What if No One Wants to Listen?
Sermon preached by Rev. Patricia Farris
July 9, 2006

The Reverends Chris and Sheila Cumbest from the Mississippi Conference of the United Methodist Church spoke out in Redlands recently at our annual conference session. Bishop Swenson had invited them to come and bring their two kids and tell us about what ministry has been like in the Gulf Coast since the hurricanes of last August. Just like the stories we hear from our partner church in New Orleans, the stories out of the Gulf coast still bring tears to our eyes. The homes and churches destroyed. Loved ones separated. Jobs that no longer exist. Schools closed. Lives torn asunder and still not patched up.

But Chris Cumbest spoke eloquently of the witness and work of the Methodist church throughout the region. As he described work teams and supplies miraculously from around the country and the money raised and the love and the prayer, as he described the people housed and fed, the loved ones reunited, the new roofs and the restored steeples, he kept saying over and over again: In the midst of it all, “the church became the church again. The church became the church again.”

Chris gave us many examples of how that’s been happening all across Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf region since those fateful days last summer—the work teams, the donations, supplies received from all over the country, indeed from around the world. But the one that most sticks in my mind is what he told us about church parlors. He said that in the South, especially, church parlors are pretty special places. You know, they’re like living rooms used to be in houses. The prettiest and nicest room—that no one ever dared actually go into. The best furniture. The carpet. Beautiful—and untouchable. Church parlors in the South, Rev. Cumbest told us, are so special that they’re used only about twice a year by the ladies of the church for their tea or annual meeting. Otherwise, parlors are off limits to children and youth and plain old ordinary church meetings where folks might mess them up.

But since Katrina, he told us, church parlors have been transformed. Right after the storm and floods, churches opened their parlors to become places where people could sleep and get a hot meal. Places where people could gather and be safe. Church parlors became true sanctuaries for people whose homes were gone. The doors of the parlors were opened, he said, to let the people in—to find shelter, food, safety and love. The church became the church again. (continued...)

"What if No One Wants to Listen?" by Rev. Patricia Farris, July 9, 2006

Of course, the whole situation down there is nothing anyone would ever have wished for, but…in the midst of it, out of it, comes new life. Out of death always comes resurrection. If the churches of the Gulf Coast had become at all complacent in their ways, or self-serving, or inward-looking…if they had become more concerned about the propriety of their parlors than the integrity of their mission…well….God dropped a brand new opportunity right in their laps. Let the church be the church. And open its doors. And respond to the real needs of God’s people. And as Rev. Chris Cumbest said, and as we know so very well from our friends at Bethany UMC in New Orleans, the buildings may be in disrepair, but the heart and soul of a church in mission is strong and vital. Its witness is clear. Its message is a word of life and hope.

The example for this way of being church is given in the passage we hear this morning from the sixth chapter of Mark’s Gospel. Jesus isn’t really getting anywhere trying to work through the established church, shall we say. I know it says “synagogue,” but this isn’t meant to be anti-Jewish in anyway. The dynamic the Gospel is pointing to is much bigger than that. It’s that whenever any religious community, Jewish or Christian, Protestant or Catholic, or whatever, gets set in its ways, gets complacent with what it’s doing, gets secure in its rules and its standard operating procedures, when it gets lazy and feels that “the old way we’ve always done it” is just good enough, when it gets more comfortable in its parlor than in the real lives of the people all around it….well, when that happens, God finds a way to shake things up and fling the parlor doors wide open.

As today’s Gospel reading begins, Jesus is healing a few people, getting something of a reputation…and the old powers that be want no part of it. You can just see them shaking their heads and scowling, rolling their eyes, bringing him down over a cozy little cup of tea in the parlor. We know his family. Nothing’s going to come of this. Just who does he think he is?

What does Jesus do? He sees that, rather than being a set-back, this is a brand new opportunity for mission. Don’t dwell on all that negativity, he says. Don’t get stuck in all the machinations of what’s not working. Just get on with the work of God. Get busy, disciples. Get somebody to go with you and get out there. Teach, preach, heal. Share the good news. Be the church. Do God’s work in whatever circumstance you find yourself in. And when they begin to do so, Mark tells us, came and heard and were healed.

Over and over again, in all kinds of circumstances, God creates a way for the message of love to break through and become real in people’s lives. And it usually involves taking us back to our foundation, to what we’re really about, to the heart of the gospel. Renewal is about being good news, being the hope, in what we do more than what say or what we say we’re about. It’s about opening our parlors to people with no place to sleep. It’s about sharing the healing power of God’s love with those who need it most. It’s the church being the church. Creating opportunity and making good news really good and really real. (continued...)