Bear The Name

Sunday, September 20^th, 2009

Ordinary 26B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Warsaw, VA

Mark 9:38-50

³⁸John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” ³⁹But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. ⁴⁰Whoever is not against us is for us. ⁴¹For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.⁴²“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. ⁴³If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. ⁴⁵And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. ⁴⁷And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, ⁴⁸where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.⁴⁹“For everyone will be salted with fire. ⁵⁰Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

Why did the disciples stick with Jesus?

What was it that compelled them to stay, after hearing him tell them multiple times that following him – staying with him on the path that they were on – would eventually result in their persecution and probably premature deaths?

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks reviewing some episodes in their life as a group where Jesus has been trying to tell them that HE was going to suffer and die, and then telling them that if they REALLY wanted to follow him they were going to have to give up any thought they had for their own safety and comfort and security and give themselves completely to the task of bringing the good news to their neighbors and beyond.

As Mark moves them closer to Jerusalem and Jesus’ coming passion, the teaching Jesus gives them is clearer and clearer. The requirement is: no compromise. All or nothing.

It sounds … intimidating … extreme … off the deep end, doesn’t it?

We’d much rather be moderate … in our actions, in our attitudes, in our practice, and in our … faith? Do we really want to include our faith in htat moderation effect? That broad middle ground can be so much more … inviting … welcoming … comfortable than the extremes.

We’ve seen the outcome of extremism. We are all too familiar with fiery rhetoric and the ranting of madmen that result in the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of lost followers or innocent bystanders.

But we can’t avoid dealing with what Christ tells the disciples and telling us through the Gospel texts: give yourself up and follow me. In ORDER to follow me, you must give your SELF up.

We may have been conditioned to think that that call is all good and well for those who are devoted to full time ministry, or who, like Chris, are committing to spiritual leadership in the church, and that it doesn’t apply to the … rank and file members of the church. After all, we all have lives to live, mouths to feed, business to take care of, we have a life to make for ourselves and for our families…

I like reading familiar passages in different versions of scripture; it helps to see the same old phrases through different lenses, and the one that does that most consistently for me now is Eugene Petersen’s ‘The Message’. Keep in mind, this is a paraphrase of the scriptures – he’s not aiming for word-to-word correspondence to the original languages, he’s trying to help us receive the words of scripture in the same way that those who first heard the words received them – the ideas and concepts are what he is trying to get across – here’s how he puts verses 43 through 48:

“If your hand or your foot gets in God's way, chop it off and throw it away. You're better off maimed or lame and alive than the proud owner of two hands and two feet, godless in a furnace of eternal fire. And if your eye distracts you from God, pull it out and throw it away. You're better off one-eyed and alive than exercising your twenty-twenty vision from inside the fire of hell.”

Can you see what the message is? Jesus isn’t talking about a one-to-one legalistic understanding of losing whatever appendage is involved in the commission of a sin. Just as he did in the Sermon on the Mount, he is going deeper than that – he’s going to where sin originates – to our very hearts.

Because ultimately, that is what God is after: our hearts. God wants us to want to be with God as much as God wants to be with us. We are God’s beloved children, and like any loving parent, God wants to spend time with us, and wants as little to get between us as possible.

So he gives us the example of the total trust, the total commitment that Christ showed in being obedient and trusting God with his life. Literally, completely, totally surrendered to whatever God had for him to do.

And ultimately, it is what we know the disciples did do, and it is what faithful followers of Christ have done through the centuries since he first told the disciples what they would have to do if they wanted to follow him.

And it is what we are acknowledging this morning in the life of Chris Bronner; that he is making the statement to be given to Christ through service to the church.

(ordination to the diaconate of Chris Bronner)

Let’s pray.

Arguments, Questions and Answers

Sunday, September 20th^th, 2009

Ordinary 25B

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Warsaw, VA

Mark 9:30-37

³⁰They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; ³¹for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” ³²But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

³³Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” ³⁴But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. ³⁵He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” ³⁶Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ³⁷“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

I know you’re probably thinking, “The Son of Man betrayed … again? Wasn’t that what he preached on LAST Sunday??”

The answer is yes, of course. Both last week’s and this weeks passages in the Gospel according to Mark have similar pronouncements coming from Jesus regarding what he is going to experience at the end of his earthly life. Though there are other things that happen between the two sections of scripture, for us to hop from chapter 8 last week to these verses in chapter 9 this week seem more repetitious than if we were to be reading through all of the intervening verses and exploring them.

While last week it was just Peter who didn’t get it, this week it’s the whole group that is exposed as being essentially clueless about what Jesus was both teaching and living. It is, as I’ve mentioned before, profoundly comforting to be able to read that those who became the Lions of our faith were not the sharpest knives in the drawer. God didn’t seek out the best and the brightest, but the ones that, even with their shortcomings and failures were willing to give themselves wholly to the Gospel once they grasped the significance, received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and set out to tell the Good News of Jesus Christ. But at this point in the story they were still providing the model for the keystone cops and the three stooges.

As the passage begins, Mark has Jesus and the disciples traveling southward towards Jerusalem, back in familiar territory, in Galilee, after having traveled to the north. Again Mark makes the comment that Jesus wanted his presence to be as unnoticed as possible, and he summarizes what Jesus was teaching the disciples, apparently taking advantage of the fact that, to some degree, they are mostly by themselves. Remember the small group being easier to teach profound truths to?

Jesus is recapping what he had attempted to teach the disciples earlier, about his suffering and death and resurrection, but again, the disciples just didn’t understand how it could be that the Messiah could achieve victory by suffering; the two just didn’t GO together. Victory just does not follow suffering. Suffering is for the loser. Isn’t it?

I’m thinking those might have been the thoughts that were going through the disciples’ minds as they were listening to Jesus tell them what was coming. I can just picture them, intently listening to Jesus, looking at his face, to see if he was just telling a joke with a REALLY straight face … and they were waiting to see who was going to laugh first … stealing quick glances around the circle at the others … but the laughter never came. So when they set off and continued their walk, the disciples kind of … held back a bit … maybe a few yards behind Jesus. Just enough space between them to allow them to talk among themselves in little more than whispers: what did Jesus mean exactly when he said he was going to be betrayed into human hands, by whom? And why would he be killed, how? And for what? And what does he mean that he’ll rise again after three days?

It’s telling that Mark doesn’t stop at saying that they didn’t understand; he goes a step further and says that they were afraid to ask him. Have you ever been in that kind of situation? I have. In fact, I am right now. And my primary reason for being afraid to ask the question I need to ask is concern for how I will be seen once the question is asked. I guess that’s why I can just hear all the questions churning in the disciples’ heads and coming out in quiet but very intense arguments among them as they follow their questions to THEIR point of origin. Certainly, they reason, Jesus cannot mean that HE will suffer and be killed. Sure, it’s a possibility, since we ARE talking about revolting against the most powerful force in the known world, the Roman Empire, but he comes from God. We’ve seen that in the way he heals people! Even IF we get into a fight with the Romans, he’ll call on his healing powers and heal any wounds we might receive and we’ll get right back in the battle … depending on the wound, it might even TAKE three days to recover … yeah … maybe THAT’S what he’s talking about.

And then … well, then we’ll have to go back to governing ourselves, like we used to. And since Jesus will be in charge, and we’re his closest advisers … hmm … who gets to be Vice Messiah? Peter? Nah. He’s a hothead. No diplomatic skills whatsoever! Who gets to be Secretary of State? John? Too young! President of the Sanhedrin? Thomas? I doubt it. Treasury Secretary? Yeah, Judas can keep that. He’ll probably outlive us all.

When we were in Louisville at the end of August, at one point we were riding with my parents in their car, and Judson and Caleb were sitting in the back with Momma while Daddy and I rode and drove in front. We had told the boys that we were going to give them a certain amount of money that they could spend any way they wanted on anything they wanted – within reason – at the store we were going to. The whole way there I could hear them discussing something, but they were keeping their voices uncharacteristically low, so even though I could hear that they were talking, it was a little hard to tell exactly what they were saying. Occasional words popped out of the conversation; “if you (something, something, something) then I’ll (something, something, something) – yes, I PROMISE I will!!” They were some of the most intense wrangling that I’d heard in a long, long time. When we arrived at the store and we got out of the car, Momma looked at me and kind of smiled and shrugged her shoulders and said something about being amazed at the level of the negotiations she’d just been hearing. They were discussing what to do with each individual piece that came in the set of an action figure and his or her package, trading one for another from another set … if memory serves. Unions renegotiating contracts with management doesn’t hold a candle to THOSE negotiations.

In the car, there is at least SOME ambient noise, whether it is noise from the road, or the air conditioner, or the radio, there is SOMETHING going on that would provide SOME interference with being able to hear each and every word that is spoken when those kinds of conversations take place. Walking is a whole different ballgame. Unless it is a windy day and you are walking into a stiff headwind, it is difficult to come up with something that would make it hard to hear a conversation that is taking place near you – even one several yards away. So I’m pretty sure Jesus heard most of what the disciples were arguing about. And I suspect that, when he asked them what the topic of discussion was, his tone conveyed to them the fact that he already knew the answer, and it probably conveyed just as clearly what he thought about them STILL thinking in THOSE terms – after all, they HAD all been there when Peter made his statement, followed by his quick fall from grace when he tried to explain to Jesus exactly what they were all thinking – and STILL thought – about what Jesus was saying about suffering and dying… nobody wanted to feel that wrath from their Master anytime soon.

But Jesus doesn’t respond with wrath.

He responds with a sad note in his voice and tries to again explain to them what this whole ‘Kingdom of God’ that he’s been talking about for the last three years is all about. Once again he tries to distill it down to it’s very essence. And he comes up with this:

“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

William Loader, Research Professor at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, puts it this way:

Human beings have mostly attributed value to those who have power. At some levels that has been physical power: an army. It is equally about having wealth, political power, family power. It is having a sense of one’s own importance on the basis that you can make others inferior, putting yourself up by putting others down. Such powerful people are engaging in the subordination and demeaning of others. It can also be that some people are powerful and have authority without such motives. They may simply be physically strong. They may have been placed in positions of responsibility. People then attribute greatness to such people – because of their power and authority. They are saying such people are of greatest value. Traditionally in most societies this related also to gender: fathers and kings, although in principle and in practice the tendency is not gender specific.

Jesus is challenging both stances: people wanting to use power to establish their own value and people using power as the measure of value of human beings. Jesus subverts both. True greatness is not about either of these relations to power. True greatness is to be like Jesus, a truly powerful person, but who valued himself not because of power but because of his being and his doing the will of God, which meant lowliness, in his case including following the path to the cross. That is all implied in the context of Mark’s story. Jesus in Mark subverts the standard values. He is a king, but wearing a crown of thorns. He is the Christ, but broken on the cross.

When Jesus says the greatest is to be the slave (9:35; 10:43,44), that is a shocking contrast. The use of the Greek word ‘diakonos’ as well as ‘doulos’, both words for slaves, helps us to see that the focus is not only the status, ‘slave’, but also the function, ‘serving’. Greatness is being a loving and serving person. Mark 10:45 makes that clear: ‘The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many’. We should not assume double standards; disciples should be like that, but not Jesus. Or Jesus and the disciples are like that, but not God! If the latter were true, we would all the time be undermining Jesus’ message every time we tried to be like God or to value what we would be valuing in God. Such has been the experience in Christian history, because people have been unwilling to be fully subverted by Jesus’ values and have found ways of reverting to the old value system when talking of Jesus and God. Our poetry, our hymns, our liturgies are often very revealing. When we hail Jesus as king and mean by it the king of love, the servant king, we have to work very hard not to allow that to be subsumed under the more popular images of greatness, which Jesus was trying to subvert.

Jesus then seamlessly gives the disciples an object lesson. He reaches for a child who is standing nearby … or maybe she was running, playing ‘catch’ with some of the other kids around, and puts his arms around her and says,

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

The image of the child, in itself, throws the focus more on the lowliness than on the service. The child is vulnerable. But then the focus shifts from the child back again to caring, this time for the child. Caring for vulnerable human beings is part of what caring is about. To take on a child in this way is to take on Jesus and to take on Jesus in this way is to take on God. In Matthew 25:31-46 we see the thought spun out into the parable of the sheep and the goats.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Behind the thought is a sense of solidarity with lowliness and vulnerability and an affirmation that in acts of caring and love we come face to face with the divine. Elsewhere the same thought is applied to those whom Jesus sends and commissions in ministry. Verse 41 speaks of giving them a drink. When people take on lowliness like this they are going to need to be cared for. The Jesus tradition assumes communities where that kind of caring is real. This will have been fundamental in the early Christian communities where leaders (apostles) needed to travel and faced all kinds of dangers. It remains an issue today: real lowly service (both for people who have power and enormous responsibility, and for those who do not) entails vulnerability. Jesus is not promoting ‘heroic loners’, but speaking of community, which provides mutual caring and support. His brokenness will become their food, the central symbol of divine presence and being – in communion and in community.

Let’s pray.

If Any

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Ordinary 24B

Text: Mark 8:27-38

Theme: Christ’s call on our life is to live a life of sacrifice

“²⁷Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” ²⁸And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” ²⁹He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” ³⁰And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

³¹Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. ³²He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ³³But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

³⁴He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. ³⁶For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? ³⁷Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? ³⁸Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

It is almost always safer to share some deep truth in a small group rather than in a large group. The dynamics are just simpler. There’s less room for misunderstanding if you can look into the eyes of everyone present and SEE that they heard you and understood what you’ve said. There’s more time available if you note a confused look on someone’s face and go into a further explanation of just what it is you are trying to get across. People don’t feel as intimidated about speaking up when they are in the company of close friends, and that held true for Jesus and the disciples when he chose to try to get away from the crowds that seemed to perpetually be following them around any time word got out that “the one who might be the messiah” was in the area.

Caesarea Philippi had been rebuilt and enlarged by Herod Philip, son of Herod the Great, as the capital of the province, north of the Sea of Galilee, near the headwaters of the Jordan River. Prior to his opportunistic and politically expedient naming of the town after Tiberius Caesar, it was called Paneas, named in honor of the Greek god Pan, who was worshipped in a nearby grotto.

Though it served as the regional capital, it was a city surrounded by wilderness, an area that was sparsely populated and fairly distant from the established centers of population.

It was into that wilderness that Jesus retreated with his disciples. As they drew further and further away from the crowds, Jesus begins to ask the disciples questions that demand their attention, and reflection.

Jesus’ first question would sound self-serving if we didn’t know what was coming. He basically asks “what are people saying about me?” and you can tell from the disciples’ answers that they’ve been hearing stuff from the crowds, and one wonders, perhaps they’ve been discussing it among themselves as well.

“John the Baptist.” That first one always struck me as odd, since Jesus and John the Baptist were contemporaries – at least until shortly after Jesus’ public ministry began and John lost his head. But then, I’m not sure the Jewish concept of reincarnation was in play here. It sounds like they were grasping at straws.

“Elijah” carries a little more contextual weight, since he had been dead longer, and was known as the one who would prepare the way for the Messiah’s coming. Though on that same note, John the Baptist claimed to be fulfilling the prophecy in Isaiah 40:3-4: “A voice of one crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord.” Either way, both suggestions carried with them something in common: “Messianic excitement” – that is, there was a buzz going around that Jesus was the promised Messiah.

His next question brings it right in close to home for the disciples. “Who do YOU say that I am?” or “What are YOU saying about me?” The ‘you’ in the sentence is an emphatic pronoun. It indicates that the crowd he had just asked them about, the ‘people’ he refers to in his first question, have no idea who he is, and he is turning to this, the smaller, ‘safer’ group, to see what they are thinking, after having had some time to observe him, listen to him teach, as well as to watch him preach and heal.

Yesterday we sat through a couple of training sessions in preparation for Leslie’s internship this year, and most of the training was an overview of what group dynamics to expect in the context of the Ministry Consultation Committee, which we were going to form. At one point, the facilitator listed the different roles people fall into when in a group situation, and one of them, aside from leader, was ‘instigator’. That is, the person who is usually the first to speak up, the one who most easily blurts out what is on his or her mind, who forges ahead into the silences that follow a question or a presentation of a theme or topic.

Peter seems to have taken that role among the disciples. He is usually the one to speak up and say what’s on his mind. And it was no different this time.

Scholars agree that everything leading up to this point in the gospel is aiming towards that confession, and everything after this point is Jesus explaining what the TRUE meaning of the title – which he does not reject – is. And he doesn’t waste any time beginning to do that, mainly because Peter gives him his first opportunity with his first answer.

Similar to the Syro-phoenician woman’s calling Jesus ‘Sir’, or ‘Master’ or ‘Lord’ in last week’s passage, Peter’s confession of “you are the Messiah” points to something more going on in the episode than simply the words that are spoken. It’s not a game of ’20 questions’ that all the disciples are competing against each other to get right. Though we see just a few phrases later that the place Peter’s answer was coming from was wrong, the proclamation still rings true on it’s own – apart from the baggage that it carried at the time. Mark is purposefully placing this exchange here in his narrative to begin the process of discovery of who Jesus is, and his first step is to disavow any pretext that Jesus is a Messiah in the style of King David – a Military and political ruler who would vanquish the occupying pagan armies and run them out, and claim the land of Palestine once again for the children of Israel.

But you’ll notice that the words don’t come from Mark to deny that, they come from Jesus. Mark DOES summarize what happened after Peter’s confession – that Jesus, in what might be called ‘plain and simple language’ (where he says ‘he said all this quite openly’), he spells out to his disciples that what being the Messiah MEANT was that (1) He would undergo great suffering, (2) He would be rejected by the Chief Priests, the Elders, and the Scribes, and (3) That he would be killed, and that after three days he would rise again.

That last seems so plain to us, reading this passage after Easter, doesn’t it? The actual wording of that last phrase is something more along the lines of an indeterminate, though short period of time rather than an exact reading of ‘three days’… though it CAN be interpreted that way. Suffice it to say, it actually sounds reasonable for someone to take you aside and try to set you straight if you start yammering about being rejected by the whole authority structure of your church, and that you are going to be killed? … Hearing would probably stop around that word and your instinct for preserving your friend would kick in. As we know he was prone to do, Peter impetuously jumps in and begins to explain to Jesus just exactly who HE is, just a reminder, something to jog his memory, since it seems like something has obviously addled his brain – he’s been doing a lot of walking and an awful lot of healing lately. I think we need to take BOTH the Sabbath AND the first day of the week off, he’s just running himself ragged. I don’t know what I’m going to do with him.

Jesus’ response is not what we could call ‘diplomatic,’ is it? He doesn’t chuckle and say ‘Peter, you didn’t quite understand what I said … let me repeat …’ none of that coddling here. He straight up calls him on the carpet. For having just made THE pivotal proclamation of the entire Gospel of Mark, Peter sure doesn’t get to rest on his laurels for long, does he?

The problem is, as I alluded to earlier, Peter’s response to JESUS’ beginning to explain to the disciples that yeah, he is the Messiah, but THIS is what being the Messiah means for him, and for us (Being rejected by the very people who have been supposedly holding vigil all these centuries until the Messiah comes, watching and waiting for him; it means that he would be put to death, and, oh yeah, he would be raised on the third day) – Peter’s reaction to Jesus telling him that being the Messiah is, in fact, about being a sacrifice, suffering for the sake of humanity the penalty that we would all by rights be subject to – tells us that while the words were the right words, Peter was still thinking in earthly, temporal terms. He was still looking for Jesus to whip out a sword and whip all those great crowds that had been following them around into some great frenzied army that would rise up and push all the Roman occupiers into the Mediterranean or up to the North somewhere, but definitely OUT of the land of Israel. Jesus calls him Satan and tells him to get away from him.

How’s that for straining a friendship?

He spells it out: “you’ve set your mind not on divine things, but on human things.”

In other words, he’s saying “you need to look at this from GOD’S eternal and worldwide perspective, not the narrow and provincial perspective of the High Priest, the Elders, and Scribes. They’ve lost sight of the forest because they are trying to keep tabs on all the trees.” I am about more than simply freeing Israel from its captivity to Rome, I am about freeing HUMANITY from it’s captivity to SIN.

Then the crowd reappears. Did you notice? “He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them: ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’.”

There are three things he’s telling them (and us) to do:

1. Deny ourselves. The form of the verb ‘deny’ in this verse is not a suggestion, it is a command. The basic idea here is to say “NO!” To disown not just our sins, but our very self – if and when that self is vying for first place in our lives – to turn away from the idolatry of self-centeredness. It is not the kind of self-denial where we give up a particular vice or pleasure for a temporary length of time, like chocolate, or ice cream; it requires submission to a new King (Jesus Christ) in the place of the old (me).

2. Take up our cross. It’s a twin of the first one. The cross was never just a burden or trouble to the Jews of Jesus’ day, or for that matter, to the Roman’s of Nero’s time. The victim was required to carry his own cross to the place of his execution. To take up one’s cross requires absolute commitment, even to death.

3. Follow me. The form is the continuing present – ‘make it your habit to follow my example.’ It is a supporting command rather than a third requirement. It takes the first two into account and helps explain them, which in turn explains what it means to be a disciple. Mark uses the word ‘follow’ in his gospel in connection with discipleship.

The Message translates verses 34-37 this way:

"Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat; I am. Don't run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I'll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?

Jesus puts into stark relief what is truly at stake if we live our lives as if WE are in control, as if WE are THE most important thing in our lives. We lose our identity, because we cannot sustain an identity based on ourselves alone.

Denying ourselves means rejecting the lie that we are the ultimate arbiter, the ultimate judge, of our own existence.

Taking up our cross means repeatedly, daily, hourly, choosing to follow Christ’s example of self-sacrificing love.

Following Christ means making that choice enough to where it becomes second nature.

May we all live lives of Christ.

Let’s pray.

For Saying That

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Ordinary 23B

Text: Mark 7:24-37

Theme: God’s surprising movement in the world

“²⁴ From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, ²⁵ but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. ²⁶ Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syro-phoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ²⁷ 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.” ²⁸ But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” ²⁹ Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” ³⁰ So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

³¹ Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. ³² They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. ³³ He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. ³⁴ Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” ³⁵ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. ³⁶ Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. ³⁷ They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

Rascal was an outside dog. Both our pet dogs growing up were outside pets. So we really didn’t have to deal with the ‘puppy dog eyes’ pleading for a morsel of food from our plates unless we ate out on our porch, which we did, but only in the summer months. Rascal was half Pomeranian and half fox terrier mix … with the coloring you would normally associate with Lassie – deep gold, with a white collar and chest. He was small, he probably topped out at 20 pounds in his later years, so he easily fit under the table while we were eating. Not having him in the house was good insofar as it made keeping the house CLEAN easier, but it was not so good in that we kids were never able to build up our immunity TO those puppy-dog pleading eyes… and were thus prone to give in whenever he set to begging at mealtime. And I was the worst when it came to feeding him from my plate.

The image our passage conjures up for us this morning is just that – of a table with children and a dog begging for scraps under the table. But the context in which we find it is not so idyllic … so … “home and hearth”.

To put the passage into a slightly larger context – that of the Gospel according to Mark, at the beginning of chapter 7, Jesus is saying in essence that you can’t judge a book by it’s cover – you can’t go by nationality, religious heritage, or social standing, you have to look beyond the external factors to get to the heart of a person’s TRUE faith – for us, that means we can’t stop at names and addresses, workplaces or family history… then Mark underscores the point by relating the story of Jesus traveling over 80 miles NORTH of Galilee, well into what was DEFINITELY Gentile territory, to begin to interact with folks there.

It almost seems like an afterthought when he says that Jesus ‘entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there.’ If you remember, the ‘secret messiah’ is a recurring theme to varying degrees in each of the Gospels, but most notably in Mark. It bears noting that in an age of slow communication, where most people lived out their lives within a radius of just a few miles from their birthplace, Jesus was mobbed nearly a hundred miles away. It would appear that good news travels fast, doesn’t it? And Mark seems to be making the point that no matter what Jesus SAYS to people about keeping his presence or true nature a secret, it just doesn’t work. Some things never change, and telling the latest ‘secret’ is usually at the top of the list – even for first-century pagans in what is today Lebanon.

The interaction between Jesus and the woman who brazenly walks up to him and asks that he heal her daughter is pivotal in the story of Jesus’ ministry. The scene is also found in Matthew, chapter 15, verses 21 through 28. In THAT retelling, the woman goes from being Syro-Phoenician to being Canaanite. It is not a huge difference, but it is noteworthy. The end result is the same – the woman is a gentile, and in Matthew the division between Jews and Gentiles is brought even more to light by the reaction of the disciples to her ‘shouting after them’ – this was no timid woman waiting her turn … she wasn’t even allowed to be in LINE. It speaks to the love she had for her daughter – but they ask Jesus to send her away. Jesus’ answer to the disciples is … silence. He only speaks again when the woman addresses him directly and asks him to heal her daughter. Jesus' response is ... troubling ... he tells her that the children (usually interpreted as the Jews) should be fed first, and the good food shouldn't go to the dogs (the common term for gentiles that Jews had ...) She answers him: Sir, even dogs get the scraps that fall from the table!...the thing is, he uses a diminutive form of the word dog - like 'little dog' - the implication is that he's talking about pets .... which ... puts Jews and Gentiles under the same roof ... which would be pretty revolutionary to a Jewish audience, but would send a clear signal to a gentile audience ... that EVERYONE is to have access to the grace of God.

The way the woman addresses Jesus is also worth reflecting on. In Mark, the word “kurios”, which is found in both passages, is translated ‘Sir’; in Matthew, it is translated ‘Lord’, but it could also be translated ‘Master’. Either way, the significance of a Gentile woman calling Jesus, a Jewish man, ‘Master’ or ‘Lord’, would not have been lost on either audience that received either letter.

This was the truth of the Gospel coming from the lips of a pagan woman, who had no standing, who could not ask Jesus to heal her daughter because her ancestors had obeyed God and followed Moses out of Egypt… or had spent the last several centuries protecting the books of the law and the prophets, or anything like that.

Her only recourse, her only plea, was to Jesus’ good graces, and his kindness. It speaks to her desperation in seeking help for her daughter, that she would ignore culturally established boundaries, and risked being thrown out of the house without so much as a please and thank you.

And THAT is where we connect with this story. We all come to Jesus in a desperate state, with nothing to stand on, with no ‘in’ to hang on to, to throw up to Jesus and say, “There, because of THAT, you need to count me in!” All we have to offer him is our surrender, our lives, our faith, and our hope. And that was all SHE had, her faith that he would heal her daughter.

But the text continues, Jesus returns to Decapolis by leaving Sidon and heading NORTH again, to Tyre, and then from there, south … a lengthy trip by any means, especially by foot. And Mark presents us with another miraculous healing – this time of a man who is deaf and has a speech impediment. It is fascinating to me that in the healing, Jesus doesn’t say ‘be healed’, or ‘be well’, or ‘Hear! Speak!’ … What does he say?

“Be opened” …

It is not only the telling of a miraculous healing, but placed after the conversation with the Gentile woman, this is a message to the Jewish community receiving these letters, to the people of Israel who first received the Covenant that God established through Abraham. Jesus is telling them to be opened to the transformative power of the Gospel, to the Gospel that breaks down walls of separation that we so easily build around us, afraid of what is different and unfamiliar, afraid of those who are not like us, afraid of what that change might imply… is it any wonder that one of the most frequent phrases we hear from God in the Hebrew Scriptures and from Jesus is “be not afraid”?

Our calling, our task as children of God, brothers and sisters in Christ, is to be a part of the tearing down of those walls that separate, that create misunderstanding, that breed mistrust, that allow all sorts of lies to fester about ‘the others’ so that we can look into each others faces and see the face of Christ reflected there.

Let’s pray.