June 14, 2009 (Flag Day)
Grace Church
Rev. Robert E. Hensley

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13; Psalm 20; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10 [11-13] 14-17; Mark 4:26-34

      Let us pray.  Lord, even now, despite all interpretation and study, we are so like the disciples of old, unable to contain the fullness of Gospel Truth. May the Spirit regenerate a new vitality so that we might be living stories of Jesus Christ, unique, but united before the world to proclaim Good News. Amen. 

      Each one of us is in the midst of writing our own gospel – our own Good News story.   Have you ever tried to retell a funny story or joke that you thought was hilarious only to see it fall flat as a pancake the second time around? The same setup, the same characters, the same punch line that left your friends yesterday at lunch holding their sides and wiping their eyes, leave today's prayer breakfast members staring blankly as they sip their coffee.  

      Over time we have developed some standard comebacks to cover ourselves and explain these freakish occurrences:  Remarks such as: 

       "I guess you just had to be there;" or,

       "It loses something in translation;" or the petulant

       "You just don't get it." 

      But the fact is, storytelling of any sort, amusing anecdotes or tragic tales, is for the most part an unrepeatable art form. The variety of people listening, the inflections in your voice, the mood of the day, the color of the sky – they all combine to create a one-time-only atmosphere for the words you speak. A story may bring a tear or a smile at one telling, and yet, the very next audience experiences the same words in a completely different way. 

      Mark's gospel tells us that Jesus chose to speak in parables. Some people find that very annoying, even a bit dishonest. Why didn't Jesus come right out and say what he meant? Why did he leave behind all these cryptic sayings, loaded with innuendo, instead of a crisp code of laws or a stack of essays with titles like "How to Be a Good Disciple," "A Brief Definition of the Kingdom of God" or "Seven Key Features of the Coming Kingdom and What This Means to You."  

      But no. Instead we have this cross-eyed, cryptic, incomplete, awkward, and at times seemingly absurd collection of sayings known as Jesus' parables.  But a list of rules never changes, never adapts. Written essays are like insects encased in amber – beautiful and precisely formed, but no longer vital and alive. It takes the fluid format of a story – a tale that can never quite be told the same way twice – to keep breathing new life into the Good News. If you still think Jesus would have gotten his points across better with hard and fast rules, try remembering the last time you sat down and really enjoyed reading Leviticus or the first few chapters of Numbers. Without the easy ability Jesus' parables have to engage us and entice us into their world, even God's Word becomes a hard and tedious read. 

      By preaching to his followers in parables, Jesus let each listener make the Good News become his own story, her own experience. As we are swept up in the story, we ourselves become part of a new parable – the parable of our lives. Taken all together, our individual experiences of the kingdom, our personal stories of God's work and witness in our lives, end up creating an entirely new gospel.  

      We are greatly mistaken if we think our tradition stems from only the four canonical gospels contained in the Bible. As well as "The Gospel According to Matthew," "The Gospel According to Mark," "The Gospel According to Luke" and "The Gospel According to John," the church has almost 2,000 years' worth of other gospel books to celebrate. "The Gospel of Augustine," "The Gospel of Martin Luther," "The Gospel of Thomas Merton," "The Gospel of John Wesley." All these "gospels" have remained vital parts of our tradition because of their eternally rechargeable parable power.  

      Other gospels may not be quite so well-known, but they work just as persuasively in our lives. How many of you know that the personal parable stories making up "The Gospel According to Grandma," or "The Gospel According to Aunt Mary," or "The Gospel According to That Kid at Camp Whose Name I Can't Even Remember," have affected your lives dramatically? 

      All of us are in the process of writing our own gospels – our own accounts of experiencing the Good News of the coming kingdom in our midst. Writing a gospel through the very act of living is part of being a disciple of Christ. It is why Jesus gave the power of the parable to all those listening to his words. Storytelling is one of the most basic practices common to all human communities. Stories connect us to one another, to our ancestors, to our world and to our God. In this week's gospel text, Mark notes that when Jesus spoke to the crowds around him, he "spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables" (v.33). Jesus knew that only parable power had the ability to make the Good News of the kingdom a potent reality for every listening ear. 

      What chapter did you add to your gospel this week? How did the parables acted out in your life witness to the Good News? Do any of these titles remind you of this week's additions to your work in progress? 

      How about “The Parable of the Crabby Boss and the Christian Coworker.”

      “The Parable of the Kids Who Won't Clean Up Their Rooms and the Mother Who Is Threatening to Ground Them for Life.” 

      “The Parable of the Parents Who Don't Have a Clue.” 

      Or maybe “The Parable of the Empty Cupboard and the Overflowing ‘Bills to Pay’ Slot” on your desk. 

      Don't worry if these, or the particular parable stories you experienced this week, didn't seem to have any grand significance, any definitive "gospel" quality to them, as you lived through them. The power of a parable is partly its ability to stand up to scrutiny and self-examination at a later time – and there to reveal its true meaning, its gospel heart. Jesus spoke in parables to the crowds. Only later on did he explain to his own disciples the kingdom basics that lived within his stories. 

      It is the job of all of us, as Jesus' disciples, to come together and plug into the parable power running through each other's lives. Because we know the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – and whether we name them as such or not, also the gospels of Augustine, Aquinas, Abelard and Avila – the gospels of Luther, Calvin, Wesley and Edwards – the gospels of grandpa, our Sunday school teacher, Cousin Ernie and our little sister – we, as a part of Christ’s body, a community of faith, can work together to discern in what new direction each week's parable power has taken us. 

      And I would like to include in this a bit of the Gospel of Grace that we and preceding generations in this place have been writing.  It came to me after Bill Cini, our Senior Warden, and I were talking this week and sharing our concerns about finances.  It should come as no surprise to you that Bill and I, in addition to our concerns about our own personal finances, are probably even more concerned about parish finances.  It goes with the territory. 

      And as we talked this week we reminded each other once more about the amazing amount of Outreach that we do here that most people never see, especially if all you see of Grace Church is on Sunday morning.  Most of you know that we have a Preschool…they just graduated their 52nd class this past Friday.  To date close to 700 young people have come through our school…and some of you may have benefitted personally, or your offspring, from that program.  What you are not aware of, unless you are a member of the vestry, is the financial part of what Grace Church provides indirectly to cover the cost of operating the school, to the tune of over $25,000 per year.  In addition to the space, we provide heat, light, water, copier, telephones…and a host of other things that tuition could not even come close to covering. 

      And the Preschool is not the only program.  We provide meeting space for several AA, NA, Food Addicts and folks who suffer from Depression.  Meeting space for NAMI, the Peace Council, OSL, Cursillo, the Vineyard Hunger Walk, the Historic Society, the police and EMT workers for debriefings.  Some of the groups give a token donation, but, many do not.  And of those that do provide a donation, it comes nowhere near covering the cost of providing heat in the winter, air conditioning in the summer, bathroom and other hospitality supplies, janitorial services.  And we do it because it is part of the Outreach that we believe we are called to do.  Even the liturgies we are using this month are part of our Outreach and Hospitality. 

      What we do together is an extension of each of your individual ministries in this community.  It is not my ministry or that of your vestry, it is OUR ministry, each one of us working together, continuing to write the Gospel of Grace which we have been writing now in this place for over 127 years.  And the Gospel of Grace is part and parcel of our obligation to live out our Baptismal covenant in this community.  It can be challenging.  Sometimes it seems rather daunting.  I don’t know about you, but it often keeps me awake at night and I know it does our wardens as well.  Speaking for myself, it is always worth it…worth the stress, worth the worry.  God does indeed always provide…and with an abundance greater than any I could ever ask or imagine. 

      So, my final duty?  No, OUR final duty then?  Let us return once again to the world outside these walls on Monday morning and tell out and live out The Gospel of Grace that can be found in the parables of our lives. In this way each one of us will in fact and in deed become living gospels of Jesus Christ.  Amen.