PROPER 24, B

Mark 10:35-45

Sometimes it is very frustrating that we don’t read the Gospels straight through in the lectionary. I mean, you can read today’s Gospel story and get that James and John are behaving in very undisciple-like ways, trying to trick Jesus into saying yes before they say what they want. But the full extent of their going astray is only revealed when we look at what has come before, some of which has not been read in this lectionary series.

The whole central part of Mark’s Gospel is bracketed by two healing stories in which Jesus heals blind men. Between these are other healing stories, but also the three times when Jesus tells his disciples very plainly what is going to happen to him.

The first time he does this, Peter rebukes him and Jesus says to Peter, “Get thee behind me Satan.” The second time he does this, we are told the disciples are afraid to ask him anything. And then we find out that on the way they were arguing about who was the greatest among them.

The third time comes immediately before today’s reading. “Jesus took the twelve aside and began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying. . . the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.

James and John, the sons of Zebedee came forward to him and said to him, ‘Teacher we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ “ Great response, isn’t it?

I have talked before about how the disciples just don’t get it, that they are so caught up in their own expectations of the Messiah that they can’t hear what Jesus tells them or are totally in denial.

Today, let’s consider another possibility. Maybe what they hear just scares them so much they can’t face it. Or maybe that fear drives them to seek some source of security. Fear is evident in Peter’s rebuking of Jesus. Death is not the end of the story any of the disciples are looking for. Both the second and third episode actually say the disciples are afraid.

Whether we see the disciples as sort of bumbling or as frightened, we can still sympathize with them. They are just like us! What do we do when we are afraid? Just take a look at what happened after 9/11. The rush to create some sense of “security” was fast and furious, and honestly without much thought.

Might that explain James and John immediately seeking some sort of security for their future? It seems a very human thing to do; to react to fear of the future by seeking some form of self-protection. They also do this without the rest of the group, as though there might not be enough glory to go around. And the others get angry because they see the behavior of James and John as an effort to edge them out.

Again, how human is this? As David Lose said on Working Preacher.org this week, “When we feel under attack, or afraid, or anxious, isn’t the temptation always to move toward self-preservation, give into our fears about scarcity, and see our companions as rivals rather than friends?”

He goes on to offer two reasons why this happens; first that as humans we are just insecure enough to believe that there is not enough to go around, money, love, whatever. And this inclines us to look after ourselves instead of our neighbors. Second, we have an entire culture that plays on our insecurity by claiming that glory is found in possessions, power, wealth, or fame. In our culture movie stars and athletes are paid way more than nurses, schoolteachers, professors, or pastors.

This is really tough to overcome. On the other hand, most of us who live long enough have found that having stuff doesn’t make us any happier, at least if we’ve never suffered extreme poverty. I suspect that each of us have also had at least some moments in our lives when we have experienced the truth of Jesus’s teaching in this story.

I know that the volunteers at Hospice always talk about how much more they have received than they have given. And anyone who has served others has known this joy, whether as a Mom or Dad, or helping a friend in need, or volunteering in any number of ways. This joy does not come just from the gratitude of those we have helped, but more from “our own increased sense of purpose, fulfillment, and courage.” This is the sort of glory that Jesus offers us when we follow his way of being a servant to others. He contrasts the way of the world, where the rulers lord it over their subjects and are tyrants, to the way of the Kingdom, where the greatest is the servant of all.

Those of us who have spent time with our Bishop Brian are aware of the extent to which he embodies this teaching in ways we have not necessarily been used to. Every time we see him, he asks what he can do for us, and seldom, if ever, says anything about what we must do for him, or because he says so.

Many Christians in modern culture would tend to focus most on the last line of this lesson, “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” The word ‘ransom’ means to buy back. Again let me quote from David Lose. “I have a hunch that the understanding the second half of that verse correctly rests in taking the first half more seriously. Maybe Jesus “buys us back” by showing us a way out of the devastating cycle of looking for glory, joy, and peace on the world’s terms by teaching and showing us how to receive by giving, how to lead by serving, and how to find our lives by losing them for the sake of the people around us that God loves so much.”

And one last set of comments to think about in the week ahead. These come from Charles Campbell writing in the commentary called Feasting on the Word. He agrees with Lose that fear breeds a desire for security, but goes on to suggest this:

“The central liturgical practices of the church (meaning baptism and eucharist) challenge all fear-driven quests for security and call the church into the alternative way of Jesus – the way of servanthood.” He goes on to describe that way as the antithesis of the Domination System (the term applied by Walter Wink to the way of the world).

The Domination System is marked by power over others, control of others, ranking of social orders and other forms of hierarchy, the division of winners and losers, insiders and outsiders, those who have honor and those who have shame.

In offering us a different way, the way of servanthood, Jesus sets us free from that system of domination. He ransoms us from allegiance to that system and from the fear and the insecurity that system thrives on.

We may not always be successful in choosing the way of Jesus over the way of the world, any more than the disciples were always successful, but we have before us this image of that way, the opportunity to choose that way, and a loving community to help us along that way. I hope that I can speak for all of us when I say, “We have decided to follow Jesus!” AMEN

Proper 23, B

Mark 10:17-31

Most commonly, this passage is seen as a stewardship story – if you’re going to get salvation, divest yourself of all that pesky money and help the church in her mission; or as a justice story – in order to be saved, give everything you have to the poor. Redistribute the wealth a little bit. Both approaches have merit and are quite legitimate. I see this today’s gospel offering as a story of healing.

In the gospel of Mark, every single person who kneels before Jesus on his journey is asking for healing in some form. For self or for others, but asking for healing. I don’t think that the rich young man is any exception.

We’d be hard pressed to name the disease, as would he, but he must surely be experiencing some sort of dis-ease. He was wealthy. In the reality of his first century world, that likely means he had status and a certain amount of power in addition to his wealth (I guess it’s not exactly unheard of for wealth, power and status to go together in any century, who am I kidding?). Yet this young man (in the gospel of Luke he’s described as a ruler) ran out of his comfortable, orthodox, proscribed existence into the path of a wayward stranger and fell to his knees at his feet, asking him for answers. He did not act in the manner of the Pharisees, trying to trip Jesus up. Kneeling at Jesus’s feet is too vulnerable a position for that sort of trickery. He must have experienced a profound sense of something wrong, something missing, something incomplete to do this dramatic, socially unheard of thing.

“Good teacher, what must I do?”

First hint that you are just not getting it at a really basic level – Jesus answers your question with a question. Jesus’s answer sounds a bit nit-picky – almost as if he is correcting the man’s grammar, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” Jesus is not being nit-picky, though. What he’s really doing is pointing back to God. God, in all God’s goodness, is the really important thing to concentrate on, not the afterlife, not your wealth, not even a charismatic stranger who seems to exude love and truth (even if he does turn out to BE part and parcel of God): concentrate on God. Or as rock star and social activist Bono (of U2) said, “Stop asking God to bless what you’re doing. Find out what God’s doing. It’s already blessed.”

Jesus goes on to suggest that one might live for God by living within the Commandments. I paraphrase the rich young man, “Yeah, I’ve done that. I’ve always done that. But something is still missing. Some powerful need deep within has propelled me into the street, away from the places I usually look for answers. Propelled me….to you.”

Jesus looked at him, loving him…..Loving him. I’ve never been so forcefully struck by this phrase as I was reading this passage this week. The image that came to mind is the heart wrenching, all consuming love that flows unchecked when I look into the faces of my children. Jesus was not giving this man set, pat answers, or simply trying to pass on truths to the disciples through his answers. He wanted this young child of God to find what he needed. “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” The young man, “was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions”.

Traditional interpretation of this passage contends that the man was sad because he wasn’t going to give up his possessions, and feared he would not get eternal life. But the scripture doesn’t really say what happened to the young man, whose name we never learn. “Go” said Jesus. And the wealthy man went. We truly don’t know if he went to find solace among his possessions, or if he went to sell them and return.

Consider this alternative. Perhaps the man was sad exactly because he decided to sell all he had, give it to the poor, and follow Jesus. The grief he shows us is the grief of ending his life as he knows it, as he heads for a new life in Jesus. That life may be spiritually rich and rewarding, beyond anything he has known, as Jesus later explains to the disciples, but that is later. Right now, he is giving up not just money, but all that it has come to mean for him: friends, independence, family, social standing, home, livelihood, religious standing, even the ability to follow the complicated purity rules. Taking the first step to a new life – not such an easy thing.

Jesus has told the rich young man to give up his possessions, to give to his neighbors. The man has, to this point, been defined by his wealth. Wealth allows him to live a life seemingly independent from God. Jesus asks him to redefine his life, in relationship with God and neighbor.

Each of us needs to prayerfully ask the question, “What separates me from God?” Wealth? Anger? Alcohol? Dysfunctional relationship? Social status? What things do I use to fill the empty places inside? Hard to identify those things in your own life? Fr. Richard Rohr offers this simple advice, “Beware of anything that you cannot not do.” Those things, whatever they may be, disrupt our relationship with God. They replace God for us. Giving them up sounds so simple, and is so extraordinarily difficult. It is the first step in healing. It comes with a cost.

As one commentary notes, “taking a first step is often very difficult and sometimes painful: attending the first AA meeting, calling the marriage counselor, talking with the son or daughter about the marijuana in the jeans pocket, coming ‘out of the closet,’ …hearing a call to ministry” (David Howell, Feasting on the Word), or maybe radically simplifying, reducing and redistributing the “stuff” in your life.

Don’t know how to take that first step? That camel in your life looking pretty immense relative to the needle? Marvelous advice from bible study this week – If you’re going to try to fit the camel through the eye of the needle, start with the tail (Carroll Thureen, personal communication). If your hump gets caught in the eye, let God take care of that. Start. It’s God’s job to worry about the impossible. For God, all things are possible. Take the first excruciating, grief filled, frightening step. Then take another. And another. Let the healing begin. The kingdom of God is unfolding, and Jesus invites us to join him in it. We cannot earn the kingdom, but we can embrace the invitation. Let us seek the Lord and live.

Fill us with your love, O Lord, and we will sing for joy….

Amen

The lectionary selection for the previous sermon should have been listed as Proper 22, B, not Proper 19. The listed citations are correct.

Proper 19, B

Genesis 2:18-24, Mark 10:2-16

I don’t want you to get the idea I would in any way avoid talking about the Gospel today. I wouldn’t want you to think I might procrastinate before tackling this challenging text.

But have any of you seen the movie “The Princess Bride”? It’s a marvelous story of fighting and monsters and revenge and, most importantly, true love. One of my favorite scenes features Inigo, a delightfully flawed, down-and-out, hero-at-heart. He asks his leader Vincini if someone could be following their little band. Vincini answers confidently, “It would be absolutely, totally and in all ways inconceivable”. But someone is following them. Inigo then observes to Vincini that the pursuer is gaining on them. “Inconceivable!” answers Vincini. But their tracker continues to close the gap. Finally, Vincini cuts the rope their pursuer is using to chase them up a monumental cliff face. The persistent stalker is not dashed to his death on the rocks as expected, but continues to climb. “He didn’t fall? Inconceivable!” shouts Vincini. Says Inigo, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Jesus has tough words for us today. Few people go through life these days untouched by divorce. If you have not lived through it yourself, you have almost certainly lived through the devastation of it in the life of a child, or sibling, or friend or other loved one. His words are harsh. He seems to describe an impossible ideal for marriage, condemn divorce and pass the judgement of adulterer on anyone who picks up the pieces and goes on with their life with a different partner. This passage and several like it are the historical basis for hurtful practice of ostracizing divorced people from the life of the church. After all, Jesus said it was BAD (in all capital letters) right?

Yet, like Inigo, I do not think it means what you think it means. At least not entirely.

To understand the scope of Jesus’ intent, we have to go back a ways. In Moses’s time, and perhaps slightly less so in Jesus’s, marriage was primarily an economic and political venture. Marriage joined families together; allowing them to create mutual offspring, and pool their resources, or at the very least depend on one another for protection and economic support. It was the basis of inter-family alliances. The woman and her sexuality was understood by all parties to belong to her father and family of origin until such time as that ownership was transferred to her husband.

The Pharisees come to test Jesus. They are not looking for answers. They know the law. Their interest is in tripping him up. The scripture in Deuteronomy (24:1-4) they cite refers to a husband writing his wife a certificate of divorce if he “finds something objectionable about her” The big controversy of Jesus’ day is whether it requires a fault as grievous as adultery, or whether snoring at night, burning the bread or an unfortunate tendency towards bad breath is adequately objectionable to throw her away and move to greener pasture. Moses wasn’t clear on that point, but he was clear that she must be written a certificate of divorce. This certificate, while it did not provide for her financially (there was no alimony, no child support attached to this sort of divorce decree), did mitigate the risk she would otherwise face of slander, rumor and shame. Moses did not actually say in this passage that a man could divorce his wife. He recognized that it happened, that it would continue to happen, and he codified a procedure that would mitigate the harm that came from it to some degree.

Hence Jesus’s reaction, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you.”

Jesus, as he so often does, goes on to not answer the question. The pharisees asked him if divorce was legal. He tells them instead what God intended marriage to be. Calling to mind creation itself, Jesus quotes Genesis and portrays the world as God would have it. As John and James Carroll write, “Jesus deflects concern from escape clauses to an embracing of the unity of partners that reflects the creative design of God” (Preaching the Hard Sayings of Jesus)

Jewish thought says God created woman not from man’s head to be above him, nor from his feet to be trampled by him or subservient to him, but from his side to be partners with him, side by side, on equal ground. Jesus here establishes God’s view of marriage as a relationship between two living, breathing persons, rather than an economic or political convenience.

Jesus’ words regarding adultery seem, to us, harsh and unforgiving. Yet, these words also serve to establish relationship and protect the vulnerable. We have seen that Moses protected women, to a limited degree, by codifying the certificate of divorce. Note though, that a woman could not initiate divorce. She had no rights, no personhood. Adultery was similarly male centered. In ancient Palestine, an unfaithful woman committed adultery against a man; an unfaithful man committed adultery against his wife’s family, not his wife. But Jesus says, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.” As John Kloppenborg writes, “In the Palestine of Jesus’s day, which did not permit women to initiate a divorce, the dignity of women was not…easily guarded. It is for this reason that Jesus uses the dramatic term “adultery” in so surprising a way. He thus brought sharply into focus the wife’s honor. It is as much to be protected and respected as the husband’s honor, and the woman is as vulnerable to damage [in the form of lost honor] as the male.” Crossan elaborates, “The opposition here is not just to divorce….The attack is actually against “[male centered] honor whose debilitating effects went far beyond the situation of divorce. It was also the basis for the dehumanization of women, children and non-dominant males.”

Interestingly, Jesus pronounces no judgement against the rejected partner. As one commentator points out, “He seems to be speaking specifically against those who leave their partners for others. His point is that divorce does not offer a legal loophole to justify adultery. That is, his strongest words are against those who initiate divorce as a means to get something else, sacrificing a spouse to satisfy one’s desires or ambitions.” (Matt Skinner, Working Preacher, 2009).

Jesus clearly does not like divorce. Which of us does? He makes no suggestion that it should be outlawed. He has the authority – he could. Instead, he holds up the ideal of relationship which calls all of us to recognize the humanity, the vulnerability, the honor of each person, within our marriages, indeed within all of our relationships.

It is no coincidence that we move from this discussion to the children – in Jesus’ day another group of non-persons, property of their fathers. Unnoticed and unimportant. The disciples try to shoo them away, but Jesus welcomes them. Children are open and trusting. They have not yet had time to learn hardness of heart. They have not yet had time to learn who is a real person and who is simple property. We must re-learn openness, trust, a willingness to be vulnerable. We do this through our relationships. The Rev. James Liggett was speaking specifically about church and marriage when he said this, but it applies to any relationship – to all community, “They are sacred mysteries, built into creation and into human nature. They are schools of love, gifts of a loving God. For it is not good to be alone; and the only way to goodness, to wholeness, is through commitment, relationship, community, and the grace of God.”

Jesus knows people. He knows not all relationships can or should stand. We are human and flawed. People change and bad things happen. But he holds up the ideal. Likewise, he knows we will not become children again, yet we must strive for open, trusting relationship, with God and with our fellow travelers on the way.

As we strive to touch Him, may Jesus take us all up in his loving arms and bless us on our way. Amen.

PROPER 21, B

Numbers: 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29, Psalm 19:7-14, James 5:13-20, Mark 9:38-50

Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.

Salt. Sodium chloride. Each of its ingredients is essential to our very life processes. As a compound it preserves and purifies. It adds depth to flavors and flavor to bland lifelessness.

Brother Moses. Now there’s a man with salt. Not much peace, poor fellow, but if ever a man had salt in himself!

The perpetually unhappy exiles are weeping again. They were slaves, Moses freed them (at God’s behest). They were starving, and they got manna from heaven. Now they’re tired of the taste of that heavenly food. Apparently even manna gets boring after a decade or two. Where’s the meat?! So they fuss and whine and complain endlessly to Moses, who once again works to solve their problems.

What I love about Moses, what makes me say has salt in himself, is the way that he talks to God. The popular book Eat, Pray, Love says “There’s no trouble in this world so serious that it can’t be cured with a hot bath, a glass of whiskey, and the Book of Common Prayer.” Brother Moses had serious troubles, but no hot bath, no whiskey, and no access to the Book of Common Prayer. Those beautiful, insightful, diverse prayers were not his to take comfort in or to share.

Just as well maybe. You never heard prayers like this in our cherished prayer book. Abused by his followers, over-burdened by God, his was a cry of desperation – I paraphrase, “Really?!? Really, God? What are you doing to me? Did I create these people? Did I create this mess? No? Well fine then. I can’t do it anymore. If you love me, kill me or fix it. ‘cause I just can’t do this anymore.”

How often do we with our hot baths, our whiskey and our very proper Book of Common prayer cry out in this way? I knew a woman who struggled with chronic illnesses, which included chronic pain. She coped well most of the time, but lamented to me one day about opportunities lost. “It’s almost like I could be mad at God,” she said. “But I keep praying….” “Have you told God?”, I asked her. “What?” “Have you told God…that you’re mad?” “I can’t do that, that would be disrespectful.” Disrespectful? Or honest and open and vulnerable and real?

The mystic Rumi penned,

Give your weakness
to one who helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.
A nursing mother, all she does
is wait to hear her child.
Just a little beginning-whimper,
and she’s there.

God created the child, that is, your wanting,
so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.

Cry out! Don’t be stolid and silent
with your pain. Lament! And let the milk
of loving flow into you.

Are you suffering? Pray. Cheerful? Sing songs of praise. The epistle lesson works its way through all the official types of prayer: adoration, contrition, thanksgiving, supplication; it refers to corporate prayer and private prayer, prayer for self and for others, prayer of words and of actions. James’ advice in the epistle we read today is, in a word, “pray”.

Prayer is one of the primary means by which we are voluntarily in relationship with God. Relationship with God seems to be precisely what God throughout time seems to be asking for. As we say each week, “Again and again, you called us to return….” “God created the child that is your wanting. Cry out…and let the milk of loving flow into you” By God’s love, by that relationship, we are transformed. By our transformation, the world is transformed. As Oswald McCall said, “Whenever a man [woman] prays, or so much as wishes he [she] could wish to pray but cannot, there is the Spirit.”

Oddly enough, that brings me to the topic of Hell. I know, it sounds like I’m starting a whole new sermon in the middle of the first one, but I promise I’m not. Jesus has quite a lot to say about hell (or at least about how to avoid it) in today’s Gospel lesson. I’ll be honest with you, I’ve never been one to pay a lot of attention to hellfire and brimstone sorts of passages. Whether that is avoidance or denial, or just the fact that the classic rendering of the hell makes NO sense to me in a loving, merciful God, I can’t say. Probably all of the above. Others may judge me on that score.

Whatever his own view of hell, there’s little question that Jesus is not speaking literally in this passage. He is not promoting self mutilation. He is emphasizing with the time honored tool of exaggeration the horror of stumbling; stumbling away from God, or somehow causing another to stumble away from God. He’s describing, metaphorically, the lengths to which one should go to stay in that relationship.

Passages like these have been used to develop the punitive picture we have of Hell. In the face of Christ’s own assertion that God loves the whole world and desires that all should be saved, that picture of deliberate eternal torture doesn’t entirely make sense. Consider instead the possibility of the equally horrific, but less punitive concept that Hell is a self imposed separation from God. As theologian Daniel Migliore expresses it, “hell is …simply wanting to be oneself apart from God’s grace and in isolation from others. . . . Hell is self-destructive resistance to the eternal love of God.”(emphasis added)

“Whenever a man [woman] prays, or so much as wishes he [she] could wish to pray but cannot, there is the Spirit.” Hell is where the spirit is not.

I don’t mean to suggest prayer as some sort of magic formula against damnation – “A prayer a day keeps the devil away” sort of thing. I mean to suggest consciously opening ourselves to meaningful relationship with God, even if it means cutting out the things in our lives which separate you from that relationship, exorcising our own demons, as it were, in the name of Christ. I think the desire for relationship rests in each of us. It is in the sense of need, of longing, of searching that we share. Prayer, in all its forms, is one crucial way to realize that relationship.

C.S. Lewis said a smart thing. (He said lots of smart things, really. I often wish I could think his thoughts. Since I can’t think his thoughts, I’ll quote them) He said, “I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God- it changes me.” Prayer is, in all its varied, vital forms, a transformative act. That open, honest, vulnerable communication with our creator transforms us. By our transformation, the world is transformed.

Holy God, may we be transformed through our relationship with you. May we offer to you the depth and breadth of our lives, and thus learn to experience the depth and breadth of your love. May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

Amen.

PROPER 19 B

James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38

Polls. Love them or hate them, we’ve got them. Marketing polls, opinion polls, internet/online polls and the all pervasive political polls. Especially in this season of our country’s political cycle we cannot escape them.

About a year ago there was a poll published in the Christian Post Reporter confirming what all of us probably suspected. This national survey confirmed that Jesus is a pretty popular guy. He’s the second most popular in the nation as it turns out. At 90% approval, Jesus gained higher ratings than the immensely popular Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, whose 89% approval ratings inspired the survey. (Jesus was edged out, incidentally, by Abraham Lincoln at 91%.)

Today’s gospel reading marks the midpoint of the gospel of Mark. Not only is it the physical middle of the book of Mark, but it also marks a sea change. Today’s reading marks the shift from Jesus’s journey across the countryside, healing and teaching and casting out demons to Jesus’s journey to the cross. At this crucial junction, Jesus seems to be running his own poll. “Who do people say that I am?” He gets an interesting range of answers. Elijah, John the Baptist, the prophets. Keeping some pretty good company in this poll so far. It’s not the answer he’s really looking for though, so he asks a follow up question, “But who do you say that I am?” In a flash of divine inspiration, Peter answers, “You are the Messiah.” Jesus makes no denial, but indicates that the results of this poll are not to be published.

Peter got the answer right, but it didn’t mean what he thought it did.

The lesson from James today illustrates with beautiful clarity the immense power of words, of human language. From our post-Easter vantage point, we can see that Peter was correct, but within his own culture, his own time, the word “messiah” conveyed precisely the wrong idea.

The idea of a messiah was popular in 1st century Judaism. The oppressive Roman regime was in full force, the Jews were oppressed and marginalized. The Messiah was to be Israel’s savior, the mighty warrior who would overthrow the oppressors, send the Romans packing, restore Israel to all its former glory, and serve as their honored king. The word “messiah” conjured images of military conquest, political domination, national supremacy. Any person with any sense wanted to ride in the wake of the Messiah, to enjoy the immense advantages of supremacy.

Small wonder Peter strongly protested Jesus’s prophecy of suffering and dying at the hands of the very oppressors that Peter meant him to overthrow. Unofficially appointing himself Jesus’s public relations manager, Peter basically says, “This is not the way to boost your popularity, Jesus. Suffering, rejection, and death are not big selling points for any plan. Can we tone down the gloom and doom stuff a little?”

Are we any different than Peter, really? We look to Jesus for comfort, to God for protection. We cling to our faith as some sort of insurance against the very things Jesus now portrays as his own inevitable fate: suffering, betrayal, even death. We, like Peter, set our minds on human things, not on divine things. As Christians, we say that we follow Jesus, but who do we say that he is? Messiah, Savior, Comforter, Prince of Peace, Lamb of God, Redeemer, Teacher. Powerful words, but what do they mean, really mean, to the deepest reaches of our hearts and souls?

As powerful as words are, no one word explains Jesus. Adding more words may not help. I read about one bit of graffiti, found I presume in a seminary:Jesus said unto them, “Who do you say I am?”
They replied, “You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the ontological foundation of the context of our very selfhood revealed.”And Jesus replied, “What?”

The words are not wrong. They give us structure, a basis. But to understand we must follow. The path Jesus describes is not an easy one. As G. K. Chesterton wrote, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and left untried.”

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian author, eventually a Nobel Prize winner, who spent about 10 years in a Soviet prison camp, incarcerated for daring to write truths inconvenient to the ruling authority. He described the power of denying self he discovered in the brutal, hostile environment of a Soviet gulag:

“From the moment you go to prison you must put your cozy past firmly behind you. At the very threshold, you must say to yourself, ‘My life is over, a little early, to be sure, but there’s nothing to be done about it. I shall never return to freedom. I am condemned to die — now or a little later. . .’ Confronted by such a prisoner, the interrogator will tremble. Only the man who has renounced everything can win that victory.”

Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Self-denial is never just a series of isolated acts of mortification or asceticism. It is not suicide, for there is an element of self-will even in that. To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Once more, all that self denial can say is: “He leads the way, keep close to him.”

Jesus did not ask his disciples; does not ask us, to suffer for the sake of suffering or to die for the sake of dying. He instead asks us to live. To live for his message, for the gospel of truth, no matter how inconvenient; the gospel of justice, no matter how unpopular; the gospel of compassion, in all its pain and all its joy.

As we journey together away from self, and toward life, I pray not that you walk in my shoes – nor I yours – but that together we walk so close to Rabbi Jesus that we are covered with dust from his sandals. (Neal Rylaarsdam). Amen.

PROPER 18 B,

Isaiah 35:4-7a, Mark 7:24-37

“Jesus set out and went away to the region of Tyre.” Tyre was a Phoenician city on the coast northwest of Galilee, about 40 miles from Capernaum. This means that Jesus was in Gentile territory. It sounds like he was looking for some peace and quiet. “He went into a house and he did not wish anyone to know about it. . .”

Last week we heard about how some Pharisees had come from Jerusalem to check out Jesus and to catch him in some offense. We’ve seen earlier this year that Jesus was not respected in his own home town, that Herod saw him as a menace. In other words things were getting hot for him, even in Galilee. And yet the crowds followed him relentlessly. He had fed the 5000 and cured many, but they always wanted more.

Notice that they did not demand sermons; they demanded miracles. How discouraging must that have been for Jesus? Reminds me of the people of Rome demanding bread and circuses. Throughout Mark the question is who is Jesus? The miracles are clues, if you will, they are signs that point to something else, that point to God and tell us something about the nature of God, but like the disciples we are awed by the miracle itself and fail to look further.

But there is no escape for Jesus. The Syrophoenician woman, frantic to find help for her daughter, seeks him out. When she makes her petition to Jesus, his reply is startlingly rough: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

This translates pretty clearly to us across the centuries. “Why should I waste my time and energy on healing gentiles, when my mission is to the Jews? I think we get it that the Gentiles are the dogs. We know they are considered to be unclean by the Jews. Barclay says that to call the woman a dog in that time was pretty much like calling the woman a bitch would be today. However, he also points out that Jesus softens this insult by using the Greek word for lap-dog, rather than a wild dog of the streets. He might have softened it further by tone of voice or by smiling. Or he may just have been too tired to rise to his usual level of care and concern for the other person.

Remember that the woman is bowing down at his feet. And her response may well have taken him by surprise, because it was quick and very clever. “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” This earns her Jesus’s respect and also his willingness to cure her daughter.

“Foreshadowing” is a literary term that describes the technique of hinting at dramatic events that are to come, so that the reader is not taken completely by surprise. This story certainly hints in several ways at the extension of the Jesus movement to the Gentiles. Jesus does in fact cure the woman’s daughter. He is escaping from the rebuffs and dangers he faces in his own Jewish community. Just so, the Jesus movement will later spread to the Gentile community when it is rebuffed by the Jews. This is the traditional view of the story.

I wonder if it might not be the other way around. That the encounter with the Syrophoenician woman may have opened Jesus’ eyes to the possibility that his message could be spread beyond the boundaries of the Jewish community, that other people were also hungering for the kind of spiritual food that he could provide. There’s no way to know, but this strikes me as one of the turning points in Mark’s gospel.

Jesus leaves Tyre and goes to the Decapolis, an area of Roman communities on the east shore of the sea of Galilee, another Gentile area. The first thing Jesus does is cure a deaf-mute and then try to keep it quiet. We’re told that his attempts did not succeed and the story was proclaimed zealously. The people were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

This reminds me of the disciples who were so relieved that Jesus calmed the storm that they didn’t even look at the meaning of the miracle. I suspect the same thing is going on here. To say that “He has done everything well,” is a kind of damning with faint praise. They are not looking at all beyond the physical healing to what it might imply about Jesus.

In the Isaiah lesson today it is proclaimed that when God comes to us, “then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer , and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.” So why don’t they get it?

The people are too astonished at the power of Jesus to heal. They want him to heal them or their friends or their family members. They don’t even think about whether Jesus is a messenger of God, much less God himself, or where his power to heal comes from, or what that might say about his teachings. They just want the miracles. They don’t see the miracles as signs of who Jesus is or what else he might bring them. What about healing of inner blindness? What about healing of the soul? What about healing of anxiety or evil thoughts? They all seem to be operating at just the literal level, as we so often do ourselves.

In their blindness they do not see Jesus for who he is. How often do we make the same mistake, not just with Jesus but with other people around us? How hard is it for us to see them as children of God? How often do we just live on the surface of life and spend our time and energy trying to avoid the depths?

The problem with this approach is that the life of the spirit, the spirit that dwells in each of us, is carried out in the depths of our being. If we avoid going there, if we avoid reflecting on our lives and our own strengths and weaknesses, if we avoid reflecting on what we’ve seen and heard, and don’t attempt to understand not just what happened but what it means, we weaken the spirit. Interpreting the signs is soul work.

And the signs are not just in the Bible but come to us in everyday things as well. The signs, the clues to God’s being, are everywhere – in nature and in people. Gather up some fall leaves; better yet, do this with a young child. Take a good look at the first snowflakes of the season. Think about the people who have inspired you.

We must pay attention to our spiritual life and nurture that part of ourselves to keep the spirit healthy, so that it can work with all the other parts of us to make us the best human being we can be. And we have to pay attention to the spirit in others if we’re to have any chance of loving our neighbors as ourselves.

That’s part of what we mean when we say, “Go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit!” Not just the power of the Spirit “out there” but the Spirit “in here” and the power of the Spirit in our neighbor. Recognition of that spirit in others helps us to love them in spite of their flaws. And always remember that it allows them to love us in spite of our flaws too. Thanks be to goodness of God!

PROPER 17, B

Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9

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

In other sermons I’ve talked about the purity code that was part of the religious life at the time of Jesus and beyond. I have explained how the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy was expanded by saying it meant not to do work and then going on in excruciating detail to pinpoint what was work and what was not. For example, peeling potatoes was work, but cooking them was not.

It’s easy to feel rather smug sitting here in the enlightened 21st Century, but the truth is that we do the same sort of thing all the time. It’s surprising to me how easy it is to fall into the sin of idolatry; that is, the sin of putting something else ahead of our loyalty to God. And also to slide into the sin of judging others, when their view of righteousness is not the same as ours.

When I hear the stories of Jesus’s encounters with the scribes and Pharisees, I always see myself as one of the disciples, cheering for Jesus to win the dispute. But I rail about the lack of manners and civility we’re seeing today. One time, when my son was grown, married, and the father of his own children, I stopped at his house for some reason. He was sitting at the kitchen table with his baseball cap on. I snatched it off his head, without even thinking, and hung it on the back of his chair.

I have to admit, that at that moment, I cared more about his lack of manners than his welfare, his kindness, or his troubles. Jesus would say that that is putting human tradition ahead of God’s commandments.

When I was growing up, back in the dark ages of the fifties, everyone wore dress clothes to church. Women wore dresses, heels and hose, a hat, and gloves. Women also wore very uncomfortable undergarments that held everything in place, even if they were skinny. The implication was that only loose women went around without such undergarments. You would not be criticized if you only had one nice dress, but you would be labeled “bad” or something worse if you didn’t wear a girdle.

Now is that really any different from what the scribes and Pharisees did? The problem with all the rules and regulations is that having them encourages us to judge others, which is also a sin, because that is God’s job. I’m not talking about the sort of discrimination that we use every day, but the kind of judgement that labels someone else as unrighteous, as a sinner, as unacceptable, so that we can exclude them from our society, or because it makes us feel good to put someone else down, or because we see ourselves as the arbiters of what is correct.

Isn’t that just a grown up version of bullying?

As we heard in the Old Testament reading this morning, Moses gave us the ten commandments, and warned us clearly about adding to them or taking anything away, but of course, that warning has long been ignored.

Jesus summarized the Ten Commandments into two simple rules: love God and love your neighbor as yourself. And still we find it hard to stick to the basics. Part of the trouble is that traditions are important to us; like ritual, they help to hold us together; they provide a framework for our shared hopes and dreams; they are necessary and useful, just like rules of the road are for drivers, or red and green markers for boaters. But sometimes we get so attached to them, that we loose sight of their actual importance in relationship to God’s law.

Think back for a moment to the time in this church when we got a new prayer book and when the liturgies of the church were updated. I went through that period at another Episcopal church, one that was near Seabury Seminary, so that we had speakers come to explain the changes being made and the reasons for it. We used all the trial liturgies and wrote comments to the national committee who were writing the new book. We sailed through the changes fairly easily.

My father and many of his friends had absolute snit fits about the new service. He even refused to pass the peace for some time. That one I couldn’t figure out because he always shook hands with everyone after church and he wasn’t hyper about germs. Maybe he just picked on that as a way of protesting the whole thing.

I’ve heard scary tales of the upset in many places when the altar was moved away from the wall. And I guess the basic truth is that none of us like change very well. And we’re all good at self-deception. I’ve promoted change in the church most of my life, but that doesn’t mean I accept it in other areas! Oh no. If I’ve made plans for today, don’t walk in and suggest that I change them!

One of the most extreme examples of holding to human tradition over God’s laws was portrayed in James Michner’s book, Hawaii. The missionaries, who went to Hawaii in the 19th Century from New England, still wore the clothes that were proper at home. The women wore corsets, long dresses and petticoats, the men wore their black coats over their shirts and pants and. . . . . they put on long underwear in November and wore it all “winter”. And they wanted the natives to do the same. This was the Christian way?????

As I listened to the Republican National Convention this week and as I will listen to the Democratic one next week, I’ll be thinking about what Jesus told us in today’s lesson. It’s a helpful tool for sorting out propaganda from fact. Jesus turned to the scribes and Pharisees and said, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

There’s more than enough hypocrisy on display at both conventions, in both parties. So who do we trust, and to whom can we go? Who is trying to convince you that some tradition is more important than the two rules of Jesus? Are their plans in line with loving our neighbors as ourselves or not? Who do you believe when they say they will work for the common good? You have to take a look past the rhetoric to what their plans actually will do.

Think also about your own biases and those traditions you hold dear. Could you let them go, if it was necessary to do so? Do they interfere with living out the rules Jesus gave us? Can you create other traditions that might work better?

In the Old Testament Micah asks, “And what does the Lord require of thee, but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

In the New Testament, Jesus says, “The first commandment is this: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is the only Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” AMEN

PROPER 15 B

Proverbs 9:1-6

Ephesians 5:15-20

John 6:51-58

The language of this reading is nearly offensive to me, and I wonder what a newcomer to the church would think about it. It is so visceral – flesh and blood – eating flesh and drinking blood. I’ve always had a problem with it because I’d like to think that we’re too civilized for cannibal language. The Jews who heard it would have had a problem too, especially about the blood, because of their dietary rules.

I think part of the shock to our ears happens because we live so far from the production of our own food. We go to the store and buy food already cleaned and wrapped in packages. It’s easy to forget that plants and animals have to die in order for us to live.

Pastor Irv reminded us of an old joke in Text Study this week, a joke about a pig and a chicken. The church in a small town was having a breakfast to raise funds for mission. In a farmer’s barnyard, a chicken walked up to the pig and said, “The church is having a ham and eggs breakfast this Sunday to raise money. I think we ought to go.”

The pig said, “No way!” “But why not?” asked the chicken, “it’s for a good cause.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” replied the pig. “They only want a donation from you, but from me they want a total commitment.”

Isn’t the ultimate commitment that of giving yourself for others? Wasn’t it just this sort of commitment that Jesus had that led to his death?

If, as I noted last week, we can understand the metaphor of feeding as meaning much more than just food, but as taking care of us in many other ways, then this must be present in the body and blood, the bread and the wine as well.

We can see this clearly in the reading from Proverbs, where Wisdom, personified as a woman, prepares bread and wine, invites those in need of help, and urges them to eat, laying aside immaturity and walking in the way of insight. Long before Jesus, the idea of food for the soul was alive and well.

Ephesians addresses the issue of wisdom even more specifically. “Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise . . .”

This reminds me of an old Indian tale about an elder teaching his grandson about the trials of being a grown-up. He said, “There are two wolves that live inside each of us. One urges us to do the right thing, to walk in love and harmony. The other urges us to do evil, thinking only of ourselves.”

“But Grandfather,” the little boy asked, “which one wins?”

“The one you feed,” he replied.

So, which one do we want to feed and how? Fast food or slow food; junk food or soul food?

This Gospel makes clear that one of the purposes of communion is that it allows Christ to abide in us and we in him. That means there is a direct connection or relationship between us. Receiving bread and wine that has been blessed by God allows us to lay aside our hurts, our brokenness, our anger, and wrangling, in order to become more like Jesus – to put on the mind of Jesus, if you will. To see things as He would see them. In other words, it is a source of insight – seeing into ourselves, or others, or the world, and seeing below or beyond the surface of things.

Something else Pastor Irv said this week. He has noticed that while most people receive bread with open hands, as we were all taught to do, some of them now take it from him. This is something I’ve also noticed and assumed it came from the relatively new use of intinction, so that the person is already holding the bread for dipping in the wine. But he saw it as the difference between receiving and taking. Subtle, perhaps, but something worth considering.

Our ritual should say something about our attitude and open hands make it clear that we are the parties receiving – not just bread and wine, but the gifts of grace, love, forgiveness, healing, care and wisdom from our God.

One of the commentators for last week’s lesson quoted from the work of Carl Jung, a Christian student of Freud. “Freud has unfortunately overlooked the fact that man has never yet been able, single-handed, to hold his own against the power of darkness. . Man has always stood in need of the spiritual help which each individual’s own religion held out to him. Man is never helped in his suffering by what he thinks for himself, but only by revelation of a wisdom greater than his own. It is this which lifts him out of his distress.”

This is the insight that Wisdom offers us in Proverbs; it is the wisdom we are encouraged to in Ephesians, and it is the wisdom and insight offered to us every week in the Eucharistic meal of bread and wine – a chance to connect with and receive from the living God, not just food, but healing, love, forgiveness, courage, and wisdom.

As I noted the last time I preached on this text, the Greek is even more visceral than our translation. Rather than to eat and drink, it’s more like to chew and gulp.

Well, to chew the flesh of Jesus and to gulp his blood is a proactive grasping for the Word, an attempt to incorporate it so completely in our lives that we are actually able to live as Jesus did. This is the act that goes far beyond believing or understanding or any other form of analysis. It operates at the gut level – literally.

Mere belief and intellectual consent are not enough for Jesus. We must commit ourselves body and soul as well. We do that by hearing the Word of God each week, eating the Word of God each week, incorporating that Word into our very being, and then going out into the world to make the Word come alive, to be the Word in the world. This is food that transforms us, so that we have the wisdom and courage to go forth into the world to transform others.

PROPER 14 B

1 Kings 19:4-8, Ephesians 4:25-5:2

John 6:35, 41-51

Jesus said to the people, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

Coming as this does, shortly after the feeding of the 5,000, it’s meaning may seem clear. On the other hand, while most of us have never experienced real hunger or thirst, we know that some people have, even if they are Christian. So what is Jesus really promising us here?

Let’s start at the literal level. God fed his people who were wandering in the wilderness after their escape from bondage in Egypt with manna, a form of bread. Each morning the manna would appear and the people would gather it and eat, but they could not store it up for later meals, so they were totally dependent on God providing it each morning. All they could eat was enough.

Then we have the story from Kings today of God feeding Elijah in the wilderness. He received a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. Twice. And it was enough to maintain him for another 40 days in the wilderness. There’s that number 40 again – so do not get too literal about this. The point is that this God feeds his people in times of trouble.

And since bread was the staple food of the time, the word bread and the word food are often interchangeable. When Jesus fed the 5000 it was with bread and fish. In all of these examples the food is real and it serves the purpose food does for us: it sustains the bodies of those who eat. It meets their present need.

In the feeding of the 5000 we also get a message about the abundance of God, about how a little can become a lot, and maybe even about how sharing what we have can stretch small amounts into large ones.

But when Jesus says, “I am the bread of life,” he is not just talking about food for the body. He’s talking about food for the soul. To understand this as his audience might have, we have to go back again to the Jewish scripture.

In Ezekiel 34 the prophet says to the leaders of Israel, “Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings, but you do not feed the sheep.”

And just in case you think the prophet is speaking literally, he goes on to say, “You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them.”

This passage makes it very clear that the metaphor of feeding is about more than just food. It’s about caring for your people, nurturing them, all the sorts of things Jesus tells us to do, and all the things he did for people and that God does for us.

Isaiah (40:11) uses the same metaphor: “He will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.” When Jesus says he is the bread of life, he’s talking not just about feeding us, but also caring for us in numerous other ways. Ultimately he is talking about the ability to live an abundant life, no matter what our literal circumstances may be.

As with bread, which represents food, which represents abundant life, the promise that those who come to Jesus will never be hungry or thirsty is metaphorical. Jesus is not saying that literally they will never experience physical hungry or thirst. Rather he is saying that they will be free of desire for stuff that doesn’t feed their souls. They will be free of seeking for more and more or whatever, whether money or fame or possessions or reputation.

I suspect that all of us have encountered people who are driven to chase after something so badly that they never have enough. They must continue to go after more, or feel that they are failures. This appetite is not about physical need, and to others it may be evident that they have more than enough, but they cannot be satisfied.

I believe that satisfaction can only come when we continue to ask ourselves, “What is enough?” and try to be realistic about it. I have a vivid, embarrassing memory about this.

I was visiting my cousins in southern Iowa one time, probably about 30 years ago. Joan fixed cold shrimp and served them in the sort of dishes you see in restaurants, where one bowl sits in another that has been filled with ice. I wanted them! Not to compete, but just thought they were so wonderful, cool, whatever. Eventually I bought a set of eight and put them in the cupboard. I have no idea now what happened to them, but I do know that they were never used. I often summon this memory when I’m trying to decide about what is enough, about what I really need versus what I want.

In our culture the word bread is often used to mean money. So to speak metaphorically, how much bread do you need? What kind of bread do you need? Especially in times of economic downturn, the fear factor enters into our considerations of money matters. This is understandable, but if we don’t recognize it for what it is, it can become a way of life – the habit of viewing the world through the lens of scarcity rather than the lens of abundance.

When Jesus offers us the bread of life, buried in the metaphor is the promise of a life of peace, which means a life without fear. This is hard to grasp and even harder to hold on to in a culture that is as fear-driven as ours is, especially since 9/11. When did gated communities become a standard part of our communal life? When did children quit walking to school? Or playing outdoors unsupervised? When did people start installing alarm systems or “safe rooms?” When did people begin to refuse to drive into the city or cities?

Walter Brueggemann, the OT scholar, claims that most of the 10 commandments are about creating a better neighborhood. I’d say that that’s what most of the teachings of Jesus are about too. If we accept the bread of life then we can live our lives as Ephesians suggested this morning.

“Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

As one of the commentators noted, Christians should no longer need to protect their egotism with lies and so are free to speak the truth. They can surrender their pride, and confess their faults. Only in a fellowship of repentance and forgiveness can truth telling become fully possible.

At its best, that is what the church makes possible. And the ritual of bread and wine is a constant reminder to us that God, our shepherd, feeds us and encourages us to see and seek his kind of abundance. AMEN