Readings

FIRST LESSON

The first lesson is from What Jesus Meant by Garry Willis

Hurt people are not drawn to the aggressively healthy, to the televangelist’s plumy voice, the fire-hose gush of bonhomie. People are instinctively drawn to Jesus, certain that he understands suffering, their particular suffering, that he sees it in their eyes even before they speak. God’s chosen are the suffering ones, whose inner luminescence is emphasized by the fragility of its container.

The idea that Jesus was a great athlete or captain of industry or persuasive salesperson does not square with the fact that he was too weak to carry his own cross, though that was a normal part of the penalty of crucifixion. Pilate was surprised that he died so soon, before either of the two men executed with him.

In Susaku Endo’s novel Silence, a Portuguese priest hunted for practicing a forbidden religion in seventeenth-century Japan has been driven alone on a path where he finds no rest or food. As he leans over a muddy puddle, a face stares up at him from the water. He has earlier said how he was consoled in his seminary days by the beautiful Jesus painted by Piero della Francesca. But now he sees a shocking sight, the face of a man haunted and fainting, with a dirty smear of stubble across it. He does not know, but Endo makes us know as we read the passage that he is looking into the face of Jesus.

SECOND LESSON

The first lesson is from the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 6 verses 1 through 13


Jesus left that place and came to his home town, 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 offence at him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Prophets are not without honor, except in their home town, 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.

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.

This Week's Sermon

Date: July 5, 2009

Title: To Understand Suffering

Message Delivered By: Rev. Joe Mc Murray

In our weekly Quest-blast, I mentioned seeing the face of God and asked how many times you had seen the face of God this week. Here is a story of someone who did. I will warn the faint of heart that there is no punch line at the end of this story.

A female humpback whale had become entangled in a spider web of crab traps and lines. She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail and her torso, and a line was tugging in her mouth.

A fisherman had spotted her just east of the Farralone Islands (outside the Golden Gate Bridge) and radioed an environmental group for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so bad off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her ... a very dangerous proposition. For example, one mere slap of her powerful tail could kill a rescuer.

They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her. When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles.
She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed them gently around, as if she were thanking them for freeing her. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives.

The man who cut the rope out of her mouth says the eye of the humpback whale was following him the whole time he was removing the rope. The way he described it at the time was, he said, “I will never be the same.”

So when we speak of God’s face, do we see it peering at us through the eyes of an entangled humpback whale struggling to be free? Do we see God’s face in the eyes of a malnourished rescue dog from the ASPCA? Do we see God’s face in the eyes of a sunburned woman peering out over a can of chili she received from the local mission?

Only when we can imagine God’s face in all these faces and more can we say we truly have a sense at the depth of who God is and what God looks like.
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Will you pray with me? God, though many of us have needs and are desperate for your compassion and attention to our prayers, most of us have been blessed again and again, and are grateful to receive your grace. Open us, God, to the needs of others. Help us to reserve judgment about worthiness and focus on your presence, however it may present itself to us. And may my words and all of our thoughts be filled with honor and praise to you. Amen.
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I can picture what the headline might have been in The Gazette, the neighborhood newspaper of Nazareth the day after Jesus returned. Home Boy Returns! No doubt, there would have been a big party planned, lots of food and drink, interviews and photographers, and time to hear the stories about what Jesus had been thinking, learning and thinking since he’d been there last.

And then would come the deathly silence as he told people how he’d been changed, and how he had changed the lives of so many people—people who believed in his message of unconditional love, understanding and inclusion. He would tell them that many now believed the realm of God to be not just for the future, but that it was also here, in the present. And everyone should relax and rejoice, because tomorrow, there would be lots more work for everyone to do.

Talk about a downer! It would have been like the bartender yelling “Last call!” 30 minutes after Bourbon Street opened.

Just who did this upstart think he was? Just because he once lived here didn’t mean he had a right to tell everyone else how to live! He had no right to shame people and intimate that we’re ignorant just because we have poor people living on the street. How dare he claim that we were weak because we didn’t stand up for what we really believe in the face of our zealous religious leaders and the even more powerful Roman occupiers? Easy for him to waltz in here and make all kinds of claims.

Jesus told the disciples, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”
And thus his spiritual connection was broken, and his ability to heal and to change minds and hearts was basically, ineffective there.

And Jesus tried to prepare his disciples for what they, too, might face. “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.”

The testimony would come as criticism against their stubbornness, their failure to listen, their refusal to open their hearts to the message that as God loves them, they must pour out their love to others.

Why did this happen to Jesus and how could it possibly have occurred with those who knew him so well?

I remember when I first left home for college. Boy, when I came back I had all the answers for what my parents had been doing wrong all those years! You think they appreciated it?

When people leave for awhile and return home again, they discover that they were remembered in very particular ways. They were a known quantity. Often, when they leave and experience the world, they grow and change. It is a natural desire to return and share their newly acquired knowledge and experience with those they know and love. Well, it’s the thought that counts.

This can be difficult for the people who didn’t leave, and who may have devoted their lives to the status quo, to things remaining the same as they always were and keeping them that way.

Add to this the difficulty of hearing the truth spoken by an outsider, even if they didn’t used to be an insider. Now they’ve gone and come back; they’ve gone and injected objectivity into their bloodstream and it’s all they can talk about. Someone you once trusted may, indeed, now be changed – hard to bear if you always believed and still believe you know best. Especially about politics and religion.

Of course you can learn to tolerate someone you used to know who know longer believes or acts the same as they once did. But when they speak what you believe to be the truth, even if you don’t like it, you are compelled to hear it in a new way and oftentimes, it’s difficult to accept.

What does this have to do with suffering, you might ask? Actually, it has everything to do with suffering. Suffering impacts us all. It’s important to speak the truth about those who suffer – to tell the truth that can be hard to hear, sometimes difficult to understand, and yet is a truth vital for the growth of any community of individuals who choose to be in alignment with God.

Who are the suffering? Today, they are the ones who grieve over the losses in their lives, whose job security is at risk; the unemployed; the uninsured. They are those whose families have been split apart by divorce or separation of one kind or another. They are those who have tried to bury their pain through addictions of one kind or another.

And always among the suffering are those who are outcast from society, the mentally ill, the homeless, the elderly, the imprisoned, the ignored. The suffering are those who have been cut off from the lifeline of interpersonal communication. They are the marginalized – in one way or another – the contemporary lepers – the outcasts who have been socially, physically, or emotionally abandoned by society as irredeemable and unworthy.

How many times have you heard people coldly say, “If only they weren’t here; if only they weren’t constantly under foot, our lives would be different; if only they wouldn’t walk down the street in the open so we have to see them; if only they would stop showing up at the same events I go to or I’ve been invited to; can you imagine one of them stopped and ate his lunch on the steps of the church right in my neighborhood?”

There always have been these suffering, and there always will be. Some say it’s folly to give the suffering our time, our attention and our treasure. They are weak. All they do is sap us of our strength. We are wasting our energies on them instead of on the deserving. When someone can define who the deserving really are, please let me know.

But we hear over and over, “Why should people in prison be allowed to read, lift weights, take classes or have health care? Shouldn’t part of their punishment be that they receive hard labor for their crimes and be confined to solitary quarters?”

Because when I was imprisoned, you visited me.

I’ve heard why we feed so many homeless and hungry people now. Because the word has gotten out! Yeah, we’d better be careful ‘cause word has gotten out. What? What’s the word? That we’re real suckers for a free meal at this church? That we’re naïve do-gooders who don’t know that we’re being taken advantage of? Or could it be that we’re known because of the services we provide, the kindness we show, and the judgment-free atmosphere into which we invite our guests? For me, the only benefit for handing out fewer lunches during the week would be that there are fewer people living in homeless conditions, or living below the poverty line so that they cannot afford food.

When I was hungry, you gave me something to eat. When I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink.

Kai-Kai has donated 90 pairs of sandals so that we can distribute them to our guests. Sometimes we find ourselves with an extra shirt or pair of shorts, or an extra disposable razor or bar of soap, that we set aside for somebody who looks like they haven’t had a decent shower and shave, or a clean article of clothing for months.

I was naked, and you clothed me.

There are people today living without adequate health care. Their only option is the emergency room, and even then, sometimes they are not admitted. Yet we have those with the power to make changes see only from their perspective: that the type of care they get just comes because they are such model citizens and everyone should be like that, whether they had the same opportunities or not. Worse than that, it’s a failure to recognize that people are in desperate need. The healthier they are and their families are, the healthier our economy will be and our country will be because workers will be able to be more efficient and more effective on the job.

I was sick, and you took care of me.

The Obama administration is about to propose sweeping changes on our immigration policies. Most of us are the children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren of immigrants. Every few generations, it’s another ethnic culture that is picked upon. At one time it was the Irish. Then Middle-Easterners. Then the Jews. Then the Poles. Now it’s the Mexicans.
The accusations have remained the same: you’re stealing jobs from decent, hard-working Americans. Our work force is suffering because people have come into our country illegally to get a substandard paycheck to pay for the lives of their loved ones back home. Many of these jobs are jobs that are not wanted. I can’t imagine what would have happened to my family if my grandfather had been turned away from Ellis Island. What must he have thought seeing the statute of liberty there to greet him, instead of border guards and vigilante groups with weapons drawn. There has to be a way that’s fair and accountable.

I was a stranger and you welcomed me.

As Gary Willis recounts from the Susako Endo novel, Silence, we are like the Portuguese priest who looked into the face of another and saw Jesus there.

Right in Key West, we see faces that are shocking to behold, faces of those who are haunted, weak from hunger and from the everyday struggle of survival. They may be dirty faces, faces showing several days’ growth of beard; or the creased face of a woman who has suffered from too much exposure to the sun. They may be angry faces, gleeful faces, concerned faces; faces filled with confusion, or contorted faces that match the particular psychosis or addiction that may be present right under the surface.

How many times will we see the face of God and turn away? How many times will it take for us begin to grasp that what we do to others we do to ourselves? When will be get used to the reality that the answers to all our problems about suffering are right here within us. They always have been.

But it takes people of great character, and yes—great faith—to look for the face of God in the most unlikely of places. I am proud to belong to a church community that keeps those opportunities to meet God right in front of us—exactly where they belong.

May we continue to follow the direction that God constantly provides. Amen.