Sunday Closest to July 6, 2015 Proper 9, Year B By: The Rev. Linda J. Ferguson 2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10 Psalm 48 2 Corinthians 12:2-10 Mark 6:1-13 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. Amen. This weekend, our country is celebrating Independence Day or the fourth of July. This is the one holiday, the three-day-weekend, people haven t tried to move the holiday to a Monday, because the date itself is such a powerful icon: the anniversary of our nation s birth with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. As a nation, the freedom we enjoy was bought for us by those who went before: our founding fathers and mothers who had the courage and vision to imagine a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. They made the down payment, in blood sweat and tears, and subsequent generations have made balloon payments ever since: claiming and reclaiming that vision of a nation with liberty and justice for all. None of us are free unless all of us are: the birthing of a nation begun in 1776 continues today. One of my favorite quotes from the time of the creation of the United States comes from Ben Franklin, who said as the delegates struggled to craft a declaration of independence: Let us all hang together, for if we do not, we will surely hang separately. Brave men, taking risks for a greater good, arguing, writing, engaging in the hard work of those days, they needed to work together to make this new thing happen. It s interesting that the gospel today talks of a similar effort; the early days of Jesus work, which met with his initial commissioning of the disciples, with some ground rules for surviving on the road. 1
The principles, both in the founding of our nation and in the founding of what would become Christianity, are rather similar: Support and respect each other. Keep the message simple and keep your eye on the goal. Travel light and live simply. Don t get stressed out about what doesn t work. When we ve embarked on difficult work, whether it is trying to make a new nation or make a new covenant, we ve got to adhere to certain principles to make it happen. Now when we talk about the disciples in the Gospel of Mark, we ve got to remember that this gospel is not kind to the disciples. Time and time again, they ask questions, they get their assignments wrong, they become cowardly. But in this reading, Jesus simply gives them their charge: they are to go out two by two and anoint and heal. He knows that he has the ability to do this himself; he s done it before and he knows he has authority from his heavenly Father. But he delegates the authority to this small band of men, and gives them some guidance and some basic principles. Go out in pairs, both for protection and for mutual building up. Travel light. Live simply: Stay in the first place you come to. Don t look for the finest house to stay in. Stay until you ve done what you ve come to do. If they don t listen, don t worry just move on These disciples were a small group, and they knew that what they were doing was a highrisk proposition. The prevailing powers didn t much like people who questioned their authority, who disagreed with their interpretation of the law, who argued that their interpretation hurt the common people, the ones who were farmers, small craftsmen and fishermen. So a small group like this was taking a risk in making themselves and their cause visible. They needed to adhere to those core principles if they were going to succeed. 2
What was the result? They preached repentance, and cast out many demons, and anointed and cured many. When you follow simple principles, you get results. Moving ahead some seventeen hundred fifty years later, the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence also followed those core principles, and got results. They got a new nation. The work of securing that nation was not easy. Fierce battles continued for several years, but the end result was the nation we call our own today. In the same way, the disciples were successful in their first attempts to go out and do the work Jesus commanded them to do, but this was not always a complete success. The work continued. They struggled. They erred. They forgot those core principles, arguing among themselves, losing courage, losing focus. We still fight to keep to Jesus core principles, to live out the new covenant, and we still often fail. But the value of the principles remains. So it was when the Episcopal Church was founded here in the United States. We know that members of the Church of England came to America, and the first parish was established at the Jamestown Settlement, more than 400 years ago. We also know that there were people who came to America because they were being persecuted in England for their religious beliefs, such as Puritans and Quakers. In some of the early colonies, the Church of England became the established church. With the advent of the movement for independence from Great Britain, however, came a problem: all Church of England clergy were expected to pledge their allegiance in their ordination vows to the monarch, who was the head of the Church of England. Further, they were required to use the liturgies in the Book of Common Prayer, which included prayers for the monarch and for parliament. Thus, supporting their parishioners who wanted their freedom would mean they were guilty of treason. And some 3/4s of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were at least nominally Anglicans. How could they provide pastoral support without compromising their oaths? 3
Of the approximately three hundred clergy in the Church of England in America between 1776 and 1783, over eighty per cent in New England, New York, and New Jersey were loyal to the crown. This is in contrast to the less than twenty-three percent loyalist clergy in the four southern colonies. Revolutionaries saw their clergy as Tories or redcoats. Hard to pastor under those circumstances! So what happened? We re no longer call ourselves the Church of England that s a big clue. The second clue is to look at the core principles we talked about earlier: Support and respect each other. Keep the message simple and keep your eye on the goal. Travel light and live simply. Don t get stressed out about what doesn t work. In a newborn nation where principles of equality and liberty prevailed, the concept of an official state church was repulsive. So in the interest of supporting these principles, the Church of England was disestablished in America. No more official state church. But the people still wanted to worship as they had always worshipped. So shortly after the war, in 1789, the Episcopal Church was established in America. We were the first province of the Church of England outside of the British Isles. A revised version of the Book of Common Prayer was written. The church was no longer aligned with the power of the secular leadership. It was simply good people, working together, trying to live faithfully. We were in this together, in this new world that we had fought for, and the work was ahead of us, just as the disciples were in it together, doing their best to do what Jesus had instructed them to do, spreading the word. In a newborn nation where principles of equality and liberty prevailed, the concept of an official state church was repulsive. Our spiritual freedom and our salvation was bought for us by the generations who have gone before. Abraham and Sarah and their faithfulness to their covenant with Yahweh; the Hebrew people who received God s law through Moses and were called again and again into faithfulness by the prophets; and Jesus our Lord and Savior who paid the ultimate price of his life upon the cross that we might live. Jesus paid the price; that we 4
are called to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ Jesus in our generation. It s the price we re asked to pay for our freedom; and yet how we pay it has everything to do with how free we are. There is amazing freedom in calling others to Christ not because we have to in order to earn our salvation, but because we can do nothing less in response to the amazing gift of God s love. As a country, over and over our efforts to ensure the freedom of one people seems to lead to the oppression of another. It seems that no matter how hard we work to do well some evil fallout is the result. And here at home, as hard as we try to make the Pledge of Allegiance come true, we have yet to truly insure liberty and justice for all. Where do we turn for answers? We turn to Jesus Christ. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, he says, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light, words of promise that there is nothing we have to bear by ourselves: nothing too heavy for Jesus to bear with us. And, those same words, remind me of the words on the Statue of Liberty, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuge of your teeming shore. Send these the homeless, tempest tossed, to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door." Freedom is not found in a place, but in Jesus Christ. The One who guides us, strengthens us, feeds us and sustains us. At this time in our life as a community of faith, as members of St. Patrick s, the core principles still apply: Support and respect each other. Keep the message simple and keep your eye on the goal. Travel light and live simply. Don t get stressed out about what doesn t work. Remember that what we do isn t about a building, it s about Christ. Don t worry about what we don t have; focus on using what we do have. Our gifts from God in a way that 5
honors God. If something doesn t work, don t be worried, just be creative, and come up with another better way. Just as Jesus was with the disciples in the Gospel story this morning, a Godly sense of purpose informed the work of our founding Fathers. Jesus core principles shaped the creation of the Episcopal Church in America. The Holy Spirit has been guiding and inspiring the thousands of Episcopalians who gathered at General Convention these past two weeks. So too, we know, that we are not alone in our work at St. Patrick s and our workplaces, neighborhoods, and homes. Many have done this kind of work before. All have struggled, but we were never alone. Let us be comforted by that, and embrace the work ahead of us. So, as our Eucharistic celebration continues, as we approach, once again, the Table of Grace to receive what we all desperately need, what only God can provide; the spiritual nourishment that comes to us in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, let us remember, as we give thanks to God for this great nation and for the freedom that we all enjoy and, sometimes take for granted, let us remember that the call of Christian discipleship is the call to follow Christ, in the way of the Cross, which is not the way of independent selfsufficiency, but the way of sacrificial love of neighbor and even enemy. It s not an easy way, that s for sure, but, it is the way that leads to life: Abundant and eternal life! God bless The United States of America!! Amen. Resources: Sermon Central Resources for Preaching and Teaching The Text This Week: Scripture Study, Worship Links, and Resources NRSV Study Bible Wikipedia.org/wiki/The Episcopal Church History of the Episcopal Churh 6