The Other Side
June 21, Proper 7:
1 Samuel 17:57-18:5,10-16 & Psalm 133;
2 Corinthians 6:1-13; Mark 4:35-41
Draft text of the homily. Please do not cite without permission.
“Let us go across to the other side.”
Why?
What’s over there?
On that dark shore…
with those menacing black clouds…
why do we have to go to the other side when there’s a storm brewing?
What’s over there?
Any Harry Potter fans here?
Remember Boggarts?
(A boggart is a shape-shifting creature that takes on the form of your worst fear).
Ron’s worst fear was giant spiders.
Herminone’s was having a professor tell her she failed.
Harry’s boggart was a Dementor.
That’s what’s over there…
on the other side…
Boggerts…
Things that take the shape of your worst fears…
The people you don’t like…
The conversations you’d rather avoid…
The places you really don’t want to go…
They’re all over there…
on the other side…
When evening had come
(evening…there’s always a growing darkness in these kinds of stories),
he said to them, “Let’s go across to the other side…”
If this were a screenplay instead of scripture, he might have said:
“Let’s go into the cellar of this old house…
“Let’s check out this abandoned mental hospital…
“Let’s head toward that cabin in the woods…
And one of the disciples would turn to the camera and say, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this…”
Maybe one of them did…
just before they stepped onto the boat…
because they know what’s was on the other side…
or they think they do…
Gigantic Philistines are over there…
Mad kings…
Gentiles…
People possessed with Legions of demons…
Anyone and everyone who doesn’t like them (or whom they don’t like)…
The Others
are over there…
on the other side…
Mark is writing for a community grappling with how to include those who are different…
those who have historically been enemies…
looked upon as sinners…
outsiders…
as dangerous.
Mark’s community is wrestling with questions like:
If Gentiles come into this mostly Jewish community, do they have to be circumcised?
Do we all have to follow the same dietary laws?
How do we accept someone into this community if they don’t read scripture the same way we do?
How do we accept someone who looks different?
Who speaks another language?
Who doesn’t fit our boxes of gender, race, or class?
How do we live with these others in our midst?
Who have a different understanding of how “we” have historically done things?
What do we do if they are fearful, and violent, and want to do us harm?
Mark’s community is in the midst of a voyage into this dark, fearful, and uncharted territory.
Sound familiar?
It’s a journey that is always chaotic.
How do we live alongside the Others in our community?
Do we change them?
Or do they change us?
It’s a crossing that is never easy…
and we’ve make it many many times in our life…
We will make it many more…
And every crossing feels like sailing in the dark…
With all the changes around us we are sailing in the midst of a storm…
How do we cope when the structures and institutions “we’ve” always relied on to support “us” and “our” way of life…
can no longer be counted on?…
are visibly shaking under the strain of so much change?
What do we do when our life situation changes…
when the wind shifts…
the seas rage…
and the resources (the money, the people, the time) that we’ve come to rely on…
are no longer there…
What do we do then?
What do we do when the weapons of terror and hate are raised against our brothers and sisters…
“Teacher, don’t you care that we are perishing!?”
Jesus makes this sea crossing to “the other side” with the disciples twice in Mark…
Both times are at night…
both times there is a storm…
This time Jesus goes with them…and sleeps in the stern.
The next time he will make them get in the boats by themselves and go on with out him.
When they get in trouble, he will walk to them in the midst of the storm…
Each time he gets a little more impatient with them for simply expecting that he will perform a divine act and relieve them of their fear.
Mark seems to be telling us that we have to do some work…
That we are to learn how to respond faithfully in these situations…
rather than simply reacting out of fear…
That we are to find the strength and some kind of inner calm that will allow us to endure—and even grow—through these storms…through faith…
through the faith—the trust—that Christ is here with us in the boat…
that Christ is with all who suffer…
Christ is the peace, and the strength, and the calm that we draw on.
We need to continually seek that inner calm—that courage—
because Jesus will keep calling us to go to that other shore.
What or who is on the other side for you?
I know who’s on the other side for me this morning…all desperately broken (mostly) young, (mostly) white, and (mostly) men who imbibed the culture of hate and death until it consumed their hearts and diminished their hopes to the barrel of a gun, or a bomb.
Who is it for you?
Slack-jawed yokels pickin’ banjoes?
Latte drinking liberal elites?
Open carry activists?
Black teenagers in hoodies?
Welfare moms?
Undocumented immigrants?
Stereotypes are just cartoon images of someone’s other side…their shadow side.
The poverty of Appalachia…
The poverty of the Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury?
poverty in general is “the other side” for most Episcopalians.
The lived experience of African, and Asian, and Hispanic-Americans is “the other side” for most white Americans
The experience of gay, lesbian, and transgendered people forms an “other side” for most heterosexual, and cisgendered people…
There are all kinds of “other sides”
for the young, one other side is growing up…
becoming an adult.
for those who are older, retirement is an other side
what will I do…
who am I, if I’m not working…
The other side might be getting married, or getting divorced…
facing an operation…
or saying goodbye…
For all of us the other side is ultimately death…
We all have “other sides” that we don’t want to go to…
That’s where Jesus invites us to go…
wants us to go…
That’s where Jesus wants to take us…
To the other side…
Into that foreign territory…
that place we’d rather not go…
Where ever it is that those “others” are…
Jesus wants us to go there, not because it’s our job to necessarily change them…
I don’t think Jesus insists on a night voyage on a stormy sea to make an impact on “them.”
He does it to change us…
He does it so that we will experience a change in ourselves…
So that we will discover that reservoir of hope…
that endless supply of peace and courage…
that grace…
that enables us to keep making these voyages…
that enables us to open wide our hearts to any and all who seek Christ…
all who are marginalized…
all whose stories we need to hear in order for us to recognize
and more fully participate in
the spread of God’s reign of justice and peace…
So that we might live together with all our sisters and brothers, in unity.
Amen.