Our Actions Matter!
Posted on Jul 08, 2018 by David Whetter
About six years ago, Rodney Atkins, a country music artist, recorded a song called "Watching You". The song is a about a dad and his 4-year-old son who wants to be just like him. As the song begins, they are in the car and the little boy is eating his Happy Meal in the back seat, but when his dad has to hit the brakes suddenly, the meal goes flying and the little boy, without thinking, utters a four-letter word that the dad says began with the letter “s.” Now the dad was shocked, and so he said to the 4-year-old, where did you learn to say a thing like that, to which the little boy replies, “Dad, I been watching you, ain’t that cool…I want to be just like you!”. Whether we know it or not, what we do and what we say truly do matter!
Believe it or not, I thought about this song as I studied our Gospel story for today. Today’s Gospel offers what initially seem to be two separate stories, but together they actually offer us a compelling glimpse of how God acts in the world and what ministry in the name of Jesus can and does look like.
To begin with, we are once again back in Capernaum, Jesus’ hometown. Now up until now, as we have read, Mark’s focus on Jesus’ life and ministry has been to highlight Jesus’ power to heal and his desire to restore community life. He has been doing amazing thing,s and his success is evident as Mark continues to point out, great crowds are gathering around him. But, today Mark adds a new wrinkle to the story. The local folks in town don’t seem to be too excited anymore about what Jesus is doing. Apparently they think Jesus’ success is going to his head. As they see it, Jesus has grown too big for his britches. These local folks, who know Jesus well, seem to be trapped in their own pettiness and they are no longer even remotely interested in receiving the blessings Jesus is offering.
Now, it’s easy for us to sit here, some 2,000 years later, and say, boy were they dumb. But we probably shouldn’t be surprised. I mean this type of reaction is common even today. How often when someone just like us makes it big, for some reason, rather than rejoice, we tend to dismiss their success as luck, or even worse, as unearned? All too often we see one person’s gain as another person’s loss. All too often we look at life as a zero-sum game where there’s only so much affirmation and acceptance to go around. All too often we see one person’s success, or another community's success, as a negative reflection on ourselves, or our community. We live in a world where we are in an endless competition in which we are measured relentlessly against each other. Unfortunately the reaction of those people in Jesus' own hometown, just as today, was all too painfully human.
So, the notion that the local folks would not support Jesus doesn’t really surprise me, but what I do find surprising is what Mark says about their unbelief, “And [Jesus] could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief” (6:5-6). Now Mark doesn’t exactly spell out for us why this is true, but it seems to me that Mark is saying that there is a strong connection between God’s healing presence in our lives and our willingness, or unwillingness, to believe. And in fact, I would go further to say that to some degree, Mark is stating that we are participants in God’s work in the world.
Now I don’t want you to think that we somehow limit God’s power by our belief. I know God’s power is limitless, and God’s will will be done with our without us, but I am saying I believe that God invites us to be the vessels of his love in this world, and our willingness to be those vessels does have an effect on how God’s love and healing is received in our own communities. With or without us, God will continue to offer God’s grace, love, forgiveness, and healing presence to the world, but our willingness to offer these incredible gifts of grace, love, forgiveness, and healing to a broken world says much about who and what we are. When the world looks at the church and sees it doing nothing about violence in our communities, about hatred, racism, homophobia, immigration, and the list goes on, then our actions, or lack of actions, say to the world, this Christianity is nothing more than a bunch of words. There is no power in God’s love, grace, and mercy, because if there was, these Christians would be acting differently. Our actions matter, and God desires that we be willing participants in God’s work to bless and care for all creation, and our resistance to being those who continue to bless this world make a difference in how God’s power to heal and care are received.
As our story shifts from the unbelief of the local folks, Jesus decides to send his followers out on a mission of healing. He sends them in pairs, and he says take nothing but your faith. And go and offer God’s healing love. What he says to them about what to do is really important. First, he says wherever you go, don’t just pop in, do a couple of good deeds, and leave, but stay until your work is finished. Stay until you have built healthy relationships. However, he goes on, if those you are offering God’s love to reject the offer, then leave immediately. Mark says nothing about cursing them or condemning them, he just says move on. You see, we can only offer God’s love and way of living, but if others reject it, we cannot control that, so move on. It seems to me all to often when others reject our faith, we want to condemn them, we want to try and force them to believe, but Jesus says, leave them be and move on. God has called us to be his vessels of love and hope, and that is all we are called to do. Salvation is not ours to control, or to give, or to force on anyone to accept, it is only our responsibility to share with the world that God’s offer of love and hope and salvation is for everyone. And when our actions are hypocritical, or even worse, violent or condemning, then the world fails to receive God’s healing presence. Our actions make a difference!
This invitation to go and be God’s vessels in God’s ministry of reconciliation with the world offers you and I the opportunity to be channels of God’s love and grace to a broken world every day of our lives. It offers us the opportunity to make every day a holy and sacred day in which we get to act and be like Christ. Our actions matter!
On that day that Jesus sent his disciples out in mission, he made it clear that that as followers of his, we are truly partners in his mission. This is why I prefer to call you all Partners in Mission, and not members. You see, Jesus did not invite his followers to join a club; no, he invited us to be his partner in God’s mission to reconcile the world to God.
This morning our senior high youth, along with the rest of the KCLYC group, have gone to serve in Minneapolis. This week they have an opportunity, just as you and I do here, to be vessels of God’s love and mercy. I pray their actions are received as a signs of God’s love, and I pray that each of you comes to know that your actions make a difference in the lives of so many whether you know it or not.
What we do matters, and once again this week we are reminded that God continues to equip and commission us to be agents of grace. Brothers and sisters, today we are reminded that we are invited to be partners in Christ’s mission, and I pray we choose to act differently every day so that the world might see Christ in and through us, so they might too say, “We’ve been watching you and we want to be just like you.” Amen