Sixth Sunday after Pentecost Ephesians 1:3-14 & Mark 6:14-29 July 12, 2009

        6Pentecost2009 Ephesians 1:3-14 & Mark 6:14-29 July 12, 2009

The beheading of John the Baptist is a pretty heavy topic for a mid-summer’s morning. How different to read John’s birth story where his mother Elizabeth and Mary, Mother of our Lord meet and John leaps in Elizabeth’s womb. Or, to read of John’s diet of locusts and honey and his hanging out at the River Jordan admitting he wasn’t worthy to untie the sandal of his younger cousin. But here we are, with this story. It is a part of the Biblical narrative, functioning largely to point to how it would go for Jesus. Cousin John is a precursor. As John is treated, so will Jesus be. To be a truth-teller, as both John and Jesus were, was dangerous.
The group of 12 here at Faith who reflected on the writings of Julian of Norwich was surprised to find in the prayers of the book a petition for whistle blowers. “We pray for whistle blowers,” it said. That is what John the Baptist was in this situation. Herod’s wife was angry because John pointed out that Herod shouldn’t have taken his brother’s wife to be his wife. John didn’t think anyone was above that kind of relational law. But John’s pointing truth to power led to his demise. His untimely and cruel death came around about the way – through behind-the-curtain conversations and unchecked resentment.
Herodias wanted rid of John, and she found a way – using her daughter – which is as bad a part of this story as any. The story of John’s beheading is a story of how not to work things out. It’s an example of things gone array, so how good it is that today and on through the next six Sundays, we have as our 2nd Reading, the letter of Ephesians. Ephesians is the opposite of the beheading. It tells of a positive way of working things out – or more accurately, of how God has already worked things out – by raising Christ Jesus from the dead.
Ephesians is directed to Christ’s body, the Church, now and in every age. It assures us that the church has been given every spiritual blessing needed to be healthy and alive and connected to God’s will. Ephesians celebrates that nothing is outside of God’s purview. The phrase, "all things," is used twice in today’s reading: “… to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” And, “according to the purpose of him who accomplished all things.”(1:10, 11).

The first time all things is used it refers to everything in the universe. All things are important to God, so the world’s ambiguities and questions and concerns are seen from the sweeping view of God. Nothing is outside God’s reach. God’s hands are forever on us, whether we know it or not.
It’s as if Ephesians has the story of Joseph in mind where Joseph is sold into slavery by his resentful brothers. Joseph, gets a raw deal, becomes an example of God’s surprising ability to intervene. God cleverly weaves and works throughout Joseph’s compromised life and turns his brother’s selfish act into the pathway to the liberation of a whole people. God didn’t cause or manipulate the evil Joseph’s brothers did, but God used the evil to serve God’s purposes.
The second time all things is used in Ephesians it refers to God accomplishing all things in Christ's resurrection. God has done everything needful in Christ so we can live for the praise of God’s glory. The God who raises Jesus from the dead meets us too on the fault lines of our lives. No depths into which we fall, or no situation into which we are put, can damper God’s power to resurrect.
Another way to speak of the Christian life is to picture our being “wired” to the power of the resurrection. The other day I kept pushing print on my computer and nothing happened. I checked to make sure the printer was on. It was. What happened was that the default printer had been changed from my printer to another printer in the office. When I pushed print it was printing, just on another computer. All I had to do was reset it to print on my printer.
A real modern explanation of Ephesians suggests we are “default wired” to Christ – connected to the power of his resurrection – and it’s not our own doing. It’s the gift of God. Today’s verses are full of “in Christ” phrases. “God has blessed us in Christ; chose us in Christ, bestowed grace on us in Christ; in Christ we have forgiveness; in Christ we have obtained an inheritance; in Christ we have heard the word of truth…”
It goes on and on about the benefits we have in Christ who is risen from the dead. If Christ is raised, so also are we – now, for the purposes of this life – not just for the life to come. What is printed out in our lives is at work now – like those from Faith and from other congregations who were able to help yesterday with the clean-up project at Bethel AME church. They were being the risen life of Christ here and now – and their muscles may show it!
The Christian life is this “caught-up-ness’ in God’s good purposes! We glimpse it now, but it will be shown fully in the fullness of time. We may not see all God’s good purposes right now. We may not see the good side of the tapestry during the July days of our lives. But God is working through all things for God’s good purposes – or, as Ephesians puts it – “for God’s good pleasure.” And God uses our hands and hearts and minds and even our water bottles.
I spoke with my sister yesterday who lives in Phoenix. They are having record-breaking weather right now. It’s about as hot as Qatar was when we were there – about 115. NPR covered a story on the homeless and the heat. It can be lethal for them. Cindy said one thing being done is that they are handing out free bottles of cold water. And shade becomes an oasis. The living presence of Christ to the homeless in such heat may take the shape – not so much of bread and wine – as of water and shade. We might hear Christ saying, “water and shade, given for you.”
Christ knows what the world needs and is searching always for willing hearts and hands ready to go where Christ leads for God’s good pleasure. What more could we ask than to be wired for God’s good pleasure as the free gift of God’s love! Frederick Buechner says that our God given vocation “is the place where our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” God lavishes us with connection to God’s heart so that our lives might beat in rhythm with the heartbeat of God. We are wired for just such a heartbeat and how good to nurture our attentiveness to it and to steep ourselves in its rhythm so that we will know it by heart – even when our minds may seem to forget.
Two of our musicians, Margaret and Cindy, and I heard a story this week that touched each of us deeply. We were at the ELCA Worship Conference in Long Beach preparing for Ash Wednesday and The Three Days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil. One of the musicians who led us was Mark Mummert. Mark is the composer of Setting One in the ELW and many other pieces of liturgy and song. He serves now as the organist at Christ the King Lutheran Church in Houston and as the organist for the Bach Society of Houston. But the world almost lost him. Last September he came down with such a bad case of pneumonia that he remembers nothing at all of his first week and a half of his hospitalization.
A pastor and organist friend came to visit him during those days. He could not respond to them in any way. They told him later of their time with him. He doesn’t remember any of it, but they told him that they asked what song or psalm he’d like them to sing. He couldn’t say, but slowly, sticking his arm out from beneath the sheets, he fingered a 1, 3, 0. Psalm 130 – “Where shall I go from thy Spirit and where shall I flee from thy presence? If I make my bed in Sheol thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy right hand holds me fast.”
Mark could hardly believe what they told him. He had no recollection of it at all, but he knew the Psalms in his bones. He had been wired to them through years of singing them. His body knew he needed Psalm 130 even if his rational mind didn’t have a clue.
What do we know by heart? What is being nurtured in our bones? Ephesians was written so that we would know we are default wired to Christ’s risen life. It was written so that we would come to know in our bones that as Christ is raised from the dead we too are raised daily to new life. To be Christian is to be baptized into the risen life of Christ and sent as the embodiment of that life into the world. May what is in our bones delight more and more to find its way into our way of life!

Amen

   +Pastor Peg Schultz-Akerson, to the glory of God
Faith Lutheran Church, Chico, CA