But What About You?

Mark 8:27-38

September 16, 2018

            The city was all about power. It was named for an emperor; in fact the city itself was built for that emperor. The city’s every building, and every nuance of architecture, was designed as a tribute to that leader. It was a city of wealth. It was a city created to glorify a human being. It was a city of ostentation. It was a city of power. It was a monument to all that worldly success could bring.

            Into this city walked a teacher and his students. Others, many others, followed along behind them. But it would have been clear to someone watching this scene from afar that the twelve students grouped around the teacher were in a different relationship with him than the others in the crowds.

            They walked into this magnificent city and the teacher asked his followers a question.

            “Who are the people saying that I am?”

            The students did not hesitate with their answers.

            “Some say that you are John the Baptist. And other folks say that you are Elijah. There are some that say you may even be one of the other prophets.”

            The teacher stopped walking, turned around and looked with great intent at his students. There was a small but weighty silence, then he asked,

            “But what about you? Who do you say that I am?”

            A person watching from a distance would have noticed how taken aback the students were by this question. That silent observer might have seen the students look down at their feet, shift back and forth, look at each other, afraid perhaps to be the first one to speak.

            Except for one – one man who stepped forward, excited, head high and hands held out. Clearly this one thought he had the right answer.

            “You are the Messiah,” he said eagerly, maybe even with a slight smile creasing the corners of his mouth.

            If this one student, this bold student, expected accolades for getting it right, he must have been disappointed. The teacher did not pat him on the back, shake his hand or turn him around to face the others; an illustrious example of one who pays attention. No, the teacher put a finger to his lips and told them not to tell anyone else. Then with a renewed urgency, he began to tell them what being the Messiah really meant. He began to tell them it was more than just a title, a designation or a royal name.

            The Messiah must suffer, he told them. The Messiah must endure pain and affliction and then die. But after three days, he will rise again to new life.

            If the students were put off by their teacher’s earlier question, they were surely shocked, bewildered, even appalled by what he was telling them now. The Messiah suffer? The Messiah die? The Messiah rise again? None of this made sense. None of this fit with what they had been taught. Nothing the teacher was telling them connected with anything they knew before.

            Maybe the other students were frightened and confused, but the one, the bold one, the eager one, he was angry. He stepped forward again, and pulled the teacher a few steps away from the others.

            “Stop it!,” he told his teacher. “Stop it! Stop saying these terrible things. You’re scaring them! You’re scaring me! This is not what happens to a Messiah! Suffering? Death? No, this is not what happens to the Messiah, the one we’ve been waiting for!”

            If the bold one believed the teacher might back down, he was wrong. Instead the teacher turned his back on him, looked at the other students and said,

            “Get behind me, Satan! You are thinking about only human things, only human concerns. But you are not thinking about God. You are not thinking about divine things”

            That one student must have felt like he had been punched in the gut. How could he have gotten it all so wrong? Only seconds before he gave the right answer. Now the teacher had called him Satan. The teacher had compared him to the Most Evil One. But there was no time to ask for more understanding or clarification. There was no time to apologize or beg for forgiveness. The teacher called the others, the crowds, who were watching this drama unfold. He called them to come closer and told them that they had to make a choice. If they wanted to be his followers, if they really, truly, most sincerely wanted to follow him, then they must also pick up their cross and walk the path he walked. They must pick up their cross and follow him. Not only must they pick up their cross, they must decide if they would be willing to align themselves with him. Would they be ashamed of him? Would they deny they knew him? Or would they be willing to give up even their lives to follow?

            “But what about you?” he said. “Who do you say that I am?”

            Who do you say that I am?

            As one commentator put it, this is the moment in Mark’s gospel when we – those of us who think we know the rest of the story – finally believe that the gap between Jesus and the disciples’ understanding of Jesus will at last be bridged. In some ways, this is the moment we have been waiting for. Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?” and Peter, bless his heart, bold, impetuous Peter, steps up the plate and hits a verbal home run.

            “You are the Messiah.”

            Yes! He gets it! Peter, at least, finally understands just who Jesus is. But as quickly as we think the gap has closed, it reopens again; and it is even wider this time. Peter may have gotten the title right, but not what the title means. Jesus ordered the disciples to keep his identity a secret from others, but they have to know, they must know exactly what the true definition of Messiah is.

            To be Messiah is to suffer. To be Messiah is to die a violent death. To be Messiah is to rise again. To be Messiah … but Peter was having none of it. As earnestly as he uttered his confession of Jesus’ true identity, he even more earnestly rebuked Jesus for expounding on the truth Jesus was determined to share. Just as Jesus rebuked unclean spirits, he rebuked Peter as well.

            “Get behind me, Satan!”

            Jesus had undergone great temptation in the wilderness, and now he told Peter that Peter’s words were just another temptation. It was more of the same. To be the Messiah was to reject the comforts of the world and to follow a different path, a different way. It was not about enjoying suffering or hoping for suffering; it was to accept that when you reject the world, the world makes you pay for it. The people may not have been calling him Messiah, but the prophets they were comparing him to suffered. John the Baptist spoke truth to power and paid for it. Elijah spoke truth to power and suffered. Jesus knew that being the Messiah meant suffering, because it meant rejecting success on worldly terms, and to follow that Messiah, to really follow means the same for everyone who picks up their cross.

            His question to the disciples was not just a test of their knowledge about his identity. It was a question of their identity as well. But what about you? Who do you say that I am also asks, who will you say that you are?

            Karoline Lewis said that is the hardest question of all, because answering who Jesus is to us means that we also have to hold a bright light up to ourselves? If I believe, heart, mind and soul, that Jesus is the Messiah; if I believe that Jesus went to the hard places and ministered to the hard people; if I wholeheartedly accept and believe and confess that Jesus as Messiah spoke truth to power and gave hope to the hopeless, gave voice to the voiceless, then what does that say about me? What does that say about how I am living, how I am being, how I am following? Have I picked up my cross?

            To answer the question, “What about you? Who do you say that I am?” is to also answer a question about myself. You are Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, and I want to follow you. My identity is intricately connected to yours. So who I say you are also says worlds about who I am. “Who do you say that I am” is a question that I must hear and that I must answer over and over again; because discipleship is a call, and it is one that we answer not just once but also over and over again. It is a choice that we make. Picking up our crosses and following Jesus is a daily decision. I don’t want to admit how many times I’ve looked at my cross, then turned and gone the other way. But here is the good news, and maybe it doesn’t even seem like good news, but it is. My cross is still there, still waiting for me to pick it up. I can always make the better choice. And I can always make that choice, because of God’s grace. God’s grace offers that me choice every day. And God’s grace covers me on those days when I cannot bear the weight of the cross I have been given. And it is Gods’ grace that gives me the courage and the strength to try again, to choose again, to answer the question one more time. “But what about you? Who do you say that I am?”

You are the Messiah. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Room at the Table

Mark 7:24-37

September 9, 2018

            Our dog Boris was a wonderful dog. He was gentle and sweet-tempered. Before I had human babies, he was my baby. I skipped a church meeting to stay home and finish the Snoopy cake I was making for his first birthday and birthday party. He was my kids’ first friend. When Phoebe had a sleepover, he let her and the other girls paint his nails without a whimper of protest. He was such a good and beloved dog; when he died we had a funeral for him. Along with our neighborhood friends, Sam and Sonja, we gathered in the backyard to say goodbye. We lifted up our prayers and memories, then at the end of the service Zach and Sam brought out their Nerf guns. They raised them up and gave Boris their version of a 21 gun salute. Zach told me they wanted to do that, because, “that’s what you do when someone important dies, and Boris was important.”

            Boris was a wonderful dog. I keep a framed picture of him in my den, because I will always love him and miss him. I loved him and I love him. But there was a moment in my life with Boris when I had to choose between him and Phoebe. As the saying goes, I was getting great with child, and Phoebe was an energetic two-year-old. We were outside on a spring day, maybe decorating the sidewalk with sidewalk chalk. I don’t fully remember. What I do remember is that we lived on a corner lot of two well-traveled streets. Phoebe decided to start toward one street, and Boris decided to run toward the other. Cars were coming. I chased Phoebe, which was not easy considering that I was, as I said, getting quite great with child. I hoped that Boris would have enough sense not to get hit by a car, but I didn’t hesitate to let him go while I went after my daughter. It was more important to save her. No matter how much I loved Boris, and I did and do. My child came first.

            You’ve probably already guessed that everything turned out just fine. I caught Phoebe. Boris stayed out of the street. Everyone was safe and well, and I have never questioned the choice I made. I would suspect that none of you are questioning that choice either. Of course, you had to run after Phoebe. Of course, you had to save your child first before you saved your dog, no matter how beloved he was to you. My reaction was the normal reaction of any parent, and that’s that.

            It’s all great, until we get to this passage in Mark’s gospel, and we read these words of Jesus to this Syrophoenician woman. It would seem that Jesus puts into words the choice that I made between my daughter and my dog.

            “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

            Say what? While I don’t question my choice on that day so long ago; it was a choice between an actual child and an actual dog. In this situation Jesus is comparing this woman, a human being, to a dog. There are loads of justifications proposed for why Jesus said this and how he said it; we’ll get to some of those. But it’s important to look first at what is happening in this story.

            Jesus made his way to Tyre and Sidon. This was Gentile territory. Tyre was not only a Gentile region, but it also had a history of great animosity toward the Jewish people. So not only was Jesus staying in a place that was “other,” he deliberately went to a town where he was the “other.” Culturally, he was the other in this situation. The text states that he did not want anyone to know that he was there. Perhaps he reckoned that if he stayed in a Gentile home, he would attract far less notice than if he stayed in a predominantly Jewish setting. But that was not to be. Even there in Tyre, his presence was not only noticed, but sought out.

            A woman heard about him. She had a daughter who was tormented by an unclean spirit, and she wanted Jesus to heal her child. She knew Jesus could heal her child. She went to where Jesus was staying and bowed down at his feet. She was Syrophoenician; about as “other” from Jesus as she could possibly be.

            “She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’”

            There it is. These are the words with which we must contend. We have to live with them, sit with them, wrestle with them. What is interesting is that the woman did not try to counter Jesus’ comparison of her to dogs. She didn’t argue that, although I would not have blamed her if she had. Instead, she turned his comparison on its head.

            “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

            Her answer and her unwavering faith and determination to see her daughter well reached Jesus. He answered,

            “For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.”

            If the woman spoke again, we do not have it recorded in this text. What we do know is that she left, and returned home to find that her daughter was lying on the bed, demon free.  

            As I said, we have to contend with these words of Jesus. And as I also said, there are a lot of justifications and explanations for why he said what he did, and what his words may have actually meant.

            One explanation that I have heard endlessly is that Jesus used a word for dog that meant “puppy,” or “beloved family pet.” He was not referring to a wild dog in the street. He was comparing her to a puppy. That may be true, but would you want to be compared to a puppy? If your daughter, your child, was sick and you were scared and anxious and desperate for her to be healed, is that the answer you would want? It wouldn’t be my first choice.

            Some have postulated that Jesus was not being unkind, but that it was a matter of timing. The time for the Gentiles would come, but not yet. It was not yet time for the Gentiles to be pulled into the promise of God Jesus brought. That promise was first for the children of Israel.

            Again, if this were your child, would you want to hear that it just wasn’t her turn yet?

Nope.

            Another theory to explain these words of Jesus is that he was testing her. He was testing her faith. Clearly her answer was the right one, and he told her so. She passed! She won the prize. Her daughter was healed. But at what other time does Jesus test someone’s faith before he heals them? He may have pushed people and questioned the people around him. He certainly spoke hard truths, and he wasn’t afraid to get angry if the situation warranted it. But when did he test someone before he healed them?

            Maybe what we have to do, and I have said this in other sermons on this text, is allow these words to be what they sound like. Jesus gave an unkind response to a woman in need. We don’t want to do this because it runs counter to our understanding of who Jesus was and is. But maybe that is exactly what happened.

            We believe that Jesus was both human and divine; fully human and fully divine. Wouldn’t that mean that Jesus’ had human responses, and human frailties? Jesus may have been tired and overwhelmed and needed a break. He went to this house hoping not to attract notice. But even there he was found. And he was found by this woman. Maybe in a moment of exhaustion, he responded to her the way we might: sharply, curtly and with a lack of patience and compassion.

            But she refused to be deterred. She refused to let it go or to slink away in shame. Her daughter needed healing, and she would do anything to make that happen. Maybe in this exchange, Jesus learned something from her. We have other examples in scripture of people arguing with God, questioning God, negotiating with God. We have other examples where people were determined to see God keep God’s promises. Maybe that’s what happened in this moment. Maybe Jesus learned something from her. Maybe he learned something about the scope of his own mission.

            Maybe even Jesus learned that there is plenty of room at the table, for us and for those we believe are “others.”

            Tuesday marks the 17^th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It is unfair to reduce the tragedy of that day and the reasons behind it to any one single factor. Yet even as I say that, it seems to me that we humans spend a lot of time believing that there is limited room at the table. September 11^th showed the terrible, destructive consequences of that thinking taken to its extreme.

            If Jesus could learn that there is room at the table, couldn’t we? If Jesus could learn that healing one does not take away from the healing of the other, couldn’t we? If Jesus could learn that the table is big enough and the world is wide enough for all of God’s children to find a place, couldn’t we? Couldn’t we finally learn that there is room at the table for all? May we learn that lesson; may we learn it soon. Amen.

From the Inside Out

Mark 7:1-9, 14-15, 21-23

September 2, 2018

            There is a humorous television commercial out right now – an ad for the pest control company, Terminix. Here’s how it goes. The Terminix man comes to the door of a nice home. The woman who owns the house is obviously relieved that he has finally arrived. Clearly, she is in great distress about the puzzling pest problem she’s facing. You realize why it’s puzzling when the two go inside. Her home is immaculate, spotless, and sanitary to the nth degree.

            The home owner takes the Terminix man into the kitchen, bemoaning as she goes that she cannot fathom why bugs are coming into her home, because she keeps it spotless. She tells him that there isn’t a crumb of food to be found anywhere. To prove her point, she opens the doors to her pantry. There, in perfect order, are neat rows of clear containers keeping her food secure. I believe they are even arranged by color. When this woman said that not a crumb or stray speck of food could be found, she meant it.

            The Terminix man has to give her the bad news that bugs don’t always come into a home looking for food. They come to get away from the cold, to build their nests and to reproduce. She cringes in horror at the thought, and the Terminix man goes on to tell her how the company can get rid of the bugs and return her home to its pristine state once more. At the end of the commercial, he makes the mistake of putting his hand on her counter, leaving potential germs. She quickly takes care of that by moving his hand and spraying cleaner on the spot.

            The point of the ad is to sell Terminix. But it is a funny commercial, and what makes it funny to me is this woman and what is supposed to be her over-the-top neatness. But here’s the thing; while I might laugh along with others at this woman, secretly I want her pantry. I want that kind of order. I want all of my food packed securely into air-tight containers, and I want to have the kind of pantry where they can all be arranged in neat rows, arranged, if not by color, than alphabetically.

            Now that my confession is out of the way, you’re probably wondering what the heck this commercial has to do with our passage from Mark’s gospel. After all, Jesus made no mention of clutter or insects anywhere in the verses that we read, or in the verses that were left out. While the Pharisees and scribes did ask about the lack of hand washing among some of the disciples, this was not an encounter about hygiene. It was, instead, a confrontation about defilement.

            “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”

            Looking at this question through our particular modern lens, the Pharisees and scribes don’t seem off base at all. We know about germs. We know that hand washing is one very effective way of preventing the spread of sickness and disease. Every public restroom you go in has a sign up saying that all employees must thoroughly wash their hands before returning to work. Hand washing is a given in our culture. But again, the tradition of the elders that the Pharisees and scribes referred to was not about hygiene or sanitary practices. It was about defilement. It was about being ritually clean or unclean. That’s why hands were washed and food from the market place was washed; and pots, cups and bronze kettles were washed. In one way it would seem that the world Jesus and these religious authorities lived in was divided into clean and unclean. One walked side-by-side with ritual uncleanness all the time. Because of that, observing the tradition of the elders was necessary to avoid defilement. Just as the woman in the commercial believed that keeping her home scrupulously clean would deter insect infestation, the people in Jesus’ context believed that defilement could be deterred and avoided by controlling their external reality. Defilement came from the outside, so they worked on keeping that outside in check.

            But Jesus turned that tradition on its head.

            “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. … For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

            “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.”

            From the inside out; it seems to me that was the point Jesus was making. If you want to know what defiles a person, look at what is on in the inside, not the outside. I do not think in any way that Jesus was saying that the Law didn’t matter or was unnecessary. After all, Jesus said that he came to fulfill the Law. Even though what defiles originates from the inside out, outward laws are still needed to restrain and constrain our worst impulses. Setting legal boundaries on human behavior is part of what makes societies function. But legalism is something else. That’s the issue that Jesus had with the Pharisees, the scribes and the other religious authorities. They took the Law, capital L, and expanded and extended it into lists of legal do’s and don’ts.’ They forgot that the reason God gave the people the Law, was not for the sake of legalism but for the sake of love.

            Jesus spent a lot of time trying to get people to understand that; to understand that the heart of God was the source of all love. So if you really want to know where defilement originates, you have to look at the heart. Defilement comes from the inside out, not the other way around.

            Yesterday, Brent and I made a trip down to Dallas to visit the 6^th Floor Museum at Diehly Plaza. The former name for this museum was the Texas Book Depository. It was where Lee Harvey Oswald was working when he became infamous for assassinating John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States. The 6^th floor is where Oswald made what is called the sniper’s nest. It is where he spent the day waiting for the president’s motorcade to come by, and it is where he took his rifle and fired three shots. The first one missed, the second hit the president and Governor Connelly, and the third one finished its ultimate purpose.

            This was not a lighthearted or fun museum to visit. It was sad. It was incredibly sad. It was haunting because unlike some museums, we could actually walk down the sidewalk where Oswald walked when he left the building. My fiancée is a self-described geek about this particular moment in history, so after we toured the museum, we followed the path of both the motorcade and Oswald for the rest of that day. We drove the route to Parkland Hospital, where the president was taken. We passed by the Trade Market where the president and the first lady were heading for a luncheon, and where the president was supposed to give a speech. Then we went to the boarding house where Oswald stayed during the week when he was working at the depository. We drove by the house where Oswald and his wife lived before they moved to a farther suburb, and we saw through a slat in the fence the backyard where he had his picture taken with the rifle that would be used to kill the president. We stopped at the spot where he gunned down a police officer, Officer Tippet. It is a place where an historical marker has finally been erected – not to remember Oswald, but to remember Officer Tippet. And finally we went to the Texas Theater, now another historic landmark, and saw for ourselves the place where Oswald was captured.

            It was haunting to see all these sites, but even more than that it was sad; so incredibly sad. What a waste of life. What a waste of potential and possibility, and for what? I thought about it and realized that seven children were left fatherless that day: President Kennedy’s two little ones, Officer Tippet’s three children, and Oswald’s own two little girls. And why? For what?

            As we were driving back to Oklahoma, Brent shared a story with me from Oswald’s brother, Robert. Robert went to visit his brother while he was in jail. Apparently Robert stared intently into his younger brother’s eyes, trying to understand, to fathom what would have made his brother do something like this. Perhaps he stared into his brother’s eyes trying to see a glimpse of humanity that he hoped was there.

            Oswald told him, “Don’t stare into my eyes trying to find something, brother. There’s nothing there.”

            That which defiles, that which truly defiles, comes from the inside out. Certainly our external circumstances help to shape us, even define us. But Jesus said it is what lives in the heart that defiles. The violence that we do to one another, the harm that we cause, the pain that we spread, that comes from within.

            But if that which defiles comes from the inside out, than isn’t it also true that what is most good, most kind, most loving also comes from the inside out? It is that goodness, that kindness and compassion and love that we seek to nurture in this place. It is that which we seek to nurture when we come to this table; when we remember Jesus through the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the cup. And when we come to this table, we not only enlarge the goodness that lies in our hearts, we see one another a little more as God sees us; we see one another through Christ’s eyes.

            May our God of grace help us to share all that is good from the inside out, to give more, care more, do more and love more. Thanks be to God. Amen.