Proper 11, Year C
Sunday, July 14, 2013
St. Mark’s, Bay City, TX
Amos 8:1-12
Psalm 52
Colossians 1:15-28
Luke 10:38-42
This weekend, we were in Austin for
my niece and nephew’s 6th birthday party. The kids all had a great time together…so did
the adults for that matter. Friday
night, the family was talking together, and my sister-in-law’s father who
speaks Spanish and a little bit of English asked what we thought about the
Zimmerman trial, nice easy topic for a Friday night. With my limited Spanish, I could only give
about a one sentence answer which was totally inadequate for my thoughts. If I could have said more, I would have said
something like this.
Ever since
Trayvon Martin was killed, we’ve been hearing about problems of race and racial
profiling. We’ve been hearing about
problems of guns and violence. We’ve
been hearing problems about courts and judicial practice, and all of these
headline grabbing, angst inducing topics are ultimately irrelevant to what
happened between Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. We don’t know the specifics of what happened
leading up to Trayvon’s death. All we
really know was that by the end of it, Zimmerman was beaten up and Martin was
dead.
We don’t
really know exactly what was going through their minds leading up to their
confrontation, but I’ve got a pretty good hunch that both saw the other as a
threat, first and foremost, rather than as a human being. Race, guns, courts, all of it ultimately
irrelevant. Two men saw each other as a
threat rather than as a human being.
That goes completely counter to the way of life in the Kingdom of
God.
Jesus was fully committed to the
Kingdom of God, and he didn’t have time for anything else. Jesus was fully committed to God’s Kingdom in
which people were humans and beloved Children of God before they were anything
else, and Jesus was against anything which got in the way of loving people and
treating them with love.
Martha
invited Jesus to her house for dinner. Now,
home is generally the place where all pretense is left at the door. We can truly be ourselves at our homes, with
our family. So, when Jesus entered
Martha and Mary’s home, Mary dropped all pretense. By the culture of the day, she was woman and
he was man. She should have been
preparing dinner, and any teaching he was doing should have been for men
only. Rather than let those customs get
in the way of their interaction, Mary sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to
him. Mary spends time with Jesus.
Martha, on
the other hand, invited Jesus into her home and then ignored him, spending all
her time preparing dinner. She was
following the customs and the norms, but she was bound by them, enslaved to
them. He Man, She Woman, and Jesus
didn’t have any time for that. The
Kingdom of God doesn’t have time for anything that gets in the way of genuine
human interaction. There is no place in
the Kingdom of God for anything that gets in the way of loving our
neighbors.
Trayvon Martin
and George Zimmerman saw each other as threats.
Well, it’s easy to eliminate a threat.
It’s easy to destroy and enemy. Once
that threat, than enemy becomes a human being, then it’s not so easy to destroy
that human being. So long as we are
threats and enemies in each others’ eyes, then violence and anger, and darkness
will have an easy time remaining strong in the world.
Proclaiming
and enacting the Kingdom of God first and foremost, we don’t see each other as
threats and enemies, but as human beings:
humans with parents, humans with children, humans with brothers and
sisters, humans with blessing, humans with troubled pasts, humans who are just
as afraid as we are, humans whose lives are every bit as much of a mess as ours
are if not more so. Living in the
Kingdom of God, we don’t have time to see each other as anything else.
As
disciples of Jesus, if we are truly disciples of Jesus, then we will be fully
committed to proclaiming and enacting the Kingdom of God, seeing each other as
human beings first and foremost, loving God and loving each other. As disciples of Jesus, we will be fully
committed to admitting when we haven’t lived the Kingdom of God life, fully
committed to making amends for those times, and fully committed to repenting
and returning to the Kingdom of God life.
There are people whose narratives
are different than the Kingdom of God narrative, and they are fully committed
to those narratives. Martin and
Zimmerman, it’s about racism. Martin and
Zimmerman, it’s about guns. Martin and
Zimmerman, it’s about…whatever. The
folks who have been championing these causes are committed to their
causes. They take every opportunity to
voice their commitment to their cause.
Disciples of Jesus have even been part of these discussions, and yet I
have not once heard someone say that the problem with Martin and Zimmerman was
that two men didn’t see each other as human.
I have yet to hear a disciple of Jesus proclaim that two men, who were
at least nominally Christian, viewed each other as less than human and weren’t,
at least in that moment, living the Kingdom of God life.
As disciples of Jesus, we need to
stop getting caught up in these other narratives. They have their place, but our narrative is
primarily the Gospel narrative, and our way of life is first and foremost “Love
God and Love People.” All other
considerations fall under those two ways of the Kingdom of God life.
The
narratives we’ve been hearing in the wake of Trayvon’s death are all reactive
narratives. Once a problem arises, they
pounce on it, championing their causes.
In the Kingdom of God life, we’re proactive in proclaiming and enacting a
loving world. As a solution to crime,
our laws focus on locking folks up to punish and prevent, on the back end of
crimes. That has its place, but the
proactive Kingdom of God life tries to take away the reasons for crime. I’m not talking about a political or
governmental solution, but a way we live our lives as disciples of Jesus. When Jesus saw people hungry, he fed
them. When Jesus saw people in pain, he
healed them. Jesus taught people a
better way of viewing each other than as threats and enemies.
Jesus treated other humans as
beloved children of God, and he didn’t have time for anything else. He didn’t get involved in the struggle
against the Romans. That wasn’t his
arena. “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s
and render unto God what is God’s.” As
we heard in the story of the Good Samaritan last week, Jesus’ arena was the
Kingdom of God. “Love God with all your
heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.”
That is our way of life. That is our arena. That is our fight. We probably won’t win. So let’s do it anyway. Disciples of Jesus don’t live the Kingdom of
God life because we know we’re going to win.
Jesus wasn’t concerned with the fact that it would take centuries for
women to get to sit at Rabbis feet.
Jesus saw a woman who wanted to listen to him and he talked to her. Disciples of Jesus aren’t concerned with
winning and losing. Disciples of Jesus live
and proclaim the Kingdom of God life because that is who we are and that is how
we live.
If some other way of life is going to
win out in this world, then so be it.
We’re going to be disciples of Jesus.
We’re going to live and proclaim the Kingdom of God life. We’re going to heal the hurting we see in the
world. We’re going to see other people
as human beings, not as threats. We’re
going to be proactive in how we live, striving for justice and peace among all
people, and respecting the dignity of every human being. We’re going to seek and serve Jesus in all
people. We’re going to live according to
the teaching of Jesus and the apostles.
We’re going to resist temptation and repent when we fail. We’re going to proclaim and enact the Gospel,
the Kingdom of God life. As disciples of
Jesus, that is who are and how we live.
That is how we view the world, and we just don’t have time for anything
else. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment