A Sermon Delivered by The Rev. John D. Painter at Centenary United Methodist Church – Metuchen, New Jersey July 19, 2009

Text: Mark 6:30-56
The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.” But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” They said to him, “Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?” And he said to them, “How many loaves have you? Go and see.” When they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” Then he or-dered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.

When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole re-gion and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the market-places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed. —Mark 6:30-56 (NRSV)

“A great wave washed over the state of Alabama a few years ago. The whole state was gripped by a raging fever, as if everything stopped, and the whole state, despite the divisions of race, religion, and language, focused on one thing. Metaphors fail me. How can I characterize this event?” asks United Methodist Bishop William H. Willimon of the North Alabama Annual Conference.

“I am, of course, talking about the popular TV show American Idol, a contest among amateurs that was won by Taylor Hicks, a dentist’s son from Hoover, Alabama, who had sung in various clubs from time to time, but he was no professional. For Alabamians to watch Taylor Hicks crowned as American Idol was a great moment in our state’s history. But why? While Mr. Hicks has talent, his talent is not so overwhelming. Probably a host of other nightclub singers could croon these soul-filled lyrics as well as Mr. Hicks.

“I think the power of Mr. Hicks to grasp our state’s collective imagination, and indeed the popularity of the show American Idol is surely this—it is about amateurs. The show features ordinary people who are energized by a dream. They want to become famous. They want to sing in front of millions one day. In fact, the more ordinary the winner on American Idol the more fun it is to see them win.

“Some of you are old enough to remember Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour. American Idol is a sort of Amateur Hour redesigned for our century. The last church I served delighted in a once-a-year talent night. Here was a night when we gathered for a covered dish supper, and then, un-der the glare of lights on the stage in the church fellowship hall, ordinary people in the congrega-tion stepped forward and sang or danced or recited a poem or led their dog in assorted tricks. In-variably, when the evening was done, there was always someone to say, ‘George, I didn’t know that you were so talented!’”

I suspect we all enjoy our own church talent nights or the Centenary Men’s Review. (We have one coming up on October 10th, so get ready, guys!) We all enjoy stories of ordinary people who, at the invitation of the crowd, step forward and sing, even if they are not professional sing-ers, and wow the crowds with their talent.

This morning’s Gospel reading is a story about very ordinary people—rank amateurs—who are called out on the stage by Jesus himself. The disciples find their ordinary lives caught up in an extraordinary miracle and, as a result, many are fed. It is not an unusual story in the Scrip-tures. In fact, the remarkable thing is that stories of amateurs called forth by God to act their parts on the stage called salvation are not remarkable at all. This is the way that our God works.

The 20th Century German theologian Karl Barth, says somewhere that, “When it comes to the Christian life, all of us are amateurs.” We never get beyond our amateur status, so far as our service to God is concerned.

Don’t you find it remarkable that when the Son of God entered human history he did not go immediately to the professional theologians up at the temple or to the church officials, those people who were the “religious professionals.” He went to ordinary people, strictly amateurs. Oh yes, there was the moment that only Luke tells about, when the pre-teen Jesus stood before the temple elders and astonished them with his wisdom (Luke 2:41-51). But presumably that was all Jesus needed to see of the “religious professionals.” He doesn’t interact with them again—at least not up at headquarters—until the very end of the story, when the “religious professionals” conspire with the political leaders to crucify him.

Ironically, Bishop Willimon confesses, “I despise that term ‘religious professionals.’ It is a term that signifies much mischief that has been done in the church. All I know is that Jesus went exclusively to amateurs when he called his disciples. It took a very short time for the church to develop its own ‘professionals,’ people who were experts at the Christian faith. It’s the Protestant in me, but I see this as a loss. I remind you that the Protestant reformation was partly a debate about the very issue of professionalization. The church had come to call some Chris-tians—namely monks, nuns, and priests—‘the religious.’ The implication was that there were some people who were ‘full-time Christians’ and there were others, the lowly laity, who only dabbled in Christianity as amateurs from time to time. This is not at all the picture as presented in the Gospels. Throughout church history, the church has had to battle against the notion that there are some people who, when asked to do some great work for God, protest saying, ‘Well I am only a layperson,’ whereas there are other people who make heroic, full-time, more dramatic witness, people who are called ‘clergy.’

“In its sad form, this perversion of discipleship implies that if you are really, really seri-ous about following Jesus, you must become clergy. I taught for a number years at a seminary and I can tell you that one of our biggest challenges was to confront seminarians with the fact that a seminary has a particular purpose—namely the training of pastoral leaders for the church.

“There were always a number of people in seminary simply because they wanted to be more active Christians. Perhaps they had some dramatic conversion experience or for some rea-son their faith was deepened and they really wanted to give themselves as fully as possible to Jesus. Where do you take that kind of inclination? Sadly, there seems to be nowhere to take that but to three years of seminary. To their sadness, many found out that seminary was one of the worst places to be in order to be a better Christian!”
“As a pastor,” Bishop Willimon testifies, “I can tell you that one of the biggest challenges any pastor has is to resist the laity attempting to give over their baptismally mandated ministry to me, the pastor. Many times laity say in effect, ‘Here, pastor. Here is my vocation to be a teacher, a proclaimer of the gospel, an evangelist, a missionary, I’ll pay you to do that for me.’ This is a sad perversion of the ministry to which Christ calls each of us. Today’s Gospel reminds us that we are all amateurs. That is, when it comes to discipleship, to following Jesus, there is no profes-sional training that we can take, no credentialing other than his claim upon our lives. The main thing that authorizes us is Jesus’ call to, ‘Follow me.’ Your personal righteousness, your many talents, no matter how great, are not what makes you a disciple. It is Jesus’ call that makes you a disciple.
“Furthermore, today’s Gospel reminds us that we are all amateurs in the sense that none of us yet has the skills, the knowledge, or the inclination to make us anything other than an ama-teur when it comes to following Jesus. We constantly get it wrong. We mess up. At our best, we have good intentions, but again and again we find out that our intentions, in regard to some ac-tion, are not as pure as we thought. Perhaps that is one reason why on most Sundays we begin our worship with a general prayer of confession of sin. We haven’t gotten it right, not yet.

“I love the way that the Gospels frequently portray Jesus’ first twelve disciples as the in-ner circle. Those who were privy to all of Jesus’ teaching, and witnesses to all his miracles, are depicted (particularly in Mark’s Gospel) as a bunch of bungling, often inept, and misunderstand-ing people. There is not one disciple, no not one, of whom it can be said, ‘He really gets it right.’ Even Simon Peter, particularly Simon Peter, is constantly getting it wrong, all the way to the end when he joins Judas in betraying Jesus.

“And this bumbling ineptitude, this eternal amateurism, is a mystery at the heart of the gospel. This is the way God works. Jesus offers salvation, redemption, and participation in the Reign of God to a bunch of amateurs. There is a sense in which the more we learn about Jesus, and the longer we are a disciple, the more we are impressed with how we fall short, mess up, and disappoint Jesus. There is a sense in which the closer we get to Jesus, the further away from him we become. Our amateur status is cultivated as we move deeper into scripture, as we learn more about Jesus.

“And yet, here we are, amateurs stumbling along behind Jesus. He would have it no other way.”

It might be the height of self-delusion and foolishness for anybody ever to think of him-self or herself as a “religious professional.” Not one of us could say that somehow God has re-vealed the secret of the gospel, the whole truth of the Christian faith, and that we are particularly, spectacularly adept at practicing the faith.

Probably this is why the church has traditionally advised that the pastor should receive the bread and the wine of communion first—not as a sign of privilege or hierarchy or expertise, but rather as a sign that the pastor is the chief sinner among a gathered community of sinners!

Today’s Gospel reading opens with the disciples excitedly telling Jesus all they have taught and all they have done. (Which is ironic, considering how often—up to this point in Mark—they have managed more often than not to say and do the wrong thing!) But perhaps the most spectacular, miraculous moment comes when Jesus turns to his disciples in front of the huge crowd and says, “You give them something to eat.”

When they are asked, “What do you have?” they respond that they have only five loaves of bread and a couple of fish. “We’re not into food distribution,” they might have replied. “We’re not so good at cooking.”

Miraculously Jesus then says, “You give them something to eat.” And when they obey, Jesus takes what they have, and—wonder of wonders—it is more than enough.
There are people right here in this congregation this morning—people without any formal theological training, people whose personalities have some deep flaws, people who are not the smartest or the healthiest—whom Jesus is using for the good of the world. You simply are will-ing, with all of your thoughts, to obey the command of Jesus when he says, “Follow me.”

I am sure this is the major reason why we love our Christmas pageant in December. Can I talk about this in July? To have a bunch of Sunday School kids and youth dressed up in “bath-robes” (I have heard Christmas pageants called “bathrobe dramas”) before a makeshift manger is for all of us to be reminded of the nature of following Jesus. When it comes to discipleship, we’re all amateur actors; we’re all among those who have been pushed out onto the stage with ill-fitting clothes, having to speak lines that don’t come naturally to us. And this, my dear friends, is the way God has chosen to save the world—through amateurs.

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PRAYER
Lord Jesus, you have called us to be your disciples. Now, we pray, take what we have and bless it, use it for the good of a hurting world. Enable us to be your assistants. Amen.
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