Sermon: Finally, Someone Gets It!

First Presbyterian Church

November 3, 2024, Pentecost 22B

Revelation 21:1-6; Mark 10:46-52

 

Finally, Someone Gets It!

 

 

What makes a saint? 

This isn't about the technical qualifications for sainthood in the Roman Catholic church, nor even those qualities that we attribute to "saints" in a more informal sense, the types who would be first in line to get into that Holy City depicted in our verses from Revelation. Maybe you've seen the paintings, utterly pure-looking with eyes cast longingly upward, as if in constant seeking prayer. Even when the painting is depicting the martyrdom of such a saint, you can count on those eyes being directed piously upward.

This is, of course, not a tradition in which all corners of the church participate. Presbyterians, for example, don't "do" saints; if they did, however, you could probably find a large swell of support for one Rev. Fred McFeely Rogers, once ordained by a presbytery in the Pittsburgh area with a charge to minister to children and their families through the media. You might have heard of that show, ultimately titled Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.

So what is it about Mister Rogers, for example, or about anyone who comes to have so touched so many with good, to the point of being so highly regarded by so many? 

Perhaps in its simplest form, these "saints" get it, in ways that so many of us do not.

The gospel of Mark gives us a lot of examples of Jesus’s disciples demonstrating that they just don’t get it. Chapters 8-10 in particular bring this point about the disciples home with extra force, as they falter again and again in the face of Jesus’s repeated insistence on his coming suffering and death. Even the rare occasion of one of them seeming to “get it,” Peter’s proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah back in chapter 8, is immediately followed by Peter’s demonstration that he really doesn’t get it. As we noted two weeks ago, Jesus isn’t going to give up on them, since at that point he is literally in the process of giving his whole life, his very being, his soul for them. Still, you have to figure that it got frustrating.

We (along with Jesus) finally get a break from this relentless downer streak in today’s reading, when at long last we encounter a person who, in ways that are rare in this gospel, gets it. And it’s a person you might least expect to do so, to boot.

This passage begins curiously, with the terse statement that “they came to Jericho” followed immediately by the declaration that “as he (Jesus) and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho…”. What happened in Jericho? Is this like that popular line that got its start in TV commercials, the one about how “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”? What happened in Jericho that suddenly there is this large crowd traveling along with Jesus and the disciples? What do they think is going to happen, so that they choose to drop whatever they’re doing and follow Jesus? What do they want from Jesus? Do they get it any better than the disciples do?

Whatever the case may be, this newly enhanced crowd is making its way out of Jericho and comes within the range of a common fixture, one we ourselves can see often enough: a beggar on the side of the road. Mark gives us his name, Bartimaeus, and also helpfully translates the Aramaic name to tell us that he is “son of Timaeus.” We also learn that Bartimaeus is blind. 

Somehow, in the hubbub of the crowd, Bartimaeus picks out the fact that this person passing by is the one called “Jesus of Nazareth.” At this he springs into action. Notice that in his calling out, he doesn’t cry out to “Jesus of Nazareth,” but to “Jesus, Son of David.” Now that sounds like a common enough reference to us Christians two thousand years later, but this is the first time that term is used in the whole gospel of Mark. The second time it comes up is in the next verse. The only other time it appears is a couple of chapters from now, when Jesus is in dispute with some of the religious scribes and authorities. And as far as Mark is concerned, that’s it. It’s not a typical name for Jesus, at least not in this gospel, and that tells us right away something about Bartimaeus. 

In a way that almost nobody in this gospel has shown so far, Bartimaeus gets it. 

To call Jesus “Son of David” is to tap into some of the deepest, longest-held prophetic teaching of Judaism at this time. It reaches back, obviously, to one of the most revered figures in Hebrew scripture. It ties Jesus not only into a royal line, but also into one of the most treasured promises of that scripture, the promise of a deliverer, a redeemer, who would come to save his people Israel. A Messiah, in other words. 

We can’t claim that Bartimaeus gets everything, but he gets that much, and determines to call out to this Son of David. Getting shushed and shamed by the crowd (beggars weren't supposed to be this noisy) only jacks up his determination that much more. He calls out “Son of David, have mercy on me!” even more loudly. 

And Jesus stops. 

The crowd, quite likely, grows quiet at this unexpected stop.

Jesus says, “Call him here.” 

The crowd, up to now the ones shushing and shaming Bartimaeus, now calls him forward, and Bartimaeus does not hesitate. He throws off his cloak – quite likely his only earthly possession – and springs up from his blind-beggar position and makes his way to Jesus. 

Jesus says, “What do you want me to do for you?”

We’ve heard this before, just a few verses earlier in this chapter, when James and John come to him with their request for seats of honor in glory, a request born of their spiritual blindness. That’s what Jesus asks them, and Jesus asks that question again here, to a man pleading from his position of physical blindness. 

Bartimaeus keeps it simple. “My teacher, let me see again.” Notice: my teacher. Not the generic “Teacher” more commonly heard throughout this gospel, even from Jesus’s disciples. My teacher. Again, to a degree not seen so far in this gospel, Bartimaeus gets it. We still don’t fully understand just how much he gets it, not quite yet, but somehow, more than what we’ve seen so far, Bartimaeus gets it.

And Jesus seems to realize this. The last time he restored a blind man’s sight, back in chapter 8, the process was rather involved: spitting in the dirt to make some mud (sounds like an awful lot of spitting), applying that mud to the blind man’s eyes, then repeating the touch when the man reported seeing people looking like trees walking around. Not this time. The striking reply comes: “Go; your faith has made you well.” Then, Bartimaeus could see – no rinse-and-repeat necessary. One moment he couldn’t see, the next he could. 

Still, though, that wasn’t the final evidence that this once-blind man understood. That comes in the final phrase; once Bartimaeus had regained his sight, he “followed him on the way.” So far as we are told he didn’t even pick up his cloak. Leaving behind what, again, was probably all he owned, he followed Jesus. If this sounds like an inverse echo of the story of the rich man from earlier in this chapter, the one who left sorrowing at the thought of selling off all he owned, you’re right. Unlike that rich man (so far as we know), Bartimaeus gets it, and not only does he get it, but he also acts upon that understanding. 

Maybe this is our caution for the day. Whatever image of "saints" we may carry around with us, be they the pious ancient saints of those paintings or the ever-so-upright "saints" of our more recent church history, they probably don't include a blind beggar sitting on the side of the road. And yet it was exactly that man who "got it," and acted upon it, when so few others did.

For, finally, the one who got it, and what he teaches us, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #326, For All the Saints; #517, Hear, O Our Lord, We See You; #772, Live Into Hope

Sermon: Always in Need of Being Reformed

First Presbyterian Church

October 27, 2024, Reformation

Mark 12:28-34

 

Always in Need of Being Reformed

 

 

October 31, 1517 is commonly reckoned as the day on which a young monk named Martin Luther nailed a document to the door of the cathedral in Wittemburg, now part of Germany. The document outlined ninety-five “theses” or arguments against what he saw as corruptions in the established church of his time. Even amongst the many other documents or broadsides likely nailed to that cathedral door, this one did get attention, and the established church did exactly what you’d expect; set out to discredit and then disfellowship Martin Luther. Nonetheless his arguments caught on with many, some from genuine theological or ethical concern, others from political expedience. Eventually most of Germany and other northern reaches of Europe took on Lutheranism as their establishment church. In later years differing reformation movements broke out in France and Switzerland and later in England and some in a handful of other places; the former of those is the tradition from which our own Presbyterian denomination was born (after a side trip though Scotland).

Some observers have suggested that this is something the church goes through every five hundred years or so. About five hundred years before the Reformation (and these numbers are extremely approximate) was the Great Schism, when the eastern and western branches of the church separated, resulting in the traditions we know now as Eastern Orthodox and Catholic churches. Five hundred years before that, give or take, came the fall of the Roman Empire with which the church had become closely intertwined, ultimately progressing over many decades to the great reform of the church initiated by Pope Gregory. (You might say things moved more slowly then.)

Even rudimentary ability at math will tell you we’re right in that 500-year-give-or-take window following the Protestant Reformations. With all this in mind you’ll not be surprised to hear that more than a few observers of the church are suggesting that it is due for reformation, if not right smack in the middle of one already. To be fair, it’s hard to blame folks for that suggestion, as the state of the larger church these days is frankly low-hanging fruit for its critics:

Ø  A large segment of the church has disintegrated into little more than an appendage of a political party. 

Ø  A large segment of the church more closely resembles a media/entertainment empire than an agent of mission or worship.

Ø  A large segment of the church, in the face of evident decline in membership and finances, has taken up the mantra of “survival at all costs,” again without regard for mission or worship.

Ø  A segment of the church (perhaps not so large) resorts to social outlets and “gatherings” without much commitment or challenge.

Ø  And a segment of the church has basically given up, resigned to playing out the string the same way they always have.

Ø  To be sure, these characteristics overlap and intermingle across all reaches of the church.

And that’s just the church in the United States. We’re not even getting into what challenges the global church faces.

What has any of this, you might ask, to do with today’s reading from the gospel of Mark? Perhaps everything, if we pay attention to what question is asked, and how it is answered.

Since last we left Jesus in Mark 10, a lot has happened. Jesus and his newly-enhanced crowd of followers have entered Jerusalem (that thing we celebrate on Palm Sunday), and Jesus has disrupted the commerce surrounding the Temple. A fig tree got cursed. Jesus has since been under siege from one group or other of the religious elite of Jerusalem, putting up with “gotcha” questions and attempted rhetorical trappings. Jesus fended them off with some straightforward traditional answers right out of the Torah, some debunkings of the questions themselves, a parable about wicked tenants overthrowing their landlord that was clearly directed at those religious authorities, and probably a few facepalms – you know, that gesture that happens when it’s all you can do not to exclaim how ridiculous or just plain stupid someone else is being. 

One of the scribes has been observing the humiliation of his fellow scholars and perhaps wondering if he truly wants to be affiliated with them right now. He cuts in with the most basic question possible: “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus’s answer, far from being radical, is about as Torah as you could get, directly citing what we have in our Bibles as Deuteronomy 6:4-5. There are two interesting additions here: Jesus adds the phrase “with all your mind” into the mix, which likely pleased a scholar of the law, and added a second commandment from Leviticus 19:18; “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The scribe agrees, sounding out his agreement even that loving neighbor as self “is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Jesus’s semi-cryptic answer, “You are not far from the kingdom of God,” ends not only that conversation but the whole trap-question campaign – “no one dared to ask him any question.” 

As cryptic as Jesus’s last comment might have seemed in that instant, it’s not so hard to figure out in context. Think back to chapter 10 two weeks ago and the rich man who went away sorrowing when Jesus told him to sell all his stuff, give the proceeds away to the poor, and follow Jesus. Think also of Bartimaeus, later in chapter 10, who “immediately followed him on the way” after his sight was restored (and was presumably among the crowd that had accompanied Jesus into Jerusalem; we'll get to him next week). The difference, you’ll remember, was in the doing. We get no indication at all of how this scribe responds; Mark’s account moves on quickly to more teaching, and we never hear of the scribe again – after all, we are just three days before Jesus’s crucifixion. 

The implied challenge before the scribe is, I submit, where a modern impulse towards reformation might be centered. How much of what the church does and says and clings to in today’s world and across this country can’t be reconciled with those two greatest commandments? How much of the behavior of the church or its members across this country looks at all like loving God with all one’s heart and soul and mind and strength, and loving neighbor as self? 

You know what? I’m going to give our denomination credit. The PC(USA) is trying. It might not always be clear or effective, and you can be sure not everybody is on board, but with such efforts as the Matthew 25 initiative, there is at least the attempt to act upon that commandment about loving neighbor as self. It is, at the least, not going away sorrowing over the call to give up our possessions.

Two caveats need to be applied here. Other commandments don’t go away. Jesus doesn’t dispose of the law with this statement, even if he does assign a hierarchy to it. Loving God and neighbor comes first. Any one thing, anything at all that puts us in a position in conflict with loving God and neighbor needs to give way, no matter how righteous it might seem or might have been intended to be. 

The second caveat applies to the whole idea of reformation itself. One of the earliest quotables from the Reformed tradition – the branch we come from, that is – is the catchy Latin phrase ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda. It commonly gets mistranslated as “the church reformed, always reforming.” That’s a problem, because reformanda doesn’t really translate as “reforming,” but as “being reformed.” Grammar fans understand the difference, hopefully. Is the church acting, or is the church first being acted upon? From whence comes the initiative for being reformed, as opposed to merely reforming? 

Whether or not the church is truly entering (or amidst) a season of reformation depends tremendously upon this understanding. Given some of the behaviors and characteristics noted earlier, it’s not unfair to wonder whether much of the church has at all, at any even remotely recent point in its history, engaged in the simple yet profoundly challenging exercise of waiting upon the Lord. How often does the church or its leaders simply read scripture, instead of hunting and cherry-picking passages to prop itself up or denigrate its chosen enemies? How often does much of the church or its leadership, instead of praying for a lot of smiting of those chosen enemies or for the appointment of judges who will do what they want, simply pray “your will be done”? How often does the church love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength? How often does the church love its neighbor as it loves itself?

Any 500-year upheaval, any new reformation in the church will almost inevitably have to be preceded by a season of listening. Listening to God. Listening to those neighbors. Listening to the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned. Listening to those who aren’t white, or male, or straight. Listening to those who know what it means to be under somebody’s heel, and who have too often seen the church propping up that somebody instead of lifting up the oppressed. 

And all of this goes not just for the larger church, but for the individual church too. Without such a season of listening, of being in scripture and in prayer, and of making ready for and seeking the prompting of the Spirit, no church is going to come out on the other side of this pandemic time or this post-uprising time with much of a future, or even much of a reason to go on. There’s a challenge for everybody and every church, from the smallest family church to the largest megachurch. 

Let us pray, let us listen, and let us await being reformed.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise noted): #624, I Greet Thee, Who My Sure Redeemer Art; #---, O love your God with all your heart; #275, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God

Sermon: What Jesus Really Gave

First Presbyterian Church

October 20, 2024, Pentecost 22B

Mark 10:32-45

 

What Jesus Really Gave

 

 

I am old enough to remember The Andy Griffith Show, not in first-run but in the daily-rerun pattern of syndication. When you see a show that often, you learn certain patterns of the show. One of the more obvious patterns was that Barney Fife, the seemingly hapless deputy, would inevitably bungle something and Sheriff Andy would pick up after him. Another was that Barney would get far too agitated and want to do something rash or extreme, and Andy would have to reign him in. These two patterns, often in combination, constituted one of the show’s regular tropes.

I’m guessing that I’m not the first to wonder if Jesus’s disciples, at least as portrayed throughout the gospel of Mark, have a bit of Barney Fife in them. And yes, that would put Jesus in the role of Sheriff Andy, having to clean up after them (as in chapter 9, when the disciples can’t manage a healing without Jesus around) or rebuke them for their rashness (as in earlier in chapter 10, when the disciples were turning away those who were bringing children to Jesus). Perhaps the most prominent examples of this dynamic in Mark’s gospel are Jesus’s three proclamations of his coming suffering and death, and the inept response of the disciples in each case – such as Peter’s rebuke that in turn got him rebuked with “Get behind me, Satan!” in chapter 8, and then the chapter 9 argument among the disciples over which of them was greatest. Today’s reading seems to offer an echo of that second incident. 

The verses immediately preceding today’s reading make up the third of those disturbing proclamations by Jesus. John, who got all hot and bothered about a man casting out demons in Jesus’s name after the previous event, drags his brother James into the mess this time. They come to Jesus with the schoolyard-taunt request to be appointed to sit at Jesus’s right and left “in your glory.” You can imagine that if Jesus had acceded to their request, the two of them would have immediately gotten into a fight over which one got to sit on the right or the left. When this tiff comes to the attention of the rest of the disciples, more dissention breaks out. Deputy Fife has messed up again, and Sheriff Andy has to clean up after him. 

In short, the disciples still don’t get it.

One of the other features of that Barney/Andy pattern on the show was that no matter how badly Barney messed up, Andy never did give up on him. Andy never fired Barney (at least not for good) or ran him off in any way. Andy kept him on, kept putting him back to work. 

So it is, as we see, with Jesus and these dunderheaded disciples. No matter how badly they messed up or got crosswise with what he was teaching them, Jesus never did cut them loose. He continued to teach them, continued to lead them, and continued to love them. 

To understand the final portion of this reading is to understand – or perhaps to begin to understand – why that is. It is a deeply important statement from Jesus about his very reason for existing, his very purpose on this earth. And as with many such statements, we often interpret it poorly.

Jesus begins by drawing a contrast between the community of Jesus’s followers and the world around them, or what such a contrast should look like. Out there in the world the powerful lord it over the powerless, but that’s not how it works here. You want to be the greatest? Be the servant of all. You want to be first? Be the least of all. That’s why I’m here. 

Verse 45 then supplies the critical understanding, in two parts. It’s not that hard to grasp “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.” We’ve seen Jesus use that term for himself in Mark’s gospel, and the reversal of “not to be served but to serve” is clear enough, if rather unsettling to we who have lived in the world of social-climbing and career ladders all our lives. 

It’s the concluding phrase where we tend to get off track, and our misunderstanding tends to hinge on two words that jump out particularly strongly in this phrase. I know I’m not supposed to get heavily into the business of translating Greek in these sermons, but we need to get the words right here. In the spirit of Jesus’s argument here, we’ll take the last word first.

The Greek word λυτρον (Lutron) is translated here as “ransom,” and that would be a typical translation in most contexts. However, our modern concept of that word is narrower than the Greek meaning. Our minds most quickly associate “ransom” with a kidnapping or hostage-taking situation, in which some amount of money is demanded for the release of those held captive. This causes many to interpret this phrase “gave his life a ransom for many” as some kind of transactional ransoming; the forces of evil get to kill Jesus so we can go free. 

That’s not how the Greek usage of “ransom” works, though. That Greek word λυτρον doesn’t involve a transaction; there’s no payee. Instead, the “ransom” involved here (going back to the Greek verb λυω ‘luo,’ the root word from which λυτρον comes) carries the image of removing a hindrance or obstacle, or perhaps of loosening bonds or releasing one held captive. It’s not about our modern image of paying ransom; a closer modern metaphor might be one in which Jesus breaks us out of prison. Being ransomed is being set free. Being ransomed is being delivered from that which oppresses or destroys us. It’s not a prisoner exchange; it’s a total jailbreak.

The other word that often messes us up, tied into the whole modernized “ransom” idea, is ψύχην (psuxen), here translated as “life.” In this context Christian thinkers have long tended to use the rather shallow definition of ψυχην as basically what makes us not dead, whatever biophysical condition would tell a doctor that we are in fact living. Therefore, in this way of thinking, to say that Jesus “gave his life” has to be about the part where Jesus died, the part Jesus has been foretelling to his disciples three times now.

But that’s not all there is to ψυχην. It also carries the meaning of “life” as “that which is integral to being a person beyond mere physical function.” We might think of this as our inner self, or even what we call our soul. It’s the difference between “being alive” and living, one might say. 

And understanding this as what Jesus gave hopefully opens our eyes to what is really going on in this passage, and why Jesus keeps cutting the disciples so much slack. 

Jesus gave his living. Jesus gave his whole inner being, his very soul, everything that he said and did and felt and thought and lived for the ransom – the setting free, the breaking out, the releasing – of many, of us, of all of us here. We are cut loose from the chains that bind us by everything Jesus said and did. 

And when Jesus is giving his living, his whole life, his whole being for our redeeming and liberation, Jesus is going to hang in there with those dunderheaded disciples in ways far beyond anything Sheriff Andy had to do for Deputy Fife. 

Yes, the suffering and death are part of that whole life. If anything, Jesus’s suffering and death were the inevitable result of a life so completely devoted and committed to our redemption and liberation. You can’t go upsetting the tyrannical order of things, “the way the world works,” without coming to the kind of end that Jesus did at the hands of imperial power. And Jesus faced it head-on, embraced it even, as part of coming to serve and giving his whole being to liberate us all. Then of course there’s that resurrection part as well. But if you’re looking for scripture to justify some doctrine of substitutionary atonement, this isn’t it. Not at all.

A Jesus who gave everything that he was for our redeeming is not going to give up on us because we bungle it once or twice or a few times or several dozen times. A Jesus who came to serve with his whole life, every minute of his very being, and to teach us so to serve, isn’t going to bail out on us no matter how backward we get it. We aren’t abandoned, we aren’t given up on, no matter how much we still don’t get it. And that, friends, is our hope. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #299, Ye Servants of God, Your Master Proclaim; #65, Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah; #450, Be Thou My Vision

Sermon: Great Big Stuff

First Presbyterian Church

October 13, 2024, Pentecost 20B

Mark 10:17-31

 

Great Big Stuff

 

 

In 2005 a new musical, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,  premiered on Broadway, another in a then-novel trend of musicals based on movies instead of the other way ‘round. The movie in question had starred Michael Caine and Steve Martin as competing con men; the musical debuted with John Lithgow and Norbert Leo Butz in those roles. As the novice grifter introduced to Lithgow’s high-class world, Butz gets the big song; when Lithgow, having grown tired of this penny-ante grifter, exasperatedly asks “what do you want!!??” Butz responds by gesticulating around wildly and shouting “I want this!!”, and then breaking into his big number that sums up everything he has seen and now wants for himself. It is simply titled “Great Big Stuff.”

It’s not the worst summary of one of the seemingly chronic conditions of our world; humans see, and then humans want. For example, it’s a driving premise behind an awful lot of the entertainment that passes by on our various screens, going back at least as far as reality-show predecessors like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous or opulent prime-time dramas such as Dallas or Dynasty. (Yes, I’m dating myself, but I know many of you know what I’m talking about.) Sure, the dysfunction of the characters of those shows counts for a lot of the alleged entertainment value, but so does the “great big stuff” those characters possess. We see, and then we want. That’s been a defining characteristic of humanity in general for a very long time.

It's also worth acknowledging that the church has not been free of that inclination, in any age of its history. Just to throw out one example, you might remember the televangelist Jim Bakker (the one with two “k”s in his name) being at least as interested in accumulating wealth as in preaching. He is, however, hardly the only example of such divided loyalty, and emphatically not the last.

Of course, today’s gospel reading isn’t very hard to tie into this human predisposition. The man comes to Jesus and asks the question that sets off this encounter: “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” That phrasing is interesting in itself; to speak of “inheriting” eternal life might offer some suggestion of how the man has gained the “great wealth” (or the "great big stuff") we learn of a few verses later. Jesus’s answer is also curious. After the seemingly odd digression over being called “good,” he lists a few of the commandments and law. While many seem to get agitated about the man’s response that “all these I have kept since my youth” as sounding arrogant or prideful, given the examples Jesus gives it’s not that shocking an answer. Personally, I’ve never committed murder myself, and a lot of people can say the same, just to take one of those.

The story gets a little more interesting after that answer. It’s a bit of a jolt to read that “Jesus looked at him and loved him…”. That’s not a typical response in these encounters. At the minimum it seems that Jesus is taking this man at his word, and that this man is not one of those who will appear in coming chapters of this gospel who are trying to trick or trap Jesus with their questions. Jesus seems to believe this man is sincere in his searching, and one might also guess that Jesus knows what’s going to happen when he gives his final answer.

Let’s make sure we take in that whole answer: “You are lacking one thing: go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Notice that the mandate here isn’t just about selling off those possessions, but also using the funds gained specifically to help those in need, and then turning to follow Jesus.

We know of course what happens next. The man goes away grieving, “because he had great wealth.” What we don’t know is what happens after that. When the man goes away, we don’t follow him; we are given Jesus’s words to his disciples about what had just happened. But we don’t know what actually happened to the man himself. 

In fact there’s a lot we don’t know about this man. Mark doesn’t even give the extra details that Matthew and Luke add, whereby we often call this person “the rich young ruler”; in Mark all he is is a man who “had great wealth,” regardless of age or social stature. We don’t know the nature of his possessions or his “stuff.” It’s entirely possible, given the Roman Empire setting in which this takes place, that among the man’s ownings are slaves tasked with overseeing his many possessions. We don’t know if there is family involved. We don’t know how far this man has come to see Jesus. 

But even more, we don’t know what the man does after he walks away grieving. For all we know, the man does exactly what Jesus tells him to do, sorrowing all the while. Maybe he’s one of those in the crowds that have accumulated around Jesus by the time he gets to Jerusalem. We tend to assume not, but we don’t know. What we do know is that he had "great big stuff", and the very idea of giving it up was shocking and grief-inducing to him.

The “shock” part shouldn’t surprise us. We are hardly the first age to assume that great wealth somehow means that God has particularly favored a person. The “prosperity gospel” might not have been invented yet, but those living under Roman rule were certainly led to believe that accumulated wealth and power and status were marks of divine favor from some deity or another. The idea of having to give up those seeming markers of divine favor likely made no sense in the eyes of this man or of anyone else listening to his exchange with Jesus. The attachment to his “stuff” was so strong, and so presumed to be so good, that Jesus’s words provoked a deep emotional reaction. 

After the man walks away, we get the rather famous line about it being easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. It’s one of the more quoted and quotable lines from Mark’s gospel, but also one that is easily misinterpreted. Is it merely the fact of being rich that makes it so hard? Or is it something about the condition of having many possessions that is the problem?

In a technical sense it wouldn’t necessarily have been hard for the man to sell all his stuff, give it away to the poor, and then come follow Jesus. It might have been an involved process to be sure, but you have to guess that if the stuff was good stuff, there would be people happy to buy it. Giving it away to the poor, again, would not be hard; in Roman society there were going to be plenty of poor people around. The hardest part might be tracking down Jesus to follow him once all those financial transactions were completed.

No, it’s not necessarily a hard task to accomplish. Involved, maybe complicated, to be sure, but not hard. What’s hard, of course, is the very idea of giving up the stuff, even if (maybe especially if) it's not the "great big stuff" from that Broadway show example. We get attached to it. It has sentimental value, sometimes. It gets connected to some special event or memory in our lives or family. It feels like giving up the stuff is giving up the memory.

Hopefully this reminds us of the lesson of this passage that is trickiest for the non-rich among us: you don’t have to have many possessions to be owned, so to speak, by those possessions. 

Our stuff, even if it's not "great big stuff," becomes our security, our comfort, maybe even our identity in some cases. Maybe it seems harmless to us. We can certainly point to others who have more stuff and fancier stuff and more extravagant stuff than we do, and perhaps hide ourselves from our own attachments by doing so. But do we still run the risk of being so attached to our stuff, so owned by our possessions, that we miss the kingdom of God?

There is that last paragraph of story, where Peter (rightly, in this case) points out that these disciples really didleave behind all their stuff to follow Jesus. Peter, James, and John didn’t even wait around to sell their fishing boats to jump on board with Jesus. And Jesus does in turn tell the disciples that their forsaking has not gone unnoticed; their sacrifices won’t be forgotten in this age or in the age to come. But even then, there has to be a precautionary note added, that even in that remembering and rewarding, there will be upsetting of the order of things – “but many who are first will be last, and the last first.” If you’re doing all of this sacrificing and selling and giving things away in expectation of being big number one in the end, you’re still getting it wrong. The reward is following Jesus. The reward is entering the kingdom of God. Period. Full stop. End of discussion. Ladder-climbing and gain-seeking and currying favor to gain more importance? None of this is part of the scheme in that kingdom, in this age or the age to come.

We are left with, in the end, a fairly simple question in the wake of this gospel story, one that is nonetheless dreadfully difficult and challenging to answer: what do we “own” that, in fact, owns us? And how do we give it away and follow - really, humbly follow - Jesus? 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #35, Praise Ye the Lord, the Almighty; #720, Jesus Calls Us; #729, Lord, I Want to Be a Christian

Sermon: One Table

First Presbyterian Church

October 6, 2024, World Communion Sunday

Isaiah 25:6-9; Ephesians 2:13-22

 

One Table

 

 

You might have noticed that I've got my white stole out this morning, which is actually recommended for Sundays on which communion is observed. I don't usually do that, though. That’s because if the white vestments came out every time the sacrament should be observed in worship, we would never get to use any other vestments. There is no qualified religious authority or text that gives a good credible argument for why the sacrament should not be observed every time a congregation comes together for worship, even including such occasions as weddings and Services of Witness to the Resurrection. The first reactions against weekly communion came as anti-Catholic backlash in some Reformed areas during the Reformation, and over time that backlash morphed into the perceived “impracticality” of weekly observance, and sometimes into a desire to keep the Lord’s Supper “special,” which is to say, I guess, that nothing else about worship is “special.” But for today's occasion of World Communion Sunday, I'll use white.

The occasion of World Communion Sunday, marked today in many Protestant traditions, provides an occasion to critique those reluctances among many other things. It might be worth remembering that there is nothing else we do in worship that has quite the direct mandate as this sacrament, given most immediately by Jesus on the night before his death. The church at large was quick to make it the central feature of their gatherings, even if the teaching/preaching parts of their worship took up much more time. They sometimes got it wrong, as we see from Paul’s reprimand to the Corinthians in chapter 11 of his first letter to them, but they did it. It is, in short, a direct ministering of grace to his disciples, and to us who follow over the many centuries as part of the body of Christ.

I wonder sometimes if there’s something else at work in some churches’ reluctance to observe the sacrament more regularly. It’s a lot of work, especially when pandemic conditions have not forced these little two-sided containers of “bread” and “wine” upon us, to get together that much bread and (in most Protestant churches) grape juice for particularly larger congregation, to be sure. It’s also true that it takes time. There’s also the matter of the awkwardness of much theology about the table; is Christ really present in the bread and cup, or spiritually present (this would be the position of most churches in the Reformed tradition, like us Presbyterians), or is it all just symbolic? And there’s also the challenge of acknowledging Christ as the one who serves us all, when any idiot can look and see that I am not Christ, and nor is any other minister presiding at table this morning anywhere in the world.

But I wonder if the biggest obstacle for some churches is that this sacrament is something we share – not just among ourselves in one sanctuary, wherever we may be, but with all the church in all the world. That passage from Isaiah, with its references to "all peoples" and "all nations," reminds us that this vision doesn't merely date from Jesus's last meal with his disciples; it was the stuff of prophets' proclamations as well.

I’m not sure everybody likes that. Particularly in this country, it’s kind of a thing for churches – especially those on the presumed cutting edge of contemporary worship – to pride themselves on creating a distinct “culture,” of worship and pretty much everything else. The implied promise is that You won’t find this experience anywhere else. That attitude, honestly, can turn up in a church whether it plays the hottest new songs on the CCLI worship music charts or fills the air with the sounds of Bach and Mozart. 

The Lord’s Supper, though, is not unique, and is almost designed to thwart uniqueness. You break bread and pass it around, and you pour out the wine or juice and share it too. The bread will be different in different places, but it’s hard to be terribly different about the observance of this sacrament. We kinda have to share it, and not just with that church a few blocks away we don’t like. We share it with a worldful of churches in places we don’t like full of people we don’t like, against whom we’d much rather discriminate.

Among many other things this sacrament, and this particular occasion of observing it, does to us is this compelling to see ourselves not as some kind of “special” or “unique” outfit but elementally as part of Christ’s body, the church.

We don’t necessarily like that. I know there are probably some churches in this town where I’d be horrified to sit through a worship service, and my own past traumatic experiences make it hard to conceive of participating in much of anything with some churches. But that’s not up to me, and those churches are part of the body of Christ too. So to with churches in Haiti or Lebanon or Gaza or Afghanistan (to the degree that any churches are allowed to exist there anymore) or any number of places in the world that too many of our leaders and people demonize at every opportunity. 

And yet here this particular table stands, one of many around the world where bread and cup will be ministered on this day, with absolutely no checkpoints or gates or gatekeepers, open to anybody to whom the Lord calls. It stands as an open rebuke to the likes of the “church growth movement,” a seemingly innocuous thing in recent decades that promoted the use of things like “market segmentation” to encourage churches to seek out their members in moderately affluent, middle- to upper-class, and almost exclusively white neighborhoods – “people like us” as many churches would put it.

There are Christians at tables around the world on this day who are, to say the least, not like us. The reading from Ephesians reminds us, though, that even we ourselves were “not like us” before the working of Christ’s mercy and redemption opened the good news up beyond the Jewish origins of its earliest followers. We “Gentiles” – i.e. anyone non-Jewish – were the outsiders. You might even borrow a Jimmy Buffett song line and say that we were the people our parents warned us about. Indeed, those in churches these days who want to keep folks “out” are only “in” by the grace of God, and they really don’t like being reminded of that.

If they don’t like that, they really won’t like eternity. The feast we keep today is, again among many other things, a foreshadowing of the great feast to come. It will be a real "y'all come" feast, with God's children from all over - "all peoples" and "all nations" - joining in.

But for now, until that day in glory, we keep the feast here in this one small corner of the body of Christ, one part of a world of Christ’s followers, seeking to be faithful and to bear witness. And we share this meal with Christians all over God's good earth, whether anyone particularly likes that fact or not. 

For the whole church in the whole world, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #504, We Come as Guests Invited; #---, When Christ's own body comes to table; #---, As we go now from this table 

I didn't think this was a literal thing...

Sermon: Know Your Place (in Creation)

First Presbyterian Church

September 29, 2024, Pentecost 22B

Job 38:1-11, 34-41; Romans 8:18-25

(note: above link contains all of Job 38-39)

Know Your Place (in Creation)

 

During the month of September, and sometimes into part of October, some Protestant churches observe what is called a "creation season," a period of Sundays in which scripture readings, liturgy, and sermons are chosen to guide Christians towards greater reflection on and understanding of creation as a work and gift of God, and the place we humans occupy as a part of God's creation. This year, your pastor was not quite on top of things to plan for a "creation season", but it seemed worthwhile to put forth at least one Sunday for worship and reflection on this theological reality. 

The thing about making plans for such a Sunday is that one can't know what'a going to happen between the time you make such a plan and that Sunday. In this case, nature offered forth one of its most brutal disasters in recent years in the form of Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 storm at landfall which brought destruction not only to expected places like the Gulf coast of Florida, but also into Georgia and the Carolinas. One doesn't expect a hurricane to trigger incredibly destructive flooding in the Appalachian Mountains region of North Carolina, but that precise thing is ongoing right now. Places suffering serious damage include the Montreat Conference Center, near Black Mountain, a site near and dear to the hearts of many, many Presbyterians.

To speak of creation and its theological implications in our time means not only acknowledging its sometimes-destructive power, but also acknowledging how human misuse and abuse have contributed to that destructive power. This isn't fun. There are those who refuse to acknowledge such a thing, no matter how clearly climate science speaks on the subject. We dare not come before the God of Creation, or the Christ we worship, with anything less than honesty; to do anything less is a profanation of the Lord's name.

Interestingly, one place in scripture in which creation is described and exalted, not only in its sweetness and light but also in its extremes and potential for harm, is in a book of the Old Testament which few people would think of: the book that tells the story of a righteous man who suffers mightily, betrayed by friends who accuse him of unrighteousness, but eventually demanding an audience of God to plead his innocence. We turn to the book of Job.

Specifically we turn to the thirty-eighth chapter of that book, in which Job finally gets his wish: God appears, “out of the whirlwind” and challenges Job to speak. Except, no, God doesn’t really challenge Job to speak. To be blunt about it, God challenges Job to shut up and listen.

Job had imagined something like what we would call a courtroom situation, in which Job would argue his case and convince God that his suffering was not right and not deserved.  Instead, God tells Job to get suited up and takes him on what amounts to a field trip through creation, for most of chapters 38-41. Even when Job tries to back down in the early verses of chapter 40, God is having none of it. Somehow, God’s answer to Job’s demands for justification is a cosmic nature hike.

God first interjects Godself into the ongoing debate with harsh words: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” In truth that could be directed at any of those involved in the conversation thus far, but Job is the one out front, and Job is the one who is going to take the heat here.

After challenging Job to put on his big-boy pants and get ready to be cross-examined, God takes off. In the course of chapters 38 and 39 we are reminded in short order that Job has been neither present for nor involved in: 

§  Measuring and laying the foundations of the earth, sinking the base of the foundation and laying its cornerstone, to the accompaniment of rejoicing from the stars and heavenly beings; 

§  Sealing up the raging rush of the seas “when it burst out from the womb” (that's some serious feminine imagery applied to a part of creation!), enrobing it in could and mist and fog, and setting its boundaries;

§  Ordering the dawn and the morning;

§  Plunging down into the depths of the sea and knowing its mysteries;

§  Knowing where light itself lives, where the snow and hail gather to descend upon the earth, carving out the channel for the rain and a path for the thunderbolt; 

§  Ordering the stars in their courses and constellations;

§  Calling forth the rain and lightning; 

§  Hunting down the prey by which the lion might feed its cubs;

§  In chapter 39, knowing the ways of the beasts of the wild, hooved animals and birds and the whole lot.

Like the Prodigal Son from the gospel of John, Job finds he cannot possibly contend with God and attempts to back down at the beginning of chapter 40. God’s not done, though. picking up again in chapters 40 and 41 with a downright rhapsodic celebration of two particular beasts, Behemoth and Leviathan. While some commentators try to equate them to native animals of the nearby Nile delta – the hippopotamus and the crocodile – they frankly sound more like creatures that should be featured in the Fantastic Beasts movies than anything we see walking around on earth. (It is after this that Job’s final reckoning with God takes place, but that’s the end of the book.)

It is wild and wonderful poetry, brash and exuberant and, yeah, a little proud in a way that a deity has a right to be. Truly, I do recommend that at some point you read these four chapters for yourself – not trying to discern the mystery or unlock some secret that will tell you when the Rapture is coming or anything like that; just read them as you might read from a book of poetry for once, and let the sheer beauty of God’s good creation wash over you and overwhelm your senses in its wildness and over-the-top breathlessness.

Still, though, we are left hanging, or so it seems. Yes, that’s lovely and all that, one might ask, but what about Job’s suffering? It’s still not fair. What does all of this have to do with that?

Theologians have grappled with this one for centuries, sometimes ending up in the theological equivalent of throwing one’s hands up in the air in resigned despair of ever coming up with an answer. I have no intention of claiming to be smarter or more gifted or more Spirit-guided than they; I can do no more than offer up one possibility, informed by other commentary. It’s deeply unsatisfying in a way and might even throw into question Job’s declared “innocence” in this whole matter, not to mention the our own. 

It is possible, that in all of this dialogue and diatribe and accusing, Job hasn’t even come close to asking the right question. (To be sure his “friends” have been even worse.)

There are many, many possible interpretations of this monologue from God here in chapters 38-41, more than can possibly be attempted in one sermon. However, the following takeaways from this monologue might be suggested, as a means of ordering what all of this means for Job, and for us, in understanding a human place in creation:

1) God orders creation for God’s own purposes and for the good of ALL creation – not just us humans.

This challenges us. This challenges how we read the Bible, and frankly how a lot of the biblical writers wrote. We tend to think that everything about creation is done for our own personal pleasure and comfort. We tend to sing songs and pull out Bible stories that make us the center of the universe. 

We’re not, not by a long shot. 

Look again at the creation as described here. It is broad and vast and unbounded and all the good words we say and sing about it without truly understanding what they mean. If we take this passage seriously, we have to understand that we are part of creation, and not masters of it. 

2) God orders and controls creation. God does not, however, tame creation.

Wild things are meant to be wild. God made them that way. Based on how Behemoth and Leviathan are described, God seems to like wild things that way. Not just the animals; wild winds, wild seas, wildness is a feature in the fullness of God’s creation, not a bug.

Also: remember The Lion King? The big hit Disney animated movie with all the creatures of the African savanna and the young lion with Matthew Broderick’s voice who had to learn to grow up and take his place as the head of the lion pride? Do you also remember the big song as this whole assemblage, this network of creatures, played out on the screen before us? What was it called?

[singing] Circle of Life?

Thing is, though, when you invoke that phrase – “the circle of life” – there’s something included in it that isn’t so much fun to think about. Part of the “circle of life” is no less than death. Death itself is programmed into God’s ordering and controlling of creation. As such, we should know suffering will happen, and not expect creation to get out of our way and avoid harming us at all costs. 

This thought leads to two related ideas:

3) If our lives seem disordered, we may need to examine whether we are truly living as part of God’s creation. 

Have we as humans lived our lives so determined on our own comfort and control that we have broken our relationship with God’s creation? Have we so separated ourselves from living with that creation, as part of that creation, that we do ourselves actual harm, set off illnesses and injury to ourselves and broken our very bodies and minds by our pursuit of dominance over and exploitation of nature?

And closely related…

4) If creation seems disordered to us, perhaps we need to look at someone other than God for a reason. Perhaps we should look in a mirror.

This is where it gets touchy for us, living as we do in a time where our relationship with creation, the struggle over living with creation or as part of creation against taming or dominating creation, is etched deeply within our very existence. This can be said of anyone living anywhere, but it stands out possibly most in the state where Julia and I used to live, the one known as the Sunshine State: Florida.

In the John Sayles movie Sunshine State, a developer who acts as something of a Greek chorus commenting on the movie’s action makes a few trenchant observations about living in Florida. People come to Florida, or at least some do, because of (what they perceive to be) nature, the “natural beauty” of the land.

Tricky thing is, though, if many of those people saw actual natural Florida, with swamps and wild grasses and prairies and alligators and mosquitoes the size of birds, they’d run screaming in the opposite direction. What they want is tightly controlled “nature,” highly groomed and manicured “nature” instead of the sheer wildness of God’s creation. That developer in the movie freely acknowledges that this is what he sells, describing it as “nature … on a leash.”

Trouble is, as we see too often and too easily these days, our attempts to “tame” nature and put it “on a leash” only make things worse.  We tame things with thoroughly unnatural chemicals and end up with red tide and toxic algae. We take out native plants and animals and bring in plants and animals that don’t belong here, and we end up overrun with the less desirable plants and invasive species (ask one of your south Florida friends about Burmese pythons). And yes, we overheat the earth so badly that, just for one most recent example, the Gulf of Mexico becomes a tropical pressure cooker, turning a fledgling tropical depression into a Category 4 monster (speak of a behemoth!) just in time for it to slam into the Florida Big Bend, which is only one example of such monster storms over the past couple of decades. Not to mention our nasty habit of thinking we tamed nature enough that we think it’s o.k. to build to the hilt right up on the coastline, right where those behemoth storms come crashing ashore.

If we think creation is disordered, yeah, we’d better look in the mirror. Norman Wirzba, now of Duke Divinity School, puts it this way in his commentary on Job:

An adequate understanding of creation and an honest estimation of our place within it require that we see creation in terms of God’s intention and scale. Attempts to reduce creation to the scale of human significance invariably result in pain to ourselves and in death to creatures around us.[i]

 

Let us be clear here; Job’s moral universe is being challenged for being entirely too small. And yes, Job’s presumed innocence is being questioned as well. 

For example: Lyle, what about those massive herds Job had kept before? Chapter 1:3 tells us Job had “Seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys” with his ten children feasting regularly and Job praying that they didn’t do anything stupid. For just one thing, how would that smell? 

I invite you to imagine the size of that stockyard. Imagine, if you dare, the smell of being anywhere near it, not to mention the amount of animal waste involved; that's an environmental nightmare. Could Job really manage those herds in a way that honored God’s creation around him? What was the effect of that massive operation on Job’s neighbors? Was Job actually that innocent, in the full scale of creation?

And what about us? What does our footprint do to others, even if we don't have that much livestock around?

We may need, in the end, to quit peering through the microscope focused ever so tightly on our own desires and comforts, and to spend time looking through the telescope that opens up God’s full bounty of creation to us. We may need to think less about how the world is crashing in on us, and more about how we’re crashing in on the world. It may be time for us to change glasses, go outside, and look at … everything, and ask not if it is ours, but where we belong in it.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless noted otherwise): #32, I Sing the Mighty Power of God; (Hymn sing) All creatures of our God on high, Every creature on your planet, #38 To Bless the Earth; #---, When earth is standing dusty dry; #37, Let All Things Now Living

 

 

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[i] Norman Wirzba, “God’s Measure of Creation,” Christian Reflection (2001), 24-29.

From a video of the famous-to-Presbyterians Montreat gate, with floodwaters pouring through after Hurricane Helene, 9/27/2024.