Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 7, 2024
2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10+Psalm 48+2 Corinthians 12:2-10+Mark 6:1-13
My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.
(2 Corinthians 12:9)
As you are aware, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church has just concluded its every-three-years extravaganza in Louisville, Kentucky. I wrote about some of the more significant parts in my e-news essay last week, and there are lots of summaries on the Episcopal Church website for you to peruse. As we have moved through this current 4th of July holiday weekend, I have reflected on some of the actions of this convention and our history of exclusion of so many from full membership in our Church's history:
The establishment of the Missionary Diocese of Navajoland, among the many tribes of indigenous peoples who did not benefit from the freedoms our founders proclaimed.
The recent incorporation of the Coalition for Racial Equity and Justice as an affiliated organization funded but not controlled by the Episcopal Church to promote truth-telling, reckoning, healing for the descendants of the formerly enslaved and other minority groups within our church.
The presence of a deputation from Liberia that sat just behind the Newark deputation, a diocese that was created in 1851 as the efforts at colonization and repatriation of Africans brought to this country was at its height. The shaking of a Liberian agbê rattle at every celebratory moment signaled their presence.
That long, slow arc of justice bending is true in the Church as it is in our nation, but in the words of Civil Rights icon Ella Baker, "We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes," not just for you and me but for all God's creation.
Back in 2015 when Michael Curry was first elected as presiding bishop, the General Convention was held in Salt Lake City, Utah, the home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (aka the Mormons). I was not there but followed the proceedings as I am wont to do, and I remember reading about an advertisement that popped up on the local Salt Lake evening news for a regional clothing store. The ad highlighted what they call a “missionary starter package” consisting of two suits, four wrinkle free dress shirts, two washable ties, and a pair of walking oxfords, all for the low, low price of $495.
Most of you know at least something about the Mormons, probably having encountered a missionary or two in your life – a clean-cut, white-shirt-wearing young man with the Book of Mormon in hand. Or maybe you have just seen the Tony Award winning musical. While missionary service is not required by the church, it is, at least for young men, strongly encouraged, and it is not financed by the church. Most missionaries raise the money themselves to last for a couple of years, often in a foreign country, to spread the word about the Mormon Church.
In light of this Sunday's gospel with Jesus’s admonition to the disciples to “ take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics” (Mark 6:8,9), it would appear that Jesus was uniformed about the great $495 bargain advertised in Salt Lake City!
But the really interesting thing about this text is not that austere requirement about relying on the kindness of strangers to survive. It’s really what comes next:
If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them. (6:11)
Yes, here we have Jesus telling his disciples that no matter their faithfulness and best efforts, they are going to fail. Not everyone is going to want to hear what they have to say. Seriously, how many of you have welcomed a Mormon missionary, or any other kind of missionary, into your home and let them stay for a night or two?
Jesus is telling his friends in advance that they will not always succeed. In fact, most of the time they were not likely to succeed. He’s telling them that failure is part of the deal. That’s not exactly a message we Americans, in particular, like to hear, especially not on this Fourth of July weekend when we celebrate all that is wonderful about our country while glossing over our failures and faults as a nation.
The apostle Paul knew a thing or two about failure, too. While he can brag about being the greatest Pharisee and Jew, and he does this a lot, he was only successful at that until Jesus, in a vision, knocked him off his…um…donkey on the road to Damascus. And then he, like Jesus before him, became an itinerant preacher, hauling his tent-making wares from town to town from Jerusalem to Ephesus to Corinth to Thessaloniki to Cyprus to Rome and many points in between. Five times he was whipped with 39 lashes; he was stoned once, shipwrecked three times, and beaten with rods. And finally, a couple of miles outside of the walls of Rome, he was beheaded. I’m not thinking that, by any measure, it sounds very successful.
Even he wrote about his struggles with a ‘thorn in the flesh’ and his desire to do good but falling into sin (Romans 7). But then in today’s epistle reading, we hear some of the most beautiful words in all of scripture: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). Paul’s failures didn’t matter; Paul’s weakness didn’t matter; it was through them that God in Christ was revealed. It wasn’t his fabulous preaching or his knowledge of scripture or his skill at church growth that demonstrated God’s might. It was in his weakness that the power of the Almighty was clear – God took the worst of Paul and built a Church that has lasted for 2,000 years. Not bad for a failure, is it?
Jesus would not qualify as much of a success story, either, at least not in worldly terms. Sure, there are those who are trying to rebrand him as a buff, Rambo-Jesus, but everything we are told in the gospels is that he refused to fight, he offered himself, and he suffered a miserable and excruciating death. Yet he knew - God knew - that this would not be the end of the story.
So, in this particular instance that we read about in Mark, this first time Jesus is sending the disciples out, he doesn’t want discouragement with early failure to make them take their eyes off the prize. It’s kind of like when you teach a child to ride a bike – you don’t just plop them on a two-wheeler and send them off on a steep trail somewhere. No, you start with training wheels, a smooth surface, nothing too challenging. Once the training wheels come off, we know they’re going to fall and maybe get hurt, but gradually they’ll gain the skill and confidence to take on increasing challenges. With time and encouragement, they’ll learn how to do something they will never forget how to do. Evangelism is kind of like that.
The disciples had many successes in these early efforts, but it was not smooth sailing for them then or in the years after Jesus had returned to God. Did they stop in the face of persecution and persistent challenges. They did not. When the world's evil continued to push back on their message of love and community and caring for one another, did they fold up shop? They did not.
Even today, the more we press on, the more the forces of evil will push back. Yes, we will fail, but we are beyond the training wheels stage, and we can trust that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. There is a lot of discouragement and hand-wringing afoot around the world, but don't be discouraged. In the words of the psalmist
God is our God for ever and ever;
and shall be our guide for evermore. (48:13)