Sermon for September 27, 2009

The Rev. Stan Coppel

Mark 9:38-50 

“No one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.”

You may be familiar with an outfit called the Church Ad Project. Started some years ago by a dynamic Episcopal priest with an interest in evangelism and church marketing, it got some of the best brains in the advertising world together to donate their time and talent to produce catchy, if somewhat offbeat, ads for the Church.

One such ad -- a favorite -- highlights the Episcopal Church’s acceptance of women in the ordained ministry. Above a photograph of a very traditional-looking altar reads the caption “Where Women Stand in the Episcopal Church.” The message is clear and simple. Women have indeed been accorded their full and equal share in the grace and responsibilities of ordained ministry in our Church. Some are now even serving as bishops, including our newly elected presiding bishop.

Perhaps this popular ad or poster could be revised from time to time to highlight where others stand in the Church. Pick a marginalized or out-of-favor group, and somewhere in the Episcopal Church you will find them accepted and fully integrated into the life of their local worshipping community. That is where they stand in the Episcopal Church. Our Church has tackled some of the toughest issues of our time in order to make all people feel welcome in its ranks. After all, “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You!” has been our motto for many years. No matter who “you” may be.

In today’s Gospel account, the disciples come to the Lord troubled about someone, an outsider without standing in their community, acting in his name to cast out demons. Scripture does not record who this someone was, so we can only speculate. It may have been a religious zealot with his own agenda. It could have been a genuine believer not yet fully integrated into the circle of Jesus’ disciples. It may have been an imposter or fraud. We will never know for sure. But the disciples certainly do not put out the welcome sign for him. Like overeager corporate attorneys defending their company’s trademarks in the marketplace, they act quickly to protect their exclusive franchise on the use of Jesus’ name and authority. They want this outsider stopped. And they take the matter right to the top, confident that Jesus will get the point and lower the boom.

It does not work out that way. Jesus is not concerned that others are acting in his name. He probably knows that his world -- just like ours today -- has more than its fair share of evil spirits: war, violence, hatred of those who are different, and greed, to name but a few. Casting out such demons -- no matter who is doing it -- is bound to be a good thing. “No one who does a deed of power in my name,” Jesus tells his anxious disciples, “will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.” He reminds them, and us, of what should be an obvious truth: “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Jesus’ tolerance for those not of his following is astonishing for his troubled times. But it is more than just tolerance. Jesus does not simply put up with those who do not belong to his circle, as if they were an annoying but harmless irritant, like summer bugs at a picnic. He welcomes them. They are the disciples to come. Those who do not now belong will soon enough have a full share in the reward of the very kingdom he has come to proclaim. Whoever bears “the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward,” says Jesus. All are welcome to work wonders in his name. Casting out demons is not the personal prerogative of the disciples. It is the challenge for all.

Our world is scarcely less fearful and frightening than that in which our Lord lived so long ago. People are still afraid of those who do not belong, of the exile and refugee, no matter what “deeds of power” they may demonstrate. We see this played out every day in distant lands and in the corridors of power in our own country. Our prejudices remain a stumbling block to our common life and to world peace. We remain too ready to perceive enemies everywhere at work against us. We are as much as ever in need of Jesus’ reassurance that all will be well. We still need to be reconciled, one to another.

Reconciliation is of course the definitive “deed of power” that drives out the demons and evil spirits of any age. It requires that we see the other in a new and different light -- as the neighbor in the next village and as the distant relative who shares our bloodline. Only this kind of change of heart can bring an end to suspicion and bloodshed. But it takes hard work and patience, both of which are in short supply.

Too often, like the people of Israel described in our first reading, we complain when things do not go our way. We want instant answers and immediate gratification. We think back to good times that probably never were. We grumble. God must sometimes be as exasperated with our demands and grievances as he was with those of the ancient Israelites. But the problem is not with God.

As always, the problem is our own fear and lack of trust, our inability as individuals, churches, and societies to live by faith, to be reconciled, to see in the good deeds of others the reflection of the love of our common Father in heaven. Perhaps the Lord needs to send seventy elders into our midst today, as he did among the people of Israel in the wilderness, to prophesy to us and bring once again order to our chaotic lives and compassion to our hardened hearts.

The Lord is still able to cast out demons. The welcome signs in front of our churches are a constant reminder to each of us that no matter who we are or where we come from, we are all capable of unimagined “deeds of power” if we but call upon the Lord’s name as did that someone in our Gospel narrative. That is where we stand in the Church today. There are plenty of demons left in the hearts of each of us. In the name of Jesus, we can cast them out. But we must begin our work with humility and reconciliation. We must begin within. For as the comic-strip character Pogo said decades ago, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

 May our gracious God give us courage to follow Christ and grace to rejoice with all who work for Christ in a world in need of the good news of God…..  For none of us has exclusive rights to the gospel!

Blessings Are Where You Find Them

We meet in the Senior Center. Sonora had two Episcopal Churches and both left the Diocese. When St. Mary in the Mountains started as a new faith community we had to find a place to meet. That place was, and still is, the Sonora Senior Center. We have no permanent fixtures and we have to set up for each service and take everything down afterwards. Our altar is a sofa table with a removable top. Our cross is hung behind the altar on a rolling partition. We have a pulpit that we drag into place for each service. We have a lectern too, but that we put by the front door so we have someplace to put the bulletins and the visitor's book. If you need a BCP and Hymnal, they are in a box by the front door - help yourself. The chairs are stackable and not padded. We also have a credence TV tray - in genuine wood - from WalMart. The Senior Center is a busy place. Most Sundays we can take our time after because the bridge group only plays every so often. On Ash Wednesday we were in a small room on the other side of an accordian partition from the Wednesday night drum circle. It wasn't too bad if we chanted the liturgy along with the drums. Our music is either piano or guitar but never both because the piano is out of tune, and a smidgen flat, so that you can't tune a guitar to it.

We've been there since January 2008. We all miss the trappings of a permanent facility - a real church, as most people would put it. That's where the part about blessings being where you find them comes in. The blessing is that, because we don't have a permanent facility we have become a real church. Huh?

Really, it isn't so hard to see. I can look back and see many times in my life where the buildings and the trappings took on more importance than the liturgy and the reason we were there - to worship God in community. I can also remember, when I was very young, spending a lot of time looking at the stained glass windows. We don't have any stained glass windows, but if you look to the left of the altar and up a bit you can watch the lighted "EXIT" sign.

Because we don't have these things we have become a faith community in a very real sense of the word. We pitch in to set up the chairs, the altar, the credence TV tray, and the rest. We sit together in a relatively small area. Microphones? We don't need no stinkin' microphones. The place simply isn't that big. Our annnouncement time can, and frequently does, turn into a sort of free-for-all. When we do the Peace, we all greet everyone else. When we are done, everyone pitches in to put it all away again. The able-bodied stack chairs, move the pulpit and lectern, and dismantle the altar. Those not able to do that help with the smaller things. Even visitors pitch in most of the time - and we let them. When we have a Bishop's Committee meeting we shoehorn ourselves around Fr. Martin's dining room table. When we have a dinner or celebration we usually do it at someone's home. We know each other. We care about each other. We strive to see God in each other. And because we all pitch in, we all feel part of that community.

Don't get me wrong - we don't want to stay at the Senior Center forever. Buildings have their uses - the church office is in a corner of my living room and it would be nice to put it somewhere else. Not having to double as a furniture mover would be nice, as well. But until that day comes, we will continue to set up, take down, and have Bishop's Committee meetings at Fr. Martin's house. We are blessed by this effort. Blessings are where you find them. You can find them in a church building, in a Senior Center, around a dining room table. You find blessings in all of those places because that is where you find people and community - and that is where you find God.

Carolyn Woodall

Sermon for September 6, 2009

Sermon for 9/6/2009
The Rev. Stan Coppel

Mark 7:31-37

Today the Scriptures confront us with the power of Jesus to heal, and our obligation to be the healing hands and presence of Jesus in our world. Considering the Scriptures, each of us can perhaps identify with one of the characters or recognize ourselves in some way: deafness, inability to speak clearly, maybe a sense of being caught or inhibited, unable to be a "doer of the Word." By making these connections we can then begin to recognize those places where God is trying to break into our lives, and through us into our society and the world.

In the Gospel, we see Jesus going to Galilee… the place where his ministry started. Going to Galilee is perhaps an indication that something of fundamental importance is going to happen in Mark's Gospel. At Galilee, Jesus is confronted with an unfortunate man who can't hear and has some kind of speech impediment, which is common in a lifetime of deafness… He is handicapped, at a disadvantage in his community, and ritually impure… his neighbors suspecting he had committed a sin. This was the belief of the day. When someone was ‘inflicted’ with a permanent infirmity, it was assumed that he, or someone in his family ancestory had sinned, and their infirmity was their punishment by God…Illness and deformity were believed to have moral causes. Jesus reaches across the gap, opens the man's ears and mouth, and restores him to wholeness.

The basis of the Good News about Jesus in Mark's Gospel is that Jesus restores people to community. His healings are about incorporating people into a new system where there are no outcasts. Just before this morning's Gospel lesson, is the story of the Syrophoenician woman (the two stories are in the same lesson in the “Revised Common Lectionary”) who claims the privileges of a dog to beg for Jesus to help in healing her daughter. We see Jesus reaching across prejudice, across lines of insider and outsider, and healing the daughter. Before that, we learn what really makes people unclean is what comes out of their mouths, not what goes in. Mark shows us Jesus changing religious rules to include more people, opening communication where there was deafness and denial before, creating new possibilities for relationships.

Where do we see this story in the world around us?.... Certainly in hospitals we are advancing in ways to help people hear, improving our technology, and finding new ways of helping people to hear and speak. They are restored to community; it is exciting and awe-inspiring to speak with people who have had their hearing restored. It is even more awesome to consider the cases of people who learn to read lips and are trained by skilled therapists to speak even when they cannot hear. There was such a woman in the television series, “The West Wing”. In the series, she is staff member at the White House--highly capable and functioning at the top of our society. To Her, deafness was not an impediment and she asks for no special treatment. She exemplifies the distinction that is often made between "cured" and "healed." She is still deaf, but her place in society is healed. She was not an outcast.

Considering the difference between cured and healed, makes me realize that there is another way to think about deafness, too. There’s a story about a man and wife. The wife would often break off a conversation to demand, "Did you hear what I said?" And the husband would look up from his paper mystified. Eventually she learned of a free hearing clinic to be held in town, and she took her husband for testing. The doctor, after the hearing test, told the man, "Sir, your hearing is fine. But you might think about seeing a marriage counselor."

It’s true, I think, that we often tune each other out. Husbands turn a deaf ear to wives, children tune out their parents. Sometimes communities of people will not hear the plea for help from poor neighbors. One of the greatest challenges to people trying to raise an issue on a national level is getting heard, breaking through the indifference of the news media, the politician's agendas for re-election. Yet our protests are in a way perhaps like the prayer of Jesus praying for the deaf man, praying for all who are deaf to families and neighbors, a plea that ears be opened.

Deafness and denial have played a big part in my own life. Sometimes it required a terrible event to open my ears. And yet I have learned that I can prayerfully open myself to the ways I might be deaf; when I feel a kind of agitation or anger inside, I know it is an invitation to stop, to consider, and pray to God for help. An even greater step is to make my needs known to friends or trust them when they suggest I might need help. I know my friends can bring me to a place where I can get in the way of Jesus. My friends have held me up in prayerful support, and thus encourage me to find the strength and openness to hear what is going on in my life. In all of this they have been like Jesus in their ministering to me, praying that I might be healed, that my ears might be opened to what's going on around me, to remind me of God’s call to a priestly ministry, and most of all, how I need to respond to that call.

What about the Word of God? What it is calling us to do as a Christian people? Do we really hear God speaking to us through his Word? I know we ‘listen’ to the Word, but do we ‘Really’ hear it? Do we reflect on it? ”Read, Mark, and Inwardly Digest” it? And THEN what!! You have heard it a thousand times before I ever stood in this pulpit. To quote Cannon Martin Risard, “Give us the strength to know your will and DO IT!

I know in my heart that I don’t have to preach to you what you should do, but Jesus, The Word, makes it quite clear.”For when I was hungry, you gave me food: When thirsty, you have be drink; when I was a stranger you welcomed me; when naked you clothed me; when I was sick you gave me help; when in prison you visited me. Then the King answers, “I tell you this: anything you did for the least of my brothers, you did it to me!”

Who are the people around you at home or at work or school that you do not hear? Are there friends in your life trying to get you to listen to something you don't want to hear? We must pray for Jesus to open our ears, clear our mouths, and restore us to community where there are ever-expanding circles of friends - with no outcasts!