The Rev. Priscilla Wood
June 9, 2024
St. James the Fisherman, Wellfleet
Proper 5B – Genesis 3:8-15 and Mark 3:20-35
During the winter I’m involved in an interfaith clergy study group. Recently we’ve been reading and discussing a group of Hasidic tales from a slim collection put together and discussed by Martin Buber called The Way of Humanity.
The first tale that Buber talks about is about a rabbi, who is imprisoned in St. Peterburg and is visited in his cell by the chief of police. The chief of police comes to the rabbi with a question about this morning’s reading from Genesis.
The chief of police is described as a thoughtful man. He begins a conversation with the rabbi and asks the rabbi a question. “How am I to understand that God, who is omniscient, asks Adam, ‘Where are you?’” Didn’t God know where Adam was? Questions like this one are often asked to point out some inconsistency in Jewish belief. How can God who is omniscient, not know where Adam is? But the rabbi gives an answer that goes to a different place than the chief of police expected. The rabbi asks the chief of police if he believes that scripture is eternal and encompasses every age, every generation, and every person. The chief of police answers, “Yes.” The rabbi then replies that in every age God addresses every person with the question. “Where are you in your world? Already so many of your allotted years and days have passed. Perhaps God will say, ‘You have lived forty-six years. Where are you now?”
When the chief of police heard his exact number of years, he pulled himself together, clasped the rabbi’s shoulder, and exclaimed, ‘Bravo!’ but his heart trembled.
The rabbi’s answer is given on a plane entirely different from the plane on which it was asked. Because scripture is for every age, every generation, and every person, the question from God to Adam is a question to the chief of police, now. Where are you now, at your age, and in your current circumstances?
That same question is to each of us sitting here this morning. Where are you? Where are you now, at your age, in your current circumstances, doing your current work, relating to the people around you? Where are you in relating to your wider community and the needs not only of those you know and love, but the needs and concerns of the world beyond your nearby connections?
Our reading from Mark, also has a question in it. A question that I think dovetails with the first one, and one we all need to consider. This question is a question Jesus asks the crowd around him.
At this point in the Gospel of Mark Jesus has been very busy. He has called some of his disciples. He has healed Peter’s mother-in-law, cast out demons, healed a leper, healed a paralytic who was let down through a hole in the roof, forgiven sins—something only God can do, eaten with tax collectors and sinners, partied instead of fasting, and healed a man with a withered hand on the sabbath which breaks the Jewish law of resting on the sabbath. Not only has he broken some Jewish laws, he has attracted a lot of attention, a lot of it negative.
Crowds are following him everywhere he goes.
In our reading this morning he’s arguing with the religious authorities who think he must be possessed by Satan. His family, his mother and his brothers come and join the crowd and call to him. Probably saying something like come home and settle down. Rethink what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. The crowd lets Jesus know his family is asking for him.
Jesus’ answer to his family, to the crowd, is, as is often the case, not an answer, but another question. “Who are my mother and my brothers?” He looks at those around him, perhaps pauses as he waits to see if anyone will answer. And then answers his own question. “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
Like the rabbi in the Hasidic tale who answered the police chief’s question on a different plane than was expected, Jesus answers his own question in an unexpected way. His family is more than the ones he is related to by blood. His family is anyone, everyone, who does the will of God. I’m sure the crowd took a deep breath and started wondering and talking about the meaning of Jesus’ question and answer.
Family isn’t just based on blood ties, though that’s important. Family is based on doing God’s will. Which leaves us having to think about and search for God’s will as we relate to those both near and far away from us. A complex and huge topic, but, if we look at the ministry and words of Jesus we can see that he spent a lot of time with those who were on the fringes of society—those labeled as sinners for breaking religious laws, the sick and outcast for some uncleanness, women, the poor—reaching out and including them in his love, in spite of the criticism he got for eating with them, healing them, and making them a part of those he included in his love and forgiveness.
So, we have a place to begin as we ponder both these questions. We can use Jesus’ behavior as an example of what we are called to do.
Where are you in your life and relationship with God?
Who are your brothers and sisters?
Perhaps, this summer as we sit on the beach, or walk on one of the many trails on the Cape, or watch the sun rise over the ocean we can ponder those questions. Where am I in my life now? And who is my family?
Where am I now, at my age, in my current circumstances, doing my current work, relating to the people around me? Where am I in relating to my wider community and the needs not only of those I know and love, but the needs and concerns of the world beyond my nearby connections? Who do I count as my family? Just a narrow slice of the people around me? Or does my family, those about whom I am concerned, reach out beyond that narrow slice?
Our life is a gift from God, and we are called to cherish that life. We are never meant to stop growing, moving, learning until we die. We are always meant to hear God asking: Where are you? In your world? In your life? Who is your family? How do you care for yourself? How do you care for those around you? How do you contribute to the care of those further away from you?
Are you narrow. Enclosed. Stagnant. Set in your ways. Do you wish you could hide like Adam? Or are you Open? Growing? Learning? Listening for new calls and new directions?
If you were Adam and God asked you, where are you in the life I have given you? Would you be able to say I keep trying to grow and improve myself and grow closer in my relationship with all those around me and with God? If you were in the crowd in front of Jesus, would you be able to say I do all I can to reach out beyond just those related to me or living nearby and include them in my concern and support?
So, this summer none of us should try to hide like Adam in the garden. We all should mull these questions over: Where am I now in my world and who is my family? If we find ourselves off track from where we feel God might be calling us, we need to make adjustments. We can use this more relaxed time of year to decide what we need to do to adjust in our activities and concerns. Whatever changes any of us decide we need to make God will be with us. It might be hard to make those changes, but God has given each of us a life that is meant to be used to its fullest. Not hidden away and not just involved with those close to us. And God will be with each of us as we journey through that life making the constant changes that bring us closer to one another and closer to God.
And that, is certainly Good News!