When Love Offends

 

John 6:56-69

Once I led a group study on the Parable of the Prodigal Son. This was a good group to work with – they were mature in their faith and devoted to studying the scriptures. We were moving right along at a good clip, but they knocked me right off my rhythm when one of them said, “I don’t like this parable. It’s not right.” and everyone in the room agreed. They resented this wayward son and rejected the notion that he should be given such lavish forgiveness. It’s not fair, they told me. It’s not right. It offended their sense of justice.

I once had a conversation with a fellow church member about the Sunday sermon we had both just heard. He told me that even though he usually liked that preacher, he really disliked this particular sermon. He was offended by her interpretation of the Noah story in Genesis – that maybe it didn’t happen exactly that way. It seemed to him that she was saying the Noah’s Ark story we teach our children in the nursery is a lie and did she really think it was okay for us to tell our children lies?

I have learned over the years that people can get a little touchy about the word of God. Sometimes, of course, they love it. But other times they react differently. They are afraid. They find it offensive. And when I say “they” I mean me too. I am not exempt from this. I still have my old high school Bible in which I scratched out a verse I didn’t like. I found the teaching too hard; I simply didn’t know what to do with it. So I removed it with a ball-point pen.

I haven’t tried to remove any verses with a pen in many years. But I have other ways of rejecting things in the scriptures that I do not like. Dealing with this passage from John’s gospel has made me very aware of this.

The people who were listening to Jesus that day were uncomfortable with his words, and Jesus took note of it. He heard their complaints. He felt their reaction in his own body, and he turned to them and asked, “Does this offend you?”

I’m glad he asked that question, because it showed a healthy amount of self-awareness. Honestly, the things he was saying about eating flesh and drinking blood? Yes, they were offensive, and I wish he wouldn’t talk like that.

But he does talk like that. He has actually been going on like this for a little while now. Several weeks in our lectionary, portions of this conversation have been showing up and, frankly, I have been ignoring them. I did not want to talk to you about this stuff.

So I ignored it. And I checked to see what was going on in the Old Testament and in the Epistles. Or the Psalms. The Psalms are usually a safe bet; they can be counted on not to give offense to anyone, except on those very few occasions when they are extremely offensive to everyone.

I will tell you the truth: the scriptures are sometimes offensive, for any number of reasons. They offend our sense of reason, or they offend our sense of what is good and acceptable. They offend our assessment of our own intelligence, or they offend the very foundations of our beliefs. And just as much, when we start talking about them, grappling with these words that are strange or offensive or cringy, trying to reconcile the word of God with our hearts and minds and spirits and experience of life, when we voice our thoughts and feelings we risk offending one another.

Once I began an adult class by reading a passage from the Gospel of John where the resurrected Jesus stands on the shore and calls to his disciples who are out fishing. Peter, who was apparently overcome with excitement, put on his clothes and jumped in the lake and swam to shore. I said to the group, “Peter put on his clothes and jumped in? Does that seem weird to you?” Most everyone laughed and agreed; yeah, it’s a weird image. But one person quietly fumed. “No, it is not weird,” she said, “and maybe if you knew the scriptures as well as I do you wouldn’t think that.”

Part of me felt sorry to have offended her. But I wasn’t really. Because this was a little thing, and if something this little offended her what in the world was she doing with the big things? And there are a lot of big things – we are talking about Jesus, and Jesus has been offending people for two thousand years. This will probably not change.

I am trying to get used to this. Trying to pay attention to how I might cringe a little when I come across an offensive passage. Because, sooner or later, the Spirit will help me recognize that it offends me because it is hard for me. Not necessarily because it is wrong, but because it is hard. Like his followers said to him in this story from John, these teachings are difficult.

So many of them are.

It was difficult when he said to a potential disciple, “Let the dead bury the dead.” It was difficult when he said to a rich young man, “You must sell everything that you own,” and it was difficult when he said to us, “Be perfect.”

It is difficult here when he says whoever eats me will live.

Who can accept such teachings as these? Not many.

I know this because people are beginning to drift away from him. The massive crowds that have been stalking him for a while now? They’ve started thinning out, because the going is getting hard. Because miraculous healings are one thing, but difficult teachings are something else altogether. To be healed, all we have to do is show up, but to be taught, we have to be open to learning something new.

In moments like these I go back to something I learned many years ago about the church’s two essential roles – it is, first, a hospital for sinners; and second, a school for saints. It is where we come to be healed of our sin-sick souls; and, when we are ready, it is the place that will begin to teach us how to follow Jesus, how to be like Jesus.

Both of these roles can be offensive. In so many ways.

When we want to use the powers that we have to draw lines that determine who is acceptable and who is not, Jesus comes along and steps right over those lines. And he says to the people on the other side of the line, “Do you want to be made well?” Jesus built this hospital for sinners and tried to make it very clear to us that it is open to everyone. It was never an easy message because the world he lived in had very clear ideas about who was in and who was out.

The woman with a hemorrhage – out. The man with a skin disease – out. Eunuchs – out. People of other religious traditions – out. The rules were clear. Everyone knew where the lines were, and Jesus was always crossing those lines.

He was always crossing lines that separated the good people from the rest, crossing the lines that separated the sinners from the sanctified, crossing the lines that separated the flawed from the perfect. In all these things he was saying, God did not set these lines. People did, and God will erase these lines.

And he said to us, “Go and do likewise.”

So he created a movement of crossing lines and loving people – even those outside the lines. A hospital for healing sinners, outsiders, untouchables, the broken ones. A movement for schooling up saints, training all of us to grow in love, grow in forgiveness, grow in acceptance of all the others. What Jesus created is a movement to wipe out the lines. Something that was – and still is – offensive.

Because when he says, you should love one another, even your enemies, people are offended. When he says, you should love your neighbor, and everyone is your neighbor – even the Samaritans, and the Palestinians, and the Israelis, and the Iranians, and the Russians and the Ukrainians, and the Democrats and the Republicans, because they are all humans. That offends people.

Sometimes, love offends people.

If you love someone you are not supposed to love – love between two men or two women, love between two ethnicities or races or religions.

People are offended – we hold tight to the lines. Because there is something in us that likes the lines that separate the good people from the bad people. There is something in us that is offended when people start crossing the lines. Any of the lines. Yet, in all these matters, Jesus wipes away the lines.

Rachel Held Evans put it well when she said, “What makes the gospel offensive isn't who it keeps out, but who it lets in.” Rachel was brought up in a church where there was a lot of attention on the lines and keeping people on their side of the lines. But her love for Jesus eventually led her to see things differently. And when she started saying it out loud…then people thought she was being offensive.

Offensive like Jesus. Offensive like the gospel.

When we are so busy tending the lines and getting offended by people who want to mess with the lines, we are probably forgetting something important: all of us are on the wrong side of the line.

But then Jesus steps in our direction. He stretches his foot out and wipes away the line in the sand and he says to us, “Never mind that. Come and be on my side.”

Jesus came for all of us who were born on the wrong side of the line. He came so that we may have life, that we may abide in him, and he may abide in us. And when he says, anyone who eats me will live, this is what it means: take Jesus into your body, your heart, your mind, and your soul. Devour all of him. Absorb everything about him that is good and true.

And when we do this, we may join the company of those who wipe away the lines, those who forgive extravagantly and love abundantly. When we take Jesus into ourselves, we may become the ones who welcome radically and heal deeply and teach wisely.

I just remembered another thing that Jesus said: “Blessed is anyone that takes no offense at me.”

May it be so. Amen.

The Wish

 

1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14

Ephesians 5:15-20

The story of Solomon begins well before the chapter we hear today. It begins with the part we heard a couple of weeks ago, when David saw Bathsheba bathing on her rooftop, and he sent for her. He ignored the fact that she was married to another man and he took her for his own. And from this sin, others followed, like dominoes tumbling down. David atoned for it all, but the words of the prophet Nathan rang true: the sword was a constant presence in David’s household from then on.

The story of Solomon moves on to include deadly fights over the matter of succession. King David had many sons by numerous wives and, unsurprisingly, they were not all in agreement that Solomon should be crowned king of Israel.

Even before David died, there were negotiations in the works. Solomon’s mother Bathsheba and the prophet Nathan approached the king on his deathbed because another of David’s sons had seized power already, apparently hoping to make it look like a forgone conclusion before anyone noticed what he had done.

So David intervened to make it clear that Solomon was his chosen successor on the throne. But his worries were not yet over. He summoned Solomon to his bedside and shared his concerns and his final words of advice, sounding a lot like Don Corleone in The Godfather. “These are the ones you need to look out for; but you should deal loyally with these others.”

“Act according to your own wisdom,” he says to Solomon. “You are a wise man,” he says at another point. But his message is clear: Do as I would do. Do as I tell you to do.

And after David dies, Solomon again finds himself challenged by those who oppose him. And even though he tries not to, he eventually succumbs to the violent ways his father had recommended.

When God came to King Solomon and said, “Ask what I should give you,” Solomon seemed to know already what he needed: Wisdom. Perhaps he knew that with enough wisdom he would have found a way other than violence.

Solomon asked the Lord for the gift of wisdom.

I don’t know how many of us would have asked for wisdom were we in Solomon’s place, because in any given day there are so many other things we are want. We want more time, more energy, more health. We want more peace in our lives, more love in our families, more laughter in our days. We want to wipe away our pain, our worries, our debt. And, yes, much of the time our desires center on material things: a new car, new furniture, a vacation. Personally, I want a lot of things, I will tell anyone who asks. I am full of wishes and wants.

And even if we realize that most of these things we wish for would not be the thing to ask God for, should the Lord come to us and say, “Ask what I should give you,” I still wonder if our inclination would be to ask for wisdom. Because we might wonder: Would wisdom make me any happier? And, wouldn’t wisdom be, perhaps, somewhere down the list below other things like love? Like peace?

However you might answer these questions, it’s important to recognize the long thread of wisdom shining through the scriptures. You could argue it begins in the third chapter of Genesis, where Adam and Eve ate the fruit that was forbidden, for they could see that it would make them wise. Was it a sin for them to want wisdom? No. Their sin, perhaps, was to take it, rather than to ask for it.

There is much written about wisdom in the book of Proverbs, where the very first verse tells us that the book’s purpose is to impart wisdom. Proverbs 8 even says that wisdom was God’s first act of creation. The epistles of the New Testament also have plenty to say about wisdom.

If we still feel unclear about the value of wisdom, we might look closely at this story of King Solomon where wisdom is the centerpiece, and we might wonder what wisdom means in this context.

When we do, what we see is thankfulness. Immediately after his vision, Solomon goes to the ark of the covenant and makes sacrifices of thanksgiving to God. Do you think that thankfulness is wise? Does thankfulness come from wisdom?

We also see a concern for justice. Solomon built the halls of justice in Israel, with a priority for administering laws for the welfare of all the people. Do you think justice for all is a wise thing?

Solomon did so much that was good for Israel, but that is not the whole story of Solomon. As the years go by, for reasons I do not know, Solomon shifts his priorities. The legacy he leaves includes very severe and harsh policies that impoverished and enslaved the people. Cruelty that does not seem to show any trace of wisdom.

The author of the book of Kings seems to know why it turned out this way and tells us in Chapter 11. Solomon lost his way when he lost the ways of the Lord. He built altars to idols, he divided his heart, and he was no longer walking in God’s ways.

Perhaps the most truthful thing to say about wisdom then is that true wisdom is following in God’s ways. And the gift of wisdom grants us the ability to discern good from evil, to discern the true God from false idols, to recognize love and practice love.

Aren’t these things that you would want? If God said to you, “Ask what I should give you,” would you ask for this?

The letter to Ephesians tells us, “Be careful how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, for the days are evil.”

Make the most of the time by staying connected with one another, caring for neighbors near and far – we hold one another up, sharing our strength when we do so.

Make the most of the time by fixing your eyes on Christ, seeking to carry him in your heart and show that beautiful heart to all the world.

Make the most of the time by staying awake and alert to the needs of the world and the ways of God and holding before you the vision of God’s better world.

There is plenty of foolishness in the world – in the church, too. Foolishness is easy but does no one any good.

And then there is wisdom.

If God says to you, “Ask what I should give you,” choose wisdom.

No Longer Strangers

Ephesians 1:3-14

In 1871 two archeologists found a piece of engraved stone from the Jerusalem temple – the one King Herod built; the one that was destroyed in the year 70 AD. The Greek letters carved on it spelled out a stern warning: “No foreigner is to enter the barriers surrounding the sanctuary. He who is caught will have himself to blame for his death which will follow.”

This was one rule it appears they were strict about. No gentiles were permitted to enter the temple. But it was not the only rule. There were degrees of acceptability in the temple worship of the time. 

The outermost area of the temple was called the court of the gentiles, and it was a large, open, public area. Anyone could come into the outer court, and it was the place where pilgrims could exchange their currency and purchase animals for sacrifice. Within this courtyard there was a low barrier, called a soreg; a few steps past the soreg was a wall that separated the public area from the inner courts of the temple. Immediately beyond the wall was the court of the women, because this was as far as Jewish women were allowed to enter. Further within, there was an inner court, the place where the burned sacrifices were made. Jewish men were permitted to enter the inner court, as long as they didn’t have certain conditions that would make them disqualified. And finally, the innermost region, called the Holy of Holies, where only the purest ones could enter.

This notion of purity doesn’t have anything to do with whether you washed that morning with Ivory soap. It is a religious concept that is laid out in detail in the Old Testament books of Leviticus and Numbers. When you read these texts, you realize that there were many types of people who were restricted from participating in temple worship. Foreigners, of course; non-Jews, who were deemed intrinsically impure, were barred. Women; eunuchs; anyone with a skin disease; these were all restricted from entering beyond a certain point. But additionally, Jewish men who were imperfect in some way were prevented from entering the inner region. The scriptures speak of the blind and the lame, dwarves, and hunchbacks, all excluded. Anyone judged to have abnormalities or deformities, excluded. There were many ways a person could be shut out.

But this is not just a Jewish thing, of course. It is a fact of human nature.

The human mind likes order, and if we can’t find it in the world around us, we create it. We divide people up into categories, and then judge those categories. So, in the end, there are those who are like us and there are others. These others might be frightening to us. They might just be perplexing to us. But often they somehow seem wrong to us. 

In the first century, the church was small but growing fast, and the question of who should belong was still a matter of controversy. Among those who gathered to worship, there were differences in race and culture, differences that really could not be erased. Nonetheless, in the church, the scripture says, there is no longer the circumcised and the uncircumcised. There is one body in Christ.

It was a matter that had been settled, at least in theory, by the Jerusalem Council – we can read it in the book of Acts, chapter 15. Yet, it seemed that the ruling did not manage to erase prejudices, strong opinions that the old way was the best way, that these newcomers just didn’t belong. It was an issue that needed to be addressed in many of the New Testament epistles, such divisiveness was being stirred up in response to the work of the Spirit. 

Like it or not, the Holy Spirit was crossing over boundaries and drawing diverse groups together in Christ – but those people were, maybe, a little averse to being drawn together. They remained preoccupied with their differences, and the ways those differences made them uncomfortable with one another.

There were the poor Christians, some of them enslaved, and there were the wealthy Christians. They had dramatically different lifestyles, obviously. And the wealthy ones were sometimes unable to comprehend the unique challenges the poor ones faced every day.

We are still beset by these kinds of problems. It is hard for us to understand people who are different from us. For those who abide strictly by the law, it is hard to understand anyone who breaks the law. For those who are blessedly free of addiction, it can be hard to understand those who suffer under the weight of addiction. For those who have enough, or more than enough, it can be hard to understand those who don’t have enough and, to our minds, do a poor job of managing what little they have.

Put simply, it can be very hard for us to understand those whose path through life has been different from ours. And what we can’t understand, we judge. Still, while we continue to struggle with acceptance, the Holy Spirit goes on crossing boundaries, the work that Jesus began.

The radical thing that Jesus Christ did in his life was to draw the outcasts to himself. He healed those who had been thrown out of society, giving them a chance at reconciliation, an opportunity to be restored to wholeness. Jesus spoke to the gentiles and listened to them, giving them the respect others might reserve only for members of their own tribe.

The Apostle Paul continued this mission; he went out to the gentile communities. He listened to them and shared with them the good news of Christ Jesus. He told them this was good news for them, too. 

This letter to Ephesians speaks directly to the gentiles, saying you who were once far off, or aliens, have been brought near, by the blood of Jesus Christ. You who were once excluded: the gentiles, but also the women, the blind and lame and deformed, the sick, the imperfect. Now the walls and barriers have been removed, the gates are open. In Christ, all have been brought together.

For in him we find our peace. In him we are given a new identity. And in him we have a whole new way to frame our outlook on the world. 

For we once looked at the world as a framework of lines dividing peoples into groups, separating them from others. We found our identity by focusing on the lines and what they represented: differences in acceptability, differences in belongingness. The lines represented the ways we differed, and we defended the boundary lines because they defined who we were against who we were not: the pure on this side of the line; the impure on the other side. The lines defined us and them, friend and enemy.

But in Christ everything changed. And we no longer look to the boundary lines, but we look to the center, which is Christ. The holy of holies. He is our center, our purpose, what we are drawn to, where we find our peace. He is our peace. 

And so in Christ all come together. The circumcised and the uncircumcised. The slave and the free, the Jew and the gentile, the north and the south and the east and the west, all came together to find their peace in him. Turning our attention away from the lines that separated us and toward the center which now defines us.

We are a new creation in Christ; together, we form a dwelling place for God, with Christ as the cornerstone holding us together. Let me tell you: We need him as our cornerstone, every hour of the day and night, because we surely could not hold ourselves together on our own.

But together we are called to be, and called to live in unity, one body in Christ – a notion so radical it makes 21st century Americans shake their heads in disbelief. “You’re dreaming,” they might say. “Wake up. Get real. Leave that kumbaya stuff in church, you’re in the real world now.”

But, my friends, we have been adopted into God’s family, and that is not an identity we can take on and off at will. We carry this with us in every moment, every place; it unites us with all who are fellow members of this household, whoever and wherever they are. It is a blessing and also a calling, and it challenges us to live in a way that is different from what we encounter every day in the world.

It calls us to see one another differently, as brothers and sisters, all beloved by God, even while we struggle mightily to feel that way about one another. 

It calls us to cross those divisions. To leave behind the old ways of speaking about others. We are tempted to fall back, to use the language that we hear around us – language that comes out of division and aggravates that division. But as members of God’s household, we must leave that behind. We have no right to strip anyone of their God-given humanity.

We cannot call another human being vermin simply because we are on different sides of an issue. We cannot call someone a monster, even if their actions seem monstrous. These ones were created in God’s own image, just as we were. These ones we would call less than human, they are human, beloved by God, just as we are.

The words to the Ephesians are a precious gift, because they tell us we belong, we who were once outcasts, are beloved. And these words are also a calling for the whole church, to see ourselves united in Christ, to know ourselves empowered by the Spirit to carry Christ, who is our peace, with us into all the world.

And to show the world what Christ’s peace looks like, sounds like, feels like, tastes like.

The world says “hate,” but God says no. The world says we are hopelessly divided, but God says no. The world says, “build a wall.”

And God says no. No. I have a better way. And I call upon you to embody that better way.

May it be so.

Knowing Who We Are

Psalm 85:8-13

Ephesians 1:3-14

Just last week I was remembering a sermon I once heard that left me feeling both angry and sad. The preacher began in a lighthearted manner, real folksy, telling lots of stories about this and that. Nothing, really. He told some jokes at other people’s expense, making them look foolish, which I didn’t like. But I waited him out, to see if he had a point. And eventually, I guess you could say, he did.

Suddenly, his tone changed as if he flipped a switch. Now the folksy good humor was gone, and he was dead serious when he told the congregation that we had better get right with Jesus. “Because some of you,” he promised, “are going to hell.” 

If we wanted to be saved, he said, there was only one thing we could do, and we’d better do it. Or else. 

I don’t know exactly who he was talking to. Was there someone in the room who was known to have drifted away from the faith? Someone who he knew did not share his particular beliefs? Was it me? Maybe he could have walked around the room and tapped each of us on the shoulder, saying “saved” or “bound for hell” with each tap. 

As for himself, he knew where he was going. He was, most assuredly, heaven bound. But as for the rest of us, well, he had some real concerns and warned us not to make any assumptions about the fate of our immortal souls.

He wanted us to know, though, he was genuinely worried about our salvation and of course, he did want to see us all in heaven. If we could get it right. 

If we couldn’t? Well, wasn’t anything he could do about that. It’s in God’s hands.

So there you have it. God is a stingy and vengeful king. God is a bouncer at the door of the most exclusive club, allowing some through the entrance, while barring the door to others – those who haven’t managed to get right with him. 

The ones who are turned away might not even know how they missed the mark. Were they wearing the wrong clothes? Do they not have the right friends? 

All they know is that they fell short. They were somehow not good enough for God to love. 

Yes. That makes me sad. And angry.

Angry at the preacher, who abused the privilege he was given. And sad because this kind of theology hasn’t been killed off yet. It is a belief that has been shouted by countless preachers, to terrify their congregations – they confuse terror with what the Bible calls the fear of the Lord. It is an idea that has trained too many children to believe that they are bad at their core – period. It is a theology that has taught people to fear and resent God.

It is a theology of judgment, of arrogance, of callousness.

It is hard to see any grace at all in it. and that is a serious flaw.

As common as it is, I cannot believe that fear-mongering is what God wants us to be doing. Of course, if scaring people is what you want to do, you can use the Bible to do that. If making people feel shame about who they are is your goal, there is enough material you can misuse to do that. 

But I ask you this: what does it have to do with the God who created a world he called good, and who loves this world enough to die for our sake, and who promises us an eternal home with him? Honest to God, the through-line in the scriptures is the vision of love. God is love. And God’s grace will see us through. 

The Psalm we read today tells us so. It is a worship prayer, praising God almighty who has done and will do great things. In the first verses, which we did not read, the psalmist recounts all the gracious and merciful deeds of God: God has forgiven, God has restored, God has revived God’s people. 

And the psalmist asks: will you do this again, God? For we, your people who need forgiveness, who need to be revived – will you be faithful?

The answer is quick and sure. Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet. Righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground and righteousness will look down from the sky. What glory the world will behold! God is so good, and we are so blessed.

And in case we need more convincing, we turn to the letter to Ephesians, where we read that God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing, and that is good, isn’t it? 

We read that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless before him in love. This is extraordinary. God chose us from before the foundation of the world. Not from the time we got it right, but from before the foundation of the world.

We continue, and read that God destined us for adoption as God’s children – God chose us – according to the good pleasure of God’s will, to the praise of God’s glorious grace, which God freely bestows on us.

We have redemption…forgiveness…lavished with grace – according to the purpose of God, who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will. 

Not according to our goodness. Not depending on our ability to get it right. But according to God’s purpose. End of story. Alleluia. Amen.

The point of this text really is to say that we who are, in a sense, latecomers to the party are welcome. We who are not children of Israel by birth are adopted into God’s family – and not just on a whim. Indeed, God has had this intention from before the foundation of the world. We are beloved. We always have been.

The beauty in this is not just in the relief of being included, the sense that we, somehow, dodged a bullet. The real beauty and potency is in imagining all that we are enabled to do with this amazing grace God bestows on us. How much love can we get flowing through the world because of this grace lavished upon us? 

Can we who are healed extend this healing to others? Can we who are forgiven extend this forgiveness to others? Can we who are blessed by the God of righteousness and peace become instruments of righteousness and peace?

In all these things we are empowered by the love of God. Thanks be to God. And this, I pray, is what we will teach our children.

Some years ago I served a church where we held an intergenerational Sunday school class in which we taught the lesson that God created us good. The Bible says so, by the way. And after class a man approached our Sunday school teacher to say how concerned he was that we were teaching bad theology. He said, “You can’t tell children they were created good. They have to learn that they are tainted by original sin; that’s the only way they can be saved.”

There is not a day when the world does not tell us that we are bad, wrong, not quite good enough. We all get that lesson. The deepest need of every human being is to know that we are loveable. To know that God loves us. 

This is the key. We all know the ways we fall short. But when we hear God call us holy and blameless we know that God is looking at us through a lens of pure love. And wrapping us up in that love and grace. 

You see, it is not about knowing how bad you are. It is not about figuring out what you need to do to fix it, get it right. Because it is not we who get right with God. It is all God. The key is to know you are loved by God. To know that you are blessed in so many ways with the gifts of God’s Spirit. 

This is all I want you to hear this week. Next week, there will be more to say about how we respond to this gift of love. But for today, only know this is who we are: Beloved by God. 

Called and Sent: Discipleship in the World Today, Part 6 - Seeking Success

Mark 6:1-13

I am making a trip to Chicago in a couple of weeks. It is a journey I try to make once a year, to see family members who are still there. I grew up in the Chicago area, so this is going home, in a way. Even though I have not lived there for 40 years.

It is home also because I will be back with my people, the ones who have known me forever. And I feel pretty sure, based on my experience, that it will be a week full of love and joyful moments, and also some failures.

Some amount of failure is baked into the cake when you go back home. I will have expectations of someone that won’t be met. I will hurt someone’s feelings, and someone will hurt my feelings. I will have a knee-jerk reaction to something someone says, because that’s the way it always goes. In spite of my best intentions to be more mature, more compassionate, and wiser, I will have moments of behaving the very same way I have since I was a child.

We tend to have expectations of everyone in our lives, but especially family. And what that means is that we don’t let them change. 

It even happened to Jesus when he went home. 

Astounding and powerful things came out of his mouth and they said, “What? Isn’t this Mary’s kid? You know his brothers and sisters – matter of fact, they still live here, don’t they? Yeah, they’re just like us.” The folks from back home were not impressed with Jesus. Actually, they were offended.

“How dare he go and be all different! Who does he think he is?”

It’s quite possible Jesus knew it would happen this way. He probably knew they would give him a hard time. Even though he was “amazed at their unbelief” he must have known there would be pushback. I wonder why he brought the disciples along to see this. Was there something here for them to learn?

Is this their final lesson before he sends them out in the field?

Which is what he does next, with a few short and simple instructions: take nothing with you; make yourself vulnerable. Stay in the same place – if someone has offered you hospitality, be a gracious guest. And if you should find rejection, shake the dust off your feet as you leave. 

He prepared them for failure, because failure will happen. Probably a lot. 

The gospel has been met with rejection in all times and all places. People doubted that Jesus could do anything about Jairus’ little girl. His family doubted him when they heard people saying he was out of his mind. And his disciples, even they doubted him again and again and again. 

What all this doubt amounts to is rejection. Rejection of any hope that Jesus will heal you, enlighten you, feed you, or bring you good news. It’s sad, but true. And because of this, I must tell you two things you won’t like: first, rejection is inevitable in the life of a Christian. Failure is inevitable. And second, we ought to get comfortable with it.

I don’t know if I can say this too strongly, because the church has a triumphalism problem. And that is not an attractive quality.

This is something that probably started way back in the 4th century, when the emperor Constantine decided to take this scrappy little movement and make it the official state religion. Which was great. We won. 

No one could feed us to the lions anymore, just for being a Christian, because now being a Christian was a good thing.

Being a Christian was the best thing, the right thing. Winning.

And we thought this is something we could get used to – winning – and so we did get used to it. and we came to expect it. We thought it was our right and kept on thinking that for centuries.

When everyone in America was Christian, we did a lot of winning, naturally. Winning with the laws, winning with the custom of saying “Merry Christmas” to everybody and getting a holiday from work on Good Friday and so much more. So much winning, you could get tired of winning, as someone once said.

So much winning, we almost stopped being Christian. 

Because being a disciple of Christ is simply not about winning. It is not about having success, in any conventional sense of the word. The way of Jesus Christ is the way of the cross. And the cross looks to all the world like nothing so much as failure.

It’s not an easy road Christ has put us on.

For the sake of the gospel, we wake up every day with the resolve to be a force for good in whatever way is given to us. We go out with the conviction of faith in the risen Lord. We read the scriptures and we offer our prayers and we hope and we hope and we hope for success. Still, we will frequently be met by failure.

We are sustained through hard days by memory deep in our bones: the kiss of God’s amazing grace, the buoyancy of God’s healing power, the resonance of Christ’s peace. We go on, putting one foot in front of the other because, even when the road is hard, we are never alone on it.

We began this series six weeks ago, with these men who are called disciples, beginning their journey of following Jesus. I said to you then that as we watch the disciples through Mark’s gospel, we see them fail repeatedly. In so many ways. And I also said we are very much like them.

I told you it is crucial that we remember who we are following, because it will make a huge difference in the way we choose to live. If we keep our eye on Jesus, we will let his life be the model for our lives. 

We know now that the way will be fraught with uncertainties and that we will sometimes be plagued by fear. We will be tempted to put our hope in men and women and institutions, which will fail us. But we also know that one of the most precious gifts Jesus has given us is this gift of one another, so that we will never be alone with our fears and disappointments, and we will always have companions who may carry the light when we cannot do it ourselves. 

So our series is bookended, in a way, with the calling in and the sending out of the disciples. But there is another set of bookends, as well. We celebrated the sacrament of communion that first Sunday and again today. This sacrament is a gift, a strength, that we should never overlook. As Christ invites us to his table, we remember with head and heart and body and soul that we belong to Christ; that we are one with him and with one another.

This is our superpower, if you will. 

Disciples of Jesus, we look ahead and we see hurdles and impending crises. In the church, in our nation, in the world. Through it all, let us steadfastly hold on to our identity as disciples of Jesus. Let us embrace the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which enable us to always work for the cause of righteousness and justice. We will grow weary in our failures. But we know that in the end God’s ever-expanding love will win and that is the win that matters.

Disciples of Jesus, with all our heart and mind and body and soul, let us be on the side of love.

 

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.