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Well, of course, things went just fine this morning. Fine, that is, except for not being able to find any decent bread to use for the Lord's Board. Trinity, being a very hip and with-it school of theology (insert ironic guffaw), prefers using actual bread over wafers. Not a slice of white bread, of course, but small loaves or doughy pitas. A note about Eucharistic bread...I don't care for the pitas, mostly because I miss the snap of the wafer, which I think communicates a certain violence inherent in crucifixion. Lends the sacrificial remembrance some auditory support. But what do I know? I'm on bread duty this week, and having forgotten to bake any last night (due to a Harry Potter festival held in the living room) I found myself in a Polish bakery at 7:15am. A note about 7:15am...is there a parish out there that needs a rector and that celebrates the Eucharist at noon? The only bread available, aside from full-sized loaves which would embarrass a congregation of twelve, was in baguette form. A baguette is a crumby bread...not crumby as in lousy but crumby as in crumb-creating. Crumb-inducing. Full of crumbs. I bought it because it was all I could find, knowing that it'd leave a mess on the paten...and corporal...and likely the floor. Fortune smiled and this morning's celebrant elected to use the wafer. She did so to avoid crumbs, so I've no idea if she also finds meaning in the snap of the wafer...but I was happy anyhow. And my sermon was well-received. I felt good enough about it, and am thus posting it here. It's short, but then it was delivered at an 8:15 Eucharist on a Monday morning. See above note regarding 7:15am. The gospel was Mark 3:19b-30. In this morning's gospel, we once again find Jesus swarmed by people seeking healing and guidance. We are told that the throng was so large and so insistent that Jesus and his disciples couldn't even eat. Imagine that. Imagine a crowd pouring into your own dining room or kitchen, through windows and doors. Imagine the room so full that you can't even reach the fridge or pass the salt. That was the power of our Lord�s healing presence, a power that drew people beyond the boundaries of polite society into a real and immediate relationship, sometimes a bit too real and too immediate. They might not have understood just what he was saying, and Mark's gospel consistently makes it clear that they didn't, but they did know that Jesus meant healing. How then was it even possible for such a dangerous accusation to be levelled at the man everyone recognized as a healer? "He has Beelzebub!" Jesus is accused of cooperating with demons, of being an agent of Satan himself. Although, as Jesus points out, the accusation is logically impossible - "How can Satan cast out Satan?" - still, it comes from a respected source. This wasn't just a group of locals, but scribes from Jerusalem, the centre of the religious establishment. Here are Jerusalem scribes come to investigate this rabbi from the sticks. These are wise and educated men�so how did they come to such a conclusion? Even the demons recognized Jesus as the Holy One, the Son of God. How could these learned scribes formulate such an outlandish claim, one that didn't even make logical sense? We like to think that things would be different today, that we would recognize the healer and accept his teaching. But would we? So often, when are faced with something that challenges our deeply held beliefs of how the world works, we react not with rationality but with fear. We needn't look far or stretch our imaginations much to find modern examples. The newspapers lately are full of ridiculous reactions, claims made in the face of social change, even here in open-minded Canada. Like the Jerusalem scribes, sometimes we don't think very clearly before lashing out. Faced with change, we're afraid of what it might do to our world, and we react out of that fear. But today our Lord invites us to reject fear. Today he tells us that we needn't be afraid, that he is more powerful than the strong man, than the demons that would tear us apart. All he asks is that we trust him, and trust in the Spirit of God to move us toward greater love and justice. Whether lay or ordained, each of us is called to ministry, to further the kingdom of God. It's part of our baptismal covenant that we, like Jesus, renounce Satan and all his works. We are called to join our Lord in binding the strong man and plundering his property. If only we can trust in the power of the Spirit. And what if we do trust and we do follow? What happens when the world reacts to us the way some people did to Jesus? What happens when they say we've lost our minds, when they call us mad? I have to say, sometimes they're not far from right. It is madness sometimes. A message of love and peace can seem hopelessly mad in a world so full of hate and violence. Few people know the world's hate and violence as well as Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust. In his play Zalmen, Wiesel struggles with the madness of hearing and obeying the voice of God in such a world. Zalmen, a rabbi's lay assistant, pleads with his rabbi, who has become too afraid to proclaim the word of God. According to Zalmen, "One has to be mad today to believe in God and in man - one has to be mad to believe. One has to be mad to want to remain human. Be mad, Rabbi, be mad! Become mad tonight and fear will shatter at your feet, harmless and wretched." Jesus calls us to be mad in the eyes of the world. He calls us to be mad enough to follow him into the strong man's house, to confront our deepest demons, to emerge victorious beside him and to enter with him into the true sanctuary of heaven. He calls us to be mad. Be mad, and fear will shatter at your feet. |
