What Must I Do?

 Mark 10:17-31

October 10, 2021

 

            When I moved to Oklahoma in 2011– which is where I lived before I came home to Tennessee – I went ahead of my family, so I could get started in my position at the church and find a place for us to live. I stayed at the home of some of my new parishioners, who were out-of-town when I arrived. Another parishioner met me and helped me get me settled. After she left, I unpacked a few more things and went to bed early. Around 2 in the morning, I woke up sick to my stomach and with a terrible pain in my chest. I got up. I walked around. I laid down. I got up again. I kept thinking that the pain would go away or at least ease up. It didn’t.

I finally realized that I probably should go to the emergency room, because clearly something was wrong. The problem was that I didn’t know where I was. It was my first night in Shawnee. I had no idea where the hospital was. I barely knew where I was, and I couldn’t think clearly enough at that time of the morning to figure out how to get myself to the ER. So, I called 911. When I explained my symptoms to the dispatcher, they sent an ambulance. When the ambulance arrived, they didn’t take me the hospital right away. They hooked me up to the heart monitor installed in the ambulance. It turns out that I was not having a heart attack – thankfully – but I was having a gall bladder attack, which can make one feel like one is having a heart attack.

The EMT’s who worked on me were super nice, and as we had some time while I was hooked up to monitors and we weren’t going anywhere, I asked them questions about the town, their job, and most importantly to me at that moment, the best place for me to buy my first smart phone. Should I go to Verizon or AT&T or some other vendor? What was their suggestion? What kind of smart phones did they have?

Yes, that’s right, I asked about where to buy my first smart phone. And the next day, after I’d finally gotten some sleep and felt a little better, I went and bought one. It was something I had been planning on doing when I returned to full-time work, and I couldn’t wait a minute longer.

Now, smart phones are ubiquitous. But back in 2011, smart phones were still the big new thing and I wanted to get in on the excitement. I realize today that my phone is, what Milton Nesbitt said just recently, an electronic leash. But back then, I was so excited to have a smart phone. So eager to join the ranks of smart phone users, that even when I was on a heart monitor in an ambulance, wondering if I was having a heart attack or not, buying a smart phone was foremost on my mind.

A smart phone is a thing, just a thing, a material, finite possession. But I wanted one. And to be honest, I like to have things. I wrote this sermon on my laptop, which is another material possession, but it serves me in getting work done and in searching the internet – for knowledge and … more things. As much as I appreciate having the ability to have things, I get anxious at times that instead of me possessing my things, my things start to possess me.  I don’t know if this particular anxiety was behind the man’s question to Jesus, but I do think it was anxiety that drove him to kneel before Jesus in our passage from Mark’s gospel.

Although he’s commonly referred to as the “rich young ruler,” Mark does not describe him this way. In Mark, he is just referred to as a man. What we can surmise about him is that he had some wealth because Mark tells us that he many possessions. Wealth was considered a sign of blessing in that time and context, but it seemed that his wealth wasn’t adding up to a contented life for this man. 

He came to Jesus and knelt before him. Usually when someone knelt before Jesus, they were seeking healing – either for themselves or someone they loved. Perhaps this man wanted healing as well. Perhaps he wanted healing from a deep, gnawing fear that nothing he could do, even following all the commandments to the absolute letter, would bring him the eternal life he desired. Perhaps the man was seeking reassurance about just that. He wanted to know that he was living a life that was good enough, that what he did to be a good person was good enough. But there was a dis-ease about him. Something was missing in his life; something was worrying him. Was it only that he wanted to know with certainty that he was good enough, or did he sense that something about his life did not add up?

Whatever it was that gnawed at him, whatever it was that caused him anxiety, he seemed to understand that this man, Jesus, would have the answers he was looking for. So, he runs to Jesus and kneels before him, asking,

“What must I do?” 

“Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus answers by asking the man why he would call him “good?” No one is good but God alone. As if Jesus suspected that the man had gotten the difference between good and goods mixed up. Jesus goes on to reiterate the commandments, assuming rightly that the man knew the commandments as well.

The man certainly knew them, and reassured Jesus that he had been keeping them his whole life, since he was a child. This begs our question, what did the man want to hear from Jesus? What answer was in search of, what anxiety drove him to put this question to Jesus?

If it was reassurance the man was seeking, I suspect Jesus’ answer did not satisfy or help him.   

“You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

I think this a prime example of not asking a question that you really don’t want to know the answer to. The man clearly did not want this particular answer. In fact, it would have seemed liked a shocking, even radical answer to receive. As I said, wealth was considered a sign of divine blessing. If you were wealthy, you must be doing something right with God. But Jesus tells this young man that the opposite is true. The way to inherit eternal life is to sell all that you own, give the profits away to the poor, then follow him.

The man can’t do it.  He walks away from Jesus grieving, sorrowful it would seem that he would have to give up his many possessions. 

What must I do?

We live in a society where the material – material possessions, material wealth – are given high value.  To not own the latest, the greatest, the newest and the most improved is to somehow fall short of being the best person you can be. None of us are completely immune to this. None of us are exempt. I know that I can live without a lot of material possessions, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want them. I lay strapped on a gurney in an ambulance, not asking about the state of my heart, but instead about where I could buy my first smart phone. I’m not immune to the lure of possessions.

Does wanting that phone, does that buying that phone mean that I have about as much chance of getting into heaven as that camel does in going through the eye of the needle? I don’t know. 

Maybe material possessions weren’t all Jesus was referring to here.  Maybe he wanted the man and all who would listen to consider what it is that impedes them in their life of discipleship.  What stops them from answering the call to follow him?

Perhaps Jesus was saying that it isn’t what we own, but what owns us that throws a stumbling block in our paths when we try to follow Jesus. What is it that owns us? What do we need to root out of our lives so we can follow? Is it a thing? A person? Is it a belief or an ideology or a behavior? Is there something in our lives that could literally come between us and our call to follow Jesus? Is it our fear?

What must we do?

It seems to me that there is a tension in this passage that we cannot ignore or make light of. We live in a world caught of enormous wealth and equally enormous scarcity, and that divide is only growing exponentially. Poverty is literally and figuratively all around us. It camps out on our doorstep. The number of people who are hungry, homeless, and hurting haunt me. But I still wanted … things.   

I want to be a disciple. I want to be faithful. I want to follow Jesus. But I want the comforts that are out there as well. I know how lucky I’ve been, in my opportunities, in my lifestyle, in the riches I’ve been given. But could I give up everything up and follow? What owns me?

Tension. What we must do and what we want. What we are called to do and what we can do. How to be in the world and yet not of the world. 

This is the tension of this passage. Jesus continues to call us through the gospel, reminding us to look first at the least of these, and calling us to accountability through his words and actions. To whom much has been given, much is required.

There is no easy, all-sufficient way to resolve this tension, and I don’t have any quick answers to offer. I know that I’m not going to leave here today, sell my car, pack up and sell our house and give everything to the poor. Are you? But it does seem to me that leaving this text without feeling unsettled, without feeling a sense of dis-ease, that all is not well with us, means that we have somehow missed the radical nature of Jesus’ words.

This passage is about a man looking for reassurance, and in his story, I suspect that we look for our own reassurance as well. What must I do? At first glance, that reassurance doesn’t seem to be there. But listen again. Listen carefully. Jesus looked at the man and loved him. His love for him didn’t end even when the man turned and walked away. Jesus loved him. When the disciples, who are just as shocked by Jesus’ words as the man, ask,

“Then who can be saved?”

Jesus gives us a far greater reassurance than any we could imagine. 

“For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

For God all things are possible. I know that I can be a better steward of God’s gifts then I am. I know I can be a better disciple. I can do more. But I also know, and this is not an attempt to let myself or any of us off the hook, that sometimes I can only do the best I can within my limited realm of possibility. There will always be more need than I can meet, and those needs will always have to be held in tension with what I want. My realm of possibility is limited.  But God’s realm isn’t. That’s the good news. That’s the good news of Jesus’ words. For God all things are possible. The world and all that is in it, including us with our conflicting wants and desires, belongs to God. For God all things are possible. Our hope lies within the realm of God’s endless possibility. 

To that, let all God’s children say, “Alleluia!” Amen.

God's Mindfulness -- World Communion Sunday

 Psalm 8

October 3, 2021 

            The word mindfulness seems to be in the air these days. With so much of the world shutting down last year, and with our lives slowing down drastically, the word mindful took on new meaning. For some, the pandemic was the universe telling us here and all around the world that we needed to slow down, reevaluate how we were living, and become more mindful.

            One of the first things that I think about when I hear the word mindful is about eating. If the universe is trying to tell us to slow down, then mindful eating is one response to that. How many of us eat our food too quickly? How many of us wander through the kitchen, snacking and grazing on whatever we find? How many of us eat mindlessly more often than we’d like to admit? I certainly do, and when I fall into mindless eating, I don’t enjoy or even taste the food that I’m taking in, much less consider how many calories I’m ingesting.  

            So, mindful eating, just like mindful living, is about slowing down. It is about being intentional about what you are eating, where you are eating, and how you are eating. Here is what I understand about mindful eating. You sit down to eat. You eat at a designated place for eating, like the table, and not standing up or in front of the television. You consider what food you’re eating, what is the most healthful and helpful to your body, mind, and yes, even soul. Mindful eating means being aware of your body’s hunger cues and knowing when you have had enough food, and not eating past the point of being full.

Mindful eating is about enjoying your food. Slowing down and tasting it, savoring it. Eating mindfully begins before you even take a bite. Mindful eating means looking at the food on your plate, appreciating its color and presentation. There’s an expression that says, “we eat with our eyes first,” so being mindful when you eat means enjoying the look of your food too. When I’ve made a meal that is colorful and healthy and plated well, it just looks better than the bright artificial orange of Cheetos. Not that Cheetos aren’t sometimes the orange bits of joy that I crave, but you know what I mean.

Mindful eating is about enjoying your food and paying attention to your food. It encourages a better, healthier, saner relationship with food. Eating mindfully is good for our health and it is also good for our spirit. Mindful eating is a spiritual practice as well.

Giving thanks for the food itself, and for the farmers who grew it, the people at the grocery store who stocked it, the hands that prepared it, and for our God who makes it all possible to begin with is not only reserved for the blessing at the beginning of the meal.  

The spiritual practice of mindful eating is about giving thanks with each bite for the food and our Creator who provides for us in so many ways and through so many people. When we can slow down and be grateful for our food and for the people involved in getting that food to the table, it reminds us to be grateful for more than just the meal that is set before us.

            In our psalm today, the psalmist speaks of God’s mindfulness. One commentator talked about verse 4 as being the ultimate question.

            “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?”

            But let’s back up a second. The psalm begins with a classic ascription to God.

            “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

            You, majestic Lord, have “set your glory above the heavens.” Look at this expansive and wondrous universe that you have created, O Lord. Look at the heavens, look at the stars. Look at the moon, look at everything in creation. All of it bears your fingerprints. The mark of your hand is upon all creation. And that creation includes humans?

            While the translation reads this in the plural, this is really an intimate conversation between God and one person.

            “What are human beings that you are mindful of me, mortals that you care for me?”

            How is it God, when you have created the universe, the heavens, the stars, the moon, all that I can see and touch, all that I can see and only long to touch, that you took the time and care to create me as well? You could have stopped with the heavens, O God, and your glory would be evident. You could have stopped with the mountains and the seas, and your creation would have been complete. But you made me. You, who created the big things, also created me, so small in comparison, so seemingly insignificant. But you are mindful of me, O God. You consider me. You take time to look at me and love me and desire good things for me.

            You made us humans a little lower than you. You made us to be in relationship with you and to care for this glorious creation you have given us, this creation that we are part and parcel of. Are we as mindful in response? Have we treated your creation with care? Do we love others, are we mindful of others, as you are mindful of us?

            Have we harmed all that you have given us? Have we taken your commands seriously or have we used them for our own purposes? Have we forgotten what it means to be stewards – of the earth, of its creatures, of one another?

            Why are you mindful of us, O God? Why do you stop to consider us, to love us?

            “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

            According to the psalmist, God is mindful of us. According to the gospel, God is mindful of us. According to all the scriptures, God is mindful of us. And if God’s mindfulness is, in some small way, a little like the mindfulness we are considering giving our food, does that mean that God takes the time to think about us, care for us, and love us?

            I know that our human understanding of things never meets God’s understanding, but I think the answer the psalmist gives that question is a resounding “Yes!” And while it feels incredibly good and wonderful to know that God is mindful of us, that God takes the time to love each one of us, I don’t think that basking in the glow of God’s love is where we are called to remain. It seems to me that realizing that God is mindful of us, trusting that God is mindful of us, and loves us, is just the beginning. God’s mindfulness calls for a response.

            How are we mindful, not only of our food, but of the heavens and earth God created; the ground on which we walk, and the air in which we breathe? How are we mindful of the creatures in God’s creation? How do we love the land, and the animals, and the world God gave us? And how are we mindful of one another? Do we stop and give God’s creation the thoughtfulness and love that God shows us? Do we show that concern and compassion to other people, not only the people that we know and love but also the people that we don’t?

            In a few minutes we will come to the table and partake of the Lord’s Supper. We will hear the ancient words of institution and open our hearts in the prayer of thanksgiving, and together we will eat the bread and drink the cup. As Presbyterians we don’t believe that the bread and the juice actually become the body and blood of Christ, but we do believe that Jesus is spiritually present at this meal, at this table. So, as we celebrate this Lord’s Supper, let’s take a moment to be mindful. As we eat the bread, think about where it came from, who made it, who prepared it, and give thanks for all of those people. And as we drink the cup, let’s do the same. And in all of this may we be mindful of God who is mindful of us. May we be mindful of what this table represents, of the memories it invokes. May we be mindful of what God did for our sake, of what God the Son prepared for when he sat at this table with his disciples. May we be mindful of God’s care, God’s compassion, God’s love that was made manifest in Jesus the Christ, in his sacrificial death, and in his resurrection. May we be mindful of God, in this time of worship, at this table, and always, because God is always mindful of us. And may we, like the psalmist, declare with joy and thanksgiving,

            “O Lord, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

            Let all the children of our mindful God say, “Alleluia.”

            Amen.

Stumbling Blocks

 Mark 9:38-50

September 26, 2021

            There is a beautiful scene in the movie, The Apostle. It is one that I suspect is overlooked or quickly forgotten by most viewers, but it stunned me when I watched the movie, and it is the scene that remains most vivid in my memory today.

            The Apostle is about a charismatic, Pentecostal, slain by the Spirit, whip people up into a frenzy kind of preacher named Sonny. Sonny is played by the brilliant actor, Robert Duvall, who also wrote the screenplay and directed the movie. As much as he is a fiery, showy preacher, who at the beginning of the movie, dresses in flashy suits, dances through the church in sunglasses, and drops $100 bills into the offering plate, is also a sometime womanizer, drinker, and someone who can become violent, Sonny also seems to legitimately want to bring the salvation of God to people. His long-suffering wife, played by the late Farrah Fawcett, ends up leaving him for another man. After showing up at a little league baseball game drunk and taking a baseball bat to the other man – also a member of his church – Sonny flees Texas and heads East.

            Even on the run, Sonny is an apostle. He can’t stop preaching, reaching out to people, trying to save souls. He goes to a Black Pentecostal minister and tells him that he believes God has sent him there. Together they grow a church. Sonny attracts people. He is dramatic and compelling, and he is insistent that people must be saved here so they know that they will be accepted into the Kingdom of Heaven when they die.

            Still, out of the all the amazing scenes in this movie, the one that stands out to me is not a moment when Sonny converts someone or when he preaches or even when has a whole church standing and dancing and raising their arms in the air shouting and singing.

            The scene that I remember so vividly is when Sonny is walking along a bayou, and he stops and looks over and sees a Catholic priest standing on the shore at the edge of the water. The priest is clearly making the sign of the cross, blessing the fishing boats in the water before him. Sonny stops and looks at the priest and he smiles and says,

“You do it your way, I do it mine, but we get it done, don’t we?”

There is no animosity, no judgment. The viewer gets no sense that Sonny thinks he is better than the priest, or that he has found the true way to heaven while the priest is still stuck in the dark ages of religiosity. No, Sonny means what he says.

“You do it your way, I do it mine, but we get it done, don’t we?”

Sonny is the opposite of everything that I hold dear as a preacher. I reject his theology and his understanding of what the gospel is about. But that moment made me wonder, then and now, if I were in Sonny’s shoes would I be able to say what he says? Would I be able to look at this other preacher, this other minister, this other apostle of God and say the same thing?

“You do it your way, I do it mine, but we get it done, don’t we?”

Clearly, from our story in Mark’s gospel, John and the other disciples could not say that. They see an unnamed person exorcising demons in Jesus’ name, but instead of rejoicing that this was being done in the name of Jesus for the sake of kingdom of God, they run to tell Jesus. In many ways, it sounds like John tattles on the other man.

“Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

We don’t know anything about this other person, this other disciple. One of the Biblical scholars I refer to commented on this and said, “We don’t know this disciple’s name, so let’s just call him Bob.  

Why would the disciples have been so upset about Bob casting out demons? I think the first answer is that he was doing something that they were unable to do. They had tried to cast out a demon already and failed. But Bob the disciple did what they could not do. That must have irked them, to say the least.

Another reason, and perhaps the biggest reason, Bob bothered the disciples is that he was not one of them. They were the disciples. They were the ones Jesus called to follow. No one knew anything about Bob. How could he be a disciple if Jesus himself had not called him? How could he do the work of a disciple if he was not in the in-crowd? There is an aspect to this exchange between John and Jesus that I had not noticed before. When John complained to Jesus about Bob the disciple casting out demons, he didn’t say, “We tried to stop him because he was not following you.”

John said, “We tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

Jesus did not question John about using us instead of you. In fact, Jesus responded in the plural.

“Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Whoever is not against us is for us.

John may have been presumptuous in asserting that he and the other disciples were to be followed same as Jesus. But Jesus didn’t seem to have a problem with John’s use of the collective as much as he did with them trying to stop Bob. Whoever Bob was and however he heard about Jesus, his work in Jesus’ name was legitimate. He was not against them, so he was for them. Even though he was not one of them, he was still for them. He was still for Jesus, and his deed of power in Jesus’ name was not to be dismissed.

This is yet one more misunderstanding of Jesus’ message, mission, and purpose by the disciples. This follows immediately after our passage last week when the disciples argued among themselves about who was the greatest, and who carried the most status as a disciple. Their argument was preceded by Jesus telling them for a second time that he would undergo great suffering, death, and resurrection. Jesus even went so far as to embrace a little child so they would understand his words about the first being last, the last first, and the greatest of all being the servant of all. But the disciples don’t get it.

They don’t get it, and their lack of getting it comes out in jealousy and insecurity over Bob the disciple. Here was this unknown person doing what they were not yet able to do. So, they tried to stop him. When they couldn’t, they tattled to Jesus about him. But Jesus knew that what was more important was that anyone who was not against them was for them. Bob the disciple was for them, and that was all that mattered.

Then, amid all the hard and challenging truths Jesus had been telling them about his own suffering and death, Jesus speaks some more hard words about stumbling blocks.

“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.”

That should have been enough to get anyone’s attention, but Jesus does not stop there.  If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. If your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out. It is better to go into heaven maimed and lame and one-eyed, then to go into hell sound of body, but lost in mind, heart, and soul.

Every biblical scholar I have ever read in relation to this passage states emphatically that Jesus did not mean any of this literally. He was speaking in hyperbole, using great exaggeration, to get the disciples’ attention. This is about the kingdom. This is about the work of God in this world through me. This is about getting people to understand that the kingdom of God is in their midst right now, right here. This is about opening the eyes and the hearts and the minds of God’s people to see God, to hear God, to recognize what God has done and will do for them. This is urgent. I’m not here for long, so I need people to understand. So, don’t put a stumbling block in front of anyone who is doing deeds of power and healing in my name. if you cause them to stumble, it will harm you. If the stumbling block comes from your own body, cut it off before you harm someone else. Because whoever is not against us is for us.

Bob the disciple was not against them. He was for them. But the disciples were too afraid and too insecure to see it. They wanted to stop him. What they could not understand was that their own fear was a stumbling block – to Bob and to themselves.

How does our fear cause us to stumble? How does our fear cause others to stumble? Are we as urgent and emphatic in our understanding and our sharing of the gospel as Jesus was, as Sonny was? Who are the Bobs in our lives? What can we do to remove the stumbling blocks we throw in people’s way, in our own way, rather than add to them?

I don’t ask these questions with any specific answer in mind that will serve all of us, because we all have to wrestle with our own stumbling blocks. We all have to wrestle with our own fears and insecurities. We all have to face up to the Bobs in our lives.

I don’t have answers, but I do know this. When it comes to the kingdom, there is room for all of us. When it comes to God’s love for the world, we are all included. It seems to me Jesus wanted the disciples to understand that God’s love, God’s kingdom, was expansive. It was open to all who accepted God’s call to share the good news. Jesus wanted them to see, really see, that whoever is not against us is for us. Whoever is not against us is for us. Remove the stumbling blocks, clear the path, make room, and make welcome all those who are for us.

“You do it your way, I do it mine, but we get it done, don’t we?”

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

Amen.

The Greatest?

 Mark 9:30-37

September 19, 2021

 

            Somewhere, sometime in the neighborhood where I grew up, someone dug a big hole. And from that big hole came an even bigger pile of dirt. It was more like a hill of dirt really, and when the neighborhood kids – me included – saw that great big hill of dirt there was only one thing we could do. We played king of the hill. If you’ve never played king of the hill, I’ll quickly explain the rules to you. There are no rules. It’s just about trying to climb to the top of hill, stay on top of the hill, and keep the other kids from reaching the top of the hill. And you accomplish those three goals any way you can.

            In my neighborhood, the girls generally ran with the girls and the boys stuck with the boys, but on that day, we all played together. We climbed and scrambled and pushed and slid. We’d get close to the top and then go sliding back down, only to make our way back toward the top once more. I suspect that sometimes king of the hill can get pretty vicious, but I don’t remember anyone getting hurt that day. I don’t remember any of us leaving angry or upset. I don’t even remember how it ended really. I suspect it concluded when our parents started to call us in, or someone remembered somewhere she had to be, or we realized that certain members of our families would not be thrilled at how dirty we had gotten. No matter how the game ended, we played king of the hill until we couldn’t anymore. And if anyone achieved lasting king of the hill status, I don’t remember it. All of us worked hard to get to the top, but none of us stayed there very long. However, it began and however it ended, there were no lasting hard feelings when we finally went our separate ways. That didn’t always happen, I can assure you.

            I’d like to say that was the last time I ever played king of the hill. But adults play this game all the time. We just call it “life.” Who can get to the top? Who can stay on the top? How do we keep others from getting there before or instead of us?

            The disciples were not engaged in a literal game of king of the hill that day, but they were bickering with one another about who among them was the greatest. We cannot know from the text the details of their argument, but it may have sounded something like this.

“I’m the greatest because I have served others better than you.”

“I’m the greatest because I have actually healed someone without any help from Jesus.”

“I’m the greatest because Jesus relies on me.”

Obviously, Jesus noticed that they were quarreling and squabbling amongst themselves. He probably couldn’t help but notice. And when they came to Capernaum and were settled in a house, Jesus asked them,

            “What were you arguing about on the way?”

            For all their big talk and bickering and quarreling while they were traveling, now the disciples are silent. They have been caught and called out. They know what they were arguing about and so does Jesus. But instead of reprimanding or chastising them, he does something even more astonishing and unexpected. He takes a seat, calls the disciples, and says,

            “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

            Then to illustrate his words, he takes a little child into his arms, and says to the disciples,

            “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

            Wait one minute there Jesus. What do you mean that in order to be first you must be last? Who’s really the greatest, the one on top or the on the bottom?

            Greatness means not being served, but serving? And then if we truly want to welcome you, to welcome the one who sent you, we must welcome a little child in your name? I suspect more than one disciple was thinking that this had to be a joke. This could not be true. Because then, as now, status was not achieved by serving others. Status was achieved by making sure others served you.

            And what about this welcoming of a child? A child? Don’t get me wrong, people loved children then as they do now. Parents loved their little ones. Having children, having families was considered a blessing. Barrenness was considered a punishment for sin. It’s not that people did not love children or loved them less than we love our own children, it’s that a child – no matter how loved or wanted – had no status in that society and culture. A child had no legal rights or protection under the law. Until that child grew old enough to be productive in the family and in the society, that child had no status.

            But Jesus picked up this little status-less child and said that if you want to welcome the Father and the Son, then you must welcome the child – this little powerless, helpless, status-less child.

            I have this picture in my mind of the child in Jesus’ arms babbling in baby talk while Jesus spoke. I can imagine the little one turning to look at Jesus, maybe stroking his face or examining his whiskers. Maybe that baby even gave him one of those open-mouthed baby kisses that my kids used to give me. And I can see Jesus finishing his words to the disciples and looking back down at that baby and smiling, maybe giving him or her one last squeeze before turning the toddler back over to Mama.

            Perhaps this image of mine is too rosy a picture, but Jesus taking that baby in his arms would have driven the point home to the disciples – or at least attempted to.  Because the disciples, especially in Mark, just did not get it. Did. Not. Get. It. One commentator wrote that the disciples are so dense light bends around them.

Consider how this passage began. Jesus and the disciples were traveling incognito in Galilee. Jesus did not want anyone to know they were there; I suspect so they would not be interrupted. Jesus was once again teaching them about the reality and truth of Messiahship. He was going to be betrayed into human hands. He was going to be killed. He was going to rise again after three days. And Mark tells us that the disciples, even though they had heard this already, even though Jesus was telling them pointedly what would happen, they did not understand. And they were too afraid to ask Jesus to explain what he meant.

            They were too afraid. Do you wonder if the argument about who was the greatest sprang from that fear? Do you wonder if it was their fear that kept the disciples from understanding what Jesus was telling them, what it meant, not only for Jesus, for them as well? Maybe their desire to be the greatest was a way of dealing with that fear? They could not let go of their worldly understanding of power and status to see or accept the upside-down kingdom that Jesus described. They were fearful of that upside-down kingdom, and I suspect fearful of what it would require of them to achieve it.

            Fear creates obstacles we cannot see or even recognize. Fear keeps us stuck. It keeps us stuck in a worldview that is the opposite of what Jesus preached and taught and lived. Jesus not only talked the talk, he also walked the walk. But what he had to undergo, what he had to sacrifice, that was terrible and frightening. If we are called to follow in his footsteps and be willing to undergo what he did, then our fear is understandable. But what Jesus tried to teach the disciples and what we struggle to learn everyday is that we have to let go of our fear. Because first and foremost our fear stymies our trust. The more we trust God, the less power our fear has over us. The more we trust that God is with us, the less we fear losing what we have.

            The disciples were afraid, and that fear will be their constant companion throughout the gospel. And I think we are afraid too. I mean I know I am. I am afraid of not having enough. I am afraid of being left alone. I am afraid that I will never measure up to others’ standards and my own standards. I would like to be king of the hill just once, for a little while, but I am afraid that may never happen, or worse, that it does.

            The disciples were afraid. Life was hard. And Jesus was telling them that the way to deal with life’s hardness was not to push others down on the way to the top. They shouldn’t even bother with trying to get to the top, because the top was really the bottom. No, if they wanted to follow him, and to live a life that was truly great, then they needed to serve. They needed to willingly, even joyfully, be last. They needed to love others and serve others and welcome those with no status as graciously and profusely as they would welcome those with it. They needed to welcome a little child in Jesus’ name, and when they could do that and mean it, then they would be welcoming Jesus and the One who sent him.

            When they could do this, then they would understand what Jesus was trying to teach them, then they would overcome their fears and their doubts and their misgivings. When they could live this upside-down life, this great reversal, then they would finally understand what makes greatness. They would finally see that the greatest one of all was the one who gave his life for the love of the world. Jesus embodied greatness, not because he pushed down others to reach the top of the hill, but because he chose the bottom.

            What would the world look like if we chose the bottom as well?

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

Prayers and Sighs

Mark 7:24-37

September 5, 2021

 

            Remember, if you can, the last time you sighed. I mean really take a minute and think about it. If you can’t remember a specific time that you sighed, try and think about something that makes you sigh. Is it sadness, relief, weariness, resignation, contentment? Now, I’m going to ask all of us to sigh. I’m serious, let out a sigh. If you need to close your eyes and think about something specifically, please feel free to do so. If you are watching from home, I encourage you all to sigh too. Sigh more than once if you feel so moved, but just sigh. I know that it isn’t easy to sigh on demand, but please try.

            When you sighed, were you thinking about anything in particular? Was your sigh born out of weariness or out of contentment? Was it a sigh of relief? I know that the biggest sighs of relief I have ever exhaled have been when I’m made it through bag check and security and long walks to my gate at the airport and I have plenty of time before my flight departs. I sink into a chair at the gate, and I sigh. I made it.

            I remember noticing that my kids would sigh with contentment when they were little, and they finally got to sit down at the table and eat. If they had been playing hard all day and they were hungry, those first few satisfying bites of food made them sigh. I know I’ve sighed over food. If I take a bite of a perfect piece of chocolate cheesecake, I’m going to let out a sigh of delight.

            But we sigh for other reasons. Listening or watching the news makes me sigh. When we had our collective sigh at the beginning of this time, I was thinking about everything that is happening in the world – all that is taking place close to home and around the globe. It is hard not to sigh with despair or worry or anguish at the many and profound ways that humans and creation suffers. So, when I listen to troubling news, I often find myself sighing.

            Until this sermon, I hadn’t given much thought to sighing. Most of the time it seems to be an involuntary response on our part. I didn’t give a whole lot of thought to sighing until I read this last part of our passage from Mark’s gospel. Jesus sighed. In previous years when this passage has rolled around in the lectionary, I have chosen to preach on the first part of the passage – the healing of the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter. I have focused more on that troubling exchange because I wanted and needed to wrestle with Jesus’ downright rude response to her request. Because I have been so focused on that part, I have not given much attention – if any – to this second part of the passage, to this other healing of a man who was deaf and struggled with a speech impediment.

            And because of that, I have not paid as much attention to the details of this healing; to one detail in particular – Jesus looked up to heaven, and he sighed.

            What are the details of this passage? From the beginning of these verses, we learn that Jesus is deep in Gentile country. The issue of who Jesus had come for is at the heart of his encounter with the Syrophoenician woman. Who should receive his attention first and foremost? The children on Israel only or was his ministry to be more expansive?

            From this Jesus travels further into a Gentile region. And while he is there, “they” brought this deaf man to him and “they” begged Jesus to heal him. It is unclear who the “they” is. Is it the crowds that were growing and following Jesus? Is it the family and friends of the man? It does say that Jesus takes the man away from the crowd, so that he could heal him in private, but who made up that crowd is not spelled out.

            Perhaps that does not matter, but what does matter is that Jesus took the man away from the crowd so that he could respond to the man’s need in private. This seems unusual for Jesus. In fact, the whole way that he healed the man seems unusual for Jesus. Just a few verses earlier, Jesus healed the woman’s daughter from afar. But this healing of the deaf man is hands on.

            I have been trying to put myself in the shoes of this deaf man. What must it have been like for him? I suspect it would be challenging for anyone to be deaf at any time, challenging to be deaf in a hearing world, but we do have more resources at hand now than the man would have had access to then. Did he understand what the people who brought him to Jesus wanted to have happen? Did he wish it for himself? Or was he just brought along? Did he have an idea who Jesus was? Was Jesus just another supposed healer in a long line of healers who had tried to “cure” him of his deafness, but had achieved nothing? What was he thinking when he saw Jesus? What did he want from Jesus?

            Perhaps Jesus understood that the jostling of the crowd and being brought to Jesus would have been confusing for the man, so that is why Jesus took him aside for privacy. Jesus wanted the man’s whole attention to be on him. Jesus was more physical in his healing, so the man would be able to see and understand more of what was happening.

            With the man’s full attention on him, Jesus put his fingers into the man’s ears. He spit – something that some believed had curative properties – and touched the man’s tongue. Then Jesus looked up to heaven and sighed and said, “Ephphatha.” “Be opened.”

            Immediately, the man’s ears were opened, and he could hear. Immediately his tongue was unbound, and he could speak plainly.

            The crowd of people who had brought the man to Jesus must have sidled their way back to where Jesus and the man were, because Jesus ordered them not to tell anyone what had happened. But of course, the more Jesus ordered them to keep their peace, to keep their silence, the more zealously and the more fervently they proclaimed what had just happened, the miracle Jesus worked. And in their proclamation, they quoted scripture.

“He makes the deaf to hear, and the mute to speak.”

I realize there are many questions to be asked of this passage. What’s up with messianic secret in Mark? Why does Jesus not want news of his actions and deeds proclaimed? Why did Jesus use these rather strange actions to heal the man? And why did Jesus look to heaven and sigh? Was he merely sighing out the word Ephphatha? Or did his sigh signify something else?

I know there is no way of knowing why Jesus sighed, and my speculation about it is just that – speculation. I see Jesus’ sigh as a deeply human response. That certainly ties in with the earlier story in this passage. Jesus was deeply human. And that can be something that we struggle with. We proclaim, we confess, that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. But I think when it comes to grappling with what it means for him to have been fully human, what the realities of that might look like, we struggle. We don’t want to think of Jesus as having his own biases as a fully human man of his culture and time. But if he was fully human, wouldn’t he have had them? We don’t want to think about Jesus needing to learn, to have his own mind and heart opened, but if he was fully human, that would have been necessary, just as it is necessary for us, for our own learning.

And maybe the fully human Jesus sighed in this moment because he knew that it was not only the ears of the man that needed to be opened up. Maybe he realized that curing the physical ailments of the people brought to him was only one piece of the puzzle. Maybe Jesus sighed because he knew that for every person he healed, there were so many more that needed his healing, and he would not have the opportunity to reach them. The needs were greater and bigger than he could affect in his earthly lifetime. Perhaps Jesus sighed because he was tired and worn and his full humanity struggled with his call and his ministry.

Whatever the reason Jesus sighed, he died. He sighed. He prayed. He wept. He learned. He even had moments of despair. He was fully human, and while the reality and consequences of his humanity might disturb us at times, it is also where I find some of my greatest comfort.

When I am ready to give up on faith, when I am ready to walk away from it, I remember the incarnation of God into the world. I remember that Jesus was fully human. You see it is the incarnation that keeps me going. It is the reality that God was willing to take all this on, not because God had to, not because God even needed to, but because God wanted to. God wanted to take on our humanity because God wanted to be in relationship with us. God chose us so that we could choose God.

Let’s face it, y’all, we humans are a mess. We were given this beautiful creation and we have messed it up. We were given one another to love, and we fail at that. But Jesus came into the world out of love for us in all of our messiness. Jesus was fully human, and took on the realities of humanness, the frailties and flaws of humanness, because we are so deeply and irrevocably loved by God.

Jesus sighed and said, “be opened.” And that’s what God wants for us is to be opened. God wants our ears to be opened, our minds to be opened, our hands to be opened, our hearts to be opened. And yes, we are going to misunderstand and fail and fall. But that doesn’t keep God from loving us. That doesn’t prevent God from calling us back, back into the fold, back into God’s arms. Jesus was fully human and Jesus sighed, and we see in Jesus all that we are called to be, the full humanity we were created to be. So, whatever makes us sigh this morning, know that Jesus sighed too. Know that Jesus felt it all as well. Know that our God became fully human so that we could be more fully human. And give thanks.

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

Amen.

 

 

From the Heart

 

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

August 29, 2021

 

            Since I decided to give my sermon the title, “From the Heart,” I thought it would be a good idea for me to do a little review work on the actual human heart. It’s been a few years since my 10^th grade biology class, and I didn’t pay as much attention in that class as I should have, so I knew I needed to brush up on the actual structure of the human heart.

            The most fundamental fact about the heart as I understand it is that the heart is a muscle. That is why cardio exercise is essential for heart health. It’s probably also why it’s called cardio. Cardio exercise raises our heart rate. It works and strengthens the heart muscle.

            Every person’s heart is about the size of his or her fist. It beats approximately 60 to 80 times per minute, and it beats about 100,000 times each day. The heart is a pump. It has four chambers, two ventricles, and two atria. There are arteries and valves and while the process is complicated and beyond my ability to understand, the simple point of the heart is to keep our blood pumping and circulating. When the heart stops pumping, everything else stops as well.

            Now that I am firmly entrenched in middle age, learning, and relearning these basics about the human heart, has made me recommit myself to taking better care of my heart for as long as I can.

            The human heart is the primary muscle that keeps us alive, but often when we talk about the heart, we endow it with much greater meaning than its physiological importance. The heart is not only the vital muscle in our chest, it is also the center of our being. Scientifically speaking, our emotions are neurological responses in our brains, but we understand them, we see them as being centered here in our hearts rather than here in our heads.

            Think about how many songs you hear on an average day that has to do with the heart. There are songs about heartbreaks, heartaches, hearts down and out for the count, hearts filled with love, hearts rising above. At one time I found a list of 124 songs that have heart in the title. These were from both pop and country, which means there is no way this an exhaustive list because there are so many genres of music, and every genre has songs about the heart. From hip hop to opera, the heart is a major theme in our music and in our culture.

            My heart could keep going for another 40 years, but no matter how much longer I live I’ll never forget the first time I fell in love and my heart soared. I’ll also never forget the first time my heart was really broken. My actual heart was not broken, obviously, but that metaphysical heart at the center of our being was. That metaphysical heart of mine was beaten up and tossed aside.

Our heart features in our understanding of God and faith. As I have said in other sermons, a vivid memory from my earliest days in Sunday School is the picture of Jesus standing outside a door and knocking. That was Jesus at the door of our hearts, knocking, waiting, wanting, hoping to be let in. We invest the human heart with a much larger meaning and purpose than the center of our circulatory system.

            Because of our complex understanding of the heart, I chose to look most carefully at the last of Jesus’ words to the Pharisees in this passage from Mark’s gospel.

            “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

            This passage begins with certain Pharisees challenging Jesus about his disciples’ flaunting of tradition. They did not do the ritual cleansing of their hands or their cookware before they ate. This practice was not so much about hygiene or sanitary practices as it was tradition. It was a ritual of spiritual cleanliness, and it was a tradition of the elders. To eat something with unclean hands or that was not prepared in properly cleaned pots was to be physically and spiritually defiled. It made them impure before God. But Jesus and the disciples turn this tradition on its head, so the Pharisees and the Scribes question Jesus. They confront him with what seems to be an obvious and flagrant breaking of the Law.

            Whenever Jesus was challenged, he was not afraid to challenge back. In our passage he quoted 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 told the Pharisees and the Scribes that their tradition had become empty ritual. He did not say that tradition was wrong or that it had no purpose, but he challenged them on their motivation for keeping the tradition. If they were supposedly doing it to honor God, then they were honoring God in name only. Their hearts were not in it. And in the part of the story, we are focusing on today, Jesus debunked their understanding of the tradition in the first place. It is not what goes into us that defiles. No food that we eat, no washing ritual that we undergo will make us clean or unclean. The source of defilement is not outside of ourselves. It is within us. It is within our hearts.

            Matt Skinner, professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, and a primary contributor to WorkingPreacher.org, said that this is the most straightforward part of this passage. Jesus tells those questioning him and us, succinctly, where evil comes from. That is the good news. The bad news is that it comes from us. It comes from the people I don’t much care for, which I have no problem whatsoever believing. But it also comes from the people I love, which is a lot harder to bear. Hardest of all to accept, it comes from me. It comes from the heart.

            Whether we choose to believe that our hearts breed avarice and murder and hatred, etc. or not, one point is dramatically driven home. Jesus calls for self-examination. We must look inside ourselves for the source of what is bad and wrong in our lives and in our world. No matter how much I would like to believe the opposite, all that is bad and wrong with our world does not just come from out there somewhere. It is not all separate from myself.

            It may sound as though Jesus was condemning the human heart to total depravity, but I do not believe he was implying that nothing good comes from the heart. Our greatest and most powerful impulses for goodness, for kindness, for love, come from our hearts. But Jesus was making clear to the Pharisees that they had invested more in tradition than they had in the actual word of God. They used tradition as a shield against what they saw as outside evil forces. They used their tradition as a weapon against others, against outsiders. It seems to me that it was tradition and their understanding of it, their using of it, that closed their hearts to God and to God’s people.

            As I said earlier, there is no indication that Jesus believed all tradition was bad. There is no reason for us not to believe that Jesus also adhered to traditional dietary laws. But following the Law never stood in Jesus’ way when it came to love – loving God and loving neighbor. The Law never stood in Jesus’ way from calling on everyone who would listen to examine their own hearts, to consider how what was in their own hearts differed from what was spoken from their lips, how what was in their hearts differed from their actions, from how they sought to live.

            Jesus stood in the tradition of the prophets, who called the people of God to give God their hearts. That’s what God wants – more than anything – is our hearts. And it seems to me that this what Jesus is trying to make the religious leaders, and any who would listen, understand. It is about our hearts. And it is from our hearts that what is good and what is bad flows. So, we need to consider, we need to examine our hearts.

            Every aspect of our worship should make us examine what is in our hearts, but there is one part in our worship service where we are called to do that specifically, and that is in our corporate prayer of confession. In the midst of all that happens in our worship service, it is easy to read the words of this prayer but not use them to think honestly about what lies in our own hearts. So, I thought it might be helpful if I read a well—known prayer of confession now. It is not the one we read earlier. And while I read it, let the words of the prayer not only reach your minds, let it touch your hearts, let it call forth for all of us what comes from our hearts.

            Merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart and mind and strength. We have not loved our neighbor as ourselves. In your mercy, forgive what we have been, help us amend what we are, and direct what we shall be, that we may delight in your ways to the glory of your holy name.

            What comes from our hearts? What do we hold there? Is it love, compassion, kindness, faithfulness, hopefulness? Or does anger, envy, and bitterness come from our hearts? What comes from our hearts not only this morning but every day? What comes from our hearts? Trust that God knows our hearts, all that is good in them and all that is not. Trust that God is working on us, day by day, forgiven what we have been, amending what we are, and directing what we shall be. And that is the good news. That is the good news.

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

            Amen.