Sermon Manuscript071606

Sermon Manuscript – 7/16/2006                         Robert Hutcherson, Jr.

Sermon: “PENNY-WISE”

TEXT

Mark 6:30-34, 53–56

Mark wants us to know that Jesus was hugely popular at first. In his Gospel, the people mob Jesus. They chase him around the Sea of Galilee. Even when the Twelve return from going forth (You remember, “no bread, no bag, no money in your belts, no second coat – just sandals and a staff for walking” – a standard that would inspire Christian missionaries for centuries) – even at that moment, with Jesus and his disciples dog tired, the crowds wouldn’t give them a moment’s peace. This was not a time for shyness, not for holding back. A great healer had come, and so many of them were sick – in this way or that.

And he couldn’t say “no.” Felt sorry for them; saw them “as sheep without a shepherd.” “And wherever he went,” Mark says, “into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces (like cordwood, I suppose) and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed.”

I feel compelled to ask where all these people were at the end, when Jesus had to “walk that lonesome valley by himself.” Maybe they were simply “sunshine soldiers,” there when the going was easy. It was probably worse than that. My guess is that most of them never had any real interest in Jesus, in whom he was or what he had to say. They came for the quick fix. “Fix my eyes, I’m blind!” “Fix my legs, I’m lame.” Fix my arm, it’s withered!” “Fix my leprosy, my hemorrhage, my madness.” I know what I need, and I don’t need a lecture. Fix what ails me, so I can get on. It is a universal human foible (evidence of original sin, perhaps) that we foolishly seek quick cures, rather than lasting solutions, to our problems. In a deeper sense than we usually mean it, we are “penny-wise and pound-foolish” when it comes to the stewardship of our lives.

It’s just as true today as it was in Jesus’ time, perhaps more so. We live in a world that believes in quick fixes. Fad diets. Pills for every problem. Two-week correspondence courses that will make us rich. Loans to pay off our debts! (Imagine that!) Fantastical exercise machines that promise perfect abs in thirty days. (I haven’t seen my abs in thirty years.) Most of our addictions begin as quick fixes. Under a mountain of stress? Have a drink. Girlfriend leave you? Smoke a little grass. The one thing that can be said about all quick fixes is that they don’t work – they only put off the problem, and often make it worse…

What does work is what we don’t want to hear: a major change of eating habits applied for the rest of our lives. A serious education that takes time and sacrifice to gain. A disciplined wallet and credit card. A program of regular exercise. Working through the stresses and strains of life instead of finding shortcuts around them.

Think about all those people who were healed by Jesus – healed by him because (even though he knew they needed much more) his great compassion for them meant he could not deny them his healing power. They returned to their worlds as a car returns from a mechanic – fixed,. But there was more life to live, more to go wrong. A car, especially an old car, always has another part to break. What if there were a mechanic who could not only repair what’s wrong but could offer a lasting fix? Wouldn’t he be busy? Wouldn’t people flock to him? That is what Jesus had to offer. Not just a healing, but health and wholeness. And that’s what so many in his time refused to hear. And still today.

A couple comes to be married. It’s obvious they don’t know Christ or the Christian life, and (to all appearances) have no intent of studying such. They just want a church -- to get married in. They want their problem fixed. And, out of our compassion (because they are like sheep without a shepherd) we do it, and hope that some fragment of the ceremony, or something we say in counseling, might be that tiny crack that opens the door to a faith that is “deep and wide.”

 Some people come to church looking for an emotional shortcut: for some ecstatic experience that will thrill them to their toes and transform their unsatisfactory lives into lives of wonder and joy. Spiritual fast-food. Some seek an intellectual fix. “Just explain to me about God and Jesus (in twenty-five words or less) and then I’ll know. And then I’ll get on with my life.” James Carse, in his book Breakfast at the Victory, says “our appetite for the big experience – sudden insight, dazzling vision, heart-stopping ecstasy – is what hides the true way from us.”

I regret to tell you, dear ones, the true way is not often the quick way. The full riches and wonders of the Gospel come over time as we struggle to understand the word of God and to apply it in our everyday lives, as we live with Jesus through good times and bad and discover what a fine friend he really is. The Buddhists have a teaching that is deceptively simple: “Chop wood, carry water.” It means, “Do the ordinary things, the everyday chores, and you will find God in them.”

On our pilgrimage we sometimes slip and fall. We discover we’re not very good at this Gospel thing. We often fail to reach the high standards we set for ourselves. Sometimes we try to help others and find we’ve only made things worse. A catholic priest tells of strolling one day through a beautiful neighborhood of Victorian homes, with their wide porches, when he saw a little boy on one of the porches trying to ring the door bell, but it was too high for him. The boy jumped and he jumped, but the bell was just out of reach.

The priest confidently walked up the sidewalk, stepped in behind the little boy, reached over his head and rang the bell. Then he patted the boy on the head and said, “What now little man?” The boy looked up at him sheepishly and said, “Now we run like hell!”

We make mistakes even when our motives are good. We struggle, and we learn, and we grow in Christ. And, by the way, he heals us (He sure does!) all along the way. We come to him in the marketplaces of our lives, in the human traffic jams, in the din and the roar, and ask him to make us well. And then we stay with him, all the way to the end. He gives us not just a drink of water, but gives us the water that satisfies our thirst forever, that bubbles up inside us like a spring. He teaches us how to live by faith and trust God. How not to worry. How to extend God’s love for us to others. How to find joy in giving. And, yes, how to suffer sometimes for what is right.

When Jesus healed people it was a sign that the Kingdom of God was present. For in the Kingdom there is no illness, just as there was none in the Garden of Eden. We accept the healing as a sign of God’s great compassion, but (if we are not just in it for the quick fix) we also accept the Kingdom. And that compels us to give our whole lives to him. To make it a lasting relationship, not a one-night stand. Far more satisfying.

There is an old story about a night in an English theater when a famous actor recited the Twenty-third Psalm. (“The Lord is my shepherd….”) When he finished, the audience gave him a thunderous round of applause. Then a little old woman, known for her pious life and Christian charity, rose and recited the same Psalm. When she finished there was no applause, just stunned silence, and not a dry eye in the house. After a few moments, the actor returned to the stage, nodded to the little woman, and said to the audience, “I knew the Psalm, but she knew the Shepherd.” It is possible to know Jesus not just as a fixer but as a friend. I offer that Jesus to you today.