Sermon: To Be Thankful

First Presbyterian Church

November 24, 2024, Thanksgiving

Deuteronomy 8:7-18; Luke 17:11-19

 

To Be Thankful

 

 

I confess that I’m not used to Thanksgiving worship services. I’ve seen them before, mostly during my childhood and only a few as a member of the clergy. I should also acknowledge Thanksgiving as a national holiday does not necessarily have specifically religious origins (it was declared and fixed on the calendar by presidents ranging from Washington to Lincoln to FDR), and there were Thanksgiving observances in the Virginia colony as early as 1607 and even in Florida before that – well before those New England Pilgrims even showed up. But regardless of origins, Thanksgiving – or gratitude, to use the more theological word – is certainly a Christian ideal, one worthy for all of us to pursue.

Admittedly, at this time of year it’s possible to feel, perhaps, a little hectored or pestered about overtly displaying gratitude – maybe you grew up in a family where you had to say something you were thankful for before you finally got to dive into the turkey? I can’t rule out the possibility that the ancient Hebrews miiiiiight just have felt that way when Moses was delivering the speech recorded in our reading from Deuteronomy. (I’m sure we probably tend to view it like a scene from The Ten Commandments, with everybody looking reverently at Charlton Heston, but I’m not so sure that's how it happened.) Yes, Moses, we promise, we’ll remember. Really. We promise. But of course, continuing to read the history of that people in Hebrew scripture reveals that, in fact, they didn’t do such a good job of remembering; forgetting their God and pursuing idols almost as quickly as they settled down in their newfound home, then rejecting God's kingship in favor of a human king during the time of the prophet Samuel. So much for gratitude, hmm? So being reminded to be grateful is probably a good thing every now and then. 

But it’s also worth being reminded of what that gratitude was supposed to look like. That's a pretty fierce warning in verse 14, about how "your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God." The Hebrew people would hardly be the only nation in history to get all caught up in its own strength and forget about the God who gave in the first place. So evidently that's challenging enough; and there's a reason that verse 17 warns us about congratulating ourselves for accumulating wealth (a warning that quite a few people ignore completely today). 

But let's go back to verse 11. "Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws, and his decrees..." That puts a different spin on things. Gratitude, it turns out, isn’t just a frame of mind. It involves action. It means doing things, particular things. It involves living a particular way. 

In the story from the gospel of Luke, we do see action – we see a direct expression of gratitude. Of the ten lepers who are healed by Jesus, one of them turns back to offer his thanks to Jesus for that healing. 

When we tell this story we often make a point of singling out this one for extra praise. Often we do so as much by shaming or scorning the nine who did not return as by praising the one who did. It’s possible that’s not the best lesson on gratitude to learn from this account, though. 

For one thing, the nine were doing what Jesus told them to do. As far as we know, since they don’t show up again in the gospels, they went to the priests and showed themselves to be clean. Presuming the priest did his job properly, the nine were then “cleared” and allowed possibly to return to their families and freed from the isolation and expulsion that victims of leprosy suffered in that time period. You might say they got their lives back, and to them, that must have been the best thing ever.

The one, on the other hand, would have gained no benefit from a visit to the priest. You see, even if he was no longer a leper, he was still a Samaritan. The priest would have likely refused such a proclamation of health to a Samaritan. Even a return to Samaria might not have been of any benefit if Samaritan authorities found out that he had been healed by a Jew. In turning back to Jesus, the one in fact turned back to the only One who would receive him, and would in his final words acknowledge him as not only being made healthy, but also being made whole – so much more than simple physical healing. 

You can be healed of your physical infirmity and still be quite broken. What Jesus gives to those who turn to him is so far beyond physical healing. And that is most certainly worth our thanksgiving and gratitude. And what that gratitude looks like in practice? There are so many possible answers to that question.

One of them (yes, you probably saw this coming) involves this church. For many of you here it has been a locus of your faith and witness for years, decades even. Whichever is the case, being a part of this church is, on a very basic level, part (maybe even the main part) of your witness. It is part of your testimony to the goodness of God in your life, to the ways in which you have been blessed by God and supported and sustained by God, even how you’ve been picked up and been given new life by God when it all seemed to be over, maybe. So, yes, (here comes the stewardship part) how you support this church, this particular church in this particular place with its history and its present and its future, is a part of your witness to the goodness of God. Simple as that. 

[Distribute cards/envelopes with instructions, etc.]

The nine got their lives back, which is itself an amazing thing. The one received new life. In the difference between the two is all the motivation for gratitude we should ever need. 

For new life, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #336, We Gather Together; #367, Come, Ye Thankful People, Come; #643, Now Thank We All Our God

 

 

 

Sermon: Signs of the Times

First Presbyterian Church

November 17, 2024, Pentecost 26B

Mark 13:1-8

 

Signs of the Times

 

 

Every lectionary cycle ends basically the same way. The final Sunday of any lectionary cycle is celebrated as Christ the King or Reign of Christ Sunday. What happens the Sunday before that, however, can be a bit wild. 

Year A, on the gospel of Matthew, culminates with the barrage of parables Jesus lets loose in Matthew 25, just before all Hell breaks loose, in about as literal a sense as that phrase can be used, in chapter 26. Mark and Luke, on the other hand, choose to put forth a bit of apocalyptic teaching from Jesus. (Matthew also includes such an apocalyptic discourse from Jesus, but the lectionary framers chose not to include it; apparently two years out of three is enough.) Curiously, the start of the next lectionary cycle will also touch on an apocalyptic theme; we will be on to the gospel of Luke at that point, but the text will address Christ’s return, “the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” Don’t worry, after this you won’t have to hear about apocalypse for the rest of the lectionary year. 

But for this Sunday we come to this seemingly out-of-nowhere discourse from Jesus on What to Expect When the End Is Coming. As unfamiliar and different as it may seem, though, it is prompted by something very familiar in Mark’s gospel; a disciple vocally and obviously Not Getting It.

Hot on the heels of Jesus’s denunciation of the power structure of the Temple and its exploitation of those who partake in its worship (at the end of chapter 12), one of the disciples (mercifully unnamed) goes off in a tizzy over the Temple building itself: “what massivee stones! What magnificent buildings!” Jesus ends all discussion with the blunt assessment “Not one stone here will be left upon another; every one will be thrown down.” Only when the group has reached the Mount of Olives do Peter, James, John, and Andrew (something of an executive committee of the disciples) dare to ask Jesus for an explanation.

There is a bit of history, though, that can keep us on track here and keep us from going off on apocalyptic tangents too soon. While you can get a good argument among biblical scholars on the exact date, those scholars agree that Mark’s gospel was written some uncertain time around the year 70 – maybe a little before, maybe a little after. That date is very significant, as it was the year that, after extended conflict between Judean rebels and the imperial Roman occupiers of Judea, the Romans destroyed the Temple and much of Jerusalem. Jesus’s words here as recorded by Mark are describing an event that either is imminent or has just happened. There’s no forth-telling here; Mark’s readers will know exactly what this is about.

The aforementioned four disciples seek an explanation from Jesus on the Mount of Olives, but instead Jesus presses on with more detail and warning. Emilie Townes, biblical scholar and dean of Vanderbilt University’s theology school, summarizes the horrors described like so: 

The ebb and flow of creation as we know it, the relationships we have established, the cultural markers that help define us – these and more are now obliterated. This is total destruction at its sharpest. It is unrelenting and unforgiving, and no one – not even the faithful – can escape its devastating blows as the old age is swept away for the new one.

And that’s just these first eight verses, which Jesus, clearly pushing beyond that initial shock, describes as just “the beginning of the birth pangs.” The rest of Mark 13 gets even worse, at least until that appearance of the Son of Man with great power and glory (v. 26). That’s the thing about these apocalypses in the gospels; they end with the very thing we’re looking forward to, right? We long for Jesus to be present among us again, right? 

In the meantime, though, things aren’t easy. And here’s the kicker; no one gets off scott-free, not even the faithful. No one gets raptured away to be “kept safe” in the dark and dangerous times. And yet notice also that there is no “call to arms” here, no summons to battle. There’s nothing here about fighting to save … well, anything. 

What are we called to do, then? Keep watch. Beware. Keep bearing witness to the gospel. Endure to the end. Don’t be led astray by false witnesses or would-be messiahs. Pay attention to the signs of the times. Don’t be stupid enough to think you know when this is all going to happen. And one more time, in verse 37, “Watch!”

There are two things about this passage we’d do well to remember, lest we get too distressed or hopeless over it all. One: this is not new talk. Frankly, what Jesus is saying here is, more or less, boilerplate apocalyptic with a long, deep history in Jewish tradition. And at least in these first eight verses, the events described are, well, not all that uncommon. Would-be messiahs? Check. Wars and rumors of wars? Check. Nations rising against nations, kingdoms against kingdoms? Earthquakes? Famines? Check, check, check. We can certainly claim these things, but so can frankly almost any age.

Point two to remember is found in verse 8: all of this that Jesus describes is but “the beginnings of the birth pangs.” As one who has never experienced nor will experience that particular sensation, I would not dare to comment upon it. However, we have to note that the birth pangs are not the end-all and be-all of pregnancy; birth pangs give way to birth, new life, new love.

So it is with these times. The birth pangs of conflict and trouble give way to the new birth of life in the unending presence of Jesus, the Son of Man coming with great power and glory.

The times of trouble can be stressful indeed. Even the poet William Butler Yeats was struck by the sense of turmoil and discord and the loss of innocence that comes with these, in his poem “The Second Coming”; 

 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer; 

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

 

 

If that doesn’t sound familiar just from a glance at daily headlines, I don’t know what to tell you. And yet…and yet…and yet, here we are promised that for all the birth pangs, for all the trials and conflict and violence, our end is promised in the returning of our Lord among us. 

In the meantime, we endure. We keep listening to the Spirit, we keep studying what we have been given in scripture – not hunting and cherry-picking for stuff that gives us an excuse to do what we want, but taking what Jesus says and learning how to live it, taking what the early church experienced and learned and figuring out what that teaches us, paying attention to those signs of the times without obsessing on them or using them as an excuse to launch a holy war. We endure, we wait, we keep awake, we keep faithful. And we await, even await with joy, what comes after the “birth pangs.”

 Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #352, My Lord! What a Morning; #361, O Christ, the Great Foundation; #629, Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee

 

 

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