SERMONS

Mark 2: 18-22
The Reverend Angela L. Ying
Bethany United Church of Christ

March 15, 2009

What’s wrong with Jesus?

Doesn’t he get that we are in a recession and that fasting is required during this season of Lent?

It is strange enough hearing last week that Jesus eats with outcasts and sinners and anyone who needs God, but now, when people are trying to make due and keep things lean, why Jesus and his disciples find joy in each other’s company.

How does one find joy at such a time as this?

How does one eat when others’ are fasting?

The scribes of the Pharisees asked this question—and rightfully so.

What’s going on?

The scribes ask Jesus, “How come we are fasting and you are not?”

Which is another way of saying, “Why are we doing the right thing and you are not following us?”

The scribes have a point. For we all know Lent is a good time to give things up.

Why does Jesus not seem to give up what others are giving up?

… I don’t know.

And yet, if we look at today’s scripture passage, Jesus does not answer the question the scribes of the Pharisees ask.

Jesus answers the scribes by asking another question—which was a sure way of annoying those who were trying to keep things the way they were.

Jesus calls the people gathered with him, “wedding guests.” Wedding guests?

Whose wedding is Jesus talking about? And why do the scribes not know they are at a wedding?

The passage is quite humorous in some ways because here are people who insist on making church and religion being dead serious all the time—even in the presence of Jesus.

I have been there.

In our attempting at trying to show others how serious a matter Jesus is—we miss Jesus all together.

But even Jesus does not take himself that seriously when he is at table with his people.

Why?

So that he can take God and what God has in store for him more seriously than himself.

Jesus is called here to be the bridegroom for his disciples. And though what is required of his disciples is great discipline, hard work, love and prayer, it is not without joy and the joy of eating together.

As you may know, one can make a feast out of very little if there is great joy.

I am always amazed with people gather around food and it does not matter really how much there is, so long as there is the presence of God and each other. Beans and rice can be a feast when you have others willing to sit at table with you.

While at the same time, others can turn a feast with all the trimmings perfectly laid out in front of them into a reason to quarrel.

“The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they?”

Good question.

Why everyone in their right mind would know that when you are with and in the presence of the bridegroom, you do not sit there glum and tight fisted—why you join in the wedding feast.

That is—if you recognize that there is a wedding feast in the most simple and you are one of Jesus’ guests.

But that is not as easy as you think.

For some of us are notorious at believing we are not one of Jesus’ guests.

That we are not worthy.

That everyone else has been invited and that we are surely not on the guest list of the bridegroom.

Which makes it very hard for those of us that think this way to join and experience the joy that Christ sees in being at table with us.

It is a hard and very old pattern to break—One that will require new learning as individuals and as a community of faith.

For sometimes, it is harder to experience joy than it is despair.

To give thanks than to find something to complain about.

We look at the economy—where is the feast there?

We look at the climate change—where is the feast there?

We look at education—where is the feast here?

We look at health care and wonder—where is the feast here?

And yet, Jesus and his disciples sitting at table ask us to question our very definition of feast.

For to feast with Christ the bridegroom, has nothing to do with greed and over consumption.

To feast as a wedding guest at Jesus’ table has nothing to do with doing things our way and with our own agenda. For the feast is not about us. It is about God!

Is an economy where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer a feast for all?

And with the collapse of a series of long held illusions in American society: that housing prices will always rise, that Americans can live beyond their means forever and that the growing gap between rich and poor doesn’t matter – writer and teacher Parker Palmer says, “Everyone realized the system was unsustainable, but we don’t want to know what we really know, because if we did, we would have to change our lives.”

When struck by depression, for a society and for an individual—a friend asks: “Is it the hand of an enemy trying to crush you or could it possibly be the hand of a friend trying to press you down to the ground on which it is safe to stand?”

For there is no mistaking the same old, same old for God doing something new!—Something new in your life and thus, something new in our lives as church.

This week I was at the intersection of Beacon and Columbian Way where the lights are always changing to green and red. The only thing is that for years, the lights have never been synchronized and therefore, quite dangerous for anyone traveling on the road no matter what direction you are coming from. Numerous times, my husband had nearly been run down on his bicycle and other times, we had nearly gone on green when the traffic in the other direction also had the green.

And on that day, I witnessed as a motorcyclist was run down by a car at this same intersection because both the northbound and the eastbound lights were green. Twenty minutes later, women were injured at the local grocery store when the southbound and westbound lights were both green.

Already late for a meeting, I found it was tempting as the priest and the Levite in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, to walk on the other side. What did he have to do with me?

But somehow I knew I had this community of faith called Bethany to be accountable to, so I, not out of my own will, became one of the witnesses.

Not only to one in need, for it was neither person fault, but to a movement in which a community is called, through its present tears, to a future joy of keeping people together and safe.

There will be days we will be called to fast. To let go of what is no longer working. No doubt about that. That is part of the process of pruning, growing and changing.

But in pruning and letting go of what is not working, we as people of faith also are called to grow and change by learning new lessons and spiritual practices of faith.

It is no mistaking that every Sunday, instead of cookies and juice, we at Bethany Church do our best to throw a feast where all are invited and can sit at the table.

It is no mistaking that we dream of building a place where at the center Feasting and Learning go hand and hand, interwoven in our love, justice and worship of God.

It is no mistaking that we are working at growing our intergenerational worship and that we know it will take time for the children to learn as we learned that in their fidgeting, their sighing, their raised eyebrows, their curiosity—with loving caring adults at their side, they will know the love of God and that they are invited to feast with Jesus Christ.

For in my internal stress and tears this week for our community and the world, it dawned on me, that no matter how hard things are—when we are in community, and know we are not alone, there can be great joy.

As in Charles Dickens’ words from his classic “Great Expectations”: “Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts”—as God breaks us open to something new.

My father often shared with us as we were growing, “wherever you shed a tear, your mother and I shed ten tears.” I seem to be beginning to understand these words—for without the deep tears, there is rarely deep joy that blossoms forth, at least the kind Jesus wants for you and me.

“Mom, did you notice—it’s snowing?”

“Yes, dear child.”

Strangely, it was the joy in her voice that made me—instead of thinking of all the things that the snow would stop from happening, causing major “boo sa sa” and chaos—stop and pause, give thanks and take in the beauty.

“It’s beautiful.”

And it came down without our bidding or our fasting.

When we gather together amidst whatever you and I are wrestling with individually or as a community, can we see God’s risk of joy and delight?

For if we can, then the words from the prophet Isaiah will come as new wine poured out for us—not in old clichés of the same old, same old, where God’s word gets wasted—but in vessels, in you and in me, where new lessons can still be learned and shared—and where fasting and feasting with God take on new changes in our lives:

Is not this the fast that God chooses:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke (that binds us from doing God’s work)?

Is not this fast to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Then the light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator will go before you, the glory of God come behind you.
Then you will call, and God will answer; you shall cry to God, and God will say, “Here I am.”

(Isaiah 58: 6, 7-9)

Now that’s worth digesting!

Copyright © 2009 Angela Ying. All rights reserved.