The Dance of the Hanging Mobile

 Now we have some work to do 

         to take in each of these three selections from Holy Scripture,

                  three rather hard readings

                  each with challenges 

                           and not easy to hear, understand or receive.

 

Let me start with this:

         A long time ago, in the last century, 

when I was the director of a Hospice program in northern Minnesota 

one of my favorite duties was the training of volunteers.

Part of the training was educating the volunteers 

         and all of us working with families 

                  in which a loved one was dying or had just died.

The purpose was to become aware of and sensitive to 

the impact on the whole family system 

that the terminal illness and death had.

 

I used the example of a mobile 

in which each piece is delicately balanced 

                                                      so that it keeps its shape.

But if you remove one piece out of the mobile, 

the whole thing goes catty-wampus.

Likewise when a death occurs in a family, 

the entire family dynamics get shifted radically. 

One can expect discord and disharmony among the family members 

as they go through the painful process of grieving 

         and adjusting to loss, 

and reconfiguring as a family again.

 

In this Gospel reading Jesus said, 

         “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? 

          I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 

      For I have come to set a man against his father, 
      and a daughter against her mother, 
      and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 
   and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.”

 

This is a hard message of the dynamics of the family system

                  out of kilter.

Jesus coming to bring discord within a family?         That’s what he said!

 

And not just a family system.

         The family is the basic unit of all cultures and societies.

         There’s the family

                  and then the tribe

                  and then the nation

                  and every level of institution in between.

And that includes the institutional Church even.

          The dynamics of equilibrium are at work in the institutional Church.

         We might call that equilibrium the status quo,

but, spiritually, that is not necessarily a good thing to maintain.

 

Consider this: the presence of Jesus

         as encountered by one member of the family 

can bring transformation, change, and healing for that one.

 

But as one member of a family changes, 

the balance of the family shifts, and the system is upset.

Systems seek equilibrium.

Jesus upsets equilibrium, 

in that when one realizes his presence, everything changes.

It would seem that 

                  if there is to be transformation, healing and growth, 

this kind of disruption is a necessary step in the whole process.

Before peace in a family, comes discord.

 

This is risky 

because there is uncertainty 

about whether others in the family 

will also at that time be willing to move toward change.

 

We all know of situations or relationships in which there is

a delicate balance that often is no more than 

         maintaining a status quo

precisely in order to avoid the dynamic interplay of relationships.

 

That story from Genesis gave us a good example of 

         a very touchy set of relationships 

                  exploding with disastrous results for Hagar and her son,

and for the seemingly eternal rift between Muslim and Jew 

                                             in that part of the world.

Yet that story also presents the potential for reparations.

 

Upsetting the equilibrium can also be seen as opportunity, 

         the place where the Holy Spirit can work.

The same process applies in the life of a congregation.

  

When a faith community gathers on Sunday morning, 

we engage in a deeply personal and intimate activity 

– offering prayer, sharing communion.

 

Personal prayer is offered by each 

within the context of corporate, liturgical prayer.

The personal prayer is so intimate, so close to the heart of our being, 

that for many to express what that is out loud 

in other than set liturgical forms 

is like asking that person to take off their clothes in public.

Our personal prayer prayed from the heart 

is an opening of self in great vulnerability.

 

The Eucharist we share is likewise 

                  tremendously intimate and personal, 

        as well as a corporate act of coming to the dinner table together.

To eat the flesh of the one we call Lord and God 

and to drink his blood 

is such a graphic expression of taking into ourselves, 

of letting into our bodies the Resurrection Jesus, 

that we can hardly talk about it.

 

Yet here we are, Sunday by Sunday, 

eating the flesh and drinking the blood 

and opening our hearts to whatever degree we are able 

to this awful and awesome Mystery of Life, Truth and Way.

 

Since the pandemic and the death and threat of death it brought,

         the equilibrium of the mobile of every congregation 

                   has been upset and knocked out of balance.

Now here is a truism:

         Change is a constant.

But when we have had no say in what changes,

         then we are challenged spiritually.

And at that point is when Jesus says these hard words:

         “Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me

                  is not worthy of me.

         Those who find their life will lose it,

         and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

 

So now here is where we turn to that third reading from Romans,

                  not the easiest of the Epistles to read.

Romans, chapter 6, with its mystical narration

         of losing ourselves in the best way possible:

                  dying in our baptism,

                  downed to our old self-identity

         and emerging from the water with an entirely new identity –

                  as a life eternally bonded in union with Christ.

 

Mystical language,

         but also what we each can experience

                  in all the ways we are daily confronted

                           with what kills life in us

                  and how the Love of God reaches through that

                           to our consciousness

         to let us know we live in Resurrection.

 

The Apostle Paul then exhorts us to 

         “consider yourselves – understand yourselves – 

         to be dead, dead to sin, 

         dead to what in your obstinacy will kill you spiritually

         and alive – now – to God in Christ Jesus.

 

But change keeps happening:

         A rector retires, 

         clergy come and go, 

         the leadership for worship changes, 

         the leadership for administration changes. 

 

New people come, different from us.

         Accepting them challenges us,

                  and yet they bring new gifts as well.

The mobile of the family system 

         finds a new configuration and balance.

 

The equilibrium gets shifted, as it must, 

and within the disturbance of change 

is the presence of the Resurrection Spirit of Jesus 

presenting us with golden opportunities 

for transformation, healing and growth 

personally and as a faith community.

 

You know, mobiles are no fun 

         when they just hang there suspended from the ceiling 

                                             without moving.

They are much more interesting 

when they dance in the breeze, the wind, the Spirit.

The balance is always changing.

 

Look where there is disturbance, 

where the mobile is dancing wildly about.

Isn’t this just what Jesus was talking about.

 

Fear not, 

be open to the Spirit for new aspects of spiritual growth.

Trust, 

and above all love one another for our Lord’s sake.

 

And our Lord always says to all of us,

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? 

Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 

And even the hairs of your head are all counted. 

So do not be afraid; 

you are of more value than many sparrows.”

 

And, you know, God values the sparrows also.

Harvest

 Have you ever noticed that sometimes at church we get so absorbed

            in all sorts of good things, like different ministries,

                        all sorts of caring service, of interesting study,

                        or church music, 

                        and all sorts of special experiences in liturgy,

so that Jesus just kind of fades into the background.

We may not intend to be so forgetful,

                                                but it happens all too easily,

            and then we lose our spiritual rudder, our integrity of purpose,

                        and awareness of the immensity of our liberation

and the immensity of the love that Jesus expressed and lived and is.

all our “church-i-ness” can distract us away from this central truth

            of Jesus and our relationship to that.

 

So in the Gospel for today we hear that

“… Jesus went about all the cities and villages, 

            teaching in their synagogues, 

            and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, 

            and curing every disease and every sickness. 

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, 

because they were harassed and helpless, 

                                    like sheep without a shepherd.” 

 

Jesus looks at all with love and compassion,

                        every single person wherever he went.

He sees the condition of suffering for each one;

he sees the helplessness they experience in the face of their suffering.

He knows it all.

Nothing escapes from his loving gaze – 

            your pain and mine, known and hidden, 

            the suffering we admit to 

            and the suffering we hide 

                        out of the shame, we think, of not being self-sufficient, 

                        not having it all together.

And then there is the suffering we are not even aware of,

            the ways in which we are bound by 

                        the limitations of our perceptions

                        and the timidity of our faith.

 

Jesus saw the crowds and he had compassion for them

            because they there harassed and helpless and leaderless.

 

In his compassion he sends out his disciples to minister to them

                        just as he would minister to them.

“The harvest is plentiful,

            but the laborers are few.”

 

So here in this Gospel passage we have a few laborers, namely 12, 

                                                            but what exactly is the harvest?

            Is it a harvest of saved souls?

            Is it a harvest of testimonies and stories of healings 

                        and liberations that have come to people?

 

Or – and here’s a new thought – 

perhaps one could think of the harvest in terms of 

what the disciples harvest from Jesus:

            what the disciples harvest from Jesus

            is the authority he has to give them to carry out their mission

of healing and setting free and proclaiming the Kingdom come near.

 

They harvested from Jesus

             the authority to cure every disease and sickness.

This was not their own capability, 

or even what they learned in “seminary” classes with Jesus,

            but pure gift through the Holy Spirit.

 

And when sent out, these disciples didn’t have to go far – 

            those needing to hear the good news

                        were those even of their own household of faith.

            Can’t make an assumption that there is no need 

                                    for release from unclean spirits or disease

            among themselves and their own people.

 

This proclaiming of the Good News of the Kingdom of God drawn near

            was not for the purpose of making the Samaritans, 

                        or other neighboring peoples, 

                                    into Jews, into right believers.

Rather even within the “right believing” ones of their own people, 

                                    their own community, 

            were many who were lost,

            who were silently suffering in their own private situations

                        of pain, grief, bondage, alienation, loneliness, anger,

                        and all other forms of human wretchedness.

 

So Jesus begins with his closest disciples and sends them out.

            Is this message just for the original 12?  or just for clergy?

            Or for all who identify with a Christian faith community, 

                                                the church?             

We say no, not just the 12, but for all disciples, including ourselves.

 

First Jesus sends the 12.

            And they are only to go to Judean and Galilean towns.

Later he will send 72, 

            and the text says he sent them to all the places 

                        where he was going to go.

Then he sent 120, 

            those who had gathered in the upper room on the day of Pentecost, 

            and they went out into all the known world at that time.

Starting close to home, the circle then ever widening.

 

Next he sends who? us?

If we look at this passage and the instructions Jesus gives,

            then this is quite a lot to ask of the average pew-sitter.

 

We are not just to proclaim in word some spiritual good news,

            but also to cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, 

                        cast out unclean spirits

            and make no provisions for ourselves.

 

“You received without payment; give without payment.”

Hey!  We don’t even ask this of the clergy!

 

But what Jesus is telling the 12 here

            is that they are to go out and do exactly what he had been doing,                                                 right?

And to do it in the same way Jesus did,

            that is, with utter trust that your basic needs will be met.

Jesus had no home, no paycheck, no pension plan, no credit cards, 

                                                not even carry on luggage.

 

And Jesus knew this was way beyond the capabilities of the disciples,

                                                                                                and all the rest of us too.

 

In actuality the disciples would be doing these things 

            not out of their own capabilities

            but Jesus was going to be working through them.

It is the Spirit of Jesus who does the work, not us.

 

When acting as evangelists for the Gospel, remember:

            we are not the ones who are doing the saving.                        It is Jesus.

 

The healing and casting out or liberation, 

                        which are signs of the Kingdom of Heaven drawing near, 

            are done by Jesus.

And they are done by him through the open and willing bodies of his disciples.

We would like to think that these disciples were ordinary folks;

            there were fishermen and a tax collector among the 12,

                                                            we know for sure.

But they were extraordinary

            in that they were responsive 

            to Christ’s call for them to follow him.

They got it about the huge compassion Jesus expressed 

            through his words, his actions and his very being.

They may not have understood it all,

            but they were magnetized by it,

                        and so when Jesus drew them, they responded.

And they came with openness – 

            openness of mind, openness of heart and openness of hand.

                                    even if they were often described as slow learners!

 

So the implications for ourselves                         here                         today               …

 

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”

 

We can look at harvest in terms of those just outside the doors 

            for whom the good news of God’s liberating love expressed through Jesus 

                                    would be very welcome,

and we can look at harvest in terms of what Jesus is offering us of himself,

            his love for others that we can be channels of,

            his capacity for compassion and compassionate service,

            and his power and authority to actually bring healing and liberation. 

Can we all be disciples in whom discipleship is progressing in faith

            and knowing that it is his life in us that we now live?

That is the question of the day.

 

What draws you to Jesus?

What captures the mind, will and imagination

                                                so that we are irresistibly drawn to him?

For me, Jesus is the unconditional potency of love and forgiveness.

Through his own life, obedience, suffering and death

            he absorbs all the energies of suffering and sanctifies all creation, all beings, 

            that the knowledge of God may prevail as the waters cover the sea.

 

We have a sacred responsibility in how we use  our blessedness, our gifts.

All this is not just for our own use;

            all is so we can be disciples and servants for others, as Jesus is.

This is our mission, our purpose.

For forging a vision of what is happening next for St. Andrew’s

            you need to be a part of it,

                        responding to Jesus, 

                        being willing to be something of a disciple,

                        harvesting the love and potency of Jesus.

 

Harvest the Love that Jesus offers us.

Seek to serve God in the Name of Jesus 

                        in such a way, with such openness 

            that healing, compassion, liberation and love flow through you.

 

Or, we could say, let that Love harvest us.