Weekly Whispering for the week preceding Sunday, July 22, 2018

The Scripture

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.  He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”  For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.  And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.         

Mark 6: 30-32           

The Whispering 

The writers of our Weekly Whisperings have their choice of reading on which they would like to reflect, based on the scriptures appointed for the following Sunday.  When I read Mark’s words, “Come away… and rest for a while,” I thought, “How could I not be attracted to that?!” 

How many of us “have no leisure”?  Do we have to be part of that group too?  Is it necessary for our children to belong to both (all) those activities?  Are we busy doing the Lord’s work, or is it a making of our own doing? 

I am certainly not saying that we shouldn’t do our part in the building up of God’s kingdom.  We need Sunday School teachers, vestry members, soup kitchen volunteers, etc.  We need activists to stand up for our beliefs, and people to tend to the poor and needy.  We need to spend time with our families and encourage them to grow.  But we also need time for ourselves so we can go to a deserted place and rest.   

Many of the ordained ministers I know talk about “sabbath.”  For years I thought sabbath only referred to a commandment that instructed me to attend worship every week.  But my ordained friends and teachers have broadened that definition for me to include worship, rest and ministry in harmony with the teaching and practice of Jesus; a day of delightful communion with God and one another.   

Now I am not necessarily good at practicing that wider meaning of sabbath myself, but I do believe it’s a good goal to have and to actively work toward.  Taking rest for not just our bodies, but for our minds and souls is important; Jesus instructed his apostles to do so.  The next time you have no time to eat, take a minute to schedule a time of rest, sabbath.  Ask yourself what you need to do to use that time well, for you.  Because you know that the demands of life will return when you open the door again.     


This week's Whispering was written by Kathy Heikkinen       

Weekly Whispering for the week preceding Sunday, July 15, 2018

The Scripture

“Before the foundation of the world he chose us in Christ to be his people… This was his will and pleasure in order that the glory of his gracious gift, so graciously conferred on us in his Beloved, might resound to his praise.  In Christ our release is secured.”     

Ephesians 1: 4-7          

The Whispering 

Herod is just perfect. 

Enmeshed in a complicated web of his own making.  A bit tawdry.  Weak.  Impulsive.  Short-sighted.  Driven to save face, powerful but not secure. 

Capable of recognizing the good, even being attracted to it.  Enjoying listening to it…  but who can go no further than being greatly disturbed.  Seeing his own complicity.  A man who does not really know himself.  Who finds himself doing what he does not want. 

Mark gets it just right – the world into which Jesus is inserting his ministry, sending out his disciples.  Herod is that world in a nutshell.  Then and now. 

Frightening how instantly I recognize it.  How intuitively I understand him. 

Early on in Mark, Jesus has begun to teach – offering parables, challenging those whose broken vision of law blocks the way of God’s kingdom. But mostly he has been going around doing “signs.”  Displays of power. Healings. Calming storms. Casting out demons.  Forgiving sins.  And people don’t know what to make of it.

Commentaries I have read usually remark that the scene in which John loses his head “foreshadows the death of Jesus” in Mark’s narrative.  Fair enough, literarily speaking.  And the scene is of a piece with those that come before it in which people reject the prophetic voice. This is going to be difficult, Mark is telegraphing.  This is not going to have the ending you want, at least not in the way you expect. 

But the scene with Herod seems to me to get to the heart of it. The brutal why. The world is not going to make this easy because we are not going to make this easy.  We can’t, not left to our own devices.  In Herod we see perfectly the brokenness of all of us on full display.  We see sin, manifest in all its cowardly yet unyielding grasp on our lives.  As such this scene foreshadows more than the fact of Jesus’ death.  It invites us into the contemplation of its meaning. It invites us not to generic striving for good, but to the particularly Christian hope.

The teachings of Christ are inseparable from his death and resurrection.  The gospel is both, intertwined.  Indeed, just a few chapters after our scene with Herod, Jesus begins to tell the disciples about that part of the plan.  (Big surprise, they don’t believe him and actually get a little peeved.)  But he insists. 

Paul (okay, probably not Paul, but close enough) reminds us that “in Christ our release is secured and our sins forgiven through the shedding of his blood… [that] the universe, everything in heaven and on earth, might be brought into a unity in Christ”.  It is this cosmic reconciliation that cracks open the ugly cycle. This is the display of power, the healing, that God offers to all in Christ.  As the Ephesians reading reminds us, this is the root of new identity, the source of wisdom and insight, the heritage we have been adopted into. 

So back to the scene in Mark.  Herod is wrong about one thing.  Jesus is not John, risen from the dead to torment him, to force a confession of guilt. That is the oh-so-understandable thinking of the sin-bound soul. 

But seeing Herod’s mistake reminds us that Jesus does rise.  He dies and rises to release us from that devastating logic, to make possible our participation in God’s plan for all creation, to bring forth from us a confession of praise.     


This week's Whispering was written by Kristen Balisi       

Weekly Whispering for the week preceeding Sunday, July 8, 2018

The Scripture 

Jesus came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.

Then he went about among the villages teaching. He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

Mark 6: 1-13 

The Whispering

"...no bread, no bag, no money in their belts,...not to put on two tunics..."

No flashing of signs or emblems of belonging to anyone other than God; completely free to be who we truly are: the children of God.

No hometown or family confining definitions of who we are; no town or country borders to defend (no need whatsoever to separate children from their parents); no duplicity or two-facedness in anything; no injunction to curry favor with those who refuse to host messages and messengers of the universal, undivided acceptance and love of God for all of God's children, no matter how it is worded.

No hometown slogans, petty jealousies and rivalries; no small-minded prejudices; no hallowed "comfort zones," financial and social barriers and private insulations; no status symbols, in-crowd allegiances, ancient feuds, tyrannies of rank and file; no exclusive neighborhoods; no hierarchies of any kind; no social hierarchy among churches or denominations; no tenure anywhere; no call to try to control others (Always carry only the walking staff of God's comfort - never a little bully stick);

No reason whatsoever not to critique the many idolatrous and oppressive tyrannies of family, community and national ideologies and their sneaky propaganda and enforcements;

No requirements to cozy-up to any people or systems of intolerance, oppression, brutality of any kind, no matter how far, far away - or how small and nearby.

No flaunting of signs of conspicuous consumption, elitism, seniority, club membership, ego-inflation, exclusive offers, special considerations; no "family" or "hometown" discounts for your ministrations of love.

No need to keep score. No law requiring homegrown "tit for tat" or "eye for an eye."

No worries about "reflecting poorly on the family/town/country name" or fretting about getting kicked-out of the family nest-egg or trust fund, or off of some kind of an historical land grant (a.k.a., land grab).

No law to say we must stay stuck in the mud. Not ever. No where. No way.

Perfect freedom to serve.

What if we all lived this way?

It seems to me that Jesus of Nazareth knew everything there is to know about tyrannies of every kind, even the down-home, cozy, close-at-hand kind. Maybe his own hometown folks dismissed him more from what he said about the "home town mentality" than from the fact that he was a known quantity who was, they had erroneously assumed, a full-fledged member of the Good Old Boys Hometown Club. He wasn't following any of the old home town prescriptions, joining any of the clubs, paying homage to any of the right people, - and yet there he was, quite at home with speaking-up in the synagogue/church anyway - and daring to show all of us, very clearly, the error of all of our selfish, colluded, deeply duplicitous, ancient-oppressive-systemic ways, as prophets always do. "Such nerve!: the people said. "If he wants out of our preciousness so badly, then we should just go ahead and kick him out! Crucify him! Crucify him!"

Was it because they were blinded by "hometown mentality," that only a few of Jesus' home town folks could actually accept the joyful liberation his loving heart and incisive social critique were so clearly offering? As for the vast majority, I guess, Jesus' double-edged liberating message just cut a little too close to home."

In my experience, it IS impossible for any of us to bring about a work of healing or reconciliation with people who truly "aren't trying to hear that," that's for sure. Nevertheless, I am reminded for the need to persist in our job of helping to liberate others from any of the oppressive ties that bind us to anything less than God's redeeming love. And let us learn over and over again how to gently "shake off the dust" of our own set-backs and failures so that we can continue to try to walk in Jesus' healing and liberating way.

This week's Whispering was written by Catherine Whittier Huber