October 10, 2010
Ordinary Time
College Community MB Church
Psalm 133
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
Luke 9:1-17
Jesus' instructions to the disciples as he is sending them out to proclaim the kingdom of God make no sense in our world. "Take nothing for your journey." To be dependent on others is to be weak, inadequate, irresponsible. We live in a world that tells us from birth: Stand on your own two feet. To need is to be deficient. We sense this cultural ethos in our animosity toward those who need welfare, our pride when we give charity to others, and our shame when we have to ask for help in circumstances of illness, unemployment or old age. We have the idea that a mature, healthy human being is one who is self-sufficient, independent, autonomous.
So when we think about going out and proclaiming the kingdom of God, we probably don't plan to leave everything we'll need behind. Self-sufficiency enhances our ability to ministry to others; after all, we are sent to give to the needy, not express our own needs.
NRP recently reported on the growing number of adults who are moving in with family and friends to ride out the economic storm raging all around us. This phenomenon of "doubling up" shows the continuing need to take drastic measures to survive. Those who have taken this rouate express thankfulness that they have some place to turn and a way to reduce bills, yet there is still the sub-text that the need to "double up" is indicative of failure. When young adults need to move back in with mom and dad, we cut them some slack because - they're young - they haven't yet learned how to take care of themselves. But when a 45 year old mom with two kids cannot sustain her family independently, we think, "What a shame!" "Doubling up" is plan B or C, not plan A - the American Dream. We are experiencing the let down of an unsustainable way of life, one where the image of success and worth is 3,000 square feet surrounded by a picket fence, 2 cars and the family dog. The lengths to which we have gone to possess the content of that dream have left us exhausted and bankrupt, moving in with others, scratching our heads, thinking, "What went wrong?" and "How do I get it all back?" It sure would be a breath of fresh air if we heard announcements like, "Your debt is erased!" "You now have a home!" "Here is meaningful work!"
When Jesus sends out the twelve, isn't this sort of what they are proclaiming - "Good news to the oppressed and broken-hearted, liberty to the captives, release to the prisoners... the year of the LORD's favor" (Isa. 61:1-2)?
Sometimes I hear this and I think that the gospel of the kingdom is that all our needs will be met. And I can imagine that if I'm proclaiming this gospel, my life should display this reality. But my reality is that I am a needy person. I'd probably fit in well with the crowds who flocked to hear Jesus in Bethsaida. I'm hoping for something good, some release, some liberty. I'm looking for the kingdom of God, the setting right of all things, the restoration of shalom on this earth and within the human community. Yet too often I assume that that looks like our images of independence.
What was Jesus doing when he sent out his disciples and told them to rely on the hospitality of the houses they entered in the towns the visited? Was he just trying to keep his budget low? I think that if Jesus wanted the disciples to proclaim the kingdom, he probably wanted them to create possibilities for the kingdom to be seen and experienced. Of course it was in obvious ways like healing and exorcisms. But what about the illness and bondage that we don't see? What about the assumptions that we hold about autonomy? Why is self-sufficiency so important? What drives that need? Might we be suffering from the illness of alienation, fear, shame... all these forces of sin that drive us to hide, distance ourselves from one another and cultivate relationships of competition, strife, envy, violence?
How do you heal that? How do you break that bondage? How do we become people who don't look to the gospel as a story of a great vending machine come to dispense what we need for the lives we've created? How do we become, instead, people who hear Jubilee as good news - people who seek to create communities of peace by the practice of empowerment that overcomes domination, sharing that overcomes hoarding, interdependence that overcomes autonomy?
One way that God has been working in my life to shape me into that kind of person is to offer me opportunities to express my own need. Let me tell you how hard this is. When I first read Henry Nouwen's book, The Wounded Healer, my initial response was, "Great. Good idea. But not for me." I want to offer my gifts, not my need. I want to be a healed healer. Offering my need asks me to make myself vulnerable, learn to trust, live outside my own control. I can offer my gifts without offering myself - I can stay safely behind my fig leaves. But it is very difficult to offer my need without opening myself up to others; I have to lower my defenses and actually hope in the gospel of reconciliation and newness.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes about "the place where faith is possible" (The Cost of Discipleship) - this place is where we're stretched in obedience beyond belief, where we step out beyond our ability and control. This is the place were faith is actually faith - the assurance of things hoped for - instead of where we live most of our lives - the place where we can make things happen for ourselves.
Teachers know that modeling is an effective technique. We most often assume that when it comes to the kingdom, we in our fullness model to others what they might obtain. So how do we respond to the Jesus who sents his disciples out without staff, bag, bread or money? Jesus models a way of life for us that puts himself at risk, that opens himself up to deep relationship, that shows his faith in the power of the kingdom making all things new. And he asks his disciples to go out and put themselves at risk, open themselves to the possibility of relationship. By offering their own need they give their hosts an opportunity to participate in a liberated community relationship. They demonstrate their faith in the gospel they proclaim. They invest in community by giving themselves to it completely. Their investment, the gospel of the kingdom claims, will pay out the blessings of shalom.
Qoheleth, in our Old Tesatment reading, tells us that "Two are better than one" because "they'll get good wages for their work" (Eccl. 4:9). This does not mean that in our quest for self-made security and comfort that a quicker way to get the goods is to work twice as hard or to enlist an assistant to work under us. More labor does not equal more gain. He's just finished bemoaning the oppressive system of "all toil and all skill in work com[ing] from one person's envy of another," calling it "Vanity! Emptiness!" Qoheleth sees that much evil comes from our never-ending striving for more. That pattern of living depletes us of life. When he says that "Two are better than one" he recognizes that competition and domination do not reward us; instead, friendship, partnership, interdependent relationship is what generates life and goodness. When we struggle in life, we need others who have been walking with us and who are ready to offer us extra support. When we come up against that which would overpower us, we need the strength of community. Qoheleth tells us, All those schmucks out there killing themselves to live the story of person independence and success - fighting with the people who pose a threat, dismissing those who get in the way of production and efficiency, eliminating those without power - they will end up consuming themselves. Those who have invested in community have something larger than themselves to work for, and their labor will be rewarding and benefit many.
The disciples did as Jesus said; however, when they returned it is clear that they were still in need of being transformed to see and live in the kingdom they went out proclaiming - the kingdom that heals and liberates, overturns patters of selfishness, distrust, oppression. Having just experienced the family network and hospitality of God's people, the disciples still fail to recognize the power of this pattern of interdependence when 5,000 plus hungry people were before them. They watched Jesus do what they had just been doing - proclaiming, healing, and they probably worked alongside Jesus while they crowd formed. But, at dinner time, the crowd and their need seemed overwhelming. The disciples didn't have enough food to go around. They were hungry too. They wanted to eat, and they probably didn't want to have to give up their dinner. In that moment they suggested that these people go take care of their own need so that the disciples could eat what they brought for themselves.
I imagine Jesus chuckling at them when he said, "You give them something to eat." The disciples probably didn't see what was so funny. They were probably thinking, "Jesus. You know we don't have enough. Don't you know it is impossible to provide for all these people? let them take care of themselves and we'll take care of ourselves." Jesus may have smiled even bigger and said, "Really? You don't see it? How possible has any of what we've been doing been? According to the 'way of the world,' the 'dominant reality' (Brueggemann), does any of this make sense? Does it make sense that you went out with nothing and were taken care of? Does it make sense that we've had power over sickness and demons? I mean, demons! The power of the prince of this world is in full force. You see it all around you. You are oppressed by it. These people are oppressed by it. And we've been telling them that there is liberation, an alternative reality, the true reality of God's kingdom. That Jubliee has arrived. And you're really going to send them away because all you hold in your hand is your own dinner?"
Jesus modeled for them again the power of the kingdom, and the disciples experienced a re-orienting in mind and relationship necessary to pour out that power. Jesus prays and the disciples serve. And the hungry were filled. What a blessing! God's kingdom is not limited by the kingdom of this present evil age.
It is easy to look out at the crowd, at the masses of people in the world in so much need, and feel overwhelmed. We look at ourselves in the mirror and say, "I don't have enough. I am not enough." We get in touch with our own limits and need, and we begin to lose vision for what could be, what should be. We start thinking "rationally" or "logically" or "realistically" and our imagination dims. All of a sudden we are doing a cost-benefit analysis of our ministry to the crowds. Can we make this happen? Can we pull this off? Does this seem to be a good use of our resources? After all, we've got to look out for number one so that we can continue to do all this good among the people.
Can we hear Jesus chuckling at us? So, you've just healed a blind man, but you don't see how the power you just demonstrated makes all things new? Sometimes we lack, as Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann calls it, a prophetic imagination. Brueggemann writes:
The formation of an alternative community with an alternative consciousness is so that the dominant community may be criticized and finally dismantled. But more than dismantling, the purpose of the alternative community is to enable a new human beginning to be made...Again, our text does not make sense in this world. Jesus' life does not make sense. His way is not the way to bring a kingdom. His way is not the way to secure oneself. For crying out loud - he asks us to give ourselves up, to offer ourselves to our brother, our sister, our neighbor. He asks us to join his family, to let go of the ways in which we've learned to "manage" or "cope" in the royal/dominant reality and exchange them for the ways of God's kingdom, the alternative reality: risky vulnerability and hopefull trust, interdependence and belonging.
If we are to understand prophetic energizing, we must see that its characteristic idiom is hope... When in the prophetic tradition we come to speak of the ultimate presentation of energy, we finally must turn to Jesus of Nazareth. We have seen that, by his actions and words, and especially by his crucifixion, he engaged in the dismantling of the royal consciousness and brought his community to face its grief in that dismantling. The counterpart to that, and indeed the focus of the work of Jesus, was not dismantling but the inauguration of a new thing. This imagination and action stood against all the discerned data and in teh face of the doubt and resistance of those to whom he came. That ultimate energizing gave people a future when they believed that the grim present was the end and the only possible state of existence. That new future in which no one believed was born in staggering amazement, for it was correctly perceived as underived and unextrapolated and therefore beyond human understanding and human control. (Brueggemann, Prophetic Imagination, 101-102)
I said before that it is difficult for me to offer my need. I'm afraid that I'll be dismissed or rejected. I'm afraid of being judged inadequate or irresponsible. I don't want to extend myself beyond what I can control. In small ways, however, I have trusted this community by communicating my need. And, you have responded in ways that turn the powers of this world upside-down. You offer care. You pray. You invite me to participate in the Disciples Fund. You gather around me in discernment. I have seen a new thing here. And I wonder, how else might our imaginations be energized by Jesus' life, teachings, death and resurrection? How else might we offer our loaves and fish? How else might we be honest and share our own need so that someone else might have the opportunity to respond and participate in deeper relationship with us?
The psalmist proclaims in the words we heard earlier:
"Give your full attention to this truth: when we live in deep partnership with one another, new life is generated, poured out by God. What a restoring experience!"