First Baptist Church of Asheville Podcast
Sermon: The Promise and Peril of Worship
Well isn't that Mary's child? Some whisper in the congregation. I have a sharp dig about Joseph. Others under their breath ask, "Isn't that that precocious boy of Mary's, you know, the one who went to trade school?" Still others smirk, "Oh well, look who's back with all his book learning?" Went to seminary diddy. Others still. Isn't that Mary's kid? The one they forgot back in Jerusalem all those years ago and had to go back and get him. Oh look, he's all grown up now, isn't he? There's a strange mixture of both wonder and condescending laughter all around the congregation as Jesus holds court in his home synagogue. Teaching, theologizing, speaking from the scriptures in ways they've never heard. Jesus' home church is on the one hand astounded by the power of his words. And on the other hand, they're offended by his teaching. And as it dawns on Jesus, as he's being disowned by the very people who raised him, he offers another proverb. Prophets are not without honor, except when they come home, among their own kin, and even in their own house. And we don't know when Jesus says this if he's being very stoic or if he's choking back tears. Either way, we can imagine how Jesus is feeling that something deep down is dying inside of him. From now on, he knows that if his mission is going to take root, it's not going to take root among his roots. It's hard not to hear this account and be in such proximity to his birthplace and not think of Thomas Wolfe and his novel "You Can't Go Home Again." There we find the beloved and moving passage. Something has spoken to me in the night and told me that I shall die, I know not where, saying death is to lose the earth you know for greater knowing, to lose the life you have for greater life, to leave the friends you love for greater loving, to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth. But what an utterly lonely feeling this must be for Jesus. He will later say in Matthew, "Foxes have holes. Birds have nests. The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Somewhere between the last sentence of his profound scripture lesson in the synagogue and the congregation's gossip and his stepping back out of the door and into the Mediterranean sign, Jesus becomes not only estranged but homeless. He has nowhere to go, no people to lean on. No old bedroom preserved with him, with the cheap little league statues on his bookshelf, no membership role bearing his name, no contacts in his phone, not anymore. Just a rolled up sleeping bag and a frayed toothbrush and a group of hapless disciples gathered around him waiting for him to tell him what's next. And what does Jesus do? He leaves for greater loving for a land more kind than home. He takes his message elsewhere to the surrounding villages preaching, teaching, healing. Only now he deputizes all of his disciples to go and do the same. Now they've become estranged together. Now they're all homeless, aliens and outcasts and all for the sake of sharing God's dream with anyone who has ears to hear and eyes to see. Now it's hard to overestimate just how Spartan this first church mission really is. No bread, no bag, no money. Can't take two tunics, you just have one tunic. So to picture each disciple standing there with their Amtrak tickets, they have one article of clothing, a walking stick, and a pair of sandals. What else do they have? A cocktail of courage and ignorance. We might venture to say they also have faith and hope and love, but it might be more accurate to say that all they have, all that any of them have, are words. One of the reasons that I often quote stand up comedians is because I marvel at just how vulnerable they make themselves in order to make us laugh. Think about it. What does a stand up comedian have? Two things. The clothes on their back and words. And the only thing standing between them and bombing with the crowd like Jesus does in his hometown are words. Speaking of comedy, I once spent a couple of days canvassing a neighborhood in St. Louis as I worked in the church that summer, inviting total strangers to a church picnic. I'll pause so you can begin to imagine what that must have been like. Me coming up to a total stranger's house, knocking on the door. Hey, y'all. Would y'all like to come do a church picnic? Now, of course, that's not what I sound like, but that's probably what I sounded like to people in St. Louis. And wouldn't you know it? Some of those people actually came to the church picnic. They actually came. I mean, what more basic thing to do than to just go up to strangers' houses and invite them to something? And they came. As far as I know, some of them still going. Quite out of character for me personally to go canvassing. I've since wondered where that energy came from. I believe it came from Lee and Dan, middle-aged couple that welcomed me to live with them that entire summer. The only rules they gave me were to let them know if I was going to be in late and special instructions from Lee to never touch her Teflon-coated pots and pans. But there's something about being welcomed as a total stranger that can inspire you to welcome other strangers, invite them, befriend them, make ourselves vulnerable to them. Isn't this how the church mission begins? Nothing but words, invitations, welcome. What's your name? Where are you from? The beginning of the church's mission has so much to do with establishing a new family where there wasn't one before. Earlier in Mark, Jesus' mother and brothers come to try to talk some sense into him. He's gone radical on them. He's left the house. He's doing all this crazy teaching. He's healing people. Demons are shouting at him, but they think he's the one that's gone berserk. They've come to try to pull him back home, and they're saying to each other on the way to find him, the boy's gone out of his mind. You just hear Mary, I did so much to raise this little boy, and now look what he's doing to me, making me go crazy too. And just they're all a titter trying to pull Jesus back into some kind of normalcy. They come outside the house where he's teaching, and when they reach the house, there's a crowd sitting around Jesus inside, and somebody says, "Hey, your family's outside. Your mom and your brothers, they're waiting for you." And Jesus says, "Who are my mother and my brothers and sisters?" You are my mother and my brother. Whoever does the will of God, that's my family now. As far as I can tell, Jesus hadn't spent any more time with this crowd than the length of his sermon, but then he looks at this room full of strangers, and he says, "Family." Some of us have been lucky in life to love and adore our nuclear families, wink, wink, mom and dad. Others of us have not been as lucky. In her memoir about prison chaplaincy, Nancy Sahested, our sister and Asheville neighbor, tells the story of Frederick. Only once in his life is Frederick's family ever acknowledged his birthday. It took being in prison for 16 years to finally find that recognition. Today was the best birthday of my 35 years, Frederick said. Guys gave me honey buns and cups of soup and candy bars made me feel like some folks were glad I was born. I felt happy all day long. In fact, I feel blessed. I wonder if it happens to any of the disciples while they're on the road, completely vulnerable due to their estrangement from home, completely dependent on the kindness and hospitality of strangers. Do you think Peter was ever just sitting across the table from a total stranger, and as he dipped his bread into the bowl with olive oil, it slowly dawned on him. That after, I don't know, a dozen or so tall tales about fishing and then some deeper conversations about who Jesus is and might be. It began to become real to him. I can connect heart to heart deep unto deep with somebody I didn't even know a few days ago. The week before Peter didn't know this village existed. Now after a few days of being a guest in a random person's house, it's family. It's like we've always known each other. I can't imagine my life now without knowing you and having had this experience. I certainly never would have sat down and broken bread with this total stranger if not for Jesus sending me out here without so much as a $20 bill. Helms and Greg Gerald are missionaries, if you will. They just up and moved to West Charlotte right after they got married, bought an old house and said, "Well, this is our neighborhood now." Greg and Helms are white and most of their neighbors are not. And they just did something outlandish, just foolish, crazy, madness. They began inviting youth to their house for dinner twice a month. Now decades later, they have a community called QC Family Tree. They do justice work together with their neighbors. They fight encroaching gentrification. Everyone in their neighborhood is concerned about housing. Am I going to be displaced like my parents or my grandparents? Am I going to be able to stay here in my neighborhood and my home? Well, all these total strangers began to get together and make a new kind of family. And now they're saving lives. One of them is a young man named Markel Peteford and reflecting on his experience with this new prophetic family. Markel said, "Look, who knows who I would have been if I'd never met Greg and Helms?" Because you have to remember in the era where I am, there's a lot of crazy stuff going on all the time and you can really get sucked into it. But now I'm starting to recognize these things and I'm starting to see God every day in my life. And since the family tree came along, I'm learning how to be compassionate. I'm learning how to tell the truth and my life's changed. And now I want to do the same for others. We're right there with you, Markel. I'm looking around a room right now at people I would have never met if it weren't for the Holy Spirit giving me and my family a new family. Interesting how this mission concludes in Mark. The Gospel writer reports, "After all this, they cast out many demons and they anointed the sick with all and cured them."