We're All In This Together

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday September 6, 2009, the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23
Psalm 125
James 2:1-10, (11-13,) 14-18
Mark 7:24-37

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

About six months ago, the Session commissioned two bible study and prayer groups based on the “Unbinding the Gospel”[1] real life evangelism series. One of the greatest strengths about this series is that it places at the forefront of evangelism where the church is located, spiritually and physically.

To describe the new people who would come to the church, the author uses nine categories. The first four groups are people like us. They are our children, their friends, folks who attend but have not made a commitment, and people who transfer from other congregations whose theology is similar to ours.

Just a note on this last group, church professionals tend to frown on people changing church affiliation willy-nilly, and even more with pastors who try to solicit members of other congregations. This is called swapping sheep. There are times when people just need to change their church, but first the sheep and their shepherd should talk about this first. Why? To see if the relationship can be salvaged. Also, if the sheep has a habit of moving from flock to flock to flock, there are some other issues involved. Still, there is a valuable and God blessed ministry in accepting sheep from other flocks when the move is right. But that’s getting away from the point.

The other groups are transfers from different theologies, people who have drifted from church, people who have left the church hurt, those who are not Christian but are like us, and finally those who are not Christian and are not like us.

The reason any of this is important is found in our reading from Proverbs. The rich and the poor have this in common: the Lord is the maker of them all. The Lord is the Maker of us all; the rich and the poor, the young and the old, the powerful and the powerless, the women and the men. The Lord is the Maker of us all.

But let’s be honest, this sounds nothing like the Lord and Messiah who says “it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” The Lord is the Maker of us all; the rich and the poor, the young and the old, the powerful and the powerless, the men and the women. But taking a look at the gospel reading asks the question of whether this is as true about Jew and Gentile.

We should remember, Mark’s gospel, the first of the gospels, was written by Jews for Jews. This work was definitively focused on what Jesus meant to the new community of believers, believers who were still decidedly Jewish, and believed Jesus is the long awaited Messiah, or as we would say, the Christ.

These people were still trying to define what it meant to be Jews who were no longer waiting for the Messiah. In their eyes, these Jewish Christians weren’t so much leaving the faith of their fathers as they were embarking on the next step in the faith of their fathers. This meant that not only did they have to navigate life knowing the Messiah; they also had to try to make their ways in the temple their Messiah cleansed.

While this story was written thirty years after the events recorded in Acts, it would still be between ten and twenty years before they were. Yes, by this time Peter had eaten unclean food with the God-fearing Cornelius the Centurion, but the story had not yet been recorded in the way we have it today. Still, the gentiles, the Syrian woman and the man from the Decapolis, they were a different kettle of fish and the new Jewish Christian community was having a difficult time dealing with these situations; but there was an example for them to follow, the example Jesus set in this passage from Mark.

In this passage, the people see that their deeply seated prejudices were just that, deeply seated prejudices. They were so deeply seated that even the Jewish Messiah knew them, and before the Syrophoenician woman, expressed them. Yet as these long held prejudices were held by the people, the Lord showed them a better way. He showed them the unmerited favor of his grace, healing those who knew him by reputation, maybe not as Lord, but they knew him by reputation.

By this, he demonstrated once and for all that those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor. He shows a good name is to be chosen rather than great riches and favor is better than silver or gold. And by these traits he shows that whoever sows injustice will reap calamity and the rod of the sower’s fury will be destroyed. In these simple yet extremely strange verses from Mark’s gospel, we are shown the wisdom of the Proverbs because the Lord is the maker of us all.

The comedienne Rita Rudner, using the wisdom which only the jester can share with the king, says it this way. “If you put flour and water together, you have glue. If you add butter and eggs, you have the makings of a cake. Where did the glue go?”[2] The glue that holds together the insulated community becomes something much greater when combined with the other. To become the community of God, the cake of our Lord, we must combine who we are with the other so that we become something better, something greater in the name of the Messiah.

The last five of the nine groups from “Unbinding the Gospel;” transfers from different theologies, people who have drifted from church, people who have left the church hurt, those who are not Christian but are like us, and finally those who are not Christian and are not like us; there is one very, very important thing that we must recognize about these people: They aren’t going to look much like us. I want to say that one more time; the people who know the least about Jesus Christ, the people the Messiah longs for us to be with; the people who need the Lord the most; they may have many things in common with us, but they won’t look like us.

They will be drifting, they will be hurt. They will be an injured people who are seeking a life that they know exists and may only have an inkling of where to find it. They may find that spark, the spark of the joy of a relationship with Christ in a friend or a coworker. They will be the eggs and butter to our water and flour.

Jesus was sent for the nation of Israel, but he has come to redeem all of us. We see this in Mark’s gospel. There is no longer rich or poor in the kingdom of God—we are all rich in the life of God. Reaching beyond the Proverb, James teaches we are all called to show favor to all God’s creatures, not just the honored ones.

We are called to act. We are to serve one another as we are to serve the Lord our God, and as the Lord our God serves us. In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

The simple act of sitting down around a table is something a lot of people don't find particularly important - but for Christians, the shared supper is a vital aspect of spiritual life.

The Scriptures speak of three kinds of table fellowship that Jesus keeps with his own: daily fellowship at table, the table fellowship of the Lord's Supper, and the final table fellowship in the kingdom of God. But in all three, the one thing that counts is that ‘their eyes were opened, and they knew him.’

The fellowship of the table teaches Christians that here they still eat the perishable bread of the earthly pilgrimage. But if they share this bread with one another, they shall also one day receive the imperishable bread together in the Father's house.[3]

We are called to go into the world, even into places we are not particularly comfortable, whether physically or socially. Like Jesus going into the gentile lands, we are called to go into the wilderness and serve one another. We are called to a living faith, not one that fades away as soon as we leave the doors of this sanctuary. We are called to take this faith and use it for the good of all God’s creation. James reminds us that faith without works is dead, and ours is a living faith. Yet, we must be reminded that James does not teach that our righteousness comes from our works.

Our faith, our vocation is outrageous. We are called to serve a God who works like no human being ever could. Yet our God walked the earth like every other human being does. We are called to believe wild and unusual things, some which offend our sensibilities—and the sensibilities of the world around us. And I say so let it be; after all if the Proverb teaches us one thing, we’re all in this together. Let’s be together in the name of the Lord.

[1] Reese, Martha Grace, “Unbinding the Gospel.” St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2008. I can’t recommend this book and its evangelism ideas more highly.
[2] http://homileticsonline.com/subscriber/illustration_search.asp?keywords=together, accessed September 5, 2009.
[3] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, “Life Together” New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954, 66.