No Heroes

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12-19; Mark 6:14-29

There are no heroes in these stories.

Not in the David story today, not in the Herod story we just read.

There are bright moments, there are strong characters, there are tragedies and travesties and triumphs. But no actual heroes.

 

Herod’s story is just blatantly a Bad Example story. I don’t think Mark would want us to look for heroes in this story of the gratuitous, unnecessary murder of a prisoner, and its lingering sludge of guilt, resentment, and fear.

I think Mark tells it to us so that we can understand the politically and emotionally fraught environment in which Jesus and his disciples are working, as Jesus sends them out in pairs to heal and share good news.

 

But for all of our immediate clarity that beheading God’s prophets for personal gain is Obviously Wrong, this story is full of opportunities to get it right, and of people who want to be the hero of their own story, if not of God’s story.

 

Mark tells us plainly that Herod’s wife is holding a grudge and ready to destroy John.  But what we don’t know is if she’s convinced herself it’s the right thing to do to protect her husband and the country from a scandal that’s pulling focus away from actual governing, to make the messy situation she was dragged into somehow “better”. Or if she knows it’s wrong and doesn’t care.

Mark doesn’t give us any motivations for Herod’s daughter. So she, too, might be out for revenge – or she might be just trying to please her parents, keep peace in her family and maybe get some obvious recognition of her talents and her value – motivations familiar to many of us from our own adolescence or young adulthood.

 

And Herod – well, he’s obviously a man who does the politically expedient thing at every decision moment. But once he did the politically expedient thing of silencing his critic John by arresting him, Herod gives himself space for wonder, or curiosity, or hope. He makes time to listen to John’s preaching, in prison, intrigued by what John has to say about God, about being aligned with God. Herod’s made this little space, in his politically expedient life, for an exploration of holiness and faith and awe.

And then, confronted with the dilemma of either keeping his personal gateway to awe and hope, or looking strong and decisive in front of his politically sensitive guests – and proving himself to be a man who keeps his word, who can be trusted to do what he promises – Herod makes the clearly wrong choice to kill John, for reasons that look right, or right-ish to him in the moment.

 

And, well, I recognize that impulse. I recognize that kind of decision.

Not that I’ve ever had to decide whether someone lives or dies, but I know that I – and maybe you – have often had to make decisions where I choose something I know isn’t exactly right, or wise, because I want to keep a promise. Because I want to be a good friend, or because I have responsibilities and it seems like doing a kind of wrong thing now will make more important good things possible later.

I know that more than once in my life, I’ve sacrificed some of my own chances to get closer to God for some “good of the group”, or to some real or imagined responsibility.

I know how natural it is to fail to do the heroic thing, when choosing the wrong thing for some right (or right-ish) reasons – or the right thing for the wrong reasons – seems to make things easier, or simpler, or some kind of better, in the moment of decision.

And still, I’m glad I see in this story that glimpse of Herod’s wonder, and hope, and seeking out of faith, even if it’s shut down by the end of the story.

 

David’s story, as we heard it today, showcases the welcoming of God’s presence and power in the life of God’s people as the ark of the covenant – the physical manifestation of God’s presence – is brought into Jerusalem. It’s a story that should be a hero’s celebration, and one that shows us David’s genuine ecstatic joy in the presence of God.

But the ecstatic joy of holiness is deliberately smudged in the story, becoming a cause of marital strife: Michal’s bitter embarrassment and wounded pride dimming and weighing down David’s uninhibited (and possibly a bit thoughtlessly extravagant) celebration.

 

And, hidden in the bit of the story that’s left out to keep it short enough for reading in worship today, are the tragic flaws of fear and self-interest and cowardice, and maybe a little greed, that are the undertones of this bright celebration.

Because David goes – as we hear – to fetch the ark of God to mark God’s victory in establishing a stable kingship in Jerusalem – and to keep David’s own promises, as well as God’s.
And then – as we don’t hear – David promptly drops the ark of the covenant like a hot potato when it turns out that all that concentrated power of God can actually kill someone who isn’t paying attention to the live-wire danger – even if he was just trying to help.
Instead of taking steps for safety and care, David parks that powerful ark on the nearest person who can’t say no and zips back home to stay safe from God’s raw power.

All this ecstatic dancing and sacrificing and generous citywide celebration only happens after David is told that the person he dumped God’s ark on seems to be prospering from the presence of God, and David thinks he’d better get that prosperity for himself and his people.

 

I recognize all this, too.

I recognize my anxious caution around the side effects of too much God zapping my comfortable safety; I recognize the impulse to get someone else to check it out first before committing myself and people I’m responsible for.

I recognize – and maybe some of you do, too – a little embarrassment, sometimes, about having gone too far, been too enthusiastic, too Jesus-y for the context. And I’m definitely familiar with the impulse to care about what other people will think, instead of just setting myself free to enjoy the presence and holiness of God’s power and love.

And still, I’m glad we see that moment of unfettered, unembarrassed, probably excessive celebration and joy in the presence of God – get to let that resonate in my heart for a moment, too – as I recognize all the messiness around it.

 

I know – deep in my heart I recognize – these stories with no heroes in them. With flawed anti-heroes doing some right things for the wrong reasons, and lots of wrong things for what look temptingly like right reasons. I know them as my story – much more familiar and recognizable in my daily life than stories about the healing of the uncurable, the feeding of hungry thousands, the resurrection of the dead, or visiting angels, or enthusiastic crowds seeking holiness and renewal.

 

I admit I’d find the story of God more attractive without these detours into unnecessary murder, or the footnotes of embarrassment and cowardice. I prefer to read stories with heroes and happy endings; like to imagine myself into those stories when the story I’m actually in is as messy as human life usually is.

But when I read these stories today, and I stop and think for a minute, I realize how much it matters (to me, to us) that these stories – these stories without heroes – are a part of God’s story.

 

Because God’s story is never just about God.

God makes God’s story always – always – about us.

About people of God who make the wrong decisions when trying to make the right ones; people of God who make the right decisions by accident or for wrong-ish reasons.

 

People like me, like us, make the arc of God’s story messy and unclear, and often confusing or difficult to read and re-tell. But when we read it, when we re-tell it, when we make God’s story about us part of our story about God, we get a chance to recognize how these stories without heroes are stories full of the presence of God, full of grace and generosity, wonder and hope, holding holy space right along with the tragedies, and dancing joy right along with the embarrassments.

 

Because God doesn’t always need heroes.

But we – hero, anti-hero, bystander, sinner and saint – we always need God.

And God goes on keeping us in the story.

Looking Weak

2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13

You don’t want to look weak, do you?

 

You wouldn’t want to look like a loser. Like you can’t go head-to-head with the other guys, with anyone else.

Don’t want to embarrass yourself in front of everyone, by looking weak, do you?

 

That’s the sort of theoretically “yes or no” question that only has one right answer.

If I’m asking you that, it’s because I want you to say “no.”
No, I’m strong! I’ve got this!

 

It’s true in workplaces and personal relationships and sports and entertainment and academics and – in a very noticeable way this week – in media and national politics. 

We are not supposed to look weak.  Supposed to hide our uncertainties and limits and frailties, supposed to project fitness, success, power and strength.

 

At least, we’re supposed to do that if we want to win. Occasionally you can build a franchise of “lovable losers”, or bumble your way to the comedic top, but that’s usually expensive and doesn’t work for most of us.

 

You and I, as ordinary people, are expected to want to win.

Expected to want to look strong, competent, healthy, and successful.

It’s fine to get your trophy for participating, but at work, at school, at sports, on the internet, well, you wouldn’t want to embarrass yourself by looking weak.

 

Unless you’re Paul.

Paul the apostle (who pretty much never shuts up about his qualifications) stands up today in front of his friends in Corinth – the friends he’s about to lose because there’ve been other apostles visiting who look smarter and stronger and cooler and more visionary and powerful than Paul. Paul stands up today and says, “yeah, I want to look weak. I want to be weak. (You wanna make somethin’ of it?)”

 

Paul does not do an incredibly good job of letting go of the need to look strong (“I don’t want to boast about my spiritual power and visions, but I totally could boast if I wanted to,” he keeps telling us.) But I think he is actually sincere when he says “I am content with weaknesses for the sake of Christ”. And that he’s deeply honest when he says “I will boast more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.”

 

I believe that at the end of the day, Paul actually does want people – his friends in Corinth, you and me – to see where he falls short, where he can’t do it all (in spite of being just as good and really better than those johnny-come-lately “super apostles” visiting Corinth thank you very much). Because he wants us to see that where he fails, Christ makes whole. That the healing and salvation he can’t win for himself or for us are set free by his defeats and our broken promises; that the joy and love we can’t earn or hoard or buy with our own power bubble up out of our dead ends and failed efforts.

 

Paul doesn’t like being weakened – having this “thorn in his flesh” he talks about. He doesn’t like being broken – who among us does? But he is, I think, in love with the revelation he receives while complaining about his weakness. That Christ tells him “my grace is sufficient for you; power is made perfect – is completed – in weakness.” That where he, Paul, fails, where he is weak, God is strong – stronger than ever, stronger than all our weakness needs.

 

So he tells his friends in Corinth, tells us, the great revelation that where we fall short, we make more room for God. Our weakness is the space that is filled with the strength of God’s power and glory and love.

 

Which is GREAT.

But also hard.

 

Because while God’s power and love and glory and strength is always there, the part where we – you and I and Paul himself – actually make space to receive it is…challenging.

 

I think that’s a bit of what’s going on in Nazareth in Mark’s story today – how when Jesus comes home to Nazareth he can’t do any “deeds of power there” – because his neighbors don’t have any space for divine displays and miracles.
They’re not able to embrace the shortfall in their knowledge of this Jesus – what they knew about him as a kid should be enough, they think.  We already know all about this guy, they seem to say.

And when they think they’re enough – when we think we’re enough – we don’t make room to experience all the more that God has to offer.

We settle for our basic competence, instead of reaching for the extraordinary possibilities of God’s power.

 

So Jesus just heals a few people – a few people whose weakness is unquestionable are filled and made whole with God’s power – and moves on. Moves on to where there’s more room for wonder, more need and more hope – and sends his friends out to do the same. Not forcing God’s glory into people and places that don’t have room for it, but healing and freeing those whose weakness makes room for God’s power.

 

I wonder – this week, as I read these stories – I wonder how often I  haven’t made room for God’s power. How often I’ve neglected my weaknesses, how easily I forget to fail – and how many miracles I might have missed as a result.

 

I wonder how often I’ve assumed, like the neighbors in Nazareth, that I know enough about Jesus already, and blinded myself to the possibility that there’s more love and glory and good news to be revealed.

 

I wonder how often we as a community forget, or miss, or overlook those weaknesses and failures that make space for God to overflow.

 

And I wonder what would happen if I, if you, if we embraced those deficiencies in our community, those defeats in our personal lives, as the places where the love of God comes breaking through our habits and defenses to make us whole.

 

I don’t know.
I haven’t mastered this yet – in fact, I’ve barely started! I’m just as well trained to fail at failure and be bad at weakness as Paul the boasting-about-not-boasting apostle ever was.

Maybe you’re already good at failing into the power of God, or losing your way into a miracle, and I can learn about it from you.

But I’m starting to yearn for the rich glory of weakness that Paul almost manages to describe to us – but has to leave the completion of our understanding to God.

Starting to be glad I can’t do it myself, because there is so much more that God will do.

 

I’m starting to hope – just a little, awkward, floundering hope – for the joys of defeat, of failing our way right into a miracle, together, as the beloved people of a God who loves nothing more than to heal the broken, and give more – so much more – than we could ever win.

 

Starting to want – almost, sometimes – to look weak, after all.

What about you?

 

God's Got This

Mark 4:26-34

As some of you may have noticed, I’m a “do-er.”
I like to dig into a problem or an opportunity – or ordinary daily business – and work out options, solutions, plans A and B (and often plan H or plan W, too), and I like to get stuff done.

 

While I do love a rainy morning with tea and a good book, or the unhurried pace of a slow baseball game or an afternoon nap, I am, for the most part, a person who finds it natural to be busy. To do, rather than watch, or wait.

 

So I’m a little out of step with Jesus’ farming parable today.

While “plant something, and then ignore it” is actually my personal gardening (and houseplant) strategy, (I am not a gardener), that sleep and rise and let stuff happen approach is not how I naturally operate in most non-plant-related cases. When it comes to work, or hobbies, or even spending time with friends, I keep digging around, adding water, worrying about weeds, pulling in grow-lights…”helping” and managing the natural processes as much as I can.

 

But oh, how this parable has been soothing my heart this week.

Because my heart is full – these days, and often – of the burden of things that are too big for me. Too much to manage. Beyond my capacity – often vastly beyond.

 

Things like the health of a couple of my friends.

Like the horrors of war around the world.

Like the partisan divisions – and the politicization of daily life choices and simple freedoms – that roil through the news and social media and even personal relationships closer to home.

Like the coming of the kingdom of God – the rebalancing of the world to operate fundamentally and fully in holiness and generous love.

 

I mean, I signed up for that idea we call the “kingdom of God” in baptism. I promised to shape my life and my heart around God’s love and faithfulness, to share that love and strive for a world of peace and justice and selflessness – and have renewed that promise over and over with every baptism I share with you.

 

But so much of the time, that “kingdom” seems so far away, so overwhelmingly more than I can manage.
And boy is it nice to listen to Jesus, today, pretty much saying: Sit down. God’s got this.

 

How many of you also need to hear that?

Listen to that truth today with me.

 

The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow; without the farmer understanding or managing the process.

The earth produces of itself, stage by stage, until everything is ready and we receive the fruits.

 

And the kingdom of God grows from the tiniest of seeds – to provide abundant shelter for the birds. And for us.

We busy people like me – and the patient, receptive people, the hands-off people, too – we all need to hear the power of this truth that God gives the growth. That God makes nurture and shelter and life grow in abundance, in ways we will never understand, or be able to accomplish ourselves, or to meddle in.

 

We must know that.

Because if we don’t know that, we won’t notice the miracles, the gifts, the graces of what grows without our help or interference.
We might miss the gifts of love and care and abundance that appear in things we aren’t tempted to meddle in. Like the glorious miracle of a weedy, uninvited bush giving shelter to the songs and birth of birds, outside the gardens we tend, or the homes and work that you or I pour attention and effort into.

 

We must know that we are an integral part of God’s story when we sit down and simply appreciate that God’s got this.

 

These are parables that invite us to steep ourselves in awe and wonder, to live not in busyness or in passivity, but in vibrant appreciation and trust.

These are parables that invite us to remember – joyfully and gratefully – that we are not God.

I am not. You are not.

Thank God.

 

But that is not our only role in these stories of God’s work.

Parables reflect light into many and varied corners of our world and selves – there’s never only one way to find God in a parable, never only one way to find ourselves.

 

There is a clear role for us – for humankind – in Jesus’ first story today, not only as the observer of mystery and the receiver of the harvest, but also as the sower of seed.

In this story of God’s work, you and I are going out on the earth scattering tiny bits of God’s word. Tiny kernels of God’s love.
By our everyday actions, or moments of great selflessness. By a strong and public sharing of faith and by one small word at the right time.

By a ride home, or to church. A small promise fulfilled or a meal shared. One word of kindness, or justice, or peace, or joy.

Each act or word equally one small seed to grow – through the work of God we don’t have to understand – into a stalk, a head of grain, a flourishing weedy bush full of thriving birds.

 

I think Jesus might be inviting us to notice those seeds we sow – sometimes without intention, sometimes on purpose. To sow intentionally and widely, yes, but also to simply notice the small acts and words we leave on the earth as we move through our lives. And to watch what God might be doing with those seeds as we sleep and rise, night and day, not interfering.

 

And I wonder if we also might discover ourselves in one other role in the story.

I wonder if perhaps sometimes – or all the time – you and I are not only observers, or sowers, but we are also in fact those grains in the story: growing inch by inch, stage by stage, through the incomprehensible and irresistible work of God.

 

That’s not as…restful a role as the grateful observer, the receiver of the harvest.

Growth is frequently the opposite of restful.

 

Experiencing the unfolding of our potential – individually or as a community – often takes the form of being stretched and expanded in uncomfortable ways.

Discovering that God has placed someone in your heart who you had no intention of inviting in – and yet you find yourself caring for this stranger, or neighbor, or annoying coworker or distant refugee, with compassion and empathy and love you didn’t know you had.

Discovering that I’m showing up for a meeting or class or task I never wanted to be interested in – and yet hearing myself volunteer because somebody has to make this peace, or repair that damage, or plan that project, or serve that meal.

Discovering that our community keeps changing – our habits, our language, our faces – because that’s how we become more truly who we are, and who God is inviting us to be.

 

Uncomfortable growth, often – and sometimes surprising or overlooked – but still we are growing and growing by the work of God. Growing by the love of God we can’t understand or resist, that unfolds us, inch by inch, grain by grain, into the whole harvest of God that nurtures the world.

 

And I find that possibility – that probability – is soothing my heart, too, as I listen this week to Jesus telling stories.

Soothing my heart to hear, again, that God’s got this.

Got the growth in myself I didn’t sign up for, the growth among us we can’t quite resist – all in God’s own hands.

It’s soothing my heart to remember, to trust, that I don’t have to over-manage this, either – that the stretching and expanding of my heart and mind and spirit, too, are something I don’t have to manage for God. That God grows the kingdom of abundance and wild beauty and holy care not just for us, but within us, and among us, too.

 

That you and I – as seed and soil and sower and harvest – we are in God’s hands, in every part of the story of God’s all-powerful love.