I want to start off by laying out my own baggage with this text. From the time I left for college at eighteen, until I moved to Michigan at age thirty, I changed residences at least once, sometimes two or three times, every year. The result of all that moving was for twelve years of my life, everything I owned could be, and regularly was, condensed to a single car-load. Toward the end of this period, after I graduated from seminary, while waiting for a call from the synod about whether any churches might want to interview me to be their pastor, my cousin got reflective about this transient period of my life. “It must be such a freeing feeling,” she remarked, “to have everything you own fit in your car, knowing you could just up and go anywhere in the world you wanted at a minute’s notice.” I, unemployed and with no job prospects, mired in student debt, having just moved back in with my parents while all my friends were buying houses and starting families, wasn’t in the mood for reflection. “No,” I quipped back. “You know what’s a freeing feeling? Owning more than one towel. Being able to commit to a toaster without having to worry if it will fit in the next move. Toast whenever you want it is what freedom feels like.”
All this to say, this is not going to be a sermon in which I encourage you to sell everything you own and set yourself free from worldly possessions. I have spent enough of my life in transition to know that owning nothing is not in and of itself the pathway to freedom. I now own seven towels, and I’m legitimately grateful for and appreciative of every one of them.
The other reason this is not going to be a sermon about the virtue of selling everything you own is the risk of glorifying poverty. Because here’s another thing, I have never been poor. Yes, for twelve years I owned next to nothing, but I have never been poor. I come from a background of relative generational wealth and I knew at any time I had an escape route. I could move back in with my parents, I could put my multiple degrees and robust resume to work at any number of white-collar professions, I could settle down and buy a toaster. The transient life-style I lived for twelve years was my choice, and my choice alone. And to make the choice to live without a virtue is to diminish the struggle of those for whom going without is not a choice but the result of unjust systems.
This passage places us in the same struggle as the one two weeks ago about cutting off one’s hand, where we need to resist the temptation to reduce Jesus’ hyperbolic teaching style to the realm of metaphor. Because as we saw two weeks ago with the cutting off of hands, the more hyperbolic Jesus seemed to be, the more serious the teaching. And Jesus was definitely talking about wealth in this passage, about the damages and dangers of money and possessions. Money, by the way, is one of the most frequently mentioned topics in Jesus’ teachings. Jesus talked about money more often than he talked about the law, or forgiveness, or heaven and hell combined. In fact, money is second only to the Kingdom of God in how often Jesus spoke of it. Money, possessions, and the role they play in our lives is hugely important, and it was hugely important to Jesus. As Jesus is quoted as saying in both Matthew and Luke, “No one can serve two masters… You cannot serve both God and money.” So while this passage is neither a glorification of poverty nor an obligation to sell everything we have and embrace a life of austerity, it is absolutely a calling to us to take a careful look at ourselves, our lives, our wealth, and our possessions, to see what outsized role those things may be playing, how they may, like the rich man, be keeping us from recognizing what we truly lack.
For twelve years, and still today, all too often the things that I thought I lacked kept me from seeing what I still had and what I still had to give. Because though I owned next to nothing and my back account regularly hovered around zero, I was never truly poor and I was never without the power that comes with being white, middle-class, and well-educated. I always had something I could give.
The other thing I learned, and am learning, is that just because someone else has less then me, does not mean I should not ask them also to think of what they have, and what they can give. Because giving of yourself, being able to contribute, that too is a gift and a privilege. And it is unfair for me to decide who is worthy of that privilege, to decide someone has less than me so I get to give my things to them, because then I get the reward of feeling good about how generous I am, and they get the obligation of being grateful for my generosity. And we both lose. I lose the opportunity to receive; they lose the power of being the one who gives.
Fall is stewardship time at Trinity, and it is also annual budget time. And while we talk about how the two are separate, how we are giving not to the budget but to our mission, and how our budget is not based on pledged giving but on a sense of God’s call, and that is true, the two seasons do overlap, and both the receipt of each individual’s estimate of financial giving to the congregation and our congregational budget are about stewardship and about addressing the question that Jesus gave to the rich man, the question of what we lack, and what we are willing and able to give.
The individual financial giving part is the easier one actually, because what we are willing and able to contribute of our own wealth is a question only each of us can answer for ourselves. I can tell you, and I will, how much that amount is for me and how I make that decision. I learned 10-10-80 as a general rule somewhere, 10 percent saved, 10 percent given away, 80 percent lived on, and that makes the math super simple. So when my paycheck comes, I move the decimal place over one, round up because I like round numbers, and done. Actually, 10-10-80 means I don’t even actually do the math, I just see how much money Bob withholds for my retirement contribution and write a check for the same amount. I guess one of those numbers is post-tax and the other pre-tax, but I’m clergy, which means my taxes are calculated by a formula only the IRS understands anyway, so I don’t get all that worked up about net vs. gross, or whatever. I go with what makes the math simple.
So that’s how I figure it out. Of course, the caveat on that is I have no dependents, my expenses are low, and I paid off my student loans while I was working under the much higher cost-of-living based salary guidelines of the Southwest California synod, so 10-10-80 is a rule that works for me. It may not work for you. Maybe you are not at a financial place where you can set aside 10 percent of your income, or maybe you’re at a place where you can set aside more. Our Muslim brothers and sisters have a different system entirely. Rather than a tithe, or ten percent of their income, they practice zakat, which means they figure out their total net wealth overall and then give two point five percent of that. The idea being if someone is living paycheck to paycheck, they may not be able to set aside a percentage of income, as that is the money they’re living on. But someone could give of their wealth, that which has moved from subsistence to sustainability. There are pros and cons to each system of course, but our Muslim siblings method may actually be more sacrificial for those of us who have accumulated generational wealth.
I offer all this as food for thought as you think about what your estimate of giving will be, when we collect estimate of giving cards during worship on the twenty-eighth. But as I mentioned, fall is also budget time, and deciding how we manage those our congregational resources is probably harder, because more of us are involved in, and affected by, the outcome. Basically, the stakes seem higher. I can more or less calculate my own income and expenses, and what I can reasonably give. I’m certainly apt to lean more on the side of caution than I probably should, one can always be more generous, but it’s still an individual decision. With the church budget, I get more antsy. Because that’s not an individual decision, and the ramifications are larger. If our money is mismanaged, either intentionally or unintentionally, and we cannot sustain ourselves, it is not just my income that suffers; it is all of us, this neighborhood, and everyone who’s given money to support our mission and ministry. I want us to be here because this is my job and I like being paid, yes. If I stop feeding him, Cat might decide to just eat me. I also want us to be here for you all, because I love watching us as a congregation grow in our faith, I love worshiping with you each week, I love visiting with you, learning from you, working with you, I love being your pastor. And I want us to be here for the people who are in and out of this building all week, who have never, and may never come here on Sunday, but who also call me pastor, and who are also a part of our faith community. What we do here is about us, but it’s also bigger than us. It drives me absolutely crazy that yet again it’s budget time and I don’t know how we’re going to make the numbers work. That you all are generous and frugal and creative, and yet we still haven’t figured out how to crack the code of the difference between your generosity and our neighborhood’s need. I don’t know what the budget numbers are going to look like, but I know that we will be looking at what we can cut. I’m tired, and I’ve only been doing it for four years, some of you have been doing it for forty.
But here’s what I do know. Jesus told the rich man to sell what he had because he lacked on thing, because he loved him. Verse twenty-one, “Jesus, looking at him, loved him…” And here’s something you probably didn’t know, the rich man in this story is the only person in the whole Gospel of Mark that Jesus is said to have loved. Jesus talked about love, but this is the one and only person whom Jesus specifically looked at, and loved. The command of Jesus to sell what he owned so that he could get what he lacked came not from a place of obligation, but from a place of love. This was Jesus trying to fill a need the man didn’t even know he had, a need that couldn’t be met by wealth, couldn’t be met by keeping the law, couldn’t be kept by discipline or observance or belief, but could only be met by Jesus. And the man couldn’t do it, and he went away grieving, for he had many possessions. At least, he went away grieving in the story, but here’s the wonderful open-endedness of Mark, we don’t know what happened after that. What we know is what Jesus then told his disciples, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”
So here’s the thing friends. It’s budget time again, and I can already tell you, the numbers don’t work. But the fact of our continued existence is proof that if God wants us here, the numbers don’t really matter. If you all had turned in the towel every time the numbers didn’t work, I wouldn’t be here. Pastor Herdman wouldn’t even be here. There was a time in the 1940s when you were down to six; your roughest time as a congregation predates both of us. So in two weeks, when you’re writing a number on that pledge card, I’m going to reiterate what you’ve been saying for years, we are not giving to fulfill the budget. We may lack something, but that thing is not money. No, we don’t have much money, but the story of the rich man assures us that the only thing we can lack is a thing only God can give, and God has given and is giving it to us in abundance, the sustaining presence of the Spirit in this place. We will be here until God decides our work here is done, and then we won’t be. The Bishop keeps assuring me the church needs us here, so as long as we are needed, I guess this is where we’ll be.
So it’s stewardship time, and I invite you to give, and to give generously. Not because the church needs your money, but so that you may experience the grace that comes from being a part of something that is bigger then all of us, the work of God in this place. And also, please don’t give me a toaster. I got one for Christmas a few years ago, and I love it. Thanks be to God for all the many gifts we receive, and also for toasters, because sometimes freedom really is as simple as a delicious piece of toast. Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Monday, October 15, 2018
Monday, October 8, 2018
Dirt Parts: A Sermon on Mark 10:2-16 and Genesis 2:18-24
There are certain texts that feel unethical as a pastor to read in worship and then not address them in the sermon. The brilliant and wonderful souls of the lectionary committee gave us two such texts this morning. Of course the Mark text about divorce is, well, loaded. And then the Genesis reading also brings along its own fun history of misuse and abuse. So hang in there friends, because we’re going right in this morning.
First let’s talk about what the Pharisees were really up to in asking Jesus about divorce. The lectionary left off the first verse, which told us Jesus left Capernaum where he’d been last week and traveled “to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan.” I don’t expect you to remember, because we read it way back in December and January, what else took place in “the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan.” Mark chapter one, verse four, “John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness… And people from the whole Judean countryside… were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan.” That’s where we are this morning, in John the Baptist’s territory. But John isn’t in the Judean countryside anymore, and this was only a few months ago, so maybe you remember why John isn’t there, what happened to John. Mark chapter six, John was arrested, and beheaded, by Herod for calling Herod out for divorcing his wife in order to marry his brother’s wife. A move which, knowing what we know about the Herodian clan in general, certainly was not about love and certainly was about power and political maneuverings. The Pharisees didn’t ask Jesus this question because they wanted him to enlighten them on what the law says about marriage, they asked him because they were hoping Jesus would back himself into the same trap that John the Baptist ended up in, and Herod would go ahead and remove Jesus from the scene for them before Jesus could threaten their status any further.
This is interesting, sure, but still doesn’t get to the heart of why this text can be so painful and why this text has so often been misused, what Jesus actually said about divorce. One approach preachers, myself included, often take with this text, is to place it in its proper historical context. Because the experience of being married in the time of Moses, and even in the first century, was vastly different then the experience of being married today. Today’s definition of marriage is a legal agreement between two consenting adults. First century marriage was a legal bill of sale between a man and the father of his soon-to-be wife. The woman was literally sold from one home to another. And this “certificate of divorce,” the Pharisees referenced. Such a certificate could legally be issued if a man found “something objectionable” about his wife. “Something objectionable” could be growing older, failing to bear a son, burning toast, or the husband simply becoming bored. And a woman’s entire value in society was connected to a man, either her father or her husband. A divorced woman could not return to her father’s home and no one else could marry her. So divorce left her destitute, abandoned, and alone.
Let’s also notice the players in the conversation. The instigators of this conversation were Pharisees, who were men, powerful men at that, and they were talking to Jesus about what the law says about whether a man can divorce his wife. The question at hand here isn’t, what do I do about this relationship that has become unhealthy. The question is: can I sell my property when I don’t want it anymore. So between the locational allusions to John the Baptist, and thus Herod, the social status of women at the time, and the male Pharisees own social status, this text is clearly power, who has it, and who wants to keep it.
But as interesting a historical lesson as all that is, I still don’t think it really deals with the pain and suffering centuries of poor interpretation of this text has left us with. I also don’t think unpacking this text in its proper historical context is all that hopeful. And believe it or not, I think Jesus is offering us a lot of hope in this challenging teaching about divorce. I found that hope in a pretty unexpected place this week. Remember at the beginning of the sermon I said there are two texts this week that make me feel an ethical responsibility to address if they are read? I found the hope for this text in diving into the other text. So let’s go there now.
Genesis two, verses eighteen to twenty-four also has a rich history of being used to justify abuse and oppression. Often the target of that abuse is women but not exclusively; LGBTQ people of all gender identities and expressions have certainly also had this text read against them. But what’s really going on here?
Verse eighteen starts right off, “The the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone.” That it is “not good” is immediately a problem, as again and again in chapter one God made creation and called that creation good. So if something is “not good,” then the work of that part of creation is clearly not complete yet. And we see God in verse nineteen immediately, and many commentaries added, rather humorously, go to work trying to come up with a solution to the problem of man’s aloneness.
One complicating factor in understanding this problem is the word “man.” Because man is a gendered word, it’s very definition requires it to be different from something else, from woman. But the Hebrew word here is adam, which is an abbreviation of another Hebrew word, adamah, which means ground or earth. The word that in Hebrew ends up meaning human male, thus translating man, quite literally translates “dirt part.” As in, not the whole ground, but a thing formed out of part of the ground. Adam doesn’t become a name until the end of chapter four. And even then, he’s never really formally named, it just seems to have become inconvenient once there were more dirt parts in the story to keep referring to this particular dirt part in the abstract while everyone else got a name. So the writer of Genesis simply capitalized it, and suddenly man/dirt part became Adam. Eve also didn’t get named in this section, though when she did, her name derives from the Hebrew word for “living” as a nod to women as the bearers of children and thus the propagators of life.
The point of all this is that the problem God recognized in verse eighteen was not that man didn’t have woman, but that dirt part was alone. Because when there was only one, it wasn’t gendered. The very idea of gender requires another thing to compare it to. When God saw that dirt part was alone, God created another dirt part so that dirt part would have another like it to be in relationship with. This second dirt part was different then the first, for differences are what make relationships interesting, but also the same, from the same part of dirt. Which, friends, is there a better metaphor for humanity as a species then that? We are a multiplicity of shapes and sizes, colors and hues, skills and abilities, hopes and dreams. And yet, in all this vast array of differences, our DNA is something like 99.9 percent the same. All of the differences we think of as being so massive, all that variation is contained in point one percent of our DNA.
All this to say, we are a relational species, we need to be in relationship to survive. God saw that when God first saw dirt part alone and said, “it is not good for dirt part to be alone,” so God created another dirt part, similar but different, to help dirt part, and for dirt part to help, so that those two dirt parts could thrive. Because it is not good for us to be alone. And anything that breaks that relational need, that forces someone to be without the relational connections that we require as humans to survive, that thing is not what God wants for us.
The good news I hear in both of these challenging texts is that God cares deeply about our lives now, and specifically about the quality of our relationships. Often we lump questions of faith in a very long-term view of eternal salvation, and that’s not to say Jesus doesn’t care about that, certainly Jesus does, that was after all the whole point of the resurrection. But in this text we see that Jesus cares about more than just eternity, Jesus cares deeply about the quality of our lives as we are still living them. Yes, in the scope of God’s time they are fleeting and temporal and whatever, but in the scope of ours, they are all we have, and Jesus knows that and Jesus cares about that. Jesus cares about our relationships. He cares that they are full, that they are rich, that they are rewarding and healthy and life-giving. That they nurture us, sustain us, help us and support us. In the model of dirt part one and dirt part two way back in creation, God cares that we have people in our lives who are our partners and our helpers, and we them, so that we may live rich, fulfilling, and whole lives.
Dear, beloved dirt parts, shaped from the earth of God’s creation, formed in God’s image, by God’s own hand, it is God’s will for you that you have other dear, beloved dirt parts, also created by God, in your life. Dirt parts who are like you, in that all of us were created in God’s image, but also different, for no one dirt part could encompass the whole of God. You are not alone, no matter what struggle you face, what pain other dirt parts may have caused you, for God knows that it is not good for us to be alone, so God created us, many of us, for each other. Thanks be to God, who gave us one to another, weird, beloved, beautiful and diverse, dirt parts of God. Amen.
First let’s talk about what the Pharisees were really up to in asking Jesus about divorce. The lectionary left off the first verse, which told us Jesus left Capernaum where he’d been last week and traveled “to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan.” I don’t expect you to remember, because we read it way back in December and January, what else took place in “the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan.” Mark chapter one, verse four, “John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness… And people from the whole Judean countryside… were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan.” That’s where we are this morning, in John the Baptist’s territory. But John isn’t in the Judean countryside anymore, and this was only a few months ago, so maybe you remember why John isn’t there, what happened to John. Mark chapter six, John was arrested, and beheaded, by Herod for calling Herod out for divorcing his wife in order to marry his brother’s wife. A move which, knowing what we know about the Herodian clan in general, certainly was not about love and certainly was about power and political maneuverings. The Pharisees didn’t ask Jesus this question because they wanted him to enlighten them on what the law says about marriage, they asked him because they were hoping Jesus would back himself into the same trap that John the Baptist ended up in, and Herod would go ahead and remove Jesus from the scene for them before Jesus could threaten their status any further.
This is interesting, sure, but still doesn’t get to the heart of why this text can be so painful and why this text has so often been misused, what Jesus actually said about divorce. One approach preachers, myself included, often take with this text, is to place it in its proper historical context. Because the experience of being married in the time of Moses, and even in the first century, was vastly different then the experience of being married today. Today’s definition of marriage is a legal agreement between two consenting adults. First century marriage was a legal bill of sale between a man and the father of his soon-to-be wife. The woman was literally sold from one home to another. And this “certificate of divorce,” the Pharisees referenced. Such a certificate could legally be issued if a man found “something objectionable” about his wife. “Something objectionable” could be growing older, failing to bear a son, burning toast, or the husband simply becoming bored. And a woman’s entire value in society was connected to a man, either her father or her husband. A divorced woman could not return to her father’s home and no one else could marry her. So divorce left her destitute, abandoned, and alone.
Let’s also notice the players in the conversation. The instigators of this conversation were Pharisees, who were men, powerful men at that, and they were talking to Jesus about what the law says about whether a man can divorce his wife. The question at hand here isn’t, what do I do about this relationship that has become unhealthy. The question is: can I sell my property when I don’t want it anymore. So between the locational allusions to John the Baptist, and thus Herod, the social status of women at the time, and the male Pharisees own social status, this text is clearly power, who has it, and who wants to keep it.
But as interesting a historical lesson as all that is, I still don’t think it really deals with the pain and suffering centuries of poor interpretation of this text has left us with. I also don’t think unpacking this text in its proper historical context is all that hopeful. And believe it or not, I think Jesus is offering us a lot of hope in this challenging teaching about divorce. I found that hope in a pretty unexpected place this week. Remember at the beginning of the sermon I said there are two texts this week that make me feel an ethical responsibility to address if they are read? I found the hope for this text in diving into the other text. So let’s go there now.
Genesis two, verses eighteen to twenty-four also has a rich history of being used to justify abuse and oppression. Often the target of that abuse is women but not exclusively; LGBTQ people of all gender identities and expressions have certainly also had this text read against them. But what’s really going on here?
Verse eighteen starts right off, “The the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone.” That it is “not good” is immediately a problem, as again and again in chapter one God made creation and called that creation good. So if something is “not good,” then the work of that part of creation is clearly not complete yet. And we see God in verse nineteen immediately, and many commentaries added, rather humorously, go to work trying to come up with a solution to the problem of man’s aloneness.
One complicating factor in understanding this problem is the word “man.” Because man is a gendered word, it’s very definition requires it to be different from something else, from woman. But the Hebrew word here is adam, which is an abbreviation of another Hebrew word, adamah, which means ground or earth. The word that in Hebrew ends up meaning human male, thus translating man, quite literally translates “dirt part.” As in, not the whole ground, but a thing formed out of part of the ground. Adam doesn’t become a name until the end of chapter four. And even then, he’s never really formally named, it just seems to have become inconvenient once there were more dirt parts in the story to keep referring to this particular dirt part in the abstract while everyone else got a name. So the writer of Genesis simply capitalized it, and suddenly man/dirt part became Adam. Eve also didn’t get named in this section, though when she did, her name derives from the Hebrew word for “living” as a nod to women as the bearers of children and thus the propagators of life.
The point of all this is that the problem God recognized in verse eighteen was not that man didn’t have woman, but that dirt part was alone. Because when there was only one, it wasn’t gendered. The very idea of gender requires another thing to compare it to. When God saw that dirt part was alone, God created another dirt part so that dirt part would have another like it to be in relationship with. This second dirt part was different then the first, for differences are what make relationships interesting, but also the same, from the same part of dirt. Which, friends, is there a better metaphor for humanity as a species then that? We are a multiplicity of shapes and sizes, colors and hues, skills and abilities, hopes and dreams. And yet, in all this vast array of differences, our DNA is something like 99.9 percent the same. All of the differences we think of as being so massive, all that variation is contained in point one percent of our DNA.
All this to say, we are a relational species, we need to be in relationship to survive. God saw that when God first saw dirt part alone and said, “it is not good for dirt part to be alone,” so God created another dirt part, similar but different, to help dirt part, and for dirt part to help, so that those two dirt parts could thrive. Because it is not good for us to be alone. And anything that breaks that relational need, that forces someone to be without the relational connections that we require as humans to survive, that thing is not what God wants for us.
The good news I hear in both of these challenging texts is that God cares deeply about our lives now, and specifically about the quality of our relationships. Often we lump questions of faith in a very long-term view of eternal salvation, and that’s not to say Jesus doesn’t care about that, certainly Jesus does, that was after all the whole point of the resurrection. But in this text we see that Jesus cares about more than just eternity, Jesus cares deeply about the quality of our lives as we are still living them. Yes, in the scope of God’s time they are fleeting and temporal and whatever, but in the scope of ours, they are all we have, and Jesus knows that and Jesus cares about that. Jesus cares about our relationships. He cares that they are full, that they are rich, that they are rewarding and healthy and life-giving. That they nurture us, sustain us, help us and support us. In the model of dirt part one and dirt part two way back in creation, God cares that we have people in our lives who are our partners and our helpers, and we them, so that we may live rich, fulfilling, and whole lives.
Dear, beloved dirt parts, shaped from the earth of God’s creation, formed in God’s image, by God’s own hand, it is God’s will for you that you have other dear, beloved dirt parts, also created by God, in your life. Dirt parts who are like you, in that all of us were created in God’s image, but also different, for no one dirt part could encompass the whole of God. You are not alone, no matter what struggle you face, what pain other dirt parts may have caused you, for God knows that it is not good for us to be alone, so God created us, many of us, for each other. Thanks be to God, who gave us one to another, weird, beloved, beautiful and diverse, dirt parts of God. Amen.
Monday, October 1, 2018
Yep, This is Also a Hard Teaching: A Sermon on Mark 9:38-50
I don’t think we really get how out of place John’s comment was unless we remember what happened immediately before. So, to recap last Sunday’s Gospel, Mark nine, thirty through thirty-seven: While traveling with Jesus, the disciples were arguing about which of them was the greatest. When they got in the house, and Jesus was alone with the twelve, he rebuked them by bringing a child into the room, taking the child in his arms and saying, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me, but the one who sent me.” And then, while Jesus is still holding a kid in his arms, John said, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” This is the precursor to John’s complaint, Jesus had literally just finished telling them that the mark of greatness is service and humility, he was still holding the kid he used as the object lesson, and John butts in, “OK, but there’s this guy who’s doing this thing, and we told him to knock it off.” John should maybe take a lesson from the kid still in Jesus’ arms, whose parents have certainly told him at some point he shouldn’t be a tattletale.
But that first section is not the interesting part of the Gospel text is it? The interesting part is the part where Jesus tells us we might need to cut off our hands, or our feet, or tear out our eyes. If you will permit me a potentially judgey aside; it is interesting, is it not, that for all the eagerness to read the Bible literally, no one seems too keen on reading this part literally. Certainly Jesus meant the part about cutting off our own hands as metaphor...
And of course, he DID mean it as metaphor. Jesus was certainly not advocating self-mutilation as a requirement for forgiveness. But to stop there, to dismiss these words to the realm of metaphor, is to miss the very serious statement Jesus was making.
So I want to dig into this teaching of Jesus this morning. To take seriously his words that it is better to drown than to hinder the faith of another, and to ask what those words mean for our lives. But before I do that, I want to emphasize again the audience for this teaching. Jesus is talking to the twelve. I guess the kid is there too, but kids are smarter than we give them credit for, and certainly the kid is aware that he is the object lesson not the intended recipient of the lecture. One can assume the kid is coloring by this point, or some other activity to keep him engaged. Listening like a sponge in the way kids do, but not altogether paying attention.
The point is this is insider talk. This is teaching for those who are already in. Jesus didn’t say this standing on a mountain top, or on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. He didn’t proclaim to the lost, the hurting, the hungry, or the oppressed, “if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off,” he said it to the already initiated. This incredibly high standard of behavior is not the prerequisite for salvation; it is the expectation for those who have already been saved. So I’m going to give a warning, if you’re new to Christianity, if you’re still learning who this Jesus character is, don’t worry, this text isn’t for you yet. But if you, like me, have been around for a while, I want to invite you to let this text challenge you, let it rub you the wrong way, let it hurt. Not because your salvation is at stake, for we know from Romans that “nothing can separate us from the love of God,” but because discomfort is a mark of growth. In the same way that exercising leaves our muscles sore, a deep examination of our sins and failings leaves our souls sore. It hurts to get stronger, fitter, more spiritually in shape. Jesus knew that, but he also knew that for the disciples and for us, the stakes were too high, the time frame to short, not to push us to be better. For the disciples, this is the end of Mark chapter nine. Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday at the start of chapter eleven; we are almost to the cross. Jesus knew if he didn’t push them it would be too late; for who would shape them once he was gone. And for us too, the stakes are high, the time short. The fastest growing religious group in America right now are what the Pew Research Center call the “dones,” D-O-N-E-S, as in those who are leaving churches, done with religion altogether. According to a recent survey there are thirty-million “dones” in America, with another seven million on the edge of leaving. Interestingly, the “dones” are not leaving churches because they lost faith in God, they’re leaving because they lost faith in church, they lost faith in the people of God, they lost faith in an institution that feels judgmental, hypocritical, and more concerned about policing the morality of others than addressing more pressing issues of poverty, inequality, and economic injustice. Of course for some “dones,” the issue is even more personal. The news broke last week that Attorney General Schuette is opening up an investigation of seven Catholic dioceses in Michigan. And I’m going to be frank; I don’t care how long ago the abuse happened, I don’t care about the extenuating circumstances. If having never abused someone is too high an expectation to set for our leadership, the problem isn’t with the expectation, the problem is with our culture. I bring this up because I am well aware that for a lot of people, this collar I wear was the status symbol that gave power, and cover, to their abuser. So instead of sitting back, “Jesus, those people are doing this thing,” or questioning the victim, “Rabbi who sinned… that this man was born blind,” this passage forces me to examine my own complicity, the power that I gain from this piece of plastic and the silence it allows me to feel justified in keeping. I am responsible for my own actions, and for the effects those actions, or as we acknowledge in the confession, the lack of action, has on others. For silence can be just as complicit as committing the act itself.
And as we heard the disciples say to Jesus back in August at the end of the Bread of Life discourse, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it.” Yes, yes it is. But just like we talked about during that Bread of Life discourse, Jesus loves us too much to settle for less than difficult. Because again, this is not the bar for entry to the kingdom, this is the expectation of us who are already in. Keeping this expectation is about making space for others to receive what we have already been given, the love and the grace and the greatness of God. It is because we know how great the love of God is that we know just how high are the stakes that we might prevent that gift for someone else.
Yes, this teaching is difficult, but here’s the good news, we do not take on this hard work of self-examination alone. We do it in community and we do it with God. These hard teachings were made in love, and with an eye to the whole community, the disciples and those whom they would bring in.
We see this shift to relationship in the last two verses of today’s reading, which seem to be about seasoning but are actually about the gift of community. Throughout scripture salt is used as a metaphor for a bunch of different things and Jesus drew on all of them as he spoke with the disciples. Salt is a preservative, it keeps things from spoiling. It is a purifier, burning away impurities so that the best parts remain. It is a leavening agent, tempering enthusiasm to allow for long term growth, a seasoner, bringing out the best flavors. And it is the seal of promise, the mark of a relationship. It’s this last one we may be unfamiliar with, but in the Old Testament relationships were bound with the “salt of the covenant,” a metaphor Jesus’ disciples would certainly have known. When Jesus told them they would be “salted with fire,” all of these images, refinement, purification, determination, growth, hope, and promise would have been bound up in those words. They were to “have salt in themselves,” first, to watch their own problems, their own frailties, their own weaknesses, so that they could then “be at peace with one another.” Kind of a weird analogy, but it’s sort of like that announcement on airplanes to get your own oxygen mask before assisting others. You are supposed to put on your own mask first not because you are more important but because without looking out for yourself first you will be unable to look after others.
So be salted, dear sisters and brothers, and let these hard teachings of Jesus challenge you, shape you, and mold you to be more then you thought you could be. These hard teachings are hard, but they are not meant to be a test of your faith. Rather, they are hard because they are a testament to Jesus’ faith in you, and to the sort of disciple Jesus thinks you can be. Amen.
But that first section is not the interesting part of the Gospel text is it? The interesting part is the part where Jesus tells us we might need to cut off our hands, or our feet, or tear out our eyes. If you will permit me a potentially judgey aside; it is interesting, is it not, that for all the eagerness to read the Bible literally, no one seems too keen on reading this part literally. Certainly Jesus meant the part about cutting off our own hands as metaphor...
And of course, he DID mean it as metaphor. Jesus was certainly not advocating self-mutilation as a requirement for forgiveness. But to stop there, to dismiss these words to the realm of metaphor, is to miss the very serious statement Jesus was making.
So I want to dig into this teaching of Jesus this morning. To take seriously his words that it is better to drown than to hinder the faith of another, and to ask what those words mean for our lives. But before I do that, I want to emphasize again the audience for this teaching. Jesus is talking to the twelve. I guess the kid is there too, but kids are smarter than we give them credit for, and certainly the kid is aware that he is the object lesson not the intended recipient of the lecture. One can assume the kid is coloring by this point, or some other activity to keep him engaged. Listening like a sponge in the way kids do, but not altogether paying attention.
The point is this is insider talk. This is teaching for those who are already in. Jesus didn’t say this standing on a mountain top, or on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. He didn’t proclaim to the lost, the hurting, the hungry, or the oppressed, “if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off,” he said it to the already initiated. This incredibly high standard of behavior is not the prerequisite for salvation; it is the expectation for those who have already been saved. So I’m going to give a warning, if you’re new to Christianity, if you’re still learning who this Jesus character is, don’t worry, this text isn’t for you yet. But if you, like me, have been around for a while, I want to invite you to let this text challenge you, let it rub you the wrong way, let it hurt. Not because your salvation is at stake, for we know from Romans that “nothing can separate us from the love of God,” but because discomfort is a mark of growth. In the same way that exercising leaves our muscles sore, a deep examination of our sins and failings leaves our souls sore. It hurts to get stronger, fitter, more spiritually in shape. Jesus knew that, but he also knew that for the disciples and for us, the stakes were too high, the time frame to short, not to push us to be better. For the disciples, this is the end of Mark chapter nine. Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday at the start of chapter eleven; we are almost to the cross. Jesus knew if he didn’t push them it would be too late; for who would shape them once he was gone. And for us too, the stakes are high, the time short. The fastest growing religious group in America right now are what the Pew Research Center call the “dones,” D-O-N-E-S, as in those who are leaving churches, done with religion altogether. According to a recent survey there are thirty-million “dones” in America, with another seven million on the edge of leaving. Interestingly, the “dones” are not leaving churches because they lost faith in God, they’re leaving because they lost faith in church, they lost faith in the people of God, they lost faith in an institution that feels judgmental, hypocritical, and more concerned about policing the morality of others than addressing more pressing issues of poverty, inequality, and economic injustice. Of course for some “dones,” the issue is even more personal. The news broke last week that Attorney General Schuette is opening up an investigation of seven Catholic dioceses in Michigan. And I’m going to be frank; I don’t care how long ago the abuse happened, I don’t care about the extenuating circumstances. If having never abused someone is too high an expectation to set for our leadership, the problem isn’t with the expectation, the problem is with our culture. I bring this up because I am well aware that for a lot of people, this collar I wear was the status symbol that gave power, and cover, to their abuser. So instead of sitting back, “Jesus, those people are doing this thing,” or questioning the victim, “Rabbi who sinned… that this man was born blind,” this passage forces me to examine my own complicity, the power that I gain from this piece of plastic and the silence it allows me to feel justified in keeping. I am responsible for my own actions, and for the effects those actions, or as we acknowledge in the confession, the lack of action, has on others. For silence can be just as complicit as committing the act itself.
And as we heard the disciples say to Jesus back in August at the end of the Bread of Life discourse, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it.” Yes, yes it is. But just like we talked about during that Bread of Life discourse, Jesus loves us too much to settle for less than difficult. Because again, this is not the bar for entry to the kingdom, this is the expectation of us who are already in. Keeping this expectation is about making space for others to receive what we have already been given, the love and the grace and the greatness of God. It is because we know how great the love of God is that we know just how high are the stakes that we might prevent that gift for someone else.
Yes, this teaching is difficult, but here’s the good news, we do not take on this hard work of self-examination alone. We do it in community and we do it with God. These hard teachings were made in love, and with an eye to the whole community, the disciples and those whom they would bring in.
We see this shift to relationship in the last two verses of today’s reading, which seem to be about seasoning but are actually about the gift of community. Throughout scripture salt is used as a metaphor for a bunch of different things and Jesus drew on all of them as he spoke with the disciples. Salt is a preservative, it keeps things from spoiling. It is a purifier, burning away impurities so that the best parts remain. It is a leavening agent, tempering enthusiasm to allow for long term growth, a seasoner, bringing out the best flavors. And it is the seal of promise, the mark of a relationship. It’s this last one we may be unfamiliar with, but in the Old Testament relationships were bound with the “salt of the covenant,” a metaphor Jesus’ disciples would certainly have known. When Jesus told them they would be “salted with fire,” all of these images, refinement, purification, determination, growth, hope, and promise would have been bound up in those words. They were to “have salt in themselves,” first, to watch their own problems, their own frailties, their own weaknesses, so that they could then “be at peace with one another.” Kind of a weird analogy, but it’s sort of like that announcement on airplanes to get your own oxygen mask before assisting others. You are supposed to put on your own mask first not because you are more important but because without looking out for yourself first you will be unable to look after others.
So be salted, dear sisters and brothers, and let these hard teachings of Jesus challenge you, shape you, and mold you to be more then you thought you could be. These hard teachings are hard, but they are not meant to be a test of your faith. Rather, they are hard because they are a testament to Jesus’ faith in you, and to the sort of disciple Jesus thinks you can be. Amen.
Monday, September 24, 2018
Who is the Greatest?: A Sermon on Mark 9:30-37
I need to tell you guys a funny story about the book I talked about during the children’s sermon (The Blue Ribbon Puppies by Crockett Johnson). As I told the kids, my copy of the book is somewhere at my parents’ house, so I spent probably more time than necessary on Thursday trying to hunt down pictures online. Most of the search results were book sellers, which often have reviews of the book. And this one review I found so funny, I have to share it with you. The review read, “A fine example of a book about promoting self esteem: every puppy deserves an award for some feature that singles him/her out... But it raises the question—when do you tell someone that he (or she) is not the best at something?” [Pause] Friends, this is a book about puppies for four year olds. Is “when do you tell a four year old they are not that great” really the question this story raises for you? I get the concern about inflating kids’ egos, but my godson is four and trust me, he knows he’s not the best at everything. He doesn’t need a book to tell him; the fact that he can’t reach the counter is reminder enough. His great frustration in life is that his big sister can do more stuff then he can do, because she is six and thus taller, faster, stronger, and generally more coordinated. My experience with four-year-olds is they are generally aware of their limitations. It’s only when we get to be a bit older that these concerns about ego really get complicated.
In our Gospel reading for this morning, the disciples were, yet again and I’ll add not for the last time, arguing about which of them was the greatest disciple. Which one was the “blue ribbon puppy,” if you will, of the group. When they got to the house, Jesus asked them, “What were you arguing about?” And of course, crickets, because no one wanted to admit they were arguing about who was the greatest, because ironically everyone knows that arguing about being the greatest is not the greatest behavior. But despite their silence, Jesus knew what they were talking about, and he brought a child up and said “whoever wants to be first must be last… [and] Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” Jesus’ insistence on welcoming children would have been completely upending the social status as children in Jesus’ time were seen as insignificant. Paul wrote in Galatians, “My point is that heirs, as long as they are minors, are no better than slaves.” This is a problematic verse in a lot of ways, Paul’s acceptance of slavery is obviously wrong, but you see the place of children in first century society.
The point Jesus was making here was what makes someone the greatest in the kingdom of God is different then what makes someone the greatest in the world. Greatness in the world’s eyes is about power, about wealth, about strength, control, good looks, fast cars, the newest iPhone, whatever, you know the rest. But greatness in God’s eyes is about love, about mutuality, about respect and care and service and giving of ourselves for the sake of others. Like Paul wrote in the beautiful hymn in Philippians, “Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend… and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” True greatness in the kingdom of God is defined by humility, service, and most importantly love. And I think as Trinity and St. Peter, as ELCA Lutherans, we get that. After all, wasn’t that what yesterday was all about. We didn’t come together to clean up the Post neighborhood, one of the most overlooked and under-served areas of our community, to show everyone how great we are. We did it because we believe in putting our faith into action, we believe that we truly get to be God’s hands in the world, that the way we give thanks to God for all God has done for us is by loving and serving others.
And that’s great! Don’t get me wrong. But the problem, dear friends, and this is a problem for me as well, is I think we’ve internalized that message of humility a little bit too much. Like the reviewer who was worried about giving four-year-olds over-inflated egos, I think sometimes we equate humility with self-deprivation, and in our concern for not saying too much, we end up not saying anything at all.
This is not our fault. We don’t live in a time where there are a lot of good models for how we talk about Jesus and there are a lot of really bad ones. Example, a couple years ago I met up with a friend in Toledo during Pride weekend. She was working on a campaign for a candidate in the Ohio governor’s race, and after the parade she and I went down to the Pride festival to get some lunch and spend some time together. Outside the festival grounds were the seemingly requisite protesters, spouting those seven Bible verses from Leviticus and Numbers that folk inevitably want to bring up to argue about homosexuality. As we walked by, one of the protesters grabbed my arm, forced a pamphlet in my face and shouted, “do you know what the Bible says about homosexuality?” Normally I ignore protesters, but I was so taken aback by his closeness that I blurted out, “yes I do, I’m a Lutheran pastor.” And here’s where this guy got impressive. Because without missing a beat, he switched from those seven verses on homosexuality to the ones in Timothy about how women should submit. As we walked away I remarked to my friend, “I don’t agree with how he interprets scripture, but that was an impressive show of prooftexting.”
So clearly we know we don’t want to be that guy, effortlessly jumping from condemning one group to another in the name of a god who doesn’t sound much like Jesus. But guess what friends, there is a middle ground. And guess also what, sharing our faith, sharing the love and grace and acceptance we’ve experienced in Christ is a gift people want. Let me let you in on a little secret, sharing the love and grace of Jesus is really what yesterday was about. It was about serving our neighbor, yes, but the obnoxious bright yellow shirts were so that people could know, hey, here is a church that isn’t going to physically accost you with a pamphlet and yell at you. If being yelled at is the only experience of Christianity you’ve ever had, and friends, for a lot of people, especially people of my generation, being yelled at IS the only experience with people of faith they’ve had, if being yelled at, being judged, being cast aside by Christians is your only experience with Christianity, these yellow shirts say, here’s another way. And friends, people want this. They want to know they are precious, they want to know they are loved, they want the kind of connection and hope and unconditional acceptance that we have received in Jesus, that we get as part of a community of believers. I will confess to you, my brothers and sisters, that even as a pastor, inviting people to church isn’t a thing that comes naturally to me, because I don’t want to come off as pushy or judgmental. But in my experience, I’ve never had a person I’ve invited respond angrily to my invitation. I’ve had them decline, but I’ve never had anyone get upset. Even the most adamantly uninterested was appreciative and honored by my invitation. People like to be invited to stuff, even stuff they don’t want to do, as long as it’s a true invitation and not a weird pushy challenge.
Proof. Yesterday we didn’t get the sort of booming crowds we’d been led to expect, so rather than standing around I took a trash bag and a few folk and I walked the neighborhood picking up trash. At first, I just picked up trash and chatted with the people I was with. But I quickly noticed that Kelly Dillman from the police department was talking to every person she passed, and was getting a good response. So I tried it. I said hi to everyone I saw, and if they engaged and asked what I was doing, I told them. We’re doing a neighborhood clean-up. I’m from Trinity Lutheran down the street, Kylee here is from St. Peter Lutheran, and we’re just out picking up some trash. There’s free hot dogs down at the Post plant if you’re interested. Super simple right, but it totally didn’t occur to me until I saw Kelly doing this that people actually wanted to be talked to. And the response I received, one-hundred percent positive. Folk liked knowing that we were here, that we were doing this for them, and that we were doing it in the name of Jesus Christ. But they could not have known that unless I had the courage to tell them. That experience of walking the neighborhood, of chatting with folk, and telling them who we are and why we were there, that for me turned what was a slow day, and maybe could have been seen as a bit of a failure into a roaring success. Because it gave me the ability to tell folk, God loves you, God loves this neighborhood, and God wants for you to thrive. And I got to be a very small part of that thriving.
So friends, I’m going to invite you to do something hard. I want to invite you to tell others about Jesus, to tell others about your faith. To not just welcome, as Jesus told the disciples, but to take the next step and invite, to bring folk along with you, like Jesus did with the child. This is going to be hard, because it means you’re going to have to be a little vulnerable. But what we learn from Jesus is that greatness, true greatness, is about vulnerability, because being in relationship is about vulnerability. Jesus came and put on vulnerable human flesh in order to be in relationship with us. And now that Jesus has ascended into heaven, we are God’s hands, God’s feet in the world. But not just God’s hands and feet, we are also God’s voice. Scary, yep, very scary. But we have the greatest teacher. Amen.
In our Gospel reading for this morning, the disciples were, yet again and I’ll add not for the last time, arguing about which of them was the greatest disciple. Which one was the “blue ribbon puppy,” if you will, of the group. When they got to the house, Jesus asked them, “What were you arguing about?” And of course, crickets, because no one wanted to admit they were arguing about who was the greatest, because ironically everyone knows that arguing about being the greatest is not the greatest behavior. But despite their silence, Jesus knew what they were talking about, and he brought a child up and said “whoever wants to be first must be last… [and] Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” Jesus’ insistence on welcoming children would have been completely upending the social status as children in Jesus’ time were seen as insignificant. Paul wrote in Galatians, “My point is that heirs, as long as they are minors, are no better than slaves.” This is a problematic verse in a lot of ways, Paul’s acceptance of slavery is obviously wrong, but you see the place of children in first century society.
The point Jesus was making here was what makes someone the greatest in the kingdom of God is different then what makes someone the greatest in the world. Greatness in the world’s eyes is about power, about wealth, about strength, control, good looks, fast cars, the newest iPhone, whatever, you know the rest. But greatness in God’s eyes is about love, about mutuality, about respect and care and service and giving of ourselves for the sake of others. Like Paul wrote in the beautiful hymn in Philippians, “Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend… and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” True greatness in the kingdom of God is defined by humility, service, and most importantly love. And I think as Trinity and St. Peter, as ELCA Lutherans, we get that. After all, wasn’t that what yesterday was all about. We didn’t come together to clean up the Post neighborhood, one of the most overlooked and under-served areas of our community, to show everyone how great we are. We did it because we believe in putting our faith into action, we believe that we truly get to be God’s hands in the world, that the way we give thanks to God for all God has done for us is by loving and serving others.
And that’s great! Don’t get me wrong. But the problem, dear friends, and this is a problem for me as well, is I think we’ve internalized that message of humility a little bit too much. Like the reviewer who was worried about giving four-year-olds over-inflated egos, I think sometimes we equate humility with self-deprivation, and in our concern for not saying too much, we end up not saying anything at all.
This is not our fault. We don’t live in a time where there are a lot of good models for how we talk about Jesus and there are a lot of really bad ones. Example, a couple years ago I met up with a friend in Toledo during Pride weekend. She was working on a campaign for a candidate in the Ohio governor’s race, and after the parade she and I went down to the Pride festival to get some lunch and spend some time together. Outside the festival grounds were the seemingly requisite protesters, spouting those seven Bible verses from Leviticus and Numbers that folk inevitably want to bring up to argue about homosexuality. As we walked by, one of the protesters grabbed my arm, forced a pamphlet in my face and shouted, “do you know what the Bible says about homosexuality?” Normally I ignore protesters, but I was so taken aback by his closeness that I blurted out, “yes I do, I’m a Lutheran pastor.” And here’s where this guy got impressive. Because without missing a beat, he switched from those seven verses on homosexuality to the ones in Timothy about how women should submit. As we walked away I remarked to my friend, “I don’t agree with how he interprets scripture, but that was an impressive show of prooftexting.”
So clearly we know we don’t want to be that guy, effortlessly jumping from condemning one group to another in the name of a god who doesn’t sound much like Jesus. But guess what friends, there is a middle ground. And guess also what, sharing our faith, sharing the love and grace and acceptance we’ve experienced in Christ is a gift people want. Let me let you in on a little secret, sharing the love and grace of Jesus is really what yesterday was about. It was about serving our neighbor, yes, but the obnoxious bright yellow shirts were so that people could know, hey, here is a church that isn’t going to physically accost you with a pamphlet and yell at you. If being yelled at is the only experience of Christianity you’ve ever had, and friends, for a lot of people, especially people of my generation, being yelled at IS the only experience with people of faith they’ve had, if being yelled at, being judged, being cast aside by Christians is your only experience with Christianity, these yellow shirts say, here’s another way. And friends, people want this. They want to know they are precious, they want to know they are loved, they want the kind of connection and hope and unconditional acceptance that we have received in Jesus, that we get as part of a community of believers. I will confess to you, my brothers and sisters, that even as a pastor, inviting people to church isn’t a thing that comes naturally to me, because I don’t want to come off as pushy or judgmental. But in my experience, I’ve never had a person I’ve invited respond angrily to my invitation. I’ve had them decline, but I’ve never had anyone get upset. Even the most adamantly uninterested was appreciative and honored by my invitation. People like to be invited to stuff, even stuff they don’t want to do, as long as it’s a true invitation and not a weird pushy challenge.
Proof. Yesterday we didn’t get the sort of booming crowds we’d been led to expect, so rather than standing around I took a trash bag and a few folk and I walked the neighborhood picking up trash. At first, I just picked up trash and chatted with the people I was with. But I quickly noticed that Kelly Dillman from the police department was talking to every person she passed, and was getting a good response. So I tried it. I said hi to everyone I saw, and if they engaged and asked what I was doing, I told them. We’re doing a neighborhood clean-up. I’m from Trinity Lutheran down the street, Kylee here is from St. Peter Lutheran, and we’re just out picking up some trash. There’s free hot dogs down at the Post plant if you’re interested. Super simple right, but it totally didn’t occur to me until I saw Kelly doing this that people actually wanted to be talked to. And the response I received, one-hundred percent positive. Folk liked knowing that we were here, that we were doing this for them, and that we were doing it in the name of Jesus Christ. But they could not have known that unless I had the courage to tell them. That experience of walking the neighborhood, of chatting with folk, and telling them who we are and why we were there, that for me turned what was a slow day, and maybe could have been seen as a bit of a failure into a roaring success. Because it gave me the ability to tell folk, God loves you, God loves this neighborhood, and God wants for you to thrive. And I got to be a very small part of that thriving.
So friends, I’m going to invite you to do something hard. I want to invite you to tell others about Jesus, to tell others about your faith. To not just welcome, as Jesus told the disciples, but to take the next step and invite, to bring folk along with you, like Jesus did with the child. This is going to be hard, because it means you’re going to have to be a little vulnerable. But what we learn from Jesus is that greatness, true greatness, is about vulnerability, because being in relationship is about vulnerability. Jesus came and put on vulnerable human flesh in order to be in relationship with us. And now that Jesus has ascended into heaven, we are God’s hands, God’s feet in the world. But not just God’s hands and feet, we are also God’s voice. Scary, yep, very scary. But we have the greatest teacher. Amen.
Sunday, September 9, 2018
Courage: A Sermon on Mark 7:24-37
I promise we’re going to get to the Gospel reading this morning, but before we do I want to start with James. Because I heard something in a commentary this week that I’d never heard before, and it blew this whole James text right open. So I wanted to share it with you because, wow.
The last verse from the second reading this morning is one of the more well-known lines from James, “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” And all you good Lutherans in the room may have been like, hey, wait a minute. Don’t we say that we are saved by grace through faith APART from works”? What does James mean by “can faith save you” and “faith without works is dead”? That sounds like our salvation comes through what we do, which is the opposite of what Lutherans say we believe. If you were wondering about that, let me tell you, you are in good company. Martin Luther himself was not a fan of the Letter of James. He even considered leaving it out of his translation of the New Testament altogether; though in the end he opted to stick it at the end, along with Jude, Hebrew, and Revelations. I’m not as harsh with James as Luther was; there is a lot in there about putting faith into action that I like. But as a good Lutheran, I admit I too have struggled with what James meant when he talked about works.
But I was listening to a podcast this week called Sermon Brainwave, which is three professors from Luther Seminary talking about the texts for the upcoming week. And one of them, I honestly can’t tell if it was Matt Skinner or Rolf Jacobson, I can’t tell their voices apart, but one of them pointed out a translation error in verse fourteen. Per either Matt or Rolf, what the NRSV translated as “can faith save you” is really “can faith save him.” I thought, no way could a translation error that glaring be in here and I’d never heard mention of it. But I pulled out my Greek New Testament, and let’s face it, my Greek dictionary because my Greek is not that good, and there it was, “pistes sosai auton,” auton is the Greek word for “him,” “can faith save him.” Boom, mind blown.
Why does that matter? Listen to that section again with that switch. “What good is it my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” The person being saved by our works isn’t us; it’s the other person, the person in need, the person being affected by our works. This is God’s Work, Our Hands, friends, this I get. And this feels very true to what the Bible says about Jesus. Because when Jesus went out in his ministry, he preached and taught, yes, but preaching and teaching wasn’t all he did. Jesus also healed, he fed, he cast out demons, he restored people to community. Jesus wasn’t just about meeting people’s spiritual needs, he met ALL their needs. Spiritual yes, but also physical, emotional, social.
So let’s get to the Gospel reading for today. And I’m just going to name right off there’s a lot about this read that I don’t understand. I don’t know why Jesus seemed to argue with the Syrophonecian woman, why he made an analogy about her being like a dog. She was not the first Gentile he’d ever come across. Back a few chapters in Mark five, he healed the Geresene man who had a legion of demons, and that man didn’t even ask to be healed, so I have no idea what Jesus’ hesitation might have been in this situation.
But here’s what I do know about this story. What the Syrophonecian woman did took incredible courage. All of the scholars I read talked about the tension that existed in Tyre between the Jews and the Gentiles. And yes Jesus was the one outside of his community, but she was still walking into a house full of outsiders, demanding that she, a woman, be treated as equal to this man and religious leader and teacher. This is courage; this is Rosa Parks not giving up her seat on the bus, or the students at the Woolworth lunch counter, she demanded that her needs be met, that her daughter be healed.
And it should be noted that she did it better than Jesus’ own disciples. Part of the process of being someone’s disciple was about being able to engage the master in conversation, to discuss and even argue with them, because that’s how disciples learn. But Jesus’ disciples are terrible at it, they’re always just like, “we don’t understand.” But this woman, she took what Jesus said and just dished it right back. Jesus said to her, “it’s not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” To which she takes his own words and flips them on their head, “Yes, but even the dogs eat the children’s crumbs that fall from the table.” Yes, ok, you want to use the dog vs. children metaphor, sure, we can go there. But if you are who you say that you are, a God of abundance, then when you feed the children, the excess will fall. There is not the scarcity you’re claiming, we both know that there is enough, so go ahead and be enough.
And when she did that, when she took Jesus words and flipped them back to him, his response to her was plain, “For saying that.” The Greek is literally, “Because of your words,” “you may go—the demon has left your daughter.”
Friends the good news in this passage is that so strong, so powerful, so overwhelming is God’s love for us, is God’s promise of grace and healing and wholeness that not even God can get in God’s way. I get that sentence doesn’t make any sense, how could God get in God’s way, but I don’t need to understand it to feel the power of that promise. We say that not even death can separate us from God, which means that God is more powerful than death. Well here we hear that God is more powerful than God. I know that makes more sense, but that’s the beauty of God. God is beyond our understanding, beyond our comprehension.
Which means that we, like the Syrophonecian woman, can and should feel empowered to demand what we need. For ourselves and for others. When we see injustice in the world, let the model of the Syrophonecian woman give us courage to act. At its heart, this is a story about racism, about the ethnic and racial tensions that were just as real in Jesus’ time as they are today, and probably felt just as big and hard and intractable. But this woman had the courage to walk right up to Jesus and demand that he help her. And theologian Gerd Thessian points out that the biggest miracle in this story may not be that the woman’s daughter was healed, but that the race barrier that divided Jesus and the woman was overcome.
So that’s the good news. The challenge is that when we are challenged, when we have our mistakes called out, our misunderstandings named, that we respond with the same grace as Jesus, who heard the woman’s argument and healed her daughter. I don’t know about you, I can only speak for me, but I can say in my own experience that when someone calls me out for something hurtful I have said or done, even when their right, in fact especially when they’re right, my tendency is not to admit my mistake and learn from it. No, I am way more likely to dig my heals in, “come on, we both know I didn’t mean it.” Or, “don’t take it so personally.” Or whatever. So the challenge for us as, I’m going to name it a room of not exclusively but definitely mostly middle class white people, will we have the courage to let ourselves be challenged, to let ourselves be changed, to listen when someone says we’ve said something hurtful, to admit we were wrong, and to change?
The answer, from what I’ve seen as the pastor in this place is yes. Yes, Trinity is a community where we try to do that hard work of learning and growing and changing. Do we do it perfectly, no, of course not, we’re people. But we’re trying. The Reconciling in Christ process, the partnership with the Co-op, conversations with the neighborhood, we don’t do these things perfectly, but thus far I’ve never seen us be afraid to try.
So dear friends in Christ, let us let the Syrophonecian woman be a model for us of courage. Let us follow in her example and demand justice where it is needed, from our leaders, from each other, and even from God. Let us have courage to stand up for what is right, not just caring for those in need but changing the systems themselves that cause the need to perpetuate. And when we find that we are the ones who need to change, when we discover that the system that is unjust is a system within ourselves, let us follow in the example of Jesus and have the courage to be changed. Because as big and hard and scary as all this may sound, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, bigger and more powerful than God and God’s love for us. Amen.
The last verse from the second reading this morning is one of the more well-known lines from James, “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” And all you good Lutherans in the room may have been like, hey, wait a minute. Don’t we say that we are saved by grace through faith APART from works”? What does James mean by “can faith save you” and “faith without works is dead”? That sounds like our salvation comes through what we do, which is the opposite of what Lutherans say we believe. If you were wondering about that, let me tell you, you are in good company. Martin Luther himself was not a fan of the Letter of James. He even considered leaving it out of his translation of the New Testament altogether; though in the end he opted to stick it at the end, along with Jude, Hebrew, and Revelations. I’m not as harsh with James as Luther was; there is a lot in there about putting faith into action that I like. But as a good Lutheran, I admit I too have struggled with what James meant when he talked about works.
But I was listening to a podcast this week called Sermon Brainwave, which is three professors from Luther Seminary talking about the texts for the upcoming week. And one of them, I honestly can’t tell if it was Matt Skinner or Rolf Jacobson, I can’t tell their voices apart, but one of them pointed out a translation error in verse fourteen. Per either Matt or Rolf, what the NRSV translated as “can faith save you” is really “can faith save him.” I thought, no way could a translation error that glaring be in here and I’d never heard mention of it. But I pulled out my Greek New Testament, and let’s face it, my Greek dictionary because my Greek is not that good, and there it was, “pistes sosai auton,” auton is the Greek word for “him,” “can faith save him.” Boom, mind blown.
Why does that matter? Listen to that section again with that switch. “What good is it my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” The person being saved by our works isn’t us; it’s the other person, the person in need, the person being affected by our works. This is God’s Work, Our Hands, friends, this I get. And this feels very true to what the Bible says about Jesus. Because when Jesus went out in his ministry, he preached and taught, yes, but preaching and teaching wasn’t all he did. Jesus also healed, he fed, he cast out demons, he restored people to community. Jesus wasn’t just about meeting people’s spiritual needs, he met ALL their needs. Spiritual yes, but also physical, emotional, social.
So let’s get to the Gospel reading for today. And I’m just going to name right off there’s a lot about this read that I don’t understand. I don’t know why Jesus seemed to argue with the Syrophonecian woman, why he made an analogy about her being like a dog. She was not the first Gentile he’d ever come across. Back a few chapters in Mark five, he healed the Geresene man who had a legion of demons, and that man didn’t even ask to be healed, so I have no idea what Jesus’ hesitation might have been in this situation.
But here’s what I do know about this story. What the Syrophonecian woman did took incredible courage. All of the scholars I read talked about the tension that existed in Tyre between the Jews and the Gentiles. And yes Jesus was the one outside of his community, but she was still walking into a house full of outsiders, demanding that she, a woman, be treated as equal to this man and religious leader and teacher. This is courage; this is Rosa Parks not giving up her seat on the bus, or the students at the Woolworth lunch counter, she demanded that her needs be met, that her daughter be healed.
And it should be noted that she did it better than Jesus’ own disciples. Part of the process of being someone’s disciple was about being able to engage the master in conversation, to discuss and even argue with them, because that’s how disciples learn. But Jesus’ disciples are terrible at it, they’re always just like, “we don’t understand.” But this woman, she took what Jesus said and just dished it right back. Jesus said to her, “it’s not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” To which she takes his own words and flips them on their head, “Yes, but even the dogs eat the children’s crumbs that fall from the table.” Yes, ok, you want to use the dog vs. children metaphor, sure, we can go there. But if you are who you say that you are, a God of abundance, then when you feed the children, the excess will fall. There is not the scarcity you’re claiming, we both know that there is enough, so go ahead and be enough.
And when she did that, when she took Jesus words and flipped them back to him, his response to her was plain, “For saying that.” The Greek is literally, “Because of your words,” “you may go—the demon has left your daughter.”
Friends the good news in this passage is that so strong, so powerful, so overwhelming is God’s love for us, is God’s promise of grace and healing and wholeness that not even God can get in God’s way. I get that sentence doesn’t make any sense, how could God get in God’s way, but I don’t need to understand it to feel the power of that promise. We say that not even death can separate us from God, which means that God is more powerful than death. Well here we hear that God is more powerful than God. I know that makes more sense, but that’s the beauty of God. God is beyond our understanding, beyond our comprehension.
Which means that we, like the Syrophonecian woman, can and should feel empowered to demand what we need. For ourselves and for others. When we see injustice in the world, let the model of the Syrophonecian woman give us courage to act. At its heart, this is a story about racism, about the ethnic and racial tensions that were just as real in Jesus’ time as they are today, and probably felt just as big and hard and intractable. But this woman had the courage to walk right up to Jesus and demand that he help her. And theologian Gerd Thessian points out that the biggest miracle in this story may not be that the woman’s daughter was healed, but that the race barrier that divided Jesus and the woman was overcome.
So that’s the good news. The challenge is that when we are challenged, when we have our mistakes called out, our misunderstandings named, that we respond with the same grace as Jesus, who heard the woman’s argument and healed her daughter. I don’t know about you, I can only speak for me, but I can say in my own experience that when someone calls me out for something hurtful I have said or done, even when their right, in fact especially when they’re right, my tendency is not to admit my mistake and learn from it. No, I am way more likely to dig my heals in, “come on, we both know I didn’t mean it.” Or, “don’t take it so personally.” Or whatever. So the challenge for us as, I’m going to name it a room of not exclusively but definitely mostly middle class white people, will we have the courage to let ourselves be challenged, to let ourselves be changed, to listen when someone says we’ve said something hurtful, to admit we were wrong, and to change?
The answer, from what I’ve seen as the pastor in this place is yes. Yes, Trinity is a community where we try to do that hard work of learning and growing and changing. Do we do it perfectly, no, of course not, we’re people. But we’re trying. The Reconciling in Christ process, the partnership with the Co-op, conversations with the neighborhood, we don’t do these things perfectly, but thus far I’ve never seen us be afraid to try.
So dear friends in Christ, let us let the Syrophonecian woman be a model for us of courage. Let us follow in her example and demand justice where it is needed, from our leaders, from each other, and even from God. Let us have courage to stand up for what is right, not just caring for those in need but changing the systems themselves that cause the need to perpetuate. And when we find that we are the ones who need to change, when we discover that the system that is unjust is a system within ourselves, let us follow in the example of Jesus and have the courage to be changed. Because as big and hard and scary as all this may sound, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, bigger and more powerful than God and God’s love for us. Amen.
Tuesday, September 4, 2018
Carrots, M&Ms, and Poop: A Sermon on Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Every time I read this passage it reminds of one of the funniest children’s sermon slip-ups I ever saw. This was several years ago, the pastor of my parents’ church brought all the kids up. She brought out a carrot and a handful of M&Ms and asked the kids, “which of these is good for you?” The kids of course dutifully responded, “the carrot.” “And which one do you want to eat?” To which the kids much more excitedly replied, “the M&Ms!” Pastor Marj went on, “when you eat food, where does it go?” The kids thought about it, “into your stomach.” “And then where?” she prompted. A few of the older kids saw where this was going and squirmed. “You poop it out, right?” All the kids eyes got super wide, Pastor Marj just said “Poop!” In church! They stared at her in amazement, fixated, and you could see their brains were working super hard to process what had just happened. Seeing their rapt attention, Pastor Marj went on, talking about how in the Gospel story the Pharisees were really concerned about what people ate. But Jesus said that because food goes in our stomachs and not our hearts, what we eat doesn’t affect who we are. All that matters is what’s in our hearts, how we show love to each other.
“So,” she said, wrapping up her explanation, “what do you guys think of this?” One little boy very cautiously raised his hand. “What you’re saying is when mom tells me I have to eat carrots, I can say that Jesus said I don’t really have to eat carrots, I can just eat M&Ms instead, because it all ends up as poop anyway.” Marj desperately tried to backpedal from this point, but by then it was way past too late, and thus the children’s sermon that will live in infamy where the takeaway was, “It doesn’t matter what your mom says, Jesus says you don’t have to eat your carrots because it all ends up poop in the end.”
While missing the point entirely for the kids, I think Marj’s childrens’ sermon was a brilliant example for the adults about what exactly is going on in this text. Because like the kids missed the whole part about how what really matters is what’s in our heart in favor of getting to eat M&Ms all the time, the Pharisees missed the purpose of their ritual purity laws in favor of enforcing a system that privileged them above others.
But before we get in, let’s talk a little bit about the religious purity laws, where they came from and what purpose they held. The obvious one is of course we know that hand-washing is the absolute best thing you can do to cut down the spread of disease. And in a pre-modern culture with no understanding of germ theory, that the Jews have been doing this for centuries is pretty remarkable. But religious purity laws were about more than just hygiene. These regulations were also a way for the small Jewish minority to set themselves apart from their neighbors, to remember who they were and, more importantly, whose they were. Ancient Israel, remember, was a little, tiny nation sandwiched between the two most powerful empires of the time. They got conquered a lot. And at the time of Jesus, it was a subject of the Roman Empire. These ritual purity laws were ways for the Jews to remember that they were Jews, that they were different from Rome. In Orthodox Jewish communities to this day, ritual hand-washing before a meal includes a prayer of thanksgiving to God for the blessings God has provided. Every time our Orthodox sisters and brothers sit down for a meal, they first remind themselves that everything they have is a gift from God. Far from the legalism we Christians often ascribe to it, the core of the Pharisees argument against Jesus was about whether Jesus’ neglect of religious customs was moving people away from God.
But of course these particular Pharisees concerns were not rooted in concern for the faith of the community, but in their own concern for control. There is no law that can be applied exactly as written to every situation, the world is too complex for that, and the ancient Jewish legal system had space for such complexity. Even within the requirements for ritual washing there was written in different levels of expectation for clergy, who would be at the Temple and thus have easy access to clean water, and the laity who would be out in the world and may not have a water source near them. There were even exceptions for times in which a person may eat without any ritual washing, the law recognizing that food is an essential part of life. The Pharisees complaints about Jesus and his disciples were about trying to impose a one-size-fits-all system on a multitude of people so that anyone who did not fit could be labeled “out,” thus raising the status of those who where “in.” And Jesus just has no patience for that sort of exclusionary behavior.
But before we pat ourselves on the back here about how great we are, with our freedom from these laws and exclusive behavior that so hamstrung the Pharisees, Jesus is throwing down a challenge here. Because let’s face it, the list of evil intentions that come from the heart, “fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly,” was pretty extensive! And in the section the lectionary left out, Jesus even used an example in which two equally good laws, the requirement to give of our belongings to God and the requirement to care for aging parents, were in conflict with each other. What do we do when the laws themselves contradict? It would be way easier to simply make sure I wash my hands before every meal then to guard against every single evil intention and contradiction.
As we try to make sense of this text, there are two dangerous pitfalls to avoid. The first is of course that of the Pharisees, that because we are living “good Christian lives,” then everything we do is great. Because if we have any self-awareness at all then we know everything we do is not. Sometimes because we are sinful. We get impatient, or are greedy, or we lie, or whatever number of large and small sins we commit during the course of a lifetime. And other times because the world is super complicated and like the example Jesus himself used with the Pharisees, we have to choose between the better of two bad choices. Being a Christian means we’re saved by grace and we’re free from judgment, but that freedom is not cart blanche to do whatever we want, and to even hint that Jesus setting us free means that is itself folly. I get kind of annoyed with the old pre-Reformation argument that there must be something we have to do to earn forgiveness, because if it was really free then people would just go around murdering and pillaging and it is only the fear of eternal damnation that keeps people in line. I mean, come on now. There’s a name for that logical fallacy that I learned in Philosophy 101, and its called Reductio ad Absurdum, or reduce to absurdity. It would be like me saying that since some bats carry rabies and I cannot guarantee there will never ever be another bat in the church, then we should condemn the whole building. It’s ridiculous.
Which really leads us to the second dangerous pitfall. Which is that we are horrible, corrupt human beings who can never be anything other then sinful and broken. Because if that’s true, again, why try? What Jesus is pushing here is the middle road. A life that says yes, I sin and am broken and make mistakes again and again, and yes, Jesus sets me free from the bondage of sin and death and invites me into new life and relationship with him, and because of both of those things, because I am sinful and because I am made sinless, then I am free to be transformed. That’s the good news. Not that we are set free to be the same, but that we are set free to be changed. Think about all the people who came to Jesus in scripture. With Judas as the one glaring exception, every single person who came to Jesus was transformed, was made better, by the encounter. Not instantaneously. Nicodemus took the whole Gospel of John to figure it out. Peter confessed Jesus as Messiah, then rebuked him and was called Satan, then promised to never leave, then denied him in the courtyard, and then became the head apostle of the entire burgeoning Christian movement, and was regularly put in his place by Paul. This is a process, friends. But it’s a process we get to do not in order to earn God’s love but precisely because we already have it. What is our sacred scripture but a thousands of years account of how committed God is to God's people? It is basically the story of God’s people wandering away, and God bringing them back into the fold again. Over and over again. How no matter what happens, God is with us. Jesus died so there is literally no where we can go, even to death, where God is not with us.
So in conclusion, I’m pretty sure Jesus does think you should eat your carrots. Not because they'll make him love you more but because carrots are good for you. They have lots of vitamins and other good things. And, I also think Jesus is pro hand washing. It’s the best way to prevent the spread of disease. And I’m sure Jesus is also fine if you eat M&Ms occasionally, there's nothing wrong with them. Just maybe not exclusively and in place of carrots. But no matter what you eat, no matter anything, Jesus loves you. And that love will transform you, in fact already has and still is in the process of. Like Nicodemos it can be a slow process. But Jesus is in this with you. Forever, to death and beyond. Amen.
“So,” she said, wrapping up her explanation, “what do you guys think of this?” One little boy very cautiously raised his hand. “What you’re saying is when mom tells me I have to eat carrots, I can say that Jesus said I don’t really have to eat carrots, I can just eat M&Ms instead, because it all ends up as poop anyway.” Marj desperately tried to backpedal from this point, but by then it was way past too late, and thus the children’s sermon that will live in infamy where the takeaway was, “It doesn’t matter what your mom says, Jesus says you don’t have to eat your carrots because it all ends up poop in the end.”
While missing the point entirely for the kids, I think Marj’s childrens’ sermon was a brilliant example for the adults about what exactly is going on in this text. Because like the kids missed the whole part about how what really matters is what’s in our heart in favor of getting to eat M&Ms all the time, the Pharisees missed the purpose of their ritual purity laws in favor of enforcing a system that privileged them above others.
But before we get in, let’s talk a little bit about the religious purity laws, where they came from and what purpose they held. The obvious one is of course we know that hand-washing is the absolute best thing you can do to cut down the spread of disease. And in a pre-modern culture with no understanding of germ theory, that the Jews have been doing this for centuries is pretty remarkable. But religious purity laws were about more than just hygiene. These regulations were also a way for the small Jewish minority to set themselves apart from their neighbors, to remember who they were and, more importantly, whose they were. Ancient Israel, remember, was a little, tiny nation sandwiched between the two most powerful empires of the time. They got conquered a lot. And at the time of Jesus, it was a subject of the Roman Empire. These ritual purity laws were ways for the Jews to remember that they were Jews, that they were different from Rome. In Orthodox Jewish communities to this day, ritual hand-washing before a meal includes a prayer of thanksgiving to God for the blessings God has provided. Every time our Orthodox sisters and brothers sit down for a meal, they first remind themselves that everything they have is a gift from God. Far from the legalism we Christians often ascribe to it, the core of the Pharisees argument against Jesus was about whether Jesus’ neglect of religious customs was moving people away from God.
But of course these particular Pharisees concerns were not rooted in concern for the faith of the community, but in their own concern for control. There is no law that can be applied exactly as written to every situation, the world is too complex for that, and the ancient Jewish legal system had space for such complexity. Even within the requirements for ritual washing there was written in different levels of expectation for clergy, who would be at the Temple and thus have easy access to clean water, and the laity who would be out in the world and may not have a water source near them. There were even exceptions for times in which a person may eat without any ritual washing, the law recognizing that food is an essential part of life. The Pharisees complaints about Jesus and his disciples were about trying to impose a one-size-fits-all system on a multitude of people so that anyone who did not fit could be labeled “out,” thus raising the status of those who where “in.” And Jesus just has no patience for that sort of exclusionary behavior.
But before we pat ourselves on the back here about how great we are, with our freedom from these laws and exclusive behavior that so hamstrung the Pharisees, Jesus is throwing down a challenge here. Because let’s face it, the list of evil intentions that come from the heart, “fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly,” was pretty extensive! And in the section the lectionary left out, Jesus even used an example in which two equally good laws, the requirement to give of our belongings to God and the requirement to care for aging parents, were in conflict with each other. What do we do when the laws themselves contradict? It would be way easier to simply make sure I wash my hands before every meal then to guard against every single evil intention and contradiction.
As we try to make sense of this text, there are two dangerous pitfalls to avoid. The first is of course that of the Pharisees, that because we are living “good Christian lives,” then everything we do is great. Because if we have any self-awareness at all then we know everything we do is not. Sometimes because we are sinful. We get impatient, or are greedy, or we lie, or whatever number of large and small sins we commit during the course of a lifetime. And other times because the world is super complicated and like the example Jesus himself used with the Pharisees, we have to choose between the better of two bad choices. Being a Christian means we’re saved by grace and we’re free from judgment, but that freedom is not cart blanche to do whatever we want, and to even hint that Jesus setting us free means that is itself folly. I get kind of annoyed with the old pre-Reformation argument that there must be something we have to do to earn forgiveness, because if it was really free then people would just go around murdering and pillaging and it is only the fear of eternal damnation that keeps people in line. I mean, come on now. There’s a name for that logical fallacy that I learned in Philosophy 101, and its called Reductio ad Absurdum, or reduce to absurdity. It would be like me saying that since some bats carry rabies and I cannot guarantee there will never ever be another bat in the church, then we should condemn the whole building. It’s ridiculous.
Which really leads us to the second dangerous pitfall. Which is that we are horrible, corrupt human beings who can never be anything other then sinful and broken. Because if that’s true, again, why try? What Jesus is pushing here is the middle road. A life that says yes, I sin and am broken and make mistakes again and again, and yes, Jesus sets me free from the bondage of sin and death and invites me into new life and relationship with him, and because of both of those things, because I am sinful and because I am made sinless, then I am free to be transformed. That’s the good news. Not that we are set free to be the same, but that we are set free to be changed. Think about all the people who came to Jesus in scripture. With Judas as the one glaring exception, every single person who came to Jesus was transformed, was made better, by the encounter. Not instantaneously. Nicodemus took the whole Gospel of John to figure it out. Peter confessed Jesus as Messiah, then rebuked him and was called Satan, then promised to never leave, then denied him in the courtyard, and then became the head apostle of the entire burgeoning Christian movement, and was regularly put in his place by Paul. This is a process, friends. But it’s a process we get to do not in order to earn God’s love but precisely because we already have it. What is our sacred scripture but a thousands of years account of how committed God is to God's people? It is basically the story of God’s people wandering away, and God bringing them back into the fold again. Over and over again. How no matter what happens, God is with us. Jesus died so there is literally no where we can go, even to death, where God is not with us.
So in conclusion, I’m pretty sure Jesus does think you should eat your carrots. Not because they'll make him love you more but because carrots are good for you. They have lots of vitamins and other good things. And, I also think Jesus is pro hand washing. It’s the best way to prevent the spread of disease. And I’m sure Jesus is also fine if you eat M&Ms occasionally, there's nothing wrong with them. Just maybe not exclusively and in place of carrots. But no matter what you eat, no matter anything, Jesus loves you. And that love will transform you, in fact already has and still is in the process of. Like Nicodemos it can be a slow process. But Jesus is in this with you. Forever, to death and beyond. Amen.
Monday, August 27, 2018
Jesus is Kind of Like My Physical Therapist: A Sermon on John 6:56-69
Last week in Bible study when we were struggling through all of the weird “eat my flesh and drink my blood” language, I jokingly mentioned that we were not unique in struggling with what Jesus was saying here. Because in verse sixty, right after the section we’d just read, Jesus’ own disciples remarked, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” And if the disciples, who were standing with Jesus, who had the benefit of having been traveling with Jesus, couldn’t figure out what he was talking about, then no wonder we can’t quite understand it either.
And Jesus’ response to his disciples discomfort was not to explain it further or back off and take a lighter tone. No, Jesus found the point of soreness and pushed even harder into it. “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? … among you there are some who do not believe… For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.” This approach shouldn’t surprise us, Jesus had been doing this throughout the whole Bread of Life discourse. When the crowd he had fed with five loaves and two fish came searching for him, he chastised them for not working for the food that endures. When they complained he claimed to be from heaven, when they knew he was Joseph and Mary’s son, he told them they couldn’t know him unless they were drawn to him by God. When they were disturbed by his calls to eat his flesh, he told them that only by eating his flesh could they live.
As we wrap up the Bread of Life discourse, I’ve been thinking about why Jesus might have done this, to take something that made the crowd and his disciples uncomfortable and just keep pushing further into it until eventually, as we read this morning in verse sixty-six, “many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.” Wasn’t pushing so hard that people turned away counter-intuitive to what he was trying to do? But something about this reminded me of someone; it reminded me of my physical therapist. Let me explain.
As I think most of you know, this summer I’ve been seeing a physical therapist to try to work through some issues I’ve been having with my hip. The problem is one of the muscles around my hip was underdeveloped, apparently a super common problem in runners, and it made the other muscles over function, which caused them to tighten up and get inflamed. The treatment for this is a combination strengthening the underdeveloped muscles and loosening the overused ones, to balance everything out. The strengthening part is fine. Each time I go in, the therapist leads me through a series of funny exercises. I walk with a stretchy band around my ankles, I stand on one foot and throw a medicine ball at a trampoline, I slide my foot back and forth along a slippery board. It’s a workout, but I run marathons, for fun. Kicking my foot backwards, not that big of a deal. But the part that I love to hate is the stretching and loosening the tight muscles. After I’ve done all the funny exercises, the therapist has my lay on my back on a massage table, and she kneads into the muscle to try and encourage it to relax. And let me tell you what friends, it hurts. She leans into it with the base of her hand, and her elbow, and I lay there, clutching the side of the table just trying not to cry.
While this is going on, I’m supposed to be relaxing into the pressure, or else the muscle won’t relax and all the pain is for nothing. There are few things more counterintuitive then trying to loosen a muscle that someone is digging into for all they’re worth. And it’s not just painful, it’s also a really vulnerable feeling. It’s my hip, right, so basically this means twice a week I have a twenty-minute long butt massage that ends in me biting back tears of pain while simultaneously trying to breath into it, relax, and place my entire weight into a person I’d never met before last month and really don’t know all that well. The strengthening part’s ok, because it’s something I’m doing, something I can control. But the stretching part feels more like its being done to me, and I’m not a big fan of that.
But, as much as I don’t like it, I have to admit, it’s helping. Recovery is so, so, so much slower than I’d like, I want to be back up and running, like, yesterday, but even I can admit its improving. On Wednesday when Kendra and I were chasing the bat out of the church I was able to sprint full speed from the bathrooms, through the kitchen, and across the social hall without any pain. That’s a huge step forward from earlier in the summer. And even in the painful pushing into the muscle there is some relief. Because as much as it hurts, it feels better. As the therapist is pressing down into the muscle, I can feel the knot start to give way, I can feel the blood flowing into it, I can feel the tightness start to loosen. It hurts, but it is a good hurt, a hurt that I can tell is leading to healing.
And I wonder if this sort of hurt is exactly what Jesus was trying to do for his disciples. I wonder if he was trying to push them past a point of tension into new life. He could have laid back, not driven so hard into the weird and hard pieces of this teaching, could have talked more about the spirit and less about his flesh, could have given them the actual food they wanted in the beginning rather than these harder teachings. These things would probably have made Jesus more popular, and maybe would have kept many from turning away. But look where the reading from this morning ended, it ended with Peter confessing, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” And would Peter have been able to make such a bold confession, “We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God,” without having been challenged in this way? I would guess not.
I could have quit physical therapy at any point if I wanted to. I've had no pain during any of my normal life activities. I can walk, sit, move, totally fine. But I kept going because it still hurt when I run, and without running I don’t feel like I’m truly living. So I let the physical therapist push me past the point of pain trusting that what I’ll gain on the other side is a richer, fuller, more vibrant life. And I think that is what Peter and the disciples found when Jesus had pushed them through this Bread of Life discourse. It hurt going through, but on the other side they found the Source of Life itself, the Holy One of God.
Jesus pushes us so hard because he loves us too much to let us be our same stagnant selves, to let us stay where we are instead of grow to who we could be. And Jesus does this however we come to him and whether we ask for it or not. This talk about seeing the Son of Man ascending is the same challenge he issued Nathanael, when Nathanael came to him way back in chapter one. Quick refresher because that was a while ago, at the very start of Jesus’ ministry, Philip, one of Jesus’ first disciples, went and found Nathanael and invited him to come meet Jesus. To which Nathanael quipped, “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” But when Jesus saw Nathanael coming, he told Nathanael he knew him because he’d seen him “under the fig tree before Philip called you.” To which Nathanael replied, stunned, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God.” Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than these… you will see the heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
The crowd listening to the Bread of Life discourse came to Jesus with their doubts, “this teaching is hard,” and Jesus pushed them to a new and fresh idea. Nathanael came to Jesus in faith, albeit a limited faith, and Jesus pushed him too, to a deeper and richer understanding. This is the hard and wonderful reality of grace, of a God who loves us unconditionally, exactly who and where we are. A God who loves us that much is never going to be satisfied with where we are, but is always going to want more for us, always going to want better for us. It is precisely because God loves us exactly who we are, that God is pushing so hard for us to be more. So when you find your faith challenged, when you find yourself pushed, let this text be a reminder to lean into the challenge, to let yourself be pushed. Ours is a God who never settles for us to be anything less than our best, God just loves us too much for that. Amen.
And Jesus’ response to his disciples discomfort was not to explain it further or back off and take a lighter tone. No, Jesus found the point of soreness and pushed even harder into it. “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? … among you there are some who do not believe… For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.” This approach shouldn’t surprise us, Jesus had been doing this throughout the whole Bread of Life discourse. When the crowd he had fed with five loaves and two fish came searching for him, he chastised them for not working for the food that endures. When they complained he claimed to be from heaven, when they knew he was Joseph and Mary’s son, he told them they couldn’t know him unless they were drawn to him by God. When they were disturbed by his calls to eat his flesh, he told them that only by eating his flesh could they live.
As we wrap up the Bread of Life discourse, I’ve been thinking about why Jesus might have done this, to take something that made the crowd and his disciples uncomfortable and just keep pushing further into it until eventually, as we read this morning in verse sixty-six, “many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.” Wasn’t pushing so hard that people turned away counter-intuitive to what he was trying to do? But something about this reminded me of someone; it reminded me of my physical therapist. Let me explain.
As I think most of you know, this summer I’ve been seeing a physical therapist to try to work through some issues I’ve been having with my hip. The problem is one of the muscles around my hip was underdeveloped, apparently a super common problem in runners, and it made the other muscles over function, which caused them to tighten up and get inflamed. The treatment for this is a combination strengthening the underdeveloped muscles and loosening the overused ones, to balance everything out. The strengthening part is fine. Each time I go in, the therapist leads me through a series of funny exercises. I walk with a stretchy band around my ankles, I stand on one foot and throw a medicine ball at a trampoline, I slide my foot back and forth along a slippery board. It’s a workout, but I run marathons, for fun. Kicking my foot backwards, not that big of a deal. But the part that I love to hate is the stretching and loosening the tight muscles. After I’ve done all the funny exercises, the therapist has my lay on my back on a massage table, and she kneads into the muscle to try and encourage it to relax. And let me tell you what friends, it hurts. She leans into it with the base of her hand, and her elbow, and I lay there, clutching the side of the table just trying not to cry.
While this is going on, I’m supposed to be relaxing into the pressure, or else the muscle won’t relax and all the pain is for nothing. There are few things more counterintuitive then trying to loosen a muscle that someone is digging into for all they’re worth. And it’s not just painful, it’s also a really vulnerable feeling. It’s my hip, right, so basically this means twice a week I have a twenty-minute long butt massage that ends in me biting back tears of pain while simultaneously trying to breath into it, relax, and place my entire weight into a person I’d never met before last month and really don’t know all that well. The strengthening part’s ok, because it’s something I’m doing, something I can control. But the stretching part feels more like its being done to me, and I’m not a big fan of that.
But, as much as I don’t like it, I have to admit, it’s helping. Recovery is so, so, so much slower than I’d like, I want to be back up and running, like, yesterday, but even I can admit its improving. On Wednesday when Kendra and I were chasing the bat out of the church I was able to sprint full speed from the bathrooms, through the kitchen, and across the social hall without any pain. That’s a huge step forward from earlier in the summer. And even in the painful pushing into the muscle there is some relief. Because as much as it hurts, it feels better. As the therapist is pressing down into the muscle, I can feel the knot start to give way, I can feel the blood flowing into it, I can feel the tightness start to loosen. It hurts, but it is a good hurt, a hurt that I can tell is leading to healing.
And I wonder if this sort of hurt is exactly what Jesus was trying to do for his disciples. I wonder if he was trying to push them past a point of tension into new life. He could have laid back, not driven so hard into the weird and hard pieces of this teaching, could have talked more about the spirit and less about his flesh, could have given them the actual food they wanted in the beginning rather than these harder teachings. These things would probably have made Jesus more popular, and maybe would have kept many from turning away. But look where the reading from this morning ended, it ended with Peter confessing, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” And would Peter have been able to make such a bold confession, “We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God,” without having been challenged in this way? I would guess not.
I could have quit physical therapy at any point if I wanted to. I've had no pain during any of my normal life activities. I can walk, sit, move, totally fine. But I kept going because it still hurt when I run, and without running I don’t feel like I’m truly living. So I let the physical therapist push me past the point of pain trusting that what I’ll gain on the other side is a richer, fuller, more vibrant life. And I think that is what Peter and the disciples found when Jesus had pushed them through this Bread of Life discourse. It hurt going through, but on the other side they found the Source of Life itself, the Holy One of God.
Jesus pushes us so hard because he loves us too much to let us be our same stagnant selves, to let us stay where we are instead of grow to who we could be. And Jesus does this however we come to him and whether we ask for it or not. This talk about seeing the Son of Man ascending is the same challenge he issued Nathanael, when Nathanael came to him way back in chapter one. Quick refresher because that was a while ago, at the very start of Jesus’ ministry, Philip, one of Jesus’ first disciples, went and found Nathanael and invited him to come meet Jesus. To which Nathanael quipped, “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” But when Jesus saw Nathanael coming, he told Nathanael he knew him because he’d seen him “under the fig tree before Philip called you.” To which Nathanael replied, stunned, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God.” Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than these… you will see the heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
The crowd listening to the Bread of Life discourse came to Jesus with their doubts, “this teaching is hard,” and Jesus pushed them to a new and fresh idea. Nathanael came to Jesus in faith, albeit a limited faith, and Jesus pushed him too, to a deeper and richer understanding. This is the hard and wonderful reality of grace, of a God who loves us unconditionally, exactly who and where we are. A God who loves us that much is never going to be satisfied with where we are, but is always going to want more for us, always going to want better for us. It is precisely because God loves us exactly who we are, that God is pushing so hard for us to be more. So when you find your faith challenged, when you find yourself pushed, let this text be a reminder to lean into the challenge, to let yourself be pushed. Ours is a God who never settles for us to be anything less than our best, God just loves us too much for that. Amen.
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