March 27, 2011

Marvin Ellison

Lent 3
     Numbers 13:17-21, 25-29; 14:1-4, 10b-11     Mark 11:20-24

Dear Friends in Christ, as we gather this morning for worship and Sabbath rest – the renewal of our minds, bodies, and spirits, how should we be thinking about our calling as people of faith, to be using our powers of moral imagination to wage peace, seek justice, and do mercy?

Perhaps the poets should have the first word. Nobel laureate Octavio Paz suggests that at the beginning of the twenty-first century, “we are living through a change a times.” Not just a time of change, but a change of times.

In changing times, God is calling – calling for the renewal of the world, of the church, and of this very congregation. But Scripture attests that when people are confronted with change, they sometimes, sometimes complain and want to turn back. “So they said to one another, ‘Let us choose a captain, and go back to Egypt.’” The ancient Hebrews were good at this. They balked not once, but over and over again, and for good reason. God has this amazing way of disturbing people’s peace and unsettling the settled.

And yet, isn’t it only by hearing and heeding God’s call that we may claim our own authority for ministry in Christ’s name, what we might think of as an authority of possibility? A rather audacious claim has been placed upon us: you and I are being called to do a new thing, to live imaginatively – right here, right now – by “practicing the future.”

Our mandate? Live now as if: as if God reigns, as if nothing and no one else has power over you. Live passionately, live confidently out of and into the vision of God’s commonwealth, inclusive and welcoming of all. Live your passion as if it’s God’s own passion for justice, mercy, compassion, joy, and yes, peace.

But, you and I know, this “vision thing” doesn’t really sell in a pragmatic, can-do, no-nonsense, results-oriented world, now does it? Listen to the put-downs, some of which may have passed your own lips: “Come on now, get a grip. You need to grow up, and face facts. Accept the limits, the givens. You’ll be happier and better adjusted if you do. Don’t forget the bottom line. Can we really afford this? But we’ve never done it this any other way! Settle for what’s possible. Draw within the lines. Above all, be realistic.”

Be realistic, but that doesn’t really reflect gospel sensibilities. The gospel has a quite different logic. “Practice the future. Be visionary – at least for a while.” Recall Jesus on prayer and faith: “Have faith in God,” Jesus says. “Truly I say to you, whoever says to the mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his or her heart, but believes that what is said is happening, it will be done for them. Therefore, whatever you ask in prayer, believe you are receiving it, and you will.”

Isn’t this odd? We’re to pray for something we know perfectly well we don’t have, that we’ve not yet received – as if we’ve already obtained it. What’s going on here? I don’t honestly know. But I have a hunch: it may have something to do with imagination and the powers of visualization. We’re to see the thing we’re praying for as if already transformed, as if made new according to God’s good purposes. We’re to believe it into being, to begin acting as if it were the new reality, here and now. Rehearsing its advent helps bring it to pass. Our job? Practice the future now.

According to gospel logic, believing is seeing, and seeing requires at least some faith. Before you step onto an elevator, you must have faith that elevators work. Try getting on an elevator without that faith! Or again, you must “see” the basketball going into the basket. You must “see” your cancer being healed. You must “see” the financial contributions coming through to pay the mortgage, support the programs, and balance the budget. You must see a congregation like this one, full of diverse and perhaps sometimes contankerous folks, not as a “problem” to be fixed, but as a unique opportunity to study and learn and teach and embody ministry in a creative, faithful way. Believing is seeing.

Now, of course, faith can be invested in images of despair and destruction. We can believe in a coming world depression, and by so doing, we accelerate its coming. We can believe we’re not worthy of love, and by so doing, we become unlovable. We can believe that gay men and lesbian women aren’t entitled to human rights protections, or that poor people prefer welfare to jobs, or that our communities are dying. By our very belief, we help bring these things to pass.

Therefore, Jesus reminded his followers to take care about what they believed and prayed for. Why? Because it may well come to pass! Prayer and moral visioning are forms of power, and their power should never, ever be underestimated. Be careful what you pray for. Your faith may mean it will come to pass.

We’re called to pray, yes – but we’re also called to build community. No community, no future. 

In the gospel of Mark, the Commonwealth of God is compared to a mustard seed. It starts as the smallest of seeds, and then, when sown, becomes the greatest of all shrubs. But there’s a gospel twist. The mustard plant has growth potential, yes – but it’s also dangerous. This small plant takes over where it’s not wanted. It gets out of control and attracts various birds that move into cultivated areas where they’re not welcome. And that, Jesus said, is what God’s Commonwealth is like. Like a pungent shrub with take-over properties. Something you would want only in small, carefully controlled doses – if you could manage to control it at all. Something perhaps even like this congregation. Before your very eyes, you’ve grown and stretched to embrace many kinds of people and families, then filled out very nicely and become – if you don’t mind my saying so – a home for all manner of strange birds. Like the mustard plant, this very congregation has take-over properties: tenacity, perseverance, and a stubbornness born of faith and vision.

And what will “practicing the future,” living out of God’s dazzling vision of a “new heaven and earth” require of us? One thing I’m certain about is that it will require a people willing to be “on the move” – and willing to move outside their comfort zones.

Therefore, Jesus reminded his followers to take care about what they believed and prayed for. Why? Because it may well come to pass! Prayer and moral visioning are forms of power, and their power should never, ever be underestimated. Be careful what you pray for. Your faith may mean it will come to pass.

Last fall, I had the good fortune of hearing Gene Robinson, the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, speak about hope and courage in a time of increased polarization. He told this story:

During World War One, two U.S. soldiers became close buddies on the battlefields of France. When one was killed in battle, the other wished to honor his friend by securing for him a proper burial. He approached the priest in the local village and asked permission to have his comrade in arms buried in the church cemetery. “Was your friend a baptized Christian in the Catholic tradition,” the priest inquired. “No,” said the soldier, “not to my knowledge.” “Then we cannot allow his burial in our cemetery,” the priest replied.

The friend was greatly disappointed, but before he left the village to return to his military unit, he managed to buy a small piece of land adjacent to the cemetery, in fact butting up against the cemetery fence. There he buried his friend without ceremony and placed a small marker at his grave.

Some years after the war, the veteran soldier returned to France and traveled to the village in order to visit the grave of his friend and pay his respects. But after searching high and low, he could not find the site. Distressed, he happened upon the same priest and asked where his friend’s remains had been moved to. “Nowhere,” said the priest. “He’s still buried on the land you purchased for him. But after you left, the members of the parish had a long debate and decided we had made a tragic mistake. So we decided to move our fence so that we could place your friend’s grave inside the cemetery. He now rests among us.”

Whenever there is faith, hope, and love sufficient to “move the fence” and no longer divide the world between “us” and “them,” in faith we proclaim, “There is Christ.”

Flannery O’Connor has written, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you odd.” In faith, God is calling us to be an odd sort of people: a faithful, courageous, and generous people, passionate about God and about living lives of peace, justice, and compassion as if that alone mattered.

On this day, this is my prayer: May God continue to disturb our peace, draw us away from Egypt, and keep us steady on this amazing journey toward a future we can scarcely imagine, but a place in which no one will be excluded and all will be honored as God’s very own beloved people. 

May our prayers and actions, no matter how tentative and small, help bring this future to pass.

Amen.

Marvin M. Ellison teaches Christian Ethics at Bangor Theological Seminary in Portland, Maine and is author of Erotic Justice: A Liberating Ethic of Sexuality (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1996); Body and Soul: Rethinking Sexuality as Justice-Love (Pilgrim Press, 2003); Same-Sex Marriage? A Christian Ethical Analysis (Pilgrim Press, 2004); Sexuality and the Sacred: Sources for Theological Reflection, second edition (Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010); and An Ethical Guide for the Sexually Perplexed (Fortress Press, forthcoming).