Posted by Pr. Richard Hermstad, Pentecost 18, Year B
Texts: Numbers 11:4-6,10-29; James 5:13-20; Mark 9:38-50

Three things:  1. The Bible is MORE THAN a collection of verses.  2.  Life, as God created it, is rooted in relationships.  3. The Gospel is MORE about earth than heaven.


First, the Bible is not made up of verses, each of which is independent of other verses.  The Bible is a narrative, a story, of the struggle between God and the people of earth. God struggles to get us to see one another as crucial to our own lives.  In the first reading, Moses cannot bear the griping of the masses – hungering for slavery, abuse and violence in Egypt, where they thought the food was wonderful.  God is perturbed and will quiet the mobs by making the meat come out their noses.  Obviously, things are not good. Moses needs help.  People must be brought to their senses.  God will give them “meat” all right!

Too often we take the Bible in hand and look for single verses to answer whatever questions we might have.  But each verse is in a chapter, each chapter in a book. Each book tells a story.  And these books are all gathered with others to make what we call our Bible.  No one verse, chapter, or book tells the whole story.  Bible study often goes berserk when serious, well-intentioned people choose a couple of verses as a way to summarize the whole story.

The Bible tells stories about generations seeking power, enduring captivity, being selfish, making wars, losing wars, society collapsing because of greed.  It tells of prophets who challenged the system and women who did amazing things.  For example, Shiphra & Puah (two midwives – Ex 1) saved Moses who then becomes God’s agent for the Israelites to escape from tyranny, terror & violence in Egypt.  Working with individual verses is a hopeless way of getting the hang of the whole.

Second, life is rooted in relationships. What Mark writes of this morning comes out of life with Jesus, the disciples and the people. Mark begins the story with John the Baptist exhorting the people to “change your ways!”  REPENT is the word we hear.  It comes from two Greek words – meta & gnosco.  It means, simply, CHANGE THE WAY YOU THINK, THE WAY YOU SEE THINGS.  You know about meta – metastasize, metamorphosis / caterpillars to butterflies.  Gnosco, Greek for “knowledge” in English.  Change the way you think, how you look at and live with the world! That’s what John says as Mark begins.

We can easily miss the point when we choose to look only at verses we like.  Let me remind you of a few things Mark has told us in recent weeks.  Thousands were fed in the wilderness, after which the Pharisees asked for a sign!  Wasn’t THAT a sign?  The disciples, following the feeding, are in the boat with Jesus and worrying about food.  Jesus asks, “Why are you talking about THAT?  Don’t you have eyes?  Can’t you see?  Don’t you “get it” yet?”

Next Jesus heals a blind man, “opens” his eyes.  The disciples seem blind, making no connections. Jesus asks them, “Who do people say I am?”  Peter says, “You’re the messiah!”  Jesus began telling them suffering would come, that he (Jesus) would be rejected, killed.  Peter gets in his face saying, “Knock it off! You’re the messiah!”  Jesus tells him to knock it off.  Right after that Jesus tells the crowds, “those who want to save their lives will lose them, but those who lose their life for his sake, & for the gospel, will save it.”

Next Jesus goes up the mountain with Peter, James, John. Transfiguration.  Moses & Elijah appear.  Moses, the law guy; Elijah, the prophet fellow – symbolic of what we call the Old Testament. They disappear.  A voice from heaven – “This is my son.  LISTEN to him!” Jesus is alone.  The whole Old Testament is wrapped up in what Jesus is saying and doing.

Another healing happens as they come down the mountain.  Then they head for Capernaum.  On arrival, Jesus wants to know what they were talking about on the road.  They were silent.  Why?  They had been talking about which of them would be the greatest!!  So Jesus declares, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”  Jesus puts a child in their midst. “Welcome a child, and you welcome me,” he says. Without all the goes before our Gospel reading, it’s hard to hear what’s really happening in it!  Each story, each verse, each chapter helps in coming to terms with the whole message.  Each piece, portion, or section, of the Bible is set in a much broader context.  So are our lives.  Bible Study includes ALL of that, or it misses the message! 

Third. The Bible is more interested in our lives here and now rather than someday far away.  We are here to share the joys and woes of those among whom we live TODAY! Otherwise, we cannot be connected with Jesus.  Life is rooted in relationships – not only with neighbors, family, and friends.  Our lives are also rooted with earth, streams & flowers, seas, oil fields, hunger, beheadings, allies & antagonists.  There is no such thing as “solitary” relationship between “me and Jesus.”  To be a follower is to be engaged with the whole earth and all its people. The earth and its people are the “context” in which we hear the Gospel this morning.  It’s never just about “my God and I.”  In a world obsessed with the first person singular – I, me, mine – Jesus calls us to life with the whole world!  Everyone and everything is included.  The pope is reminding us of such things this week!  Unless we get THAT, we have missed the meat of the biblical story.  When you leave, look around out there.  Everyone and everything you see belongs to the world God loves, and asks us to love. . . .                         (Amen?)

- Copyright:  Richard P Hermstad, 9/27/2015

Posted by Pastor Seth for Year B, Pentecost 16
Texts: Isaiah 50:4-9; James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38

Immediately prior to this story, we hear another one. Jesus and his disciples are in Bethsaida, where the villagers bring him a man called Bartimaeus, who is blind. Jesus lays his hands on him and restores his sight. He asks Bartimaeus, “Can you see anything?” Bartimaeus replies, “I can see people, but they look like trees walking around.” So, Jesus touches him again. This time, when Bartimaeus looks up at Jesus, he can see everything with perfect clarity. Then Jesus and his disciples go to Caesarea Phillippi. (Mk 8.22-26)

It is no accident that Mark prefaces our reading today with this story of healing a blind man. What we hear today is the turning point of Mark’s gospel, the beginning of the second act, so to speak. Up until now, Mark’s story has been all about the first question Jesus poses to his disciples: “Who do you say that I am?” He has been teaching and healing and performing signs, all demonstrating what Mark has claimed from the beginning of chapter one: that this is “the beginning of the good news of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God.” After all that they have seen and heard, Peter and the others show that they can see that this is true: “You are the Christ.” However, when Jesus begins to teach them what it means to be the Christ, we find out that Peter cannot yet fully see what is going on.

To Peter, a Christ who is rejected by the religious authorities rather than celebrated by them, a Christ who suffers and dies rather than one who conquers and reigns makes about as much sense as trees walking around having conversations with one another. What Peter knew (or thought he knew) about the Christ didn’t fit with what Jesus was telling him, so he took Jesus aside to correct him. Jesus responds harshly, even calling Peter “Satan,” because Peter’s vision of what a Christ does is not only wrong, it is dangerous and completely contrary to God’s design for the fulfillment of creation. In that moment, what Peter wants for Jesus—glory and power—is the antithesis of God’s will; it is satanic.

For Peter, his experience of Jesus until now has been the “first touch,” the initial action of Jesus that helps him to see that Jesus is, in fact, the Christ, even if he can’t see what that means. He waits, along with his fellow disciples, the crowds, and us, for the “second touch,” the moment when Jesus’ action will reveal the fullness of who he is and help us to see him and God’s kingdom clearly. Beginning with Jesus’ new teaching to the crowd, Mark’s gospel builds from here to this “second touch,” taking us along the road to Jesus’ Passion.

For Mark, it is Jesus’ suffering and death who reveal most clearly that he is the Christ and what that means. Unlike Peter, Mark believes that Jesus’ defeat and execution is not the evidence of God’s judgment or absence, but that he is, in fact, God’s Son. The cross is proof for Mark that our God is not a God who abandons us to evil and death, but instead suffers through it alongside us.

Theologian and author Marva Dawn writes:

...at the 1987 Vancouver World's Fair, the Christian pavilion's presentation utilized glitzy double-reversed photography and flashing lasers. When I tried to explain my qualms about the production to an attendant who had asked me how I liked their "show," she protested that it had saved many people. I asked, "Saved by what kind of Christ?" If people are saved by a spectacular Christ, will they find him in the fumbling of their own devotional life or in the humble services of local parishes where pastors and organists make mistakes? Will a glitzy portrayal of Christ nurture in new believers his character of willing suffering and sacrificial obedience? Will it create an awareness of the idolatries of our age and lead to repentance? And does a flashy, hard-rock sound track bring people to a Christ who calls us away from the world's superficiality to deeper reflection and meditation?     (from Reaching Out without Dumbing Down)

For Mark, it is of the utmost importance that the reader see God’s presence in Christ’s suffering because only then can we see God with us in our own suffering. Our God is not a God who miraculously escapes suffering, but who endures it with us out of love.

However, if Peter’s Jewish heritage couldn’t imagine a dying Christ; our Christian often heritage can’t imagine a Christ who isn’t dying on our behalf. We have been taught that Jesus’ death should have been ours, fair recompense for sinfulness, but that by taking our punishment for us, Jesus saved us from God’s wrath. His suffering, therefore, was redemptive: his pain saves us. If this is true, then our suffering must be redemptive, too. We hear Jesus say, “take up your cross and follow,” and we begin to believe that means we should willingly suffer the inconvenience of lost keys or traffic jams; to bear the unjust violence of an abusive spouse or the grief of losing a loved one; to be a martyr for our deeply held beliefs. When suffering on these terms, we are following in the example of Christ, the eternal victim.

This story teaches us otherwise. Peter’s satanic mind was set on the human things of glory and victory; our satanic minds are set on the human things of fairness, anger, and vengeance. Perhaps for us Christians, the crucifixion is only the first touch, and we are here with Peter waiting for our eyes to be more fully opened to God’s kingdom.

When Jesus rebukes Peter, notice what he says: “Get behind me!” Later, when he talks to the crowds he says, “if any want to get behind me to follow…” Jesus isn’t insulting Peter, he is commanding him to “deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” Jesus is telling him to put aside his own desires for himself and Israel and even Jesus and instead to seek what God desires: to take up his cross and follow.

We confess as Christians that we are saved by Christ; but remembering Dawn’s question, we might ask by what kind of Christ are we saved? Are we saved by a whipping-boy Christ in service to bloodthirsty and capricious God who threatens to punish us for all eternity, but whose justice we narrowly escape through a loophole? That kind of God is more likely to inspire disgust or fear, rather than love. What might our lives look like as we follow that God? Jesus might easily say to us and our silly ideas about the cross and God’s punishment, “Get behind me, Satan!”

Mark and the other evangelists paint a different picture. Instead of the story of a vengeful and violent God, we see the story of a loving and long-suffering one. The cross Jesus bore was not God's (misplaced) anger, but selflessly giving his life freely to those whom he loved, even knowing as he did so that we would take it from him. He denied his own wants and desires, even his own safety, to follow his Father; a path which led inevitably through the cross, but which, because of God’s love, also led out of the tomb.

This is the Christ who saves us, and who invites us follow him. This is the Christ who gives himself for us. In the words of the hymn, our thorns pierce him—hands and feet—and we feed on his very body and blood; and yet he lives, sustaining us with his own life. The cross he bears is not God's anger against us, but our sinfulness so often directed against one another, and even against God.

This Christ comes to us in the meal of Holy Communion, touching us again and again so that we may see more clearly that to take up our own crosses and follow means to serve: to serve God, to serve our neighbors, to serve even our enemies with every fiber of our being, even and especially when our service is inconvenient or uncomfortable or even dangerous. To follow Christ is to love those whom Christ loves and serve those whom Christ serves; to give ourselves, as he does, as strength for the weary and nourishment for the hungry. For us to take up our cross and follow means "to have the same mind in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God,

                   did not regard equality with God

                   as something to be exploited,

          but emptied himself,

                             taking the form of a slave,

                             being born in human likeness.

                   And being found in human form,

                                      he humbled himself

                                      and became obedient to the point of death--

                                      even death on a cross. 

                   Therefore God also highly exalted him

                             and gave him the name

                             that is above every name,

          so that at the name of Jesus

                   every knee should bend,

                   in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess

          that Jesus Christ is Lord,

          to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil 2.6-10)

B Pentecost 15, Pastor Stephanie McCarthy
Isaiah 35.1-10; Psalm 146; James 2.1-10,14-17; Mark 7.24-37

We have to do better.  The walls we build to keep us safe are one thing, but the walls we have built to keep us comfortable are deeply wounding our world.  We have to do better.

In the midst of a world of walls we are taken to task this week in our readings.  We are reminded that the God we worship is a God that builds no walls.  When Jesus says to the deaf man “be opened”, so much more opens that just the man’s ears.  The proclamation about Jesus becomes an unstoppable force, Jesus can’t even stop people from spreading the good news.  When we hear these words (be opened) today, we are pushed to think about the ways that Jesus can open us by breaking down the unnecessary walls that we have built. 

At the end of today’s psalm we hear about how God watches over the resident alien, orphan and widow.  We hear these three named again and again in scripture.  They are the lowest of the low in their context – the outcast, dejected.  They have no means of support and no ties to anyone who can help.  These are the people who would have been most likely to encounter the walls other people had built up as they worked to survive.  And yet – God watches over them, God does not put up walls.

The author of James pushes back against those who have faith and a sincere desire that all those around them will be clothed and fed, but are not actually doing anything.  Sometimes we can use our faith as a wall – if we wish hard enough, or learn enough, or pray hard enough, God will take care of those in need without us having to get messy or be inconvenienced.  And yet this is not how prayer works.  Pope Francis says – “You pray for the hungry.  Then you feed them.  This is how prayer works.” 
(This poem was written by Rev. John Stott based on Matthew 25)

“Be opened.” Jesus said.  While there are many ways for us to practice open-ness in our lives, this week it seems we are invited to be open by breaking down walls and barriers.  Our world so desperately needs it.  In the midst of the turmoil and crises and violence of the world, we do find openness.  Over 10,000 families in Iceland have expressed their willingness to commit to hosting a refuge family in their own homes after the government said they could only take 50 refugees.  There are groups on the Mediterranean working to rescue drowning men, women and children.  In the midst of a world of walls, we can see cracks in the layer of brick, we can see God at work.

Because God’s open-ness is what empowers us to be open.  God refuses to build walls, to the point of coming down to earth as a lowly human.  On God’s watch nothing will come between us and God.  On God’s watch, grace has the final word, for all people. 

When the world tries to push stereotypes down our throats, God’s grace and openness teaches us to see each person as beloved.  When the tragedies of life tempt us to back away from those we love, God’s grace and openness encourages us that the risk is worth it.  When we run headlong into the walls we have built, God’s grace and openness helps us break those walls down.







 

That would have been a great place to end a sermon.  It all sounds good, but you’ll notice I haven’t presented any on the ground solutions for the class-ism, racism, violence, and tragedies in this world.  I wish I could.  I don’t have any easy answers, or even any complicated ones.  Some days it feels like all I have up here are words – the kind that make us feel good and don’t stir any action.  We leave here and what really changes?  And that’s frustrating and hard and really uncomfortable.  But maybe uncomfortable is exactly where we need to be.