Mark 9:30-37 - "How To Be #1"

        If you are a student of the Olympic Games, a follower of past winter Olympiads, you might remember an American skier named Bill Johnson.  He is one on the Sports Illustrated cover that is the image this week for our bulletin. 

         Bill was a handsomely blond, fearless, and arrogant 23 year old who came out of nowhere, rocketing onto the world winter sports scene with a couple of big victories just prior to the winter games.  And in Sarajevo in 1984, he became the first American to win an Olympic alpine downhill race – and was de facto a national hero and immediate media darling. 

         His fame, however, was fleeting.  You see, after the awards ceremony with his Olympic gold medal draped about his neck, Johnson did a press conference and asked how much it meant to him to have won the gold medal.  He smiled, lifted the medal to his lips, kissed it, and replied in a cocksure manner:  “Millions – we’re talkin’ millions.”

         Even as visions of dollar signs danced in his head, the advertising industry dropped him like a hot rock, and the American public turned its back on him.  Any endorsements he had already negotiated dried up, and he faded into oblivion.

         It is a sad tale of misguided ambition.  However, Bill Johnson is really not all that different from any of the rest of us.  We all want the world to crown us with greatness.  Every single one of us wants to be acknowledged as the best.  Being #1 seems to be part and parcel of simply being human.

         And so can you really blame the disciples for arguing that point on the road as they traveled back to Capernaum, back to the home base, to the very roots of Jesus’ ministry?  After all, Jesus had just told them for a second time that if they continued to travel with him to Jerusalem, to the Holy City that was the seat of Jewish religious power and authority, that they would inevitably be swept into a chain of events over which they would have no control and which could only end in one way – rejection, suffering, the death of this beloved rabbi for whom they had left their homes and family and with whom they had forged this marvelous little community earmarked by laughter and learning, companionship and camaraderie. 

         Surely, given Jesus’ dire prediction, the disciples wondered what the end would mean for them – even if the end seemed so clear for Jesus.  Would their little community disband?  Would each of them return to the fishing boats and tax collecting booths from whence they came?  Could they ever really go home again?

         And if going home was not an option and they chose to stay together instead, then who would be the leader?  Which one of them was really the greatest and therefore destined to steer the others forward into a future they could only guess at? 

         Would it be Peter?  Jesus seemed to be partial to him at times, but Peter had that embarrassing tendency to run off at the mouth at the most inconvenient moments. 

         Then what about Andrew?  He was the surely the greatest fisherman among them – though James and John had their father Zebedee’s fishing business to back them – and that was nothing to sneeze at. 

         There was Mary Magdalene too.  Jesus appeared to fancy her – but she was a woman and one with a clouded and mysterious background to boot.  They should not have to worry about her aspirations for greatness. 

         Judas had a keen financial mind and was clearly the best among them when it came to keeping the books and the budget.  And Matthew, well, one might not really like a tax collector, but when it came to getting folks to tithe – or even to cough up an offering – he surely had the greatest number of tricks up his sleeve.

         That was the gist of the disciples’ conversation on the road to Capernaum.  It must have been a lively discussion and at times loud enough and contentious enough for Jesus to have heard bits and pieces of it and taken notice – and not too positively either.  After all, when they were comfortably settled in wherever it was that they were going to spend the night, Jesus asked them point blank what they had been arguing about.

         And you can bet that the disciples were more than a little ashamed by their conversation on the road – especially when, as the author of the Gospel makes a point of telling us, their behavior became the impetus for Jesus “sitting down” to teach them.  Those are carefully chosen words, you know, because the significance of Jesus choosing to sit is critical.         

         As the author of the blog “Magdalene’s Musing” cites, “This is a signal to his disciples—and to us—to pay very, very close attention to the word he is about to share with them. To sit down before speaking is, in the ancient world, to take the classic teaching position of the rabbi. Jesus is claiming his authority as he prepares to deliver a teaching.”  And so we had better listen up because what Jesus has to say may in fact be, according to this Gospel, the central teaching of his ministry.

         And we hear Jesus utter confusing and nonsensical words.  “So you want first place?  Then take the last place. Be the servant of all.”

         Can’t you just picture the disciples?  “What in heaven’s name does he mean by that?” they all wondered.  Peter scratched his head and mumbled about first Jesus telling them something about saving their life by losing it and now here he is talking about being first by being last.  It was all quite perplexing and seemed to go against the grain of every fiber of their beings.  What was all this business about kingship and servant hood?  It just was not right for kings to be servants or servants to be kings for that matter.        

         Countercultural – that is what it was – what Jesus was telling them was just the opposite of the way that Jewish society had educated them.  You mean, they mused, that there are more important things than proudly slapping that bumper sticker on your donkey proclaiming that your child is an honor student?  More important than working 80 or 90 hours a week so you can have the pleasure boat, the vacation home, and the other accouterments of success?  More important than doing whatever it takes to own three camels, a big flock of sheep, a gas guzzling truck, and an ATV?

         That sort of logic did not make any sense at all to the disciples – any more than it makes sense to us.  And it is countercultural – because when you apply the logic (or illogic) of the Gospel, the world is not what it seems. 

         And to make his point crystal clear, Jesus beckoned to a child who was pressed up against the atrium wall, her wide dark eyes taking in the conversation.  Now mind you, I am not setting the scene for one of those saccharine sweet encounters during which a Caucasian Jesus cuddles a cleanly scrubbed little girl with perfect blond curls and bows. 

         Not by a long shot.  You see, children were among the most vulnerable and least regarded in ancient Jewish society.  They were right up there with widows, beggars, and disabled people. 

         Listen to what Nicholas Kristof wrote in an article in the New York Times Magazine entitled “The Women’s Crusade:  “Here’s the thing about kids in first-century Roman Palestine: Children were nobodies, the bottom of the social food chain. Children had no power whatsoever, they weren’t given choices or negotiated with; they weren’t allowed privileges or given allowances.

         Children could be and were left on garbage heaps to die of exposure. Some of them were collected from the garbage to be kept as slaves. Depending on the hierarchy of the household, any number of people could decide that it was no longer expedient to keep a child alive. And although Jewish parents did not engage in infant exposure, their children had no more position or social standing.”

         Children were not so much outcasts as they were simply non-persons.  They were invisible.  And so what Jesus is saying to us, using a child as a living example, is this:  

“Whoever welcomes me is the one who welcomes the nobodies of this world, the invisible ones, the ones who fall through the cracks, the ones we never make eye contact with who stand on the street corner with signs declaring their homelessness.

         Whoever welcomes me will not just work in a soup kitchen but will also talk to the people who wander in for their noontime meal.   Whoever welcomes me will not see half the American public as victims content to be living off the system.  Whoever welcomes me will actually make eye contact with the homeless man on the corner and maybe even give him a Gatorade on a hot, sunny day from the stash you keep in the back of your car for just such purposes. 

         That is servant hood.  That is putting oneself last and in the end coming out first.  You see, once again, as he always seems to do,  “Jesus is challenging us to reverse long-standing, ingrained, human habits. To set aside our common human understanding of how to win fame and glory, and instead learn from Jesus (about) God's way of deep hospitality and honoring.”  (David Ewart, “Holy Textures”)  

         Even in these tough economic times, when what we really want to do is insulate ourselves from anything or anyone that might de-stabilize our own sense of material success and self-worth, Jesus challenges us as Christians to re-imagine all that, to see the integral relationship between first and last, king and servant, to understand greatness for what it really is. 

         What Jesus means reminds me of the story I heard about a tribe of Native Americans who once lived in Mississippi next to a very swift and dangerous river. The current was so strong that if somebody happened to fall in, he or she would be swept away downstream, never to be seen again.

         One day the tribe was attacked by a hostile group of settlers and found themselves with their backs against the river. They were greatly outnumbered, and their only chance for escape was to cross the rushing water.

         And so they huddled together.  Those who were strong picked up the weak and put them on their shoulders; the little children, the sick, the old and the infirm.  Those who were ill or wounded were carried on the backs of those who were strongest.        

         They waded out into the river, and to their surprise they discovered that the weight on their shoulders carrying the least and the lowest helped them to keep their footing and to make it safely across to the other side.

         Do you really want to be great?  Do you want to be #1?  Of course, we all do.  Each one of us has a bit of Bill Johnson the skier in our hearts.  And that is OK.  To be great, to be #1 seems to be part of being human.

         So the question really is this:  How do you go about being great?  And the answer is simple:  Be great in compassion. 

         How do you go about being #1?  Be first in caring.  Be first in outreach.  Be first in thinking of others before you think of yourself.  Because when you do, when you become the servant and consciously minister to the ones who are like children, the ones who are invisible, just like that Native American tribe, something amazing, something miraculous, will always, always happen.

by Rev. Nancy Foran

www.rvccme.org

Mark 8:27-38 - "Following"

            Last week, Jesus was trying to get away from it all, and so he headed into alien lands, into modern day Lebanon, moving through the cities of Tyre and Sidon, healing daughters of foreigners and pagan deaf mutes along the way.  This week, he is still trying to get away from it all, and we find that he and his disciples have wandered back into the Holy Lands of Judaism and are just outside the ancient Roman city of Caesarea Philippi in northern Galilee.   Situated near the base of Mount Hermon and the source of the Jordan River, the land they traveled was also the site of a few Jewish outposts or settlements. 

            It was here that Jesus kicked off his sandals, settled back, and began again to teach his disciples, and it is here – in this very passage we just read - at what is virtually the midpoint of this Gospel narrative, that Jesus has a very important conversation with his disciples.  It is a conversation on which the entire Gospel hinges.

            To paraphrase William Shakespeare in “The Tempest,” this is the moment when all that is past becomes the prologue for all that is to come.  You see, halfway through this Gospel of Mark, Jesus dramatically changes direction. “The happy, crowd-pleasing days of preaching and healing in Galilee are ending, and Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem.” (Mickey Anders)  And for those of us who know his story, the road to Jerusalem will lead to his untimely death.

            In the first seven chapters of this Gospel, Jesus’ ministry of healing has flourished.  He has developed quite a following even as he has also encouraged a good amount of criticism for his actions by the temple authorities.  Now that he is alone with his disciples, he wants to check out the gossip and hear what the grapevine has been saying about him. 

            “Who do people say that I am?”  He queries Peter, James, John, and the others. 

            “Some say you are like John the Baptist.”  Though recently dead, his head presented to King Herod’s wife on a solid silver serving platter, John, liked Jesus, had called for repentance among the people to whom he preached and apparently had done a good number of healings himself. 

            “Others say you are Elijah.”  Oh, Elijah, the greatest of all Jewish prophets who, as the story was told, had not really ever died but was instead carried off to heaven in a fiery chariot – and would one day come again.

            Surely these answers reaffirmed to Jesus that his ministry was effective.  He was making a difference.  People were beginning to see him in the same light as they did some of the most memorable figures in modern and ancient Jewish history.  That alone must have made Jesus feel pretty good, but it was not enough.

            “And who do you say that I am?”  Jesus asked, looking each disciple square in the eyes. 

            Well, all I can say at this point is - you have got to love Peter.  Whereas James or Andrew might have thought a bit more about how to phrase their response to such a probing question, Peter just blurts it out.  Have mouth, will travel. 

            “You are the Christ,” he replies emphatically.  Wow!  When you think about his words, it is really an astounding statement that Peter has made.  You see, up to this point, Jesus has really done nothing at all that could have been construed as at all Christ-like by ancient Jewish standards.  His presence had initiated no substantive transformation of Jewish society.     

            But here was Peter calling him “divinely authorized,” the “anointed one.” And what Peter meant was that Jesus was that king, that human king who had received God’s stamp of approval and so would one day restore the nation of Israel and with it all her people – no more Rome, no more oppression. 

            As Lutheran pastor, David Lose, wrote, what Peter was implying was this: ‘Jesus, I think you're the one who will purify our society, reestablish Israel's supremacy among the nations, and usher in a new era of peace and holiness. I'm expecting big things from you."

            “You are the Christ,” Peter confessed and proclaimed.  And Peter is absolutely correct in his rapid-fire answer.  Usually the blundering dunderhead, the one who never quite gets it right, for once, Peter is on target.  He is the hero! 

            But not for long!  He is only the hero for a couple of verses really.  You see, in another way, Peter is only partly right.  Jesus is the Messiah.  That is true, but there is more.

            It is only a partial truth that Peter delivers in his confession, and a partial truth should never be substituted for the whole truth.  And so it is at this point that Jesus lays it on the line and tells his disciples what it means to be the Christ, what God intends for the “divinely authorized one, “anointed one”, to be.  It is not a pretty, and it is nothing like what Peter – or the others, for that matter - expected.

            Suffering? Rejection? Death? Hold on there!  Wait a minute!  Did Jesus not understand what Peter meant? Was Jesus not paying attention?  As one blogger wrote, “Jesus dying? What would that accomplish? It sounded like foolish talk to (Peter).  Jesus was young, vital, compelling, popular, if somewhat polarizing as a figure. Surely there was much yet to be accomplished! Death couldn’t factor into the plan anywhere, certainly not anytime soon! Jesus’ “career potential”—what would happen if His life were abruptly cut short? Everything would be lost!”  (Joshua Victor blog) “The Christ,” Peter had declared.  “You are the Christ.”

           As Lutheran pastor, David Lose, writes, “Peter, you see, wants and needs a strong God. Like so many of his day, he's looking for a descendant of mighty king David to come and overthrow Roman rule and restore Israel to it's rightful place among the nations. Jesus has to be that person. After all, he's already brought relief, comfort, healing, and life. So what's all this talk about suffering and death?  Peter wants a strong God...and who can blame him?  (After all, life is pretty miserable for Jews in the ancient Roman Empire.)…Good thing Peter is there to straighten (Jesus) out and show him the path the Christ is supposed to follow.”

            But though Peter may get the title right, he gets the meaning all wrong.  “Get out of my way, Satan.”

            And in the words that follow his equally rapid-fire rejoinder, Jesus recasts for all who will listen just what the Messiah will be. “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  

            Jesus is the Messiah, the king, that is true, but not in the way anyone  - and least of all Peter - would have expected.  It is like the story of a man living in London during the Second World War.  Every night German planes dropped countless bombs on the city.  Buildings burst into flames (as) sirens wailed incessantly, (and) entire blocks were reduced to rubble.  One day this Londoner was sitting in the wreckage of his home.  The walls remained, but the roof was gone.

            The man was near despair.  His home ruined, his city devastated, his country under attack.  Then out of nowhere, these thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door.

            The man opened the door and was shocked to see a small regal figure.  It was the king!  King George VI, who was touring the war-damaged neighborhood and had stopped at that particular house.  The startled man welcomed the King of England into what was left of his home.

            That is not what we expect of kings, but Jesus is a king like that – coming into our lives when they are in ruins, breaking into our hearts when we least expect him.  However, just as with Peter’s confession, that is only part of the truth. 

             If you think the main reason Jesus comes is to take away your troubles, to fix everything in an hour on Sunday morning, to solve all your problems, then you will be deeply disappointed, especially when you read this Gospel of Mark.  You see, the perspective of this particular Gospel, the take of this author on the life of Jesus centers on discipleship, radical discipleship.  This Gospel is about how we respond as followers to the message that Jesus both preaches and lives.

            The point of this Gospel of Mark is following – and its message is for losers.  Presbyterian seminary professor, J.C. Austin puts it this way:  “Being a follower is not something we encourage in America.  No college commencement speaker has ever congratulated the graduates on becoming the "followers of tomorrow."  Nobody makes sweeping biographical history films about great world followers.  Nobody gives awards to recognize the contributions of community followers.  Nobody frames their résumé to highlight where they exercised strong "followership" in their work.  Nobody's heart swells with pride when a fellow parent comes up to them and says, "You know, your kid is a real follower."…In fact, when "following" comes up at all, it's usually negative.  Don't be a follower, be a leader.  Don't follow the crowd.  Being a follower is weak and passive.  It is for people who can't think or act for themselves.  Being a follower is for losers.”

            But with Jesus, well….Do you really want to know who this Jesus is?  Then follow him.  Do you really want to know what it means to live in the light of God’s anointed one?  Then follow him. 

            Follow him into the soup kitchen.  Follow him into the state legislature.  Follow him into the halls of Congress.  Follow him into Haiti where thousands are still homeless – and now forgotten - after the earthquake how many years ago. 

            Follow him out of this church building and into the streets, into mission, into outreach.  Follow him by truly participating in the kingdom of peace and justice – both economic and social - he proclaims and by doing the work that he calls us to do in his name.

            “Who do you say that I am?”  I am the hungry child.  I am the uninsured mother.   I am the old man no one visits.  I am the soldier who fights in wars that should never be fought.  I am the refugee fleeing the car bombs.  I am the oppressed.  I am the marginalized. 

             "Who do you say that I am?” Like this story we read, it is a pivotal question.  It is the hinge point on which our faith depends.  And, in the end, it is a question that I cannot answer for you.  Oh, I can help you when you decide to try to figure out the answer, and this faith community can support you when you decide to live out your answer, but I cannot answer it for you.

            “Who do you say that I am?”  That is between you and Jesus.

           

           

James 1:27-37: "Hearing and Doing"

         The Book of James in our Bible is one of those books that when you thumb through the Holy Scriptures trying to find it, you often fail because it is so brief.  Just a few pages long, it finds its niche right after Hebrews and just before the First Letter from Peter.  It is often passed over, and so James is not a book many Christians read all that often – though perhaps we should. 

         Martin Luther called it an “epistle of straw,” meaning that it had no relevance to the Christian faith, and therefore he did not like it very much.  However, most Lutherans today think that probably what he meant was that the Book of James is not at all Christological.  That is, there is nary a mention of Jesus Christ in its few pages.  In addition, it certainly is not at all like many of the other letters included in our Bible, a number of which were penned by the Apostle Paul.

         This Book or Letter of James is not nearly as theologically deep as, say, the letters to the Romans or the Galatians.  The author wrote it to a first century Christian community that was experiencing a good bit of internal rancor and conflict – not unusual for those early faith families.  The letter is very practical in nature, probably because it was addressing some very specific issues in that fledgling church, issues dealing with the very nature of ministry itself.

         And because this letter of James is so short, you can be darn sure that the author does not mince words.  He says what he means and means what he says.  In the portion of the letter that we just read, he makes two points that leap out at me. 

         The first point is the remark about listening, not in the sense of just hearing but rather in really trying to understand what another person is saying.  It is like the story that has been told of Franklin Roosevelt, who often endured long receiving lines at the White House. He complained that no one really paid any attention to what was said.

         One day, during a reception, he decided to try an experiment. To each person who passed down the line and shook his hand, he murmured, "I murdered my grandmother this morning." The guests responded with phrases like, "Marvelous! Keep up the good work. We are proud of you. God bless you, sir."

         It was not until the end of the line, while greeting the ambassador from Bolivia, that Roosevelt’s words were actually heard. Somewhat confused, the ambassador leaned over and whispered, "I’m sure she had it coming."

         Are you listening? How good a listener are you? That is one of the questions that the author of the Book of James raises.  In quoting the letter, Episcopal priest Rick Morley puts it this way:  “’Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.’ Wow. Really, James could have stopped his epistle right there, and he would have said 99% of what the Church has needed to hear for 99% of its existence.

         (The author) tells everyone to “cool it,” “slow down,” and stop being reactionary—whether you’re right or not. ‘For your anger does not produce God’s righteousness’…James is saying that you could, in effect, believe all the right things, say all the right things, and “think you are religious,” but you won’t find righteousness with God with snapping, reactionary anger.”

          Perhaps those are words that we here in our church should remember as we begin to grapple with the question of growth and what growth might look like for us.  Surely we will be coming at the question of who we are now and where we want to be in the future and what all that will mean when it comes to the way we do worship, the manner in which we make music, and even how we educate ourselves and our children in the Christian faith.  Trust me – we will not all have the same perspective.  Not all of us will agree.  And so it will be crucial for us to remember the admonition of the author of James:  “Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.”

         The author of the letter goes on to tell us that we cannot achieve God’s high and lofty purpose for us, we who are sons and daughters of the Holy One, if we fail to become better listeners.  That being said, however, and this is the other point that struck me in the passage, it is not all about listening.  It is not all about the ears.  That is only where it begins. 

         "Do not merely listen to the word, (as we read in the letter)...Do what it says (Let me repeat that – do what it says). Those who listen to the word but do not do what it says are like people who look at their faces in a mirror and, after looking at themselves, go away and immediately forget what they look like.” 

         In other words, it is not enough for we who say that we are Christians to simply listen to preachers like me talk about the Christian faith.  Hearing alone is insufficient.  There is more.  We must “do.”  You see, there is an essential link between hearing about the faith and living it, “doing” it in an every day sort of way.

         And what type of action, what kind of “doing” defines our faith and describes a true Christian?  The author of the letter of James has an answer to that, and his definition is extraordinarily simple: "Religion that God accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

         Fancy that! The author of this letter mentions nothing about going to church on Sunday or reading the bible and praying daily, though he does talk about those things in other places (so do not get the wrong idea).

         But here he cuts to the chase on what this “doing,” this acting upon one’s faith, ought to be:  First, look after widows and orphans.  Using modern language we would say:  look after the marginalized and the poor, look after those homeless men who stand on the street corners of Portland with their handwritten cardboard signs, look after the ones in Raymond whose heat is sucked out through the drafty places even as the winter air is sucked in, look after all those singles, couples, and families who could go under if we were not looking out for them.  

         And second, keep from being polluted by the world.  Keep from falling into the pervasive cultural trap of disbelieving in the abundance of the resources God has given to this world and instead hoarding what you have because you are so fearful that there is not enough to go around.  Or simply figuring it is not your problem to solve because somehow the affluence of the 1% will really trickle down to the very least of these.  In other words, as a Christian, you need to be taking action.  You need to be shaping your life around mission and outreach, around aiding the modern-day orphans and widows.

         In the end, it is like this: The only way you can see your faith or communicate it to another person is by what you do. As Robert L Kinast comments: Faith and works "are not two separate or competing realities. They are two phases of a process as necessary and natural as breathing in (the word) and breathing out (the service).  The one leads to the other…We only perfect our faith” by practicing it.

         First Congregational Church in Montclair, New Jersey is the church I grew up in, and it has a tradition now that four times a year, in each of the months with a fifth Sunday, the church family gathers for a brief worship service, and then the whole congregation goes out into the community.  Some go to the food pantry, others to the soup kitchen, and still others to nursing homes.  They hang a large banner on the doors of the church that reads:  “Jesus has left the building, and we followed.”  Now - that is a powerful sermon!  Something we might do here as part of a growth strategy?

         Jesus left the building, and we followed: That simple slogan lies at the core of this little, oft forgotten letter of James.  You can come into this sanctuary on Sunday mornings and hear me prattle on about our faith.  You may even listen ever so intently.  You may be able to rattle off Bible verses from memory.  I may be able to spout theology.  But those intellectual gymnastics alone does not make us Christians.  In order to be God’s sons and daughters in the very best and truest sense of the word, the world needs to experience who we are.

         The world will see our faith because of our actions, or the world will see our lack of faith for the same reason…When we ignore the need around us – local, national, and global - when we let children go without food or anyone go without healthcare, if we do that even as we say that we are Christians, we are telling the world a lie about Jesus…But when we live the truth, when we “do” the faith, oh, what a story about Christianity we have to show and tell.

         See how they love one another. See how different they are. See how their values are far better than even the best the world has to offer. If we want to show people who we are as a church family and what our faith is really all about, we do not need to learn high blown words to tell them.  However, we do need to get out of this sanctuary and do what Jesus calls us to do and what the author of this letter reminds us - live the faith…Be a constant doer of the word.  In that way, we will be truly blessed – just as the world around us will be blessed too.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond VIllage Community Church, Raymond, Maine

www.rvccme.org