Excerpts from Minister Jamie's sermon based on Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
We are often in such a hurry, from one thing to the next thing to the next thing, that we do things like lose our keys. I do this all the time. I act and don’t think about what I'm doing. I just go through the motions and am not being intentional. Our gospel text for today says that they were in such a hurry that they weren't even taking time to eat. Not even taking time to eat. I think it's not a surprise that as humans we are always putting Dacartes before the horse! (Rene Decartes was a French philosopher and mathematician.)
I remember my very first philosophy course just like it was yesterday. I had always had this desire to know things or try to understand… why is the world the way it is, and why does some knowledge seem so elusive? I would encounter people who would say things like, “I know God”. I would think, ‘you know God and I want to know God too’. What is this secret to knowing God? So, I enrolled in my very first class. I sat there and I heard one of the nicest people I've ever met talk about the nature of God, good and evil in the world, and what it means to be ethical. All the things I had wondered and thought about my whole life. I didn't know there was a whole course in this! He used to say before every exam, “never sell your soul to the devil for the sake of an exam”. You might get a few questions wrong and that is OK. Far better to miss a few questions than risk serious consequences by cheating.
In this same class I encountered someone who lived a long, long time ago named Anselm. Anselm was a very smart man. Smart enough that he made it into philosophy classes! His number one contribution, not just to theology, but to the history of philosophy, is that he had ideas about the nature of God. One of the ideas that Anselm had was that God was perfect in every single way.
I have no doubt that God is perfect in every single way. However, the nature of perfection is very troublesome. If you're a perfect being and you change in any way, that implies that there was something imperfect. If you're perfect, why do you need to change? Perfectionism is something that creeps into our lives that keeps us from digging deeper into our faith or into learning ways that we can love better. It actually builds a wall between us and other people.
Nothing outside of God is perfect. The church is not perfect. No one individual in the church is perfect. Now I one hundred percent believe that we should strive to be the very best we can be. That as people of faith we can all love better and love bolder because that takes us closer to the one who is perfect in love and perfect in compassion.
Our job as sheep is to listen to the Shepherd’s voice. To listen to the voice of the one that we call the Good Shepherd. Yet so often we hear God call us to something and we can't be moved to do it. There is this juxtaposition of good and perfect. We fear getting one thing wrong so much that we do nothing. The enemy of good becomes perfection. So, we don't listen to the voice of the Good Shepherd.
Perfectionism keeps us from understanding compassion. Jesus had compassion for his sheep, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Compassion is a word that is rooted in the gut. Compassion feeling moved by someone or something internally. Not just ‘I I feel sorry’, but ‘I am moved in my inner most being for this person or these people’. To be moved requires a certain amount of proximity to another human being. Just this week I was informed of a young girl who is no longer with us. She passed away. About a month and a half ago I met little Piper. She had made a bracelet for a guy that was sick and dying. Little piper thought, “I'm going to make him a bracelet!” So, as I visited him this small girl ran in and handed him this bracelet that she'd taken time to make for him. Moved to compassion.
It doesn't matter how old we are, how young we are, or anywhere in between. We must be moved by compassion. The Bible tells us that God's very heart is compassionate. As God's sheep, as God's people, we are God's beloved. Perfectionism should not keep us from compassion. In fact, it takes us further away from whatever we think perfection is.
Why is it that that we walk around and have such a hard time in our in our world, in our culture, and in our churches when we feel like it's so difficult to be moved by people’s stories? I would say it's much like our text says today. Our gospel text notes that they were running around like chickens with no head. They were going in circles, not even taking time to stop to eat. We get like that. We go from one thing, to the next, to the next, to the next as transactions.
I bought this today.
I did this today.
I got this today.
Check this off.
Check that off.
Check this off.
We went to church today.
Just check off your checklist.
But what moves you? What moves you like what moved Piper to act? To bring goodness into the world? That is our task today. Stop. To stop in the midst of all this busyness and all this activity and get in touch with ourselves our feelings, our emotions and our thoughts, so that we can be renewed and refreshed in a way that allows us to go out and share good news with other people. As the church our call is to be people who share and bear good news with the world. There's plenty of bad news, but we must be people of good news. And that requires that we take time to rest. To stop.
It was only 2 months ago when I was in Lexington KY and Rupp Arena, and I was blown away. UK plays basketball there and it is a loud place. Inside Rupp Arena they had a quiet room where people who were overstimulated or just needed to step aside could go and sit quietly. They had these scents and lights. There were probably 20-25 people in there and not a sound. Completely contrary to the busyness that we create in our lives. I will say I walked out of that room feeling refreshed. I had taken a little bit of time to be quiet and to stop so that I could be filled up. Just to be filled up so that I could then go out into the world. I could leave that building. I could go to wherever I needed to go and be moved with compassion.
We are beings created in God’s image, and being rooted in God’s image means that we must be people connected to one another. That connection is sustained by compassion, and we must never lose that. Jesus has compassion on us and it's our job to find ways to fill ourselves up so that we can be moved to compassion for each other.
May it be so.