Lifelong Learners and Lovers of Others

Mark 6:1-13

Rachelle and I set out on a Saturday night a month or so ago

and headed out of town on 123a towards Marlow. 

I had heard a strange noise just after we left the driveway,

slowed down, rolled down the window and then decided it must not have been anything. 

So I rolled the window back up and off we went down Hill Rd. 

Well it was just past Echo Valley Farm that I started hearing a more constant noise,
but I continued on, thinking that when I got to our destination I would take a look.

But then further down the road as we passed Tucker Rd.,

the noise had gotten louder and the car was driving with great difficulty

and it became clear that I was and had been driving on a flat. 

I pulled off to the side of the road just past the small bridge that goes over the brook. 

And I got out of the car and looked, and sure enough the tire was pretty near useless. 

So, knowing that I had AAA, since my in-laws had given me a subscription for my birthday,

I got out my cell-phone and called the number I had saved there. 

Only problem was – there was no cell service. 

So I did the thing where you walk around

and then get excited when you get a single bar

and dial the number again,

only to have the tiny bit of service you found slip away right as you try to call.

So I thought, so much for AAA – I’ll just change the tire myself. 

I got out the jack and lifted the car and took the wrench to the lug nuts. 

Nothing happened.  I tried again. 

The car rocked, but the nut stayed fast. 

I tried a couple more times before I concluded that I was not going to make it budge. 

So I took out my cell phone again and began walking around.  No service.

I think I went back to the wrench and tried some more.

But it didn’t accomplish anything.

But around that time, down the road came a neighbor, someone I knew from town.

He rolled down his window and I said, “How are you doing?”
To which, with good New Hampshire humor, he responded, “Better than you!”

He pulled up and got out and worked at the wrench for a time and he couldn’t get it to budge.  And he tried a couple more times but concluded that we’d need a better tool to get the tire off.  He couldn’t help me, but on his way home he’d stop down the road and ask our Fire Chief to come up and lend a hand.

Some minutes later S. drove up and took a turn at the wrench.  With a good bit of effort and some grease, he was able to get the nuts off.

And then he went to pull the wheel off.

Nothing happened. 

It took a considerable amount of effort

and a couple of trips back and forth from his garage

to get the wheel off so that we could put the spare on.

And when we finally got the spare on, and lowered the car back down,

The spare was flat.

So we raised the car again and S. took the spare back to his house to fill it.

He came back and put it on for us.

We thanked him, turned around, and went back home,

And I was flustered from such an unexpected interruption of our evening activites,

Humbled by the helplessness of the whole event,

But also very grateful for a community of people

who take the time to help their neighbors.

And I got to thinking about how so much of new technologies

Are invented to keep us from needing one another.

We are a complicated people.

On the one hand we seek as much as possible

to acquire the things that give us greater independence,

more power and control over our lives, our destinies,

And yet on the other hand, we long for the sense of community and belonging

That is only possible when we acknowledge that we need one another.

The sense of connectedness that comes when we acknowledge

that happiness is not gained through greater autonomy,

but through meaningful relationships borne of shared vulnerability.

I didn’t know the relationships that I had in these particular neighbors

Until I was unable to change my tire.

In my inability to do for myself, I found a deeper connectedness to my community.

In some ways, I’m glad that I had no cell reception and that I couldn’t reach AAA.

Instead, I had the opportunity to receive neighborly care from people I know and who know me.

This was a gift to me, a sign reminding me that I am not an individual only,

but someone who exists as a member of a larger human community.

But don’t get me wrong, I still want better cell phone service throughout town.

Today’s reading got me thinking about the nature of the kingdom or reign of God.

What I see in today’s gospel reading is an insight into the way that Jesus understands the  reign of God and how it is witnessed to in the lives of his disciples.

The ministry that Jesus gives his disciples is not a sure-fire, in-control,

Guaranteed-success way of making converts.

Because Jesus was not concerned about manipulating people to buy into his religion,

Rather he wanted to invite others to become a guest at God’s table.

This was good news for those who were never invited to be guests at anyone’s table.

And humbling news for those who were always that ones in the position of power and privilege, inviting their select few worthy candidates to their own tables.

I think another way to think of Jesus’s call into discipleship,

What we see in Mark 1:14: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Is a call to become a guest.

There is something in our culture and something in us that resists the vulnerability of receiving hospitality and all the vulnerability that that entails.

But my experience with the flat tire and with countless other experiences

Has been that it’s not until I have been on the receiving end of care that I see myself and the world around me more truthfully.

Jesus sends out the disciples

Without the sufficient supplies for independent and well-fortified selves.

They had a buddy system, and Jesus gave them a spiritual authority over unclean spirits,

But “he ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.”

They would become recipients of hospitality or rejection,

There was risk in their embodying the peaceable way of Christ,

But this was the way that Jesus chose to further the message of the reign of God.

And this makes some sense to me.

It has only been through shared vulnerability that my relationships with others have deepened.  And it has been through showing my own inability to do it on my own that I have discovered the community that sustains me, and the God who heals my broken heart.

This is the God who comes to us in the breaking of bread and the sharing of the cup.

Where we are invited again to be guests,

To receive of God’s love, and recognize our mutual dependence upon God and one another to live this life truthfully and in a way that can really make us free.

Faith is not something we drum up, but something we receive like bread and wine.

Willie Jennings is an African-American theologian and someone I have really appreciated reading and listening to recently.

He talks about how Christians in the modern world have absorbed a colonial mentality that is relentlessly evaluative of others – and he calls this pedagogical imperialism.

The evaluative or judgmental mode of Christian life is very connected to European colonial history – and this is emphatically not the mode of being that he sees in Christ himself or in the early Christian movement.

He says that the call of Christ is not to become evaluators and sorters of others – that is a colonial legacy – the legacy that made slavery and segregation possible.

Rather, the call of Christ is to become lifelong learners and lovers of others.

Lifelong learners and lovers of others.

And this has to come as we allow ourselves to go out unfortified,

Staff and sandals and willingness to receive from others the gifts that they might share.

The way of bringing about the reign of God is a way of vulnerable love.

But so much of modern western Christianity has resisted vulnerability and the listening and receiving that it entails.

What would it mean for us, if instead of seeking to change others, we leave that to God and rather seek to become lifelong learners and lovers of others?

What would it mean for us, if instead of trying to get people into church,

We leave that to God and rather seek to go where people are and become guests at their table, listeners to their stories, and recipients of their hospitality.

This willingness to become vulnerable is not comfortable for us because we want to be the hosts, we want to have control over the situation, the conversation.

We are afraid of being guests.

But sisters and brothers, I believe that this is the way of faith.

This is the Christlike and servant way of being in the world.

And quite possibly the only way that the reign of God will truly be seen and witnessed to.

I was blessed by the experience of surprise and gratitude for the neighbors who helped me.  I was made more aware of the ways that I keep myself from such experiences to my own detriment.

What would happen if Christians took to heart the call to become lifelong learners and lovers of others?

Just like Jesus in his hometown, there will be rejection of this way,

But there will be a lots of blessing too,

As the walls of hostility are brought down

And the peace of Christ realized

In a war weary world.