I preached this sermon on Sunday, June 9 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary texts cited are 1 Samuel 8:4-20 and Mark 3:20-35.
Last week, while Matt and I were on vacation in Boston, we did a lot of walking. And of course we visited all of the famous sites in the city: the Old North Church, and Paul Revere’s house, and Bunker Hill, and all the rest. But we also ended up in some lesser known corners. I won’t say we were lost, but at the end of one day, we were trying to find our way back across the Charles River to the central part of the city. We came across a narrow little walking path that cut through a park and then over a series of concrete structures in the river.
As we crossed over, I saw that it was a dam used to control the inflow of saltwater from the ocean and that it had a series of locks built into it to make the water navigable for boats traveling up and down the river. So we stopped for a moment to look.
I’ve always found locks interesting—the kind for boats, not for doors—maybe because I grew up in proximity to the famous Soo Locks up in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, where large cargo ships must pass through to get from Lake Superior to the rest of the Great Lakes.
The basic concept of a lock, if you have never seen one, is that a boat, when it is passing from one elevation of water to another, enters into an enclosed chamber, and then water either flows in or out of the chamber so that the boat can rise or fall and then emerge safely on the other side at the proper elevation. They are elegant and ingenious in their simplicity, and you can find them all over the world, in all sorts of settings.
But as we looked down into these locks in Boston, I was surprised to see one little boat, just floating there in the chamber, in the still water, with nobody on board. Now, I am sure there was a perfectly mundane reason for this boat to be left there, but it struck me as a rather forlorn sight, almost as if the boat had been abandoned, mid-journey, trapped between the river and the sea, left to sit alone in this chamber of somber, motionless water, surrounded by gray cement walls, waiting for someone to claim it and release it.
And, as it happens, that image of the boat trapped in the lock came to my mind this week as I was reflecting on our Scripture lessons—probably because I was thinking about the price we are sometimes asked to pay for safety and for belonging.
Just as that boat was suspended in motion, confined to a safe place that it was not meant to stay in forever, so, too, I think, we can find ourselves trapped in proverbial locks—ones that we have constructed for ourselves or that we’ve drifted into unwittingly—and in those moments we need to be reminded that we were meant for something more.
Consider: in our first passage from the Book of Samuel, Israel wants a king. They want a king because they are a bedraggled and storm-tossed people; they are weary of being vulnerable, weary of having to trust in the guidance of a God whom they cannot see. They want to be like other nations, they want to be ruled by the sort of king they can comprehend, the kind who will put them on the same level as their adversaries. And so they enter the lock.
But Samuel warns them—and warns us still: beware of hiding yourselves within the stone walls of an earthly king’s protection, because you might get stuck there, stifled and crushed by the very safety you once craved. That’s why Samuel says, in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day. Personally and politically,God will let us build up all the walls we think we need, but it will also be up to us to dismantle them when we realize we’re trapped inside. All of history seems to be us learning this lesson over and over again.
Because now, as then, God wants us to remember that the human heart and our common destiny was not meant for small spaces, intellectually, socially, or spiritually—we were created for for expansiveness, for mutuality, for the practice of a love that is broad and deep, the kind that ultimately cannot be contained by fear.
If our life is something like that little boat in the lock, then God is not found in the walls around us, hemming us in. God is instead the living water rising up beneath us, the bracing current flowing from the depths of time, the One saying, come out, be brave, sail upon the ocean of light, see where the wind of the Spirit carries you, and fear not, for I am with you in every cresting wave.
And, speaking of the Spirit, we must also deal with this morning’s Gospel, which can, again, read as one of those passages that locks us in, with all of this talk about blasphemy and unforgivable sins, and Jesus rejecting his mother and siblings. What does all this have to do with the good news of God’s broad and deep love?
Quite a lot, actually. And here, again, the image of the boat and the lock helped me think about this.
I think the Church has too often read Scripture as if Jesus himself was the keeper of the lock rather than what he actually is: the ocean that lies beyond it. We have too often imagined Jesus as if he was the heir of King Saul rather than the Son of God. We have entrapped him within the limited nature of our cultural and political imagination, as if he wants to rule over us like any other king. But he does not.
He is, as God was with Israel, as God has always been, the One who warned us against the seductive promises of tyrants. He is the God who wants us to leave behind the locks we have built up, who wants us to open the gates and break down the walls and break open our hearts and unfurl our spirits and cross the sea with him toward a farther, more promising shore.
And that is why, in today’s reading, he rebukes the religious authorities who condemn his healing and his casting out demons all because such things challenge their narrow understandings and harden them against the infinite compassion that is the true power of God. And this is why Jesus rebukes his family’s efforts to restrain his ministry, too. They want to keep his mission quiet and still and respectable like the water pent up in a cement chamber, rather than let it be the raging torrent of mighty waters that it actually is!
Jesus wants them—and us, now—to see: all of the systems and structures and institutions in the world, even the most cherished and fundamental ones, can turn into stifling dead ends if we hide within them, if we resist the outpouring of love and justice and mercy that is the true purpose of being alive.
And until we realize this, until we claim this as God’s true purpose for us—to leave the lock, to brave the waters, to give our lives over to the blowing wind of the Spirit—then we are indeed at risk of blasphemy against that Spirit, which has nothing to do with taking the Lord’s name in vain, but is the serious risk of living our lives in vain—of never letting God transform our hearts and our world. That’s why Jesus came among us. That is why we must set out; that is why our hearts must be set free.
Can you accept that you are loved so deeply and unconditionally that you are indeed free? Are we out there telling others in our community that they are loved that deeply and unconditionally, too?
They need to hear it. Because a lot of people are hurting, and they need to know that the Gospel is, in fact, good news for everyone and everything, without condition or exception. No cement walls. No tyrant kings. Just a river flowing toward the open water, and a wind that will carry us home.
If we do nothing else in The Episcopal Church and here at St. Anne, I hope that we will realize this and help others do the same. I hope, in this moment in our world when there are so many big questions and deep hurts, that we will understand: the time for waiting behind the walls is over. It’s time to get out there, and show the world who Jesus actually is, and see where his love takes us.
The gates of the lock are open.
Let’s go.
By Another Road 