Discipleship: Renewing the Visions

SERMON # 1368.01
02/19/12 (3107)
Hymns: Opening Hymn: “I Stand Amazed in the Presence” #371
Sermon Hymn: “Majesty, Worship His Majesty” #176
Closing Hymn: “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” #349

Mark 9:2-9
The Transfiguration
2 After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. 3 His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. 4 And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.
5 Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” 6 (He did not know what to say, they were so frightened.)
7 Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”
8 Suddenly, when they looked around, they no longer saw anyone with them except Jesus. 9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus gave them orders not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

Have you ever had a moment of truth—an experience that truly changed you or the way you looked at things for the rest of your life?  I remember reading where some years back how then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright learned from a reporter that her parents, whom she’d always known as Catholics, were actually Jews who had converted to save themselves and their family from the Holocaust.  Can you imagine how such knowledge must have rearranged what Mrs. Albright knew about her past and how she viewed her own identity and that of her family?

In today’s Gospel reading, three disciples were confronted with the identity of Jesus.  The Jesus they had known was now revealed to them in a new and incredible way.  In Mark, the passage is sandwiched between some very interesting material.  It comes after Peter confesses, “You are the Messiah,” (Mark 8:29) and Jesus’ insistence that he will die and that those who follow him will also be required to give up much.  Then immediately following the trip to the mountaintop, Jesus and the disciples hit the road again on the way to Jerusalem and the cross.

Wedged in between these themes of death comes this magnificent passage of exaltation.  In this amazing account, Jesus was physically changed before their eyes—in a way that no one had ever seen.  Peter had confessed him as Messiah, but they were unprepared for the visualization of that reality.

There is so much here that echoes themes from ancient Israel.  Jesus glowed with the brightness often associated with God’s presence in Exodus and elsewhere.  There was a voice and a cloud, also indicators in Exodus of the eternal present with humans.  Moses and Elijah were present, symbols of law and prophecy.  This was a vision for men who would understand that they were witnessing something deeply connected to their spiritual heritage.  The Jesus they knew as friend, teacher, and rabbi was somehow uniquely identified with God.  Even so, they did not seem to grasp the full magnitude of what they saw.

They knew, though, that it was something—something far bigger than they had ever before witnessed.  Peter, I suppose, felt as though he had to say something.  He offered that the disciples might build three dwellings, like shrines, for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus.  But before anyone could make an answer, a voice spoke out of a bright cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love.” (Mark 9:7) These were familiar words, the same words spoken by the heavenly voice at Jesus’ baptism, at the beginning of his ministry.  Now as Jesus moved toward Jerusalem, the words were the same.  And these words were added: “Listen to him!” (Mark 9:7)

This account in Mark draws us in two seemingly competing directions.  First, it draws us back to the past.  Like the three disciples stupefied there on the mountain, we see the long history of God and Israel symbolically enacted through voice, brightness, cloud, and prophet.  But also, the story draws us toward the future of change.

This event is called the Transfiguration, because Jesus was transfigured—changed—right in front of the three disciples.  But they must have been changed, also.  It’s impossible to imagine they could have come down the mountain and left that event behind them.  They took it with them.  In the future, at times when they wondered about their faith—questioned deep down what the whole experience with Jesus had meant or who he was—they could recall this event and what they had seen.  As they tried to follow the teachings of Jesus, they could remember the voice from the cloud: “This is my Son...listen to him!” (Mark 9:7)

Sometimes things happen to us or in us that change the way we see things for the rest of our lives, just as Madeleine Albright was changed by the information about her parents.

On a much smaller scale, this is one of the essences of worship, is it not?  In our praise of and experience of God, we find ourselves changed.  In worship, we remember together the events of the faith and the events of our own lives that have changed us.  In communion, we are drawn to recall the self-giving love of God that has brought us this far.  In the charge, we are moved to go with our changed hearts and translate them into changed lives—to make a difference in the world in which we live.  Worship rearranges how we look at our past and how we imagine the future.

In addition to worship, there are other times and places where we see the glory of God.  We must, though, keep our eyes open for the glory and our ears attuned to hear the voice.  Can you see the glory of God in the beauty of nature—the desert at sunset or a mountain stream?  Have you heard the voice of God in the cry of a newborn baby, the laughter of a child, or the developing expressions of teenagers?

It is easier to see the glory and hear the voice at the mountaintop.  But what about when we return from the mountain?

Jesus and the disciples might well have asked the same question.  Why wasn’t the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane answered with a change in the coming events?  Why was there no glory, no voice at Golgotha? “Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:40) taunted those who passed by.  If God could be made known in the glorious mountaintop experience, why not then, when a miracle was needed?  Where was God when Jesus breathed his last?  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)

Why, indeed.  None of us will ever fully comprehend the darkness of the cross, the depth of the isolation, the pain of the separation.  But somehow through the darkness of that experience, we are drawn from light to light—from Transfiguration to Easter.  We need that light when we, too, travel through the darkness.  We look for it.  “⁴ Even though I walk…through the darkest valley…” Also known as “the Valley of the Shadow of death…” (Psalm 23:4)  In the darkest valley, in the depth of loss, in the crisis of faith, in the loneliness of depression, in the fear of illness, we wonder about the light.  Where are the glory and the voice when we need them most?  Sometimes they seem to be missing, even as they were conspicuously absent at the cross.  In Jesus’ own experience, we can see that we are drawn through the valley from light to light.  Jesus and the three went from the mountaintop of transfiguration to the valley of the cross, where it seemed the light of glory would never be seen again.

      As we prepare to journey through Lent, to walk the way of the cross, the austerity of the season reminds us of the stark seasons of our lives.  We also have dark periods when the light of glory is nowhere to be seen.  Yet the memory of past visions of glory is somehow able to sustain us until Easter morning, when the light of the resurrection dispels the darkness, and the glory of the Lord is finally brought to full expression.


AMEN & AMEN,
Brother Ron

Jesus Heals the Sick

SERMON # 1366.01
02/12/12 (3104)
Hymns: Opening Hymn: “He Touched Me” #367
Sermon Hymn: “My Hope is Built on Nothing Less” #368
Closing Hymn: “Just as I Am, Without One Plea” #357

Mark 1:40-45
Jesus Heals a Man With Leprosy
40 A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
41 Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” 42 Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.
43 Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: 44 “See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” 45 Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.

“The hardest part of the whole thing has been the loneliness,” he said to me.

“You mean the loneliness of not getting to go to work and seeing people?” I asked.  He had been laid off at his job a few months before.

“No, the loneliness of friends avoiding me, people not coming around to see me any more,” he said.

“Well, why would they do that?” I asked.

“I’m not sure, but I think their attitude is, ‘I don’t want to catch what he’s got.’“

I know that sounds strange, but I’ve seen it before.  Even people who do not have a communicable disease, even people who are not contagious, are sometimes avoided.  They are in difficulty, having trouble, people “don’t want to catch what they’ve got.”

In America, if you play by the rules, do right, then right will be done to you.  You will not have any problems keeping a job.  You got laid off? Well, then you must have done something wrong.  You must have some kind of problem.  And we don’t want to catch what you’ve got.

I know this sounds strange, irrational, but I have seen it in practice.  There is a sense in which we regard anyone in trouble or anyone who is a victim of deep misfortune as being contagious.

And this was the way the man in today’s Gospel has been treated.  He is a leper.  As a leper, he was a very sick man.  Leprosy is one of the few diseases that is specifically mentioned in scripture.  Even before they had the concept of contagious disease, leprosy was considered contagious.  One was specifically prohibited by scripture from even touching a leper.  If one had leprosy, there were rules that excluded the leper from public gatherings, even religious gatherings.  It is not too much of a stretch to say that the disease of leprosy was analogous to our disease of AIDS, only more so.  Because of his disease, this poor man was unfit for contact with other human beings.

When I was a child, a little girl in my second grade class got the dreaded disease of polio.  Our teacher described to us the possible complications of her polio.  She told us in some detail about the bad things that could happen to her body.  But our teacher also told us that, because of the polio, we could have no contact with her.  We could write her a get-well card, but we could not visit her.  And I remember thinking at that moment that the polio itself wouldn’t be all that terrible.  I, as an eight-year-old, could put up with the physical pain and inconvenience, but the isolation, the shunning, the loneliness would be the worst.

According to biblical law, this man was unclean.  He could have no contact with clean people.

But when this man encountered Jesus, he saw a possibility of deliverance.  He was filled with hope.  Groveling, kneeling before Jesus, he begs, “If you choose, you can make me clean.  (v. 40)”

And what was the response of Jesus? I wonder if his response surprised the unclean man.  There are some of our Bibles that say Jesus was filled with pity or compassion.  The Greek word in Mark’s text says that Jesus was filled with anger.  When Jesus looked at this poor man, his heart was filled with rage.  Rage?

When Matthew and Luke retell this story (we think that Mark is the oldest of the Gospels) both Matthew and Luke omit any reference to Jesus’ anger.  They don’t even say that Jesus felt compassion.  One can understand why they would not want to remember that Jesus was angry, but why did they not want to remember that Jesus was compassionate?

This move is rather typical of Matthew and Luke.  On a number of occasions, when they retell Mark’s original story, they tend to polish up Jesus, to remove references to Jesus’ humanity.  They don’t like to depict Jesus weeping, angry, or otherwise acting in a human way.

We believe in the full humanity of Jesus.  He was not only God but also human, fully human.  But even then, why did Jesus get angry?

Was he angry because this leper had broken the law of Moses?  Had he stepped over the boundary between the clean and the unclean, the healthy and the unhealthy? That interpretation would not make sense because Mark says that, “Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, ‘I do choose.  Be made clean!’” (v. 41)  If Jesus had been so concerned about breaking the law of Moses, upon seeing this man he would have moved away from him, not reached out toward him and touched him.  The law clearly said that lepers were not to be touched.

Or perhaps, you are thinking, Jesus was angry because this man approaches him in a rather manipulative way.  What does the man mean by “If you choose, you can make me clean”?  Is this like the man saying to him, “If you are really the Messiah, and if you really have love for those in need, then you will prove that you are the Messiah and make me clean”?  But Jesus doesn’t seem to be angry about that.  When the man says, “If you choose,” Jesus immediately responds, “I do choose,” and heals the man.

I think Jesus was filled with anger, not at the breaking of the ancient law, nor because of the way this sick man approached him, but he was angry because of the man’s sickness, because of what this sickness had done to the man, ravaging his body so, and because of the way his illness had isolated him from the warmth of human community.

I think he was angry at the evil of it all.  This was not the way God intended life to be.  This was not the way God had intended the world to be.  This incident, where Jesus shows anger, reminds me of another incident when Jesus got angry—the cleansing of the temple.  On that occasion, Jesus got so angry that he kicked over tables, he took a whip and drove the money-changers out of the temple, saying that through their commerce, they had transformed God’s temple into a “den of thieves.”  Jesus was angry because evil had, even if temporarily, intruded into God’s good and loving purposes for the world.

When the leper cried out, “Make me clean!” the man was crying out for more than healing.  He was crying out to be received back into human community.  He was pleading for a chance to become fully human once again.  And, whether he knew it or not, he was also pleading, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  He was pleading for the triumph of the good purposes of God, not someday, but today, not in heaven, but here, and now.

And so, Jesus, moved by anger, moved by righteous indignation at the utter injustice of it all, majestically announces, “I will.” And he reached out, touched the man, and healed him.  And, having healed the man, having moved the man from death to life (Who says Mark doesn’t really have a theology of resurrection?), Jesus puts him back into contact with the rest of humanity.  He tells the man to go show himself to the priests.  The man is to go witness to the religious authorities that life has overcome death; that there is a power available that is loose in the world and this power is in the person of Jesus.  The man was to go and tell that to all of the professional religious people, even before he went home, back to his beloved family.  Maybe Jesus wants him to tell the priests because we religious professional types are the last to believe life and liberation when we finally get some!

And then Jesus told him to tell no one else.  But the man failed to obey Jesus.  Perhaps that seems incredibly ungrateful.  Jesus has healed him from leprosy and all Jesus asked was that, after showing the religious authorities what had happened, he should keep it to himself.  But he could not keep it to himself.  He had to go and shout to everybody what Jesus had done for him.  He was so grateful, so excited.  Can you blame him? He was now free.

But because he went and told everybody, ironically, Jesus is no longer free.  A once trapped man is now free to go where he wants.  Jesus now must be isolated, apart from the city.  Now Jesus is forced to stay in Galilee, out in the countryside.  Ironically, the man is free, for the first time in a long time, to go back to town and enjoy human company.  Jesus the liberator is forced to stay out in the countryside.  In healing the isolated sick man, Jesus has become an isolated sick man.  Jesus not only got very angry at the presence of evil, but he also responded, majestically acted against evil.  He restored a bruised and broken man to health and wholeness.  He restored him for life, to human community.  And as a result, Jesus becomes a marked man, a lonely man, eventually a dead man.  Jesus has sacrificed his personal freedom in order to care for someone else.

A man in our church recently donated one of his kidneys to save the life of his brother who was dying of kidney failure.  Of course, we have two kidneys, and he can still live with only one.  And yet, his life is more restricted, he has to take various drugs to offset the loss of his kidney.  There will be restrictions.

I also know a woman, now in her late 70s, who has given much of her adult life to caring for a mentally challenged adult son.  She might have put him in an institution where others could have cared for him.  But she felt it would be better for him.  She knew that he would have a more satisfying life if she stayed at home with him and she attended to his needs.  This has been wonderful for the son.  He is now in his 50s and still in relatively good health except for his mental disabilities.  But it has meant that her life has been severely restricted and confined.  There have been many occasions when she has been unable to go to church or to a meeting, or socialize with her friends, because she has taken on the care of her son.  And yet, when I talked to her, she told me, “He is the best thing that ever happened to me.  He has given me a wonderful purpose in my life.  He has been a gift.”

It’s rare that an act of goodness comes without cost.  It is rare that some deed of compassion does not cause some pain to the doer and the giver.

It was certainly that way with Jesus.  When he came face to face with evidence of evil in this world, he was angry, filled with righteous indignation.  He did not sit back and philosophize about theodicy.  Rather, he pronounced, “I do choose!” He reached out, he got involved, he touched, and he healed.  As a result, he caught what we had.  He, for our sakes, became infected with our sinfulness, the limitations of our humanity.  God in Christ could not remain in majestic isolation from us.  Rather, he came to us, shared our lot, touched us, and paid dearly for it.  He, who was without sin, took on our sins, and paid for that.  Though he was not afflicted with leprosy, his body, hanging from the cross, was afflicted much worse.  He was, in the words of the Hebrews, crucified not in the middle of the big city, but “outside the gate” on a lonely hill, the utter outcast.

When we move to the Lord’s table, when we partake of Holy Communion, we say this, we do this in celebration of the one who for our sake became human.  This is my body, broken for you.  This is my blood, shared for you.  He got what we got, so that we may get what he has.  Thanks be to God. 

AMEN & AMEN,
Brother Ron

What Are You Waiting For?

SERMON # 1356.01
12/11/11 (3095)
Hymns: Opening Hymn: “God Hath Spoken by the Prophets” #108
Sermon Hymn: “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” #240
Closing Hymn: “I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light” #206

John 1:6-8, 19-28 (NIV)
6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.
John the Baptist Denies Being the Messiah
19 Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. 20 He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.”
21 They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”
He said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?”
He answered, “No.”
22 Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”
23 John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”
24 Now the Pharisees who had been sent 25 questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”
26 “I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. 27 He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”
28 This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

I think it is fair to say that most of us go to church because we are looking for a handle on the infinite.  Even though we know we can never capture God, it is comforting to go someplace where we have a way of talking to and about God that makes us feel a little less lost in the universe.  It is comforting to have songs to sing and rituals to perform, even if they never solve the mystery of God’s love for us in Christ.

This privilege of gathering for worship has always involved some risks, only I am not thinking about the dangers of persecution or bad preaching this time.  I am thinking instead about the danger of religion—I mean any of the systems invented and defended by human beings in their efforts to pigeonhole God.  Just to make sure I was on solid ground here, I looked up the word religion in my concordance to see how many times it occurs in the Bible.  The answer is three times: once in the book of Acts when Paul is talking about his past as a Pharisee, and twice in the letter of James, where James defines religion as caring for orphans and widows in their distress.

That is all the religion there is in the Bible.  Jesus never uses the word at all, perhaps because he found organized religion so unfriendly.  The first time he preached in his home synagogue, the entire congregation rose up in wrath and tried to throw him off a cliff.  The clergy in Jerusalem had the same reaction to him.  Every time he showed up in the temple, they stood around in clumps trying to figure out how to get rid of him, and at least once he got so mad about what was happening in God’s house that he turned all the furniture upside down.

Jesus was not big on religion, as far as I can tell.  He seemed to see it as something people did instead of worshiping God.  When people could no longer stand surrendering themselves to a love that would give them no details, make them no deals, cut them no slack, they invented a religion that would do all those things for them and they worshiped that instead.  They spent their prayer time making up rules and definitions.  They spent their orphan-and-widow time keeping their records up to date.

It wore Jesus out, because they did not know when to stop.  It might have been all right if they had limited the use of their organizational skills to each other, but they did not.  They tried to organize God too, so that their religion turned into a blindfold that kept them from seeing the God who came to them—sideways, from way out past the limits of their expectations—as a complete surprise.

 He draws crowds in the wilderness, which is how he comes to the attention of the religious establishment in Jerusalem; only they do not know what to make of him.  He does not dress, act, or sound like anyone they have ever encountered before.  He certainly does not dress, act, or sound like them, so they send a delegation of clergy down to his river camp to find out who he is.  They are professional appraisers, well equipped (they think) to find out where John has gotten the authority to act the way he is acting.

“Who are you?” (v. 19) they ask him, and you can almost see them standing there with their IPhones or Blackberries, texting their ideas and questions about John to their Facebook friends.  Is he Orthodox or Reform, a fundamentalist, a charismatic, a liberal, a traditionalist, a Pentecostal?  Is he high church or low church?  Does he believe in predestination, transubstantiation, dispensationalism?  Where does he stand on believer’s baptism, the ordination of women, the use of incense, and same-sex unions?  They want details, only John will not cooperate.

“I am not the Messiah,” (v. 20) he says, which is a pretty interesting answer since that is not what they asked him.  But John is up to something here, which is all but lost on his visitors.  “I am not,” John starts out with them, and that is how the whole conversation goes, with denial after denial.

“Then who are you?  Are you Elijah?”  “I am not.”  “Are you the prophet?”  “No.” (v. 21)

It is terribly frustrating for them.  They have a religious identification box with a round hole, a square hole, and a triangular hole in it, but John will not fit into any of them.  He matter‑of‑factly dismisses all their religious categories, but it does not take them long to catch on to his tricks.  Whatever they suggest, he is going to say “no,” so they invite him to categorize himself.

“Who are you?” they try again.  “Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us.  What do you say about yourself?” (v. 22)  But John will not say anything about himself.  He is Mr. Not, Not, No, the man with no face, no name, no identity at all except for the sound he makes.

“I am the voice,” he says at last, “of one calling in the wilderness, ‘make straight the way for the Lord.’” (v. 23)  It is the only claim he will make for himself.  John is a honking horn, a crowing rooster, a jangling alarm clock.  He is not the main event.  He is the wakeup call for the main event, but as uncooperative as he is being with his visitors, he is telling them something absolutely crucial about the one coming after him.  If they think John is hard to peg, just wait until they meet the light.  The light will not match any of their descriptions or fit into any of their boxes either.  The light will not obey their rules or honor their systems, because if the light did that then he would not be the light.  He would be something much smaller and tamer—a pocket-sized flashlight, maybe, something people could turn on and off at will.

By refusing every title the religious authorities try to pin on him, John turns out to be a very good witness to the light.  Neither he nor the one coming after him will ever fit into anyone’s pocket like that.  John is the unclassifiable witness to the undefinable Lord, who will be as slippery as greased lightning, as elusive as a moonbeam, as hot to handle as the sun.  No system will be big or fast enough to contain him, John warns his visitors, so they might as well give up right now.

“Among you stands one you do not know.” (v. 26)  John tells those who are supposed to know everything there is to know about God, and it is a wonder they do not have him arrested on the spot.  They cannot excommunicate him, however, because he does not belong to any group they can throw him out of.  He lives in the wilderness, far from the temple.  He operates outside their boundaries.  He is “Mr. Not Not No”, who has already emptied himself out to make straight the way of the Lord.

What John does not tell his visitors is that he does not know whom he is waiting for either, but that is the point.  If he thinks he knows whom he is looking for, he might miss the one who comes to him sideways, from way out past the limits of his expectations.  The point is to know that he does not know, and to do what he can to help everyone else know that they do not know either.  It is enough to trust God to open their eyes when the time comes.  It is enough to trust the light to be light enough to see.

We are given this passage on the Third Sunday of Advent because we still need John’s testimony to the light.  While we are waiting—for a baby’s cry, for a handle on the infinite, for the earth to turn toward the sun again—we can use John’s reminder that none of us ever knows exactly whom we are waiting for either, and that we need not be ashamed of that.  It is a good thing, not a bad thing, to surrender ourselves to a love we cannot predict or control, especially during this season when we look forward to holding him in our arms.  He will allow us to do that, but only on the condition that we understand we can never possess him, not entirely.

     In the end, it is he who puts his arms around us.  No religion can contain him.  No church can box him in.  But oh, can we worship him.  We can worship him until the light is all we see. 


AMEN & AMEN,
Brother Ron

When Life Comes to Life

SERMON # 1365.01
02/05/12 (3104)
Hymns: Opening Hymn: “Oh For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” #057
Sermon Hymn: “Jesus is All the World to Me” #469
Closing Hymn: “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” #474

Mark 1:29-39
Jesus Heals Many
29 As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. 30 Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. 31 So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.
32 That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. 33 The whole town gathered at the door, 34 and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.
Jesus Prays in a Solitary Place
35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. 36 Simon and his companions went to look for him, 37 and when they found him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for you!”
38 Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” 39 So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.

A pastor was preparing to leave the congregation where he had served faithfully for seven years.  Both he and his parishioners were in tears over the parting.  Gifts were given, embraces shared, kind and complimentary words offered:

“Pastor, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your service to the Lord here.”

“Pastor, your faithfulness has been an inspiration to us.”

“Pastor, God has truly blessed us with your ministry.”

But of all the gracious and kind comments made, the most moving, the most impressive was this: “Pastor, we knew that no matter how bad things were, no matter how difficult things became, if you were present, somehow it would be all right.” None of us who serve as pastors could ever hear anything more uplifting and affirming than this.

Multiply that sense of reassuring presence a hundredfold and it begins to convey something of the assurance that those who were sick or poor or broken by life must have felt in the presence of the Good Pastor, Jesus Christ.  When Jesus was around, these people just knew that things would be all right.  Healing would happen.

Life comes to life in the presence of God.  Elijah breathing life into a dead boy’s body.  Isaiah telling us to wait upon the Lord for renewal of strength.  Paul doing whatever it takes to draw out the life‑giving blessings of the gospel in the churchgoers of Corinth.  Jesus healing the sick and broken.  Again and again, the message is the same: wherever God is, wherever Jesus is, life comes to life.  Things will be OK.

Mark writes, “³¹ That evening after sunset the people brought to and all the sick and demon-possessed.  ³² The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases.” (Mark 1:32-34)  What a blessing it must have been to be a beneficiary of the new life God brings through Jesus Christ.

The life-giving blessings of Jesus’ touch are not limited to the narrow band of men and women who knew him in the flesh two thousand years ago.  We don’t have to celebrate from afar.  Look within.  We too have joined the ranks of those first men and women who were touched by Jesus and given new life.  For us this newness of life may not have come through physical restoration from infirmity, but it surely has come through spiritual restoration from sin.

And this new life places upon each of us an obligation not just to be beneficiaries, but also conduits—individual pipelines, if you will, through which the loving and life-giving spirit of Jesus Christ can flow thru us into the lives of others in need.  Paul understood this.  That’s why he became, as he put it, all things to all people, so that he could share to others what was shared with him, namely, newness of life in Jesus Christ.

It is our responsibility, therefore, to follow this example.  Wasn’t this the duty that Christ was placing upon us over and over again in the Gospels?  “²¹ Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21)  And in one of his last parables, that of the sheep and goats, didn’t Jesus promise God’s reward to those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome strangers, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit the imprisoned?  Is that so hard to understand…we must do more than just sit and watch.  We’re not to just be spectators but members of the body of Christ.

We can share the good life to others in the name of Jesus.  What we must keep in mind, however, and it is crucial for us to do so, is that we can be successful only as long as we ourselves remain connected to the true source of life, God Almighty.  After Jesus poured life into those who were sick and broken in Peter’s hometown, Mark tells us he withdrew to a private place where he could be alone with God in prayer.  Why did Jesus do that?  I believe he did that to ensure that God’s Spirit continued to flow in full force into his soul, from where it could be given to others as the need arose.

One of the great missionaries of the 20th century was Mary Reed.  As a young woman she decided to bring life to the women of India in the name of Jesus.  For eight years she worked under difficult conditions in Cawnpore, India, until her health began to collapse.  She was sent to the Himalayas to recuperate, and while there she discovered a colony of 500 lepers living without help or support.  Some time later she returned to India, but within a year her health failed again, and she was sent back to America.  Much to her dismay and to the confusion of the doctors, her health continued to fail until one day she realized what was happening.  The pain in her finger, the spot on her face—telltale signs that she herself had contracted leprosy.  Instead of decrying her plight she returned to India where she could work with a community of lepers and bring to them the life that Christ had brought to her.  And so, in Chandag, India, a settlement and a hospital for lepers grew as a result of her efforts.  A single woman.  A soul filled to the brim with the life of Jesus Christ.  A servant of the Lord who brought life to those who were broken in body and spirit by a dread disease.

A teacher of first and second graders in vacation Bible school taught the children that we are Jesus’ hands and feet in the world.  Then he asked the children where Jesus lives today.  The response was nearly unanimous, “Jesus lives inside us.” One little boy was puzzled, however.  Looking at the large picture of Jesus on the wall he said, “I’m small and Jesus is big.  If Jesus lives inside me why isn’t he sticking out somewhere?” Good question don’t you think!  Truth is, if Jesus lives inside us, if we are filled with his life, he does stick out somewhere, bringing health and well-being to others.

Wherever Jesus is, all things end up all right.  Healing happens.  Life comes to life in the presence of God.  May we be not just the beneficiaries of this blessing.  May we be the instruments as well.

AMEN & AMEN,
Brother Ron

As One with Authority

SERMON # 1364.01
01/29/12 (3103)
Hymns: Opening Hymn: “Majesty, Worship His Majesty” #176
Sermon Hymn: “All Creatures of Our God and King” #062
Closing Hymn: “Blest Be the Tie That Binds” #557

Mark 1:21-28
Jesus Drives Out an Impure Spirit
21 They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. 22 The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. 23 Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an impure spirit cried out, 24 “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”
25 “Be quiet!” said Jesus sternly. “Come out of him!” 26 The impure spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek.
27 The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.” 28 News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.

A member in a congregation I served had been a career noncommissioned army officer.  John was a no nonsense kind of guy, whom I had no trouble at all picturing as a drill sergeant ready to chew up and spit out recruits who even thought of looking cross-eyed at him.  John was also one of the most voracious readers I’ve ever met.

So I was intrigued when John said he had a book I needed to read: About Face, the autobiography of Col. David Hackworth, the most highly decorated Vietnam War veteran.  What further tweaked my interest beyond John’s recommendation was the timing.  This was not long before the outbreak of the Gulf War, and Col. Hackworth kept popping up on Crossfire and other such news talk shows, arguing not to become involved in this war.  The seeming paradox of his current position with his past exploits persuaded me to take John up on his offer to lend me the book.

It is a massive volume, over 800 pages, though the stories more than make up for the length.  Some allege Col. Hackworth provided the inspiration for the character played by Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now”.  Even more fascinating is Col. Hackworth’s emphasis in the book upon teaching: not only in the role it played in his rise from the enlisted ranks, but also in his seeing teaching as his most important role as a combat leader, training those under his charge to fight and more importantly to survive.

What comes to the forefront of the autobiography is the critical importance of authority in teaching.  In Hackworth’s case, authority derived not from established rules and procedures—it was personal authority.  Authority gained through the harrowing experience of enduring and winning in combat.  Authority that derived from his self-identity as a warrior rather than with the institution that first rewarded and then rejected him.

That emphasis on personal authority sheds light on Mark’s introduction of Jesus as teacher: ²² The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. (v. 22)  The teaching pronounced by Jesus astonished those who heard it.  That astonishment traces less to content, and more to the personal aura of authority.

In that day’s normative style of teaching, a scribe or rabbi presented a case based on scripture and traditional interpretations.  If the subject was Sabbath, the teacher referred to scripture related to Sabbath and citations of some previous rabbi’s position supporting his view.  If you could claim both law and precedent, you were teaching.  Jesus, however, proceeds otherwise.  He invokes a different “authority” beyond what others have said or taught in times past.  Jesus teaches as one whose authority resides in himself, in his own identity.  Matthew’s Gospel provides a clear illustration of this contrasting style in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

§  ²¹ “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder.’—²² But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment.”

§  ²⁷ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.  ²² But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’”

§  ⁴³ “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  ⁴⁴ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”

§  “You have heard that it was said,” no longer suffices in the light of Jesus’ authority, even when the “old” is scripture itself.  Jesus’ authority is vested in himself: “But I tell you.” The decision to accept or reject Jesus’ teaching is not what you think about the texts and traditions he cited or ignored, but in what you think about Jesus.  (Matthew 6:21-43)

And there is a difference.  The teachings and authority of Jesus cannot be measured solely by how they conform to expectations related in scripture or to Israel’s developing expectations of the Messiah.  Faith depends, in the final analysis, on a decision made about the person of Jesus.  Biblical scholars say all of the blessings pronounced by Jesus in the New Testament have Old Testament precedents with only one exception: “Blessed is he who takes no offense at me.” The person of Jesus is the crux of faith’s decision.

In the Gospels, accepting Jesus’ teaching involves an acceptance of Jesus’ authority.  That helps explain why Christian discipleship involves a commitment of trust in the person of Jesus beyond mere assent to this doctrine or that theory of biblical inspiration.  And to make such a commitment, you have to decide about Christ’s authority.

An authority borne out in Mark’s story, not simply by his words but his actions.  The story of the exorcism that follows immediately upon the astonishment at his teaching is not coincidental.  Authority relates to power—and the power of Jesus’ words finds its equal in the power of Jesus’ actions.  Ironically, the demonstration of Jesus’ authority in exorcism elicits the exact same response as does his teaching: “ ²⁷ The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this?  A new teaching—and with authority!’” (Mark 1:27)

Those crowded into the synagogue at Capernaum recognized Jesus exercised authority in the person of the teacher rather than simply his sources.  Did they follow that authority in their lives?  Did they all become followers of the Christ?  On that, the Gospel remains silent.  It is one thing to see and recognize authority.  It is quite another to heed and follow it.

And what of us?  How do others see Christ’s authority at work in us?  Do persons see the authority of our faith merely in the words we pronounce and the creeds we declare and the denominational trappings we carry—or is our authority, like that of Christ, rooted in our identity and experience?

To go back to the example of David Hackworth: would people instinctively follow our example of Christian faith because they know the faith of which we speak is part and parcel of who we are and what we do?  Or to put it another way: if their lives depended upon having a faith that was real and vital versus one that was peripheral and optional—would they cling by our side, convinced we are authorities for such faith, or would they seek others?  Perhaps that is an unfair question.  No one possesses a corner on faith’s market.  And yet: doesn’t the faith of some persons seem so natural, so much a part of their whole being, that it would be difficult to conceive of that individual without it?

Such a faith is authoritative: not because it is pushy or easily verbalized, not even because it claims to have all the answers: such a faith is authoritative because it is true to experience.  It’s not that Jesus ignored scripture or his Jewish tradition for authority: it’s that, because of the integrity of his faith, Jesus moved those teachings from past wisdom into present vocation: “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago,...But I tell you.” Authority comes from walking the talk, from faith whose witness is not only what scripture confesses, but also what our lives embody.

During my time in the Arkansas Annual Conference, I’ve spent time with other UM pastors at learning events as well as by myself in personal retreat at a place originally called St. Benedict Priory, a member of the Swiss-American Congregation (group of monasteries) of the world-wide Benedictine Confederation.  Subiaco was founded by three monks of St. Meinrad Abbey in Indiana (which I’ve also visited): They became “adopted” by the motherhouse of St. Meinrad.  In November, 1877, an offer of land for a new Benedictine foundation in Arkansas was made by the Little Rock-Fort Smith Railroad Company. The monks of this new foundation were to minister to the German-Catholic settlers coming to the western Arkansas River Valley.  Gradually the little community grew as new members, largely from Switzerland and later from the U.S. came to help in the work.  We shared that building and our mealtime with an order of Catholic abbots, who throughout the week showed extraordinary hospitality to us.  On Sunday, our group of about 30 accepted the invitation to worship with them at 11 o’clock mass.

From the ages represented, I believe practically all of those priests are now retired from their vocations.  They each have a simple room in which to live out their days, a room in which fits all of their possessions.  My wife and I have a simple house and with a large shed out back, and all the storage rooms seem full to overflowing (including closets under beds, etc.  What stays with me most from that service came in the refrain from our opening song entitled “Two Fishermen:” “Leave all things you have and come, and follow me.”  It struck me: as often as I have heard Mark’s story, as well as I know it and have read it, now I stood in the presence of men who bore the authority of that text because they lived it.

When I now think of what it might mean to teach and live as one with authority—my thoughts turn to those priests.  They walk the talk.  They live the faith.  It’s not just Bible verses and church traditions.  It’s not just social activism and progressive thinking.  Faith recognizes authority derives from life and word, action and trust, woven in a seamless whole by the grace of God that goes embodied and risked.

        Christ taught among us with such authority.  So may we teach: as those whose faith is inseparable from our conduct, from our values, from all that we do and all that we are.  

AMEN & AMEN,
Brother Ron