Listening [Proper 9B]
The Rev. Jeremiah
Williamson
Mark 6:1-13
Listening
I will never, ever
forget the first time I preached – because it was super weird. I had started a couple months earlier as the
seminary intern at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Chatham, New Jersey. I was still fairly new to the Episcopal
Church, having been raised in the Pentecostal tradition. And Elizabeth, the Rector for whom I worked, gave
me a couple months to immerse myself in the community before assigning me
Advent 2, Year C.
I had taught classes
at the parish; I had given talks. But
the sermon is different. There is really
nothing quite like it. A sermon begins as
something incredibly intimate – at its best, a private conversation between the
preacher, the Holy Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit – one person’s fumbling
attempt to say something true, to preach something faithful, to relay what it
seems God wants the congregation to hear that week. And then, that immensely intimate struggle is
placed in the pulpit. And the words on
the page become so real – a private struggle made very public. A labor of love, a window into one’s soul, a
delicate offering, one human being’s best attempt to say something true about
God, one person’s attempt to proclaim Jesus’ Gospel message in this time and
place: the sermon meets a sea of people.
And the sermon, crafted so carefully, words chosen so intentionally, is
no longer what is on the page, but is instead what each individual hears or
thinks they hear. Some of them will feel
the Spirit, some will encounter the Good News in a new and life-changing way,
some will be inspired, some will be comforted or challenged. And also some will be bored, some will be
distracted, some will silently critique the vocal tone or the grammar. And sometimes, some will be mad – might even
leave the church because of one sermon.
Every time I sit down to write a sermon and every time I step into the
pulpit I feel the great weight of the moment – and even more so in the tense
political culture in which we live.
So after spending the
week wrestling with the first verses of the third chapter of Luke’s gospel, I
woke up that December Sunday morning both extraordinarily nervous and ready to
preach the Gospel, to preach my first sermon.
And it was snowing like crazy. At
the eight o’clock service that morning, there were four of us. Three, including me, in the chancel; one in
the pews. And that one guy, who received
all of my eye contact, was the kind of guy who carried on his face a perpetual
frown.
And I preached my
heart out to him. And he returned to me
absolutely no energy or emotion. He sat
and looked at me with that stubborn frown unaffected. It is an experience I will never forget –
because it was super weird. I still
preached even though there was one person in the nave because, well, it was my
first time preaching and I didn’t know what else to do, but also, I still
believed that God inspired my study and prayer and writing that week – and maybe
this was the guy who needed to hear what I believed God laid on my heart.
By ten o’clock, the
roads were plowed and people filled the nave and I preached that sermon a
second time to more than one person. And
so maybe it was for them. I don’t
know. I just said what I thought God
wanted me to say and let the Spirit work in the Spirit’s mysterious ways. Fifteen years of preaching now and that conviction
has never changed.
By the time Jesus’
arrives to preach in his hometown synagogue, for the first time, he has made
quite a name for himself. He proclaimed
a vision for the Reign of God on this earth; and then he made that dream come
true before the peoples’ eyes by healing the sick and even raising the
dead. In fact, his last stop before the
synagogue was Jairus’ home where Jesus raised his daughter.
Jesus was a big deal
by the time he showed up for his hometown visit. And that was big problem. It seems like there are two issues at play
here. One is his message. There is a timeless tradition of treating
apocalyptic preachers like they are crazy – and it is true that some have made
a strong case for that designation. From
pulpits to radio stations to billboards to street corners, the number of incorrect
predictions of the Rapture or the end of the world is staggering – in fact, so
far, 100% of those predictions have been wrong; the Earth has yet to end.
Jesus was preaching an
apocalyptic message – not exactly that the world was ending, but close: that
the world as we know it is ending, that the kingdom of God was coming to
displace and overthrow the kingdoms of the world. It was a controversial, potentially dangerous
message in a powerful Empire that lined the streets with the crucified bodies
of those who openly threatened the throne.
That is why Jesus’ family, in the third chapter of Mark, tried to shut
Jesus up and tell those listening to his Kingdom message that he was crazy.
But there is also
something else: Jesus was getting a little too big for his britches. They knew him; they knew his family; they
knew his background. Maybe the folks in
the other villages didn’t, but they did.
He was a handyman; he was supposed to build doors and keep his mouth
shut. He needed to stay in his
lane. He wasn’t a Rabbi. He wasn’t educated. He wasn’t special. He was like them. And here he was, waltzing back into town like
he was something special, like he was better than them. Of course they took offense at him. They were pretty sure: he wasn’t better than
them.
It is such a human
reaction. In those ancient peasant
villages, people were born into certain roles; that was their inheritance. It was an insult to family and neighbors for
one to try and transcend that status.
And while the social
structure has changed over the years, the same human impulse that Jesus
experienced in his hometown remains. Biblical
scholar David Lose reflects on this tendency: “When
someone just like us makes it big, for some reason, rather than rejoice, we
tend to dismiss.” He says, “I’ve lived in communities, primarily academic,
where one person’s gain was assumed to imply a loss for others (as if life is a
zero-sum game and there’s only so much affirmation and acceptance to go around)
or where one person’s success reflected unflatteringly on everyone else (as if
life is an endless competition where we are measured relentlessly against each
other). Either way, [the] reaction [of Jesus’ townsfolk] is all too painfully
human.”[1]
Shot
down and dismissed, Jesus left his hometown, our Gospel says, “amazed at their
unbelief.” He had come to town with the
Good News, with the best news, and no one listened. He had come to town with signs and wonders;
Jesus was there to change their lives, to heal their infirmities, and no one
was interested. Because they could not
see past his tool belt. God was in their
midst, but they couldn’t hear God and they couldn’t see God. They looked at the Word of God and saw only a
handyman who was too much like them to be anything special.
And
it begs the question: where are we missing the Word of God? The Word of God flows often from the most unlikely
sources. That truth is evidenced
throughout the Bible – nowhere more obvious than in the person of Jesus –
incarnate by the Holy Spirit of an unmarried teenage virgin, from a line of
handymen, rejected by those who knew him best, crucified by the people he came
to save.
We
live in an age in which we are bombarded by voices. And yet, no one is really listening. Like the people in Jesus’ hometown, we always
have a reason. And so if the Holy Spirit
were to flow from the wrong person, from an unlikely person, from a person who
does not fit the mold, would anyone listen or would we simply tell them to “stay
in your lane, know your place?”
And
if we never listen, how will we ever hear?
If we dismiss young people and victims, women and people of color, if we
dismiss the preachers who are too political and the preachers who are not
political enough, if we dismiss athletes and celebrities, if we dismiss the
people we know too well and the people we do not know well enough, if we
dismiss the faithful people who are not Christian, and the Christians who are not
Episcopalians, and the Episcopalians who like praise bands a little too much:
how will we ever hear the Word of God?
God
has a word for this world, for this nation, for this city, for this parish; I
believe that. Jesus is still in search of a receptive audience. It is up to us to listen, to listen to the
still small voice of the Holy Spirit, to listen for the Jesus hiding in plain
sight – speaking to us through the poor and the oppressed, through the ridiculed
and the dismissed, through those who do not look the part, through those who
refuse to stay in their lane.
We
need to hear the voice of Jesus. We need
to learn to listen for the Spirit, flowing from even the most unlikely
source. Because we might just be the
ones God is expecting to speak that word, that Good News of God’s impossible love,
to a world in which the skepticism runs almost as deep as the need.
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