15 July 2012 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
Amos 7: 12-15 + Psalm 85 + Ephesians 1: 3-14 + Mark 6: 7-13
Even after 45 years as a priest, it is a constant challenge for me to prepare and enter this sacred space putting down any hint of feelings that this is a performance. I have come to understand that for great performers there is a similar experience. As long as they “act” they are not truly into the character or the scene. They must become the person they are presenting. They cannot simply “act like” that character. A truly discerning audience always knows the difference. It is, I suppose, what makes the difference between an amature and a truly great performer. Great performers spend months and months researching and studying in every way the character they are going to become on the stage or the screen. Amatures just learn the lines. Great performers learn to walk like them, talk like them, think like them, and often enough, they begin to look like them. I saw a stage play last fall in which the central character was Winston Churchill. It was a dramatic play about the three days leading up to a turning point in the early days of World War 2. When the play ended, I felt as though I had been in the very presence of that courageous leader. It was amazing.
The same thing is going on in Mark’s Gospel. Apostles have spent a lot of time with Jesus. They have listened, learned, studied, eat, slept, and traveled with Jesus all preparing for the day when, in a sense, the curtain will go up and they will be out there on their own. Their success will be determined by how closely they can present the truth, the compassion, the vision, and the message of the one they are presenting, or the one who is now present in them.
What troubles me with this Gospel considered in this way is that for every play or performance, and with every Celebration of a Sacrament, there are always the performers and spectators and this is where the difference comes between what happens in a theater and what happens in a church. There will always be spectators at the theater, but there must never be spectators in a church. My challenge comes when I walk down this aisle because there are obviously a lot of spectators here which then tempts me to perform: a bad plan and a bad experience for all of us. If you don’t believe me that there are specatators here, you need to sit in that chair and look around at the faces and the postures. Or, you can take a good look at the contribution pattern and see quite clearly that more than half of the people here are spectators they are not participating in the mission.
Here is the problem and the challenge Mark sets out to the church today: the mission of passing on the faith is a vocation shared by everyone who has come to know, to listen to, and be inspired by Jesus Christ. There are no spectators. These verses are not a piece of history telling a story of some day in the past when Jesus sent out the twelve. It is the living Word of God revealing our vocation to us. Nowhere in here are we instructed to stand around and listen, or sit around and watch what happens. The qualifications are right here in the very words of Jesus Christ: live simply enough that you can discover how God provides for you, don’t hang around people who do not welcome who you are and what you present, and don’t be looking for a better a deal. There isn’t one. I often wonder how this gospel sounds to the folks who parish hop, or shop around for a church. The instruction here for all of us who embrace the vocation of our faith is to stay put – in one place, and there together we are to confront evil, encourage repenetance, reconcile, and bring about healing from all the sickness that surrounds us.
The first reading today addresses that “who me?” response you may be feeling. There is no excuse accepted. The first reading today puts a stop to that. Amos the prophet was a shepherd – the lowest of positions in those times. That did not stop God from sending him. Every baptized person in this place has been anointed as Jesus Christ was anointed: as priest, prophet, and king. Those are the words spoken over you at your Baptism. The first vocation each of us has is to pass on the faith, and at some point in every one of our lives, we have to “get it.” We must wake up and realize that we’re not here as spectators to watch, or as an audience to sit around and listen.
Children, you too must pass on the faith. You do it by repect and kindess; by honesty and truthfulness. You pass on the faith by being generous and helpful. Young people, in High School and College, you too pass on the faith by your courage in the face of evil, by the decisions you make and the company you keep, by your trust in God and commitment to prayer and worship before anything else. Your defense of the week and outcasts, the losers and the lost awakens in everyone the power of faith and grace. Parents, it is your vocation accepted at the Baptism of your children to bring them up as Christ has taught us. Yet year after year children show up in our programs ignorant of the most basic and fundamental elements of the faitih. How is this possible? How have the spectators become the majority?
Hear this Gospel. Hear the Word of God. Get up. Get out. Get serious. Get your life in order. You don’t need anything more than what you get here: food for the journey, a companion, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.