19th Sunday after Pentecost – Bill Harkins
Proper 21, Year B
The Collect of the Day
O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we, running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Gospel: Mark 9:38-50
John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.
“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched. “For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
“Water from a deeper well”
In the Name of the God of Creation, who loves us all, Amen. Good morning, and welcome to this service of Holy Eucharist on this 19th Sunday after Pentecost. It’s getting cooler now—that real down-home southern heat and humidity is mostly past—and the lovely days of fall are just ahead us. It’s been dry the past few weeks, but this weekend brought blessed relief in the form of a tropical depression, and we are reminded in Mark’s Gospel that when we give a drink of water in the Name of Jesus we do so on behalf of Him, and this is followed by at bit of homiletic hyperbole reminding us that we cannot be perfect, and that only in humility before children, and one another, are we whole in Christ. Moreover, the theme of water is a powerful metaphor, and there are many, many ways to give that cup of water to others, in compassionate response to suffering. This may take surprising forms if we are open to the possibilities for grace.
Even though fall is here, and the heat doesn’t have the same authority it does in summer, it’s been quite warm of late, and we runners will continue to hear the well-known refrain…stay hydrated, drink plenty of water, and when you think you’ve had enough, drink some more. Water is both essential to life, and is a powerful symbol in our faith, and that of many other belief systems. Water is so very precious in so many ways. Three-quarters of the Earth’s surface is covered with water, yet 98 percent is salt water and not fit for consumption. The human body is more than 60 percent water. Blood is 92 percent water, and our DNA contains a combination of stardust and the water of the oceans from which we came. The brain and muscles are 75 percent water, and bones are about 22 percent water. Water is mentioned some 350 times in the King James Bible, and it is from the waters of our Baptisms that we rise, like Jesus from the Jordan, transformed by the Spirit. Each year during the Peachtree Road Race we runners drink a lot of water, and we are blessed by Holy Water right outside the walls of the Cathedral where I served for 18 years and where I was ordained to the priesthood many years ago.
So for these reasons among others, I try to follow this good advice, and strive to drink plenty of water, and often carry it with me on the trails where I run. On a hot Saturday back a while back, I was on my familiar trail at Kennesaw Park, and it was one of those days of 90% humidity and 90 degrees. It is not unusual, once the school year has begun, for local high school cross—country teams to train there. I typically hear them coming up behind me, and they are generally very polite, and the lead runner will shout “On your left,” letting me know to move to the right to let them pass. On this day, I heard them coming, and, still running, I moved over, and heard the respectful request, and I was a bit chagrined to find that they passed me as if I were standing still. 12 or 15 runners flew by me in a colorful, rapidly departing blur, and left me in a cloud of Kennesaw Mountain dust. I stopped, and grabbed my water bottle, and took several big swallows, watching the runners disappear into the deep, Pentecost green woods. As I stood there, I had two thoughts. The first was, “When did middle-school girls get so fast?” And the second was, “This water is really good, but it cannot quench the thirst I’m really feeling now. For that, I need water from a deeper well,” water, that is, something like the God-given grace to accept that the days when I could, just maybe, have stayed with those fast runners is long gone, and will never return. I needed the water of grace, and resilience, and the wisdom to accept that things were changing in relation to a sport to which I’ve given much of my life.
I wonder, at times, when miracles occur in scripture, how these stories relate to our own life of faith. This is especially true when we are vulnerable—walking in darkness through harrowing times—when we are lost, and do not know where to turn, and we look for Jesus to provide the great miracle that will deliver us or those from whom we care, out of despair. Times, perhaps, when we do not know where we are going. Sometimes we get the deeply longed-for result when we pray—the mother of two young children whose cancer, against all odds, simply disappears; the father whose heart stops on the operating table is brought back from the brink of death; the relationship that seemed on the rocks is restored…and so on. And then there are times when one’s best friend, a fiercely gifted runner, dies of melanoma at age 38, despite the prayers of so many. Or the young man whom one mentored for years dies in an accident his freshman year in college. And like the Psalms of lamentation, one wonders out loud where one might find water, and calm, in those stormy narratives. I get it. I’ve been there. I suspect many of you have, too. And yet, in proscribing the forms that miracles may take, we risk missing those moments when miracles may occur on a smaller scale. Moments, that is, when God’s compassion enters our most profound moments of vulnerability, and gives us glimpses of resurrection, and resilience, and hope. And hope is a good thing. It may be the very best of things. And water may be one of the forms these minor miracles of hope may take. Liston Mills, my mentor and primary professor who taught faithfully at Vanderbilt for 40 years, once said to me, “William, over the course of your time with us you have studied a lot of psychological theory, and theology, and the integration of the two. But remember that sometimes the most and best we have to offer is being present, and creating hospitality. It’s like giving someone a cup of cold water on a hot day.” I thought about that often in the years that have since passed, and I have asked myself over and over what he was trying to tell me. I think it was something about grace, and humility, and compassion. Buddy Miller, a wonderful alt-country singer/songwriter in Nashville, wrote a fine tune in which he says:
I need a drink of something like water
I need a taste of love divine
Sometimes you just gotta do what you oughtta
Sometimes you bring up the water when the well is dry.
I think that my professor/mentor, and the author of Mark’s gospel, understood this. Small miracles can happen, even with a cup of cold water. Small acts of hospitality and compassion can make a difference far beyond what we imagine. With the help of the Holy Spirit they can transcend the limits of our spiritual imaginations. And when this happens, all are transformed. And this need not come from our positions of greatest strength. Rather, as the social science researcher Brene’ Brown has noted, it paradoxically comes from our own places of vulnerability. She writes;
“When I ask people what is vulnerability, the answers were things like sitting with my wife who has Stage III breast cancer and trying to make plans for our children, or my first date after my divorce, saying I love you first, asking for a raise, sending my child to school being enthusiastic and supportive of him and knowing how excited he is about orchestra tryouts and how much he wants to make first chair and encouraging him and supporting him and knowing that’s not going to happen. To me, vulnerability is courage. It’s about the willingness to show up and be seen in our lives. And in those moments when we show up, I think those are the most powerful meaning-making moments of our lives even if they don’t go well. I think they define who we are.”
Truth told, I’m not sure what to make of the hyperbolic references to Hell in today’s text. To me, Hell is simply to be oneself apart from God’s grace and in isolation from others in beloved community. Hell is that self-chosen condition in which, in opposition to God’s unconditional love and the call to a life of mutual friendship and service, individuals barricade themselves from others. It is the hellish weariness and boredom of a life focused entirely on itself. Hell is not an arbitrary divine punishment at the end of history. It is not the final retaliation of a vindictive deity. As one theologian I admire has said (Daniel Migliore) hell is the self-destructive resistance to the eternal love of God. It symbolizes the truth that the meaning and intention of life can be missed. Repentance is urgent. Our choices and actions are important. God ever seeks to lead us out of our hell of self-absorption, but neither in time nor in eternity is God’s love coercive. Jesus uses hell as a fear tactic- perhaps hyperbolic – to be inclusive of the least of these and those who wish to follow Jesus. A number of years ago I was the priest on call at the Cathedral and received an emergency call in the middle of the night from the NICU at Northside Hospital. The nurse said a couple from the Cathedral was there, and the mother had just given birth to a stillborn daughter late in the third trimester. I drove to the hospital and arrived @3am, and I was met by the charge nurse, who was herself in tears, and led back to the room where the parents and their daughter were waiting. The mother was lying with her daughter on her chest in a lovely cloth basket and the father standing on the other side of the bed. I stood silently next to the bed, and took the mother’s hand in mine. Both parents were crying. I did not know them. After a few moments of silence the father asked tearfully, “Does she need to be baptized.” I was quiet for a minute, one of those Holy Saturday times when one is tempted to grasp for easy solutions and quick fixes, and I prayed, silently, for the right words. Saying nothing, I reached up and gathered the tears from the faces of both parents, already blessing their daughter, and with those tears I offered a blessing for this lovely child of God, and a prayer that God would welcome their daughter home, which I am sure in fact had already happened. After a time, the nurse came back in, and we all prayed together, and I promised to follow up with the parents. I saw them more often at church after that, and about a year later, they asked if we could talk. They let me know that they had adopted a daughter from China, and she would be having surgery for a repair of a cleft palate the next month. Would I mind coming to be with them for the surgery and I said of course I would be there, and I was. The surgery went well, and then—well, miracle of miracles—they asked me to baptize their daughter in Mikell Chapel. And so we did. The water of baptism was mixed with all of our tears—tears of joy—water from a deeper well. Amen.