If He Is Here, They Will Come
Copyright
© 2012 Robert J. Elder, Pastor
16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 22, 2012
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
And they went
away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.
Some of us likely will remember the Kevin
Costner film of 20-some years ago: Field
of Dreams. One key line in that movie, which became one of those cultural
bywords that stayed around for quite awhile, was, “If you build it, they will
come.” I can tell you that far too many businesses as well as churches have
learned the error of that thinking, that people will come just because there is
a nice facility. In the end, it’s the hearts that live inside the people in a
building that attract or repel others.
Mark tells us that “they went away in the boat to a deserted place by
themselves.” But not for long. Every pastor can tell stories of dinners
interrupted, conversations stopped short, attempts to dash home for a quick
dinner frustrated by the insistent demands of people who come to the church
looking for the help they think Jesus is going to make available to them. And
if they spot you before they run into Jesus, well, that’s just how it goes.
I remember once reading about a pastor who “resigned from a suburban parish
where relentless demands on his time and energy were beginning to wear him
down. He left to become a missionary, on the coast of Maine, of all places. In
his new position he visited small clusters of Christians in remote locations.
He reported that in many ways his ministry was the same as it always had been:
he preached, taught, visited the sick. But there was this difference: between
ports of call he traveled long distances by boat. Between sermons he could
listen to the wind. Before teaching another class he could study the horizon.
After visiting the sick he was anointed with sea spray. Interspersed with his
demanding pastoral duties he took a watery “road less traveled by, and that has
made all the difference.”[1]
I have heard from one pastor who takes a week every year to hike in the
mountains alone. He asks his wife to save all the newspapers that have come
during the week of his absence. Upon returning, he reads each newspaper. That
way he can remind himself how readily the world and the people in it are able
to continue on without him.
Mark declared that “…they went away in the boat to a deserted place by
themselves.” Doesn’t that sound good? In Mark's Gospel, Jesus and his disciples cross the Sea of
Galilee so many times that it is difficult to discern the pattern and motive
behind the itinerary. Difficult, that is, until the sixth chapter, when the
reason for the crossings becomes clear: the disciples needed a break.[2]
Following the
teeming demands of ministry, the exhausted disciples were due for a retreat to
charge their batteries. Sociologists sometimes call this “compassion fatigue.”
Just prior to this, remember, “...many were coming and going, and (the
disciples) had no leisure even to eat.” Before the first spoonful of food had
reached their mouths, here came the tap on the shoulder and the request,
please, just this once, please help, won’t you help? So it was time for a
discipleship retreat, and off they went to a deserted place. What a great plan.
But no sooner had they tied up at the dock than “...many saw them going and
recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived
ahead of them.”
If Jesus is there, people will come. That’s how it has always been. Try any
replacement for that name “Jesus” in that statement, anything that points to
something other than Jesus, and the church ceases being a church. It is, at the
last, the true test of a church. Over time, if Jesus is not present there, no
one will come. Oh, it might take a long while for some who are just in the
habit of coming around to stop, but over time it will happen.
I remember reading about a once-wealthy church in Pittsburgh. It was a
large stone edifice, built in what we might think of as a sort of Presbyterian
version of an English gothic style. It had huge, vaulted ceilings, and at one
time was one of the largest open spaces under one roof of any building in the
city. The lettering over the entrance where the arched Byzantine doors once
stood now welcomes not worshipers, but people seeking a parking place:
“Southside Parking Garage,” says the sign over the opening. With a straight
face, the developer of the project said, “It was an ideal space for
conversion.”[3]
Apparently this had been a church where people had parked for years: parked
their money but not their bodies, parked their children but not their cars, and
eventually the children grew up and nothing was parked there any more at all
other than the left-over money of dead people, which kept the facility going on
life support long after the heart had quit beating on its own. With the sort of
funds they had, you could continue to offer programs for years without having
to be bothered with a congregation. But in the end, the aging trustees, who
were all that was left of the church, closed it anyway, since parking was all
it was good for. Now it is truly a drive-in church.
I’ve been in other defunct churches. They always strike me as a sort of sad
testimony, no matter how cheery – even inevitable – their transformation into
some other kind of business. Neighborhoods change, people come and people go. But
if the heart of Jesus had been celebrated and worshiped there, couldn’t the
church have changed along with the neighborhood? This is what I always wonder.
Often they are transformed into restaurants, another unintended symbol of the
body of Christ, which had once been gathered in those places around the
communion table. I know of another church in New Jersey, founded by people who
were angry with their former church, so they gathered in anger and separation.
Ultimately, the next generations forgot what the fight had been about, and
since fighting was the glue that had held it together, the church came apart.
Literally, it’s beams and timbers were dismantled and reused in what are now
many fine homes in the area.
I once wrote to my former congregation about my visit to a small country
parish in Wales during a vacation there. A sort of Stephen King cemetery
surrounds this ancient building which exudes local history from every stone.
And that may be part of the problem. It stands more like an artifact than a
congregation. Sunday worship when we were there numbered 12, 4 of which were
our party of not-very-competent Presbyterian-cum-Anglicans. The idea that a
small church is a better place to become acquainted and feel at home was given
the lie in this place.
But the very next week found us in London at St. Paul’s Cathedral for the
11:00 AM “sung mass.” It was high church at its best, and the Spirit was alive
in the place, clearly a place of worship where all were welcomed and encouraged
to take part. Jesus was there, and they came.
“They went away to a deserted place by themselves.” Sometimes this sounds
like the very thing we need, to get away, to be alone. And sometimes we do. I
know that many folks in congregations who don’t disappear in the winter for
Palm Desert or similar warmer climes may be likely to be gone some time now
during the summer. But such separation and self-tending is meant always to
function as a servant of ministry, not as its main point. The disciples and
Jesus were allowed precious little time to themselves in deserted places. The
need of the world to be near Jesus was just too overpoweringly great.
“Mark says that Jesus and his disciples had come willingly to this deserted
place. They were exhausted from ministry among the needy multitudes. They were
seeking rest, retreat, a July vacation from the rigors of their work. Yet when
they got to the deserted place, it was quickly filled with more multitudes who
came clamoring after Jesus. The crowds did not come, like the disciples, in
order to get away from life; they followed Jesus here because they were
desperate to survive life. Jesus looked on them and quickly saw that they were
harassed and helpless, ‘like sheep without a shepherd.’ Here were the
oppressed, the hurting and the poor, come out to this desert hoping for a
blessing from Jesus.”[4]
When Jesus got to the shore on the other side of the lake he saw that the
great throng had anticipated his next move and was waiting there for him. When
he looked out on them and had compassion on them because they looked to him for
all the world like a bunch of bleating lambs whose shepherd had left them alone
in the wilderness, he realized that this sorry gathering of people had been
paying rent to absent theological landlords for far too long. He decided that
he would teach them something right then and there about what it means to have
a real shepherd. If we had been there, we would probably have been like the
rest of the crowd, anticipating a free meal, or at least a healing or some
other miracle. But Jesus didn’t do that, not yet. He first did what the
Shepherd was called to do for his people. He “began to teach them many things.”
There is but one true teacher. The rest that we who have followed him have
to add is but commentary. The ministry of the church is not in the hands of
pastors, nor even boards and committees. Not now any more than it ever has
been. It rests largely in your hands; your able, fallible, caring, failing,
tentative, willing, reluctant hands. My long-time friend, Jim Wharton, who taught
at the seminary at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, once pointed out
that in the biblical story, God is singularly unimpressed by the differences
between clergy and lay people on points of competence, fitness, equipment,
credentials, or status. On one occasion, (in the book of Joshua) a rather
harried prostitute named Rahab was able to minister to Israel; on another, a
humble shepherd boy named David became minister to a king (I Samuel 16:14 ff);
on another, a famous prophet named Elijah endured the indignity of receiving
the ministry of a cackling flock of crows (I Kings 17:4 ff). The possibility of
ministry is as near for any of God’s people as the next human being.[5]
Which brings me to this thought:
Hospitality is among the highest marks of the presence of Jesus in a place,
the New Testament is filled with testimonies to this fact. Over 38 years if
ministry I have been through the mill with transients who drop in on the
church, all pastors have. I have dealt with the con artists, the demanding ones
that try to make you feel guilty, the ones who have a knack for showing up as
you prepare to leave for a well-deserved hour at home before returning for an
evening round of meetings. But sometimes, it is different, not a hand-out, as
the ads used to say, but a hand.
So Mark’s gospel causes us to consider this today, this presence of our
Lord in this place. Because we know that if the needy and the harassed and the
helpless ones are among us in our community, our church and even our homes,
surely Jesus cannot be far away. If they come, he is here, giving us the opportunity to be a
blessing even as we seek to be blessed. Amen.
[1] “Watching
from the Boat,” by Martin Copenhaver, Christian
Century, June 29, 1994.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Thanks to
my friend, Dr. George Chorba, for sharing stories of “converted” churches.
[4] “The
Loving Shepherd,” a sermon by William Willimon, Duke University Chapel,
7/20/97.
[5] Biblical Basis for Ministry, Earl E.
Shelp et. al., Westminster Press, 1981, p. 61.
