July 4, 2021 -Sermon by the Rev. Bernadette M. Hartsough
Happy 4th of July weekend to all of you. I hope you get to spend some time outside relaxing with friends and family. According to the Weather Channel, we are supposed to be rain free for a few days! Amen to that.
This morning I am going to focus on the Gospel of Mark. Today’s gospel has two distinct scenes. The first scene is Jesus in his hometown. The second scene is Jesus sending out the twelve to go out to heal and preach. The first scene prepares us for the second scene. The theme in both scenes is rejection.
In scene one, the gospel tells us that Jesus and his disciples go to his hometown. Jesus tried to teach and to heal. His friends and family saw him as a carpenter-a craftsman. They wondered who does he think he is? He is one of us. An ordinary Jew raised among us. He should be with his family. He should follow in his father joseph’s business. Jesus has stepped out of his role in his family. In ancient Palestine, honor and shame dictated your family roles and your occupation. In our culture we applaud if a hometown boy or girl makes it big. We honor them. In ancient times the class system was very rigid. It was hard to move out of it. Jesus was a craftsman. He was in a lower class than the temple priests, scribes, and pharisees. Jesus was not supposed to teach and spend time teaching others. Jesus’s behavior was dishonorable to his family. Jesus’s humanity was all that his family could see. They could not see his wisdom and divine power. So, they rejected him.
The Gospel of Mark doesn’t tell us directly how Jesus felt after visiting his family. We can tell from the description of the scene that Jesus felt hurt and disappointment. Jesus uses this experience of rejection to provide a teachable moment to his disciples. In the second scene of today’s gospel, Jesus instructs the twelve how to heal and to teach; how to “do” the word and how to “speak” the word. He sends them out in pairs and instructs them on what to take. The last part of the directive involves, “shaking the dust off of their feet.” It acknowledges human freedom. People can reject the gospel. If they do, move on. Don’t waste time. There are others that need to hear it.
The directives that Jesus gives in this passage have been used by Christians to spread the gospel. In the early church, the disciples went to different regions. They spoke the word and they did works. In some areas they were rejected, and they moved on. In other areas they adopted the local culture to tell the story of Jesus. that’s how we got Ethiopian Orthodox Churches, Greek Orthodox Churches, Roman Catholic Churches, and others. They are similar but the prayers, music, and worship style reflect the culture. They adapted the Gospel to the local culture.
Through the centuries, missionary work and evangelism became distorted. Christian missionaries taught about Jesus using one fixed culture: the western European and English culture. They saw the gospel of Jesus and European culture as part of the same message. They rejected the cultures of other groups. This rejection caused other cultures to become suppressed. The other cultures were not seen or heard. They became invisible in Christianity. So, there was a disconnect between church and culture. For example, in countries in Central Africa, Scottish missionaries came and built beautiful Anglican Churches. They look like something you would see in London or New York. The churches have no local African art or architecture. The music is English hymns. We could go there and recognize the prayers and the hymns. It would be a very comfortable feeling for us but for the people who live there and go to church there it is vastly different from their day-to-day life. The Christian missionaries in parts of Central Africa were so successful in evangelizing the Africans in European culture that Africans do not know their local history before the 17th century. Their history was rejected, erased, and made invisible. We see the same thing in the Caribbean and in Central and South America. Unfortunately, we have seen the same thing in this country with the indigenous peoples-the Native Americans.
We can hear Jesus’s words speaking to us today. Jesus’s voice calls us to speak and live the gospel. We take some things with us. We take with us the love of God and others that is in our hearts. We speak from that love. We take Jesus’s words with us. His words are of love and sacrifice. We take ourselves, our experiences, our pain, and our joy. We share how our lives are bound up in Jesus’s lives. We don’t have to have a theology speech. We speak of our experience.
We leave behind those things that prevent others from hearing the gospel. We leave behind rejection. Rejection is hard. It makes us feel invisible and unimportant. Rejection can affect our self-esteem. It makes us less confident. It causes us to avoid situations in which we may get rejected. Jesus tells us that when we follow him and speak of him, expect rejection. But get back up and keep going.
We leave behind competition, judgement, and power. If we have power because of our status, we are not to use that power to control others. We find ways to talk about Jesus using the culture and language of the people. Jesus did NOT call us to change someone’s culture or to get them on our side. Speaking the language of another is not just learning another language like Spanish, French, or English. It is learning how people different than us live. How do they shop, do laundry, what do they eat? What is important to them. How do those less fortunate know Jesus? How do those more fortunate know Jesus? When we leave behind power and judgement, we begin to see that ALL need to hear the words of the gospel. We give them the words and then let it grow in their hearts and minds and souls.So, if Jesus took you aside like he did the twelve and sent you out to tell his story, what experiences do you take with you to share the gospel? What things do you need to leave behind?