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SERMONS

The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 1, 2006

By The Rev. Alston Johnson

“I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would affront your intelligence.” That is what William F. Buckley once said to a guest on his television show. William Buckley is known by most as a sardonic, dry wit; someone not to be trifled with in conversation; someone who appears insufferably arrogant when it comes to opinions and verbal repartee.

Buckley himself was once asked about being a Christian. He paused for reflection for a moment and said with seriousness, “If you mention God, or your faith, once at a New York dinner party, you are met with stony silence . . . mention God twice and you don’t get invited back to any more dinner parties.”

In his own way, Buckley, the seemingly invincible master of the come back line, paused for a moment to point out how he had experienced the cost of Christian faith in his own world. There was a pregnant lack of irony and sarcasm. It seems that God was not on the invitation list; and if God arrived, his messengers certainly would not be invited back. Buckley’s New York dinner party is a reality for many of us, it simply takes different forms. Finding ways not to have our identity as Christians some how upset the buoyancy we seek in our social lives, in our business relationships, in the “lifestyles” to which we have become accustomed. If the truth were known, there are dinner parties in our lives where God is an unwanted guest.

There are a variety of ways that we might dis-invite God from our lives at any time; many ways to establish a perimeter. In our lives at work, at home, even at church, we have the temptation of hosting the New York dinner party that Buckley talks about. Black balling God from the invitation list. Perhaps God is not welcome to crash our party; unless he is dressed for dinner, on his best behavior, and playing up to an image that we have worked so hard to create and preserve.

It’s not just at a Big City dinner party that God sometimes difficulty getting a hearing. God’s ongoing revelation can have difficulty getting a hearing even among those who should know better.

“Teacher we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

“Jesus, someone is out there practicing without a licence; he is not a member of the club.” The question of who is “in” and who is “out” when speaking of God is even something that we encounter in the Gospels. In this passage from the Gospel according to Mark, the disciple John would like to dis-invite someone from the gathering, but in this case it is because this exorcist doesn’t have a “union” card so to speak.

You see, someone is breaking the code, someone is borrowing what John believes is reserved for the disciples, the power of Jesus’ name and mission, someone is challenging the disciples’ rules about who is “in” and who is “out.”

“Whoever is not against us is for, is for us, John.”

Jesus won’t join John in this blackballing; Jesus does not point the finger and join the accusation. Rather, Jesus opens himself to embrace this stranger to the disciples . . . although this stranger is no stranger to Jesus’ name. In fact, Jesus not only welcomes this stranger, he blesses this stranger, and anyone who would do something so small as to give a cup of water to someone like this stranger bearing his holy name.

You see John, you’ve missed it; you have missed the point. You are headed for a stumbling. The writer of Mark is at it again; pointing out that precisely when the disciples are concerned about their identity, their special role, Jesus is constantly opening the doorway to the kingdom before them . . . turning their gazes from what seems significant to what is truly significant.

Jesus is not going to agree with John. Jesus is shifting the focus, so that the disciples are not fixated on the worthiness of another, but rather their own worthiness.

Notice that Jesus the rabbi does not follow John’s lead.

Jesus does not teach a lesson about how this nameless, carpetbagging exorcist should become a better and true follower. No. Instead, Jesus the rabbi teaches his disciples a lesson about how those closest to him should not be caught having one of those New York dinner parties. Where talking about God interferes with the status quo, where we simply dis-invite those who break our code.

Jesus is always about the individual disciple accepting the burden of self discipline - from which the word disciple is derived - for the sake of the body, a “team” effort. The only one who is normally going it alone in the Gospels is the one who becomes the Messiah; it would seem that the message for the rest of us is that we need, and are instructed, to make the journey with others. We don’t really get to have God without also getting to have one another; everyone is invited to this dinner party at God’s altar.

And when we are a hindrance to that invitation, well Mark has much to say about millstones, cutting our hands and feet off, and a place where the worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.

The life that we share as Christians as a church family, and the life we share with Christians where ever our daily lives might take us, must first and always be an effort for God’s people to become one; does this sound idealistic? It should. It is something that will only come with the kind of love, the kind of faith, the kind of humility, that God’s love and presence brings. Those who follow Jesus really have no other choice.

Or as Martin Luther King Jr., used to say “we must learn to live together as brothers and sisters, or perish together as fools.”