This Difficult Teaching

John 6:56-69

August 26, 2018

            Back in the early 1990’s, a movie came out about the afterlife. It wasn’t your typical film that about what heaven or, for that matter, what hell may be like. Defending Your Life had a different take on what happens when you die. Daniel Miller, a man in his 30’s, divorced, working in a comfortable job, living a comfortable but non-descript sort of life, dies suddenly in a car accident. He wakes up dead and finds himself in Judgment City; it’s sort of the waiting room of the afterlife. Arriving in Judgment City is your first stop when you die. Actually, the first stop is being housed in a Judgment City hotel room to sleep, because apparently dying takes a lot out of you and the newly dead need their rest.

            What happens in Judgment City? The name is rather self-explanatory. You, actually your life, is judged. Judgment City is where you defend your life. During the day, you are in a courtroom of sorts. Like any courtroom, you have a prosecutor and you have a defense lawyer – more of an advocate really. You, your advocate and the prosecutor watch clips from your life. Then you’re asked to defend the decisions you made or didn’t make. There are two possible outcomes – you go back to earth to live a new life and get it right this time or you go … on. The “on” is never fully described. It just means that you got it right in your life on earth, and you’re allowed to go … on.

            Judgment is not based so much on morality, but on whether or not you lived your life in fear. Morality, standing up for your convictions, doing what is right, is connected to fear. It takes courage to do the right thing. Daniel Miller, played by Albert Brooks – who also wrote and directed the movie – was not a bad or immoral person. He didn’t do anything particularly wrong. But he didn’t do anything particularly memorable either. He lived a very fearful life. It probably didn’t seem so fearful when he was living it. He lived a life that many people live. It was … fine. But it turned out that most of what Daniel did and did not do was based on fear. And fear is what you are judged on. Did you live your life in fear? Then you need to go back and do life again. Learn to live without fear. Learn to be brave, to be courageous. Learn to live without fear.

            The nice thing about Judgment City is that while you defend your life during the day, at night you can have fun. You can eat anything you want without gaining a single ounce. There are restaurants and even bowling alleys – Judgment Lanes. The majority of the people in Judgment City are old, but another person close to Daniel’s age is Julia, played by Meryl Streep. Julia’s life had been full. She definitely lived without fear, or if she was afraid, she overcame it. Daniel falls in love with Julia – really falls in love. And it’s this love that finally pushes him to find his courage. He was sentenced to go back, to live life again. Julia was allowed to go on. Without giving away the ending, Daniel changes his life … or his afterlife.

            A life lived in fear is the premise of Defending Your Life. I realize that this does not meet our Christian understanding of the afterlife. But what about our life now? Do we live lives of courage or do we live lives of fear? I pose this question because I think that fear plays a part in the passage we read from John’s gospel.

            We have finally reached the end of chapter 6 in John. Next week we return to Mark’s gospel. We get a break from pondering Jesus as the bread of life, the living bread from heaven, and especially, eating his body and drinking his blood. I mean it when I say we get a break. These words are not easy to read, to preach or to understand.

            According to the text, we are not alone in finding them challenging. Those listening found them hard to swallow as well.

            “When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’ But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, ‘Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.’”

            Note that it was not just any old folks who struggled with what Jesus was teaching. John refers to them as disciples. These were people who had followed Jesus, who were learning from Jesus, who believed in Jesus. They were disciples, but Jesus’ teaching about being living bread from heaven was just too much for them. They couldn’t wrap their heads around it. They couldn’t go any further, and they turned back. They turned away. They were afraid.

            The word that the New Revised Standard Version translates as “offend,” actually comes from the Greek word for scandal. Jesus asked them if his words scandalized them. To go even deeper, the root of this word literally means “stumble over.”

            Do my words, my teachings scandalize you? Do they make you stumble? Yes. The disciples who had been following Jesus stumbled over his words, and they could not find a way to get back up and keep going. It was just too much.

            What about Jesus’ words made them so fearful, other than the obvious answer that delving into his flesh and blood has an “Ew! Yuck!” factor, as we talked about last week? Remember that the underlying theme in John’s gospel is relationship. Jesus, the Word became flesh, became this flesh so that we could have a relationship with him, and through him, with God. Abiding in John’s gospel is about abiding in relationship. Staying in John’s gospel is about relationship. Jesus gave up his flesh and blood so we, the world could have a new relationship, a new life with God. Considering all of this some 2,000 years later, we might think that there should be no fear involved whatsoever. These disciples who turned away just didn’t get it. They did not have all the knowledge that we have. They were afraid because they didn’t know the rest of the story, and we who do, are not afraid.

            Or are we? Think about it. What does it take to be in a real relationship, a full relationship, an intimate relationship? It takes vulnerability. It takes intense honesty. It takes a willingness to reveal ourselves, to show ourselves with all of our flaws and failings. I think this is true in our marriages, our family relationships, and our deepest friendships. Being vulnerable, being honest, being willing to show ourselves for who we truly are is a scary thing. Staying on the surface of a relationship is much safer, much easier.

            If it is scary in our human relationships, how much more frightening is it when we consider our relationship with God? I’m not talking about a relationship based on the fear that God is going to strike us down at any moment. I’ve heard that kind of relationship preached far too often. I’m talking about recognizing that being in relationship with God calls for a deep and abiding trust. It calls for a willingness to let go of control, to realize that there is more than we can understand or explain. For us being in a relationship with God the Father comes through being in a relationship with Jesus the Son. That relationship with the Son calls us to imitate the Son. That is discipleship. We seek to follow Jesus, to be his disciples. But that means we are called to do what he did, to live as he lived. We are called to love, really love in word and in deed, the stranger, the other, those who seem most unlovable. And we are called not just to pity, but to put ourselves in their shoes, to walk their journey. Being a disciple calls us to hard places and to do hard things. This is a difficult teaching, and it is a difficult doing.

            It takes courage to love like this. It takes a letting go of our fear. But when we let go of our fear, when we step up and find this courage, we have a fullness of life that is joyful and brimming, overflowing, with love and hope. This is the abundant life that Jesus spoke of. It is a life based not on fear or caution but on love.

            It would be easy to walk away. Sometimes we do just that. I know I have. We are ever walking the line between discipleship and betrayal. Perhaps we don’t betray as Judas did, but we betray when we give into our fear, give into hopelessness. But the good news is that we are covered by grace. Jesus does not stop calling; Jesus does not give up on us or walk away from us. May we summon up our courage and let go of the fear which keeps us from living full lives; lives of discipleship, lives of love. After all where else can we go, really? Who else can we turn to? It is Jesus that has the words of eternal life. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Living Bread

John 6:51-58

August 19, 2018

            “This is my body given for you.”

            “This cup is the new covenant sealed in my blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of sin.”

            “The body of Christ.”

            “The blood of Christ.”

            I sometimes wonder what it would be like if someone who had never heard anything about church – about Christ, about Christianity, someone with no cultural references, no memories of visiting church with their grandparents or going to Vacation Bible as a kid – walked into our church just as we were celebrating communion. What would they think? What would they hear? What would they see? What would they believe we were doing?

            I read a story in a blog I follow about preacher and scholar,Martin Copenhaver, who witnessed a moment like the one I described. The setting was a traditional church. The communion table was spread with fine linens and a beautiful chalice and plate. The minister stood and solemnly intoned the words of institution: the body of Christ, the blood of Christ. And in a moment of quiet, a holy pause, a little girl in the congregation who was really listening to what was being said, suddenly exclaimed, “Ew! Yuck!”

            It was when I was attending a Catholic Junior College that I first realized that different denominations understand what happens in the Lord’ Supper differently. Some traditions, such as Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Episcopalian, believe that the bread and wine become the body and blood. When we were discussing this belief in my required theology class, Father Dolehide asked a Catholic student what he thought about when he took the Eucharist. The young man looked somewhat shamefaced, and then he said,

            “Honestly, Father, I just close my eyes and try not to think about it.”

            My fellow student’s answer was not, “Ew! Yuck!” But the underlying sentiment was similar to that of the little girl’s. He was taught that the bread and wine became the body and blood, so he just closed his eyes and tried not to let his imagination get the best of him.

            I admit that I take comfort in our Presbyterian understanding of the Lord’s Supper. This is a communion table, not an altar. Christ is spiritually present, which means that we are eating bread and drinking wine – or grape juice. There is no mystical substitution going on. The bread stays bread and the grape juice stays juice. I take great comfort in all of that, because I get the “Ew! Yuck!” factor. If I really believed that the bread became flesh and the wine became blood, it would be a lot harder to deal with. My comfort level about communion remains high until I get to this passage from John’s gospel.

            “So Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.’”

            Our English translation does not adequately describe the scandal of these words, nor the shock and disgust the people listening to Jesus must have felt. What Jesus was saying was an abomination according to the Law and prophets. It was repugnant.

            John’s gospel is metaphorical and layered with meaning, but in this case, the verbs in Jesus’ words are vivid and more literal. The first verb for eat was more like a gentle supping, but it switches to a verb that can be translated as gnawing. When Jesus spoke of eating his flesh, he wasn’t necessarily being metaphorical. He was talking about them gnawing his flesh. Was Jesus inviting the people around him to come over and take a bite of his arm or leg? No, of course not. But clearly he was trying to make a point, an intense point. I am the living bread. God gave your ancestors manna in the wilderness to sustain them, but that manna did not last. I am the living bread, I am the bread that lasts. If you want to abide in God, then you need to abide in me and I in you. You have to eat this living bread and drink this living blood.

            Abiding in John’s gospel is not just about staying someplace. Abiding in John’s gospel is about being in relationship. Jesus was making the connection between God and him; a relationship with God comes through him, the Son. And that relationship was cemented, founded, grounded, made eternal through eating his flesh and drinking his blood.

            So what does all of this mean? What does this have to do with us, not just when we’re sitting here gathered around this table, but in our everyday lives? How will digging into this strange passage from John help us on Tuesday? How does it counsel or comfort us as we just try to get through the everydayness of life?

            I think we have to go back to the first chapter of John, to those first verses, specifically to, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God, our God, is not just out there somewhere watching from a distance – like that popular Top 40 song from years ago. Our God is the incarnate God; as Dr. David Lose put it, the carnal God. God became one of us. The Word became flesh, our flesh. I learned this week that the Hebrew idiom, “flesh and blood,” is about a person’s whole self. If I speak of giving God my flesh and blood, then I am giving God my whole being – my heart, my mind, my body, my soul, my everything. God becoming flesh and blood in Jesus was God giving us God’s whole self, God’s whole being. God asks the same of us in return. Jesus, in dying on the cross, gave his whole self, did he not? He gave his flesh. He gave his blood.

            As strange and even gory as his words sounded, Jesus was not speaking of something cannibalistic. He was telling those who would listen, that he would give his flesh and blood to them and for them. He gives his flesh and blood to us and for us. He gives his life so that abundant life for the world, for all of us, is possible – not just in some distant future, but right now. It is about a relationship, an abiding in him, in God through him, that goes far beyond any external relationships we may have.

            To quote from Martin Copenhaver:

            “The New Testament uses many different images to express the intimate relationship between Jesus and those who believe in him, and John gives us many of the most familiar expressions of this relationship: Jesus is the shepherd and we are the sheep. He is the vine and we are the branches. He abides in God and we abide in him.

            In this passage, however, language is pressed to its limits to express the indissoluble participation of one life in another. For those who receive Jesus, his life clings to their bones and courses through their veins. He can no more be taken from a believer’s life than last Tuesday’s breakfast can be plucked from one’s body. It is the ultimate communion – the coming together, the union of the Savior and the saved.”

            “The indissoluble participation of one life in another.” Whenever we gather around this table, whenever we share the bread and drink the cup, we are remembering and renewing this indissoluble participation of our lives in Jesus and with one another. God became flesh and blood so that God’s whole self would be given to us. Jesus literally gave up his flesh and blood through death for our sake. God resurrected Jesus so that new life could be ours. Jesus is the living bread, and we are called to taste it, to eat it, to remember and know that “that his life clings to our bones and courses through our veins.” Sisters and brothers, may we all taste and see the goodness of our God.

            Thanks be to God. Amen.

Rules for the New Life

Ephesians 4:25-5:2

August 12, 2018

            Many years ago when my kids were younger, we were getting ready to go on a road trip. I no longer remember exactly which trip this was – I think our destination was somewhere out west – but our road trips usually involved long hours in the car. I would always come up with activities that would make time pass a little easier. My love of listening to audio books started on these long car journeys. But no matter how hard you try to keep folks engaged, when you’re in the car for a long period of time restlessness eventually sets in. And when restlessness reared its head the trouble would start.

            In order to create a more harmonious atmosphere for our drive, and to preserve my sanity, I sat down and created a list of rules. I printed it out and read it aloud to everyone who would share space in the car. I told everyone involved that I was bringing it with me as a reminder of how we were all expected to behave. I don’t remember my rules verbatim, but I know they sounded something like this.

            1) Sibling shall not hit, tease, annoy, irk or otherwise pester other sibling.

            2) Children shall not backtalk or sass a parent.

3) All litter, including candy wrappers, paper, straws, etc., shall be thrown away at every stop.

            4) There shall be no whining.

            5) Mom will be listened to; i.e. no interrupting, no talking over or ignoring her.

6) This trip is supposed to be fun, so everyone will have fun – whether they like it or not.

I’m sure there were more rules than that. Knowing me, I probably came up with ten; kind of a Ten Commandments of a family car trip. But we hadn’t even walked out the door of our house before at least two of the rules were broken. I don’t think we’d even reached our destination before I abandoned the whole list altogether. It was a long trip.

I’m not telling you this to disparage my children; but long trips confined in a car wear on everyone – kids and adults alike. I thought perhaps my list of road trip rules might soften the edges of the journey. But I forgot how hard it can be to abide by certain rules when you’re dealing with other human beings. That seems to be a universal reality.

My title for this sermon is not my own, meaning I didn’t pluck it out of my own imagination. Although it is not in your pew Bible, it is the subheading of this particular passage in my Bible. Rules for the New Life – everything about this particular passage is summed up in the title. We have a new life together; therefore we need new rules for how to live this life together.

You may be thinking to yourself, why are you saying it’s so hard for us to follow rules? We follow rules all the time. Our society and culture is predicated upon the assumption that most people will follow the rules. Rules set the boundaries of our society. Abiding by the rules makes it possible for us to live in society, to function in society. There have to be rules, and we all follow them. If we didn’t there would be mass chaos all the time.

Since there isn’t mass chaos all the time, it would seem safe to assume that we already know the rules that help us live together somewhat harmoniously. But these rules in our passage today read differently than say traffic rules. These are rules for the new life. And abiding by these rules can be much more difficult and challenging than taking turns at a four-way stop sign.

At first reading, it seems as though if we just obeyed these rules than everything would be hunky dory. Again, it may seem as though we already obey them. Most of us don’t go around lying, and the first rule in verse 25 is “putting away falsehood, let all of us speak truth to our neighbors …”

Does that mean that Paul thought everyone was a liar or a potential liar? No, but it does mean that it can be easier to avoid the hard truths we should speak to one another. If you were here last week, think about the passage that was read from Second Samuel. Think about the hard truth the prophet Nathan had to confront David with. David broke several of the commandments with his relationship with Bathsheba, and with setting her husband, Uriah, up to be killed on the front lines. Nathan telling David, “You are the man!” was a hard truth. Maybe other people in the king’s life would have probably just told him what he wanted to hear, not what he needed to hear. Sometimes putting away falsehood is not so much about lying as it is about truth, hard truth.

Paul went on to talk about being angry. Just as Jesus addressed conflict among his followers in the gospel of Matthew, assuming that there would be conflict, Paul rightly assumed that people would get angry. Anger is a reality, but it’s how you handle your anger that can make all the difference. Not all anger is bad. When we see injustice, oppression, cruelty, we should rightly be angry. But what do we do with our anger? How does it motivate us? What actions stem from our anger? If we respond to cruelty with more cruelty, is that being angry but not sinning?

Paul’s words about thieves should be obvious. Thieves should give up stealing. However this was not just about refraining from one bad behavior; it was about turning that behavior into something that served others. Engage in honest labor, not just for your own benefit, but for the benefit of the needy all around you.

Another rule for the New Life is one that I especially struggle with: watch my words. It’s not that I try to speak evil, but how often have my words torn down rather than built up? One admonition that my mother repeated over and over was “you can’t take back words.” That goes back to being angry, but not sinning doesn’t it? How many times have I said something in anger that I regret? More times than I’d like to admit. You can’t take back words, so let no evil talk come out of your mouths. Words that tear down cause grief to the Holy Spirit.

The community that Paul addressed came together not because they were of the same birth family or the same ethnic or cultural background. They came together out of love for God in Jesus Christ. They formed a community because God loved them first, and because they recognized that love. The seal of the Holy Spirit was what bound them together, and to tear down one another in anger grieved the Spirit that formed them.

These rules for the New Life called the community to “put away bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together will all malice.” But these rules were not just about what they should not do, they were also, and even more importantly, about what they should do.

“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

The Rules for New Life are not just rules about what we don’t do, but are about what we are called to do. They are about who we are called to be, and how we are called to try and live with one another. The Rules for New Life are a reminder that our lives are not our own. Our lives belong to God. The Rules for New Life are a reminder that we are not just individuals taking up our own particular space in the world. We are members of one another. We belong to God, and we belong to each other.

Just this week I stumbled upon a news video from the BBC about a Greek woman known as Mama Maria. Greece has been a landing point for the thousands of people fleeing the violence and war in Syria and other places in the Middle East. Many refugees have found shelter in other European nations, but many more have been turned away. Many of these refugees have been sent back to Greece. Yet whether a refugee is just arriving to Greece or returning, Mama Maria feeds them. She owned a restaurant in her small village, and she fed them there – by the thousands. She never charged anything, she just fed them. She saw them suffering and scared and far away from home, so she did the one thing she knew could do. She fed them.

She fed them until threats against her forced her to close her restaurant. She was told repeatedly to stop doing what she was doing. But her belief that this is her calling is so strong, she refuses to stop. She can no longer feed refugees in her restaurant, but she can feed them in her home. And she does; because we are members of one another. Maybe Mama Maria would not articulate it that way, but she doesn’t have to. Her actions speak for her. In her act of feeding, she imitates God. She loves as Christ loved us.

We are members of one another. Ultimately, this is what these Rules for the New Life are all about. They are a reminder that living together in this new life is not just about restraint or refraining from bad behavior. It is about actively seeking to do what is good and kind and tenderhearted for the other. It is about forgiving. It is about imitating God; the God we know through his Son; the Son who willingly died so that we might live a new life. We are members of one another, may we follow the rules of this new life, now and always.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Desperate

Mark 5:21-43

July 1, 2018

            Desperate. Desperate is a word I probably take for granted. I probably overuse it. The lunch hour comes and goes and I don’t get a chance to eat, and suddenly I’m desperate for some food. My gas tank gets down to the lowest point it can go, and I’m desperate to get some more gas. I’m worried about having too much month at the end of the money, and I start feeling desperate – even though we have a roof over our heads and food in our bellies and clothes on our backs.     

In an online dictionary, the first definition of the word desperate, an adjective, is “feeling, showing, or involving a hopeless sense that a situation is so bad as to be impossible to deal with.”

With this definition in mind, what does desperate look like? Desperate is going from doctor to doctor trying to find someone who can diagnose what’s wrong with your husband or your wife or your mother your kid. Desperate is sitting with your kids in the car outside of a police station, waiting until you see an officer, and then asking for help because you can’t go home. Home is where you might get killed. Desperate is taking your children and fleeing your home and your homeland because bombs are dropping or soldiers are marching or gangs are shooting. A few years ago, when a baby boy’s body washed up on the beach after he and his older brother and parents fled from the civil war in Syria in a tiny, un-seaworthy boat, Alice and I read a poem together as part of our worship service. My paraphrase of part of that poem is this, “a parent doesn’t put their child into a boat unless the water is safer than the dry land.” And a parent doesn’t take their child across a desert unless the other side looks safer than the home they’ve left.

The people in this story from Mark were this kind of desperate. It was desperation that motivated and drove them. When Jesus got in the boat in the passage we read last Sunday, he went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. That was the gentile side, the land of the “other.” Now he and the disciples have crossed back again to more familiar ground. It would seem from our reading of Mark’s text that the minute Jesus stepped out of the boat, he was met by a great crowd of people. The crowd gathered around him, and although Mark gives us no lengthy descriptions of the scene, I can imagine that it was noisy. That many people gathered in one place, clamoring for Jesus’ attention, would have been noisy.

Through the crowd came Jairus, a leader of the synagogue. As a leader, he would have had some status in the community. And that status would have given him some power and authority. Jairus could have easily sent someone to talk to Jesus, to ask for help, but Jairus himself came. Jairus must have pushed his way through the throng of folks gathered around Jesus. When he reached him, he did not tap Jesus on the shoulder or reach out to shake his hand. No, when Jairus reached Jesus, he fell to his knees before him and begged him, repeatedly,

“My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.”

We do not read what Jesus may have said in response, but we do know this. Jesus started to go with Jairus. The crowd followed. The crowd was so great and pushing, it must have almost seemed like an entity unto itself. The crowd pressed in on Jesus. Before Jesus could go very far, before he could reach Jairus’ daughter, another person pushed her way through that tight pack of people.

It was a woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years. At just about the same time Jairus’ daughter came into the world, this woman had begun to bleed. I cannot, nor do I want to; imagine how awful those twelve years must have been for that woman. As so often happens in the gospels, we are not given her name, but we do know that she had suffered much. She had endured much under the care of many doctors, but instead of getting better, she had only grown worse and worse and worse.

But here was this man; here was this man who had become known for doing wonderful things. He had become known, not only for his miraculous healings, but also for casting out demons and speaking about God in a way no one had ever done before. Here was this teacher, this rabbi, and the woman who had suffered for so long thought,

“If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.”

She didn’t presume to even look at the teacher must less ask, plead or beg him for help. She just knew that if she could touch his clothes, she would be made well. She was right. She was made well. She felt it in her body; she felt it in the depth of her being that finally the bleeding had stopped. But perhaps what she did not know, what she did not realize was that as soon as her fingertips brushed the rough cloth of Jesus’ robes, not only would power discharge from Jesus like a charge of electricity, Jesus would also realize that something had happened.

Even though Jairus’ daughter lay at the point of death, Jesus stopped. In that moving mass of humanity, with so many hands grasping at him, he stopped and turned around and looked and asked,

“Who touched my clothes?”

Who touched your clothes? Do you see how many people are around you? Do you see how many people are touching your clothes right now? How can you even ask, “Who touched my clothes?” Look! Everyone is touching your clothes!

But Jesus knew. And the woman knew. She must have been terrified. She must have been beside herself with fear and panic and worry. Not only had she snuck her way to a healing and been caught, she had also potentially made the rabbi and everyone else around her ritually unclean. Because you see this woman was not only physically ill, in the eyes of her community, in the eyes of the Law, she was ritually unclean. For the time of a woman’s menstrual cycle, a woman was in a state of spiritual uncleanliness; not to be touched. This woman had lived in that constant, unceasing, unrelenting state for twelve long years. Yet, she had risked everything to touch the clothes of this man because she wanted to be healed. Now she had been found out, caught. What would happen to her now?

Maybe she could have stolen away from Jesus through that crowd as quietly and as quickly as she had moved through it toward him. But the jig was up. It was better to come forward, then to hide. She came forward, trembling in fear, and fell on her knees before him. Jesus did not scold or reprimand. Instead he said,

“Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

He had healed one daughter of Israel, but just as this was finished the news reached him that it was too late for the other daughter. Some people came to tell Jairus not to trouble Jesus any longer. His daughter was dead. But Jesus only kept going, telling Jairus,

“Do not fear, only believe.”

When they reached the house, Jesus only let Peter, James and John accompany him inside. Already the mourners had gathered around the little girl, weeping and wailing. Jesus said,

“Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.”

Even through their tears and grief, they could not help but laugh. Sleeping?! Hah! Dead is dead. But Jesus ignored them. He sent them outside, and taking only Jairus and the girl’s mother and the three disciples, he went to where the little girl lay. He took her by the hand and said,

“Talitha cum,” “Little girl, get up.”

And she did.

Two healings. Desperate people. The power of touch. A desperate parent will go to any lengths to save their child. I know I would. A desperately ill person will go to any lengths to find some healing, some help. I know I would.

I’m not sure how to end this; because as beautiful as these healings are, not all desperate people get what they most desperately need. Not all children who are sick get better. Not all people who fight against illness for years live. Not all desperation finds a happy ending. No parent would risk putting their child in a boat if the water were not safer than the dry land. No parent would risk taking their child across a desert if the other side were not safer than what they left behind. But they are desperate. And as good as I find the good news, telling desperate people to just hold onto that is not enough. It does not seem sufficient. I don’t have answers for why some children live and some do not. But I do know this. We are called to see and hear and acknowledge and love the desperate people in this world. Not having the answers does not let us off the hook. We are called to love them, to see them as God’s children just as clearly as we see ourselves as God’s children. We are called to offer our hand, to do whatever we can do, because we are the Church. We are the body of Christ in this world. We are Jesus’ hands and we are Jesus’ feet. That is our call. That is our commission. That is our commandment. And if we don’t do it, who will?

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Don't You Care?

Mark 4:35-41

June 24, 2018

            Adrenaline works. When my older sister was a toddler, she and my brother, who was a baby, and our parents, were at a church picnic. As toddlers are wont to do, she got away from the person watching her and started toddling off from the picnicking folk right toward a street. And on that street there was a car. I’m not sure which of my parents saw this first. But according to my mother, my father sprinted toward my sister and snatched her up before she could enter the street. Whenever she tells this story, my mother says that she has never seen my dad run as fast as he did that day. My dad and his brothers were all athletic, so I assume he was a fast runner anyway. But when he saw my sister heading toward the street, he beat any previous speed he had ever reached before. Adrenaline works.

            Adrenaline was also working when my dear friend Shelia confronted gang members with a bat on her front porch in Chicago. They were harassing a friend of her daughter’s who had been sucked into gang life, but had broken free of it. That was not an easy thing to do, and gangs apparently don’t forget or forgive former members. Well Shelia saw what was happening, and she grabbed her bat and marched out there and let them have it. They left. But here’s what you need to know about that bat. It was not a regulation size baseball bat. It was one of those small souvenir bats. It would probably have broken in two if she had swung it too hard, much less used it on someone. These were gang members, and Shelia reflected later that they could have easily killed her right there. But in the moment she didn’t think about her own safety. She was furious that these strangers were on her property, threatening this young man. Perhaps it was the force of her fury that scared them away, but she chased away gang members with a souvenir bat. Adrenaline works.

            Adrenaline is the hormone that is secreted by the adrenal glands, and it is typically associated with our fight or flight response to stress. I suspect that adrenaline was being pumped by the bucketful on that boat in the Sea of Galilee. In my mind the adrenaline flowing that night was practically visible as the boat was being swamped by the wind and deluge of rain from the storm on the Sea of Galilee.

I’ve tried to imagine what it must have been like in that boat that night. Not all of the disciples Jesus called were fishermen, but the first four were. They would have been well aware of the storms that could turn the Sea of Galilee, which is really a lake, not a sea, into a raging tempest. If you wonder how it is possible that a lake could experience such terrible and dramatic storms, think about the storms that can generate on any of our Great Lakes. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot is not just a depressing song. It’s a depressing song about a shipwreck on a Great Lake. My point is this, like the Great Lakes the Sea of Galilee was subject to terrible storms, and at least four of the men on the boat with Jesus would have been aware of that fact.

So I can imagine that when the storm began and the water got rough, the disciples’ first response was not to wake up Jesus. Their first response was probably to try and hold fast through the storm. Maybe they prayed it would pass quickly. Maybe they thought they could continue to navigate and hold the boat aright. But that was not to be. Instead, the storm grew worse. The water and the wind and the rain were battering the boat that held Jesus and the rest of the boats that sailed alongside them. Maybe they tried to bail, but with that much water coming in bailing was pointless.

Finally, when it seemed that they were truly about to sink, to rest in watery graves, they turned to Jesus. Jesus was asleep in the stern. In the midst of that violent and wild gale, Jesus was sleeping, his head on a pillow.

“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

Rabbi, Teacher, don’t you care?! We are about to go down with the ship and you’re sleeping?! I’ve heard of staying cool in the midst of crisis, but come on! Wake up! Help us! Don’t you care?!

Jesus’ response was to wake up and not just calm the sea. He rebuked it. He rebuked it just as he did unclean spirits. He rebuked the wind, and said to the sea,

“Peace! Be still!”

And with those three words, the wind stopped. The waters calmed. The sea was peaceful and placid once more. But here’s the funny thing, the terror that the disciples felt at the storm did not abate. Instead it transferred. They were frightened by the storm, but when Jesus calmed it, they were frightened by him.

I realize that the fear they felt over what Jesus did was along the lines of reverential awe. But they were still pretty scared. In a matter of minutes, the disciples moved from thinking Jesus did not care because he did not wake up to,

“Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Who then is this indeed?

Why did Jesus get into the boat in the first place? It almost sounds like a strange twist on the old joke about the chicken. Why did the chicken cross the road? Why did Jesus get into the boat? To get to the other side.

This passage, these last verses in chapter 4, begins with a simple phrase – probably one we don’t give much thought to.

“On that day…”

What had happened on that day? Jesus had been telling parables about the kingdom of God. Jesus had compared the kingdom of God, the reign of God, first to a Sower of seeds, then to a growing seed that grows and flourishes without much help from the person who scattered it, and then to a mustard seed that grows from the tiniest of seeds to a flourishing, flowering shrub that hosts birds of the air.

That’s what had been happening on that day. That’s what Jesus had been teaching on that day. Now it was evening of that day, and Jesus told the disciples,

“Let s go across to the other side.”

What was on the other side? The other side was the home of the other. They were heading to gentile territory. Jesus will leave the boat only to be confronted by a man possessed by a legion of demons, living in the tombs, in the land of gentiles. That’s what waited for them on the other side. They were going to the place where the other resided, a land, as one commentator put it, where no respecting rabbi or teacher would dare venture.

In between the land of the familiar and the safe and the people who were like them, and the land of the other, they face a storm so terrible it threatens to drown them all. And in this in between they witness a miracle. Jesus rebuked the wind and calmed the sea.

Why were they still so afraid?

How often have I said that if I had been lucky enough to have been in Jesus’ presence my faith would never falter?! How could the disciples see and experience the miracles Jesus performed, and still have such little faith? But I think this story is testament to the fact that miracles do not necessarily equate to stronger faith. I’ve probably seen more miracles than I realize, and that has not kept me immune from struggles with faith and doubt. And it was not just that the disciples witnessed a miracle of healing, they witnessed Jesus doing what only God could do. He rebuked the wind. He calmed the sea. He controlled creation. And yeah, they were scared. But who wouldn’t feel some sense of awe or imposing reverence that borders on fear in the presence of God? I think I would. I suspect some of you might too.

It seems to me that what happened in that boat was not just about a miracle, it was about a moment of recognition of who Jesus truly was and is. And in that moment the disciples moved into a deeper relationship with Jesus. They still won’t get it. They will struggle and fail and fear. But in that moment they sensed that this was not just about what Jesus could do, it was about who he is.

So where does this leave us? What does this matter for us on Tuesday? Is it just about Jesus being in the boat with us when we are swamped and afraid? Is it a reminder that Jesus does in fact care? Yes, but I think there’s more to it. I think this is a story about relationship. The disciples moved from what to who. They were touched by God’s presence in a way they could not have foreseen or completely understood.

Jesus had been telling them about the kingdom of God. Now they were going to the other side to see that kingdom lived out in a new way. And in the in-between, they encountered God in a new way; they crossed into a relationship with God they had not experienced before.

“Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

They encountered God in relationship with Jesus. They crossed to the other side with him. They went to the land of the other and back again. What does this mean for us? It seems to me that when we find ourselves touched by God’s presence, that moment does not necessarily eradicate our fears. Instead, it offers us the opportunity to deepen our relationship with God. And when we go deeper into that relationship, then we find the courage to get out of the boat, to go to the other, to not only think about the kingdom of God, but to do our best to live it.

Why did Jesus get into the boat? To get to the other side. Let us follow.

Alleluia! Amen.

Kingdom Seeds

Mark 4:26-34

June 17, 2018

            Whenever I am going out of town in the summer, as I did this past week, I try to make arrangements for my house, my cat, my mail and my plants. I figure that as long as the house and the cat are okay, the rest will take care of itself. I try not to get too stressed about my plants, but I hope that they will be watered – at least a little bit.

            I say that I try not to get too stressed, but that’s all relative. I have left home with plants that were blooming and thriving, only to return home to find them dead without hope for resuscitation. And I have not been happy about it. I’m trying to let go of that kind of stress though, because it’s just not worth it. Seeing how hot it was down here this past week, I didn’t have high hopes for any of my plants. When I checked this morning, there were a few that are on their way out, but hopefully my tomato plant will come back around with daily water and some TLC.

            That makes it sound like I really know what I am doing when it comes to gardening. But in reality, I have no clue. My gardening consists of planting, watering, and praying. A lot. Sometimes, that formula works, sometimes it does not. But every year, I convince myself that I will claim my mother’s green thumb gene that surely lies somewhere in my DNA, and make my garden grow.

            Considering my fingers-crossed-living-on-a-prayer approach to gardening, you would think these two short parables in Mark’s gospel would resonate strongly with me. But on first reading, the first parable especially frustrates me.

            “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.”

            Oh how I wish I could just scatter some seed, go to bed, get up the next morning, and repeat the process, and the seed would sprout without anymore effort or exertion on my part. Dr. Matt Skinner, professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul wrote that at first these parables seem kind of boring. This first parable has all the excitement, he wrote, of an elementary school life science book. The seed is planted. It sprouts. It grows. And we really don’t know how.

            The second parable is not much better. First, Jesus compared the kingdom of God to seeds that are scattered and they grow without any tending or care. Then he spoke of the kingdom of God being like a mustard seed. It is infinitesimally small – the smallest of all the seeds on the earth – but when it grows it becomes the “greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

            Surely, that was a joke, right? Jesus must have had a great sense of humor, because the mustard seed produced a weed. No farmer in his or her right mind would ever plant it on purpose. When the mustard seed took hold, it grew and spread and infiltrated every corner. It might grow to be a great shrub, but I suspect that most folks would dig it up, root it out and toss it aside before it got to that point.

            Both of these strange parables were used by Jesus as comparisons to the kingdom of God. What was Jesus trying to say about the kingdom of God? What point was Jesus trying to make about our relationship to God’s kingdom?

            What is a parable anyway? Is it merely a story? A fable? A tale with a moral twist? The word parable comes from two Greek words, para and ballein. Para means “along” or “along side,” and ballein means “to throw.” So digging into this etymology, a parable is a story that throws the listener alongside something. When Jesus told parables, he threw his listeners alongside something else. A parable was not meant as a neat allegory; it seems to me that it wasn’t even meant to be a perfect example. Jesus told parables to throw us alongside something else. They were meant to be unexpected. They were meant to make the people who heard them think and see and consider in a new way. They were meant to give us a glimpse into a truth that perhaps could not be described or explained in any other way.

            Surely, this would be true of the kingdom of God. One commentator made the point that this particular phrase is so common in our religious circles, that we take it for granted. We want to see it as a literal place, a geographical point on a map, a destination to be reached through God’s divine GPS. But perhaps “kingdom” would be better translated as “reign.”

            “The reign of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.”

           “The reign of God is like a mustard seed, 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.”

            I like substituting the word reign for kingdom, but whether we use one or the other, what unexpected, twisting point was Jesus trying to make with these parables? What point, what message, was he trying to throw us alongside?

            The kingdom of God is like seeds that are scattered and grow, we don’t know how. Perhaps the kingdom of God does not just grow in a way we cannot understand, it grows in spite of us and our lack of understanding. It grows and sprouts and ripens whether we are involved or not. In verse 28, the word translated as “produces of itself,” is where we get our word automatic. It does it on its own.

            As seriously as I take our call to participate in kingdom work, it is good news to know that God works through us, around us and without us. God’s kingdom is not limited to our faltering efforts. God’s kingdom is like seed that is scattered and grows automatically.

            And what about that mustard seed? The kingdom of God is like a common weed that cannot be easily rooted out. It spreads and grows, and in spite of its small size, when it comes to fruition it is the greatest of all shrubs. Its branches are so long and so full that the birds of the air can make nests and take shelter in its shade.

            The kingdom of God, the reign of God, is rooted in our midst. It grows whether we contribute to it or not. The kingdom of God comes in the most unexpected ways and in the most astonishing and surprising forms. Jesus did not throw us alongside a description of a kingdom that is like the most beautiful and fragrant of flowers; Jesus threw us alongside a description of a kingdom that is like a flowering weed; unstoppable, unrootable. And in that weed’s branches, the birds of the air find a home.

            One more unexpected twist; even though the cover picture on the bulletin is a lovely drawing of birds in a beautiful tree, remember that in an earlier parable, the birds of the air were the ones who ate the seeds that did not find root in good soil.

            It seems to me that God’s kingdom is not just found in unexpected ways or manifests itself in the surprising forms; it also welcomes those people, those others, who are unexpected and surprising. It welcomes those who in other situations might be most unwelcome.

            Jesus threw his listeners alongside the unexpected and the unforeseen examples of God’s kingdom. We are thrown alongside them as well. Perhaps these parables are kingdom seeds in their own right. They are planting themselves within us, within our hearts, within our minds. May they take root, grow and flourish in unexpected, surprising and wonderful ways.

            Alleluia! Amen.

A House Divided

Mark 3:19b-35

June 10, 2018

            George Malley was an ordinary man. He was a good-natured good guy. An auto mechanic by trade, he lived in a small town where he had friends, where he was liked, and where he was well thought of. George was unmarried, but there was a woman named Lace – a single mom with two kids whose heart he was trying to win. She made hand-crafted chairs. He agreed to sell them from his store. No one else was buying them, so he did. He bought every one. That was the kind of guy George Malley was.

            Celebrating his 37^th birthday with his friend, Nate, George leaves the town tavern and sees a bright light in the sky. George watches it as it falls to the earth. It is believed to be some sort of UFO, and after its appearance, strange things begin to happen. Strange things around George begin to happen. He learns a language in just a few hours. He breaks complicated codes. He moves a pen with his mind, and shatters glass the same way. He can sense when earthquakes are about to happen.

            George thinks that maybe this phenomenon, whatever it is, is a gift. Maybe he can help people. Maybe he can change some things for the better. But he scares people instead. They think he is out of his mind. They get angry with him. They shun him.

            It turns out that George did not see a UFO. It turns out that there was a tumor growing in George’s brain. The phenomenon was that instead of shutting down George’s mental processes, it was firing them up. Every synapse, every tendril of brain matter was alight. George Malley was not out of his mind. He was the most fully in his mind that any of us could ever hope to be.

            Some of you may have recognized this as the plot of the movie Phenomenon, starring John Travolta, Forrest Whittaker, Kyra Sedgwick and Robert Duval. If you have not seen this movie, I highly recommend it.

            Jesus did not do what he did because he had a tumor. Jesus did what he did because he was Jesus. But our passage starts with the words, “Then he went home.” Mark’s gospel does not begin with a birth narrative. There were no visits from angels, no heavenly hosts singing to shepherds in the fields. We do not know what Mark and his readers knew about Jesus’ origins and what they didn’t. And, let’s face it, regardless of what they knew about Jesus’ full identity; you know that there were neighbors who were going to only see Jesus as Joseph and Mary’s little kid forever.

            I’m sure I’ve told you this story before, but when I was first applying to go to seminary, I was seeking references from some of my professors from college. I called my teacher and mentor from the college radio station to ask him for a reference letter. We exchanged the usual pleasantries, then I said,

            “Mr. V., I have come to this huge decision in my life and I am going to seminary. Would you be a reference for me?”

            There was a pause, then he knocked the phone receiver against something, and said,

            “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”

            Because the Amy he knew, college Amy, d.j. Amy, didn’t quite fit the image of seminary Amy – not yet anyway.

            So Jesus went home, and the crowds that had been following him, followed him there too. They were so great, that Jesus and the disciples could not even eat. Jesus’ family heard about this, and they tried to restrain Jesus, to rein him in. I can imagine them saying something like,

            “Jesus, what are you doing? What are you saying? Why are you doing these things?”

            I try to put myself in his family’s shoes, because they must have felt pulled in all directions. They loved Jesus. But they also had angry and disturbed neighbors and other folks telling them that their son, their brother, their cousin Jesus was out of his mind.

            “What are you going to do about it?!”

            To add to the chaos and the stress, the scribes had come down from Jerusalem, which if I understand it correctly, was not a quick trip. Jesus wasted no time upsetting the religious authorities, and they were watching him. I suspect they had people sending information about his doings to them. So there they were, on the scene. They accused Jesus of being Beelzebul, which was another name for “Lord of the demons,” or “Satan.”

            “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.”

            That was a pretty dramatic accusation. Jesus responds by speaking to them in parables, although these are parables that do not fit the norm of what we think of as parables.

            “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come.”

            How can Satan cast out Satan?

            It is almost as if Jesus was saying to them, “Think about it. If I’m Satan, how can I cast myself out?”

            But what about all this stuff about a house divided? What about Jesus’ words about blaspheming against the Holy Spirit and that unforgivable sin? That’s the part of the passage that worries so many people. I’ll be honest; it has worried me as well.

            Growing up I was led to believe that suicide was the unforgivable sin. It was the taking of one’s own life that was blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. With the suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain this week, we have been given a powerful opportunity to talk about that. Why would a God who loves us enough to become one of us refuse to forgive someone who is despairing enough to take his or her own life? That makes no sense to me. I walk with depression and I have lost dear, dear friends to suicide. I cannot imagine God casting them out because they were suffering that intensely.

            Also, I’m paraphrasing Mary Bracy on this – without her permission, sorry Mary. The encouragement to those who are severely depressed to reach out is great. But we have to realize that when someone is suffering that badly, reaching out can seem impossible. We have to reach in.

            My point is this: despair is not the unforgivable sin. That is not blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. It seems to me that what may be blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is actually us trying to limit what God is doing through the Holy Spirit. It is us believing that those who do it differently are the enemy. Yes, Amy, I am preaching to myself. There are those who believe that I am not a “real Christian” because I am not “saved” in the way that they think I should be. But if I’m honest; if I’m really honest, do I think they’re real Christians because of the way they believe? I may have to say it through gritted teeth and clenched jaw, but they are believers too. A house divided cannot stand. Who am I to try and limit the Holy Spirit? Who am I to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit by saying who should be in and who should be out?

            When Jesus’ family came to him and wanted to see him, was Jesus dismissing them or disowning them or was he trying to make a larger point? They were his kindred. But his family was much larger than those he had by blood. His family was made up of those who did the will of God. There was nothing in his words about doctrine or institutional policy, just the will of God.

            A house divided against itself cannot stand. Who are we to limit the Holy Spirit? Who are we to decide who should be in and who should be out?

            Alleluia! Amen.