We are THEY (Sermon)

“We Are THEY”

Mark 7:31-37, 8:22-26

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

9/6/15

         The Presbytery of Western North Carolina supports a medical missionary in Malawi. Her name is Barbara Nagy. Barbara serves as the staff pediatrician at the hospital in the central Malawian town of Nkhoma. As a participant and co-leader on two trips to Nkhoma, I gained appreciation for not only true poverty, but genuine community.

         Consistently among the poorest nations on earth, Malawi lacks many basic resources, and it offers virtually no amenities, especially to Malawians. Supported by congregations around the world, missionaries like Barbara enjoy a few conveniences of home, but every day at the Nkhoma hospital, one feels Malawi’s poverty and sees its community.

         If you get sick in Malawi, your family and friends become your EMTs, ambulance service, food service, social workers, and HMO. When you go to the hospital, you must have a community around you to do everything except to deliver medical treatment. While you lie in a crowded ward, your family and friends live on the grounds of the hospital. They sleep under the trees. They use the restrooms built by the Presbytery of Western North Carolina. And they prepare food for themselves and for you under the outdoor cooking shelter. Only the most destitute get fed the meager hospital rations.

Without that community, few Malawians survive for long. In a place of such acute poverty, every individual needs and belongs to an enfolding community, to a responsive and attentive THEY.

         As Jesus returns to Galilee from the North Country, a very proactive THEY brings to him a deaf man. In Bethsaida, another THEY brings to Jesus a blind man. I can imagine each THEY being as desperate and as trustingly hopeful as a Malawian family. The THEYs who bring the deaf and blind men to Jesus do not come to test him. A desire for wholeness drives them. They do want wholeness restored to the particular individuals, but I think they also desire wholeness for the community. As long as one of them is deaf or blind, there is a deafness or a blindness to the entire THEY.

         This appears to be a difficult concept for wealthy, individualistic cultures. Folks like us have been taught to attach much if not most of our identity to individual achievements and personal property. I have to think, however, that the cultures represented in biblical literature, especially the culture in which Jesus lives, has much more in common with places like Malawi than the contemporary western world.

Now, we all belong to peer groups. We identify with political parties and agendas. We brand ourselves with the logos of schools, sports teams, shoe manufacturers, particular stores, denominations, and so forth. Still, to many of us, the idea of being defined by a THEY, by other people’s joys and sorrows, by their strengths and weaknesses, seems as quaint, confining, and anachronistic as a rotary phone. More dangerously, such an association may seem to threaten one’s own individuality. Where is the line between I and We?

As the Church, we are an intentional community. We are a re-presentation not just of Christ to the world, but of the THEY which brings the deafness, blindness, and brokenness of the world to Jesus. Individualistic religion judges all of that brokenness. It says, “If you were moral enough [or] if you had enough faith, you wouldn’t be in this mess.” At its most devilishly heartless, individualistic religion dismisses the world’s brokenness by saying, “Take heart, God never gives you more than you can handle.” Like you, I have heard that phrase in hospital rooms, funeral homes, and from pulpits. Brothers and Sisters, please think carefully before you stab someone with those words. Maybe, sometimes, there are “good intentions” behind that platitude, but it really feels to me like saying, “That’s your problem. Handle it yourself.”

God calls us to recognize when one of us has, indeed, become burdened with more than he or she can handle. God calls us to accept their suffering as our own. If we are part of the great THEY of faith, our vocation includes bringing individual and collective deafness and blindness to the Christ, and joining our voices in begging for help.

How many of us have approached worship as a time to recharge our batteries? I understand that image, and can even appreciate it to some extent. But do you hear how it also encourages a kind of individualistic, handle it yourself mentality? If we, as the Church, are part of God’s created and creative THEY, worship is more that recharging batteries. It is a time of equipping the saints for tending to our broken and over-burdened neighbors. There are personal aspects of that, but our deeper and wider purpose is to draw and to be drawn closer together in holy communion, closer to God for each other’s sake, and closer to each other for God’s sake. In this renewing community, our witness to God in Christ becomes a magnificent harmony of distinct voices.

Many of us grew up hearing preachers erect a fence around the Lord’s Table. The words were exclusive: This table is set for those who know, love, and trust God. Generations ago, many pastors even examined their parishioners before a communion Sunday, and only those who survived his scrutiny were allowed at the table. More and more of us are removing that fence. There are too many reasons to come to the table.

You may come in penitence to receive forgiveness.

You may come in gratitude to praise God.

You may come to reclaim your unique gifts and recommit your unique individuality to loving both God and neighbor.

You may come to feel the embrace of a community of faith, to identify yourself with the body of Christ.

You may come to receive a reminder of God’s faithfulness to you in a season of sorrow, illness, loneliness, or grief.

You may come out of unbreakable habit.

You may even come out of simple curiosity.

Whatever your reasons, come. Come and find your place in God’s gracious THEY in and for the world.

Charge and Benediction:

       There is a very interesting detail in the story of Jesus healing the blind man in Bethsaida. After the first application of spit on the man’s eyes, Jesus asks him, “Can you see anything?”

“Can you see anything?” God Incarnate has to ask the recipient of his touch if he has been made whole. Not only that, but Jesus’ work requires some fine-tuning.

       You have come to Christ’s table. It is now time for ongoing conversation with him. Don’t run straight back into the village. Take time to process what you have experienced.

       Depending on your reasons for having come, Jesus asks you,

‘Do you feel forgiven,

grateful,

equipped,

comforted,

included?

Does your habit still feel justified?

Are you still curious?

       Can you see anything?

              Trees are okay.

Trees are a good start.

May you branch out into the world

in grateful, hopeful, healing peace;

And may your ears, and eyes, and hearts be opened.

Amen.