I don’t think I have ever preached a sermon where the point has been the congregation before. The congregation seems to be the point of the readings set for the 8th Sunday after Trinity (year B). They are Jeremiah 23:1-6, Psalm 23, Ephesians 2:11-end and Mark 6:30-34, 53-end (text below). I’m covering a long term “vacancy” in a group of churches. I’m hoping these congregations will find encouragement here.
July 21st 2024
The point of today’s readings is the gathering after the scattering – the scattering of people. I don’t think I have ever preached a sermon where the point has been the congregation before, but that seems to be the point that links the readings appointed for today. All four: the reading from Jeremiah, the Psalm, the reading from Ephesians and the gospel reading from Mark – they all build the point. The congregation is the point. The gathering after the scattering is the point.
Never has there been so many people on the move as now. By the end of last year 1 person out of every 69 was forcibly displaced, having been forced to flee persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations and events seriously disturbing public order. That is double the number of a decade ago.
I in 69.
Last year the global refugee population increased by 7% to over 43 million people. 73% of them came from just 5 countries: Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine and Sudan.
As well as those 43 million people another 63.3 million people who were forced to flee remain in their own countries. They are known as internally displaced people. Can you imagine this? Over 9 million people in Sudan, over 7 million people in Syria, 6.9 million people in Columbia, 6.3 million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and 4.5 million people in Yemen – all internally displaced, mostly due to conflict and violence, and some due to natural disasters.
1 in 69.
Every bomb dropped on a village or a housing block in Ukraine and Gaza displaces the families who live there. Every military push forces out those in its path.
I in 69 people displaced and scattered. Poet Warsan Shire, herself a British poet born to Somali parents in Kenya, begins her poem called Home with the lines:
No one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark.
1 in 69 people forcibly displaced – according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recent report on global trends. 1 in 69 – and it’s getting worse. 1 in 69 displaced and scattered because of the failure of governments to guarantee their peace and security.
This is the world we live in. Our scriptures reflect the same realities – the failure of government to secure peace and security. Our scriptures come from the heart of people displaced by persecution, oppression and exile – and those moved with compassion for them.
Jeremiah is one such person used to address the tragedy of his contemporaries being displaced in large number and scattered far and wide. Just as the UNHCR report puts the blame on the failure of governments to safeguard peace and security, so does Jeremiah all those centuries ago.
Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of the pasture! Says the Lord. Shepherd was a term used to describe the king. Jeremiah’s “woe to the shepherds” is a judgement on the line of kings who have failed the people.
In the previous chapter Jeremiah protests against the succession of rulers whose eyes and hearts have been set on “dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood and for practising oppression and violence” (22:17) in contrast to the good king (Josiah) who “judged the cause of the poor and needy” (22:16).
It was the failure of the rulers to “execute justice and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed” which resulted in the scattering of people. The promise in Jeremiah is to gather the scattered, the ones lost, to raise up shepherds who will shepherd them, so that they shall fear no longer, nor be dismayed, nor go missing.
Similarly, in our gospel reading, Jesus sees the crowd coming to him. (Is Mark here seeing the fulfilment of the promise of Jeremiah?) Mark writes that Jesus had compassion on the crowd because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
The verses of today’s gospel immediately follows the beheading of John the Baptist in prison – the beheading of Jesus’s own cousin by Herod at the request of his dancing daughter and wife. Herod, as king, was supposed to shepherd the people, but left the people like sheep without a shepherd. Mark pictures Herod partying with his courtiers and the “leaders of Galilee” – the very ones who should have been keeping watch of the people. Another Partygate. Mark pictures Herod and his court getting fat at the expense of the poor.
The lost and scattered, then as now, are always the victims of failed government, self-serving leaders (misleaders) and corrupt shepherds. The lost and scattered are always the people on whom God shows compassion, through the prophets, through Jesus and through the work of the Holy Spirit.
All we see in today’s gospel is people gathering and coming together around Jesus and the disciples. The intention was that Jesus and his disciples were going to find a deserted place so that they could get some rest. They went by boat. But they were spotted. Many saw them and recognised them, and they hurried on foot from the towns and got there before the boat landed. There were five thousand of them – an unimaginable number of people, like sheep without a shepherd.
Again, later, when they landed at Gennesaret in the second section of our gospel reading), people recognised Jesus and they rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was.
Notice the rush people were in. Mark underlines their hurry. They rushed about that whole region bringing the sick to wherever he was. 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.
Jesus doesn’t let them go. He has compassion on them.
He heals them. He makes clean what the religious (mis)leaders had made unclean He restores them to their communities – no longer outcasts.
He feeds them – yes, the crowd in today’s gospel is the crowd he feeds with just the five loaves and two fish.
And he began to teach them many things.
Here is the good shepherd doing what good shepherds do: gathering the scattered, the least, the lost, the sick and helpless – making right the people the bad shepherds and corrupt leaders had wronged.
This is the point: the gathering after the scattering. The crowding together is the point.
And here we are – gathered, a congregation.
How do we see ourselves?
Do we see ourselves as among those on whom Jesus has compassion?
Do we see ourselves as held together by his love?
Do we see that without our gathering we would (in the words of the epistle) remain as strangers and aliens, hopeless and far off?
Do we see that we are brought to this point “by the blood of Christ”?
Do we see that we are citizens with the saints and members of the household of God?
Do we see ourselves built together spiritually as a dwelling-place for God?
Do we see that Jesus feeds us – even as we walk together through the valley overshadowed by death?
Do we see that Jesus has begun to teach us many things?
Do we see this as the rule of heaven, his will on earth, as it is in heaven?
Do we see ourselves as the lucky ones, even as the ones the world counted least, or last or even lost, who by amazing grace have become among the first gathering of Jesus?
Do we see ourselves being joined by others, including some of the many others who make up the 1 in 69 people currently on the move, without a shepherd?
Do we see this as our place of belonging – after all our longing?
Is this not home, where we belong – counted, fed, healed, restored?
Do we see our congregation as the point that proves Jeremiah’s promise, the gathering that justifies our faith in the Lord our shepherd?
Mark 6:30-34, 53-end
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 recognised 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 they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognised him, and rushed about that whole region 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.
Grits and Grains 