The Crosses We Carry

Mark 8:27-38

September 15, 2024

 

"I find God in the suffering eyes reflected in mine. Some people find God in church. Some people find God in nature. Some people find God in love; I find God in suffering. I've known for some time what my life's work is, using my hands as tools to relieve suffering."

Those words were written by Kayla Mueller. She was the young American woman killed several years ago while being held hostage by ISIS. This excerpt was from a letter she wrote to her family in 2011 while she was serving with an aid organization in India. The Huffington Post quoted this in an article after it was confirmed that she had been killed by airstrikes on the compound where she was being held.

“I find God in the suffering eyes reflected in mine.”

Those are profound words, and they reflect the deep faith of a young woman who I believe, and to quote her parents, lived more purposefully in her 26 years than most of us do in a much longer lifetime. As I read Kayla’s words again, I wonder if they might be linked to the question Jesus asked of his disciples on the road to Caesarea Philippi.

“Who do people say I am?”

Jesus asked while they were on the way to the villages of that region. The disciples immediately offered answers.

“Some folks are claiming you are John the Baptist.” “Other people are saying you’re Elijah or one of the prophets.”

I can imagine the disciples talking over each other, getting more and more excited as they share the different theories on Jesus’ identity that they were hearing in the neighborhoods and on the streets. As one commentator pointed out, Jesus didn’t try to stop them as they offer these opinions. He just listened. And when they were finally finished, Jesus didn’t correct them either. Instead, he asked them another, more pointed question.

“Who do you say that I am?”

Where are the disciples enthusiastic responses now? Before they were just sharing what others were saying. Now, they must answer the question for themselves. Who do they believe him to be?

If there was an awkward silence after Jesus asked this second question, Peter didn’t let it last long. He rushed in with his declaration,

“You are the Messiah.”

We don’t know if Jesus cried, “You got it, Peter!” But we do know that as soon as Peter said this, Jesus ordered the disciples not to tell anyone what Peter had just revealed. He ordered them sternly. He was unflinchingly serious. I am the Messiah, but don’t tell anyone. This is the Messianic secret that many generations of scholars have theorized and written about.

While there were probably many reasons why Jesus didn’t want the larger population to know his identity as the One sent from God, perhaps one of those reasons was that he knew full well how the title Messiah would be misinterpreted and misunderstood. Jesus understood that if people recognized him as the Messiah, they would expect a certain kind of action from him that was not going to happen. They would expect him to be someone that he was not. And when the people’s expectations met his reality, there would be confusion and anger. We know that this is exactly what does happen, but it was too soon for that truth to be revealed to the whole population. Jesus knew that. Jesus knew the time was not yet right, so he made them keep his truth a secret.

Yet, while the larger population could not yet be told about Jesus’ identity as the Messiah, these were his disciples. These were his closest followers. These twelve were the ones he called to follow him, and they had responded without hesitation. Now that Peter had declared his identity, the disciples must know the truth about what it really meant to be God’s Messiah.

So Jesus began to tell them, to teach them, that as the Messiah he would suffer.

“He would undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

However much Jesus wanted the disciples to keep his Messiah identity under wraps, he spoke to his disciples “quite openly” about his suffering and death. But this was all too much for Peter. Peter pulled Jesus aside and rebuked him.

I know that I have stated this when I’ve preached on this passage in the past, but rebuke is not a word to be taken lightly. Peter rebuked Jesus in the same way Jesus rebuked demons. Whatever Peter said to Jesus, and we can imagine several possibilities, his words must have been harsh and angry. I can almost hear Peter telling Jesus to knock this talk about suffering and dying off, stop saying these crazy things. Not only was Jesus scaring and confusing the disciples, but they were also in the heart of Roman territory. The villages of Caesarea Philippi were towns bearing the name of Caesar. What Jesus told them was scandalous, treasonous, terrifying, and dangerous; not only for him, but for his followers as well.

But even if what Jesus said wasn’t a potential threat to their well-being, it still made no sense. Jesus was teaching the disciples, proclaiming to them that as the Messiah he would suffer. God’s messenger would suffer. God’s Son would suffer. God would suffer! How could there be a suffering God? Wasn’t God supposed to end suffering? Wasn’t God supposed to be the balm, the antidote to suffering? Wasn’t God supposed to be above suffering, the torment and bane of human existence? But Jesus said that he would suffer, and that he would suffer greatly. This couldn’t be right. This could not be the way God planned to save them, through a suffering Son.

But that was what Jesus told them. The crux of being the Messiah was suffering. The cross was at the heart of the matter.

Jesus did not let it end there. He then told them that if they want to be his followers, they must deny themselves, pick up their own crosses and follow him. He would suffer for their sake and for the sake of the world; in turn they must be ready to suffer for him.

To deny themselves was not about giving up a beloved treat or pastime. I don’t believe it was about self-mortification or beating the flesh into submission either. Denying themselves was more about serving and following and following and serving even if it meant the sacrifice of their own lives. Perhaps they would lose out on some of the things of this world, but in following him they would gain so much more.

This sounds powerful in theory, but I suspect that picking up a cross and suffering as Jesus did was not a big selling point for discipleship. It wasn’t for the first disciples, and if we’re honest, the idea of suffering probably isn’t for us either. At the end of Mark – the actual end, not the shorter or longer versions that were added on later – Jesus suffered and died without followers. Jesus died without followers. They ran away afraid. God suffering and dying on a cross was a cross they were too afraid to bear.

Yet Jesus made it clear to the disciples and all those who would listen that following him meant not only in his footsteps but in his suffering. Perhaps the next question he should have asked them was the question Kayla Mueller answered. “Where do you see God?”

I’ve always understood Jesus’ words about picking up our crosses as representing the individual burdens that each of us must bear. As the hymn says, what trials and tribulations do we carry? Well, those are our crosses. But more and more I wonder if Jesus wasn’t speaking so much about personalized burdens but about the cross that leads to death so that others might live, the cross that we carry into the suffering of the world and not away from it.

Maybe that is what is at the heart of the matter. Maybe following Jesus requires us to look into the eyes of those who suffer in this world and see God. Maybe following Jesus requires that we look into the eyes of those suffering, see God in those people, and then respond; respond to them as Jesus responded to the suffering people he encountered every day. Maybe following Jesus calls us to see that what we say and do, and even more what we don’t, matters because we are all connected to one another, tied to one another. We are all in this together. The way I live, my actions, my choices,  affect other people, people that I know and people that I don’t. Maybe carrying our crosses means choosing to live differently, intentionally and mindfully – mindful of the ways we treat others, mindful of how our living impacts other people and creation. Maybe carrying our crosses means asking ourselves these questions, again and again and again.

Who do I, Amy, Brent, Charlotte, Kim, Beth, Bill, Brianna, Andrew, Barbara, Charlie, Cheryl, Pam, Jerry, Mellisa, Rick, etc. say that Jesus is? And where and in who do we see God? When we ask those questions and seek the answers, then we will know the crosses we are called to carry. Then we will pick up our crosses and follow Jesus, follow him to death and follow him to life. Thanks be to God.

Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia!”

Amen.

Be Opened -- Season of Peace

Mark 7:24-37

September 8, 2024

 

            I have been blessed and lucky to love more than a few dogs in my life. Brandy was my dog growing up. He used to sleep at the end of my bed and growl at my dad when he came down the hall to check on me at night. Brandy was a small dog, but he was spunky and protective. Meg was the family dog of the people I lived with for a while in Richmond. She was a sweet girl. When Gonzo, the dog from next door, would come over to play, Meg would get a treat for her buddy and herself. She’d give the treat to the other dog, then off they’d go. When my kids were little, we had Boris and Belinda. I loved them both, but Boris was my first baby before I actually had my first baby. Let me put it this way, I skipped a meeting at church so I could finish up a birthday cake I was making for the party being thrown for Boris’ first birthday. Yes, Boris – the dog – had a first birthday party.

            Boris was a good dog. He was gentle. He was patient, even when two little kids fell all over him. Once when Phoebe had friends sleeping over, he let them paint his toenails. I checked on the kids at night and so did he. I loved Boris with all my heart and my heart was broken when we finally had to make the painful decision to put him down. I hope he’ll be waiting for me at the Rainbow Bridge.

            But as much as I love dogs, I don’t want to be called a dog. Loving dogs and being compared to dogs are two very different things. Being called a dog has harsh connotations. These connotations are part of what we wrestle with in this first story from our passage in Mark’s gospel.

            Jesus has been on the move. He has fed five thousand people. He has walked on water. He has been rushed by countless people begging for healing – for themselves or someone else. He has been confronted by the Pharisees and scribes. He has upended their objections, taught more crowds, and given deeper instructions to his disciples. And now he has come to the region of Tyre. There he went into a house not wanting anyone to know his whereabouts, hoping, as the text says, to escape notice.

            But escaping notice was not to be. A Syrophoenician woman heard that Jesus was in town, and she immediately went to find him. Her little daughter was sick with an unclean spirit, and she was desperate for help.

            She went into the house where Jesus was and bowed down at his feet. This woman, this mother, begged Jesus to cast the demon out of her daughter, to make her well. But Jesus gave her an answer that she probably hadn’t expected. It’s certainly an answer that we don’t expect.

            “He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’”

            Throw it to the dogs?! Jesus, what are you saying?! It’s bad enough that anyone would say this to a woman seeking help for her daughter, but the fact that Jesus said it is so much worse. So. Much. Worse.

            There have been many attempts at explaining Jesus’ words over the centuries, or should I say attempts to explain them away. Some interpreters have reasoned that Jesus didn’t mean this, but that he was trying to teach the others around him an important lesson. Others have said that he wasn’t really insulting the woman, that the word for dog here could also be translated as puppy. Because when your child is suffering terribly, it is infinitely better to be called a puppy than it is to be called a dog.

            But the more I’ve read and preached on this passage, the more I’ve learned from others about this passage, these verses, the more I think that Jesus said these words exactly as we hear them. His words to this woman were insulting and unkind and harsh. I imagine that the woman heard them this way as well, but she refused to let Jesus’ harsh words stop her. She counters his words with this.

            “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

            Essayist and theologian, Debie Thomas writes that as a child she was taught to believe in Perfect Jesus. And Perfect Jesus could do no wrong. Perfect Jesus was shiny and bright and … perfect. But in this story we must wrestle with Real Jesus. Human Jesus. And that’s what we believe, or at least that is what we say believe. That Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. He wasn’t just divinity wrapped in human clothing. He was human. And as a human he got tired. As a human, he needed downtime. He needed time alone to be quiet, to be untouched. When my kids were tiny, there were times when I just didn’t want to be touched by anyone. I had hands and feet all over me all the time. That was from being with two little kids. Think about how many people gathered around Jesus. Think about how many folks clamored for his attention, for his help. Just think about how many hands were constantly touching him, pulling at him. Real Jesus, human Jesus is the Jesus we meet in this story. And this Real, Human Jesus clearly needed a break.

            And this Real, Human Jesus was also a man of his time and his context. This woman was a Gentile woman. Real Jesus, Human Jesus might have had unconscious biases, learned prejudices the same as the rest of us. I know people don’t like to hear that, but if we acknowledge his fully human nature, than we must also acknowledge that as a human being Jesus had to learn as well as teach. Jesus had to grow, not only physically, but into his calling, into the fullness of his nature.

            Maybe Real Jesus did believe at first that his call was only to Israel. But this woman came, this desperate, frightened, angry mother came to him and demanded that the good news he brought be her good news too.

            And how did Jesus respond? He listened. He heard her. He changed his mind. He didn’t double down into his original statement and refuse to help this woman. He realized that he was wrong. He was not too proud to change his mind. Can we stop for a moment and think about how incredible that is. Jesus changed his mind. His heart was changed. His mind and his heart were opened that day. Maybe in that moment Jesus understood that the table he spoke of was big enough for everyone. It was big enough and wide enough for that woman and her daughter and other Gentiles and the children of Israel and for friends and enemies, for rich and poor, for weak and strong, for powerful and powerless. The table of God’s kingdom was big enough and wide enough and open enough for all to sit.

            Jesus’ heart and mind was opened and in the last part of the story those are the words he uses to heal the deaf man. “Ephphatha!” Be opened. Jesus opened this man’s physical ears to hear and his mouth to speak clearly, but Jesus also had his ears and mind and heart opened in a new way as well.

            What would it mean if we could be as open as Jesus? We’ve had another school shooting after years and years of school shootings and shootings in grocery stores and malls and churches and on the interstate. Maybe it’s too simplistic of me to say that we have an epidemic of hearts that remain stubbornly unopened, but I think that’s part of it, part of the problem. On Wednesday we will remember the 23^rd anniversary of September 11^th. Wasn’t that terrible day an extreme and horrible outcome of hearts that refuse to be opened to people and ideas and beliefs that are different?

            With every act of violence that I hear about or read about, I feel my heart trying to close, trying to shrink down, because I’m scared and angry and frustrated and tired. I don’t want to hear other sides. I don’t want to be opened to the humanity of people, especially those with whom I disagree with so completely. But when I do that, I am part of the problem. Because the good news that Jesus brought was not just good news for some, but for all. It was the good news that the table is big enough and wide enough and long enough and open enough that all of us, every one of us, all of God’s children and that means all of us, are invited to take our place. Are we willing to do the hard work, and it is hard work, of opening our hearts and our minds to make room?

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.

           

             

From Within -- Season of Peace

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

September 1, 2024

 

            A television show that Brent and I love to watch is Young Sheldon. This is the prequel to the show The Big Bang Theory. Sheldon Cooper is a young boy of enormous intelligence. He is nine when he starts high school. He graduates from high school in record time, goes to college, also checking with his mother if his bedtime can be changed to 8:30 – since he’ll be in college, and starts graduate school at Cal-Tech at 14. There is no doubt that Sheldon is a certified genius.

            But with his intelligence comes many, many, many quirks, idiosyncrasies, and hyper sensitivities. One of those sensitivities is random human touch. His family, his mother, father, older brother, Georgie, and his twin sister, Missy, eat dinner together every night. And the one thing they do before they eat is pray while holding hands. Sheldon is a germaphobe and will only hold his brother and father’s hands if he’s wearing his mittens. This is not necessarily a bad idea when it comes to his brother, Georgie. For the first couple of seasons, Georgie’s personal hygiene is often called into question. But the point is that Sheldon obsesses about germs he might pick up from other people. But he has a much harder time reflecting on what he might share with other people – whether its germs or insensitivity to someone else’s feelings something else. Most of the time Sheldon only thinks about what the germs that contaminate his hands or make him sick or defile him and not the other way around.

            With this illustration in mind, I chose to look most carefully at Jesus’ words to his disciples at the end of our reading from Mark’s gospel.

            “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

            This passage begins with some Pharisees challenging Jesus about his disciples’ flaunting of tradition. The disciples didn’t participate in the ritual cleansing of their hands or their cookware before they ate. At first reading, this sounds horrifying to our 21^st century ears. We know that good hygiene makes a difference. We understand the importance of cleaning our hands and our cookware to avoid spreading germs and disease. You would never use the knife you just cut raw chicken with to then immediately cut up vegetables for the salad. I mean, yuck! Cross-contamination is real people!

But the cleansing the Pharisees were referring to was not so much about hygiene or sanitary practices as it was tradition. It was a ritual of spiritual cleanliness that was a tradition of the elders. To eat something with unclean hands or that wasn’t prepared in properly cleaned pots was to be physically and spiritually defiled. My understanding is that it made a person impure and unclean before God. But Jesus and his disciples turn this tradition on its head, so the Pharisees and scribes question Jesus. 

            Whenever Jesus is challenged, he challenges back. In our passage he quotes scripture, specifically the prophet Isaiah. 

            “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.”

            In other words, Jesus tells the Pharisees and scribes that not only are many of their traditions created by humans and not God, but these same traditions have also become little more than empty ritual. If the tradition of ritual cleansing is supposed to honor God, then it is done in name only. Their hearts are not in it.

And in the part of the story that we are focusing on today, Jesus debunks their understanding of the tradition in the first place. People can ritually purify themselves till the cows come home, but that won’t change this one truth. It is not what goes into us that defiles us.  No food that we eat, no washing ritual that we undergo will make us clean or unclean before God. The source of defilement is not outside of ourselves.  It is within us. It is within our hearts. 

            Matt Skinner, Associate Professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, says that this exchange is the most straightforward part of this passage. Jesus tells us in succinct and plain language where evil comes from. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it comes from us. Yes, evil intentions, the whole list that Jesus recites, can come from the people I don’t like, which I have no problem whatsoever believing. Yet they also come from the people I love, which is a little harder to bear. Hardest to accept of all, evil intentions come from me. They come from the heart. They come from your heart, a stranger’s heart, a politician’s heart, a neighbor’s heart, from my heart. They come from within.

            Whether we choose to believe that our heart breeds avarice and murder and hatred, etc., or not, one point is dramatically driven home. Jesus tells the Pharisees and scribes, the crowd around them, and the disciples that evil and evil intentions are not an us versus them proposition. And no amount of hand washing, not amount of tradition, will change that. Jesus calls all who will listen to examine themselves, to examine their heart. We must look inside ourselves for the bad which contaminates us and our world. It’s not just all out there. 

            Yet even though it may sound as if Jesus is condemning the human heart to total depravity, I don’t think he was trying to imply that nothing good comes from the heart. But he was making it clear to the Pharisees and scribes and the disciples and the others around him that they had invested more in tradition than in the actual word of God. They used tradition as a shield against what they believed were outside evil forces. And they used the traditions as a weapon against others. Tradition, which at one time may have brought their hearts closer to God, were now most likely responsible for closing their hearts to God and to God’s people. 

            I also don’t want to imply that Jesus believed all tradition is bad. We have no indication from the text that Jesus himself didn’t adhere to Jewish dietary laws. But following the Law never stood in his way when it came to love – loving God and loving neighbor. 

            Bad things are bred in the human heart – anger, avarice, lust, murder and murderous thoughts, envy, pride, etc. But good comes from the heart too. Hope comes from the heart. Compassion comes from the heart. Forgiveness and joy come from the heart. Love comes from the heart. Tradition and the intentions that began the tradition can and do bring us closer to one another and to God. Think about traditions in your families. Think about traditions around meals or holidays or other celebrations. Those traditions may warm your hearts and fill you with even more love for the people you share with them. But what about traditions that may have outlived themselves? Are there traditions that need to be let go of for new traditions, new ways of being and doing and living, to begin? Maybe some traditions have become exclusive, drawing lines between who is on the inside and who is on the outside? Maybe some traditions create stress and tension that block joy?

            If tradition has this power for good and for bad in our families, think about the power tradition holds in our churches. What are our traditions that open our hearts more to God and to other people? And what traditions do the opposite? Are there traditions or rules that define us and help us to grow in faith? Are there traditions or rules that stunt us spiritually?

            As I was preparing for this sermon, I read a story from a fellow pastor. One Sunday when she finished preaching the sermon, she left the pulpit to stand with the congregation and sing a hymn. During the hymn a man walked down to her. This man was married to a woman who had grown up in that church. He was well-known to the preacher and to the congregation. He had struggled and wrestled for many years with addiction and business setbacks. He could be gruff and difficult. But the preacher also knew that this man had been longing for God for just as long as he had been struggling, but he had been unable to accept God’s grace and love.

            This man came to the preacher during the hymn and said, “I want to be baptized.” He repeated his urgent request. Something within him had changed, and he knew it and he needed to be baptized. The preacher knew it too. The hymn was still being sung. There was no water in the baptismal font. She had not gotten session approval, which is what good, rule-following Presbyterians do. But she saw that the glass of water she kept under the pulpit was still there. Before the hymn was finished, she took the water and poured it into the font. When the singing ended, she called this man over to her and she asked him the questions about his faith, “Do you renounce evil? Do you trust Jesus?” And then she spoke the words of baptism, “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

            At its next meeting, the session approved his baptism. The rule was followed, and the tradition continued, but the rule didn’t stand in the way of grace, the tradition didn’t close the door of the heart to love.

            Would I have been willing to do the same? I don’t know. I don’t know. My uncertainty means I need to do some more looking within. Maybe we all do. But I do know that even when what comes from within is less than, even when we let tradition get in our own way, there is always another chance to try again, there is always another opportunity to let love guide us. There is always grace, God’s grace and the grace we are called to show ourselves and one another, and for that we say, “Thanks be to God.”

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.