross, his teaching that welcoming children is like welcoming God, and his steady march toward Jerusalem and crucifixion, I thought of a lyric from Leonard Cohen’s song, Hallelujah. “Love is not a victory march.  It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.” 

If only following Jesus meant victory over every battle and struggle we have, but it doesn’t.  We fail, we fall short, we know defeat.  We know the cold and broken Hallelujah that comes in those moments.  As Jesus’ disciples, we don’t always choose or even seek victory.  We seek to serve, to heal, to restore the brokenness of the world.  We seek to love, but love is not a victory march. 

Love, Jesus teaches comes from being like children.  If you want to be great, Jesus said, then be least of all.  Children were least of all, and yet he taught that welcoming a child was like welcoming God. 

Children love unreservedly.  They’ll abandon what they’re doing when they see someone they love in order to run over to that person, sometimes shouting with delight.  Children trust.  When children love and trust their parents, it takes a lot for them to lose that trust, far less than it takes adults to lose our trust in people.  Children also forgive.  They’ll be terribly upset with another kid one minute and playing joyfully with that same kid the next. 

You really want to be great and mighty, Jesus was telling his disciples, then forget about power and might.  Greatness in God’s kingdom comes from loving deeply and unreservedly.  Risk opening your heart to others, opening your heart to love.  Love is not a victory march.  Love is risky.

To love another person means that we might not be loved back. It means letting ourselves be naked and vulnerable to another person.  Letting our hearts and our souls be bare to someone else and knowing full well that we might get hurt.  That is the risk of relationship.  We know how to hurt those we love.  We know just what to say to our spouses to tear them down. We know the things that our children fear and the things that will break their hearts.

Every day we make a choice to go out into the world either letting our heart be vulnerable or hiding it away.  Hiding it away is safer and easier, but it is also not taking the risk of being loved back.  Not taking the risk of letting someone else cherish us, is a life that lacks the depth of love that God intends for us to live.  Risk love in this world, and live God’s kingdom.

If you really want to be great and mighty in God’s kingdom, then trust in God.  You may have felt let down before when things didn’t turn out the way you wanted them to.  You may have felt the sting of a cold and broken Hallelujah, but continue to trust in him.  Trust in God doesn’t mean we trust him to make outcomes happen how we want them to.  That’s not trusting God.  That’s directing God, something we’ve all probably done at times.  Trusting in God means we don’t necessarily know the outcome, and choose to put our trust and faith in God anyway, realizing we are little children, and he is God. 

If you really want to be great and mighty in God’s kingdom, then forgive, over and over.  Forgive people.  Forgive yourself.  Offer forgiveness like water to people dying of thirst for our brokenness kills us every bit as surely as lack of water.  In the marriage ceremony, we have a prayer for the couple which can really apply for everyone and anyone.  “Make [our lives] together a sign of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world, that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer despair. 

Risk love, trust, and forgiveness, Jesus told his disciples. Risk facing the cross.  It may not be a victory march.  It may be a cold and broken Hallelujah, but it is a Hallelujah nonetheless.  Amen.

We've Got More than Enough for the Dogs Under Our Table

Brad Sullivan

Proper 18, Year B

September 6, 2015

Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX

James 2:1-10, (11-13), 14-17

Mark 7:24-37

Jesus didn’t want to heal a little girl who was possessed by a demon simply because she wasn’t Jewish.  That’s a hard point for us to accept, and this is a difficult passage to wrestle with.  Many have said that Jesus was just testing the Syrophoenician woman’s faith, and that he really intended to heal the woman’s daughter all along, but that doesn’t really seem to follow the story. 

Jesus had traveled north of Israel to the region of Tyre.  This was gentile country, and the woman is named as a gentile.  There was no reason to test her faith.  I think we can take Jesus’ dismissal of the woman on face value.  “Let the children be fed first,” Jesus said, “for it is not fair to take the children’s food and feed it to the dogs.”  I was sent for Israel, Jesus told her and that’s not you.  Jesus didn’t want to heal the woman.  She wasn’t his problem.  Don’t ask me to heal you, Jesus was saying, have your little demigod idol thing heal you. 

Then, Jesus healed her anyway.  Jesus dismissed and insulted her, and the woman does not respond with anger, but takes his insult because her love for her daughter was greater than her pride.  I think in that moment Jesus saw this woman’s humanity.  No longer was she a gentile who wasn’t his problem.  She was a woman and a mother who loved her daughter. 

I don’t think that’s sinful on Jesus’ part.  He likely grew up being told that the gentiles were not their people and not their problem.  So, that’s probably what Jesus believed.  Then he met the Syrophoenician woman and realized that she was part of humanity.  No longer was she not his problem, and no longer was he here only for Israel, but for all mankind.

There has been an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Syria which has been growing since the uprising in 2011 aimed at ousting president Assad.  Since then, civil war has engulfed the country, both sides have targeted civilians and used them as shields, and the self-proclaimed Islamic state has taken territory and begun their brutal tactics of maiming and killing Christians, Muslims, and anyone else they deem unworthy. 

This has left over 11 million people displaced from their homes, and over 4 million Syrian refugees have fled the country, seeking asylum in surrounding nations and even up into Europe.  The crisis of refugees has caught the world’s attention recently because of pictures of little children who died trying to escape, their bodies washing up on the shores of Greece.  Folks leaving Syria said it was worth the risk because they were dead there anyway. 

This may seem like it’s not our problem.  It’s a world away.  There are so many people here who are in need.  Why give our help and our prayers to folks fleeing Syria when there’s so much to do here?  It’s not our problem, but then like Jesus with the Syrophoenician woman, we eventually see their humanity and realize it is our problem.  They are people, and as Body of Christ, we are called to seek and serve Christ in all persons.  We’ll also find, as Jesus did, that there is more than enough help to go around. 

After Jesus healed the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, he healed a deaf man in the largely gentile region of the Decapolis, just east of Israel.  We don’t know if this man was Jewish or Gentile.  Maybe it didn’t matter anymore.  Jesus healed him.  Not long after that, Jesus multiplied food so that from enough for a couple of people he fed 5000 people.  There was plenty of food to go around and plenty of food left over, crumbs enough for all the dogs under the children’s table. 

While believing himself to be limited in his mission, Jesus found that his mission was not limited only to Israel, and he found that he had more than enough healing to go around.  As Jesus’ body, we too have more than enough to go around.  The Syrian people are fleeing the threat of death from three different armies in their country, each of which have shielded themselves behind civilians and targeted civilians.  We have more than enough to help people this humanitarian crisis, which is one of the worst we’ve seen.    

We can give to organizations like World Vision who are helping to provide food and shelter for Syrians fleeing their country.  We can petition our government to allow more refugees into America.  We can learn more about the crisis and learn about other ways to help.  We can pray for the people of Syria, the refugees, those taking them in, and those in danger of dying during their travels. 

Perhaps more than pray for them a few times, we may still not really want to do much to help.  There’s too much to do here.  It’s not our problem, but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.  We may want to do more to help here instead, but there’s no reason why we can’t do both.  As Jesus found after he healed the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, he still had plenty left to heal a deaf man and then feed 5000 people with 5 loaves of bread and two fish.  We may just find that if we give help to Syrian refugees, that there’s also a deaf man who needs healing here, or 5000 people who need food. 

We have more than enough healing and resources to go around, and like Jesus, we find that people half a world away are our problem because they are human beings made in God’s image, and through Jesus, we have more than enough love to give and we have more than enough help to give.  Amen.

Deep, Honoring, Passionate Love

Brad Sullivan

Proper 17, Year B

August 30, 2015

Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX

Song of Solomon 2:8-13

James 1:17-27

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

“Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”  We got to hear from the Song of Solomon today, a series of poems and writings of passionate, unabashed love, the kind of love experienced between a newly married couple on their honeymoon and a long-married couple for whom that passion and unabashed love remains.  Interestingly, God is nowhere mentioned in the entire book of Song of Solomon.  Many in the church have tried to allegorize Song of Solomon to make it about Jesus’ love for the church, and that’s a valid interpretation, God’s passionate love for humanity. 

If we stop there, however, and don’t allow this book also to be about what it truly is, a writing about passionate love between people, we’d be missing out on some of the beauty of this writing and the beauty of the love we have as passionate, sexual people.  Passionate love and even sexual desire that men and women feel for each other is part of the image of God in which we were made, and ask any newlywed, it’s a good thing. 

The lovers in Song of Solomon in the passage we heard today are so in love, that once they are together, everything in the world seems beautiful.  It’s spring time.  There are flowers and turtledoves, figs ripe on the vine.  There are beautiful scents in the air, sounds of birds chirping, not a mosquito around, and it seems as if all creation was put there by God just for the love and enjoyment of the two of them. 

I’d venture to say that a lot of us have had those feelings of being so in love that it feels like every sunrise and sunset were given by God just for you and your beloved.  Beautiful, blissful creation that is made by God and given for the enjoyment of just two people who are passionately and unabashedly in love sounds an awful lot like the Garden of Eden. 

Far from sinful, the passionate love the man and woman in this passage helped them love creation more.  They seem at peace with the world, as though the love they have for each other is going to pour out onto the world around them.  Passionate and unabashed love is far from sinful, far from anything to be ashamed about.  Passionate and unabashed love is our Edenic state, how God made us to be, part of the image of God in which we were made. 

How do we then get from the good joy and beauty of the passionate love seen in the Song of Solomon to the church sometimes in our history teaching that sex is basically wrong and bad; in a marriage it’s ok, but even then, kinda questionable?  Well, as we are no doubt aware, our desires can sometimes run amuck. 

Desire run amuck is largely what Jesus is talking about when he lists some of the evil intentions that can come from the human heart:  fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.  These are basically desire run amuck, desire for things and people, desire for people as things, without regard those people.  Jesus’ list of vices are all ways that people gratify their own desire, regardless of the cost to others. 

Fornication is sex for personal gratification, without truly honoring and deeply loving yourself or the other.  It is desire run amuck.  It doesn’t really bring about that deep, passionate love for each other and for all creation, such that every sunrise and sunset is made just for those two people.  I very much doubt that when someone steals something that they really want, that they suddenly notice the beauty of the flowers and the chirping birds, the love and beauty of creation surrounding and blessing them.

From the beginning, when Adam and Eve decided they desired a piece of fruit more than they desired God and each other, our sin, our missing the mark, has been our desire run amuck, when we have desired things and even people as things more than we have desired true, deep, passionate love for God and each other.  True, deep, passionate love not only desires the other, but also honors the other, and when we have that true, deep, passionate, mutual love that not only desires but honors, then all of creation sings. 

Such passionate mutual love that not only desires but also honors is a lot of the Kingdom of God that Jesus came to bring about.  That’s in rather sharp contrast to the Pharisees and the Scribes being angry at Jesus because he and his disciples didn’t follow the traditions of the elders in not washing their hands appropriately.  These traditions of the elders were oral tradition based on the laws of Moses.  These traditions were intended to help people remember their deep honoring and love of God.  They just don’t seem to have been overly effective and were certainly not worth getting angry over. 

We have a lot of traditions in the Episcopal Church too, intended to help us draw near to the mystery of God, and open our hearts to God’s passionate love for us.  Some of us follow and understand these traditions really well, and some of us don’t.  Over the years, I’ve known folks would be absolutely incensed if one of the rituals and traditions in our worship didn’t go quite right.  They loved worship and traditions so much that they were angry at people when the worship and traditions didn’t go quite right.  How many parents have I talked to, fearful because their children made noise and were fidgety during church?  I tell them time and again, be not afraid.  Children can be kinda noisy and fidgety, and here in worship is where they belong. 

As Jesus pointed out to the Pharisees and the Scribes, being angry with people because traditions and worships don’t go quite right is rather backwards.  Our traditions and worship are meant to help us love each other and love God with ever greater passion, not the other way around.

We were made to see each other and all creation as beloved of God, and not just beloved, but deeply, passionately desired by, honored, and beloved of God.  We were made to see God, creation, and each other, through the eyes of newlywed lovers, so passionately desirous for each other, that all the world is beautiful.  We were made to live the passionate, desirous, honoring love which we heard in the Song of Solomon.  “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”  Amen.