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St. George's Episcopal Church Roseburg, Oregon Proper 11 , 23 July 2006 Go To St. George's Home Page

2 Samuel 7:1-14a
Psalm 89:20-37
Ephesians 2:11-22
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
Collect of the Day
From the Revised Common Lectionary as Adapted for Use by the Episcopal Church
and Authorized by the 74 th General Convention of the ECUSA

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed. (Mark 6:30-34, 53-56)

When Ordinary Becomes Extra-Ordinary
By the Rev. Dr. Bill Stroop

     Have any of you heard of Robert Burns who lives near Hartford, Connecticut? How about Kevin O’Keefe, the author? How about Adolphe Jacques Quetelet (pronounced kettle-ay), the Belgian opera composer and historian of love?[1] No? Strangers to you?

     Kevin O’Keefe is the author of the book, The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation’s Most Ordinary Citizen. In this book, he has compiled over 1,000 facts about the Average American. He gathered his data by taking a tour of America in search of the sublimely ordinary, the man or woman who was the definitive representative of the most average U.S. citizen.[2] In his book, he reports how he talked business and pleasure with shop owners, attended church functions, and visited the polls on election day. Incidentally, he bypassed both Peoria and Normal, Illinois because neither city, he explains in the book, are normal.

     O’Keefe’s stimulus for this work originated with his reading of the 19 th century work of Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, a man who the type of high pompadour and low sideburns that Elvis – a century later – would make famous. After flirting with careers in music, poetry, journalism, and painting, he virtually invented the field of social statistics. It as he who first showed that human actions could be plotted onto a bell shaped curve, with the most average in the group in the middle of the curve. He also invented the concept of criminal profiling.

     Between 1827 and 1835, Quetelet also set out to define the demographically average person, because the average person, Quetelet believed, would possess all that which is “great, good or beautiful” in any given society. Now this is a little different than how we think today; the average person in our society is the person in the middle of the curve who gets a “C,” whereas the “great, good or beautiful” are the above average people at the far right of the curve who get the “A’s.” In his 1835 book entitled, A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties, Quetelet gives us the average age, strength, and drunkenness of assorted Europeans, among other facts.

     Following Quetelet’s pattern, O’Keefe set out to determine the characteristics of the average citizen. But O’Keefe went one step further. O’Keefe actuallyfound that person. Enter Robert Burns, who is a resident of a suburb of Hartford, CT. He is 5-foot-eight, weighs 185 pounds, and is 36 years of age. He works as a maintenance man. He has three children. He drinks the milk in the bowl after the cereal is finished and eats about 25 pounds of candy a year. In total, Robert Burns possesses 140 of the average American statistics. He is Joe American, the most average citizen.

     To be the perfectly average American is harder than it might seem: You must live within three miles of a McDonald’s, and two miles of a public park; you must be better off financially than your parents, but earn no more than $75,000 a year; you must believe in God and the literal truth of the Bible, yet hold some views that traditional churches have deemed sacrilegious.[3]

     The average citizen e ats peanut butter at least once a week, and prefers smooth over chunky; is between 5 feet and 6 feet tall, weighs 135 to 205 pounds, and is between the ages of 18 and 53. The average citizen can name all Three Stooges; lives within a twenty-minute drive of a Wal-Mart™; and lives in a house, not an apartment or condominium; the house is valued between $100,000 and $300,000. The average citizen grew up within 50 miles of their current home. The average person eats at McDonald’s at least once a year; takes a shower for approximately 10.4 minutes a day, but never sings there; has fired a gun; and believes gambling is an acceptable entertainment option.

     It turns out that most citizens believe in God, and never doubted the existence of God. Church attendance remains important; Joe and Jill Average go to church 12 times a year. It would appear that the need to seek the divine or have a relationship with Jesus is just as important today as it was two thousand years ago.

     As you remember, in this section of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus has been dashing immediately from one place to another healing, teaching, and preaching. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus suggests that since he and the disciples have been on the road for a while, it is time to withdraw and recharge the spiritual batteries. So they took a boat to the other side of the Sea of Galilee to get away and rest.

     But a crowd of average Joe and Jill Galileans saw them leave, and took the long way around on land to meet them on the other side. I can imagine the crowd, probably relatively small at first, growing in number as more townspeople, villagers, and shepherds joined the throng to see what all the fuss is about. When Jesus and the disciples moored the boat, they were mobbed. Jesus was greeted like a rock star, surrounded by the mob. Jesus was moved by their needs and he “ had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus was not like Kevin O’Keefe or Adolphe Jacques Quetelet compiling a list of wants and needs of these people. Instead, he registered their needs deep in the core of his being. He was moved by his godly sense of compassion; he felt for them. And Mark tells us that he responded by “teaching them many things.”

     Jesus’ compassion was for the average person in that crowd: Joe or Jill Galilean. In all of the accounts of Jesus in all of the Gospels – and the epistles as well – Jesus had special compassion for the average person. Jesus did not have compassionate feelings only for the top 10%, the elite, the political leaders of the time, or the rich. In fact, Jesus’ reaction to the upper crust was often critical, because he wanted the upper echelon to actually see and care for the poor and the lowly – in other words – the average citizen. In a way, Jesus was like Quetelet who saw the average person as the ideal in a society. Quetelet once wrote, “If an individual at any given epoch of society possessed all the qualities of the average man, he would represent all that is.” But the difference between Quetelet the data collector and Jesus is that Jesus did something. He acted with compassion and care and love, doing what he could. Jesus also did something with the rich; the high, and the mighty. He instructed them to give to the poor; to use their resources to help rather than oppress people. And he acted with the poor, lifting them up, healing them, and assuring them that the least among people matter especially to God.

     Jesus felt the hunger pangs of the hungry in Galilee. Jesus feels the pain of a computer specialist who is fired because of racial prejudice. He hears the anxiety of a young adult who is working out their sexual identity. He feels the fear of a child who is abused by an adult who is supposed to be a care giver. Jesus feels the pain and disorientation of a woman who has lost her husband of 53 years. Jesus hears the cries of children all over the world who go to bed hungry every night. Jesus is moved with compassion toward lepers, demoniacs, and ordinary people with problems and worries like you and me.

     Like he did that afternoon with the mob by the Sea of Galilee, Jesus also teaches us. His teachings are hard sometimes. When we hurt we want so very much to turn to Jesus so he can take care of us. But when we are not hurting we often go about our business. Jesus teaches us that we cannot be that self-centered or that self-indulgent. We are called to care for the poor and the weak, and to be good stewards of this world of ours. We are challenged to be peacemakers, and to respect the dignity of all human beings. Jesus calls us to a high and consistent ethic of human life and existence. A calling, if you will, about how to live.

     And Jesus heals us. As you know, my good friend Doug was killed in a motor cycle accident last year. His wife brought some of Doug’s ashes to Roseburg recently, because Doug had once expressed an interest in living here. On the night we planned to scatter the ashes, we drove to a secluded place. The moon was full, and there was plenty of light to see. Doug’s wife could not bring herself to open the container. She wasn’t ready to let him go. She was in pain; she was in deep mourning. As we stood there, holding each other, we became aware of another presence. We looked behind us and there was a man on a motorcycle, sitting there with his helmet on. I don’t remember him actually pulling up. He sat there looking at us. The bike was off. He said not a word, and was very respectful. And then slowly he pushed the bike around so as to not disturb us with the light, and then quietly motored off. Doug’s wife looked at me and said, “Doug was here.” I thought, “God sent his angel.” In a few moments she was able to open the container and release her husband to the elements. She had been healed just enough to get through the next day.

     Jesus has compassion for us; Jesus teaches us; Jesus heals us. All of that tells me that Jesus loves us, Joe and Jill Average Person. It is not hard to admire and recognize the extraordinary and above average. But it takes something more to value the overlooked; the underappreciated, the unrecognized. But that’s exactly what Jesus did, and continues to do. When Jesus looked at that mob of people I can imagine him thinking, “God, I love these people!”

     Loving people is what we are called to do. To see God’s people, to love God’s people, and to treat them with compassion; to teach them; and to heal them as best we can. For ordinary people this may seem very hard to do. But Jesus showed us how. Jesus saw every person as holy in the eyes of God. When we can do that, then we will see and respond as Christ did, and the ordinary in all of us will become the extra-ordinary.

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2 Samuel 7:1-14a

Now when the king was settled in his house, and the LORD had given him rest from all his enemies around him, the king said to the prophet Nathan, “See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.” Nathan said to the king, “Go, do all that you have in mind; for the LORD is with you.” But that same night the word of the LORD came to Nathan: Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the LORD: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?” Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the LORD of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover the LORD declares to you that the LORD will make you a house. When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me.

Psalm 89:20-37

20 I have found my servant David;
with my holy oil I have anointed him;

21 my hand shall always remain with him;
my arm also shall strengthen him.

22 The enemy shall not outwit him,
the wicked shall not humble him.

23 I will crush his foes before him
and strike down those who hate him.

24 My faithfulness and steadfast love shall be with him;
and in my name his horn shall be exalted.

25 I will set his hand on the sea
and his right hand on the rivers.

26 He shall cry to me, ‘You are my Father,
my God, and the Rock of my salvation!’

27 I will make him the firstborn,
the highest of the kings of the earth.

28 Forever I will keep my steadfast love for him,
and my covenant with him will stand firm.

29 I will establish his line forever,
and his throne as long as the heavens endure.

30 If his children forsake my law
and do not walk according to my ordinances,

31 if they violate my statutes
| and do not keep my commandments,

32 then I will punish their transgression with the rod
and their iniquity with scourges;

33 but I will not remove from him my steadfast love,
or be false to my faithfulness.

34 I will not violate my covenant,
or alter the word that went forth from my lips.

35 Once and for all I have sworn by my holiness;
I will not lie to David.

36 His line shall continue forever,
and his throne endure before me like the sun.

37 It shall be established forever like the moon,
an enduring witness in the skies.” [Selah]

Ephesians 2:11-22

So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision”- -a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands-- remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

Collect of the Day

Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

[1] Information adapted from Timothy F. Merrill. “The Average American.” Homiletics4(18):31-35, 2006.
[2] Adapted from Public Affairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Accessed on line 20 July 2006 at http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/publicaffairsbooks-cgi-bin/display?book=158648270X.
[3] http://www.theaverageamerican.com/

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Copyright © 2006, William G. Stroop - All Rights Reserved.
20 July 2006

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