Rev Fanny Belanger

– We’re at the end of our cycle of readings with Mark today (We covered Chapter 3-6). The disciples – it seems – have learned what they had to learn, they have been sent and, in our passage today, they come back from their mission as “Apostles” (If you have noticed the words Mark uses). As their Master, they, too, have performed “mighty deeds” and offered “power words”. They come back to Jesus proud and excited, they have so much to tell him, and it really feels that we have come full circle to a happy ending.

And yet, it is interesting to notice that as the Apostles tell Jesus about all they have said and done, Jesus does not offer a word of congratulations, or even fill them in on their new assignment, but instead, Jesus invites them to rest: “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while”.

It is interesting we hear this passage today, because at first sight it is really not what seems to be the most impressive about Mark’s Chapter 6. Actually the lectionary skips two important episodes: The feeding of the five thousands and Jesus walking on the water. (Yet – fear not – next week we will start a cycle of five weeks on John’s Chapter 6 – a chapter dedicated to the meaning of the bread as the body of Christ, so we will have many occasions to reflect on this). But for now, we are, as the Apostles, invited to leave the extraordinary to sit in the ordinary, and maybe, with them, to go to a deserted place.

So I would like to spend a little time with you to try to understand what it means and how it is relevant for us as well.

It’s important to notice, I think, that Jesus is talking about a certain kind of rest. I have read many commentaries about this passage and was surprised to notice that, most of the time, the authors of those commentaries mentioned the need of balancing work and play, job and family life, ministry and leisure. I am not saying that those things aren’t important, but to me, this is not what the Gospel is about. Jesus does not tell the Apostles to take a nap, attend a party, or even to go home to their families, rather Jesus invites them to “go away in a deserted place all by themselves”. As often in the Bible, activity is followed by a time of “rest” (Think about the story of the 7 days of creation), where “rest” is understood as “sabbath”, a time dedicated to God exclusively. In the Bible, activity, creation, is always followed by sanctification.

There are three things I would like to notice about that:

– The passage underscores the importance of prayer in our daily lives and also in our ministry. As I have mentioned many times, in Mark’s Gospel, there is always something going on. We see today that the crowd never let go of Jesus and of the Apostles. There is always something to do, always a need for healing, teaching, feeding. And for the Apostles – as for us in the church, or when we strive to follow Jesus in our daily lives – we may very well get caught in this never ending cycle of demands and needs, thinking it’s our call to do it all, to answer it all, to care of it all. And yet, Jesus is very clear today that the work is not complete without the time of rest. Rest is not there to balance ministry, rest is an essential part of ministry as it sanctifies and offers to God our activities. Jesus himself used to retreat on his own for prayer time and examination. This is the heart of ministry.

So of course today, we could wonder what part of our days we dedicate to prayer. I assume it would be a mistake to add it as “another thing to do”, rather, it’s indeed a time of “rest” – not a nap – but a “rest” as to “put back everything into God’s hands” – sanctifying the work we have done and offering the work that is to come.

– The second thing I notice, is that, as the disciples rest, Jesus takes over. He notices that the crowd is following in great distress and so, Mark tells us, he starts teaching them – only Jesus. The Apostles have disappeared. To me, it speaks to us as well that we are only followers and sent ones. In the end, we are reminded that whatever “mighty deed” we perform, whatever “powerful words” we may pronounce, it’s in the end Christ who works in the hearts, bodies and souls of the people. Resting is offering up our work to God and also letting go of it. Not clinging to our ministries and activities but “allowing”, if you will, God to use what we have said and done. The Apostles are not meant to be “clones” of Christ – they are meant to point to Christ. In this way, when they retire to a deserted place – they do what’s expected of them – They have, at some point, to get out of the way to let God act.

In the same manner, I wonder how it is for us, if we think that God expects us to do it all, or if we may come to this awareness that not only we need to let go because we certainly cannot do it all, but we are even expected to let go for our ministry to work out. Letting go does not mean letting down or not caring, it means not clinging to it, not assuming we have to do it all and all by ourselves. We have to trust God to finish the work we have started.

– Third remark: When Jesus invites the Apostles to go to a deserted place all by themselves, I think he does not speak only a bout a physical place. Rather it’s an emotional, spiritual place. We see that when they come back from their mission, the Apostles are very proud, and excited – and I think it’s a good thing they feel happy about it. Yet, there is also a warning in Jesus’s words. There is a thin line we have to walk when we have a full schedule, because we risk to become full of ourselves as well. Jesus invites his friends to reconnect with their poverty, their own neediness, to reconnect with God and to reconnect with themselves (“go by yourselves”). They, themselves, are in need of healing, are in need of grace, are in need of God. Sometimes we can also get lost in serving others. We may end up thinking we don’t need God anymore, or that there is nothing broken in us that needs attention.

So, do we dedicate time for our own healing? Are we able to sit with this emptiness we may find when we are alone – and how do we invite God in this? How can we do ministry if we carry with ourselves our own insecurities in everything we do? But are we ready to face our own brokenness and do we allow God to step into it?

I think it’s very interesting that Mark notices – again – that all those who touched the fringe of Jesus’s cloak were healed – We have talked about that a few weeks earlier with the story of the bleeding woman. To me, it does not mean that people thought Jesus was magic – well, maybe they did – but, deeper, in Mark’s words it means that people were at Jesus’s feet (Re-read our three chapters, and you will be surprised to realize how many people fall at Jesus’s feet). It’s an act of trust, abandon and humility. People are healed because they are humble in front of Christ. It looks like the Apostles are heading the wrong way when they come back to Jesus to boast about all they have done. Jesus gently invites them to reconnect with this humble attitude – and so are we. If you remember from our last sermon series, Jesus says in John’s: “Without me, you can do nothing”

– And now, I would like to finish on a question we have explored in this cycle of Mark and I told you it was Mark’s main question: Who is Jesus?

Well, isn’t it interesting, as we first glance at this text, that it seems there is no answer to this question? We have mentioned Jesus is first presented as a teacher and the healer, but then, as we dig deeper, we understand that he is the savior, the servant, the suffering one and the risen one, but what to make of this passage? Are we back to our starting point, Jesus teacher and healer and should we leave aside all we have learned going further? Well, I think Mark is still telling us who Jesus is, but instead of telling us who is Jesus by showing us what Jesus does, Mark gives us a peek into Jesus’s heart. Mark shows us a little bit of Jesus’s heart. And he says that Jesus had compassion, and we understand that this compassion is at the root of all he does for the people. Now maybe it’s a little less, or maybe it’s much more than what we expected. To me, it says that, much more than a teacher, a healer, and even a savior, Jesus is the one who has compassion. And if you notice, the crowd knows. Mark mentions that they recognized him. The Apostles still aren’t sure who is this Jesus because they try to fit him in a category (Prophet? Messiah? Son of David? Son of God?), but the crowd knows Jesus is the one who loves them with a compassionate love. And so he loves us with this kind of love, and that’s how we are invited to discover who he is – should we take the time to rest in him, naturally…

This week again, we follow the thread in Mark’s Gospel about Jesus’s identity. As I’ve mentioned several times before, the Gospel keeps on asking who is Jesus and it seems to be digging deeper each time. We have seen that Mark presents Jesus as a teacher and a healer, then shows us that Jesus is actually a savior (the resurrection of Jairus’ daughter, the calming of the storm) and then Mark narrows down the question to find out what kind of savior Jesus is. Last week passage was about demonstrating that Jesus wasn’t a rescuer – as he expects openness and collaboration in his ministry (see last sermon). And today, we are heading even more closer the cross – Jesus is a savior, and not a rescuer, and rather a “suffering servant” as John the Baptist was.

– This long and detailed story about John the Baptist seems to be interrupting the narrative flow about Jesus’s ministry, and yet it gives us important cues to understand what’s coming next. This story does not mention Jesus, or the disciples and yet we see the point. It is, if you will, a little bit like the story of Esther in the Old Testament. Not only because Herod offers to Herodias’ daughter “half of his kingdom” as did the King for Esther – an explicit reference – but also because the Book of Esther never mentions God, although we understand it is all about God. In the same way, we have to understand that if the story never mentions Jesus, it is all about Jesus.

So it looks like a “moralistic” story, and at some level it is, but if we look more deeply, it is also theological story – a story about Jesus.

First of all – what is it with this story as a moralistic story?

Well, I think we can comfortably say that it isn’t moralistic in a traditional sense because in the end, the evil ones aren’t punished. Rather, they win and the holy man loses. Yet, their victory probably does not sound good to any of us. So it’s this kind of story that, instead of telling us directly that something is right or that something is wrong, it’s the kind of story that provides a moral teaching by showing us a situation, handing us a mirror in which we can look at ourselves and question our own lives.

So how can we see ourselves through the lens of this story?

– Well, first of all, Herod is presented as a complex character instead of being just singled out as a “bad guy”. He is first of all conflicted. He likes John actually, he likes his teaching, and maybe there was some kind of religiosity in Herod: He was a Jew, he knew the Torah, he probably had admiration and respect for the prophets. We understand his desire to be good or even to be close to God – certainly because we also have this desire inside of us. Yet we quickly discover that, for Herod as it is for us, doing the right thing is uncomfortable. To really “hear John” instead of just listening to him, Herod would have to separate from his wife – but it was no easy. It’s not sure that he was insanely in love with her, rather it looks like she was a dominating person and he was under his influence.

To me, we can certainly relate to this very human side of Herod. Like him, we may like to hear about justice and righteousness and God’s will, but of course when it comes to put it in action it’s rather uncomfortable, mostly because doing the right thing is likely to displease people we would like to have on our side. And it’s something that is easy to forget when we preach love and the love of neighbor: We have a tendency to think that it means we should make everyone happy. But we see in the story that it is hardly the case, and that, in order to do the right thing, Herod should have taken the risk to displease his wife and his hosts.

More deeply, the story mentions that Herod had John killed “out of regard for his hosts”, but also “out of regard for his oath”, and I think it’s even more interesting. It looks like honoring an oath is the right thing to do, correct? Yet in this case, do you think that Herod should have honored his oath? No, we understand that he should have acknowledged in front of everyone that it was not a good idea to offer Herodias’ daughter whatever she wanted. I find it interesting because we see that, contrarily to what we often assume, leading a moral life is not just about following rules or sticking to some principles. Rules are there to guide us, but they should not be an excuse to do something awful! We have to use our own judgment all the time to do the best thing in any given circumstance.

But then the story asks another question: how do we use our judgment? Certainly there are situations where our judgment is impaired – and this is exactly what happens to Herod here. He is surrounded by the wrong persons, everybody is getting drunk and excited, included himself. It is to be noticed that the story does not seem to condemn the party itself, or even the drinking, or the sexual attraction Herod experiences, but it shows us that this context leads him to make bad decisions. I think this is certainly something we can relate to. If we want to make moral decisions, we have to remove ourselves from situations we know can impair our judgment. It may be different for each one of us. Many situations in themselves aren’t sinful or that sinful, but they can lead to sin because we are weak.

To me, this is really the point the story makes about Herod’s character – he is not a bad guy, but he is weak, makes bad decisions, and since he is the king, his bad decisions have terrible consequences. The story shows us that we need to be aware of our own weaknesses so they don’t take control of our lives. If you think about it, all Herod had to do was to say no…to declare that he promised more than he could afford, that John was off limits. But he doesn’t do that because he does not want to look stupid. How often do we do the same? We do something stupid and to hide the fact that we have done something stupid, we do something even more stupid? Leading a moral life requires humility and the ability to acknowledge that we need to change and to change our minds.

In this we find ourselves at the frontier between morality and theology because we see in action what it is to “repent” – the very thing John was teaching and Jesus taught after him. Change your minds from what you are currently doing to follow God’s righteousness. Herod incarnates the tragedy of not being able to repent, to turn back to God. Herod gets caught in a situation where he ends up having no choice (He was “greatly perplexed” actually means “He didn’t know where to turn). And so in the end John the Baptist loses his life, but Herod loses his soul. This story is a scary story, to say the least.

– Now a few words about the theological aspect of the story.

First, we talked about Jesus’ “mighty deeds” and “powerful words” in Mark’s Gospel and in this sermon series, but our theme is also a “rising opposition”, and the story shows us where the Gospel is heading. John appeared first, opening the way, but he is also the first to leave, and we can guess that’s the way things are going to be for Jesus too. Jesus is a savior, but also a suffering servant. He does not promise victory in this world, he just calls people to do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing as did John. John was willing to speak truth to power, just because it was what he had to do, even at the cost of his life. The scene of John’s burial is very powerful to me. There is a poverty and a vulnerability in doing the right thing, not knowing what the consequences will be – it includes John, his disciples, but it will also includes Jesus himself.

Yet – and this will be my conclusion – in all of this there is a promise of a Resurrection, oddly spoken by the mouth of Herod himself, who fears that Jesus is “John raised from the dead”. Jesus is not John reincarnated (that would be impossible since they are the same age), but it is the same spirit of truth working in him. It is scary to Herod because he fears judgment and condemnation for what he has done, yet there would have been for him another chance for repentance – even when all seemed said and done. We know that Herod didn’t take this opportunity to repent and that, a few years later, when faced with Jesus he will also let Jesus be put to death. Herod had sealed his fate. The evil ones win and the holy man loses, but only in this realm. Jesus’s story is not complete if we don’t look all the way towards the Resurrection.

– Our Gospel today continues right after the passage we have heard last week, after the Resurrection of Jairus’ daughter (“Jesus left the place” = Jairus’ house). And you would expect that people would be very excited with Jesus after the mighty deeds he performed, healing a woman who had been sick for 12 years, raising back to life a little girl – and yet today we come across one of those passages where Jesus is harshly rejected (and it happens many times in the Gospels).

Of course, we know that Jesus was rejected by religious leaders – and we can, to some extend, understand that. Jesus did not always go “by the book” (The Torah/ God’s Law), or at least Jesus did not understand it in the way it was often taught at the time. So Jesus threatened some of the religious authorities’ power. Yet what we see today is a bit more surprising: Jesus was also misunderstood by his people (He finds himself in his home town), simple folks who don’t have positions to be protective of. In this, Mark comes back to a theme already developed in Chap 3 when Jesus’s family goes out to look for him because he has “gone out of his mind”, according to their own words. Here, things get worse though: Not only is Jesus misunderstood, he is also rejected and put down. Indeed, calling Jesus “The son of Mary” could be a way of saying that they don’t know who is father is. At the very best people wonder aloud who does Jesus think he is.

And actually, maybe that’s what Mark wants us to think about too: Who is Jesus? And I think I’ve already mentioned that this question is actually the thread throughout his Gospel. We have noticed that as we progress in the Gospel, Jesus is increasingly presented not only as a teacher and a healer, but also as a savior. In Chap 4 and 5 in Mark, Jesus saves people from the hostility of nature (by calming the storm), from the power of the demons (exorcised the Gerasene man) and he saves a woman and a girl from the power of disease and death (what we read last week).

And yet, as we see today, Jesus is rejected. If you think about it, it does not make sense, right? Why would people reject a Savior? I am currently reading a book that was released last year, a book by Barrie Wilson and it talks about the quest of a Messiah. The author notices that we all have a longing for a savior, not only in religion, but also in pop culture (Superheroes). When I read this passage of Mark, I wonder though. Do people really want a Savior? Or is it that they don’t want the kind of Savior Jesus was? And maybe this is the question Mark invites us to explore today: What kind of Savior was Jesus?

Well to me, the thing is, in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is presented as a Savior, but he isn’t a rescuer. Yes, he helps those who cannot help themselves, yet contrarily to most of our superheroes, Jesus doesn’t just save little girls and people from accidents and then goes back to his cave! Jesus expects openness to his teachings, readiness to put them in practice and Jesus expects collaboration in his ministry. We saw last week that Jesus couldn’t do miracles when people didn’t take him seriously – he had to drive them out of the house – Today Mark says plainly: “Jesus could not do any deed of power there”. Jesus does not save people in spite of themselves, does not impose himself to people, he does not do it without us even if his grace is offered to all. We saw how Mark invites us to make ourselves vulnerable to Jesus, but Jesus made himself vulnerable too, and he paid the price.

– So why would people reject Jesus, if really we are all longing for a Savior? People who don’t compete with Jesus’s power but are from his village, and his family?
Maybe they didn’t like his fame – it can be annoying to have a childhood friend or a former classmate who makes it when we don’t.
Maybe they were jealous of his closeness to God – Why would God have picked him over them?
But maybe what was really “offending” them, as Mark puts it, was Jesus’ teaching.

According to Mark, Jesus’s teaching and preaching was all about repenting and changing. Obviously, these people didn’t like it that Jesus has changed, and they didn’t want to change either.

– To me, this is what we find in this passage is that Mark made the point that Jesus was a Savior, but he is the type of Savior people don’t want, even if he is the Savior we need. We want a Savior who can fix things when things go wrong, and I guess everybody could agree with that, but are we ready to welcome a Savior who show us that we have to acknowledge our shortcomings, change and amend our lives?

And so when Mark says that Jesus could no do any deed of power there…except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them”, we have to understand that, mostly, what Jesus was prevented to do was not in his healing ministry, rather he could not, or would not, change people’s mind about him. Jesus cannot repent for them. It is their decision to make to “repent”, to turn back to God.

– And so, what about us? Is wisdom or faith or holiness something we are really looking for, or do we cling to our habits and old patterns as long as we’re doing okay?

Are we using our relationship with God to control outcomes in our lives, or are we looking for real closeness with God and let God save us from hurting ourselves, our neighbors, non human creatures and our planet – because this is really what we need to be saved from?

Again, we see in Mark’s that familiarity with Jesus leads to domestication. People’s closeness to Jesus prevents them from taking him seriously. They think they know him but they don’t. For us as well, sometimes our closeness (as Christians) is a way to keep him at a distance – we think we know what Jesus is about and we don’t let him surprise us or lead us to change. We see that often in the Mark’s Gospel – and that’s the case today, Jesus marvels the faith of people who don’t know him, and is amazed at the faith of those who knows him – a serious warning for us!

– Now to the second part of our Gospel today. We see that Jesus does not ask only for welcome and openness, but also for collaboration in ministry. Jesus is not this kind of rescuer who wants to do it all by himself. He wants his disciples to “graduate” and to be able to do what he does! It’s the second time in Mark’s Gospel that we hear that Jesus sends out his disciples. As I’ve mentioned before, they learn by doing, but also they are supposed to share what they have learn – and I guess this passage asks questions more specifically to us as a church.

The disciples are appointed for a mission. Jesus picked his disciples so he could send them out to make Jesus known and make a difference in the world, Jesus did not pick his disciples so they could have a nice time together. As we rejoice today to be finally “back home” in the sanctuary, let’s remember that the church is “an institution that does not exist for the benefit of its members”. We have to keep on wondering where is Jesus sending us today, to whom, and for what purpose – this is what church is about. Of course we need to come to the sanctuary to receive the teaching and the sacraments, but our real work as Christians starts on Monday morning, in the midst of our daily activities and in our encounters with others.

– The last part of our Gospel today respond to the question on how we are to carry this mission. Jesus asks his disciples to take with them the minimum – and to me it says two things, materially and spiritually.

Materially: There is actually very little the disciples need, and what they need will be mostly provided by the generosity of strangers and/or God’s providence. They have to remember that the most important is to share the message. What about us today? In our churches, we can focus on many details about leadership, organization, communication and so on…Yet we need to have this question in minds: How does it serve the Gospel? Maybe we don’t need as much “stuff” as we think we do.

The advice Jesus gives is mostly spiritual though: Jesus does not want his disciples to get stuck. He tells them to move on when they encounter rejection. As so the question for us could be as well: Where is it that we lose our time and our energy, and where do we have to re-focus our mission? Where is it that we are needed, heard, welcome and how could we focus on those areas of ministry?

– Today, we continue our journey (geographical and spiritual) in Mark’s Gospel. If the beginning of Chapter 4 was dedicated to Jesus’s teaching, the end of the chapter and chapter 5 are focused on Jesus’ miracles: Jesus calming the storm (last week), Jesus casting out demons (beginning of Chapter 5, we don’t have this passage in our lectionary) and today Jesus’s acts of healing that will actually result in a Resurrection. After displaying his power in his teaching, Jesus displays his power over nature, demons, and – as of today – power over disease and even over death.

The structure of the passage we have is very typical of Mark’s Gospel, with a story inside another story. Maybe Mark wrote this way to sort of insist on a point, or maybe, as we mentioned previously, the action in Mark’s Gospel is so fast paced that Jesus had do two things at the same time. Or maybe a story sheds light or another story, they explain and complement each other.

If you look at our characters today, it is certainly interesting to notice how they balance each other. Jairus and the bleeding woman seem to be complete opposite. Jairus, as a leader of the synagogue is certainly a well established man, well known and respected, learned and religious, surrounded by family and friends. On the other way around, we read that the bleeding woman has spent all her money. What the story does not say, but Jesus’s audience would know, is that the woman was considered impure, nobody could touch her without making themselves impure as well, and so she was probably very lonely – unable to have children, probably divorced, and she had no access to most of the religious activities of her people – which could also explain her religiosity that almost falls in the category of superstition: “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well” so she thinks.

And yet. There is something common to the leader of the synagogue and to the bleeding woman: They are both at their wits’ end. They have exhausted all their resources. It is said plainly about the woman, as for Jairus, as a leader of the synagogue, if he asks a wandering preacher most his peers are suspicious about, it indicates clearly that he does not know whom to turn to. And maybe saying that the two characters are at their wits’ end is putting it mildly: They’re desperate.

And so today, both of them fall at Jesus’s feet.

– First thing I would like to notice with you is that according to Mark, both Jairus and the bleeding woman need Jesus, in the same way – no more, no less. And it’s interesting because we sometimes think that Jesus was only interested in helping the poor and the outcast – and he was certainly interested in helping them – but it’s more than that: Jesus is interested in helping all those who can’t help themselves, which means: absolutely everybody, the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, the religious and the non religious. The only requirement is that they would acknowledge their need, or rather, that they would open their door, their heart to Jesus. And it wouldn’t have been easy for both of our characters.

It wasn’t easy for Jairus because he had to acknowledge that all his knowledge about God, his wisdom, his rites and his prayers couldn’t save his own daughter. It wouldn’t have been easy for the woman because she couldn’t acknowledge her disease in front of the crowd and in front of the Master. She was considered impure, and she was probably ashamed too. Even today there is still a taboo around menstruation – you know don’t tell people about that, and especially not men – so I can’t imagine how it was at the time. There is a simple reason why the woman does not ask Jesus to heal her, and rather tries to catch his cloak instead. She couldn’t ask in front of everybody. She was ashamed of her body – or she knew people would make her feel this way.

So, I have two questions for us today about the story.

– My first question is: Do we acknowledge that all of us and all around us need Christ, and are we ready to make room for them and to help them have this faith encounter? Remember, in this section of the Gospel, Jesus is training his disciples, teaching them who is his and showing them what to do to be his witnesses. Jesus didn’t heal to make a statement but he was making statement all right. And the statement is that still need him, because in the end, no matter our social status, our wealth, our relationships, we still have times in our lives when we feel broken, because we are at our wits’ end when serious disease and death strike. Remember, Jesus does not prove himself only to be a healer, rather he acts as a savior. We notice that last week: Jesus did not just calm the storm on the boat, what he did was rescuing his friends from a certain death.

How do we make it possible for others to get to know their savior? Well, that’s a question we could ask ourselves as individuals and as a church. I am excited that at St Margaret’s we are going to launch a program fro newcomers and all those who want to start afresh in the Christian faith. Like the bleeding woman, I am sure we often have visitors in our pews we are trying to “touch Jesus’s cloak”, have a glimpse of him, people who don’t feel they are so worthy but still are looking for a word of comfort, for meaning in their lives, for friendship and acceptance, ad we should be ready to welcome them. I love it that Jesus does not just let the woman go away with her gift, he wants to engage with her, to let her know she is noticed, loved and that she belongs. He calls her “daughter”. She is a daughter to him with the same love that the little girl is Jairus’ daughter. He takes time with her although he is own his way to an important man’s place. But everybody is as important in Jesus’s eyes.

– Now my second question is for us, more personally. As we noticed before, we see that, in spite of all their differences, what’s common to our two characters is that they are being willing to open themselves to Jesus. To ask for help, as Jairus, or as the woman, to “tell the truth”. To me, it is very interesting to notice that when Jesus praises the woman’s faith, we often assume that he praises the fact that she touched her cloak to seek for healing. I don’t think this is what it’s about. Jesus is not praising magic or superstition. Jesus praises the woman’s faith after Mark tells us that although the woman is all fearful and trembling, she steps out of the crowd, “fell down before [Jesus] and told him the whole truth”. She could have run away…but she chose to make herself known, and this is what faith is about.

We talked about faith last week – Jesus taught his disciples to have faith in the storm and we said that faith was a “good mix of trust, humility and boldness”. What the Gospel teaches us this week is that faith takes also vulnerability. And so my question for us today is: Do we have this vulnerability? Do we engage in faith as a man of the synagogue, who basically could live through faith as an occupation, a center of interest or a way to have a social status, do we engage faith as a woman of the street, with bit of superstition, a taste for magic and a bit of drama, or are we ready to be transformed in the faith of Jairus and the faith of the bleeding woman, looking for a faith that that will invite Jesus to really transform our lives? Are we ready to tell the whole truth about ourselves, to show Jesus who we are inside, our hurts, our sins, our powerlessness over our own destinies?

– And that leads us to the last point of the story: We need to take Jesus seriously. When Jesus arrives at Jairus’ house, he promises healing and Resurrection to all and the friends and family laugh at him! And so Jesus turn away from them, they don’t get to witness the miracle. I don’t think Jesus is trying to punish them by pushing them out of the room – it is said in other places in the Gospel that sometimes Jesus couldn’t do any miracle because of people’s lack of faith – so he had to turn away. In the same way, Jesus cannot help us if we don’t take him seriously by being plenty honest, vulnerable and trusting and ready to let him do what he needs to do for us? Jesus turned away from those who didn’t take him seriously, but he never turned away those who came to him with their whole heart. Maybe that’s all the faith we’re required to put in him.

If you remember from last week, we talked about Jesus’s role as a teacher in Mark’s Gospel. In contrast with the three other Gospels, in Matthew, Luke and John, Jesus’s teachings are somewhat limited in Mark. Instead, as we noticed last week, in Mark’s, Jesus is presented as a man of action, always on the move, spending most of his time with people, performing healing and exorcisms – and traveling quite a bit.

We have noticed that the Gospel we heard last Sunday, about the different parables of the seed, was kind of the pause in the narrative – we saw Jesus sitting with the crowds to give them images to ponder about what the kingdom of God could look like – This Sunday we are back for more action…and it’s quite dramatic to say the least. We find ourselves on the very evening of that day where Jesus gave us a pause and took time for teaching, and as he and his disciples move forward to another place, they encounter this powerful storm that threatens to overturn their boat.

One mistake we should avoid doing is to believe that we have nothing to learn from this episode and that Jesus has nothing to teach through this event. Mark did not pack his Gospel with action so people wouldn’t get bored, it’s not a blockbuster movie, rather everything in his Gospel are an occasion for learning and we discover that if Jesus taught a lot through parables, he also taught a lot through experiences. The story we have heard today is, if you will, an “acted parable”. Jesus uses the opportunity of this rather dramatic incident to show something to his disciples – and there is still today a lot we can learn from it.

In the first part of our reflection today, I would like to notice is what we may learn about ourselves in this story:

– First thing we could notice is that Jesus calls his disciples to trust. We may be tempted to say that the disciples weren’t very trusting people, but we shouldn’t blame the disciples for getting very anxious in the situation they are in. Mark doesn’t tell us that they were in some kind of “turbulence” during their crossing, rather Mark says that it was a “great storm” – not just adverse winds.

And so, instead of feeling bad when it’s difficult to trust in our own storms, I think it should help us accept our feelings – since we see that the disciples found themselves in the same place. Moreover, we can see that Jesus, although physically present in the storm, didn’t seem to offer any kind of help before they asked him. For us, in the same way, we may have moments when we feel in danger and quite forsaken. Rather than blaming ourselves for lacking trust – or blaming others or God for failing to rescue us – we need to learn to take the next step. Trust is not so much about what we feel, but how we decide we should act on our feelings.

– The disciples decide to ask Jesus for help. When Jesus rebukes them, making comments about their lack of faith, I don’t think he is upset about being woken up, but rather about being accused of letting them “perish” (Him, the author of life!). We need to trust that Jesus does not want to let us perish (which in the Gospel, is a little different than dying – perishing is dying in sin, or without having accomplished any purpose), but that we can turn to him. This is I think the heart of trust. It’s really hard to get rid of anxious feelings, but maybe we can choose to trust that there is a something, or someone!, greater than our fear.

It’s interesting to read the Gospel in Greek because the word “fear” is used both for what the disciples experience when they face the storm, but then it says as well that they experience “a great fear” when they see Jesus calming the storm (and not “awe”, as in our translation today). To me, this is this sense they have that there is much more power in Jesus than in all the other things they could be afraid of – and I think Jesus asks us to trust that. It’s not about not being afraid, not being anxious, but trusting that he is there beyond our fears and our anxieties. Rather than obsessing on getting rid of our feelings, we can just turn to him.

– Now, and this is my third remark about the disciples, I think the teaching moment is not only about learning to trust and to ask for help. More deeply, I gather from the story that Jesus helps the disciples face their own powerlessness. You know, they must have started to feel pretty confident about themselves following the Master. And yet, they still had to realize their own mortality and that they had no power over their own lives. This is probably the root of all fears, that we cannot save ourselves, that we cannot give life to ourselves. Jesus reminds the disciples that he has this power but moreover, that this is his will for them, that they will live (physically for a while, but mainly spiritually).

The disciples have to learn humility to be able to let God act through them, that they are at their core powerless. Yet, the story also tells us that the disciples shouldn’t be complacent about their powerlessness either. Maybe some of us feel overly confident and they need to learn humility, but I guess some of us, or at certain times of their lives, just give up on themselves or on anything they can do. The story reminds us that even if we are in a situation where there is nothing we can do, we still have prayer, we can still ask God to intervene in our crisis.

And so – as a conclusion about the disciples and what we can learn for ourselves – I would say that the story shows us what faith looks like, as a good mix of trust, humility but also boldness. But maybe, there is more to that in the story – I would like to touch briefly on that in a second part of our reflection today.

The story you see is not really about the disciples – the story is about Jesus – and it’s actually the main thread in Mark’s Gospel. Throughout the Gospel, Mark wants to answer this question: “Who is Jesus?” and it’s exactly on that note that our passage concludes today: ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’

– Who is Jesus? Well, as we have just discussed, we see that Jesus is a teacher (It’s after all the way the disciples call him when they wake him up) and we see that this story in many aspects is a teaching moment. Yet if you think about it, it’s rather rough for a teaching! More than just a teaching moment, it is a saving moment. Jesus displays his power as a savior, not just as a teacher or a healer or even an exorcist, there were a lot of teachers and healers and exorcists at the time – and probably still today. But there is only one savior – and not one that just helps in difficult situations, but one who saves our life – not our physical life but out eternal life!

In the Episcopal Church, we don’t talk much about Jesus as our savior, so I invite you this week to think a little more about that. That we are invited to trust that Jesus save our eternal beings in the same way he saved his disciples from death on that day.

– Now the second thing to notice about that Jesus that is really important, is that Jesus acts like God. Notice that Jesus does not pray to ask for a miracle, rather he uses his own authority to call out on the wind and the sea, and this is really what manifests the power of God through the Bible on very important occasions: When the world is created, or when the sea is parted before the Hebrews when fleeing Egypt. Jesus is not the incarnation of God the creator, but authority (and it’s really a display of authority we have here!) authority has been given to Jesus over the created world. And so this passage is what we call a “theophany”, a manifestation of God.

What Marks asks us to trust here is that Jesus really embodies who God is, and manifest to us the character of God. A God, again, who creates life and save us from death, even in the chaos of a natural world we don’t understand and cannot control – and this is the source of the trust we need to put in God. That there is no situation, problem crisis that is beyond this power.

– And so lastly, we see that Jesus’s power is to bring peace and order – not as a cop using coercion, but Jesus brings peace and order in the same way that God brought peace and order when God created the world, by calling each to their own being, and where it is supposed to be. We noticed a few weeks ago that the work of the Devil in Mark is to create division – the work of the Devil in Mark is also to create confusion and chaos. Jesus accomplishes the work of God by putting back the world in the order intended by God, a creative and life giving order. And this is of course the way we are supposed to live too.

Conclusion: Jesus manifests who God is through his teaching about the kingdom of God, but more deeply, Jesus manifests who God is through his own action and character: A God who saves, creates and restores. And this is about this power that we will learn more next week.

This Sunday we continue our cycle of readings in Mark’s Gospel and it’s interesting because most of the time in his Gospel, Mark presents Jesus as a man of action. As you may already know, Mark’s Gospel is the shortest of all the Gospels and it is a narrative that is very fast paced: Jesus is always on the move from one place to another, manifesting God’s kingdom in performing many miracles, healing and exorcisms.

And yet, I am saying that it’s interesting because this week we have come to a sort of a pause, or if you prefer, a kind of a parenthesis. Most of the fourth Chapter of Mark’s we have just read from is dedicated to Jesus’s teachings, and to the specific and sort of unique way Jesus taught: by using parables, or stories, images. We actually find three parables in this very chapter, and all of them are about planting and growing seeds as an illustration for what the Kingdom of God looks like.

And before we go any further, I would like to notice that it’s very nice, kind of touching, to hear those stories (at least two of them) on this joyful day when we gather to celebrate a baptism, because those stories are of course full of promise. They talk about the unexpected growth of a seed, that happens we don’t know how, in a way we cannot control and giving fruit beyond expectations. It connects with something very deep within ourselves, as it certainly did for the people who listened to Jesus: Simply put, it’s about the miracle of life, this amazement we may have when we farm or when we garden, and we get to observe the coming forth of fruit and flowers, or, to our even greater amazement, when a human being is born and we watch them beginning to grow into their own person to fulfill their own destiny. It’s a joy and a mystery that is beyond our comprehension – although it happens all around us and to us, constantly and consistently: Life is there and keeps bringing novelty, changes and transformation.

As Christians, it says even more to us. We know that in those parables, Jesus does not talk only about the miracle of life, but with that and beyond that, Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God. For Jesus – and it’s a beautiful thing to be reminded of on the day of a baptism – the Kingdom of God is given to us. We do nothing to earn it and we certainly cannot control it, but it’s pure grace – it only has to be received – and, again, this is what we do on the day of our baptism. Baptizing a young child (rather than an adult) makes us even more aware of the gift: You don’t need to have done great or even good things, you don’t need to know all the right things, you just have to come to God to be adopted as God’s child. On the day of baptism, we plant this little seed that is the grace of God and we trust God to do the work in the hearts of our children. If we are invited to be companions on the way, as parents, godparents, grandparents and also as a Christian community, there is certainly nothing we can do to control what God will do in the hearts of those we bring to God. It’s all about trust and letting go and waiting on God to do the work.

And I don’t know what you think but to me this is very interesting that in Mark’s Gospel where Jesus is a man of action, always on the move, always busy, yet Jesus teaches us to rest in God and to trust that God will do the work! We have seen last week that we are in this moment in the Gospel when Jesus is sending out his disciples to preach the kingdom of God and I can’t help thinking, well, what a strange thing to say when you’re hiring people that whatever they do, it will happen anyway! But it’s in this deep trust in the power of God that Jesus found his strength and energy to do all the things God called him to do – as so we are invited to the same trust to be Jesus’s true disciples.

Now there is more we need to notice about this passage of Mark’s Gospel. As I’ve said earlier, it’s kind of a pause, a parenthesis, a snapshot of Jesus’s teaching – and as we get ready to follow Jesus (in baptism) or as we re-examine (during this liturgical season) what it means to be a disciple, it’s important to think about about the heart of Jesus’s teaching – and I think this is what this passage does:

Mark uses this passage to tell us what Jesus taught – the kingdom of God – and how Jesus taught – by using parables, images, stories. And to me, this is what Mark wants to realize:

– The first thing Mark wants us to realize is that Jesus’s teaching wasn’t primarily moralistic. It’s interesting isn’t to listen to these parables because I think that one of the things we often assume about church is that church is here to teach us what to do, what is bad and what is good, but we see today that Jesus’s teaching was far from being moralistic. In Mark’s Gospel, we see that Jesus did not come on earth to tell people what to do, how they should behave, Jesus came to make us known the good news of the Kingdom of God – that God is at work in this world, within ourselves, even when we are still a very young child, or even when we are just a tree, a shrub or a seed. We see that Jesus’s teaching isn’t about right or wrong, bad or good, but Jesus’s teaching make manifest a new reality, a reality that is hidden to our eyes and yet is present in the midst of us.

– The second thing Mark wants us to understand is the way Jesus taught, using parables, images, and why Jesus taught this way. We often see in the Gospel that Jesus didn’t hesitate to tell things as they were to people when he thought they were wrong or when they were bothering him. And so what we need to understand is that when Jesus used images, it wasn’t because he didn’t dare to speak directly, the stories he told weren’t a way for him to sugarcoat something difficult. On the other way around, Jesus’s parables were there to manifest something beautiful. And we know that, right, that Jesus’s parables aren’t about us first, they are about the kingdom of God, that’s actually how they all start, with those words: “The kingdom of God is like…”

Jesus spoke in parables – and through the Gospels is still speaking to us – because that’s the way people could understand a reality beyond their understanding. Mark says that Jesus “spoke the word as [the people] were able to hear it”. We cannot apprehend, or fully apprehend, the kingdom of God with our senses or with our intelligence. So Jesus spoke first to people’s imagination and to their hearts. And so instead of trying to dig under the parable or the image to find the idea, or “what Jesus really meant”, we have to let Jesus’s words find their way inside of us. We cannot read his words to find a key to all our problems in life or to understand everything about God, but as we listen, we are drawn closer to the mystery of God’s revelation and God’s love to us. It takes time, it takes a life time.

– And so to me this is the third thing Mark would like us to realize, it is that it’s only in following Jesus that we can come slowly to an understanding: Mark says that Jesus “explained everything in private to his disciples”. To me, the sense of the parable of the seed is that it’s an image about what the word of God does inside of us. It grows little by little, until it is fully mature. We have to let it rest inside of us, and as the sower who does not know what happens when the seed falls in the ground, the word of God develops inside of us and gives birth to something new – and this something new is us born into God’s reality. As we discover more about the Kingdom of God, our shortcomings and sins are also revealed. The more we know about holiness, the more we realize our brokenness, but yet, again, it’s not so much about good and bad, as it it about transformation. Morality is about doing good things but it does not necessarily bring transformation. We can do good things on surface for different motives. But again, Jesus’s teaching isn’t about a moral life, it is about growing in a spiritual life. Jesus’s teaching is about the transformation of our being, or “conversion”. The revelation of the Kingdom of God always invites a response on our behalf and this response is conversion: Turning to Christ, which is exactly what we do on the day of our baptism and each time we renew our baptismal promises.

So let’s get started.

From this Sunday until the end of July, we will be reading through Marks’s Gospel from chap 3 to 6 – a sermon series I’ve (ambitiously?) called: “”Powerful words, mighty deeds and rising opposition”.

As you may know, Mark’s Gospel is really divided in two parts: Jesus’s ministry in Galilee and then Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem, the turning point being Peter’s confession of faith and the transfiguration Chapter 8-9. At the beginning of his ministry, in Galilee, Jesus draws attention to himself by performing healing, casting demons and proclaiming the coming of the kingdom of God.

As he does so, of course, he attracts a lot of people, but he also gives rise to a growing opposition – an opposition that will eventually lead to his death, but also to his Resurrection as the disciples get to understand what it really means to be the Messiah – “The suffering servant”

But for now, we are in Jesus’s early ministry. Our passage today actually starts after Jesus appoints the twelve – “sends” them. We see that Jesus does not only call disciples, people who will sit at his feet to learn from him, Jesus sends them on the mission as well – the disciples learn by doing. Not only do they take in Jesus’s example, but they are to imitate him and to participate in his work – even at the beginning of their formation.

Now it says something for us, of course. When we follow Jesus in our daily lives, it’s not only about learning about him, we learn from him and we learn from him as we do, as we imitate him, as we strive to love as he loved, as we strive to do God’s will as Jesus’s did God’s will – and it’s actually the topic of our passage today:

Jesus recognizes his disciples as those who do God’s will. Jesus goes even as far as to say that those who do God’s will are to him “Brother, sister and mother” – Not just “students” or “apprentices”, but his own flesh and blood. But we know that don’t we that Jesus wants us to become his very flesh and blood – that’s the reason Jesus gave us the Eucharist. It’s not only about following, it’s about belonging.

But let’s start with the beginning. To me, there are three main things to notice about the passage we have heard today.

– The first thing that is important is this re-definition Jesus makes of what it means to be close to him, to be one of his kindred. We see that Jesus does not necessarily feel close to his natural family, the people he was “assigned at birth” if you will. Actually, they are so different from Jesus that they think that Jesus is not “right in his mind” (The translation we’ve heard today say “some people” think that Jesus is out of his mind, but the original Greek links this declaration to Jesus’s own family). But then, if Jesus does not necessarily feel close to his natural family, he does not feel necessarily close to religious authorities either – it’s actually an understatement to say that since some scribes think Jesus is possessed by a demon.

As so we discover that Jesus does not like to be labeled and does not conform to the expectations. As a son, a brother, or even as a good Jew or as a rabbi.

And I think there is something important in that. To me, what Jesus does is not so much that he downplays the importance of family, rather he rejects “familiarity” for another kind of bound. Jesus rejects “domestication”, Jesus does not want to be domesticated – to become who people wants him to be – and he does that well since we see that the people who should be naturally close to him or welcome him as a peer think he is out of his mind or possessed. Jesus is not who they expect him to be.

And to me this is of importance because I wonder, as we examine the way we are to follow Jesus, if belonging to Jesus’s family as Christians does not sometimes turns into “familiarity” and “familiarity” turns into “domestication”. Having been Christians for 10, 30 or 50 years, we end up thinking we know who is Jesus – what Jesus would say, what Jesus would want, or what Jesus would do. And we can still love Jesus very much – certainly his family did love him – and yet we misunderstand him, Jesus becomes who we would like him to be – Most of the time a savior or a god who confirms our expectations instead of challenging them.

And so the challenge for us – but also the joy and the excitement – as we go through this liturgical season is to get to know Jesus again, to remove the labels we have put on Jesus, and as we re-examine who Jesus is, we can reexamine how is it that we should live our Christians lives. I certainly invite you to let yourself be surprised by the Jesus in Mark’s Gospel – who certainly did not come to the people to make them feel better about themselves, but so they can change their hearts and change their ways, and from there, how they can change the world.

– Which takes me to my second point.

Being part of Jesus’s family isn’t about flesh and blood, at least not in a biological sense, and it’s not only about belonging to a religion – the religious leaders who rejected Jesus shared the same Scriptures, the same rites, and the same faith than Jesus – they would worship in the same synagogues and sacrifice to the same Temple. But Jesus identifies those who truly belong with him as those who “do the will of God”. The sin against the Holy Spirit Jesus mentions is this way people can label themselves as godly and religious, when they consistently refuse to amend their behavior and call right and holy what is wrong and unfair. But as the first disciples, we are first called to do God’s will rather than giving ourselves titles or declaring that we are God’s family. What makes us part of the family isn’t our birth right but what we concretely do. And we know what is God’s will in Jesus’s eyes, rather than a set of rules, it means to have compassion and to work for justice.

In concrete circumstances of course, we may not have the same understanding of what is God’s will. But we are certainly called to seek God’s will together, to do the best we can to stick to Jesus’s example: teaching the love of God, denouncing abusive power, condemning lies and hypocrisy, practicing a religion of the heart rather than performing religious rites….

As I mentioned earlier, Jesus wants his disciples to learn by doing. And we also learn by doing, by serving together. In the end, Jesus tells us, this is what makes our unity. Seeking and doing God’s will – that it is actually the source of our unity, and this is my third and last point.

– Jesus notices in this passage that a divided house or kingdom cannot stand. And this is actually the way of the devil. You may know that st its root, the word “devil” means “the one who divides”. And we can certainly witness how much evil comes from division: in nations, in families, in churches, in marriages and even within ourselves. So we are right to seek unity. Yet unity isn’t about proclaiming that we are one big family, again it’s not about sharing a common label “Christians” or “Episcopalians” or in our case the “people worshiping at St Margaret’s”. Our unity – and our belonging with Christ and to Christ – should come from our desire to do God’s will together.

In many churches, a common mistake is to think that we have to get along and agree on everything and then we can seek God’s will. But as he sends his disciples, Jesus shows us that we first need to seek God’s will and then we can be with one another in harmony because we have a common goal, a mission: “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother”.

And so Division is the work of the devil, very likely, but sometimes conflicts also come when we don’t have a clear sense of what we are supposed to accomplish together. We see that in churches, but also in work places, in marriages and so on. Unity comes from what people seek to do together to bless one another and to bless the world. When they see a bigger picture than their own, limited will and desires. We can more easily leave our conflicts aside when we have a sense of purpose.

Well, I think it’s good news, isn’t it? Because in the end, Jesus invites us to live beyond ourselves, in a perpetually expanding family and mission field and all we have to do is to start somewhere – but about that, we’ll talk next week.

As always when I prepare a sermon, I have a look at different commentaries, and it’s often quite helpful, yet this week I felt a little saddened by the fact that I read a lot about Trinity Sunday being the Sunday in the church where we don’t focus that much on Scriptures, rather we talk about an “idea” – The Trinity.

It made me feel sad because of course the Trinity isn’t an idea, the Trinity is our God – and today we are called to celebrate our God in the fullness of God’s revelation to us through Jesus-Christ. Our readings, in fact, are quite powerful, and they don’t deal with a lot of theological disputes, rather, they express a sense of awe and amazement, whether with the story of the call of Isaiah who has this glorious vision from heaven, or with the psalmist who finds the glory of God expressed in every earthly creature – and if, true, Nicodemus comes to see Jesus to inquire about his God, he does so compelled by the wonderful signs Jesus has manifested to the people.

If you have noticed, we have, at last, finished with our cycle of readings through the Farewell Discourse in John’s and we are back in the beginning of the Gospel (Chapter 3), and it’s a good place to start again – and this is actually what our Gospel deals with: starting again, being re-born. We celebrate today the Trinity and indeed, in this cycle of readings in John, we have had an overview of the way we understand God – or better – of the way God has been revealed to us: With the Father as the source of life and love, with the Son who comes to reconcile us to the Father through teaching, healing and mainly forgiveness of sins, and with the Spirit whose presence among us continues the work of the Son bringing us sanctification.

And so you see, the Trinity, it has little to do with an idea, it’s not an abstraction, on the other way around, it’s very concrete! It expresses the way God is in the process of manifesting who God is, giving us life, making God known and drawing us closer to God. The amazement for us, as believers in Christ, is not so much that God is remote for us and so different than we are, being so perfect and holy, although God certainly is, rather, the amazement is that God, being all of the above, is present to us, for us and among us.

Now, of course it calls for a response on our behalf, and to me this is what our Gospel today deals with – Jesus tells Nicodemus that he has to be re-born to see the kingdom of God. Now what does it mean exactly?

Well, let’s first have a look at Nicodemus – who he is at the beginning of the story and what is it in his character that Jesus would call him to a second birth. I actually really like that, after spending so much time on Jesus’s discourse, we are back meeting actual people in our readings, because I think it helps us greatly to make a connection with the texts – and the truth is, the more time I’ve spent looking at Nicodemus, the more I found the many ways we can relate to him.

Nicodemus is not an outsider, you see. He knows about Jesus, and he actually quite likes him and approves of his work and teachings. We see that he is curious, and he is a bit skeptic too – he has questions and he wants to have answers to his questions, he is brave enough, and he is a little scared too. He does not want to judge, and he does not want to be judged. He is full of good will and good intentions, and he also lacks real flame and passion.

Nicodemus is disciple material, if you will, and he isn’t yet a real disciple.

And so, Jesus calls him to conversion – to be reborn, as the text puts it – a well known expression in Christian churches.

And well, I find it interesting to put this expression back into context, because I don’t know what you think but to me, we have used this expression so much we don’t really know what it means anymore. Most us would think it means to give our life to Jesus, to abandon a life of sin and addictions, start attending church and read the Bible and be a good person. And there is certainly some of that, but it does not cover it all, far from that. This understanding of conversion can also make us think that it’s not something we are concerned with, being already Christians, when in fact, as I said, Nicodemus looks so much like us – It may very well still means something for each one of us – To be reborn.

The thing is, being “born again” is often understood as referring to conversion that happens once in a time, quickly and quite painlessly. But if we’re honest, yes, birth certainly occurs once in a life time, yet most of the times it’s far from being a quick and painless process. I preached last week about how Jesus calls us to make ourselves available, and sure, we cannot give new life to ourselves as surely as the baby in the womb cannot give life to themselves – the best we can do is to allow the process to take place, to not resist the Spirit of God that wants to bring us the life of the Spirit. Yet, if we have to make ourselves available, it’s not just about showing up, more deeply we have to be willing to change and to not hold on to what is old. Can you imagine a baby resisting natural birth because they are so happy in the womb? It would feel ridiculous, as Nicodemus observes. And yet, this is where we may find ourselves spiritually. We are quite happy where we are and we are not quite interested in growing, meaning mainly: interested in changing. It does not mean so much “becoming a good person” – although it can mean that too – but as I said, change is about letting go of the old – sins, anger, resentment but also despair, resignation, apathy. Jesus insists that it is a spiritual conversion, not just a moral one. In this, “good people” needs conversion too: To believe that a new life is possible, that is not cluttered by the hurt and failures of our past.

I wonder if it’s one of the reasons churches have difficulties. We’re full of good will and yet so often paralyzed because we cannot let go of what has grown old, and we don’t really believe that God calls us to a new life and that God is up to something new. We’re often more focused on traditions, filling the pews, rather than on blessing our communities and being out there in the world.

You see, one of the things that we learn when we consider the Trinity, is how much God was willing to change to meet us, by God’s incarnation in Jesus, by God’s presence in our world. God constantly discloses God’s being to meet us, in spite of the risks and the suffering. In the same way, we have to be willing to change to meet God. We have to be willing to reconsider the way we think, behave and relate to one another – This is our response to God.

And so being re-born is a much more complex process than declaring that we “give our life to Jesus” – although we need to say it quite often. But it takes a life time to give our life to Jesus. If you think about it though, isn’t it wonderful to think about our lives as a process of being born, rather than a process of growing old and dying? When I think of Nicodemus, I can’t help thinking how humbling it must have been for him, a teacher, a leader of the Jews, someone who was “somebody”, to be invited to be born anew, to let go of who he though he was to become who God knew him to be. Maybe that’s the key for us. Jesus, again and again in the Gospel, not only in John’s, asks us to become child like, to make ourselves small – and so maybe the key is humility. To be willing to receive again, to learn again and to allow this to change us. To be willing to meet God as God has been willing to meet us. In short, we have to continue to being willing to become disciples, being taught and transformed.

So, yes, on this Trinity Sunday, we need to be amazed at God’s being, but we should also be amazed at God’s works and what God wants to do with us and through us. That God calls us again and again to be disciples – and this is on what we will focus in the weeks to come.

Good morning and Happy Pentecost Sunday!

A few weeks ago, when we started our Bible study, we first listened to this powerful (if a little strange) story we have just heard from the book of Acts, and we started to share a bit about our own experiences of the Holy Spirit – the way we have felt the Holy Spirit coming in our own lives. As you can probably imagine, those experiences weren’t quite as dramatic as the experience the Apostles had on that day – although some of us agreed easily that they were quite powerful and a little strange too. Our stories of encountering the Holy Spirit were quite different for each one of us, but one of the things we all noticed is that we got pretty emotional remembering these experiences and telling them to one another. Because we experienced that God was here. God was here, even if we couldn’t explain how or why.

Theologians say that the Holy Spirit is “the one who mediates the presence of the Lord” – The one who enables the Risen Christ to come among us – and it is certainly what they can conclude when studying closely the passage of John we have just heard. We are, once again, back in the Farewell Discourse (Our last Sunday with it). Last Sunday we were in Chapter 17, but today we go back one chapter to spend time on the promise of the Holy Spirit – A reading appropriate for Pentecost, even though the passage of Acts is probably much more well-known.

Jesus is about to depart but he promises his disciples that he won’t leave them on their own, and that he will send them the “Advocate”, the one who testifies on his behalf. The Holy Spirit will take what his Jesus’s (and we have to understand: his teaching, his miracles but also the story of his life, death and Resurrection) and the Spirit will reveal the truth about Jesus. Now that’s a lot of words, isn’t it? And we got a bit used to that after 4 weeks in this passage of John’s, but still: What does it mean, in the end?

Well, I was wondering about that when I was reminded on those stories we shared about the Holy Spirit during our Bible study. As I have just said, one of the things we all noticed is how emotional we got as we remembered those stories because what they all had in common is that we had experienced God’s presence – God was there for us – God, as we came to know him revealed in Jesus. And so, theologians will say to us that the Holy Spirit is the one who mediates the presence of the Lord, John will say the Holy Spirit reveals the truth about Jesus after Jesus has physically left the disciples – and I would put it with even more simple words, as I remember the expression on your faces as when we shared our stories:

The Holy Spirit is the one who makes it real. The Holy Spirit is the one making God, God revealed in Jesus, real for us – in our day and age, in our particular life condition. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes the story of Jesus’s life and everything you’ve ever been taught about God, and every question you have ever asked and prayer you prayed – and the Holy Spirit makes it alive, real and present before you.

The Holy Spirit comes and then you know it’s real – you know it not so much in your head or even in your heart but in the depths of your being and yes sometimes you can get pretty emotional about that. And it might not be a powerful feeling everyday – but you can go back to it again and again and something settles in you and you know it’s true.

I really like it that we read from John’s today. Maybe you’ve learned about the Holy Spirit at church, at Sunday school and if you’re like me, you’ve learned about all the gifts of the Holy Spirit – Wisdom. Self control. Kindness. – and this is all what the Holy Spirit does according to Paul. But John, John does not talk about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, in Jesus’s mouth the Holy Spirit is in himself the gift.

The Holy Spirit is the gift and the gift among all gifts. A gift you don’t put on a shelf, but a gift that keeps on giving – who continually brings to us the presence of the Lord and renews the presence of the Lord among us (and we pray the Holy Spirit in our Eucharistic prayer, don’t we?). The Holy Spirit is the Present. The Presence.

In John’s Gospel, there are no complicated Sunday school lessons about the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is simply the one that makes it real. After Jesus is gone, the disciples afflicted by sorrow will suddenly wake up from their mourning because they will receive the gift, the gift that makes the Lord present, and at their turn, they will have to make the Lord present for others. The Holy Spirit mediates the presence of the Lord, but he also mediates through the disciples. And this is, to me, the heart of our Christian calling. Experiencing the presence of the Lord, we have to make God real for each other. And we know that after they have had this extraordinary experience, that’s all that the disciples are going to do: Making God real for people. In words and actions, and also just in being the persons they have become. They will bear testimony. And they don’t necessarily bear witness with some mind blowing experiences, they bear witness by their patience and kindness, their faithfulness and their hope, their attention to the little ones, their readiness to tell the story of Jesus, to share what they have, to rejoice in goodness – and these are after all the gifts of the Spirit.

It does not mean that the Apostles had it all figured out – And we see that a lot in the book of Acts, they also had time of doubt, discouragement and conflict. From John’s Gospel it does not seem that we are meant to experience the Holy Spirit on our own. It’s a communal experience. We get to know God when we gather together. We make God real for others and we make God real for each other. As Christians we are meant to support and comfort each other and to continue to seek together how the life of Jesus speaks to us and how we want to live it out in our Christian community, in our families, in our neighborhood. Together, we are to be witnesses of the Lord’s presence. As a church.

Today, we will receive John Richard as a novice in the Community of the Gospel and we will also commission our new vestry. And I would like to remind you that this root of our call, before leading liturgy or conducting meeting, or making decision about the church. Our call is, experiencing the presence of the Lord, to make it real, to make it manifest and express it in the way we worship and pray, in the way we involve ourselves in our communities and serve them, in the way we relate to each other and in the way we live – and I would add,even in the way we can disagree with each other or be in conflict, or hurt or disappointed with each other. When Jesus say to the disciples that the Holy Spirit will come to reveal the truth, it’s also a warning: It means Christians will have to deal with what’s broken in themselves, in their community and in the world.

Now how do we do that? Where do we start? Well, that’s the sense of our ceremony today. You will all be making a step towards the altar (a traditional way of doing things in the church). There is no Sunday school exam – and you don’t have to be a special people. Disciples certainly weren’t – the evangelists actually insisted a lot about how ordinary the disciples were. But there were present. Present. Given to God. At that’s what we do at the altar. We give to God. The bread, the wine but mostly: we make ourselves present, gift. We give ourselves and what we have and allow God to use us. I read one day a beautiful quotation that I never forgot: God uses our availability rather than our ability. We’re obsessed with our abilities (or lack thereof), but we forget we first need to be available and receptive. Of course we need abilities. But the first thing is to allow God to use us to mediate God’s presence.

So will you take the first step?

Unsurprisingly this Sunday, we are still in this portion of John’s Gospel scholars call “The Farewell Discourse” – Jesus’s last instructions to the disciples before his passion, death and Resurrection. As I mentioned before, it’s a long discourse, almost four chapters and it may sound a bit repetitive…Yet if you pay attention, you will realize that the Farewell Discourse is a bit like a spiral, slowly folding us in and dragging us closer to the center, drawing us closer to the point. And I guess this is where we land today – to the center, to the heart of Jesus’s will for his disciples, to the heart of Jesus’s heart.

If you remember from last week and the week before that, we have been learning about what Jesus has to say to his disciples before he leaves them:

– The first thing Jesus asks his disciples to do is to abide in his love. He does not ask them to save the world, or to build a church or to go on a mission. He asks them to receive the Father’s love through him, him being the vine, the Father being the vine grower and the disciples being the branches.

– The second thing Jesus asks his disciples is to love one another, and if you remember from last week, Jesus asks his disciples to love with a certain kind of love: The love of God Jesus himself has given testimony to by laying down his life. The disciples are called to lay down their lives for one another, to give the love they have received, an unselfish love that seeks the best for others.

Those two commandments Jesus gives to his disciples in the Farewell Discourse are of course pretty close to all of his teachings as we found them throughout the Gospel: Love God with all you heart, all your mind and all your soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.

And so now you would expect that we are going to wrap it up – and yet, there is more, and this is what we discover in the passage we have heard today. As I have just noticed, today we are drawn to the center of Jesus’s will, to Jesus’s desire – a desire so deep that actually Jesus doesn’t speak these words to the disciples, those words are addressed to the Father, in what the scholars call “The Final Prayer” – the climax of the Farewell discourse. And so it’s wonderful because as Jesus addresses the Father, we get a peak into Jesus’s heart and we learn about Jesus’s secret agenda for his disciples:

Yes, Jesus wants the disciples to receive the love of God and he wants them to love one another, but in the end he wants them to be sanctified. Jesus wants his disciples to be sanctified by “knowing / experiencing the truth”

And well, I was wondering how we react to that exactly? How do we react to that? If Jesus wants his disciples to be sanctified, I guess this is still true for us today – Jesus wants us to have the love of God, to have love for our neighbors and Jesus wants us to be sanctified. Well, I don’t know about you but I am fine with receiving God’s love, loving God and loving neighbor, but I have mixed feelings about sanctification – and I guess I am not alone in that, and for two reasons:

– The first reason why I don’t really like to think about sanctification is that it automatically makes me think about the “holier than thou” issue that is so common place for Christians. Thinking that God’s will is to sanctify myself raises a lot of questions in my mind, the main one being: Isn’t it at odd with Christian’s humility? Am I supposed to believe that I am better than others? Moreover, aren’t we supposed to interact with each others as equal? We want to be welcoming and non judgmental and inclusive Christians, right?

(Now the second reason why I don’t really like to think about sanctification is that it does not sound like a lot of fun. But I’ll come back to it.)

It is a legitimate concern for us to wonder what it means for us Christians to be sanctified – and if it means that we have to establish an “us” versus “them”, if we are to cut ourselves from the world. Throughout the ages, certainly, a lot of Christians have thought this is what they needed to do in order to become holy. Some have lived as Hermits, some in monasteries, some have even created their own cults and sects to feel closer to God, to reach a purer degree of living and not be contaminated with what we used to call “the century” – the society of men, the world.

Now, it’s interesting to realize that John struggled with this question as well. In his Gospel, John mentions the “world” 78 times (11 times in our passage) and “the world” is almost always in opposition with God – The world does not know God or refuses to receive Jesus.

Yet one of the things that is remarkable in our passage today, is to notice that Jesus’s will – and he expresses that very clearly – Jesus’s will is not for his disciples to be cut off from the world. Jesus only asks God to protect them from the evil as long as they are in the world. Which makes me think that the “world” in John’s way of speaking is not so much a physical space, the space that is not the church, it’s not even a social entity, that we could oppose to the Christian community, rather it is the spiritual realm, or if you prefer the mind orientation, where we are not connected to God, where our view is limited to earthly concern – it is if you will the mundane (mundane having its etymological root in “world”). Jesus does not wish for his disciples to hide away from human society or to distance themselves from the sinners (all his ministry was about welcoming the sinners), but Jesus prays for his disciples that they will be protected by God from what is evil, and it sounds like what is evil is to get caught in the “worldly”, where the world becomes the ultimate horizon and one loses sight of God.

We’re fine being in the world – really. What Jesus fears for his disciples is that they will lose sight of God when they’re in it. And we know there are many ways that can happen: We can fall in love too much with this world, wanting the good, earthly things it can provide: wealth, success, entertainment. But it can also happen that we lose sight of God if we are too angry with this world too. We are overwhelmed with its pain, or maybe with its absurdity, and we lose hope, or we just end up being terrified. What Jesus wants for his disciples is that they will be able to live in the world while not losing sight of God – and this is what I think is meant by being sanctified.

Throughout the ages, we have often imagined sanctification as a solitary endeavor of becoming perfect. But in John’s Gospel, it looks like being a Saint does not mean to be perfect, to think all the right things and to do all the good things – being a Saint means to know the Truth, that is the love of the Father – a living truth and not an “intellectual truth”. Being a Saint means to bring into the world a wider perspective and to live into the world with a bigger heart because of this hope and this love we have received from the Father in Jesus (And this is the testimony John talks about in his first letter we have just read)

Jesus says that this deep, intimate knowledge of God and of being united to God will bring us joy, perfect joy – a joy that we can’t keep to ourselves, a joy that we have to share with the world. And this is why sanctification is probably more fun that what we thought it would be.

Being a Saint isn’t about ourselves and our ability to become perfect, or even good. Being a Saint means to be filled with a holy Spirit – generous, daring and resilient – the Holy Spirit, the very Spirit of God inside of us. But about that, we’ll talk next week for the feast of Pentecost.