Called to Ministry
8th Sunday after Pentecost

O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

2 Kings 2:1-15

Now when the LORD was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal.  Elijah said to Elisha, "Stay here; for the LORD has sent me as far as Bethel."  But Elisha said, "As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you."  So they went down to Bethel.  The company of prophets who were in Bethel came out to Elisha, and said to him, "Do you know that today the LORD will take your master away from you?"  And he said, "Yes, I know; keep silent."  Elijah said to him, "Elisha, stay here; for the LORD has sent me to Jericho."  But he said, "As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you."  So they came to Jericho.  The company of prophets who were at Jericho drew near to Elisha, and said to him, "Do you know that today the LORD will take your master away from you?"  And he answered, "Yes, I know; be silent."  Then Elijah said to him, "Stay here; for the LORD has sent me to the Jordan."  But he said, "As the LORD lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you."  So the two of them went on.  Fifty men of the company of prophets also went, and stood at some distance from them, as they both were standing by the Jordan.  Then Elijah took his mantle and rolled it up, and struck the water; the water was parted to the one side and to the other, until the two of them crossed on dry ground.

When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, "Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you."  Elisha said, "Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit."  He responded, "You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not."  As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven.  Elisha kept watching and crying out, "Father, father!  The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!"  But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces.

He picked up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan.  He took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, saying, "Where is the LORD, the God of Elijah?"  When he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha went over.  When the company of prophets who were at Jericho saw him at a distance, they declared, "The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha."  They came to meet him and bowed to the ground before him.

Psalm 114 
1.    Hallelujah!
When Israel came out of Egypt, *
the house of Jacob from a people of strange speech,
2.    Judah became God's sanctuary *
and Israel his dominion.
3.    The sea beheld it and fled; *
Jordan turned and went back.
4.    The mountains skipped like rams, *
and the little hills like young sheep.
5.    What ailed you, O sea, that you fled? *
O Jordan, that you turned back?
6.    You mountains, that you skipped like rams? *
you little hills like young sheep?
7.    Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, *
at the presence of the God of Jacob,
8.    Who turned the hard rock into a pool of water *
and flint-stone into a flowing spring.
EPHESIANS 4: 1-7, 11-16

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.  But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift.  The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.  We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.  But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body's growth in building itself up in love.

MARK 6:45-52

Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd.  After saying farewell to them, he went up on the mountain to pray.  When evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land.  When he saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind, he came towards them early in the morning, walking on the sea.  He intended to pass them by.  But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out; for they all saw him and were terrified.  But immediately he spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’  Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased.  And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.
 
Steer the ship of my life, good Lord, to your quiet harbor, where I can be safe from the storms of sin and conflict.  Show me the course I should take.  Renew in me the gift of discernment, so that I can always see the right direction in which I should go.  And give me the strength and the courage to choose the right course, even when the sea is rough and the waves are high, knowing that through enduring hardship and danger in your name we shall find comfort and peace.

This prayer from Basil of Caesarea (c. 329-379) well might have been the prayer of those first followers of Jesus out on the sea that night.  It speaks to an intuitive state that seems to haunt us in our human condition.  In what direction are we to go?  How do we find comfort and peace when the sea is high and the waves are rough?  As humans we turn to the spiritual realm, sensing that there is more than what we experience in the strictly temporal.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition, that spiritual realm is known as the Kingdom of God, the one that Jesus continually described as being present.  Not a ‘pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by’ kingdom, but a kingdom of eternal dimension – without beginning or end, ever present.  The practice of seeking, experiencing, and living in that kingdom is called ministry.  We are commissioned to ministry in the kingdom through baptism.  We celebrate our presence and growth in the kingdom in Eucharist.  And we share the gifts we have been given to meet each other's needs in family, in community.

There are several things than can limit our freedom in ministry in this kingdom – and today I want to focus on two of those.  One is the inability to see giftedness in others – especially those with whom we share a daily temporal life.  The other is fear of claiming and engaging our own giftedness for fear that it is insufficient, inadequate, or incomplete.

There are few readings in the letters and writings of the New Testament better suited to reinforcing the concept of exercising our gifts as a community in Christ than Paul's words to the church in Ephesus.  But even his mention of gifts is tempered with the realization that, as today's collect says, we must pass through things temporal – things that will tug and try to rob us of things eternal.  We really do need a vision, a light, and a strong protector.  To speak of how today's readings represent a challenge to all of us to exercise our gifts for opening the eyes of the world to the kingdom of God among us, we first must take a quick overview of this part of Mark's story of Good News.

The 6th chapter of Mark tells us about Jesus in decidedly Hebrew terms.  It is a “good news/bad news” sequence of vignettes, designed to remind Mark's listeners – and us – that following Christ is far from easy or simple.  It takes a vision that does not arise from having good “I”-sight but from having our eyes opened by the grace of God.  It reminds us that the vagaries of life will put us to the test.

The chapter opens with Jesus’ rejection in Nazareth by those who thought they knew him – they could only see him as a local, lower class, uneducated boy with no more right to teach them than anyone else.  Mark tells us that “he could do no deed of power there …, he was amazed at their unbelief.”  Mark then immediately recalls for us the successes of the twelve when sent out to preach, cast out demons, and heal.

But, in the terse style of this gospel, the light of this success immediately turns to darkness with the news of the beheading of John the Baptist.  When Jesus get word of John's execution – the execution of his friend, of perhaps the only one who understood a bit of what was going on, of the one who would foreshadow his own arrest and execution – he calls the disciples to join him in a time of disengagement and proposes they find some alone time to rest and reflect.  But just as quickly, crowds hear of their whereabouts and begin to arrive and clamor for healing – a reversal of the reaction in Nazareth.  Mark's wonderful words – “He had compassion on them…”  In his own grief, from his own loss and weariness, he begins to feed them.

The story of the loaves and fishes reminds us of God's provision, of manna, of bread in the wilderness.  Mark tells us he had them sit down on “green grass” – reminding us of Psalm 23.  The five loaves allegorically speak of Torah while the two fish – the heads of leviathan, broken and given for food in Psalm 74 – emphasize Jesus’ ministry as the hand of God.

And so we come to today's story – Jesus again attempting to escape the crowd.  This opens a multi-chapter section, ending at Mark 8:26 sometimes called the Bethsaida Gospel.

Today's story is intertwined with the Exodus story – Jesus sends the disciples to “the other side” and just as the bread has fed five thousand as did the manna in the desert, so now Jesus crosses the water and as encouragement, he plans to ‘pass them by’ – to encourage them as God did for Moses on Sinai and for Elijah in 1 Kings.  But their hardened hearts, their blinded eyes, their worldly view saw a distorted vision that resulted in fear instead of awe, terror rather than comfort, isolation rather than association.

Last weekend back, Kevin Thew Forrester, Ministry Development Coordinator for the Diocese of Northern Michigan, came and shared his vision and knowledge of the exercise of our Baptismal call to ministry with over two dozen folks from around the diocese.  It was a time for catching a vision, for eating and drinking from the cup of experience of one who has rowed against contrary winds, and for recognizing Christ among us.  I want to share some thoughts that come from the Diocese of Northern Michigan about this vision.

It was again emphasized to us that the church is one body – the baptized.  Each and every one of us is baptized to serve the world through ministry – ministry that is the shape of each life lived in the Spirit.  The traditional orders – bishop, priest, deacon – reflect the primal, or archetypal, shapes which each and every Christian life takes.  There are teachers in Christ, lawyers in Christ, janitors, shopkeepers, artists, soldiers in Christ – but it is always some particular life in Christ that is baptized.  It is impossible to sever baptism from mission and ministry.  Christian life is baptism into mission through ministry.

When we come together to feed each other, to heal each other, to offer God's grace to each other, we are learning how to:
 And so it was that in the conference, we began our time together with listening – listening one-on-one to each other, validating one anther's hopes and fears and experiences.  No one of us is sufficient by ourselves.  To me there is a sense of sadness and melancholy when in the reading today, Mark says, “When evening came, the boat was out on the sea and he (Jesus) was alone on the land.”  The aloneness he had sought was not where he was to be – his place was leading, encouraging the disciples as in this world they strained against an adverse wind.

When Mark says that the disciples’ hearts were hardened, it is not a condemnation so much as an observation.  I think he says it with the compassion of Christ who offers sight to the blind, courage to the weak, forgiveness to the one bound by remorse, and the oil of gladness that overcomes fear and softens the hardened heart.

We are, everyone of us, gifted for each other.  There is no one who does not belong, there is no one who does not have something to bring to the table.  It takes courage to move beyond our fears, it takes imagination to envision the giftedness of those for whom familiarity has caused us to see only ordinariness, it take the light of Christ and the love of God to enable us to engage in the temporal while finding our life which is in the eternal.  There is an ancient Celtic prayer which reminds us that as we row across the sea, in a dark and stormy night, there is one who calls us to the other side:
May the light of Christ surround us.
May the love of Christ enfold us.
May the power of Christ protect us.
May the presence of Christ watch over us.
May all the earth be ablaze with the glory of God.
May the Light come to burn away the darkness.
May the Light of Christ shine out through the darkness.
May the love of Christ burn ever in our hearts.

John Dryden Burton
July 30, 2006
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