Called and Sent to Be and Do

“Called and Sent to Be and Do”

Psalm 138 Mark 3:20-35

Second Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, June 6, 2021

First Presbyterian Church, Sandpoint, Idaho

Andy Kennaly, Pastor

          Here’s my opening paragraph:  Tension.  Conflict.  Intolerance.  Intimidation used as a technique to control and manipulate.  Lies and conspiracies promoted and believed by many without question.  Violence legitimated, weapons normalized; promoted as necessary to defend one’s group or way of life from the intrusion of outside forces perceived as threats.  Fear of destruction perpetuates a fascination with safety and security.  Life becomes rigid, boundaries enforced, moralism replaces mystery, and separation is the norm.  You’re either in or out as group-think takes over and attitudes of “if you’re not with us you are against us” push away any form of receptivity to the “other.”  Controversies and instability keep people reeling from any sense of normalcy, and before adjustments can be made, a new confusion has arrived.  Narrow-minded perceptions deny a larger reality and truth becomes limited to what one wants to hear and believe in the siloes of selective perceptions.

Does this opening paragraph sound like the struggle Western Culture deals with right now, as democracies are tested while arsenals build and globalism convulses on multiple fronts, from economic to environmental, and existence itself seems to be on the brink either through emissions and climate change or the violence of perpetual war where all options are on the table?  Is this a description of national politics in America as a two-party system force dualistic judgements through dialect opposition as Democrats and Republicans march lock-step in their own clusters, trying at every turn to make the other look bad and appease their own constituents, even as within their own parties there are fractures, factions, and failures of leadership that damage the common good?  Maybe that opening paragraph describes the State of Idaho or what we see at local levels as one controversy comes after another, and each election gets more heated as people who are very calculated vie for position and power?

History does not repeat, but it rhymes.  Descriptions of animosity, anger, and violence can fit almost every age, and at times seems overwhelming.  What I describe in that opening paragraph, what I had in mind, is the scene of Mark chapter three.  What we read this morning is one portion of a larger chapter, and my description highlights aspects of the storyline.  It begins as Jesus heals in the synagogue on the Sabbath.  He invites a man with a crippling condition to open his hand up.  This healing violates narrow interpretations of doctrine, to the ire of the Pharisees who immediately plot to kill Jesus, even as Jesus looks at them with a mix of emotion: his anger, his righteous indignation, combines with grief, over their hardness of heart as the Pharisees, the religious leaders, fail to know and do what is good, even while they self-righteously claim they are defending God and upholding religious law.

The powerful scribes get in on it too.  They bring their voice of authority and conviction down from Jerusalem.  From positions of power they accuse Jesus of embodying evil.  By then the crowds surround Jesus to the point of preventing eating and possibly crushing him under their desire for healing.  It’s a dangerous situation, similar to the one that opened the chapter to the point where, earlier, Jesus goes up on a mountain and calls only a select few to join him as he appoints them his disciples.  He’s on the mountain, a place of revelation as God makes known who God is and what God is doing.  The twelve are called “to be with him, are sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons.”  Their names are listed, patiently indicating relationship and the importance of connection.  This peaceful mountain scene is sandwiched between Jesus requesting a boat so he doesn’t get crushed by the crowds to him in a house so chaotic they can’t even eat.

By now his family is in on it.  They come to rescue him, thinking he’s crazy to invite all this attention and they know full well the aggression of the authorities is dangerous.  They are likely being protective as they call from the street for him to come out of the house, to go with them.  They do think he’s crazy because they can’t see where he’s coming from as he operates from a high stage of consciousness.

Jesus isn’t crazy but is courageous.  He confronts his confronters and shows the scribes their hypocrisy, even while confident in declaring his victory over evil.  He points out the main teaching of most world religions that say, “Don’t judge.”  They have judged him, “for they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’”

This is tricky, being wise as serpents and innocent as doves, of living lives of discernment guided by wisdom yet not getting sucked into the blinders of judgment and self-referential thinking that has opinions and points of view from certain perspectives that can’t see the larger picture.  Those judging Jesus in a negative light deny inner experience of the Presence of God, both in his life and ministry and in their own.

This passage concludes with Jesus pointing out relationship beyond flesh and blood, that his mother and sisters and brothers are those who do the will of God.  Commentators point out that by including “sisters” this is evidence that women are among Jesus’ disciples, those following his ministry and teaching.  And as he says this, it also invites a question for all of us.  What is the will of God?  If doing the will of God is of relational importance to Jesus, more than flesh and blood, then what is this will?

This gets us to another main point of world religions: the call to love.  Love God with everything you are, and love your neighbor as yourself.  This is relational in the sense that there is no separation.  Even Jesus doesn’t stay on the mountain, but comes down to the crowds, makes himself vulnerable, in love, and confronts his enemies, knowing full well where this was heading.  This cruciform structure of life is easier to talk about than it is to live, which is another reason it’s important that Jesus calls the twelve.  This group, a mixed assortment of various levels of comprehension and motivations, is at the core of moving the entirety of humanity into a deeper relationship with God.

As followers of Jesus, expressions of the Living Christ, sent as the Body of Christ into the world, we too support one another as we journey.  To gather around the table of communion, we symbolize this call of Christ, this invitation to be new creations sealed in the blood of Christ, to re-form, re-member, Christ in the world as we celebrate God’s love that holds everything together.

As we gather around the table, we assume this is a table.  But you know what?  It has legs.  Our table has legs.  Jesus is in a house that is so crowded they can’t even eat.  Perhaps this is because to eat around the very low table of that culture, you lay on the floor with your legs out behind you, leaning your head in toward the center.  If the house is crowded, you can’t lay on the floor or you’ll get stepped on as the crowd pushes in, then people would trip and fall on you; so you need to stand up, which means you can’t eat.  Or maybe they can’t eat because as Jews they are not allowed to share meals with Gentiles, and the crowd is mixed, coming from town and the larger region.  Maybe it’s the religious law that is preventing the meal.  We don’t exactly know why they couldn’t eat, but it does show a bit of chaos and adds to the dynamic nature of this scene: there is a lot going on that is unsettling to life’s normal assumptions, understandings, or expectations.  There are dimensions of interior and exterior, of divisions and of unity.

It’s comforting to know that many of the dynamics we find ourselves facing in the convulsions of culture’s growth pains, Jesus has faced these dynamics as well.  We need to claim those mountain top times of silence, divine Presence, and inner peace, both for our own soul and the benefit of society as a whole.  That call to the calm, grounding Presence and unity in the ever-present-Origin is transformational.  It’s from that base, that naming as a new creation that we are sent into the world to wrestle the chaos, do God’s will, and love, love, love in Christ’s name.  We are not perfect in this, but our failings are forgiven through a larger Grace that holds all things together.

Thanks be to God for the vulnerability Jesus takes on himself to call us brothers and sisters as we journey together for good.  May we be open to trust the inner experience of God as Christ is in our midst, and we are called and sent to be and do God’s will through the power and grace of Love’s transformation.  Amen.