Sermon: Remember What You Were; Remember Whose You Are

First Presbyterian Church

July 21, 2024, Pentecost 9B

Ephesians 2:11-22

 

Remember What You Were; Remember Who You Are

 

One thing that was mentioned in the sermon a couple of weeks ago, introducing this little trip through the book of Ephesians, is that this letter seems to have been addressed to a situation in which the church or churches being addressed consist more of Gentile converts to Christianity than of those who were of Jewish background. This differs from most of the actual letters of Paul, which address church groups that seem to be more evenly divided. The content of chapter 2, of which we just heard a portion, suggests that this shift did not occur without some measure of conflict or at least stress between the two parties. 

Here the author (again, most likely an associate, or a student, or a student of a student of Paul’s trying to consolidate his teaching some years after Paul’s death) seeks to address this particular strain in the body of Christ. What is left unmentioned, however, is how this particular shift came to be. We don’t actually know why the church had come to consist of more Gentile converts than Jewish. It could be simply that more folks of non-Jewish background were welcoming to the gospel as it was proclaimed across the Roman realm. 

On the other hand, we see in other epistles situations where such conflict could have been triggered. Much of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, for example, addresses a situation in which that church had succumbed to a handful of teachers who insisted that to be “really Christian,” the Gentile converts in the church needed to undergo the Jewish ritual of circumcision. Paul had firmly opposed that teaching at the time, and upon learning that the Christians there had been swayed by this teaching he frankly blew a gasket, chastising the “foolish Galatians!” and asking “who has bewitched you?” 

Whatever the source of this conflict, the author of Ephesians takes pains to sort out the division. We are reminded here that the author (like Paul) was of Jewish background. The Gentiles are addressed as “you” as early as verse 11; by verse 14 the author is giving away his own status by speaking of “the hostility between us” in verse 14. 

The thrust of the author’s argument is to remind those of Gentile background that, for all their apparent superiority of numbers and status in the church now, they had originally been the “outsiders” – being “without Christ,” “strangers to the covenants of promise,” and “having no hope and without God in the world.” They had plenty of false gods, to be sure, but in that previous state they were cut off from the one true God. 

To be sure, the Jewish Christians aren’t let totally off the hook. This chastisement is more backhanded, however, and refers to the conflict previously mentioned from the letter to the Galatians. The reference in verse 11 to Gentile followers as “called ‘the uncircumcision’ by those who are called the ‘circumcision’” seems perhaps a bit clunky until the author drops the somewhat belittling next line: “a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands.” Nobody gets off the hook here; whatever the division was, both sides have culpability.

Into this division comes the good news of verse 14: “in his (that is, Christ’s) flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” By referring to Christ doing so “in his flesh” – in his bodily crucifixion – the author contrasts the new condition of Gentile and Jewish converts with the division that had come before through another act upon the flesh, the act of circumcision. The one act unites those whom the other separates.

Much of the rest of this passage elaborates upon and even celebrates this act of Christ, culminating in verse 19 with the joyful declaration “you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God.” Finally, the metaphor of building is introduced to suggest how, “upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone,” we all – no matter where we came from – are built together into nothing less than the dwelling place of God.

While this passage is vitally important for understanding what unity in Christ looks like and the degree to which any unity we have is Christ’s doing, it can be difficult for moderns to take in or understand its application to us. After all, for many of us in these pews, we find it difficult to see ourselves in the author’s description of strangers or aliens or those on the outside. We’ve been good church folk all our lives, haven’t we? When you’ve grown up in the church, it can be hard to process this bit of instruction.

There are two ways to work through this conundrum, one of which is a historical acknowledgment. Most folks who you might find on the pews of Christian churches of whatever variety this morning did not come to Christianity via Judaism. In the language of the time of this writing, we would just about all have been “Gentiles.” It is this act of transcending divisions that enables us even to be here in the first place. Even after nearly two thousand years, this is no small thing to remember.

The second way of understanding our situation requires us to remember one inconvenient fact: your presence on a church pew does not automatically render you as being in unity with Christ and with God’s household. There are churches out there this morning full of zealous devotees whose true allegiances, whose ultimate loyalties and passions and beliefs and behaviors, place them squarely in opposition to Jesus Christ and his gospel, no matter how much they (and their ministers, to be sure) try to bathe those allegiances and loyalties and passions and beliefs in churchy talk. We would all do well, in light of this scripture, to examine our own lives and histories to discern whether we have at times pursued such loyalties and allegiances and beliefs that placed stumbling stones in front of other seekers, or brought disrepute to the gospel, or sought to drive out or exclude those whose lives or beliefs or faith somehow failed to be exactly like our own, or tried to pass off our petty hatreds and prejudices as somehow Christlike. None of such things build us up into a dwelling place for God. 

We, even we lifelong churchgoers, need to remember what this passage teaches us here. We didn’t earn this. We really don’t need to be strutting around the Church Universal as if we own the place. It is God’s grace alone that even allows for us to be the church that we are. And we would also do well to remember that the same grace of God that brings us into God’s household brings in all of those who would come into that household, even if they’re not our favorite people. God is the one who breaks down the barriers; God is the one who invites; God is the one who welcomes. It is only God’s doing that we are no longer strangers or aliens or outsiders, but citizens and members of the household of God.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #32, I Sing the Mighty Power of God; #212, Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed; #438, Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me

 

 

Sermon: One Great Big Run-On Acclamation

First Presbyterian Church

July 7, 2024, Pentecost 7B

Ephesians 1:3-14

 

One Great Big Run-On Acclamation

 

 

It was a chart-topping song back in 1981, and then it became a ubiquitous presence at almost any kind of celebration, particularly the kind that followed big emotional sports triumphs. You’ve heard it:

[singing] Celebrate good times, come on! …let’s celebrate…Celebrate good times, come on!...There’s a party goin’ right here…a celebration to last throughout the year…

Even forty years later, that song still manages to show up after a big win of whatever kind, and why not? It’s an absolutely infectious song (in the good way we speak of songs being “infectious”) and there’s really nothing about it to give offense; it’s just fun.

While the song isn’t terribly specific about what it’s celebrating (other than the pretty general “good times” of that opening), our scripture reading for today carries a pretty celebratory tone itself but with something quite specific to celebrate.

As we jump into a series of readings from the book of Ephesians that will take us through July and August (and even one Sunday in September), a little stage-setting is in order. While the book claims Paul’s name at its opening and has often been attributed to that apostle, it is incredibly unlikely that Paul himself actually wrote this book. For one thing, its apparent time of writing, based on content and context, would have been well after Paul was dead; for another, it is inconceivable that Paul himself would have written such a generic and impersonal letter to the church at Ephesus, which he loved dearly as described in Acts (a feeling that was most definitely reciprocated). For that matter, the designation of Ephesus isn’t even on most of the earliest manuscripts, so that part is doubtful also.

The far more likely case is that a follower or student of Paul’s, or perhaps even a student of a student of Paul's, many years later, compiled a compendium of Paul’s teaching (as the author understood it in his own situation) as the apostle’s posthumous influence began to wane, possibly sending it as a circular letter (one meant to be passed around from church to church, likely including Ephesus), and putting Paul’s name on it to indicate its authority, an unfortunate but not-uncommon practice of the time. Imagine an old follower or associate of John F. Kennedy or Dwight Eisenhower, say, taking up pen to write a faux-editorial with his or her mentor’s name on it as a kind of letter to America in its current troubled times. Something similar is going on here.

That said, the theme of this opening statement is one that Paul did indeed turn to in his own writings: the idea of adoption. Especially in the eighth chapter of the letter to the Romans, Paul did speak of adoption as how we know ourselves to be children of God:

 

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry ‘Abba!’ Father!, 

it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 

and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ.

(Rom. 8:14-16)

 

 

From this Pauline starting point, our adoption or being chosen in Christ “before the foundation of the world,” our Ephesians author pours forth quite a flood of acclamation of God for this gift; for the redemption and forgiveness that comes to us in this gift; for the mystery of God being revealed in this adoption; for the inheritance that is ours in this adoption (sounds like the Romans reading above); for the hope in which we live because of all of this.

The fun part for those who try to read this in the Greek is that our author has done all of this in one sentence. It’s true; everything in today’s reading is one sentence in the Greek, all linked together with linking participles piled one on top of the other. Be grateful for the work of biblical translators, friends (especially the grammar-sticklers among you). 

Still, though, that seems like part of the charm of this passage. We do this, really, when we get all excited about something we’re trying to describe. “And then we saw…and it was so cool and it was amazing and then this happened and then…and then…” We do run on when we get excited; it’s nice to imagine our author here being so caught up in the joys of this adoption that the words just pour forth in the rush of joy. It’s fair, after all, to be excited about being gathered up and taken in by God.

The other challenging part of this passage is its apparent audience. Most of Paul’s writings were directed at churches somewhat split between those who had come to follow Christ from a Jewish background and those from Gentile backgrounds. By the time of this letter, however, the audience seems to be mostly Gentile converts. The author, on the other hand, is apparently of Jewish background if verse 2 of the chapter is any indication. Yet God’s adoption was not limited to one group or the other; all of them – Jew and Gentile alike – were caught up in God’s choosing. God is not choosy; God will not be pinned down to choosing one or the other; God chooses everybody. How human beings respond to that choice - to being chosen - may be all over the map, but God chooses everybody.

A sweeping survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute between 2013 and 2019 found that, among other things; the percentage of the population identifying as “none” (including atheists, agnostics, and those who might claim some sort of religious belief but no affiliation) had declined slightly; the percentage of white folks claiming some variety of evangelical affiliation had declined a lot; and the percentage of white folks claiming some mainline Protestant affiliation – mostly Episcopalians, some Lutherans, and the Presbyterian Church (USA) among others – had…risen a little bit.[1] (For the record, this tracks with this denomination’s own findings that after years of decline the membership of PC(USA) had leveled off from that decline and, in the last reporting period, had taken a slight uptick. Of course, this is five years ago now, and things are different again.)

One doesn’t want to get too giddy about surveys like this (and again, things have no doubt changed in the five years since), but I think there’s something to this result that resonates with the exuberant celebration of this Ephesians passage. After years of membership decline and sometimes even derision from other precincts of Christianity, the churches of the so-called mainline (a terrible name for a religious affiliation) found themselves pressed to be, frankly, more welcoming. Churches of those denominations that couldn’t get away from the somewhat exclusive or elitist bearing of, say, the 1950s found themselves shrunken dramatically or closed altogether. Welcoming all much more broadly, taking to heart the sense of generous adoption marked in today’s reading, became a survival mechanism if nothing else. Maybe that survival mechanism works, even if it's uncomfortable for those who cling to those days when we didn't have to worry about welcoming new folks, unless they were folks who were just like us. 

It does seem that recognizing the graciousness, the unmerited favor of God’s adoption of us, would compel us to be in turn welcoming of all of those who are also part of that generous act of adoption, even if they don’t realize it yet. 

This is not a popular sentiment with all. We live in a time in which some corners of the church are striving mightily to exclude as many people as they feel like, over anything from ethnicity to sexual orientation to politics. This isn't a sentiment that our author of today's reading would endorse; indeed, one could argue that it was the early church's eventual embrace of Gentiles - sometimes with great reluctance - that transformed the early Christians from a small and uncertain sect in and around Jerusalem to a far-flung presence across many corners of the Roman Empire (as related in the book of Acts). Anyway, excluding those whom God calls family isn't a very faithful response to the grace of God.

Maybe Kool and the Gang had it right. There is a party goin’ on ‘round here, a celebration to last throughout the years. Come on and celebrate.

For the generousness of God choosing us, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #331, God of the Ages, Whose Almighty Hand; #---, God has made us all a family!; #839, Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine!

 

---

[1] Jack Jenkins, “White mainline Protestants outnumber white evangelicals, while ‘nones’ shrink,” Religion News Service https://religionnews.com/2021/07/08/survey-white-mainline-protestants-outnumber-white-evangelicals/ (accessed 7/8/21).

Come on and celebrate.

Sermon: Grab the Hem

First Presbyterian Church

June 30, 2024, Pentecost 6B

Mark 5:21-43

 

Grab the Hem

 

Healing. You would think this would be one thing we humans would unanimously agree is a good thing.

Working my way through the halls of the local VA hospital to see my father when I was a child, it wasn’t hard to see examples of why any of us would be downright jubilant if Jesus were to show up in the flesh and run rampant through the halls, healing patients left and right. 

You would think this would be one thing we humans would unanimously agree is a good thing. But somehow, it isn’t always so.

One thing that sometimes gets in the way of this longing for healing, something that many of us fall prey to at times, is the slight problem that in order truly to desire healing, one needs to be able to admit that one is sick. And we’re not always good at that.

“Oh, it’s just a sniffle. It’s nothing.”

“I just didn’t get enough sleep last night.”

“It’s only a tickle in my throat, no big deal.”

Of course, before you know it, you’re in bed wiped out with the flu or something worse. We don’t admit we’re sick – maybe we feel like we have too much to do, or it’s too late to get someone to sub for us, or who knows what excuse we use, but the illness fells us in the end because we refused to admit it was upon us.

This isn’t a problem for either of the protagonists in today’s scripture. Jairus, the local synagogue leader, has seen his daughter’s condition worsen steadily until she is on the brink of death. While the religious authorities in Jerusalem might have disparaged Jesus’s healings as the “devil’s work,” Jairus evidently didn’t care; if there was any chance this itinerant rabbi could heal his beloved daughter, he would do whatever it took to get it to happen. In a scene that must have shocked the locals, Jairus threw himself before Jesus and begged him to come to his home and heal his daughter. Jesus agreed and the two, and Jesus’s disciples, began to make their way through the ever-present crowds around Jesus towards Jairus’s house.

It is in the midst of this travel that our second seeker enters and even interrupts the story. This is another of those “sandwiches” of which Mark is so fond, in which one story is inserted into the midst of a similar or related story, allowing us to see the two in tandem and perhaps compare them to one another. While in this case both are stories of people seeking healing, the contrasts are at least as notable as the similarities.

Jairus, a significant person in the community, comes to Jesus on behalf of his daughter. It turns out she’s all of twelve years old. While infant or childhood mortality was certainly more prevalent then and there than here and now, rhia parent was not willing to let his child go without a fight. We can certainly understand Jairus’s determination to do anything he could to bring his daughter back to health. 

Our second seeker, though, is about as different as possible. She gets no name in the story, not a surprise given that in the context of the time she would have been about as insignificant as it was possible for an adult to be. She is apparently a widow, with no family to care for her or to speak on her behalf, and such a woman had no legal or societal status; while the lawgivers and prophets of the Old Testament implored the people of Israel to care for and deal justly with the widows and orphans among them, the Roman Empire held no such scruples.

At one point she apparently had some resources, but they were evidently consumed in the struggle to find treatment for her malady, one which the old King James Version called an “issue of blood.” It was constant, it was debilitating, and it was sufficient to render the woman ritually impure, unable to participate in the rituals of Judaism at the time. 

Having no one to advocate for her, she had to take matters into her own hands, and she been trying to do so for twelve excruciating years. A cavalcade of physics had done their worst, apparently, while bringing her no relief and possibly leaving her in worse condition. Also, the woman had been relieved of what resources she had, leaving her destitute as well as sick.

No one had to tell her she was ill and in need of healing. Still, she didn’t choose to approach Jesus directly for a cure. We aren’t told exactly why; Mark tells us that she believed she would be made well if she simply touched his clothing, but doesn’t tell us why she didn’t simply come to Jesus directly. The culture of ancient Israel offers a few possibilities. She might have feared that if he knew her condition, Jesus might refuse to heal her for fear of being made ritually unclean himself. It’s also possible she feared that he would refuse to hear her, a poor widow with no man to speak on her behalf, simply because that’s what men typically did. She might have felt that in her condition she would simply be unable to get through the crowd enough to speak to Jesus directly.

Whatever the reason, you’ve heard the story; she somehow gets through the crowd and touches some part of his garment, maybe the hem, and is healed of her long, debilitating illness. Somehow Jesus knows that something has happened, even in the midst of the jostling crowd, and in the end the woman does meet Jesus after all, and she hears Jesus speak to her as a “Daughter,” and she hears him say that “your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

Did you catch that? “Your faith has healed you…be freed from your suffering.” Now, a lot of theological discussions of this passage will get deeply involved in explaining or understanding the idea of the first phrase – “your faith has healed…” and I’m not saying that it is not a challenging thing to most theologies to read a statement that seems to attribute the healing to the woman’s faith. I think, though, that part of the answer to this lies in the way Jesus is dividing two phrases that we tend to read as meaning the same thing.

When we peer into the Greek, it gets more challenging; the word that the NIV translates as “healed you” is more often translated when it appears in other verses as having to do something with saving. That leads a lot of preachers off on an unprofitable rabbit trail about how “salvation” comes – whether by human faith or God’s work – when the more challenging and on-point question here is, “You mean there’s a difference between being healed of illness and being saved, or made well, or made whole?”

There’s more to being well than just not being sick. 

I can’t help but wonder sometimes if we know that, subconsciously at least, when we pray. We pray for healing for our own sicknesses or the illnesses of those we love, but there are things that we need to be truly whole, to be truly saved from harm, to be truly well, that we don’t always recognize about ourselves, and that if we’re honest there are some things we would just as soon not submit to the full-fledged healing of Jesus.

However, there is still one more healing to be addressed here. Evidently Jairus has been waiting while this impromptu healing incident has happened, but that waiting was crushed by the appearance of messengers from his house with the worst possible news: his daughter was dead. 

That news was followed by the question "Why bother the teacher anymore?" Perhaps it was an innocent question, or perhaps (given that Jairus was an important figure in the local synagogue, and that Jesus was not in favor with religious authorities) it was meant to discourage Jairus from continuing to cling to this teacher. 

We might also consider how this news might have hit Jairus in this particular situation. As the woman with the blood issue took up Jesus's time, his own daughter had died. It's not hard to imagine a reaction of impatience or even anger with that woman for taking up the healer's time and thereby leaving his own daughter to die.

Before either of those possible, very human reactions had a chance to set in, Jesus tells Jairus "don't be afraid; just believe." They continue on, though most of the disciples were left behind, to Jairus's house. The cavalcade of theatrical mourners is dismissed, Jesus takes the child's hand and gives the word, and the daughter is up and about like any twelve-year-old. Then comes one of the strange features of some healings in this gospel; Jesus tells them not to tell anybody what happened. That's going to be a challenge, since by the time the theatrical mourners had done their work virtually the entire town knew that Jairus's daughter was dead. ("Theatrical mourners," by the way, is an actual thing; in the case of the death of important people professional mourners would in fact be present to perform public and overt acts of mourning, perhaps to cover for the grief of those directly affected by the loss.)

Two healings, done for two very different people; one of status (in the eyes of society), one all alone and unimportant (in the eyes of society). Jesus's healing grace does its work anyway, for both. 

There's a message in that. It isn't up to us where Christ's healing and restoration goes. The status and importance and wealth and influence of one doesn't get to interrupt the healing of the one with none of those things. Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord can and will be saved, healed, restored, repaired, renewed. It isn't up to us to decide whom God can heal. 

For that, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated):

#837  What a Fellowship, What a Joy Divine

         Hymn sing:

         #793  O Christ, the Healer

         #178  The Woman Hiding in the Crowd

         #792  There Is a Balm in Gilead

#---    See two who came for healing

#800  Sometimes a Light Surprises

 

 

 

Sermon: Who Then Is This?

First Presbyterian Church

June 23, 2024, Pentecost 5B

Mark 4:35-41

 

Who Then Is This?

 

 

“Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him.” It’s possible that the polished language of this NIV translation of Mark 4:41’s climactic exclamation is just a little too tame, a little too composed-sounding to capture the moment fully. The New Revised Standard Version translates the phrase as "Who then is this, that even the wind and sea obey him?", while The Common English Bible goes with “Who then is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him!” The exclamation point as a finisher helps, but that first phrase – “Who then is this…” – just seems…awfully formal for having just seen Jesus turn a raging storm into dead clam with just a few words. 

It’s worth noting that there’s another word in v. 41 upon which we should cast a skeptical eye. The NIV, NRSV, and CEB all speak of the disciples being “overcome with awe,” but that is a characterization that would most kindly be called generous. In just the previous verse Jesus had called them out for being “afraid” (NRSV) or “frightened” (CEB) in v. 40; a more literal translation of v. 41a acknowledges this as it speaks of the disciples being “fearful with a great fear.”

This is not unprecedented behavior. Think of Isaiah, in chapter 6 of that prophetic book, exclaiming “woe is me!” at the sight of the Lord in the heavenly temple surrounded by all the heavenly beings at worship. You could also stick with this gospel, for that matter, and skip ahead to its ending. When the women who had come to the tomb are confronted with an open, empty tomb and a man in white giving them a message to go ahead to Galilee where Jesus will meet them, we are told that they “fled from the tomb with terror and amazement” (the CEB says they’re “overcome with terror and dread”). 

So yeah, “who is this” seems too calm. These people, fearful and overcome, just aren’t going to sound that composed. Something like “who in the world is this?” or even stronger, depending on your tolerance of the idea of one of Jesus’s disciples letting loose with a first-century Aramaic expletive.

Let’s be fair to the disciples. What they’ve just seen defies all logic and comprehension. It wasn’t just that they survived the storm or are preserved through the storm, the way that the singer of Psalm 107 describes in the reading we heard earlier; it wasn’t just that the storm subsided really quickly, as we can see storms do in these parts. Imagine a powerful hurricane coming ashore somewhere, waves ratcheting up and winds pounding and rain pouring, and then, all out of nowhere, the wind has stopped, and the sea is absolutely still – a “dead calm” as v. 39 says. And no, it’s not just the eye of the hurricane; the storm is gone. 

You’re going to tell me that, no matter how much we’re all celebrating and rejoicing, there isn’t going to be just some chill of fear about witnessing such a thing, and the person who could do such a thing?

So yeah, even if I feel like the phrasing is a little stiff and bland, I can absolutely understand the disciples wondering who this is. 

Now it’s not as if the disciples haven’t seen some things, even in the relatively brief time they’ve spent with Jesus. These first chapters of Mark routinely depict massive crowds of people pressing in to be healed by Jesus, and Jesus, well, healing them. We also see accounts of demons not even waiting around for Jesus to spot them. They’re terrified just by his showing up. 

Thing is, though, this kind of thing wasn’t necessarily considered that out of the way or bizarre or non-credible. If we were to hear of such a “healer” coming to town we’d scoff and make jokes about it, and the very mention of casting out demons would bring up even more jokes about Linda Blair’s head spinning around in The Exorcist or similar Hollywood treatments. But in first-century Palestine, while this wasn’t necessarily commonplace, neither was it unheard of. Remember elsewhere when the Pharisees start challenging Jesus, it isn’t over the act of casting out demons itself, it was over by what authority he does so – the act itself apparently wasn’t all that shocking. 

So, while the disciples have seen some stuff so far, we can’t necessarily presume that what they’ve already seen would have prepared them for this. This is a different order of power. Great storms being stopped dead in their tracks compares with healings and exorcisms in the first-century Judean mind the way that the one thing doesn’t fit in that little childhood song about how “one of these things is not like the others…”. 

So yes, it’s believable for the disciples to ask “who is this? even the wind and the waves obey him?”, even despite the way a lot of contemporary biblical commentators try to make this incident out as yet another example of the disciples' complete failure of faith. To quote author D. Mark Davis, 

In the same way, I think it disingenuous for a pastor, on a calm Sunday morning when everyone is quietly listening, to treat the disciples' words as the silly expressions of those who don't really trust in Jesus' love. I think perhaps we ought to imagine ourselves and our entire congregation in an airplane that has lost its engines when we preach this text. Then we can explore panic and pious together.

 

I might suggest being in the eyewall of a hurricane or in the path of a tornado as other options, but you get the idea. 

But here’s where we have the advantage over the disciples; we’ve been able to read Mark’s first chapter, the stuff that happens before the disciples have fully joined up with Jesus. We are able to see how Jesus confronted Satan out in the wilderness, and came away proclaiming “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” We saw the baptism of Jesus, with the heavens torn open and the Spirit crashing down on him from on high. And for all the challenging stuff that this gospel writer puts before us, not just here but for all that is to come, we have the very first sentence of this gospel lingering over us and in us through every part of this book we read: 

“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated): #307, God of Grace and God of Glory; #---, Who then is this; #819, Be Still, My Soul

Sermon: Invasive Species

First Presbyterian Church

June 16, 2024, Pentecost 4B

Mark 4:26-34

 

Invasive Species

 

 

Remember kudzu? Did anybody in this part of the country ever have any experience with kudzu?

The green viny stuff that became a rather notorious menace across much of the South not that many years ago? You could drive down the highway and see trees or bushes or even just what should have been grassy embankments covered in green vine. Anybody else remember it? 

Kudzu was introduced into US agriculture back in the 1930s as a guard against soil erosion, especially during the years of the Dust Bowl, and it also made good feed for cattle. When farmers had to abandon their farms because of boll weevil infestations and crop failures during the Depression and Dust Bowl, however, the kudzu that had been planted grew unchecked. And it grew, and grew, and grew. When it grew, it prevented other plants or shrubs or even trees from growing or caused them to die off. Kudzu had become an ecological hazard and threat to the biodiversity of the region.

It might surprise us to learn that when Jesus told the second parable in today’s reading, the one fondly known as the Parable of the Mustard Seed, his audiences quite likely responded to his mention of that seed and the shrub that grew from it in much the same way a modern farmer or nature observer might respond to the mention of kudzu.

Jesus doesn’t tell many parables in the gospel of Mark, but the ones he does tell are choice. The first portion of this chapter is given to the Parable of the Sower, and it’s not hard to believe that he deliberately followed that parable, with its sower scattering seed over soils and surfaces of varying receptiveness to the seed, with these two parables about seeds. How many ways can you use seed to make a point about the kingdom of God?

We should take note here that the way the seeds function in these two very brief parables is different than the role seeds play in that previous parable of the sower. In the earlier parable, which Jesus explains quite thoroughly to his disciples, the seed represents the word that Jesus proclaims; the focal point is the various “soils” – the path, the rocky ground, the soil covered with thistles, and finally the good soil – that represent the different souls to which the word comes and which react differently to the seed. Here, though, in these two mini-parables, it is the seed itself that is the object of the story and serves as the primary “mover” in each. 

Also, in these two parables, the seed plays a specific role. Each parable begins with some evocation of the kingdom of God and suggests that in some way what the seed does is somehow representative or at least evocative of the kingdom of God.

In the first parable, the sower has scattered the seed on the ground and then, for all practical purposes, disappears from most of the parable. The sower sleeps through the night, and rises at day, but the seed’s growth occurs quite independently of the sower. We get a brief description of that growth that seems to be echoed in that old favorite Thanksgiving hymn “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come,” when Jesus describes how “the earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.” You might remember the hymn’s line “first the blade and then the ear, then the full corn shall appear…”. At any rate the seed’s growth happens without the prodding or direction of the sower. 

Maybe we need to remind ourselves of this, given as some of us are to keeping gardens or working very hard on lawns or foliage. The gardener can plant the seed; the gardener can then set up a very rigorous schedule of watering (according to local regulations) and then pile on all manner of nutrients or fertilizers or whatnot to encourage growth; but, even so, whether the seed grows or not is not up to the gardener. That growth is ultimately not a thing that the gardener controls despite their best efforts. (I suspect some folks can tell their own stories about learning that truth the hard way.)

If that particular gardening truth is frustrating, the one found in the second seed parable is downright maddening. When Jesus casts about for something to which to compare to the kingdom of God, he comes upon that mustard seed, (quote) “which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up, and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” 

There’s a bit of backhanded humor going on here, in that it was very unlikely that anybody in Jesus’s audience was deliberately going to sow mustard seed. More likely, if one found that great shrub growing on one’s land it was most likely because a stray mustard seed had hitched a lift on somebody’s sandals in some other location and finally been dislodged on your piece of land. Furthermore, most folks would emphatically not have wanted that shrub growing wild on their land, as it tended to disrupt or interfere with the growth of the stuff you actually did plant. To put some modern environmental terminology on it, in terms of cultivation and agriculture, this plant was the equivalent of an invasive species. It didn’t really care what your plans for that plot of land were; like kudzu, it moved in and took over. 

This is what the kingdom of God is like? Not just growing and moving without our doing anything, but actually overrunning, taking over, disrupting and disturbing what we’ve planted?

Well, yeah, that is what the kingdom of God is like. 

God is not a potted plant to be planted and confined to this specific corner of our garden. God grows wild; the Spirit blows where it will, as John 3 tells us; the kingdom of God grows and spreads out and provides shelter for all of God’s creatures – even the ones we don’t want messing up our perfect little garden. 

To understand the kingdom of God in this way is to grasp why possibly the most important words in the Lord’s Prayer that we will pray in a few moments are “your kingdom come, your will be done.” Your kingdom, your will. Not ours. God’s and God’s alone.

That Jesus (as Mark records) uses the word “kingdom” here is actually rather important and not something we want to mess around with, precisely because the kingdom of God as these parables describe it is completely unlike the human “kingdoms” we raise up over ourselves. If we as citizens of a democracy aren’t diligently scrupulous about watching over our government, it inevitably devolves into some kind of tyranny, right? Go ask those who lived under the thumb of the Roman Empire of Jesus’s time. And when human kingdoms or governments make like invasive species (like, say that Roman Empire), it isn’t a life-giving thing – no vulnerable creatures are finding shade in the branches of that human kingdom’s invasive growth. But God grows wild, the Spirit blows where it will, and the kingdom of God spreads out without waiting for us to tell it where to grow.

It’s tough to let go of making our own perfect little garden in our own perfect little lawn, once the Spirit blows in and the kingdom grows in. But faith truly has its roots in letting go of our insistence on control and getting on board with the kingdom of God, wherever it may grow.

For the invasive kingdom of God, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise noted): #620, Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven; #---, When seed that is scattered; #36, For the Fruit of All Creation

Sermon: Family Values (According to Jesus)

First Presbyterian Church

June 9, 2024, Pentecost 2B

Mark 3:20-35

 

Family Values (According to Jesus)

 

 

The gospel of Mark sure does well at getting your attention.

While this year of the Revised Common Lectionary is nominally devoted to working through the story of Jesus as recorded in that gospel, it’s been a while since we heard a whole lot out of this, most likely the earliest gospel written. One could argue that’s at least partly the author’s fault; the season of Easter, for example, doesn’t really include much of Mark (besides Easter Sunday itself) because this gospel doesn’t have much Easter-ish stuff to offer beyond that blink-and-you-miss-it moment with the women at the empty tomb in Mark 16:1-8. Before that, in the season of Lent, Mark’s account of Jesus’s temptation and of the Palm Sunday entry into Jerusalem are separated by a bunch of stuff from the gospel of John. So yeah, you could be forgiven for having forgotten about this brief gospel and its supposed place of prominence in this year’s lectionary cycle. 

I have to hand it to the lectionary folk, though; between last Sunday's reading and this week's, this is a heck of a scripture to bring this gospel back into focus. 

Since it’s been a while, and since this year’s lectionary cycle didn’t leave a lot of room during the Epiphany season, it’s probably best to recap what’s happened so far in this gospel (which, remember, has no nativity story at all): Jesus appears to be baptized by John in the wilderness; Jesus is tempted, though there’s precious little said about it in this gospel; he heads back north to Galilee to pick up his ministry there, calling his first disciples along the way; and he performs a lot of healings and casting out of unclean spirits. He starts up a preaching tour but keeps getting interrupted with more healings. Along the way various religious authorities begin to take offense at his work and his “speaking with authority,” though the common folk keep turning out in droves. More disciples get called, Jesus dines with some of the “undesirables” of society, and the religious authorities start trying to trap him in some kind of error or (better yet) blasphemy, which doesn’t work. Finally, here in chapter 3, Jesus does a healing in a synagogue, which prompts those religious authorities to seek to “destroy” him. The crowds only get bigger, unclean spirits keep cowering before him, and he finally sets the group of twelve disciples in place from among his followers. That brings us to the homecoming recorded here, set against a backdrop of both great popular acclaim and fierce authoritarian threat. 

For the first time in Mark’s gospel, Jesus’s family shows up. Remember, there is no nativity account in this gospel, so we have no names for these folks who show up; at first they’re just “his family” in verse 21. By verse 31 they’re named slightly more specifically as “his mother and his brothers.” 

This family appearance is the bread, so to speak, in what biblical scholars sometimes call a “Markan sandwich.” This writer is fond of a rhetorical device in which two stories are told together, with one story split up and placed on either side of the other, as the slices of bread are placed on bottom and top of whatever you take in your sandwich. The tendency in such “sandwich” accounts is to focus on the stuff in the middle – the “meat” of the sandwich – with the “bread” getting less attention. 

And it would be very easy to do here, because the middle of this sandwich is pretty juicy. The religious authorities come after Jesus, this time literally accusing him of being “in league with the devil” in order to cast out demons. Jesus bats down that charge as firmly as basketballs get swatted out of the air during the NBA playoffs, with the pithy observation that if Beelzebul is casting out Beelzebul's own devils, he’s not going to last much longer. Jesus hints at the one who really can subdue a strong foe such as Beelzebul (spoiler alert: it’s Jesus himself, who has already faced down the devil and cast out a bunch of unclean spirits), and then suggests, in a passage that needs a sermon all its own, that some folks are getting so willing to believe lies about him that they’re trending towards blaspheming the Holy Spirit, which is a hole you can’t get out of. When one has so embraced lies that one can’t even see the truth anymore, how can one be restored to right relation to Jesus and one’s neighbors?

That’s meaty stuff indeed, and one could make an old-fashioned forty-five-minute stemwinder of a sermon out of that. But the bread of this Markan sandwich shouldn’t be ignored even though – or perhaps especially because – it might make us even more uncomfortable than the stuff in the middle. 

Back to Jesus’s family. It’s quite likely that they have shown up here in what we can only guess is Jesus’s first time back in his hometown region since his baptism, or as we might put it in vernacular form, “when he went off after that crazy wilderness preacher John.” And he apparently hasn’t even stopped in for a visit. What’s worse – and you know how this always seems to be the worst offense you can commit in the eyes of family – he’s causing a scene. As verse 21 puts it, they are saying “he has gone out of his mind.”

As a result, they have come to “restrain” him. (Your NIV reads "take charge of him," but this NRSV translation is somewhat closer to the Greek.") Don’t overlook this word; it’s the same word used when the authorities come to arrest Jesus later in this gospel (ch. 14), as well as when John the Baptist is arrested (ch. 6) They’re not there to play nice. 

Jumping down to verse 31 (the other slice of “bread” in this sandwich), the attention shifts back to the family, now specified as his mother and brothers, who are “standing outside,” and who “sent to him and called him.” One might guess that sounded something like “Jesus! You get yourself out here RIGHT NOW!” 

Others in the crowd, those gathered closer to Jesus pass this news along to him. Jesus’s response is, shall we say, not exactly what you’d expect from a dutiful son.

 

Who are my mother and my brothers?

Here are my mother and my brothers! 

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

 

 

No matter how shocking or offensive this might sound to us, one thing that emphatically must be named here is that there are many, many people in the world for whom this is good news. For those who simply cannot be reconciled to their biological families for whatever reason – physical or sexual or emotional abuse, neglect, rejection for sexual orientation or religious disagreement or for just “being a failure,” or even the politicized social polarization of our society right now – this is a definition of family in which there is hope, opportunity, and even welcome. 

For the “family values” crowd, not so much. Jesus isn’t anti-family, but family ties or obligations cannot be allowed to interfere with the business of “doing the will of God” as invoked in verse 35.

But what, exactly, constitutes “doing the will of God?”

There are lots of places in scripture where one could get an idea of what “doing the will of God” looks like. One might look at the parable of the sheep and the goats from Matthew 25, or maybe the Beatitudes, for example. From the epistles one might think of the “fruits of the Spirit” in Galatians 5, or Paul’s list of things to think on in Philippians 4. But in this passage, among those whom Jesus indicates, what is it that marks them as “doing the will of God”?

It really seems like the answer is that they are there.

They are with Jesus. They are listening to what Jesus is teaching. They are there despite the accusations of the religious authorities. They are there even despite his own family’s claims that he’s gone crazy. They have come to him, they have followed him, and they are there.

In the end, any definition of “doing the will of God” has to start there, with the simple act of following Jesus. For us now, centuries removed from Jesus’s walking on the earth, “being there” cannot be separated from responding to the leading of the Holy Spirit and following in what the Spirit is doing. And doing that right can be just about as uncomfortable as dealing with out-of-his-mind Jesus was for his family. That Spirit leads to uncomfortable places, being called to do challenging things or taking up difficult journeys that might well persuade others that we’re out of our minds. It can lead to leaving behind all that’s comfortable and familiar and starting from what looks like nothing, or less than nothing. It doesn’t allow for sitting back and assuming everything will go as planned, or as we’ve decided it should go. And sometimes it even means taking care of one’s family.

But it starts with following, being present, listening. That’s the first answer to what it means to do God’s will. And that is the call of this very uncomfortable, not at all family-values-friendly moment in scripture. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #681, This Is the Day the Lord Hath Made; #829, My Faith Looks Up to Thee; #846, Fight the Good Fight