St. Paul’s Church in
Bergen & Church of the Incarnation, Jersey City NJ
June 10, 2018
Year B, Proper 5: The
Third Sunday after Pentecost
1 Samuel 8:4-20;
11:14-15
Psalm 138
2 Corinthians
4:13-5:1
Mark 3:20-35
God’s Peculiar People
If
you were here last week you may remember that in my sermon I mentioned in
passing how a small group of progressive evangelical Christians recently went
right into the capital of conservative evangelical Christianity – Lynchburg,
Virginia – the home of Liberty University.
This
small group of progressive evangelicals went to Lynchburg offering to pray with
their conservative brothers and sisters, to pray for healing and peace.
They
went there carrying a hand plow that had been made from a melted handgun,
making real the biblical dream of a sword beaten to a ploughshare.
And,
they went there knowing that almost certainly the leadership of Liberty
University would turn them away, which is exactly what happened. In fact, this
little group of Christians was warned that if they stepped onto the school’s campus
they would be arrested as trespassers.
I
have to admit that I love seemingly hopeless, seemingly waste of time, seemingly
doomed to fail stories like this: the big, powerful, politically-connected university
against a ragtag bunch of “Jesus people” carrying nothing but their bibles and
a symbolic hand plow.
One
of those Jesus people in Lynchburg was a guy named Shane Claiborne.
Maybe
some of you have heard of him.
He’s
written a couple of books, including one called Jesus For President.
Back
in 1998, Claiborne and five other young people took radical Jesus at his word:
they gave up their possessions, and in the toughest neighborhood in
Philadelphia they started a new religious community, calling it “The Simple
Way.”
There
they live and pray together and have planted community gardens and, of course,
fed people – fed people even when the authorities have tried to stop them!
A
couple of weeks ago I came across a quote by Shane Claiborne that I like a lot.
Here’s what he said:
“Christianity
is at its best when it is peculiar, marginalized, suffering, and it is at its
worst when it is popular, credible, triumphal, and powerful.”
I love that. That
is truth. Listen to it again:
“Christianity is
at its best when it is peculiar, marginalized, suffering, and it is at its
worst when it is popular, credible, triumphal, and powerful.”
We Christians are
not meant to be powerful and popular in the eyes of the world.
No, you and I, we
are meant to be… strange.
We are meant to be
God’s peculiar people.
That’s true for us
– and it’s true for our Jewish older brothers and sisters in faith, too.
Throughout nearly
all of their history, the people of Israel were small, weak, and divided.
They were almost
constantly threatened, and often occupied and enslaved, and even sent into
exile, by more powerful neighboring empires who scoffed at the idea that this
small, insignificant people with their weird dietary rules and bizarre customs
like circumcision could have possibly been chosen by the one true God.
If that were the
case, why were God’s chosen people overrun, over and over again?
Or, maybe this God
wasn’t so powerful after all?
And, even the
people of Israel themselves wondered about that, often tempted by other seemingly
more powerful and successful gods, forcing the prophets to work overtime as
they called God’s people back to faithfulness, over and over again.
In today’s
reading, we hear God’s peculiar people of Israel giving into the temptation
faced by most peculiar people – the temptation to be just like everybody else.
The elders of
Israel demand that the prophet Samuel give them a king.
Samuel doesn’t
want to do it.
And I love God’s
response in this story: God interprets their demand for a king as a rejection
of God’s kingship, a rejection of the unique relationship between God
and God’s people – and that’s exactly what’s going on.
But, here’s the
best part: God says to Samuel, give them what they want.
And, so the people
of Israel made the big mistake of becoming a little bit less peculiar. From now
on they’ll have their kings, some will be better than others, but, like all
kings, they will scoop up a lot of the nation’s wealth for their own benefit, they
will become the center of attention and devotion, they will assume the law –
even God’s Law – doesn’t apply to them, and, like all kings, they will send
the young to die in battle.
Israel made a big
mistake, rejecting God’s kingship and putting faith in men, just to be like
everybody else.
The truth is, we
are not meant to be powerful and popular in the eyes of the world.
It’s not easy, but
you and I, we are meant to be God’s peculiar people.
In today’s gospel
lesson, it’s clear that the people around Jesus, including the scribes and even
Jesus’ own family think that he’s beyond peculiar.
The scribes accuse
Jesus of having an evil spirit, while others, including, it seems, even his own
family, think that he is out of his mind.
There is something
very endearing about Jesus’ mother and brothers and sisters trying to take him
away – in my imagination I see them desperate to get him back home to Nazareth
– back to the carpentry shop – back to a normal life.
Jesus, please just
be normal! Be like everybody else!
And, I’m pretty
sure that this was a very real temptation for Jesus. Listen to his harsh
response about who is his real family – not his biological kin, but anyone
who does the will of God!
Pretty harsh, especially
considering Jesus’ family was so worried about their beloved son and brother –
so worried that he is making a fool out of himself, so worried that something
terrible was going to happen to him.
And, let’s face
it, they had good reason to worry, right?
Jesus is
peculiar.
It’s peculiar to
say that in God’s kingdom, it’s the poor and the hungry and the weeping and the
hated who are truly blessed.
It’s peculiar to
hang out with all the wrong kinds of people – the tax collectors, the prostitutes,
and the lepers.
It’s peculiar to
surround yourself with a highly unreliable group of followers, knowing full
well that they will chicken out and abandon you in your moment of need.
It’s peculiar to
teach that we are to love absolutely everybody, even the people we absolutely
can’t stand, to love even our enemies.
It’s peculiar to
teach that we are to turn the other cheek, that we are to forgive not once, not
seven times, but seventy times seven times, an infinity of forgiveness.
It is peculiar to
reveal the bottomless depths of God’s love by dying a shameful death on a
cross.
And, there’s
nothing more peculiar than rising from the dead, revealing once and for all
that God’s love is stronger than everything, stronger even than death itself.
All very strange,
indeed. Peculiar.
And, as the Body
of Christ in the world, this is the peculiar life that we’ve signed up for –
this is who we are meant to be and how we are to live.
Even just a glance
at church history or at today’s news teaches us that, like the people of Israel
demanding a king, we Christians have often given into the temptation to be just
like everybody else, to chase money and power and popularity, to hold onto our
grudges, to fear people different than us, to be… not so peculiar.
Big mistake.
But, the good news
– the best news – is that God is the
most peculiar of all, choosing a small and weak people as God’s very own, and
never giving up on them or any of us, no matter how many times we mess up, forgiving
us no matter how many other kings we choose to follow.
Thanks be to our peculiar
God.
Amen.
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