Pentecost, Proper 6A Road Trip
Matthew 9:35-10:8 (9-23)
June 14th, 2020. St. Mark’s
We’re on the road!!! Today we embark on the travel narrative where Jesus sends us out into the world to proclaim the good news, cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons! Throughout the journey this summer Jesus dialogues with the crowds, his disciples, and us as he empowers us to heal and love. But Jesus keeps making statements difficult to understand, like we heal and love by being “wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” Maybe there are answers in the responses of others before us who struggled with these words during unrest in their times./ We can often better understand Jesus’ words in the music of other fragile and fragmented generations like ours./ So, let’s travel back to the 1960s,/another era of great social and racial unrest: the Vietnam War, riots, fires, assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, President John Kennedy, his brother, Robert Kennedy./ Let’s engage in active imagination and travel to the sixties./ Then imagine Jesus taking this summer Galilean road trip in that generation carrying with him the voices whose music healed the pain of that era.////
It’s summertime in Galilee. Jesus is sweating, not blood but water, as he stuffs the disciples’ sleeping bags into the car top carrier of their VW van. The new and old Galilean disciples are shifting about in excited pairs, chattering noisily about places they will go and things they will see. Jesus inserts his favorite recording of Handel’s Messiah into the van’s old tape player, hoping that the breeze of its majestic strains will lift him up on the miles ahead. The disciples, Peter, Paul, and Mary wannabes/ roll their eyes and jump into the back seats singing John’s latest hit, “My Bags Are Packed, Leaving On A Jet Plane, and don’t know when I will be back again.” Judas sits in the front seat with a pirated version of Jesus Christ Superstar, as he hums, “If I were Free to Speak My Mind.”
Jesus makes one last check through his AAA trip ticket and settles into the driver’s seat, gripping the steering wheel. He alone knows they are headed to Jerusalem. There are three highways to Jerusalem: along the coast,/ down the western Jordan Valley,/ and the shorter, middle way through Samaria. AAA has routed Jesus and his band away from Samaria.
Fifteen minutes into the trip, Peter belts out a new song, “Let the Midnight Special Shine Its Light On Me.”
Peter, Paul, and Mary then revive the group by breaking into a rousing version of “Early in the Morning, at The Break of Day, I asked the Lord, please help me find the Way.” ///
The rest of us also remember past summer road trips and wonder if we will ever hit the road again to get away from it all. Jesus and the disciples, however, are moving toward it all. This is the beginning of our summer lectionary road trip, an itinerary that traces a section of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem described by Matthew. Jesus’ road trip is not vacation. Matthew’s version of this journey teaches us how to continue Jesus’ ministry of compassion, peace, love, healing. These travel narratives will support us who struggle and strive to live “real life”/ faithfully today/ during this pandemic and unrest,/ as we also listen to those in a past generation who struggled and heard Jesus’ words of love and healing.
Music often is the healing grace in times of stress and unrest. It is comforting that Jesus has some sacred recordings and a band with him to lift his spirits, for he cautions them and us that we will face rejection and disappointments from the get go. Things may not work out the way we had planned.
Jesus bluntly tells his disciples they will even be beaten and dragged before the ruling class. The disciples, James and John, the sons of thunder, react conventionally saying, “we will meet violence and rejection also with violence and rejection.” The song from the back of the van is “If I Had My Way in this wicked world, I would tear this building down.”/ Jesus will have none of that. Instead he asks Peter, Paul, and Mary to change their tune to a friend’s draft of “Blowing in the Wind: How many times, Lord, how many roads must a man walk down, before he is called a man, the answer my friend, is blowing in the wind, blowing in the wind.”/ The beloved disciple then follows up with the old spiritual, “I Ain’t Gonna Study War No More.”
Jesus then gazes over his shoulder at his musical group in the back seats and teaches us and them the words to a new tune he just heard, “The Times, They Are A ‘Changin.’” He tells us our life will be different in his band, even more so during our present time. We may have no musical ability, but Jesus reminds us to keep practicing only one song which is really a wedding song, performed at Peter’s wedding, “There is Love, there is Love.” This must be Jesus’ theme song. It makes Jesus happy when we sing it. Jesus challenges us to move beyond the accepted standards of safety and security and put relationships with each other and caring for each other as a major priority.
The last song we hear from the back of the van is, “Lord, I’m 100 miles from Home, 200 miles, not a shirt on my back, not a penny to my name. 500 Miles.” //
Soon in our lectionary trip, Jesus preaches about seeds, sowers, mustard seeds, yeast, and tremendous catches of fish. Jesus likes food and eating, especially eating with strangers. He tries to retreat to a deserted place, but people find him. Instead of scolding the crowd, he heals the sick, feeds 5000 plus with five loaves and two fish, and ends up leaving 12 baskets of leftovers. Jesus climbs up a mountain to pray, but he sees his disciples in distress on the sea. “The Water is Wide and we cannot get o’er.” Jesus goes to them, and calms the sea. He heals the daughter of a foreigner and learns what God is teaching us about caring for those different from ourselves.//
Too soon our journey this summer draws to a close, and our present routine may not be different. But if we follow our lectionary closely these weeks, we will discover that we have been traveling in a unique summer school with Jesus, more like a touring choir camp,/ and that in Jesus’ classroom, the songs, the music, the lyrics differ greatly from what our culture once sang.
We may lose our way or run out of gas on this trip to Jerusalem with Jesus, but all of Matthew’s stories this summer/ and the music from past generations remind us that Jesus never ever leaves or abandons us on this journey. He knows what we are going through. He loves us and asks us to act out that love to the world. WE are to share that love so others will also know they are loved and will never be abandoned. “The Song is Love.”/
There are high stakes for those who unfold Jesus’ road map and follow his musical band and its itinerary. This journey with Jesus to Jerusalem so reminds us of our present spiritual and physical life of faith/ with what seem like too many bumps and potholes.
It is easy to let the cacophony in our minds drown out the MINISTRY Jesus strains his voice,/ calling us to/ in the midst, and through this pandemic and social unrest. The music Jesus sings is a new tune with lyrics of only two words, heal, love. It is impossible not to worry about what will happen this summer and the next,/ but worrying keeps us from doing this real ministry of compassion to our brothers and sisters./
Listen carefully this summer for the music from Jesus’ band,/ all too often in the background. Listen especially to a song Jesus wrote for Peter, “With Your Face To The Wind, I See You Smiling Again.”
Don’t miss a single Sunday of Jesus’ summer road trip. Join the chorus when Peter, Paul, and Mary point to us/ to sing our part/ in their newest release: “If I had a hammer,/ I’d hammer in the morning,/ I’d hammer in the evening,/ I’d hammer out danger,/ freedom,/ justice,/ love// between my brothers and sisters, all over this land.”
“No Excuses,” Homiletics, 6/28/1992.
“Walk On,” Homiletics, 6/28/1998.
Elizabeth McGregor Simmons, “Luke and AAA: Preaching to Fellow Travelers in June, July, and August,” Journal for Preachers, vol. 27, no. 4, Pentecost, 2004, pp. 12-17.
Charles Hoffacker, Proper 8C, Sermonwriter, June 27, 2004.
Joanna. joannaseibert.com