Sermon 7/4/2021 “Speak out”
Preacher: Jo J. Belser
Location: Church of the Resurrection, 2800 Hope Way, Alexandria, VA
Text: Mark 6:1-13
Day: 6Pentecost, Proper 9, Year B
Eugene Bullard, born in 1895 in Columbus, Georgia, was not a likely candidate to become the first black military pilot. He was born poor and ran away from home at a very young age. But maybe, if I tell you Eugene Bullard flew for France, not the United States, his real-life story will become more believable.
Eugene was a horse jockey, a boxer, and a jazz musician. He owned a restaurant in Paris between the two World Wars where Louis Armstrong and other famous musicians played with him. Eugene joined the French Foreign Legion before World War I, the French Air Service when it was formed during that war, and later the French Resistance in World War II. Some of his many awards — 14 from France — include the Légion d’Honneur and two Croix de Guerre.
In the 1950s, when Eugene Bullard returned to the United States to be near his daughters, the only work he could get was as an elevator operator. He wore his awards every day over his work uniform, where white people shook their head at his pretentions. He took leave in 1959 to return to France as the guest of France, where General Charles de Gaulle called him a “true French hero” as he awarded him the Médaille Militaire. Back at work in America, people in Eugene’s elevator marveled at his ability to tell such outlandish and fantastical stories.
In 1994, 33 years after Eugene’s death and 77 years to the day he had been denied the opportunity to fly for his own country, Eugene Bullard was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force.
Eugene Bullard was NOT Christ Jesus. However, Eugene would have agreed with the statement that Jesus made when HIS gifts were denied and rejected in his hometown of Nazareth. Jesus said, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.”
We recognize the truth of this statement, even today. Take Desmond Tutu, for example. Was Bishop Tutu recognized as a prophet first in apartheid South Africa, or was he considered to be just an annoying advocate for change before the world recognized the prophet he is?
To get to the point of today’s message, God is active in our world, and we are required to speak out and tell people. God was active in Christ Jesus and God is active today, also, by empowering human agents to change what God wants changed. Eugene Bullard was God’s change agent, as is Desmond Tutu. The difficulty is that we humans don’t always want things changed.
We want the privilege we have. Even if we are willing to share privilege, we don’t speak out. And when we don’t have privilege, we feel too disadvantaged, too downright tired to change anything. But every once in a while, God’s voice breaks through. God activates prophets to speak. God activates us to rise up and work together to bring hope to the poor, to seek justice, to correct oppression, to help the needy, to recognize ourselves in immigrants, and to share what we have been given. These are always the causes God activates us to accomplish. These are the messages God gave the great biblical prophets to speak out about. So, too, God requires us to speak out. And always, we must not just act, but speak.
We accomplish OUR God-work in our jobs (directly or indirectly) and by our volunteering and through our church. Sometimes we are activated to do things by ourselves and always we are activated to fund prophetic endeavors.
Our gospel lesson today testifies that people may reject God’s activation message. Our first lesson from Hebrew scripture tells us we are to share God’s message whether or not people receive the message even if they choose to not believe what we prophets say. Our duty is to share God’s word — results are not up to us.
Jesus demonstrated this principle in our gospel lesson today. He went home to Nazareth and shared God’s word in the synagogue on the Sabbath. Mark doesn’t record what Jesus preached, but Luke’s gospel does. This is where and when Jesus read what Isaiah had foretold about the Messiah’s mission and then declared, “This scripture has been fulfilled in your presence.” His meaning was clear, “I am the Messiah.”
Had the people believed him, had they showed faith in his healing powers, he would have healed them; he would have saved them. But they chose to not believe him, and Jesus acquiesced to their choice. They were offended, thought he was a heretic or just plain crazy. They used irrelevant facts to disbelieve him. For example, they knew Jesus’ family members, but how was THAT relevant?
But notice, though, that Jesus had done his part: He had told them. Whether they believed him was not Jesus’ responsibility. Mark’s gospel tells us Jesus instructed his disciples to go tell people about God. Jesus told his disciples also to “shake off the dust of their feet” and to go somewhere else if people didn’t accept their message. Then Jesus did what he had instructed his disciples to do, he shook the dust off his sandals and left Nazareth to speak out to other people about God and how they, too, could be part of God’s work in our world.
Jesus’ family rejected Jesus on this occasion. However, John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus’ siblings later believed in him after the Resurrection. Only God knows what the final outcomes will be. What we say to others about God may be disbelieved or even rejected now. However, our words might also be the seed that sets those we tell on a new course in life, to join God’s timeless team of change agents.
Aren’t we at Church of the Resurrection, all God’s change agents, working together to accomplish God’s work in the West End of our City and beyond? If you don’t think so, look out these windows and see what God wanted this time, but never ever think we are the ones who accomplished it.
In the end, all we have to do is to tell others about God and about Christ Jesus and how God is at work in our world. We have nothing to lose, and the ones we tell have everything to gain.
