Called and Sent: Discipleship in the World Today, Part 5 - While We Were Busy

Mark 5:21-43

Today is another one of those “sandwich” stories Mark is so fond of. This is a technique Mark used frequently – breaking up one story by inserting another story within it.

It’s a great literary trick. It can serve to increase the suspense in the story, leaving the reader hanging, biting their nails, wondering what will happen. In this case, we are holding our breath wondering if Jesus will get to Jairus’ house on time to save his daughter. This is very serious, we already know. Jairus fell on his knees before Jesus and begged him to come save his little daughter, who is at the point of death. This is a 911 moment. 

So Jesus went with him. The crowds are still ever-present, pressing in on him. Nonetheless, he makes his way through – no doubt, Jairus’ people and Jesus’ disciples are probably facilitating this, forming a barrier between Jesus and the crowds of people. But then Mark shifts our attention to a woman who was there, in the crowd. 

What on earth do we care about his woman, you might ask? Jesus is right now on an urgent mission to save a little girl’s life, but Mark is going to take a pause here to tell us about this woman.

She is hemorrhaging. So perhaps this is also urgent. But, no, she has been living with this hemorrhage for 12 years. She has repeatedly sought out medical care from many physicians, but to no avail. She has suffered with it for all these years, but now she sees a chance of being healed. If she can only touch the hem of Jesus’ clothes, she believes, she will be made well. And so she does. And so she is made well.

That could be the end of it except that it wasn’t. Jesus suddenly stopped walking and said, someone touched my clothes. And everyone in his entourage thought he was insane because obviously there were many people touching his clothes as he made his way through the dense crowd. Why was this important enough to stop? 

He looked around to find the one who touched him but didn’t need to look far. The woman stepped forward and identified herself. She explained her need and her desire, and he listened. Meanwhile, the entourage was surely getting antsy, impatiently waiting for this trivial conversation to be over so they could continue on their way to a very important healing. But Jesus listened to the woman, and then said to her, “Your faith has made you well.” 

Before he even begins walking again toward Jairus’ house, the group is met by some messengers who say, “it’s too late. The little girl has died.” Yet, Jesus insists on going. Jesus insists that hope is not lost. And it is not lost, because when he arrived at the house, he took the hand of the dead child and said, “Little girl, get up.”

It didn’t matter, in this case, that there was a slight delay in his arrival, because the power of the almighty God is in him.

Both of these stories tell us something about Jesus’ power to heal. Both of these stories make clear that his healing gifts are in an entirely different realm from what we normally expect. If he were a doctor, we would want him to rush to the child’s bedside, to arrive there before she died, while healing was still possible. If he were a doctor, we would have told the woman with the hemorrhage to make an appointment because he was quite busy at the moment.

But Jesus was not a doctor. He was, and is, a savior. The word that Mark uses here when he speaks of healing is sozo, a word that is usually translated as saved. This is the nature of Jesus’ healing – it will make us whole; it will save us. This is a very important part of the gospel news: Jesus offers us the healing power of God. 

And even though these two stories are about healing of physical ailments, the healing of Jesus may take many forms. It is often about something quite different from curing a disease. 

There is another aspect of this passage that sheds light on just how that healing can happen. It happens in the interruptions.

You know, every Sunday I ask you all to silence your cell phones before worship begins. It just seems like a courtesy to everyone who is worshiping. It’s the same way when you go to a concert or to a movie. You are always reminded to please silence your phones, so the experience we have come here for will not be interrupted by a ring tone. People get upset about things like that. People get upset about interruptions.

Yet, getting upset about such a thing is not necessary. It is actually a choice. 

I once heard a funny story about Queen Elizabeth, who probably did not have a cell phone. She was in a formal meeting, which was suddenly interrupted by the sound of a cell phone. There was a woman at the table who had neglected to silence her phone and much to her acute embarrassment, it started ringing. The conversation stopped. All eyes were suddenly on her. At that moment, the queen said to her, “You’d better answer that. It could be someone important.”

Who could be calling that is more important than the queen? Eight times out of ten, my cell phone calls are coming from robots. And the rest of the time they are likely to be about as substantive as, “Hey, what are you doing?” Or “what time do you think you’ll be home?”

But I love what the queen said. “It might be someone important.” Not that it might be some-thing important. She said someone.

And, not necessarily someone more important than me. Just, someone important.

I might be over analyzing her words, but this says something to me about how we approach life. Sometimes, interruptions are a message for busy people.

Busy people like Henri Nouwen.

Nouwen was a gifted priest and theologian, who spent many years teaching in prestigious universities – Notre Dame, Yale, Harvard. Then one day he interrupted his academic career and moved to a place called L’Arche Daybreak, a community for the intellectually and developmentally disabled. He gave up a life of importance for a life of serving those who are among the least of these brothers and sisters of Christ. He was seeking to follow Jesus, and this was the form his discipleship took. He remained there for the rest of his life.

So much of what we can learn about discipleship from Mark’s gospel is learned by watching and listening to Jesus. When we see how Jesus responds to interruptions, this is an opportunity for us to learn. 

And when we watch him here, we see that he does not prioritize one person’s need over another. He doesn’t get anxious about time, his workload, demanding people, or his deliverables. Whatever the moment is, Jesus is in the moment. Perhaps this is a lesson for us.

I don’t know about you, but I have much room for improvement on this matter. I have a tendency to get tunnel vision, becoming so focused on what is right in front of me, that I shut out everything that is around me. And I am not only talking about the important stuff. I can become so preoccupied with trivial things that I fail to hear or see the important things. But somehow, Jesus, in being completely present in the world, is able to hear and see and respond.

Everyone around him that day had the same priority: to get Jesus to Jairus’ house. Then a woman who needed healing reached out her hand and Jesus stopped to give her all his attention. Because this woman, too, is a beloved child of God. This woman, too, has a desperate need to be made well. This woman, too, is worthy of his time.

In his first years of teaching, Henri Nouwen was befriended by an older professor, one with many more years of experience than him. One day as they walked around campus, the older man said to him, “You know, my whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.”

And Nouwen wondered: What if our interruptions are in fact our opportunities? 

Consider this: There is no one with a more important to-do list than Jesus. But when he speaks to you, you would never imagine that he has anything more important to do than be with you.

Perhaps we can learn a thing about discipleship. If we would see Jesus' sensitivity toward desperately needy people as a call to be patient and kind, to offer them what healing we can. After all, if we can see these interruptions as our work, we have the possibility of becoming healed and whole ourselves.

Called and Sent: Discipleship in the World Today, Part 4 - Crossing to Safety

2 Corinthians 6:1-13

Mark 4:35-41

We are continuing today with this fourth chapter of Mark, where Jesus is teaching a large crowd. Crowds of people have been growing and following him around desperately, hungrily. They need something from him, they want something. And this is, perhaps, a thing that resonates for you. You might be reading this today because you need something, want something from Jesus. 

There is a detail about this section of Mark’s gospel that seems kind of important. Jesus and his new disciples are beside a lake. And the swelling crowds of people have come again. This is the new normal for him. There is no place, evidently, that Jesus can go where the crowds are not. It is as though he has been backed up against the lakeshore with no place to go.

Jesus looks at the mass of people. Then he turns and looks at the lake; there is a boat. He looks back at the crowd pressing in on him, then he looks at his disciples and says, “Let’s get into the boat.” The only way for Jesus to get any space between himself and these crowds was to be in or on the water. So they sat in the boat, pushed off a little from the shore, and he spoke to the crowds gathered on the lake shore.

The lake was his stage. The boat was his pulpit.

This went on some time, it appears. He would speak to the crowds, then try to speak privately with his disciples, and back and forth, until night came. By night there was no sign of the people leaving, so he said to his disciples, “Let’s go across to the other side.” 

Mark says they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And when he says just as he was, I believe he means thoroughly exhausted. At this point, Jesus needed someone to take care of him.

It is moments like this one when we might remember that Jesus was a human. That is something we easily forget but shouldn’t. He bore all the same frailties that we do. He did not have unlimited stores of energy. He did not have the ability to give and give and give without taking a moment to refill his tank. He was not immune to stress and distress and all the same kinds of feelings we are prone to. When someone is on your last nerve. When the demands are too high. When something happens that you cannot fix. 

His disciples may be blissfully unaware, because they are just taking it all in. They’re on the receiving end of his giving. They listen. And every once in a while, he asks them to do something easy – something they already know how to do. like, get me that boat. Now let’s take the boat out on the water.

It’s possible that this was the moment when they first recognized what he was going through. And that he actually needed something from them at this moment. And maybe they feel some pleasure in it, because it is gratifying to be able to give a person something they need, isn’t it? 

This is still the easy part of discipleship, when someone just tells you what to do and you know how to do it. But sooner or later, something more is going to be asked of you. You’ll be expected to step up, to do something hard. To cross over into adult discipleship.

Like right now.

Jesus says to them, “Let’s go across to the other side,” and so they do. They know how to manage boats, because they have been doing it most of their lives. Jesus is tired, they can see. He needs to get away from the crowds and this is something they can do for him. So they take him with them in the boat, just as he was. They arrange for him a nice cozy spot in the stern.

And all is well – for a minute.

Then the mother of all storms comes up. A great gale arose, the waves are beating into the boat, the boat is being swamped. These fishermen are utterly terrified. While Jesus sleeps peacefully upon the cushions.

And this troubles them even more. Because they are feeling so alone in this storm.

The disciples frantically try to steer safely across the stormy sea, to the other shore. They don’t know if they will make it. They don’t know if they will live through this night. And there is Jesus, sleeping like a baby on his cushions. The wind and the sea are raging all around. He sleeps. And these disciples are enraged.

So they wake him. Because, how dare he sleep at a moment like this. Why isn’t he up and sharing in their terror? Why isn’t he trying to help them keep this boat afloat? Does he not even care? They might die this very night out on the sea. Doesn’t Jesus even care?

Once again, I think perhaps this is a question that might resonate for you. If you have had to endure a terrible thing. You prayed for a miracle, for a cure, for mercy. You cried out to God – and you heard no response. Silence. And nothing.

Don’t you care, God? Are you even there?

It is a lonely feeling, to feel that God has abandoned you. You call out into the wind and you hear no answer.

But I want to turn your attention to Jesus at this moment. And remember that he has every human feeling just as we do, including the feeling of being abandoned by the one he needs. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” These words are from Psalm 22, and they are the same words Jesus cried out from the cross. 

Jesus had every weakness you and I have. But there is something Jesus had in that moment on the stormy sea that none of the others had – Jesus held fast to the peace of God. The peace that passes understanding held him grounded and safe.

When they shouted at Jesus to waken him, he opened his eyes and saw. He rebuked the wind. He commanded of the sea, “Be still.” And the storm calmed. 

When I was just beginning pastoral ministry there was a phrase that I heard a lot, something I was supposed to strive for: to be a non-anxious presence. Ideally, the pastor walks into your living room and radiates peace. The chaplain walks into your hospital room and calms the atmosphere of your soul. The non-anxious presence. Jesus was a non-anxious presence in the boat that night.

His disciples were dumbfounded. They got what they wanted, but never imagined could happen. They said to one another, “Who even is this guy?” What they were on their way to learning is that he was the prince of peace. The power of the almighty God was in him.

This was their first adventure into grown-up discipleship, where something was expected of them, something more than what they were used to, something that would challenge their comfort and certainty. What they would come to know is something that each one of us needs to know: that the peace we need to get us through all the storms of life is found in Jesus. Lying there, protected on the cushions in the stern of the boat, Jesus was harboring in his body the greatest strength – the peace of God. A treasure that is readily available to each of us.

And it must also be said that the life of discipleship will require it, once we get beyond the elementary level. In Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church, he describes many of the trials that Christians will face. And, while he didn’t include it in this list, Paul could have added shipwreck to the trials he has endured, more than once in his time.

The thing that Paul learned is also the thing that we must learn if we are to follow Jesus: He will not take away all the storms. He will not take away all pain and suffering. What he will do is give us what he has: the peace to carry us through. 

Then we have the knowledge that we are not alone – not ever. We have the certainty that Christ is indeed with us and he offers us the peace that will calm the storms of our souls, will keep us from falling overboard in haplessness and fear.

As Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.”

We have a lot of difficulties that would lure us into forgetting this. There are the personal storms of our lives and there are also the terrible uncertainties of this world we live in. And we are swamped with fear. War and politics, the real and increasingly dangerous storms in this changing climate that leave millions of people homeless and many more dead. While we do not have solutions to these overwhelming difficulties, we do have an answer. The answer for us, disciples of Jesus, is to find that peace which can ground us in faith – 

faith to know the next right thing to do.

When you find yourself at sea, reach for the peace of Christ. It will be your sure guide through any storm.

Called and Sent: Discipleship in the World Today, Part 3 - What We Cannot See

 

2Corinthians 5:6-10,14-17

Mark 4:26-34

Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Mark 1:14-15

Back in the beginning of Mark’s gospel, these are the first words we hear from Jesus, himself.

The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe in the good news.

And the rest of the gospel tells us what this means, tells us what this kingdom is like.

In the fourth chapter we get the first lessons about the kingdom of God. And the lessons are given – naturally – in the form of parables.

The word parable actually means “thrown alongside.” Jesus scattered these parables alongside our lives, inviting us to see where they might connect with our own paths. A parable doesn’t give us the answers; it invites us to think…and wonder.

Some people love parables, but not everyone does. The downside of parables is that they make you, the listener, do a lot of the work. There is no spoon-feeding here. Parables require us to think and engage our imaginations, to stay open to ambiguity. To listen…to look. A parable never nails down the answer, but instead opens up a lot more questions.

In this series we are asking questions about living as disciples of Jesus in this world; Particularly what we can learn from Mark about discipleship. A life of discipleship, it turns out, is a life of engaging in the questions and the wondering. And the parables of Jesus provide us with endless fodder for questioning and wondering.

It is not an accident. It is not simply because Jesus liked telling stories. It is quite deliberate that he chose to teach in this way.

The first parable in this set, the one we did not read, is one you may be familiar with – the parable of the sower and the seeds.

A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path and the birds ate it. some seeds fell on rocky ground, where it sprang up quickly, but then died quickly because it did not have good roots. Other seeds fell on thorns and the thorns grew up around it and choked it. But other seed fell on good soil, where it grew and increased and brought forth great yields. He ended this story saying, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen.”

They may well have listened, but not understood. To some it may have been as clear as mud, but for many the parable will draw them in and invite them to tease the threads apart, to explore the many possible meanings.

And that is, most certainly, by design. The work of a disciple is to be an active participant in the discovery of truth.

Jesus takes a group of disciples aside for further, more in-depth discussion, and he says to them a peculiar sounding thing: that for those who are on the outside everything comes in parables, so they may look but not perceive, listen but not understand. And, in a sense, the purpose of this ambiguity is to avoid mis-understanding among people who are just not yet ready to hear, not yet able to understand.

Because it is clear that the intention is to reveal the truth as far and wide as possible. Jesus says to his followers, nothing is hidden except to be disclosed; nothing is secret except to come to light.

In its time.

Let anyone with ears to hear listen.

And he gives them a little more to listen to.

The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and then go about his life. Somehow the seed will grow, the earth will produce, the harvest will come.

The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, the smallest of the seeds. But when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs. Still a shrub. But a great one.

And so it went on. In many parables he spoke the word of God to them, as they were able to hear it.

As they were able to hear it.

And there was a lot they were not yet able to hear.

In the early centuries of the church, there was a process for guiding new converts to Christianity, a process of preparing them for baptism. During the season of Lent they were guided into the spiritual disciplines of the church. On Easter Sunday they were baptized – a ritual that was and still is considered the entrance into the church.

There is one ancient baptism pool I have seen pictures of that is in the shape of a cross. The baptismal candidate would step down into the pool on one side, move toward the center of the cross, where they would be completely immersed, and then continue moving toward the other side where they would step out of the pool. This was a symbolic journey from one end to the other, from the old life to the new life - through the cross.

And even though there was much preparation for the baptism, the heavy lifting only began afterwards. It was only after they descended into the waters of death and ascended into new life that they were considered ready to learn the hard stuff. Now they could be taught all the elements of belief.

Why did it need to happen in this order? Essentially it is because faith is about more than just words. It is about hearing and also seeing - with the eyes in our heads and also the eyes of our hearts.

The parables Jesus tells in this chapter are all about the mystery of growth. There is nothing much that the sower does except scatter the seeds. There is nothing you can do to make the mustard seed big and strong. This is work that happens in secret, you might say; underground, in the dark.

But the growth is revealed in its time, as is the kingdom of God.

There is so much we cannot see until we are ready to see. So much we cannot really hear until we are ready to hear. And so Jesus spoke in parables – to give little glints of the kingdom; to ignite our curiosity, our wonder; to keep turning these things over and over.

And then, sometime later…perhaps after the arrest and the crucifixion, his death and resurrection…those first disciples began to talk amongst themselves. They puzzled through these things. Do you remember that time he said the kingdom of God is like scattering seed on the ground? Do you remember the time he said the kingdom was like a mustard seed?

And in the remembering together, they begin to piece it together. They begin to see different and new facets in all these things. Now they have ears to hear, eyes to see all that was once hidden. Now they’re ready to do the heavy lifting.

The secret which is revealed is that the real heavy lifting is done by God. The heavy lifting for us is to trust in that, to accept and embrace that.

Martin Luther, the great church reformer of the 16^th century, understood his part in the work of God’s kingdom. In speaking about his ground-shifting work of reforming the church, he once said, “I taught, I preached, I wrote God’s word – otherwise, I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank my little glass of Wittenberg beer, the gospel ran its course. I did nothing. The Word did everything.”

As disciples of Christ, we must know what our work is. But just as importantly we must know that the growth, the yield, the harvest belongs to God. The parables of Jesus teach us that this kingdom work is a mystery – one that we are invited to participate in.

There is still much that we cannot see. As the Apostle Paul writes, we walk by faith and not by sight. But to be immersed in Christ, to begin to look through the eyes of new life, we may see, as Paul says, that “there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”

May you have ears to hear and listen. 

May you have eyes to see and comprehend. 

May you journey on this mysterious path of discipleship.

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Called and Sent: Discipleship in the World Today, Part 2 - Family Ties

Mark 3:20-35

In the movie, Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner plays a man named Ray who is trying to learn how to be a successful farmer. He didn’t grow up on a farm, but he has a lot working in his favor. For one, he lives in Iowa, which is a place God made for growing food. He has a beautiful, fertile piece of acreage, and he lives in a community of farmers, from whom he can learn a lot. 

But one evening he is walking in his cornfield and he hears a voice. “If you build it, he will come.”

After that, it’s one weird thing after another, and he ends up ploughing under his cornfield to build a baseball diamond so all the ghosts of ballplayers past can come out and play.

And his wife Annie gets it. Somehow, she gets it. But their relatives and the community all think he’s lost his mind. In Iowa, land is money. Your crop is your livelihood – it pays the mortgage, it puts food on the table, it’s what keeps the economy churning. What Ray is doing makes no sense at all. He must be out of his mind.

Something like that is happening in this episode from the gospel. Jesus’ family is really worried about Jesus. It is not clear what they have actually witnessed, but people are saying that he has lost his mind. And Lord, have mercy – When you hear those words, “people are saying…” you know trouble is on your doorstep.

His family members are not the only ones who want him stopped. Talk about Jesus has even reached Jerusalem and the temple scribes have come all the way to Galilee, so they could charge Jesus with doing the devil’s work. Which is very disturbing, to say the least.

The whole story is rather disturbing. His family, the ones who should know him best, are trying to restrain him from doing the work of his ministry. And the religious authorities, who should be encouraging of the kind of work he is doing, casting out demons and such, are flat-out condemning him. 

Yet, there are others – many others – who see what Jesus is doing, see who Jesus is. He has healing in his touch and in his words. He bears the power of God in his body. They will follow him wherever he goes.

The crowds of people will follow him. They know he is not out of his mind. They know he is not possessed by evil. These people – they get Jesus. As Jesus acknowledges, they are as close to him as family.

As the distance grows between Jesus and his family of origin, the bonds are forged between Jesus and his faith family. As the hostility grows between Jesus and the religious heads, a new faith is nurtured for the ones who see Jesus is creating a new way. 

“Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

This is one of several stories in the gospels where Jesus speaks against family. It is a kind of passage that makes us uneasy. Family is important. Family is where we learn about love and loyalty and how to care for one another. It confuses us, to say the least, when Jesus seems to urge his followers to throw out family like it’s just garbage. 

In disparaging family, Jesus is attacking the very social fabric. This is threatening, not just to his family members but to the leaders of this society, including the scribes who come down from Jerusalem. Yet, the crowds who have begun following him now, they are not alarmed. It may be that they can see something the others cannot: that Jesus is deconstructing one thing for the purpose of building something new.

He is the new wine that cannot be forced into old wineskins; he is the new light by which we may see God’s extraordinary purpose for us. He is the life through which we can see and receive divine love, by which the hungry are fed, the sick are healed, evil is overcome, the dead are given new life. 

Old structures have to give way to the new. Old beliefs and values have to be traded in for the new.

But, still, his family members stand at the edges of the crowd and insist that Jesus must be restrained. He must be stopped. This is not good for him; it is not good for us. 

The religious scribes march in and accuse him of doing the work of evil. They do not see something new and inclusive. They only see the destruction of something they thought was just fine. 

The call to follow God may sometimes set us at odds with the people we love, the people who are our people.

It may be helpful to bear in mind, at such times, that healthy family ties leave plenty of room for disagreement. Family is not required to be of the same mind on everything. And that is one of the things I love about the Presbyterian Church, in fact. Unlike some other churches, we are not required to agree on all things. There is lots of room for healthy disagreement, for respectful and loving dialog about all kinds of things.

As the Apostle Paul said in his letter to the Corinthian church, “love bears all things.” If we have love we can get through all kinds of disagreements, all sorts of struggles and hardships. Even in a relationship that seems as though it has reached a breaking point, there is still hope that love will prevail. In the world, as it does in the movies.

In Field of Dreams, the family dispute about the baseball field got so intense that Ray and Annie were on the verge of losing the farm. Annie’s brother Mark comes over with papers for them to sign, that would hand over the farm to the bank. But then something happened, and Mark suddenly sees it. He sees the vision, the dream, Ray and Annie have seen all along.

And so this is how I see the relationship with Jesus and his family. It’s not good right now, but this does not have to be a permanent break. If they can only see what he sees, there is hope. And for the scribes, too, if they can only see…

But if they do see, and still, they hold fast to their conviction that his work is evil; that the work of healing, of feeding, of overpowering evil with love, of making people as whole as they can be – if they insist that this is of the devil? If they reject the love that is God’s nature? Well, they have chosen to make that break permanent. God does not force us to accept God’s love. This may be the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit of which Jesus speaks. 

The hard truth is that we don’t have the whole truth. We are still works in progress. The best we can do – and must do – is to seek to stay close to Jesus, to follow the will of God. And a pretty good rule of thumb would be anything that brings someone to his or her fullest and most authentic personhood, anything that allows humans and all of creation to thrive, anything that increases love, is the will of God. 

It is a hard thing for humans to do the will of God, as Jesus says, when we would so much rather do the will of ourselves.

To be a disciple of Christ in the world today offers us many opportunities to make this distinction – between our own desires and God’s desires. But we can. We can be in that circle surrounding Jesus, following him, loving him. We can learn to see the world and everyone in it through the eyes of God. It just takes practice. 

Photo: ChurchArt.Com 

Called and Sent: Discipleship in the World Today, Part 1 - New Wineskins

Mark 2:23-3:6    

All four of the gospels tell us basically the same story, but each one bears certain unique marks that set it apart from the other three. Mark’s gospel is believed to be the first one written, probably around the year 70. It is short; it is blunt. Mark has two focuses: Jesus and his disciples. It is all about the relationship between them.

Mark wants us to have a clear and correct understanding of Jesus, in order to have a clear and correct understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

But the understanding is not easy, nor is it simple.

As you read Mark’s gospel, pay attention to his disciples and you will see a change happening.

At the beginning, they seem promising. They are eager, enthusiastic, even brilliant at moments. But as we read on, we watch that change. Increasingly, they fail to understand Jesus. And we see that their failure to understand leads them to fail in other ways too.

By the time Mark reaches the end of the gospel, the picture looks quite dismal, as the disciples flee the tomb and say nothing to anyone, because they are afraid. It’s all enough to make you want to throw a shoe at them.

But pause a moment and see how much we are like them.

The Gospel of Mark speaks not only about the relationship between Jesus and his first disciples, it speaks to the life of discipleship in every age. We are like them: sometimes enthusiastic and passionate. Now and then, we shine with brilliance. But much of the time we are hitting our heads against a wall, again and again, unable to figure out how to stop doing that and find a better way.

Even, at times, fleeing from the good news because we are afraid.

Yet Jesus continues to call us, imperfect and frail as we are, and beckons us follow him. So let us follow, right alongside these first disciples and see for ourselves.

Jesus is leading his new disciples through some fields, plucking heads of grain as they go, and consequently challenging the traditional sabbath laws. What about this was unlawful? Work.

Work of any kind was prohibited, and that would include harvesting, or even preparation of food. Eating, of course, was not against the sabbath laws. But any work of gathering and preparing food had to be done before the sabbath.

It seems a trivial thing. But the religious authorities, who cared very much about providing a system of rules that everyone could understand and follow, would not see it as trivial. Breaking a rule in a small way may very easily lead to breaking the rules in larger ways, and soon, there is the fear, the rules no longer matter at all.

Sabbath was, and still is for observant Jews, a way to mark them as different, set apart. It is about identity. We are the people who follow God’s laws and so we remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. And this is how we do that.

This is what Jesus confronts in that moment when he leads his disciples through a field plucking heads of grain to eat. His response to the Pharisees who question this is to say, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath;

so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.”

The tradition is not lord. The rules are not lord, but the Son of Man is lord, even of the sabbath.

I am pretty sure people were shocked to hear this. I doubt they were able to understand it, but it relates to something he said a bit earlier.

When Jesus was in Capernaum, he called Levi, a tax collector, saying “follow me.” He joined Levi and some of his friends at Levi’s house for dinner. And some Pharisees asked him why he is eating with sinners.

Later, he was asked why he and his disciples do not fast, as other devout Jews do. Interestingly, all these queries have to do with food. How we eat, what we eat, when we eat, who we eat with.

Jesus says to them, “Look. No one sews unshrunk cloth onto an old cloak; no one puts new wine into old wineskins. The old structures do not accommodate the new reality. The old patterns cannot contain the new dynamic.” Jesus cannot be shrunken, reformed, or cut into a shape that fits the old beliefs and traditions. Jesus is new light by which we may see the world God created and our place in it.

He is the lord of the sabbath: by his presence, brokenness will be made whole; evil will be overcome with good; death will be conquered by life.

And he calls us to be his disciples, to follow him. We learn to be like him from following him – as Eugene Peterson says, the long obedience in the same direction.

But it is not always easy to remember who we are following. On this long journey we lose our focus; we let our attention stray to lesser gods.

We make a shift we might not even notice and become disciples of a particular religious leader. And the lines between religious power, civil power, and political power get blurred. 

Maybe we turn to a politician, who becomes our north star. 

Do you see the danger? It is too easy for us to slide into becoming disciples of a false messiah.

It matters who you follow. Who you are a disciple of does and always has made a difference. Two thousand years ago as much as today. You will learn from, learn to be like, whoever you choose to be a disciple of. If you choose to follow Jesus, then what you will learn is love.

With Jesus, it’s about love. And what a powerful thing that is when it is set loose. And the strange thing about that? The world still cannot get their head around this notion. We are still trying to wrap up the good news of Christ in old ideas of power and tribal allegiances. We are still trying to put this new wine into old wineskins.

To put it in a few words, rules can be helpful. But they become unhelpful when you lose sight of the real point. The real point that Jesus teaches is that people are important, that community is important, that life is precious. The most important rule is to love one another. And figuring out the way to do that is a process we have to be engaged in every day of our lives.

Because you cannot put new wine in old wineskins. The old structures cannot contain the new reality. And Jesus is always the lens through which we may see, the light which will guide us forward. 

Trinity Sunday: Strange Gifts

 

Isaiah 6:1-8

John 3:1-17

When I was a freshman in college, I answered a knock on my door one evening and met three young women I had never seen before.  They lived a few flights up in my dorm and they were making the rounds on behalf of salvation. They smiled warmly and spoke in gentle voices and invited me to participate in a weekly bible study they were holding in their room. I didn’t even need to think about it; I said yes. It was like God had opened the door and said here you go.

I went to the bible study, and at first it was very nice. These young women radiated warmth and love, and I appreciated the things I was learning. But then suddenly one day it changed.

We were in our usual space, sitting on the floor together reading the scriptures and then the leader turned to me and asked me when I had been saved. I didn’t know how to answer that question. I was a Lutheran, we didn’t talk that way. When was I saved? What an absurd question. But when it became clear I didn’t have the answer, they pounced.

It was imperative for me to be born again, they told me. And if I were born again, I would know that I had been born again. There was no gray area in this business of being saved. I either was or I wasn’t. They were telling me that it was becoming pretty clear that I wasn’t. They told me that if I did not accept Jesus and be born again, I was most certainly going to hell. They said this in the sweetest way imaginable.

I left there in tears that evening, in fear and confusion. Because I had loved Jesus all my life. I had been taught that I am saved by grace alone, through faith alone. There was nothing I needed to do to earn it; indeed, there was nothing I could do to make it happen. God had already done this amazing work through Christ’s death and resurrection. I didn’t think a born-again experience was going to happen to me, and I knew I couldn’t fake it. Yet the certainty of these girls unsettled me, and I was afraid.

I understand why Nicodemus was disturbed by this talk of being born again. Because, to him that night, it seemed quite impossible. How can a grown man go back into his mother’s womb? How can anyone be born a second time?

Nicodemus got stuck on a few of Jesus’ words and couldn’t get unstuck. “How can this be?” he says. It’s possible Nicodemus didn’t even hear anything Jesus said after that. He seems to fade away into the night.

How can this be? Well, I could ask that question about a whole host of things, particularly on Trinity Sunday. When I think about Isaiah and the Seraphs, and the Lord God upon a throne before him. When I think about that live coal being pressed to his lips. When I think about the Spirit of God blowing where it will blow and somehow touching us, enabling us to be born from above, as Jesus says, I wonder: How can this be?

When I think about God loving the world so much that God gave his only Son so that we may not perish but may have eternal life. That God sent the Son not to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him, I wonder: How can this be?

I don’t have the answer to these questions.

When I think about the words of the scripture saying that God sent the Son for us and for our salvation, and that the Son sent the Spirit, whom he calls the Advocate, so that we would not be alone, I do wonder – how can this be? When I ponder the presence of God as creator of all things, the one who was present before the beginning of time, making beauty and meaning out of chaos, I wonder – how can this be? When I consider God as being incarnate, born of flesh to live and teach and heal and die for our sake to overcome death for us all, I do wonder – how can this be? When I think of God being present in our midst now, as Spirit, intangible, elusive, but powerful, I wonder – how can this be?

I don’t know how this can be. These are strange and mysterious gifts. And it is certainly not for us to determine how and when these gifts are received. Nicodemus walked away into the night without an answer to his question, just as lost as he had been before. He didn’t receive what he had come for, what he had asked for.

Isaiah didn’t ask for the gift that was given to him. As far as we know, he wasn’t asking for anything at the time. He was just minding his own business when the Lord and the heavenly entourage appeared before him, calling out to one another with words of praise, filling the room with smoke and noise and trembling. A seraph touched a burning coal to Isaiah’s lips and said, “Your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” He didn’t ask for this gift.

The wind blows where it chooses; you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with the Spirit of God.

Isaiah did not ask for this gift, but the gift chose him. And when the Lord called out, “Whom shall I send?” Isaiah said, “Here I am; send me.”

The Spirit blows where she will and how she will. And I wonder: Did the Spirit blow on Nicodemus? It didn’t seem so, as he skulked away into the shadows. But here is something else we should know about Nic.

Sometime later, in Chapter 7, we read that Jesus goes to the temple in Jerusalem and begins teaching, saying some very provocative things. The Pharisees watching become very agitated and want to have him arrested. But Nicodemus, who is himself a Pharisee, speaks up. We have not heard him speak since he said, “How can this be,” but now he speaks to the gathered Pharisees to urge restraint on them. Nothing bad happened that day, and perhaps it was because of Nicodemus’s words.

Again, Nicodemus disappears. We hear nothing more about him – until after Jesus is crucified. In Chapter 19, there is a man named Joseph who asks permission to take his body down from the cross. He arranges to have it taken to a tomb. And Nicodemus, who first came to Jesus under cover of darkness, brings a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloe to give his body a proper burial.

Did the Spirit blow over Nicodemus? Perhaps. We don’t control how any of this works.

So often it seems that the Spirit blows over us, surprising us, and moving us in a new direction – a direction of service, a direction of forbearance, a direction of love. Sometimes the earth shakes and the angels cry out and the Lord says, “Whom shall I send?” Maybe looking right at you when he asks the question. And you answer, “Send me!” and everything is changed.

Sometimes, you get blinded by the light on the road to Damascus like Paul did. And then you hear Jesus speaking to you. And everything is changed.

But other times there are gentle brushes – or nudges. Sometimes there are moments of confusion or surprise … questions that won’t let go – until the moment when you know you have to answer. Like Nicodemus when he spoke to the Pharisees in a critical moment; when he came to the grave bearing compassion and a lavish supply of myrrh and aloe.

The gifts of the Spirit are strange gifts. But somehow, they empower us to do the work of God in this world, which we know from the words of John chapter three, is the work of love.

I never had the kind of born-again experience that those girls in my college dorm wanted me to have. But I know that, in the years since then, the Spirit has worked in surprising and powerful ways in my life. No Seraphim and burning coals. Sometimes more questions than answers. Perhaps I am more like Nicodemus than Isaiah.

The gifts of the Spirit are strange, indeed. Let us be grateful for these strange gifts that empower us to do God’s work on earth.

Let us be grateful for those who stand up and say, “Here I am; send me.”

Let each of us listen for the call of love in our lives.

Photo by Helena Hertz on Unsplash 

True Friend

 

John 15:9-17      

In the musical, My Fair Lady, there is a young man who is hopelessly in love with Eliza Doolittle. He is trying to profess his love to her, then Eliza suddenly interrupts him, saying she is so sick of words, words, words. She says, “If you’re in love, show me!” Because words will only go so far in communicating something as big as love.

In the Gospel of John, God’s love is a clear thread running through it – and the gospel only has words to show us this. Jesus uses an awful lot of words with his disciples to show them who he is and what kind of relationship he wants to have with them. In John’s gospel we have the “I am” passages, where Jesus uses words to show his disciples who he is for them. And in recent weeks we have dwelled on some of these. Such as I am the good shepherd, and I am the true vine.

Not to say that he is, literally, a shepherd – or a grapevine.

When all you have are words, you try to use those words to spark imaginations. Words become images which can become truths that live inside of the listener. Sometimes it doesn’t work out well. You may remember the Pharisee, Nicodemus, who couldn’t quite grasp the images Jesus tried to convey to him about being born of the Spirit. But others who heard Jesus were better at catching the meaning – such as the Samaritan woman at the well, who easily flowed right along with Jesus when he said to her, I give you living water. She said, I’ll take it.

In the words we hear today from Chapter 15, the image is one that you might understand quite well: friends. We have friends. We know what they are. But I must confess that it doesn’t seem simple to me.

When I hear Jesus call me his friend, I am bowled over…staggered. This seems like a remarkable thing. In some ways it seems like too little – remember that guy, or girl, who said to you, “I just want to be your friend.” Yet, in other ways, it seems like too much, an impossibly intimate thing to have with the Son of God.

One year some college students I worked with created a sermon about friendship, and they managed to articulate seven distinct levels of friendship.  They drew a diagram that looked like a bullseye target.  It was the seven circles of friendship, kind of like Dante’s nine circles of hell – only different. The weakest levels of friendship were on the outer rings and the deeper levels were nearer the center.  It was surprisingly detailed – something, I think, only young people could create.  Friendship is to young adults like snow is to the Inuit people: something so central to their existence they are acutely aware of all the nuances. 

But even if you don’t have such a fine and variegated understanding of friendship, you probably would agree that there are a few different degrees, or kinds, of friendship.

Whatever Jesus means when he uses this word, it is clear that it’s not a word I can toss off casually or that I can afford to misunderstand. He tells me I am his friend, that he has chosen me for friendship. And I have to struggle with understanding just what that means.

What does it mean to call someone “friend?”

As I pondered the question this week, I realized I couldn’t do it on my own. I would have to turn to an authoritative source, and so I did. Facebook, that strange realm that invented a whole new meaning for the word “friend.” I asked my Facebook community what makes someone a good friend.

I got answers from a dozen people and found some consensus about what we value in a friend. We are looking for someone who is trustworthy, someone with whom we feel comfortable enough to be ourselves, someone who listens to us. We don’t want to be judged by our friends, but we do want them to be honest with us. Maybe. We want them to care for us, to want the best for us. We want them to love us, unconditionally.

One person said something that I found particularly helpful. That her friends tell her they love her, even when they know she is wrong. But they also tell her that she was in the wrong.

As I thought about it a little more, it occurred to me that good friends can make us better people, because when we are committed to a good friendship, we are practicing some of the things that make us more loving, more generous, more joyful people.

In this series on resurrection stories, we have been spending some time thinking about what it means to have a relationship with a resurrected Savior, and what it means for us to be resurrected people. We began with a few of the stories in the gospels about that very first day when Jesus rose from the grave. The ways he showed up for his first disciples share some common ground with the ways we might see him show up in our lives.

The message, essentially, is that we can enjoy the presence of Jesus with us just as the first disciples did because it is the role of the church to let Jesus live in us and through us. And we are most clearly able to see the resurrected Jesus when we are letting his light shine through us for the benefit of one another. The resurrected life of Jesus is most vivid when it is being shined outwardly, for the benefit of the world.

To be a resurrected people is to be a friend to the people God has placed in our lives.

I have used a lot of words over these past several weeks in my efforts to convey the ideas of resurrection life. But words are not enough and never will be enough. Eventually, all the words must point to something beyond themselves. As Eliza said, Show me! And the message of all the gospels is that Jesus did, indeed, show us. He said,

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. And then he showed us.

He also said,

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Now it’s on us to show him.

This is what Jesus is waiting to see, whether we will love one another as he loves us.

You may still be on the fence about whether you are prepared to lay down your life for a friend, even for a friend in the innermost circle of friendship. No one mentioned that particular quality in response to my Facebook query.

It’s okay, I think we all understand the ambivalence one might feel about laying down your life for anyone. But perhaps we can begin with a few small steps; with a willingness to lay down our agendas…to lay down our prejudices…to lay down our infernal busyness for a friend in need. We might be better friends if we could lay down these things. And with more people practicing real, authentic, and meaningful friendship, the world would be a better place.

Brothers and sisters, we are living in a post-resurrection world. Because Jesus lived, died, and rose from the dead, the world is a different place than what it was before. You and I know this. But someone outside the church, someone new to the church might say, “Show me!”

And that is a fair request to make. It will be up to us to show them, with the evidence of our lives.

Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash