“Except”

2 Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13

July 5, 2009

The first thing people expect when they come to church is healing, success and money. Maybe you object, but for many this is what it boils down to, this is what church is supposed to be for. If church is good for nothing, then nothing in it is good.

But don’t fret, there are plenty of churches, plenty of preachers that preach the prosperity Gospel. None was more blatant than Reverend Ike, who is still around, but gained most of his notoriety in the 1970’s when he was on 1700 radio and TV stations coming out of New York City. Reverend Ike (Eikenkroetter) preached that the lack of money, not the love of it, is the root of all evil. “The best thing you can do for the poor is not be one of them,” was his best advice. He took his own advice with mansions on both coasts, mink-appointed Rolls Royces, gaudy suits. Rev. Ike’s most famous item was his powerful prayer cloth that the listener was supposed to spread out over the radio during the broadcast. Kind of an early “homer hankie” and you can still get one for only US$10.00.

Reverend Ike did not invent the prosperity Gospel - the idea that Christ died to make you successful, famous, and rich - it’s been around since the beginning of Christianity, and it has always sold. From Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking to Joel Osteen’s Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential, there has always been a market for Christianity that doesn’t ask anything of you except being successful.

The one thing people back home never seem to like whether it is in Galilee or Saskatchewan is a local kid who become successful elsewhere and then tries to come home. Jesus’ reputation proceeded him as he came back to teach in his hometown synagogue, maybe Nazareth, maybe Capernaum according to other Gospels. There is almost a formula at work here as the people who had known him don’t bother listening to a word he says, just start mumbling loudly that he has become too uppity for them. We know exactly who he is and who he has been and who he is still related to - and nobody related to us can ever be that good. It is the fact of small towns everywhere that despite the certain ballyhooed quality of life, there is an insistence upon a mediocrity that cannot tolerate success. When Jesus with a sigh comments on all this sniping against him, “A prophet is not without honour, except in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house,” this proverb is not true because Jesus says it. It is true because it is the truth everywhere.

Jesus could do no mighty work there - except... except he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. The hometown folk were astonished at his teaching; Jesus marveled because of their unbelief. Probably again with a sigh, he moves on to teach in other villages. You can’t go home again.

This unsettling and disillusioning experience may have impelled Jesus to shift into the next phase of his ministry, sending out the twelve disciples to wage war on the unclean spirits. As far as we can tell, none of the original twelve disciples had any particular skills in this area, and we know they bungled it all badly at different stages. But Jesus equipped them with the authority to do remarkable things, which is something to remember about our own possibilities.

However, Jesus prescribed a particular life-style which would have shocked Reverend Ike. He wanted them to be poor - take nothing for the journey except a staff. Notice that there are lots of exceptions in this passage. No bread, no bag, no money, just wear sandals and don’t bring along a second change of clothing. You are going to be poor, for none of these possessions will bring you into the kingdom of heaven. When you go into a village, accept the hospitality you are given, no matter how humble, no matter how poor. Don’t go shopping around for better digs and more delicious food; you are rich already in your poverty. Don’t confuse matters thinking success and property are signs of the wealth of your soul.

The evangelist Mark reports that they went out and did it all - preached that people should repent, cast out a few demons, anointed people with oil and healed them. Nothing spectacular that would go well with the surroundings at the Crystal Cathedral or Reverend Ike’s place. While Jesus marveled at his own people’s unbelief; it is just as amazing to see how the church in so many places has pushed aside Jesus’ advice - a desire to be anything but poor.

Paul seemed to get the idea, perhaps because his own experience traveling around preaching the Gospel and establishing congregations in all sorts of places gave him no choice. With tongue in cheek he begins with prosperity language, I am boasting! He boasts for the accomplishment of some person who has been taken up to heaven in a vision - most people believe it is him, he even knows how long ago it was, 14 years back. But that was not really him, he will not boast, except of his weaknesses. His strength in his weaknesses and his wisdom is in his foolishness, and that is the Good News. You don’t have to be rich and powerful and successful to enjoy the kingdom, and in fact being rich and powerful and successful always seem to be hindrances.

Paul admits he has been given “a thorn in the flesh” to keep him from being too arrogant and overly self-assured. It has been a two-millennium-old guessing game what kind of affliction it actually was, but it obviously prevented him from becoming a television evangelist. Ernest Hemingway perhaps described Paul, noting that “life breaks us all, but some of us are strong in the broken places.”

It is fairly obvious that Paul was fighting some of the same battles as the church today against the all-too-human tendency towards the prosperity Gospel. In the first as well as twenty-first century the assumption is that if God wants a better life for you - and what else would God really want? - then when you boil it all down the church is all about you. William Sloane Coffin, when he was chaplain of Yale University, once told the seminarians, “I don’t see how you attract folk to Jesus by appealing to their basic selfishness - ‘Jesus can fix everything that’s wrong with you’ - and end up offering anything like the self-less, self-denying faith of Jesus.”

Clarence Jordan, the translator of the Cotton Patch Version and founder of the interracial farming community of Koinonia in Georgia, was being shown around a new church by its minister. The minister pointed out all the architectural features and creative touches, stained glass and then some. A spotlight illuminated a large cross on the top of the steeple. He couldn’t help but say, “That cross alone cost us $10,000.” “You got cheated,” Jordan said. “Time was when Christians could get them for free.”

It’s all about poverty, it’s all about weakness, it is all about all those cases of “except.” Jesus could do very little in his hometown where envy and jealousy reigned, except to lay his hands on a few sick people. A prophet is without honour, except in his own country. The disciples were sent out as poor men carrying nothing with them except a staff, which is meant to assist you in your weakness. Paul knows he is nothing to boast home about, except for his weaknesses.

We gather here, not because we are the most successful, but because we are broken and by God’s grace in the church there is eventually someone else who is strong in our broken places.

Preached by Robert Kitchen

Knox-Metropolitan United Church

Regina, Saskatchewan