To Whom Do We Minister?

The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (RCL, Year B, Proper 12)
Summer Sermon Series (4 of 11)
July 12, 2009

The Reverend Paul Abernathy

“Can’t we all just get along?” A plaintive plea uttered by Rodney King in response to rioting sparked by the 1992 acquittal of the Los Angeles police officers charged with having used excessive force during his arrest for driving under the influence. What began ostensibly as a commonplace, moderately unpleasant transaction between law enforcement officials and a citizen caught in the commission of an offense literally exploded into something more grave, exposing long simmering tensions along the fault lines of race and inequality, law and injustice, power and powerlessness.

“Can’t we all just get along?” Leave well enough alone? Let bygones be bygones? Live and let live? Sometimes, when the issues are great and the stakes high, the answer is no.

So, it seems is true in ministry. Sometimes the service one offers to “the other” is not consolation, but challenge – which brings to mind the old adage that the ministry of the church is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.

So, it seems the latter was true for the ministries of Amos and John the Baptist…

Amos, demanding repentance, so distressed the royal court that Amaziah, the priest, appealed to King Jeroboam to silence God’s prophet – clearly a sign that the institution of religion no longer contained nor could tolerate a word of truth – saying, “Amos conspires against you…the land cannot bear all his words.”^[1]

Eight centuries later, John the Baptist, made a similar plea and so disturbed Herod’s household that even the king’s fearsome fascination with the messenger could not spare the prophet’s life.^[2]

This is the fourth installment in our summer sermon series. Three weeks ago Susan called us to Pay Attention!, urging us, in awareness of eternity, to be present in the temporal now. I, then, asked the question, Pay Attention to What? Ministry, particularly service to “the other,” those unlike us. Susan, last Sunday, asked, Why Minister to Others?, making the perhaps paradoxical point that we, in the commonality of our individual uniqueness, all share the state of otherness one with another, thus, none of us is an island unto ourselves. Today, to the query To Whom Do We Minister?, it is not only “the other” as in those who are different from us, but also those who differ with us.

So Amos and after him, John the Baptist, and after them, Jesus. And we are called to follow him, whose life, death, and resurrection story reveal both promise and cost of love and justice, in reaching out to all, even to those with whom we disagree.

How very hard that is! Most of us, I imagine, are fairly wedded to our worldviews – the lenses through which we perceive and process the reality around us and within us so to make sense of it, so to make sense of ourselves. I would guess that most of us, most of the time like or, at least, are accustomed to how we think and feel, and, in that, find comfort with those who share our views. So, to the question, Can’t we all just get along?, the answer, often enough, is no; that response equally often attended by the question, Why should we?

Because there is something as essential to our finding comfort, holding fast, being true to our hard-fought, hard won individual perspectives. That is, challenging and being challenged by “the other,” verily, all others. Being in regular, if not constant relation to those who differ, those who disagree. And, in that, keeping our heads, hearts, and hands open to the reality that there is but one race. It is human. There is but one life we know and one world we inhabit. It is this. And unless we make the effort, take the risk of challenge and change, learning and growth, we will continue to repeat that cardinal blood-stained lesson of human history – illustrated in the driving of Amos from the land that could not bear all his words, the beheading of John the Baptist for daring to name the immorality of a king, and the crucifixion of Jesus for calling the religious and political authorities to use their prominence and privilege to serve the helpless and the hopeless – that we, when in power, kill the disturbers of our peace.

Rather, may we follow the one who ministered to all – in his life, reaching out his hands to all, by his death, stretching out his arms to embrace all, through his resurrection, opening his heart to all.

[1] Amos 7.10. The Hebrew scripture passage appointed for the day is Amos 7.7-15.

[2] The gospel passage appointed for the day is Mark 6.14-29.