Content with a Reality Check
“Content with a Reality Check”
2 Corinthians 12:2-10 Mark 6:1-13
Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, July 4, 2021
First Presbyterian Church, Sandpoint, Idaho
Andy Kennaly, Pastor
Mystical experiences are hard to explain with words. The Apostle Paul tries to, in his second letter to the church in Corinth. When he uses phrases like, “caught up to the third heaven – whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows,” or “caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat,” points to the confines of language to capture the fullness of Divine Essence, and the limitations of our usual perspectives to express a broader Reality. Like James Finley says, you can’t put the ocean into a thimble, but you can put a thimble into the ocean. Once you know there is more to life than meets the eye, you can’t not know. Once you delve into mystery, “consider the exceptional character of the revelations,” as Paul puts it, and catch a glimpse of God’s Ultimacy, everything else becomes relativized. Paul discovers and claims, in this spiritual awakening, humility, and receives it as a gift, which, though painful like a “thorn” in his flesh, helps him trust grace all the more and experience the “power of Christ” that dwells in him.
If you hold this passage up next to the Gospel reading in Mark, they interrelate as they explore elation and humility, power and weakness, and they both speak of being content, to trust the sufficiency of grace. We see Paul and Jesus both learn similar lessons, and the disciples need’s to experience these teachings in hands-on ways.
Church teaching says Jesus is fully divine and fully human, although we tend to overplay the God card. In doing this, we minimize his humanity. Mark reminds us that Jesus is a person and shares the story of him going to his hometown. That Jesus even has a hometown, and several siblings, brothers and sisters, and people who know his parents, is not something we typically focus on. They all hear him on the Sabbath in the synagogue as he teaches. “Many who heard him were astounded.” Then comes a list of questions, most likely asked in a mocking tone, with irritation. The peoples’ assumptions, perspectives, and ability to control are challenged by whatever it is Jesus says. They didn’t seem to like the type of wisdom he shared. Like most people identifying with their false-self and judging through dualistic thinking, they are easily offended. Because they are close-minded, and their hearts closed off by pride, Jesus “could do no deed of power there…and he was amazed at their unbelief,” their lack of open trust.
This scene is a necessary check and is a glimpse at Jesus’ humanity. Up to now, crowds of people have followed him to seek healing and hear his teaching. In his hometown, he is amazed that God’s power has almost no effect among the people he knows from growing up and living there for years. It must have been very baffling, even disappointing. But it’s a reality check; a reminder that the Essential never imposes itself, even while the unessential always demands attention and pushes its own way. God’s love does not coerce people or force them to love God back. But we’re quite skilled at staying distracted and identified with lesser things as our ego keeps control by pushing away anything unknown, mysterious, or feared.
The term, “hometown” assumes a sort of knowing. It’s where we’re from, it’s who we are, it’s what we know. Hometown implies the familiar. It’s more than a mind thing, or certain thoughts, but involves feelings that are held very deep. Just looking at Sandpoint today, with a Fourth of July parade, hometowns involve tradition, community, and with that a certain level of expectation and ways to behave. The people reacting to Jesus are unable to accept him because what he is saying is not matching up with their expectations and what’s familiar. Expectations can lead to resentments.
One thing that is certain about life is that eventually you get wounded. There are disappointments, things don’t go as planned, setbacks occur. Maybe we get double crossed or suffer injustice. Perhaps death intrudes and loved ones pass away. Something happens and the way we thought life would be is forever changed. Like a song Bono sings with the group U2, the way he knows there’s no end to love is because there’s no end to grief. The deeper the love, the stronger the grief.
What do we do with pain? Paul talks about a thorn in the flesh. That sounds painful! Does this mean he walks with a limp or has a physical ailment? Possibly, but what injures us more deeply is wounded pride. Sometimes our ego confronts things we just can’t get our minds wrapped around or explain. Even God makes a good target for our tendency to blame. Discontent takes up residence and resentments become lodged as part of our identity. If we translate the word “flesh” as an unchecked ego, as the need to make our way happen and stay in control, to be proven right, to keep score and count everything in self-referential ways, this may be closer to the “flesh” Paul mentions. As Paul the mystic shares of his experience we see him as one delivered from arrogance to humility. His ego, which is there, moves from opaque to translucent. In Christ, his weakness finds strength and he is gifted, even amid challenges, with contentment.
Echoing this in the Gospel reading, as Jesus has a reality check in his hometown, he not only goes to other villages to teach, but sends the twelve disciples, two by two, and gives them instructions.
Suzanne Guthrie picks up on the disciples sent out as amateurs, still inexperienced in their calling. She equates this to us and the theme of prayer, saying, “A life of prayer…begins in weakness and ignorance; you never suspect the anguish, sense of loss, the profound changes of heart and mind, the dark nights of the soul, the confusions of power and powerlessness of the soul’s unfolding journey. Like so many of life’s endeavors, if you knew what we were in for, you'd never begin.” (Suzanne Guthrie, At the Edge of the Enclosure, http://edgeofenclosure.org/proper9b.html).
How do we, like Paul, integrate the thorns? How do we, like Jesus, face resentments and move on in healthy ways? Are we honest about life’s confusions? Do we really relinquish control? Do we ever have control to begin with?
Jesus sends the disciples so they can learn lessons that can only be gained experientially. The instructions help guide them into deeper humility. Things like trusting humanity and the benevolence of the universe to sustain you. When they enter a house, they are to stay there until they move on. This is another way of claiming contentment. If they are in a house, for example, and they are given a muffin for breakfast, but down the street there’s a place that would feed them bacon and eggs, they are not to shuffle around to gain prestige and privilege, to up the ante with each move. They are to stay humble. This builds thankfulness, a sense of “enough-ness.”
In shaking the dust off their feet when they are not accepted and they need to move on, this could mean a couple of things. As a gesture, it has intensity. Shaking the dust off their feet is like telling the people off, flipping the bird, insulting the village for rejecting them. This is one possibility of interpretation, but it’s at a surface level, a cultural level. Through the lens of ongoing love and deep care, even for our enemies, the same gesture has a different tone. It’s done less directed toward them in aggression, but more as an acknowledgement of a reality check. As disciples, they did what they could to connect with people. Like with Jesus, sometimes that is received and sometimes that is rejected. Through love, shaking the dust off is a way of acknowledging you’ve done all you can but it’s time to move on. In leaving, you are entrusting that village to God’s continued care. Maybe someone will connect with them, but it doesn’t have to be you.
This is important for the questions of how we deal with pain, how we live with resentments, how we cling to our wounds. The dust settles, the feet move on and trust the journey ahead, but in an honest way that doesn’t push away the pain or the rejection. Paul prayed significantly for the thorn to be removed. But it is not removed.
It’s important to recognize pain, to honor the reasons it exists, to look for the lessons it teaches as only it can, and to integrate suffering within a larger wholeness. Pain never goes away, but it can find balance. Wounds can either fester or heal. Learning to live with scars is a gift of grace sometimes disguised through suffering. Challenges of hard experience help us learn to be content through reality checks. Reality, both in terms of the harsh conditions of creation and the creative power that brings beauty out of those same conditions. Grace is the Ultimate Reality. As Jesus sends us we are held in the depths of Love. We can hold our pain and not push it away because we are held in an eternal embrace.
On this Fourth of July Independence Day, may we claim the unitive connection of God’s love. As we turn toward the Ultimate, may we be healed, in Christ, so our hearts and minds are renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit. Thanks be to God for grace to sustain us on the journey, and may God be glorified, now and forever. Amen.