Collect
Merciful God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as pass our understanding: pour into our hearts such love toward you that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Post Communion
Creator God, you made us all in your image: may we discern you in all that we see, and serve you in all that we do; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Readings
Old Testament – 2 Samuel 5.1–5, 9–10
Then all the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron, and said, ‘Look, we are your bone and flesh. For some time, while Saul was king over us, it was you who led out Israel and brought it in. The Lord said to you: It is you who shall be shepherd of my people Israel, you who shall be ruler over Israel.’ So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron; and King David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the Lord, and they anointed David king over Israel. David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned for forty years. At Hebron he reigned over Judah for seven years and six months; and at Jerusalem he reigned over all Israel and Judah for thirty-three years. David occupied the stronghold, and named it the city of David. David built the city all around from the Millo inwards. And David became greater and greater, for the Lord, the God of hosts, was with him.
Psalm 48
1 Great is the Lord and highly to be praised, ♦
in the city of our God.
2 His holy mountain is fair and lifted high, ♦
the joy of all the earth.
3 On Mount Zion, the divine dwelling place, ♦
stands the city of the great king.
4 In her palaces God has shown himself ♦
to be a sure refuge.
5 For behold, the kings of the earth assembled ♦
and swept forward together.
6 They saw, and were dumbfounded; ♦
dismayed, they fled in terror.
7 Trembling seized them there; they writhed like a woman in labour, ♦
as when the east wind shatters the ships of Tarshish.
8 As we had heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, the city of our God: ♦
God has established her for ever.
9 We have waited on your loving-kindness, O God, ♦
in the midst of your temple.
10 As with your name, O God, so your praise reaches to the ends of the earth; ♦
your right hand is full of justice.
11 Let Mount Zion rejoice and the daughters of Judah be glad, ♦
because of your judgements, O Lord.
12 Walk about Zion and go round about her; count all her towers; ♦
consider well her bulwarks; pass through her citadels,
13 That you may tell those who come after that such is our God for ever and ever. ♦
It is he that shall be our guide for evermore.
Epistle – 2 Corinthians 12.2–10
I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven — whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person — whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows — was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat. On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me, even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given to me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.
Gospel – Mark 6.1–13
He left that place and came to his home town, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, ‘Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?’ And they took offence at him. Then Jesus said to them, ‘Prophets are not without honour, except in their home town, and among their own kin, and in their own house.’ And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief.
Then he went about among the villages teaching. He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. He said to them, ‘Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.’ So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.
Sermon on Trinity 6
Have you ever thought where we get all those well-used phrases we use in common parlance? “Once more unto the breach”, “The spirit is willing”, “To be or not to be”. They often come from Shakespeare. Certainly, we usually consider that all our wonderful sayings come from Elizabethan English, from the great playwrites and poets of that time. We also know the King James’ Bible is from that period. Since most of our well-used sayings come from that time, should we be surprised that the bible can be an important source for our modern turns of phrase? We now use the phrase, “Shake off the dust from your feet.” This one comes from the bible; it is from one of the sayings of Jesus. For most of us that is a little surprising. – Such colourful sayings certainly don’t come from modern “corporate-speak” which I liken to George Orwell’s “doublespeak”.
Doublespeak is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or even reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (for instance, “downsizing” for layoffs ), in which case it is primarily meant to make the truth sound more palatable.
In other words, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth and disfigures our use of speech. This is not the language of poets, is it? We learn about life through the commonplace phrases we use, like “Shake off the dust from your feet.”
Language is so very important for us, because it leads us everywhere in our lives – reasons for doing things and also reasons for inaction, statements of fact and statements of clarifications – and then there is the news, “fake” or not – but most importantly, declarations of love and declarations of war.
So let us consider our language and how we use it. Our use of language defines us in many ways. – I suppose you can say that human being is defined as linguistic. We are the only creatures on earth to speak to one another through words, for clarity in most cases, but sadly sometimes to deceive. We all know this is true, don’t we? I think we have all told “white lies”. I know that from time to time I have even told some whoppers.
Most of the time we speak so that people will understand what we are talking about. We don’t want to be misunderstood, just like the teenagers we once were, when we felt aggrieved because our parents really didn’t get what we were trying to tell them. We were just like those surly youths of today whom we wish would just say hello to us when we greet them.
Language connects us – badly sometimes, as when politicians obfuscate or when people just refuse to reply: and we speak well at other times. – For instance, when we declare our undying love, we are expressing as clearly as possible our intentions and hopes for the future.
So, let’s get back to the phrase, “Shake off the dust.” It is often used isn’t it? But do we know its origin? Do we know why it is so significant for us?
Jesus said to them, ‘Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.’
We are often house-guests, aren’t we? We visit our families and settle in, and we are happy to stay with them. Other times we might visit friends of long-standing at their invitation. We find ourselves comfortable in their presence, enjoying their company as they enjoy ours – well, we certainly hope so.
But what happens when we visit strangers? What happens when we are off on business trips or on an errand? We appear in a strange place, somewhere we don’t normally visit, or perhaps a somewhere we visited “a lifetime ago”, as we often say. We are strangers in this location and we feel “all at sea”.
What happens then? Don’t we make the best of it? We experience the warmth or the coldness of the welcome, which sets the tone for the whole of the visit. What if it goes badly? What do we do then? We usually want to run away. We don’t want to have anything more to do with the place at all.
However, when we run away, we do so in a panic. We don’t consider our experience with a dispassionate heart. We don’t coolly evaluate our visit with a view to either remembering any of its glory, or forgetting all its ignominy. When we do escape from the wretched place, we don’t take stock of the situation. Our tail is between our legs as we flee and we don’t see what we are taking away with us, willingly or unwillingly.
When I remember what went wrong on my visit, I hang on to that in excruciating detail, but do I remember any redeeming features of the visit? This remembrance of the embarrassing is even worse when it takes place in unfamiliar circumstances – when I recall being a stranger in a strange land, I am covered with shame, that film of remembrance which sullies everything derived from that experience.
We have tried to run away, but we see the event through a filter, that dust which covers the whole event, sometimes thick and concealing, sometimes a mere film and just unclear. How do we overcome that? We all remember the story of the foot-washing during holy week. The commentary always remarks that even when you have bathed and dressed freshly, when you walked over to the party, your feet would inevitably be grimy, so a foot-washing was necessary to bring you to that pristine, clean condition. So it is with our banishing all the bad memories of a place. We need to shake off the dust of that location, so that we no longer let it ruin our memories. No longer do we have to filter it through the film of that place.
There are many events like that in our lives, aren’t there? There was a zen holy man who told the story of walking with another monk. They met a beautiful woman trying to cross a deep river. The monk helped her cross the river by carrying her on his back to the other side. Then they all parted. The monks travelled miles further and when they settled down for the night, his companion who had been uncomfortable for the rest of the day since the river asked, “How could you have done such a thing? To have carried that woman across the river, when we should have nothing to do with women?” He answered, “No wonder you are so tired, you have been carrying her all this way, whereas when she alighted and went her way, I let her go.”
That fellow had a great weight on his journey, the dust of the road became boulders stifling him. We should realise washing the dust away is a painless process, easily done, and very effective in ridding us of that film of memory which may just cloud our judgement. After all the dust can be so very thick that we see nothing at all, or it can be just a thin layer which merely dims our sight. However thick, let us brush off all that dust and remember things clearly so that we can share life in all its fullness with everyone.