Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 9): 9 July 2006.

2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10 or Ezekiel 2:1-5

Psalm 48 or Psalm 123

2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Mark 6:1-13

For better or for worse, dodgeball has been removed from the repertoire of many grade school playgrounds. But there remain plenty of places in life where it can be decidedly uncomfortable to be caught in the middle.

Yet that is exactly the position in which God repeatedly puts chosen individuals, according to the lessons for this Sunday. Ezekiel 2:1-5 begins the content of God's call to Ezekiel, following immediately on the mysterious and complex (indeed, baroque) Chariot Vision in which God arrived in the preceding chapter. There is nothing mysterious or complex about what God has in mind for the prophet. Twice, in vv. 3 and 4, God tells Ezekiel that he is "sending" him, using the technical verb for an ambassadorial appointment, shalach. Further, Ezekiel's commission is absolutely clear: "You shall say to them, 'Thus says the Lord GOD'" (v. 4). But Ezekiel will be playing to a tough house. Six times in three verses (vv. 3-5) God informs Ezekiel that his audience has a history of attitudes and actions at cross-purposes with the will of God.

At first, it seems that God is simply setting in place justification for the horrific judgment that will follow later in the book, when God leaves Jerusalem and even becomes the enemy of his own people (chaps. 11, 3, and 33): "Whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house), they shall know that there has been a prophet among them." The parenthetical remark makes apparent which way God thinks things will go, such that a devastated people will have to admit in retrospect that God had dealt fairly with them and had done his best by sending a prophet. "So they are without excuse," as St. Paul said in another context, centuries later (Rom 1:20). Nevertheless, there is a chance: The people may just listen, despite their past history and present proclivities. But the outcome is not Ezekiel's burden. It is enough that Ezekiel proclaim God's message, as the man in the middle.

In Mark 6:1-13, at first Jesus is on the spot--in his own hometown, of all places! His old neighbors concede that Jesus has both wisdom and power, but they cannot get past their cognitive dissonance based on their knowledge of his family and of his lower-class origins. (Increasingly, NT scholars are seeing [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], "carpenter," as socially beneath both farmers and skilled laborers, something like a "journeyman handyman.") So they "take offense." Jesus responds by grouping himself with the prophets and, like many prior prophets, finds himself "amazed" at people's preference for their own distorted preconceptions to God's appointed message and messenger.

In light of this setback Jesus goes elsewhere to resume what he had attempted in Nazareth (i.e., teaching) and sends out ambassadors of his own--prophets of the prophet, as it were. Interestingly, Jesus sends them in teams of two. Whether for mutual support or accountability or both is not said. Jesus specifically directs them to travel light. Like Ezekiel, their assignment is to bear testimony, not ensure results. Yet it is more than a little intriguing that the twelve appear to have enjoyed greater success in their work than Jesus did in his, at least in Nazareth: Compare v. 5 ("And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them") with v. 13 ("They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them").

2 Corinthians 12:2-10 then takes us to the man whose sufferings for service "in the middle" are described in detail at a length second within the NT only to Jesus', namely, St. Paul. In the chapter prior to today's lesson Paul provides the most complete roster of his travails (2 Cor 11:23-28). Today's Epistle begins with the account of an ecstatic revelatory experience, apparently as a trump-card played on those who continued to challenge his credentials as a true apostle (Gk. [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], literally "ambassador, delegate, messenger"). Paul immediately backs away from taking any ensuing credit, however, clearly conscious that any resultant boasting would inappropriately spotlight the messenger in place of the sender. In fact, Paul notes (perhaps ruefully) that God had intervened in his life to prevent excessive egotism by giving him a "thorn ... in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me." Thus, the messenger himself receives a messenger at God's behest, to which he responds by pleading thrice with God--in effect: "I get the point of your thorn; now please remove it" (cf. Jesus' pleas in Mt 14:32-42). But the point, God says, is that the point must remain, so as to give Paul no alternative to utter reliance on God's grace and Christ's power. The lesson concludes with an example of what we might term Pauline jujitsu, in which weakness is leveraged into strength (cf. the converse application in Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 8, in his adjudication of the "meat offered to idols" issue: The strong position demonstrates its strength by deferring to the weak position). Paul thereby makes his peace with the costs of apostleship.

What is the preacher to make of this day's pericopes? We do well to begin by applying them to ourselves. They warn us against surprise at "alligators" and similar fauna among our hearers, even as they comfort us with the limits of our calling: to proclaim with faithfulness (and all the skill that we can muster), leaving success to the Spirit of God. They encourage us to collegiality (remember "two by two" in Mk 6:7). At a time when at least some congregations are now compensating their pastors at a level commensurate with peer professionals, they remind us to travel light. They drive us back in hard times to God's call and sending and, beyond that, to a divine grace that, paradoxically, can be most evident when we feel that we are least responsible for any successful reception of the gospel among our hearers. We are most faithful, when we act both with [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ("authority," Mk 6:7) and in [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ("weakness," 2 Cor 12:10).

Particularly the Gospel lesson also reminds us of one of the greatest challenges of effective ministry: the achievement of the right balance between personal and professional distance and engagement vis-a-vis those whom we serve. As Jesus himself experienced, familiarity can breed offense; yet, as Paul realized, constant emphasis on one's distinctive place in the community of faith risks confusion of the messenger with the message. We might even dare to suggest a likeness here to the need for balance in our own relationship with God as both transcendent and immanent (cf. reflections above for The Holy Trinity). Overemphasis on either distance or engagement (and most of us tend by nature one way or the other) puts us, respectively, either too much in the middle or too little for faithful ministry.

What, then, do these lessons have to say to our hearers? Look first at the points offered above with respect to preachers: many of them are immediately transferable. In this regard, it is imperative for the preacher to invite all to reach back to God's call and sending as the basis for living transformed rather than conformed lives (Rom 12:2). The fundamental calling and sending for all Christians--pastors included--happens in baptism. If anything, it is the laos who most need this assurance, as it is they who are most often most firmly caught in the middle, tugged between participating in a world of "rebels who have rebelled against me" (Ezek 2:3) and conveying God's message of judgment and grace to that same world.

How important is it really that we sent ones act on our calls? A story that I heard early in my ministry (and whose source I have long forgotten) makes the point nicely:

Upon his ascension, Jesus was welcomed to heaven by myriad angels. One
of them, seeing the disciples still looking up with mouths agape, turned
to Jesus with a worried look: "Are these the only ones you've got to
carry on your work on Earth? What if they fail? What's your backup
plan?"
  "There is no backup plan," Jesus replied. "I'm counting on them."

For the brief span of our lives, we're it (or It, to return to the world of childhood games), right in the middle of the action. But, as Luther liked to say when he felt spiritually hemmed in, "Baptizatus sum" ("I am baptized!"). For the baptized, called, and sent, the middle is not simply an uncomfortable place. It is also a place of opportunity to speak and act in the name of God and thereby to enlarge the middle ground and the host of those who live and serve there. GCH