A sermon given at St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church in Springdale, Arkansas, on July 22, 2018. St. Thomas’ is the parish that sent me to seminary. It is always so good to be with them.
Proper 11, Year B
Readings: II Samuel 7:1-14a; Psalm 23; Ephesians 2:11-22; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
“S doesn’t stand for ‘Super.’” My wife Molly explained this to me one night recently as we were watching a movie. Molly continued: “S doesn’t stand for ‘Super.’ It’s a symbol from his home planet meaning ‘Hope.’” Well, whatever it means, there’s no denying he is super. That’s why he’s many people’s favorite superhero. “Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound”–that’s our guy, our hero. Seemingly undefeatable with a high sense of morality, standing up for ordinary people like me, and insusceptible to the things that can get me down like the flu and machine gun fire. Superman. That’s the hero for me.
All of our superheroes, whether because they’re from a different planet or world, are super wealthy and geniuses, or were bitten by a spider–all of our superheroes are superheroes because they have some sort of extraordinary power, something that makes them different from you and me, that makes them more than human. They don’t have to worry about normal stuff like the flu; they can tackle the big problems of evil. Their narratives try to convince us that they, and they alone, can be our messiahs, our saviors, our hope.
Because of that, today’s reading from the Gospel according to Mark can catch some of us off guard. It can be surprising, even if it is so ordinary. Jesus tells his disciples that they all need to take a break. “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while,” Jesus says. They’ve been busy, to the point of not having time to eat. From the beginning of Mark’s Gospel (and we are only six chapters in at this point), Jesus has been going at a breakneck speed. He’s baptized, driven off into the wilderness, calls his disciples, launches his ministry, heals and teaches and preaches and debates with religious authorities. He calms a storm. He commissions his disciples and sends them out ahead of him to preach in other towns. He preaches in his hometown synagogue and is rejected. He feeds the 5,000 and walks on the water. Jesus has been busy.
So he gives the invitation: Come away and rest a while. You’ve been running ragged. Take a load off. Of course, as we read today, they couldn’t rest, not at that moment. They were met with multitudes everywhere they went, and Jesus had to stop to heal and teach.
But this can be alarming to some because of how ordinary it is. Jesus has to rest. It’s a reminder of his humanity–that while he is fully God, he is also fully human. And with his humanity come certain limitations. He has to rest. Rest is a good and holy and necessary thing for all of us, even our Lord.
Not for Superman, though–not really. He doesn’t need his rest. He’s better than we are.
But here’s Jesus, and he needs a nap. Just like me.
We like our superheroes to come with fancy outfits and superhuman abilities. We like them to come with a buffer against all that ails us mere mortals. We like them to tackle the problems we can’t, the evil in the world. They give us hope.
God could have sent a Superman. God could have sent a conquering, undefeatable military hero. God could have blinked and made a new world. But that wasn’t the plan.
The plan was to send the Son of God, the Word, Jesus Christ, as a baby who would grow up to be a poor traveling teacher without a place to lay his head, who would be susceptible to things like the flu and the cross and death. Not a super-man, but someone who is fully God and fully man.
And in him, in him alone, is hope. The incorruptible superheroes we like to lift up are frauds. Despite the S on his chest, there is no hope in the likes of Superman, or any of those Super-People we lift up as our heroes.
In Jesus Christ is the hope of the world.
The author of the letter to the Ephesians tackles the question of how we are saved through Christ. In our reading today, the author writes that “in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” The writer is discussing the conflict in the early Church between Jewish believers in Jesus and non-Jewish believers in Jesus. The biggest question in the early Church was what to do about non-Jews. Did believers in Jesus–all originally Jews–have to follow the Jewish law? Did they need to be circumcised, follow the dietary restrictions, and observe Jewish festivals? If they did, then non-Jewish followers of Jesus had a few more requirements before they could be accepted fully into the community of believers. If not, then we are saying that belief in Jesus Christ is enough, and while those other things might be good and even important for Jewish followers of Christ, they are not necessary for non-Jewish followers.
The writer is arguing that through Christ these two competing groups–Jews and non-Jews–are reconciled, or brought together, to God and to one another. The dividing wall that has separated them has been broken down. Why? Because through Christ and through Christ alone, we all have access to God: Through Christ we all have access in one Spirit to the Father. And because of that we are all members of the household of God, with Christ as the chief cornerstone.
But we need to notice: It is through the blood of Christ, through his death, that we are reconciled with God and with one another. It is through the humanness of Christ–the very thing that our superheroes try to reject–that we are saved. All of this is only possible because of the humanity of Christ, because he was willing to die, just like each one of us will die. Because of all of that, he is our only hope, he is the source of our unity, he is our Savior. Through him we get to God, and we become part of the very family of God, with prophets and saints of ages past. Through his death and resurrection, evil and death are really defeated, and we really have life.
You know, our grownup superheroes look a little different than they did in the comic books or on TV. Our superheroes don’t wear capes anymore; they look more like Clark Kent than Superman. They don’t have laser vision; they usually have impressive resumes and even more impressive bank accounts. They don’t have an “S” across their chests; but they have fancy titles and prestigious positions. Sometimes they have an “R” or a “D” after their name. But their message is the same: Put your hope in me. Trust me to solve your problems. I’m invincible and all powerful. Let me save you; let me be your Messiah.
Perhaps even more often we hold ourselves up to this superhero standard. We exalt ourselves, expect us to solve our own problems, to be our only hope. We try to convince the world that we can rise above ordinary, human problems. We walk around with smiles painted on our faces, afraid someone might catch a glimpse of the crack in our defenses. We are terrified that someone might see that we are not faster than a speeding bullet, not more powerful than a locomotive, and most days, we cannot even jump over a casual hurdle.
We cannot be our own Messiahs. Those outside voices cannot be our Messiahs. But the good news is that’s not the Christian hope.
For our hope is in a God who came as a human, to live and die and rise again on the third day; who, yes, got tired and needed a nap. It’s disarming–and even a little alarming–that Almighty God would come in such an unexalted, normal way. But that was the plan to save us, to free us from the powers of sin and death, to defeat evil, and to make us children of the living God.
Storied Grace 