SERMON PREACHED at St MARY’S,
NORTH OAMARU
ORDINARY
SUNDAY 16 (18th July) 2021
Readings:
A crowd without a Maremma?
2 Samuel 7:1-14a
Psalm 89:20-36
Ephesians 2:11-22
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
The author of the gospel-telling we know as mark was a natural
story-teller. But one of his techniques to keep his listeners interested was to
sandwich scenes between parts of another scene, to sandwich stories so that at
least in his plan they served to illustrate each other. The problem is that every now and again, like here,
the lectionary compilers commit a kind of literary divorce, separating the
parts from one another and from meaning. So I was tempted to ignore the passage
this week and turn to the epistle. Except this Epistle reading is one of the
most excruciating in the entire New Testament. I was once preaching at a girls’
school in Melbourne and was asked what readings I wanted. Without looking at
the lectionary I told them to use whatever was the epistle for that day. I was
after all not preaching biblically that day. To this day I have nor want no
idea what the poor girl-prefect made of her reading.
So here we are with separated snippets of Mark, swimming against
the tide of the author’s wishes.
The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that
they had done and taught. He said to them, ‘Come away to a
deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’ For many were coming and
going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in
the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going
and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and
arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great
crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a
shepherd; and he began to teach them many things …
When they had crossed over,
they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of
the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region
and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And
wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the
market-places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his
cloak; and all who touched it were healed.
So let us dwell with just one passing moment in this slaughtered gospel passage. In fact, one passing word. As you may have noted from my notes in the pew sheet, it is usually translated “had compassion on,” but that’s a terribly sanitized, anglicanised translation of the Greek. Years ago, when I was a priest in Whanganui, I indicated that the Greek was less sanitary: that it meant “moved to the bowels.” A furious woman informed my that such a word as “bowels” was not to be used in church. I wondered sadly how sanitised and judgemental we had become when we felt that we knew better than the gospel writers how to speak of the experiences of Jesus.
The life of Jesus reveals to us the heart of God – all that we
need to know of God. When Jesus saw the aimlessness of his society he was,
quite simply, moved to the bowels. As I have said in my notes, he felt as we
might when we see a child run out in front of a bus. Worse, he felt as we might
if we overdosed on prune juice: we are not talking about nice and polite
disturbances, here.
But we are talking about the response of Jesus, the response of
God, to a crowd, a community, a society, a race, a species that is lost, as sheep
without a shepherd. Jesus’ listeners knew well that sheep without shepherds were
in his rural world in mortal danger. Like a bus bearing down on a child, like a
wolf stalking out its lunch.
When I lived in outback Queensland the farmers who were battling
on with merino wool production (against all odds) were facing the relentless
problem of wild dogs – some would say dingoes – stalking their flocks. In a
parable in itself, many farmers turned to dogs like Maremmas; dogs that, well,
doggedly defend the flock on 60,000 acre farms where farmers had no hope of
covering all those bases where predators lurked.
The crowds Jesus saw were, we might say, like a flock without a
Maremma, a Pyrenean Mountan dog, an Akbash or an Anatolian Shepherd, out there
at the mercy of every hungry passer-by, four-legged or two.
We live in strange times. Every generation has. I might even
suggest that every generation has had its wolves stalking it, stalking us, stalking
all humans, stalking all sheep who are wandering vulnerable and astray. There’s
always been predators lurking. And Jesus was moved to the bowels. He
withdrew with his apostles but the crowd were relentless. That same crowd – us –
eventually executed him: the wolves outwitted the Maremma, it seemed. Or for
those in the know, we might suggest that the White Witch outwitted Aslan.
But Mark will tell a different story, and after 2000 years we
are allowed spoilers. Just when the witnesses, the sheep of Jesus were at their
most broken resurrection light broke in. A young man whispered to some
frightened women, saying, if we may paraphrase, “go tell it on the mountain.”
And they didn’t at first, because they were frightened. But then the frightened
women whispered to the frightened men, and the frightened men whispered to
other frightened men and women, and the message that Jesus goes before us and a
round us and is always with us even through darkness into light and through
death into life leaked out and had the final word.
And it seems that word still can leak out, even amidst dwindling
churches and circulating viruses and rising tides and plastic-soup oceans and
waterways. And despite all odds we are called to be the singers of the song and
even through us and our worship and our lives some may touch the hem of the
garment of Jesus and find that light. And next week we will find that a meal
and a message of hope can transform the lives of those who reach out to receive
it even when they seem simply to walk away. But that’s next week because the
lectionary compilers have committed textual slaughter.
The Lord be with you.
