The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 4, 2016
Proper 18
The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.
Two words: Colin Kaepernick.
I’m pretty much an agnostic when it comes to football. I have no idea what kind of a quarterback he is.
You can love him or hate him, and you can wonder whether his style of protest is appropriate for a professional athlete. Just don’t dismiss the point he’s trying to make, because it’s one of the most important issues facing the country today, and his moral clarity about it is remarkable.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” he told the media a week ago. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
Kaepernick’s decision to remain seated during the national anthem comes with a risk, a price he may have to pay. He knows this.
He says, "I think there's a lot of consequences that come along with this. There's a lot of people that don't want to have this conversation. You know they're scared they might lose their job or they might not get their endorsements, they might not be treated the same way. And those are things I'm prepared to handle."
“If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.”
“I know that I stood up for what is right.”
Sometimes people do these things. For example, some of us who are LGBTQ have taken great risks in coming out--risked losing our families and friends, our jobs, our apartments, even our own physical safety. Because deeper than the desire to have all these relationships and things was an even deeper desire to live authentically and honestly in the light of day--to do the right thing--and this overrode all other considerations. So out we came.
Sometimes people, including football players and queers, do these things. Something deep inside--something deeper and more important than football and family and money and personal safety--something deep inside requires it, makes it worth the risk of losing everything else.
It works this way for followers of Jesus as well.
Large crowds were following him, today’s gospel says. They were expecting him, as the messiah, to lead the violent uprising against Rome.
Jesus doesn’t seem to like big crowds following him, so he decides to do some thinning. He turns and confronts them.
He does not offer them any romantic fantasies of an easy life.
"Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, is not able to be my disciple.”
“Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me is not able be my disciple.” (Really? The only people who carried crosses in those days were criminals on their way to being executed by the state!)
“None of you is able to become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”
Extreme words. Such words were common in those days among teachers trying to make a stark point.
For Jesus’ hearers, renouncing family meant losing everything, your place in the world, your identity, everything and everyone you hold dear.
If previously they had found identity and refuge by clinging to their family of origin or family of choice, they must forsake that identity and refuge. If they had loved life itself and let this absolute value guide their every decision and action, they must forsake even that allegiance.
Jesus is now to be their center. No room for competing loyalties.
If you follow me, Jesus is saying, you will be risking everything. Don’t be naive. Think about what this entails. Don’t sign up under the first flush of inspiration or in secret pursuit of anything other than the cross. Make your decision with the practical wisdom of a cost-conscious builder or a battle-hardened king.
In the late 1980s, a volunteer approached a leader of the Sanctuary Movement in the United States [which was shielding Central American] refugees from Central America [from unjust deportations], and she asked to join in the work of the movement. The leader said to her, "Before you say whether you really wish to join us, let me pose some questions: Are you ready to have your telephone tapped by the government? Are you prepared to have your neighbors shun you? Are you strong enough to have your children ridiculed and harassed at school? Are you ready to be arrested and tried, with full media coverage? If you are not prepared for these things, you may not be ready to join the movement. For when push comes to shove, if you fear these things, you will not be ready to do what needs to be done for the refugees." The woman decided to think it over.It’s all about living out of a deeper place in our hearts, a desire deeper than simply pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, deeper than our desires for security, respectability, success, wealth.
(David Rhoads, Reading Mark, Engaging the Gospel [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004] 53)
Beneath these surface desires lies a deeper one. When you find that deeper desire in yourself, you’ll recognize it. It’s a place to stand and from which to act in the world. A deeper set of values, a deeper love. A rock you can build your life on.
When you connect with that deeper desire, pay close attention. Because very likely it is from there God will speak to you very intimately. Pay attention.
It is to this deeper place in our hearts that Jesus, with his extreme language about hating our families, carrying crosses, and renouncing all our possessions, is trying to lead us. But before he can lead us to that deeper place, he first has to dislodge us from our usual comfort zones, displace us from the ordinary and “proper” places we aspire to and cling to.
This can be hard to hear. We understandably want to be ordinary and proper people who live ordinary and proper lives. We want to be an ordinary and proper parish. There is enormous pressure to simply live life on the surface, doing what is ordinary and proper--and there’s great satisfaction in being generally accepted and respected.
Being ordinary and proper offers us the comforting illusion that things are under control and that everything extraordinary and improper can be kept outside the walls of our self-created fortress.
But the gospels continually invite us to move from where it is comfortable, from where we want to stay, from where we feel at home.
- Leave your father and mother.
- Let the dead bury the dead.
- Keep your hand on the plow and do not look back.
- Sell what you own, give the money to the poor, and come follow me.
A persistent voice relentlessly nudging us out of our comfort zones, stripping us of our security and whatever illusions we may have about ourselves, inviting us to live out of a deeper desire, a deeper truth.
This voice nudges us not only as individuals, but also as a faith community.
The Greek word for church is ekklesia--from ek meaning “out”, and kaleo meaning “call”. Ek-klesia = Called out.
Ek-klesia means we as a Christian community are called out of our ordinary and proper places to the places where people hurt and where we can experience with them our common humanity with all its joys and struggles, including our common need for healing:
Perhaps it means we’re called out to the scene of another senseless and violent death in the neighborhood, or to stand in vigil outside the police station,
To stand with another senior being evicted from their home in these days of gentrification
To assist an unhoused person just needing a quiet, safe place to get a little sleep
This call to leave our ordinary and proper place to be where the pain is follows the path of Jesus himself. As St. Paul once sang, Jesus deliberately displaced himself. “His state was divine,” Paul sang, “yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as we are.”
Sharing our common human joys and struggles, and our common need for healing, Jesus is the displaced Lord in whom God’s compassion becomes flesh.
It is in listening to the deepest stirring in our own hearts, in following that displaced Lord, that we as individuals become his disciples, and we at St. John’s become a community that can truly be called Christian.
Let me close with a blessing from the Franciscans.
May God bless you with a restless discomfort
about easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships,
so you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.
May God bless you with holy anger
at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
so you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.
May God bless you with the gift of tears
to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all they cherish, so you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.
May God bless you with enough foolishness
to believe you really can make a difference in this world,
so you are able, with God’s grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.
