“I’ve changed my mind.”
Have you ever heard anyone say this?
Sure you have. It’s a common enough thing to say.
No doubt you have said it yourself on several occasions.
This statement marks a change of course. You had planned to follow one course of action, but when you gave it some thought, you decided to do something else instead.
This is an internal process. You are using your own common sense to dictate your actions.
Let me be more specific. Changing your mind is an internal process that takes place in your head.
You are using your noggin.
But this internal process is often dictated by external circumstances… The approaching thunderstorm, for example, has made you think better of going for a swim in the pond.
The new course of action you have decided upon tends to be one that makes logical sense. It is even possible, when changing your mind about something, to consider your options with a certain amount of objectivity.
I’m too tired to drive, so instead of pushing on and getting home tonight as I originally planned, I’m going to stop at this Holiday Inn for the night.
The surf looks pretty rough, so I guess it’s not a good day for a swim after all.
I’ve had a change of heart.
A change of heart.
We’ve heard this phrase too. It’s not as common as “I’ve changed my mind” – but it is an idea that we are familiar with.
This is a little different though.
I would say a change of heart is a rare experience in our lives. It is a bit more serious than a change of mind.
Unlike a change of mind, it seems to me that a change of heart has less to do with external circumstances. I’m not saying that there is no relation at all between the wisdom of your heart and what is going on in your life – but when it comes down to it, I don’t think changes of heart are data driven decisions. A change of mind may have practical consequences for your day, but a change of heart is likely to alter your view of the world and how you are called upon to respond to it. Matters of the heart have far reaching consequences.
In the west – a part of the world deeply influenced by the Judeo-Christian worldview, the mind is understood to be the seat of the intellect and the heart represents the seat of our emotions and our intuition. If we follow this way of thinking, the heart is deeper than the mind – it is harder to get to, and thus harder to change. The heart, maybe, is where our deep beliefs reside. If this is so, it may take something on the order of a spiritual crisis to inspire a change of heart.
**
The passage from the gospel of Mark that Liz just read for us has two parts.
The first part tells us what happens to Jesus when he finds himself in his hometown.
It doesn’t go well…
The second part of the passage tells of Jesus’ decision to empower the disciples as healers, and teachers and send them out into the world to spread the good news.
When I first read this passage, I found myself primarily interested in the instructions that Jesus gave his disciples in the second part, and I considered not including the first part of the passage at all.
But then I got to wondering if the two stories were related to each other in any way.
Did the two events (the experience in his hometown, and his decision to send out the disciples) – did these two events, I say, just happen to occur one after the other in time, or were they related? Did the second story happen as a direct result of the first story?
Before I speculate further about this question, though, I feel compelled to give you a little peek into my sermon writing process.
You should know that I differ from many of my colleagues in the ministry, in that I almost never consult with Bible commentaries and I avoid online lectionary resources like the plague.
You may not see this as such a great thing. To be sure, my knowledge (and by extension your knowledge) of the gospel might be greatly enhanced if I consulted such resources.
But I refuse.
I give them a wide berth.
I am also belligerent in my outright refusal to read prefaces to novels, or watch trailers for movies.
If you ask me why I avoid all these things, like a long-tailed cat avoids rocking chairs, it is because I desperately want to protect my initial, intuitive response to the passage, or the book, or the movie.
I don’t want someone else – no matter how smart – to prejudice my own pure response. Never before, in the history of the human race, has my mind, or my heart responded to this text. Whatever the result of the interaction may be… I want to own it.
Why am I going on about this? It’s because the question of whether or not the two parts of this passage are connected… is a question that has “lectionary resource” written all over it. It’s just the kind of analysis that you might find worked out in a Bible commentary.
Be that as it may, I came to it all by my lonesome, dammit, and I’m going to answer it my own way. In our world today, the regrettable fact leans upon anyone who has the gumption to have an idea, that every idea, every sentence, every word spoken into a microphone, can reasonably be suspected of having its origin in some question typed into an AI Chatbot. This dreadful reality undermines everything that is sacred to me, and so it is a matter of some consequence to me, that I stake out my integrity as a minister and a writer, and insist that the ideas I express are ideas that come from me.
From my mind.
From my heart.
**
Taking a moment, then, to consider the first part of the story, we find out what goes wrong when Jesus finds himself in his hometown. At first things are going as expected, but soon some of the busybodies in the synagogue recognize him and start grumbling:
““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?”
Who does he think he is, this hometown kid coming back putting on airs? It would be one thing if he was from some impressive place like Rome or Jerusalem, but this man is one of us, and look at us, we’re just decent folk living our lives the best we can. Why should we listen to him?
This might be what they were thinking. Mark’s gospel, in a characteristically matter-of-fact turn of phrase just says:
…they took offense at him.
Since we cannot hear the tone of his voice, and the gospel writer did not bother using qualifying adverbs, we don’t know if Jesus was indignant or resigned when he responds, saying:
“Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown and among their own kin and in their own house.”
We do know, though, that this prejudice on the part of his hometown people seems to have literally short circuited Christ’s ability to do his work. The text states, rather matter of factly that
Jesus could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.
This is where the first part of the passage ends, and the second part begins. There is no indication in the text that there is any more to be said about Christ’s unsuccessful visit home, unless, of course, you read his next actions, in the second part of the passage, as a response.
Until that time, Jesus had been moving through Galilee casting out demons and teaching by himself. Now, in the second part of this passage, he decides to gather his disciples and instruct them to help him.
Did the external circumstances of what happened to him at home, cause Jesus to make this change of course?
In other words… did Jesus change his mind?
Or did the events affect him more intensely? Were his deeply held beliefs challenged enough to cause him to rethink his way of living in the world?
In other words… did Jesus have a change of heart?
To pursue these questions, let’s take a look at those instructions that Jesus gave his disciples, when he set them forth to heal:
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.
Christ’s insists that the disciples set off on a journey and take nothing with them.
Nothing. No food, no money, no bread, no staff. He lets them have sandals and one tunic – but that’s it.
Jesus requires that his disciples remove any and all things of this world that could get in the way of their relationship with God.
In order to become empowered to heal and teach, they must first return, as close as possible, to the state that Adam and Eve were in, before they realized they were naked.
The accouterments of civilization are removed. The soul is laid bare.
This is significant – it suggests a deep change.
But there is something else too.
Jesus sends his disciples out two by two.
This detail – this two by two detail, I think, indicates that Jesus was changed by his experience in his hometown.
He had a deep realization in his hometown – the realization that he could not do it all by himself.
That no one can do it alone.
He recognized that we all need each other.
And in needing each other, we recognize our need for God.
For God does not principally manifest as power…
God principally manifests as love – and to love you need two.
Two.
Perhaps a deep change that leads you to God, can be called a change of soul.
Not a change of mind
Or a change of heart
but the deepest kind of change.
A change of soul.
You can recognize this kind of change because it leads you to love.
I’m not talking about Hollywood love,
This is not an easy love, but it is a strong and mysterious love
This is God’s one-pair-of-sandals love.
Amen