Discernment and Rebuilding the Church

the Rev. Carol Tookey

Sermon for Proper 5 B – St. Mark’s    7 June 2015     
The Rev. Carol Tookey        

My Franciscan community has been doing some discernment around the theme “Rebuild my Church.”  If you know Francis’s story, you know that “rebuild my church” is what Francis heard from the crucifix as he prayed at the little church of San Damiano after his conversion.  As part of this process, our own fellowship group in Albuquerque has been looking at the life-cycles of communities. 

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A community usually starts out with a charismatic leader with vision. Then it starts to organize itself around this person and vision. There’s lots of enthusiasm; lots of people join.  As time goes on, it builds up a structure... the established way of doing things. Eventually the charismatic leader leaves or dies, and the organization becomes more rigid around their own rules and regulations... if there is not a renewal – a revisioning – the organization becomes rigid with its only purpose to sustain itself, and dies. 

St. Francis of Assissi (detail) by Bencivieni di Pepo Giovanni Cimabue

A community usually starts out with a charismatic leader with vision – then it starts to organize itself around this person and vision. There’s lots of enthusiasm – lots of people join.  As time goes on, it builds up a structure – ‘norms’ is what they call it in group process – the established way of doing things. Eventually the charismatic leader leaves or dies, and the organization becomes more rigid around their own rules and regulations. And then the cycle winds down – if there is not a renewal – a revisioning – the organization becomes rigid with its only purpose to sustain itself, and dies.  St. Francis wasn’t even dead in the ground before some of his followers were changing his vision of radical poverty and dependence on God to the development of an organization. And right after his death they started building the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi.  And our own Third Order community has not been immune to this process.

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That’s the situation we see in the story of Samuel. The people of Israel were delivered from slavery through the vision and leadership of Moses – the charismatic leader who spoke with God.  When they entered the Promised Land, Moses died, and left the leadership to his assistant Joshua. They wandered around the desert for 40 years, and as they did so, they started the process of fleshing out the Law of Moses with lots of rules and regulations that would establish themselves as a community separate from the surrounding culture.  But they continued to be led by men and women – judges and prophets – who listened to the Spirit of God.  But now they are disillusioned. They look to the countries around them – strong and stable with kings for leaders – and that’s what they want. So they come to Samuel – the latest prophet – and tell them that they want a king. Samuel warns them what happens when a movement becomes an organization – but they don’t see it.  So Samuel and God let them have their way. And it’s just 3 generations of kings before all of Samuel’s predictions come true under the rule of Solomon – conscription, taxation, stratification of society.  One of the themes I see in this story is discernment and choice. People try to discern for themselves what’s best for them, and they make a choice to go with the culture of the world. And the results are predictable.

In the gospel we have this very weird story about demons, accusations of Jesus being in league with Beelzebul, accusations of madness, talk of blasphemy and ideas about family.  There’s a lot of stuff packed in this short passage, more than we can sort out today. But I think here, too, we have a problem of discernment.

The scribes accuse Jesus of being in league with Beelzebul – the ruler of the demons. And this accusation prompts Jesus to make probably his worst condemnation in all of the Gospels – the withholding of forgiveness – forgiveness which seems to be a central feature of the Kingdom of God that Jesus came to proclaim. As I read this, I wondered if these accusers had a vested interest in the evil spirits that were holding the people. Was there some kind of money or power involved? Were they getting something out of it?

I wondered if these accusers had a vested interest in the evil spirits that were holding the people. Was there some kind of money or power involved? Were they getting something out of it?

The story made me think of a gas station out by the little community on the reservation where Les and I occasionally go. The guy who owned the gas station applied for a liquor license. The people in the Navajo community nearby pleaded that he not sell alcohol there. There was, and still is, such a problem with addiction in that community, and they didn’t want to have the temptation within walking distance. But the owner of the gas station knew he had a lucrative proposition, and if he could keep the ‘spirits’ available, he would make money. To the owner, making money was a good thing. To the local community, the ready availability of alcohol was an evil spirit.

I don’t know if the scribes had some kind of interest in keeping people enslaved to the demons that Jesus was casting out.  But what is clear is that Jesus’ accusation against them is that they discern wrongly – they are calling what is good, evil. By saying that Jesus has an unclean spirit, they are blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. And somehow, if people are that deeply confused about good and evil, they will find forgiveness hard or impossible to receive. 

...if people are that deeply confused about good and evil, they will find forgiveness hard or impossible to receive. 

In Ched Myers’s commentary on the Gospel of Mark, called Binding the Strong Man after this very passage, his whole premise is that what Jesus is attempting to do is a nonviolent action against the forces in society that confuse good and evil, what traditionally have been known as virtues and vices. Myers talks about Roman and imperialism and temple establishment. And that brings us back to those organizations that came about from the decisions of the Hebrew people, and the transformation of a Spirit-led desert people into a religious hierarchy and a nation-state.

What if we could free people from addiction, not only to intoxicating spirits, but to over-consumption? What if we could free people from having to do work that was demeaning, poorly paid and unsafe? What if we could free people from the power of soul-destroying institutions like government bureaucracies? 

What if we could free people from addiction, not only to intoxicating spirits, but to over-consumption? What if we could free people from having to do work that was demeaning, poorly paid and unsafe? What if we could free people from the power of soul-destroying institutions like government bureaucracies? 

Discernment is the key in being able to see these structures – or in Biblical terms – these principalities and powers – for what they truly are.  But discernment isn’t easy. It can be tricky.  A business like tobacco is a good example (and less controversial than some others I could name). We know now that smoking is dangerous and costly. But, as poet and philosopher Wendell Berry admits, it was a life-saving economy for small communities in the southeast where other forms of agriculture just didn’t work, and there weren’t many options for making a living.  When the people of Israel went to confront Samuel, they saw an old man who couldn’t hold things together much longer, and no future in his sons who had been corrupted by power and position. So they made a choice they thought would be better – a king, like the nations around them.

Amish of Lancaster County, courtesy of wikimedia.org

We all have to make similar choices. Sometimes, like those people, there just isn’t an easy, black and white answer. So probably the most important lesson to be gleaned is the importance of the process of discernment.  I think that’s made even more difficult in a culture where there are so many choices out there, and so many vested interests, and a media that’s probably determined to confuse virtue and vice in the pursuit of an economic goal. As people of faith, it seems we are obligated to be thoughtful and prayerful in the choices we make.

I tell people that I admire the Amish because of the way they make decisions.  They are known for their rejection of a lot of modern technology – like internal combustion engines, for example.  But they don’t reject all modern conveniences. What they do is, as a community, prayerfully consider what the impact of a technology will be on their community before they reject or embrace it.  What a thought!

We, as a church, are surrounded by a culture that doesn’t do that – that makes decisions based on convenience and the bottom line.  But I think these passages are calling us to be more discerning in the decisions we make. Not to make them based on values that are not in keeping with our own tradition. Not the values of the market but the values of family. To be thoughtful and prayerful about how we live together and make decisions as a community, and for that matter, as individuals and families – in line with the kingdom of God.  Our communities, like my Franciscan family, often do metamorphose from being a spirit-filled community to an organization.  But God calls us to continual reformation. And the only way to do this is prayerful 
discernment.