I
have a young friend named Michaela who, in addition to being one of the coolest
teenagers you’ll ever meet, happens to be a wicked tap-dancer. She goes to a
fine arts/performing arts magnet high school around the corner from our church.
This past spring I ditched the evening session of my Synod Assembly (Sorry,
Bishop!) and snuck out to enjoy watching Michaela and her dancing classmates in
their year-end recital. Michaela had a tap/jazz solo, and, I gotta tell you, I
was pretty proud of the kid. In fact, I really enjoyed the heck out of the
whole concert.
I
was little surprised, however, by the rowdiness of the audience. It’s not that
they weren’t appreciative, but they just seemed a lot louder and more
demonstrative than I remember high school audiences being in my day. They seemed
like they were watching a football game, not an indoor theater performance. (Maybe
we were just as obnoxious in my day,
but somehow I don’t remember it like that.)
I
mentioned my impression of the audience behavior to Michaela after the concert.
“Yeah,” she said, “they were pretty rude. Especially the parents. They kept
calling our names and it made it kinda hard for us to concentrate on stage.”
The
parents..? You mean the adults? The GROWN-UPS..??!!
You
would think—wouldn’t you?—that adults would know how to behave themselves in a
theater around other concert-goers. You would think that they knew the rules of
civility and that they would have respect for the performers and the other
audience members. You might even think that they had a responsibility to model
correct decorum for their children. You would think that, right? But you’d be
wrong.
This
Gen X generation of parents does not seem to have the same code of courtesy
with which your Old Religious Guy was raised. How can they, unless someone teaches it to them?
In
the Gospel lesson for the Eighth Sunday of Pentecost (Mark 6:30-34, 53-56) Jesus
is dealing with a pretty rowdy public. Here he is, trying to take his buddies
away on a little weekend boating trip so they can relax after the hard work of
preaching the gospel and casting out demons, and this rude swarm of needy
people won’t leave him alone. Obviously this gang has no respect for boundaries
or Jesus’ personal time (Pastors will understand this!). But Jesus—being Jesus—doesn’t scold them or shoo
them away. Instead, the scripture tells us, he has compassion for them, because they are like sheep without a shepherd
(v.34). But he does not immediately begin to lay hands on them and cure their
illnesses. Rather, he begins to teach
them.
I
think this is key. Healing is not just the absence of disease or injury. It has
to include the renewing of the mind too. How can these hungry, sick, needy
people know what wholeness is unless someone teaches them?
The
only assumption we can make in a hungry and broken world is that people will be
hungry and broken. We can’t assume anyone knows what it means to be a
Christian. We have a responsibility to talk about our faith, to learn and
relearn it, and to be teachers. Faith, Saint Paul tells us, comes from what is
heard (Romans 10:17).
(Quick note: You
may have noticed a big gap in the continuity of this week’s gospel pericope. The
compilers of the Revised Common Lectionary have cut out verses 35-52 which is
the story of the feeding of the 5000 and Jesus walking on water. They’ll give
us the feeding story next week and then link it to four more weeks about Jesus being the Bread of Life. I don’t know
who the compilers are, but they will have to answer for this on the Day of
Judgment!)
There’s
a detail I really dig in verses 53-56. This part of our lesson, I would think,
is about faith and hope, but I also see it as an image of our human longing and
the abundance of grace found in the smallest details of our faith journey. The
people again swarm Jesus, and are hungry for the healing he can give them. Even
touching just the fringe of his cloak (v.56) brings them to wholeness. I like
this. It says to me sometimes just the tiniest touch can abound with blessings.
Can
I share a little confession? When I was a senior in seminary, I liked to sleep
in on Sunday mornings. I knew I should honor the Sabbath, but seniors were not
required to do field education, so, unless I was engaged to be a guest preacher
somewhere, I just shut off the alarm clock on Sundays. After all, I
rationalized, I had been to chapel and compline every stinkin’ day of the week.
Being a single guy, I could go out clubbing on Saturday night and dance ‘til the
proverbial bovines returned without having to worry about church the next day.
Also, the Sunday services at our chapel really sucked. The congregation which used
our chapel on Sundays was uncomfortably dysfunctional, and the interim pastor
was a nightmare. She was a manuscript preacher who had no ear for liturgy, read
in a monotone, and seemed to be working out her own personal issues through her
excruciatingly dull sermons. So I’d stay in bed and plan to watch those Sunday
morning news shows pastors never get to watch.
Until
about 10:30. Then my conscience would get the better of me, I’d drag myself up,
shave, put on a clean shirt, and go to church. I’d sit in the pew criticizing in
my mind just about everything. Yet, somehow, something in that morning would
touch me. I would, metaphorically speaking, brush against the outer garment of
Jesus and realize my own hunger for the sacred. There would be a word in the
lesson, a hymn, the taste of the Holy Supper, or even something profound which
miraculously escaped the lips of that impossibly bad preacher which fed me with
the morsel I didn’t even know I was hungry for. I always left the service glad
I had gone.
A
little bit of Jesus can go a very long way. There is a, as a seminary classmate
of mine liked to say, a God-shaped hole in each of us. But it takes only a
small brush with grace to fill it.
Thank
you again for reading, my friend. May you be the fringe of Jesus’ cloak to
someone this coming week—or may that fringe touch you.
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