12

Mark 3:9-13

I take great comfort in the Gospel lists of the twelve disciples. There is room for everybody in this list. There is room for you and for me.

First, we know so little about the twelve. We know that four of them were fishermen, there were two sets of brothers, Matthew was a tax collector, Simon was a Zealot, Thomas, a skeptic, Judas, confused, but by and large we know little else. Peter was married, but we do not know if he had any children. Ego, impulse, fear, wonder, and strange determination led them--sometimes simultaneously. 

They could be anybody.

I think that’s the point.

As Christ brought the call of God to the world, Christ was a notoriously horrific judge of character. He avoided the places of power. He stayed out of the church council meetings. We only have record of one sermon preached in a synagogue--a disastrous experience, if Luke tells it right. No, Jesus stayed out in the world, mingling with the mob, touching the masses, and loving them all. He seemed most drawn to those everyone else avoided. He welcomed those who most everybody else disregarded or ignored. As he gathered a community of students who would eventually take the reins of his ministry, he stayed out of the Temple seminary, Sabbath schools, and went for what Bill Cosby calls the “regular people.”

Why?

Because regular people know what’s going on because they live in the middle of it.

Over 90% of Americans favor some form of gun control--at least, background checks and preferring that hunting guns be actual rifles instead of combat machine guns--but the Senate failed the majority stunningly, refusing to even talk about it, let alone vote on something this week. 

Regular folks know the score. So, we will fall back and make our own choices.

Jesus knew that dynamic well. So he bypassed the leadership and elite circles because he knew the message would get garbled in translation. He chose to speak through a group that knew the language of the people, knew their experiences, knew their needs, and knew their hopes and dreams from the inside. Then, the message would be relevant. It would be true. And it would be theirs.

In Luke, the angels sing of good news of great joy that is for all people. That means the Gospel is good news for all of us here this morning. It is our good news. God speaks straight to us and our experience in Christ.

But there are times when the Church gets lost in itself as it translates and interprets that good news. Theologians begin to parse every note and point, producing thousands and thousands of pages of doctrine. Preachers tend to assume that congregations are benighted, so we preach “simple”--i.e., what we actually understand ourselves (little) or in preacherly phrases and poetics that leave a congregation stunned to silence (or sleeping). Or we look at the Bible--see this massive book full of WORDS, and decide that is way too complicated for anyone to actually follow, so we replace it with “Ten Simple Rules” and “Five Good Deeds” and “Ten Bad Things You Should Never Do”--our “Jefferson Bible.”*

The Twelve should stop us dead where we are. 

The Church was no different in 1st Century Palestine than it is now, so Jesus and God bypassed it. God’s good news was for all people, and it was clear enough for all people to grasp as they heard it, so Jesus picked future pastors based on their normalcy. These persons touched by grace would become the perfect emissaries of grace. These imperfect human beings would be perfect ambassadors for God because they would embody that no one needs to be perfectly righteous, pure, sinless, smart, strong, brave, courteous, and right on through any Boy Scout list of attributes you like. Just believe. That was what Jesus wanted. He chose the Twelve because they followed. They trusted him. They did not always understand him, but they trusted him. That is what God needs. Trust. Then miracles can happen.

Our world needs miracles.

Last Monday afternoon, the world shattered again as innocent people running, watching runners, and just enjoying a parade got blown apart. Someone thought they could scare us silly and take our place from us. Someone thought they could drive us to huddle away in locked houses, rooms, and in the dark, too scared to move. 

But someone was wrong.

Instead, through the miracle of grace, regular people jumped into action, not paralysis. Regular people tended one another. Regular loved one another. Regular people healed one another. Regular people went running. Regular people took their children to a ballpark and a hockey rink, not afraid to be in public. 

Regular people took back the world.

That is what Christ calls us to do. That’s what Christ invites us to do--love one another. As we embody the love of God in our words and actions, we turn back evil. We do so far more effectively than those “in charge.” We do so because we embody the love Christ revealed to the world. We become love for a world desperately hungry for it.

Think about this idea for a moment--Jesus never told the crowds, “Believe this list of dogmas.” Instead, Jesus almost always said, “Go, do this...”

The Twelve responded and did.

It is now our turn.

Go, and do likewise.

Amen.

______

*Thomas Jefferson famously decided he did not like the Bible as it was, so he wrote his own that cut out all the bits he did not like or disagreed with.