Notes for July 22 Sermon Eph. 2:11-22, Mk. 6:3-4, 53-56

July 22 Eph. 2: 11-22 Mk 6:30-34, 53-56 One big surprise to me here is the sheer weight of the need of the hungry, the mentally ill, the needy who offer up a barrage of cries for assistance. A local church has run out of funds and helps only its members. I saw a sign on another church door that says they are helping only in absolute emergency, life-threatening situations. At the edge of the Roman Empire, Jesus was confronted by immense need, but that is easy for us to forget when we see the clean vista of movies and Sunday School materials to inhabit our imagination. A crush of need threatened to swallow him in its vortex. the lectionary keeps two short pieces on the edge of miracle stories. They certainly also define the ministry of compassion that marked the short work of Jesus of Nazareth.One gets the sense that Jesus feels like a mother who works outside the home when there seems to be no time to rest. Even the disciples are besieged, as they are not at leisure even to grab a bite to eat. Jesus does not worship busy-ness, instead, he asks them to go to a deserted place to find some rest and peace. After the feeding of the 5,000 and the walking on the water, still they are drawing desperate people in droves who are seeking healing.It sounds like a rampaging army of the dispossessed chasing their captain. Pope Paul VI said, if you want peace, work for justice For me, justice is about structures that allow people to be treated fairly and a system in place to move people from handouts to be able to give hand-ups in due time. Social security strikes me a s a just way of handling the issues of retirement, more than the old poorhouses we used to have. We used the national credit card to fund 2 wars, but I hardly heard a peep of complaint about the billions spent. Our reading from Ephesians has a wonderful image of structure and important words about reconciliation, of bringing people together.. Suffering tends to isolate us. We tend to keep our distance from suffering. We have gotten to a terrible place where we blame those who suffer for their suffering and how they respond to their suffering. Human beings slip from conflict into violence very easily, and we cite differences as the root of the violence.It is so easy fo rus to erect dividing walls of hostility and find 9it so diffiuclt to dismantle them. The letter points to a different sort of human nature being established in a Christian. One of the difficult things about charity is that it converts people into objects of pity. I find myself expecting clients to be polite and grateful. It often feels like an assault on one’s dignity to receive handouts. Our derision knows no bounds when people try to game the system or depend on charity as some sort of expectation, even a right. The dividing wall of hostility is a marvelous image. Those of us of a certain age recall the quarter century when the Berlin Wall divided sections of that city. We maintain a careful hedge between us and the needy, socially, economically, politically, even spiritually. On a different level that dividing wall of hostility exists within us, between different segments of our personalities, our desires, our own divided selves. Perhaps our mania about being busy and constantly active is a way of not having to face a divided self. We rightly use images of inclusion; we are in this together;we are a family; we are all in the same boat. Before we are capable of living out those images, we need to continue to do the work of making our own selves whole, integrated, at peace.