A Responsibility to One Another

Sermon September 29, 2024

            “Teacher!” The Apostle John exclaimed, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”  Our story today doesn’t waste a moment of time in getting to the point.  Last week we talked about how the disciples were involved in a discussion about who was the greatest.  Jesus issued what was, for Him, a mild rebuke of the disciples, and then He took the time to try to teach the disciples that those who are the greatest in God’s kingdom, are those who do the most for others; that servanthood is the mark of the true disciple.  But now, the disciples see a person who is not a part of their inner circle, and that person is casting out demons in Jesus’ name.  How dare they? 

            I have to say that, for me, the patience that Jesus had with the disciples is extremely encouraging, because I have certainly had my own share of “Duh!” moments in my lifetime, and I know that Jesus has, time and time again, displayed that same patience with me.  But here we are, probably with the child from last week’s story still sitting on Jesus’ lap and possibly just moments removed from the part of Mark’s story where Jesus had to gently reprimand the disciples and teach them that true greatness in the kingdom isn’t about power or influence, but about servanthood.  And in spite of this possibly only moments old lesson on humility, the disciples have once again exhibited a lack of understanding of the nature of servanthood. 

For whatever reason, John and the disciples felt threatened by this other person who was claiming to work in Jesus’ Name without being one of His actual followers.  We don’t really know why they felt this way, jealousy perhaps? Maybe they felt that this person was undermining their authority as disciples, or perhaps somehow diminishing their status or prestige.  Maybe they thought that this other person was misleading people, or not fully understanding Jesus’ teachings?  (As if the disciples actually fully understood Jesus’ teachings!)  But without regard to why the disciples felt this way, the disciples said to Jesus, “Make him stop!”

            Jesus responds to their request by explaining to them why this person doing what they are doing is a good thing and not a bad thing.  “Whoever is not against us is for us” Jesus said.  Jesus then again begins to explain to the disciples about servanthood. 

After Jesus tells the disciples that whoever is not against us is for us, Jesus tells them that “anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to the Messiah will certainly not lose their reward.”  

Last week, the lesson on servanthood was about individual servanthood, as Jesus instructed the disciples about how their understanding of personal greatness and status just wasn’t applicable in God’s kingdom.  And that the disciples individually needed to begin to develop a servant’s heart if they wanted to become a productive part of that kingdom.  But now, today, Jesus begins to teach about collective discipleship and about how the church needs to work together to accomplish God’s purposes.  In the simple act of giving a glass of water, one disciple is supporting another in their ministry.  And as anyone who has ever undertaken even the tiniest task at church knows, the help and support of others is enormously important.  Even when that support comes in the seemingly unimportant form of a little encouragement, or prayer, or handling some little bit of paperwork, or even bringing a snack at an opportune time, discipleship is at its best when it is a team sport.

            This person who was casting out demons in Jesus’ name was healing the sick and was offering new life to others in Jesus’ name.  I do believe that this fits the textbook description of discipleship.  The disciples, instead of having chosen to become insular, would have best served their discipleship role by supporting this other person.  Rather than asking them to stop, there should have been high fives all around. 

I have an honest question.  Can we look at this part of the story and see the difference between the selfish, worldly response of the disciples and the loving and supportive response advocated by Jesus?  In a place where we might not have expected to find a lesson about love, we have run right straight into one.  If the disciple’s hearts were filled with the love of God, their natural response to this person WOULD have been one of support and encouragement.  This is a wonderful illustration of how having the love of God in our hearts will impact our actions.  It is what Jesus has been trying to teach all along, but something that the disciples are not going to understand fully until they experience the filling of the Holy Spirit.  But WE don’t have to wait to be filled with the Spirit.  The Spirit is already in us.  It is Jesus’ automatic gift to all who follow Him, so for us it isn’t a matter of waiting on God to bring us understanding and a loving heart, those things are already within us; we just need to learn to listen to the Spirit so that we can develop those attitudes of loving and understanding.

            And at this point, I have to say that the rest of this week’s lesson contains some things that are hard to hear.  And so, I want to say up front that the Bible absolutely does not always ask us to take it literally.  It is important, of course, always to take it seriously, but we do need to understand that the Bible sometimes uses hyperbole to make a point. 

Sometimes this hyperbole is apparent, and sometimes not so much.  When Mark told us back in chapter one that when John the Baptist was baptizing, and I quote, “All the land of Judea and all that were in Jerusalem were baptized by him” do we think that every, single, person who lived in Palestine was baptized by John?  No, of course not!  We recognize the fact that, in this instance, the Bible is using hyperbole to express the fact that a whole lot of people did come to be baptized… just not all of them. 

2^nd Chronicles tells us that Solomon, and I quote, “Made silver and gold as common in Jerusalem as stones”.  Again, we recognize this instantly as hyperbole because of the context.  We know that gold and silver were not really as common as rocks, but the text is making the point that the amount of gold and silver used by Solomon was extraordinary.  Now, no one would take either of these examples literally but would just pretty much instinctively understand them as exaggerations to make a point.  Today, Jesus will be using some allegorical language that, because of the context, may not be so easily identifiable as hyperbole.  But we will need to approach these texts with the same understanding that these are exaggerations to make a point.

            Returning to our story, Jesus then says that “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck, and they were thrown into the sea.”  The Greek word that Mark uses that we translate as stumble is σκανδαλίσῃ (scandalize) a word that, in the Greek, meant to set a snare, to trap something or someone.  It implies a purposeful act of hindering a person in some way.  But Jesus doesn’t want anything getting in the way of a person choosing to follow Him.  He doesn’t want the disciples hindering this person who is casting out demons in His name.  And He certainly doesn’t want the disciples hindering themselves by failing to love and support each other.

            Michael K. Marsh has a wonderful website called Interrupting the Silence, and he has a great, and thorough explanation of this, “Jesus is once again asking us to look at ourselves, to be self-reflective. It’s as if he saying to John, ‘Don’t you worry about that other guy. You worry about yourself.’ He’s asking us to look within. The greatest stumbling blocks are not outside us but within us: anger and revenge, the judgments we make of others, prejudice, our desire to get ahead and be number one, the need to be right, our unwillingness to listen, the assumption that we know more and better than another, living as if our way is the only and right way, pride, fear, being exclusionary, our busyness, lies, gossip, our desire for power and control. These, and a thousand other things like them, are what cause others and us to fall.” ¹  And Jesus doesn’t leave any room for doubt about how important this is.  Yes, the millstone is hyperbole.  But as I said before, the Bible doesn’t always ask us to take it literally, but it does require us to take it seriously.  Jesus wants us to know on no uncertain terms that personal discipleship, and corporate discipleship are both absolute keys to living lives of eternal significance.

            Now, there is one really important thing to remember any time we study the Bible, and that is that no verse stands alone!  Each and every verse of the Bible needs to be understood in the light of the witness of the entire Bible.  So, when the Bible teaches us in multiple places that self-injury is a violation of the Law, or that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit and so should be honored, the only way to square these teachings with the amputations suggested in this passage is to understand them as hyperbole to make a point, not unlike that 2^nd Chronicles claim that gold and silver became as common as rocks.  But Jesus is using this harsh language to emphasize to us just how critical this teaching is. 

            As Jesus continues, here is where things get a bit hard to hear.  But in His discussion about hands feet and eyes, let’s tie this part of the conversation in with the part that just transpired.  If our hands represent the things that we DO, is it fair to say that things that we do can trip someone up?  Or trip us up?  How about if our feet represent where we GO?  Same thing?  And if our eyes represent the things to which we turn our attention, can that trip someone up?  Can that trip us up?

For us to be a stumbling block or a snare, whether through our actions or our presence or that to which we give our attention, is absolutely to be avoided, and to be avoided without regard to the personal cost to us.  Are we beginning to see how this part of the discussion is still thoroughly tying in with the idea of serving others instead of ourselves?  Can we hear in Jesus’ words once again the call to deny ourselves that we may be a blessing to others?  Can we circle back to the disciple’s actions in this morning’s reading and see how what they did and what they said could have been a stumbling block or a snare to the person who was casting out demons?  Can we see how what the disciples did and said were absolutely a stumbling block to them?    Can we see how, in the disciple’s rejection of their brothers or sisters in Christ, they were failing to love?  And can we see how that failure to love moved the disciples further away from the kingdom of God? 

If our goal is discipleship, the last thing in all the world that we want is to be moving in the wrong direction.  This is why Jesus used such harsh language.  Jesus really wanted to make the point that guarding what we do, where we go, and what we give our attention, is an essential part of growing into discipleship.

I’d like to close with an explanation that I hope won’t sound too convoluted.  First, most important, WE ARE FORGIVEN!  Anything and everything in our lives that fails to be 100% Christ-like has already been dealt with at the cross.  If our hearts belong to Jesus there is no worry and no fear about our eternity, because Jesus has covered all of that for us once and for all. 

Second, while the imperfections and indiscretions of those who belong to Christ are forgiven, not everything is beneficial.  God has called us to a higher purpose.  He has called us to live lives of eternal significance, and sometimes living in that way means not doing things our way.  It means not seeking our own comfort and satisfaction, but rather that of others.  And yes, that IS a sacrifice, but that brings us to the third thing which is the fact that there is an unimaginable joy that we will find in dedicating ourselves to loving others. 

And finally, listening to, and obeying the Spirit takes practice.  Just like anything else in life, we learn from our experiences.  How is it the old saying goes?  “Good judgment comes from experience, and well, most experience comes from bad judgment”.  But God is unwaveringly faithful.  If the true desire of our hearts is to serve God, He will be relentless in teaching us how to do that.  And the end result of God’s efforts will be that we will develop a heart that looks like His heart.  And we will find that those self-serving impulses that we occasionally feel will begin to give way to a love that permeates our thoughts and our actions.

Finally, DO NOT be discouraged if there are times when we aren’t feeling as loving or as charitable as we thing we should.  We are human, and worldly feelings will never fully go away until the day that our faith becomes sight.  Warren Wiersbe explained this beautifully when he said, “The Spirit may use the body to glorify God, or the flesh may use the body to serve sin.  When sinners yield to Christ, [they] receive a new nature within, but the old nature is neither removed nor reformed.  For this reason, there is a battle within”. ²  But in light of this battle, it’s important to remember that we are in good company.  Possibly the most encouraging thing I can say about all of this is to quote Paul’s letter to the church at Rome where he said “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”  We are all in the same boat as Paul.  We know where we want to go as disciples, but sometimes we stumble.  If God didn’t already expect that of us, He wouldn’t have had to send His Son.

My beloved friends, let us not be discouraged by focusing on the missteps that can cause us to stumble.  Rather let us press on towards the goal of living our lives in such a way that they become lives of eternal significance.

¹ https://interruptingthesilence.com/2018/09/30/first-do-no-harm-a-sermon-on-mark-938-50/

² Warren Wiersbe (I copied this quote a long time ago and do not remember from where I copied it. My best guess is one of his “Be” series books, which I highly recommend)

The First Must Be Last Sermon September 22, 2024

            Before I start talking about today’s text, there are a few things that we need to understand about the first century Greco-Roman world because, in many ways, their society was quite different from ours, and understanding the differences between these societies will help us to better understand our lesson today.  Roman society was deeply engrossed in matters of status, honor, and duty.  Emotions were to be suppressed in favor of logic and efficiency.  Social status was a matter of extreme importance and those who were in the top social strata had considerable power over those in lower social strata. 

The population of Rome was divided into three basic groups, the Patricians were the wealthy and influential leaders of Roman society.  Patricians comprised between 4% and 8% of the population of Rome.  The Plebeians, though their citizenship conferred upon them some rights, were mostly just the common people.  They comprised between 72% and 78% of the population, and while some plebeians lived fairly well, most tended to live at a subsistence level.  The rest of the population, possibly as much as 20%, were slaves.

Income inequality within the Roman Empire was rampant, with the wealthy often living lives of extreme excess, while most of the rest struggled.  Some of the wealthy of the Roman Empire were famously known to practice widespread mistreatment of people, physically, sexually, and emotionally, and that treatment applied not only to slaves but often to Plebeians as well.  The Patricians were able to leverage their status politically to their benefit, garnering more for themselves while leaving little left for the rest of the people.  Given that type of society, it’s not hard to see why status played such an important role in the daily lives of Romans.  You really did need to be somebody if you wanted to get anywhere.

            The first century Greco-Roman world also did not share our views on the sanctity of human life.  Gladiator games were enormously popular and displayed a troubling disregard for the lives of the participants.  Since almost all of the gladiators were slaves, they had little power over their circumstances, and studies estimate that approximately 20% of gladiators lost their lives in the arena, and of course, when you were thrown into the arena for legal reasons (Like, being a Christian perhaps) that number was a lot closer to 100%.  The bottom line is that the lives of the common folk, for the most part, really didn’t matter, that strength and influence were highly valued, and that little value, if any, was given to the lives of the marginalized or those who lacked social standing.

            The first century view of children varied widely from today also.  Children did not have the protections that they have today.  Children could legally be sold to satisfy a debt, sometimes into slavery, sometimes to provide a male heir to a wealthy family.  Probably the worst practice of all was the fact that, when a child was born into a Greco-Roman household, the child would be presented to the father.  If the father accepted the child, it became part of the family, but if, for any reason, the father rejected that child, the baby would be put into a jar and left outside.  This practice was not considered murder by the authorities because they reasoned that someone may have pity on the child and take it in as their own, but the sad truth is that most of these babies died from hunger or exposure.  Suffice it to say that children had very little value in first century Greco-Roman society.  In fact, for the most part the ONLY people who had value in that society were those who had something to offer… those who could help another in some way.  If you weren’t valuable to someone, you just didn’t matter.

            Which finally brings us to today’s story.  Jesus is still trying to travel incognito.  The public part of His ministry has mostly ended, and His focus now is a more thorough teaching of the disciples, who more often than not, still don’t get it; they still don’t understand Him.  As our story begins today Jesus is once again trying to teach the disciples of His impending death and resurrection.  Our text tells us that “The disciples did not understand what Jesus meant, and they were afraid to ask.”  Sounds like me in my sophomore algebra class. 

            Anyway, while they were on the road, the disciples were having a bit of a discussion.  And the word for “discussion” that Mark used here is διαλογίζομαι (dialogizomai), which is interestingly defined by Helps Word Studies as “To go back-and-forth when evaluating, in a way that typically leads to a confused conclusion. The term implies one confused mind interacting with other confused minds, each further reinforcing the original confusion.”  Still sounds like my sophomore algebra class.  You see, the disciples were trying to figure out who was the greatest, or the most important.  (Who had the highest status!)  Remembering of course, that this issue held even greater importance in their society than it does in ours.

            Jesus asks the disciples (rhetorically, I presume) what they were arguing about but none of the disciples were willing to admit the subject of their conversation.  Probably a pretty good indication of the fact that they knew Jesus would not approve of the subject matter.

            Already knowing what they were talking about, either through having heard their conversation or through divine omniscience, Jesus sits down to teach them.  “If you want the place of honor”, Jesus told them, “You must become a slave and serve others”.  Then, to illustrate His point, Jesus asked a child to stand near Him.  Putting His arm around the child, He continued, “When you welcome even a child because of me, you welcome me. And when you welcome me, you welcome the one who sent me.”

            In order for us to understand the impact of this, we need to backtrack for a moment because we really need to view this statement through first century eyes.  Dr. Mark L. Strauss explains, “While in Western culture we tend to view children as innocent, vulnerable, gentle, even pure, in first century culture they were viewed as insignificant and having no social status.  Welcoming a little child means breaking social norms, lowering oneself to accept another of lower status and thereby risking one’s own position of power and prestige.”  This acquiescence to an individual of low social standing, such as a child, had the potential to cause people to think less of you because you abandoned your position of rank and privilege.  A famous rabbi, who was a contemporary of Jesus once said, “Morning sleep, mid-day wine, chattering with child, and lingering in the places of the common people destroy a man.”  This quote speaks volumes of the mindset of a people for whom status is of much greater importance than petty things such as caring for the least of these.  And worst of all, this was a rabbi saying this; one who should have been intimately familiar with the constant call of the Hebrew Bible to love your neighbor as yourself. 

            I have a vivid memory of seeing the late British Princess Diana on TV.  Here she is, royalty, a person of extreme importance, participating in a grand procession of some sort wearing clothes that befit her royal presence.  Along the way, a child said something to Princess Diana.  She stepped out of the line in which she was walking and then knelt down to bring herself to the level of the child for the duration of their conversation.  That image has never left me, and I can’t imagine a better illustration of our passage today than that of an actual royal princess, kneeling to speak with a child.  At that moment, her wealth and status and position were all set aside in order for her to give her full attention to a little child who wanted to speak with her.  This child had nothing of substance to offer to the Princess, there was no benefit for the Princess to stop and talk to this child, and yet she did.  And she did so simply because she had a love for children.

            And the point that Jesus is trying to make here is that we should have this same kind of love in our hearts, not just for the young ones, but for each and every one of God’s beloved children.  Pastor Leonard Vander Zee said, “The way of discipleship is not seeking personal greatness, but servanthood.  The way of discipleship is not seeking power over others but accepting servanthood and giving up power for the sake of others.  The way of discipleship is the willingness to be acted upon rather than being the actor.  It is the way of love.”

            And so, in keeping with Mark’s teachings of the last several weeks, he reminds us again that we are to set aside all of our self-serving ways in favor of a willingness to serve rather than to be served.  To follow Jesus’ example and to become a people for whom love of others takes a higher priority in our lives than does the love of self. 

            Just like the parable of the Good Samaritan where we are called to understand who our neighbor really is, we need to understand who it is that are the children to whom Jesus is referring.  Yes, part of this IS about receiving a child in Jesus’ name, but the child represents more here than just young people.  The child represents anyone who is powerless, the poor, the homeless, the prisoner, the refugee, the immigrant… this is about recognizing the Imago Dei, the image of God, that dwells in every single one of God’s beloved children.    And this is without regard to where they are from, or what color they are, or what their politics are, or who they worship, or who they love.  This is about loving as God has called us to love and allowing God to be the One to handle the business of being the one and only judge of human hearts.  Our job is not to judge, our job is to love!

What is it that Jesus said?   Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you?  What Jesus is asking here is radical, it’s revolutionary, it’s counter cultural.  It is a complete reversal of the world’s ways of doing things.  Last week I quoted Matthew Henry saying that as Christians we must be willing to swim against the stream.  From a worldly view, we stand to gain exactly zero by giving our time and our efforts to care for the poor and the marginalized, but we don’t do these things for personal gain, do we?  We do these things because God has begun the process of changing our hearts, and the love that fills our hearts as a result of this change motivates us to love others… eventually even those who are difficult to love.

            There is one other question in today’s text that I feel needs to be asked, and that question is WHY did the disciples not understand what Jesus was trying to teach them?  I mean, Jesus wasn’t speaking in parables here, He was speaking plainly.  It’s easy to understand how one might fail to pick up on an oblique reference to something.  But that isn’t what Jesus did here.  “The Son of Man will be handed over to people who will kill Him” Jesus said.  “But three days later He will rise to life.  Now, I suppose it is possible that the disciples failed to understand that when Jesus spoke in the third person about the Son of Man, He was referring to Himself.  But I find that a little hard to believe because Jesus refers to Himself as the “Son of Man” 81 times in the Gospels!  No, I think it is more likely that the disciples were suffering from cognitive dissonance; the inability to accept as fact those things that were contrary to their world views. 

These thoroughly Jewish disciples carried in their minds the traditional Jewish interpretation of the Messiah being a mighty military ruler who would subdue the nations and sit on the throne of David, reestablishing his kingdom; a kingdom that would last forever no less.  I am sure that the disciples fully expected Jesus to expel the Romans and establish an Israelite rule that would encompass the whole world.  Is it any wonder that they were jockeying for position in Jesus’ new world government?  The idea of a suffering Messiah was something that was foreign to their theology, so it is not hard to see how they were unable to process what Jesus was trying to teach them.  But in their misunderstanding, there is a lesson to be learned.

            We must be open to the teaching and leading of the Holy Spirit.  When we allow the Spirit to guide us, He will guide us into ALL truth.  But if we allow our preconceptions to hinder the instruction of the Spirit, we will have no better luck understanding what it is that Jesus is trying to teach us than those first century disciples did.  Let’s think about this for just a moment.  Throughout the Gospels, the disciples display a consistent inability to understand the things that Jesus is trying to teach them.  After Pentecost these clueless students became some of the most effective teachers and leaders in the history of our planet.  What was the difference?  The Holy Spirit. 

            When the Spirit filled the disciples, not only did they finally understand what they were taught, but they also went from cowering in an upper room, terrified that the authorities would be coming for them next, to standing in the streets boldly proclaiming the Gospel.  This same Holy Spirit that empowered the disciples, dwells within each of us.  It’s not magic, it’s not mumbo jumbo, it is the very real Spirit of the Living God asking us to simply say “yes”.  Asking us to allow Him to transform our hearts into hearts that look like God’s heart.  Asking Him to make us into a people who have the capacity and the desire to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us.  Asking us to allow Him to help us to be the people that God has always intended for us to be.

Who Do You Say I Am? Sermon September 15th, 2024

              Before I get started today, there is something really important that I want to say.  Kelly and I had a conversation about this week’s sermon and its tie in with The Chosen Bible Study (That was a plug folks!) and Kelly said this: “As believers who have given our heart to Jesus as Lord and Savior, we will not be judged for our sins because that has already been dealt with on the cross.  But we will be judged on what we have done to share Jesus with a hurt and dying world.”  I would like for all of us to keep this idea in the front of our minds this morning as we talk about the 8^th chapter of Mark.

In today’s story we read that Jesus asked the disciples “Who do people say I am?”  The disciples answered with the common public perceptions of who people thought Jesus was, maybe John the Baptist or Elijah somehow reincarnated, or maybe another one of the prophets.  All of these guesses were complimentary towards Jesus; they all supported the idea that Jesus was indeed someone very special.  But they were all wrong.  Jesus is much more than just these things.  After hearing their replies, Jesus then asked them “Who do YOU say that I am?”  And Peter nailed it when he said to Jesus “You are the Messiah, the Son of God”.  But in looking at this passage today, I can’t help but dwell on the question “Who do people say that I am?”  I think that there is a tendency for us to look at the 2000 plus years old stories of the Bible and view them as being archaic.  I think that we believe that we are somehow past all of that… better informed, less superstitious, more knowledgeable.  But are we?

Well, who DO people today say that Jesus is?  Is He prosperity Jesus?  If we pray hard enough and have enough faith will God make us wealthy?  Is He activist Jesus? Is social justice the leading item on the agenda?  Is He liberal Jesus?  Primarily about forgiving sins regards of how we live?  What Dietrich Bonhoeffer referred to as “Cheap grace”?  Is He conservative Jesus?  Trying to enforce morality on the whole world?  Is He great moral teacher Jesus?  If we live a good life according to His example, is that all that matters?  Is He therapeutic Jesus?  Telling us that we are basically good people so we can feel better about ourselves.  Pretty much all of these things also recognize Jesus as being someone very special, and they also are all wrong.

It doesn’t seem to me that Jesus ever had much interest in making people wealthy.  Does anyone ever recall Jesus working a miracle and filling someone’s bank account?  People will inevitably point to Matthew 7:7-8 “Ask and it shall be given to you, seek and ye shall find, knock and the door will be opened unto you”.  It kind of sounds like the Bible is promising prosperity, doesn’t it?  I mean, at least if you are thinking along those lines.  But we have to remember that every verse in the Bible needs to be understood in its proper context, and these words are spoken right in the middle of a discussion about true faith vs. false faith, and they are spoken with the assumption that the seeker is seeking a more and truer faith and not just personal gain.  What the text is really teaching here is “Ask and the mysteries of faith will be revealed to you, seek, and the Holy Spirit will guide you, knock and the door that leads to a life that glorifies God will be opened to you”.

Social Justice… seeing to it that the poor and the marginalized are supported and cared for is, in fact, one of the key themes of the Bible.  God clearly has a special place in His heart for the disadvantaged, but caring for the disadvantaged is not what drives our faith.  It is the opposite.  A heart that is right with God also shares with God that special care for the disadvantaged.  And so, for the believer, caring for the disadvantaged is a labor of love, not a labor of obligation.

For liberals who appear to care too little about their personal holy living and for conservatives who appear to obsess about everyone’s holy living, we need to remember that, Biblically speaking, sin is absolutely anything in one’s life that fails to be completely Christlike; and that absolutely no one is even remotely sinless except for Jesus.  We also need to remember that sin is not avoided by willing ourselves not to sin.  Sin is avoided by allowing the Holy Spirit to transform our hearts into a people for whom sinful behavior is foreign to our new nature in Christ.  With this in mind, the priority of the Christian is not so much about avoiding sin, or enforcing holy living, but rather seeking to become, and seeking to lead others to become, people who invite the Holy Spirit into their lives, so that the Spirit may transform their hearts.

Zephaniah 3:17 says “The Lord your God wins victory after victory and is always with you. He celebrates and sings because of you, and he will refresh your life with his love.” (CEV)  Yes, God does indeed refresh us, and wonderfully so, but the call to the Christian is still to pick up the cross and follow Him.  If our faith doesn’t lead us into asking God to incorporate us into His plan, if we seek refreshment but fail to participate in the furtherance of that plan then not only are we missing out on an important part of our faith, but we are denying ourselves the joy of having a part in the building of God’s kingdom.

And so, as we look at all of the things that this world thinks that Jesus might be, we can see that this world really doesn’t have a whole lot better idea about who Jesus is than the ancients did.  So, with the ancients clearly not understanding, Jesus took the opportunity to explain, first to the disciples, then to the gathered crowd, exactly what it means for Jesus to be Messiah…  It wasn’t what anyone wanted to hear.

Our story tells us that, “He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.”  When He said this, Peter… you remember Peter, the guy who just declared Jesus to be the Messiah?  Well, Peter takes Jesus aside and rebukes Him.  Our parallel story in Matthew tells us that Peter said to Jesus, “Never, Lord!  This shall never happen to you!”  You see, Peter DID recognize the fact that Jesus is indeed God’s only Son, and the Messiah, but Peter totally misunderstood what it meant for Jesus to BE the Messiah.  Jesus’ rebuke of Peter was harsh.  “Get behind me, Satan!” Jesus said, “you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

Does anyone think that what Jesus just said here was really important?  Take a close look at each of the possibilities that I listed for potential roles for the Messiah.  Can we see what they all have in common?  Not a single one of those roles have anything to do with God, or His plan.  None of them.  In each instance, they are about the individual.  How can God help me to be richer, or a better person, or happier, or more chill?  At their very core, these roles for the Messiah as my personal improver, reveal the depth of selfishness that exists in the worldly human heart.

Fully understanding this, Jesus continued with His teaching.  “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save their lifewill lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.”  It’s a hard teaching, right?  Dr. Mark L. Strauss says, “To ‘deny oneself’ does not mean to live a life of self-denial or self-discipline.  It is to renounce your claim to yourself… desires, ambitions, personal goals, and to submit to Christ as his slave.  It is a denial of autonomy and self-sufficiency.” ¹  God has a plan, and if it is our desire to be included in His plan, it then becomes our responsibility to make sure that WE aren’t the ones who are getting in God’s way. 

We are all, of course, grateful to live in a time and place where worries about martyrdom are pretty much non-existent, but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t giving up our lives in other ways.  Warren Wiersbe has a great way of explaining this, “Discipleship is a matter of profit and loss, a question of whether we will waste our lives or invest our lives.  Note the severe warning that Jesus gives us here:  Once we have spent our lives, we cannot buy them back.  Remember, He was instructing His disciples… [people] who had already confessed Him as the Son of God.  He was not telling them how to be saved and go to heaven, but how to save their lives and make the most of their opportunities on earth.  ‘Losing your soul’ is the equivalent of wasting your life, missing the great opportunities God gives you to make your life count.  You may ‘Gain the whole world’ and be a success in the eyes of [others], and yet have nothing to show for your life when you stand before God”. ²

One of the very first sermons I preached, many years ago was on the Old Testament book of Habakkuk.  And Habakkuk speaks eloquently about the sovereignty of God, and the importance of believers seeing the world as God sees it, and not as the world see it.  This idea of having a heavenly perspective on events and behaviors is exactly what Jesus is teaching us here.  The call to the believer is to turn away from worldly ways of doing things and to live according to kingdom principles.  This is what it means to take up our cross and to follow Jesus. 

This morning, our gathering music was a song written by Larnelle Harris and Dave Clark called “Greater Still”.  I’d like to repeat just a snippet of those lyrics.

A vessel filled with only me Is no good to You, for a heart can be no more than what’s inside.  The only thing I really need only You can do.  So, purge my heart till only You abide.

I must become less that You become greater still.  Lord empty me of anything that keeps me from what’s real.  For only through my weakness can your power be fulfilled.
Lord I want to become so much less that You become greater still. ³

            It’s a beautiful song, with beautiful theology.  Basically, it says that the more we allow the Spirit to guide and direct us, the less of ourselves we have in our heart, and the better equipped we are to serve God and to bring the Good News of God’s kingdom to the world.  And as I said last week, “what we discover as followers of Jesus, is that the giving of our lives to Him isn’t a sacrifice at all.  It is, in fact, the only way for us to become truly the person that we were always intended to be.”

            Our story today concludes with Jesus emphasizing the importance of choosing to live our lives for Him.  “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” Jesus asks, “Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?  If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”

            In today’s passage, a passage that is filled with teachings that are difficult, this part of it might be the most difficult of all.  And it really is difficult because the idea of being ashamed of Jesus is not at all a comfortable one.  And explaining all of this is not easy, because I want for us all to be completely assured of the fullness of God’s grace and mercy.  I want for us not to be afraid that an occasional moment of weakness will impair our relationship with the Jesus that we know, love, and serve.  Because in Jesus Christ, WE ARE FORGIVEN.  But at the same time, I also want us to be encouraged to show the world convincingly, through our words and our actions, that we are disciples of Christ. 

The esteemed theologian and commentator, Matthew Henry said, “Those that resolve to serve God must not mind being singular therein.  Those who are bound for heaven must be willing to swim against the stream.  They must do not as the most do, but as the best do”.  Keeping in mind the kingdom goal, we are to live our lives in a way that furthers that kingdom and glorifies God.  We ask that the Spirit strengthens us and guides us into that task.  God is just waiting for us to say “Yes”.  He is waiting for us to choose to become the people that He has always intended for us to be.  Jesus said that “His yoke is easy, and His burden is light”.  The really good news about all of this part of God’s story today, is that when the love of God fills our hearts, the sharing of that love not only becomes easy, it also becomes the way in which we serve God most faithfully.

¹ “Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament” Mark L. Strauss Commentary on Mark Pg. 372

² “Be Diligent” Warren Wiersbe Pgs. 105-106

³ © 1987 Bridge Building Music, Inc.; New Spring

News Worth Hearing Sermon September 8, 2024

            Last week we talked about the Pharisees, who were so concerned about ritual purity, and yet were following Jesus around trying to entrap Him so that they could find an excuse to arrest Him.  Jesus called them hypocrites, and rightfully so, because their hearts were far from being the loving and compassionate hearts that God calls ALL of His children to have.  Part of our story today is kind of the opposite of last week’s story.  Where last week we discussed the uncleanness of hands, this week we face the troublesome question of whether or not people can be unclean… with an expected, but still surprising answer.

            Jesus had become popular.  His healings had attracted the attention of just about everyone, and Jesus couldn’t go anywhere without being mobbed by people who were either looking to be healed, looking to have Jesus heal a friend or family member, or just looking to see if they could witness a miracle in person.  On top of this, Jesus was being hounded by the Jewish authorities who were constantly questioning Him and often accusing Him of breaking some law or other.  And the simple fact is… Jesus was human, and He was exhausted. 

And so, for one of only two times, Jesus left Jewish territory and went to Tyre, where He hoped to hide out for a while and get some rest.  Our story tells us that He didn’t want anyone to know where He was staying, but He just couldn’t keep it a secret.  So great was His notoriety by now that even the Gentiles in Tyre knew about Him and it didn’t take long for a Gentile from Tyre, a woman who was born in Syrian Phonecia, in what is modern day Lebanon, to find Him and fall on her knees in front of Him, begging Him to heal her daughter, who was suffering from some kind of demon possession. 

            But before we continue with the story, I’d like for us to have a little background about Tyre.  The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that the people from Tyre were “notoriously the Jew’s bitterest enemies”.  Tyre was part of a very wealthy area, and the people of Tyre had considerably more wealth and more power than the Jews.  Pastor Jeff Hamling explains, “If there is any hierarchy or power dynamic between Jesus and this woman—she is at the top. Her people have used their position of power and privilege to oppress the Jews for hundreds of years”. 

            And yet in spite of that dynamic, the woman had a few things going against her.  She was a Gentile, and therefore, as far as the Jews were concerned, unclean.  How unclean?  The Jews believed that the mere shadow of a Gentile falling on a plate or cup was enough to make it unclean.   And so, Jews generally had no dealings with Gentiles at all.  She was also a woman, unaccompanied by a man and as such had no business speaking to any man, much less a rabbi like Jesus.  I don’t know if we can understand just how much of a violation of taboos both of these things were, but this exchange between Jesus and the woman was extremely irregular.  Still, the woman was a mother, and when your child is in need or in danger, a parent does whatever they have to do.  And so, the woman not only approached Jesus, but our text tells us that she continually kept begging Him.  Not just a single request, but a barrage of requests.  And here’s the part of the story that seems to be often misunderstood.  Jesus replied to the woman, “First let the children eat all they want, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” 

            In first century Palestine, dogs were not held in the esteem that they so often are today.  Dogs tended to be feral and were scavengers, eating whatever they could find to eat.  And not all of their meals were, shall we say, particularly appetizing.  Among most of the first century Jews, dogs were disgusting, filthy, creatures, and were despised by the people.  And yes… the Jews referred to the Gentiles as dogs.  And so, this comment of Jesus could be (and historically sometimes has been) taken as a racial slur against the Gentile woman, but it wasn’t.  It was actually a parable, and here’s why.  The Greek word for dog was kýōn (keeohn), but that is not the word that Jesus used here.  Jesus used Κυναρίοις (kunariois), which might best be translated as puppy.  It was a word that was used to describe a beloved household pet, not a marauding scavenger.  With that in mind, the parable that Jesus told was this:  The children sitting at the table must eat first and be filled before the household pet is fed the scraps from the table.  In the parable, the children are the Jews, the beloved family pet is the Gentiles.  Dr. Mark L. Strauss tells us that, “[Jesus] was sent to the lost sheep of Israel.  Yet this exclusive mission was not because of the exclusivity of salvation.  Rather, Israel must be restored and a faithful remnant called out so that they could be the mediators of God’s salvation, “a light for the Gentiles”.  In other words, it’s not that the family pet is excluded from the meal, it’s just that the children take precedence because the children, or Israel are responsible for bringing God’s kingdom to the Gentiles.  It’s kind of like teachers have to go to school to learn how to teach before they can actually begin teaching, so it is that a remnant of the Jews need to be equipped to teach the Gospel before they can bring it to the Gentiles.

            The woman in our story could have taken offense to being called a dog.  She could have walked away angry because her position of privilege led her to view Jesus’ response as insolent.  Instead, she agreed.  Yes, she said, indicating that she understood that she had no claim to the meal that was set on the table for the children.  But she didn’t ask to be included in the meal.  All she asked was to be given access to the crumbs that fell from the table.   Dr. Daniel L. Akin comments on the depth of faithfulness of the woman’s answer.  “[Would we be] willing to see ourselves as dogs, that [we] might be transformed into the child [we] might become?  Perhaps [our] sin is greater than [we] realize, but His grace is greater than [we] could ever imagine.”  In our act of recognizing that, as sinners, we have no right to sit at God’s table, He not only seats us there, but He lavishes us with an unimaginable feast of riches.

            Jesus was impressed with the woman’s answer.  Here she is, a Gentile woman, and while we just finished reading a passage where even the disciples didn’t understand what Jesus was trying to teach, this woman totally gets it.  And so, Jesus healed her daughter.  But there is a great irony here.  In our lesson last week, the Jews, who viewed themselves as the “clean” ones, were questioning Jesus with evil intent, showing their hearts to be far from the kingdom of God, but this “unclean” woman becomes one of the few people who actually understood Jesus’ parable, and further, approached Jesus with humility and respect.  This short little story is extremely important, not only because Jesus shows His willingness to bring blessing on ALL people, but also because we see a Gentile woman who has a heart that “gets it”; who understands the depth of her need for God, and humbly yet persistently asks for that need to be filled.  It is also a wonderful statement about the importance of intercessory prayer, because this woman was not asking for something for herself, she was asking for another.

            But this isn’t our only story for today.  Today we get a doubleheader. 

            Jesus left Tyre, and as He was traveling through the Decapolois, a group of ten cities built by the Romans, largely inhabited by Roman army troops, and an area that has been referred to as “Rome away from Rome”, a man was brought to Jesus who was deaf and had a speech impediment.  Jesus healed the man, but His method of healing was interesting.  He had just healed the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter from a distance, and without ever seeing her, and yet with this deaf man, Jesus put His fingers in the man’s ears and touched his tongue.  Was this necessary?  Maybe and maybe not, but several commentators who I have read made the point that, with the deaf man not being able to hear what is going on, and with his not knowing Jesus or His intentions, it is entirely possible that Jesus used a form of sign language to tell the man what He was going to do; putting a finger in the man’s ear to let him know that Jesus was going to heal his deafness, and touching his tongue to let him know that Jesus would heal his speech.  This is, of course, entirely speculative, but would have been consistent with a loving approach to a person who may have been anxious.  Well, that, and it wasn’t my idea.

            But I do believe that there is more to this idea of Jesus doing things with a purpose when He healed people.  Last week we spoke about how Jesus purposely violated the Jewish oral law in order to try to teach the Pharisees some important truths about the Law.  When Jesus healed a blind man on the Sabbath by spitting on mud to make a paste to put on the man’s eyes, making the paste was interpreted by the Jews as working on the Sabbath.  Jesus probably didn’t need to make the paste but did so to make a point to the assembled Pharisees.

            But there is one thing about Jesus’ healing people that was the same whether the person healed was Jew or Gentile.  Our story today tells us that, “Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone; but the more He ordered them, the more widely they continued to proclaim [what had happened].”  Whether Jew or Gentile, when Jesus asked people not to tell anyone what He had done, this appeared to be an impossible task.  I mean, how can we not rejoice over God’s grace and mercy? 

            Remembering again the fact that Jesus is in Gentile territory, with an entirely Gentile audience, the last verse of our story today is powerful and wonderful.  Our story tells us that this supposedly unclean Gentile crowd was “thoroughly astounded and completely overwhelmed” and they praised God saying, “He has done everything well”.  Among His own people, Jesus faced opposition and rejection.  And yet, here He is, among the people that the Jews referred to as “dogs”, among people who Josephus identifies as some of the Jewish people’s bitterest enemies, and there is praise and thanksgiving for His grace and His healings.  It is exactly as the Apostle John wrote in the prologue to his Gospel, ” He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”

            And so, the question that our story today leads us to ask is, how can we ensure that we are the people who ARE willing to receive Him?  Well, let’s take a look at the last two weeks and see what are the differences between those who receive Him and those who don’t.  The Jewish authorities approached Jesus with the mindset that they were the “clean” ones.  Their judgmental behavior sprung from an attitude that they were righteous, and that it was their responsibility to enforce their righteousness on those who they deemed inferior, or at least righteousness challenged.  There was no room in their worldview even to admit the possibility that they may be in need of forgiveness… that there was anything at all wrong with how they lived and acted.  They were, in their own minds, already righteous.  The Gentiles in our story, on the other hand, were humble in their approach to Jesus.  They recognized their need and acted accordingly.  And it is they who received blessing from Jesus.  And what was the result of them receiving that blessing?  Praise!  It was praise.  When they received blessing from Jesus in the form of healing, they were filled with gratitude, and that gratitude expressed itself in an outpouring of praise and thanksgiving to God.

            If we are going to be among those who are willing to receive Jesus, we need first to be aware of our desperate need for Him.  Sort of like figuratively recognizing that we are the beloved family dog waiting under the table, but at the same time knowing that God will graciously and lovingly seat us at that table and fill us with all good things.  Then second, we need to be a people of gratitude.  We need to comprehend the depth of what Jesus has done for us in His life, death, and resurrection, and respond to those blessings with our own personal commitment to love and to serve Him completely.  To allow the Spirit to guide and direct our lives so that we become the people of love and compassion and grace that He has called us to be.

            Speaking truthfully, what we discover as followers of Jesus, is that the giving of our lives to Him isn’t a sacrifice at all.  It is, in fact, the only way for us to become truly the person that we were always intended to be.

New Wine Explained

September 1, 2024

            It might seem odd that my sermon today is talking about New Wine when nowhere in today’s reading is New Wine mentioned, but you’re going to have to trust me on this, today’s reading is all about the New Wine.

So, what exactly is the New Wine?  The New Wine to which I am referring comes from a passage from back in Mark 2, where Jesus said, “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse.  And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”  These two little parables that Jesus told back in Mark 2 are the beginning of Jesus explaining how He was here to institute something that was completely new, something that, like new wine, simply wouldn’t fit into the old way of doing things.  And our reading today addresses itself directly to this “new wine in new wineskins’ part of Jesus’ story.

In our reading today, the disciples are eating, and some of the Jewish authorities asked Jesus “Why do your followers not walk in the way of the traditions of the elders instead of eating with defiled hands?”  They asked this because the disciples had not done the ritual hand washing before they ate.  Jesus answered them but before we talk about Jesus’ answer, let’s see if we can understand what is meant by “the traditions of the elders” and we also probably need to take a look at that hand washing thing.

            The “tradition of the elders” was the Jewish oral law.  Dr. Mark L. Strauss explains, “We are particularly hard on the Pharisees (as Jesus was) with reference to their many traditions, but their motivation was a noble one.  The Old Testament Law could not cover every area of life, nor could it account for new and changing circumstances.  The Jewish religious leaders therefore sought to “put a fence around the Torah”, both to guard against its violation and to define its specific limitations.”  The result of this “putting a fence” philosophy was a huge body of interpretations of the Law.  These interpretations were initially not permitted to be written down but were only transmitted orally in order that the teachers of the Law could adapt interpretations to changing times and changing circumstances.  This is why the Teachers of the Law were so important.  It was they who determined what constituted faithful living for the people of Israel.  It wasn’t until the late 200’s or early 300’s that this body of oral law was finally codified into a book that we call the Mishna. 

But written or not, to the Jews, the oral law was serious business.   The Mishna states, and please hear this… “It is a greater offense to teach anything contrary to the voice of the Rabbis than to contradict scripture itself”.  Wow! 

            Understanding how seriously the Jewish Authorities took the oral law, it’s easy to see how they took exception to the disciples not following those laws.  Which brings us to the hand washing.

            The part of the law that required Jews to wash their hands before eating is a part of the oral law and is not found in the Torah.  The ritual originated with a commandment that was from the Torah, but was directed only to the priests, who when given gifts of oil, wine, or wheat, were required to do a ritual hand washing before eating that food.  According to Jewish historical traditions, over time the priests had become quite lax in following this command and so, sometime in the century before Jesus was born, the leaders of the Jewish priestly community, decreed that all priests must follow this law.  At some subsequent time, apparently around the 30’s BCE, and for reasons not even known to Jewish history, this ritual hand washing became a requirement for all Jews, so not only was this hand washing thing not a Deuteronomic law, it was also actually a very recent addition to the oral law. 

Additionally, it should be noted that this law had nothing whatsoever to do with hygiene.  It was strictly ceremonial.  The washing consisted of pouring water over the hands, up to the wrists either two or three times, followed by a specific prayer.  This was done even if the hands were already clean, because the purpose of this washing was not to remove dirt or germs, it was to remove ritual uncleanness. 

So, you see, the complaint of the Jewish authorities against Jesus and His disciples wasn’t about the Law as it appears in the Torah, but was rather a part of Jewish oral tradition, and a relatively new part of that tradition as well.

            And so, Jesus answered their question, but He didn’t answer it directly, Jesus responded to them by saying, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites”, and then He quoted a passage from Isaiah, “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.”

            In all of their “fence building” the Jews had succeeded in creating a religion that was all about following rules.  In their attempt to clarify the meaning of the Ten Commandments and the related Deuteronomic Laws, they had created an impossibly complex body of rules and regulations to be followed.  So complex, in fact, that the Teachers of the Law didn’t even teach the entire law; they specialized.  One teacher would specialize in Sabbath law, another in dietary law, another… well, you get the picture.  And to be a faithful Jew had come to mean following all of these laws meticulously, and this was a nearly impossible task. 

            But Jesus had no interest in this body of human created rules and regulations.  Even if the original intent of the Jewish authorities had been noble, as Dr. Strauss said, by Jesus’ day these rules had become the religion, pushing to the side God’s actual Law and relegating God’s law to a lesser status than the teachings of the Rabbis.  And so, Jesus pushed back.  Time and time again we see Jesus purposely doing things that violated these man-made oral laws.  Whether it was the failure to wash hands that we read about in today’s reading, or healing on the Sabbath or picking grain on the Sabbath, or eating in the presence of Gentiles, or touching of the ritually unclean, Jesus challenged the man-made laws because the man-made laws were obscuring the real purpose of God, which is for His children to enter into a loving relationship with Him.  And so, the Jewish authorities, while purporting to be the guardians of the Law, were actually leading people away from the faith to which God had called them.

Jesus flatly refused to acquiesce to the rules that He knew were not a part of God’s law.  The Jewish authorities interpreted this defiance of the oral laws, as a threat both to their religion and to their authority.  And it is at this point that we have our New Wine moment.  The Jewish authorities had lost sight of the fact that their faith was supposed to be about heart and not about doing.  And this call from Jesus to a heart relationship with God simply did not fit within the framework of a religion of rules and regulations.  Just like the New Wine that must be poured into new wineskins, so it is that a faith built around loving relationship cannot function in a legalistic religion, especially when that religion gives people the opportunity to compare themselves to others and to feel a sense of superiority when they believe that their behavior might be a little bit more faithful. 

While ostensibly, these Jewish authorities were guarding the sanctity of the Law, the reality was, they had traveled from Jerusalem for the specific purpose of entrapping Jesus, and they were going to use the Law as a bludgeon to attack Jesus for His disregard for the oral law and for their authority.  This is why Jesus called them hypocrites.  This is why Jesus said that “they honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me”. 

Jesus then turned to the gathered crowd and asked them to listen carefully as He said to them, “Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.”  From the very start, Jesus has taught us that faith in God is a heart matter.  Through His life, through His teaching, and through His example, Jesus has always showed us that God’s emphasis is not on our behavior, but on our hearts.

Dr. Timothy Keller has a great comment on this, “For the Greeks and Romans, the great human struggle was between the mind (which they believed was resident in the soul) and the passions (which they believed were resident in the body.) If you wanted to achieve strength, courage, self-control, and wisdom, you learned to sublimate the emotions to the dictates of reason. 

For modern people, the great struggle is almost the reverse. We believe our deepest feelings are “who we really are” and we must not repress or deny them. The great human struggle is between the emotions and a repressive society that so often stands in the way of self-expression and realization. 

The Bible teaches neither of the above. It says the human struggle happens within a single entity — the human heart. The main human struggle is not between the heart and something else, but between forces that tear it in different directions. The great battle is deciding to what your heart’s greatest love, hope, and trust will be directed.”

My dear friends, God wants our hearts.  He wants our love and our devotion, but these things we are unable to give until we understand the fact that God is imminently worthy of our love and devotion.  And so, our purpose here is to allow God to lead us to an understanding of the fact that He IS indeed worthy of our love and devotion.  And when we make that discovery, and we begin to give God our full love and our full devotion, God fills us with His Holy Spirit.  And as the Spirit guides us and teaches us, we begin the process of developing a heart that looks like God’s heart.  We begin to become a people of empathy and grace and compassion and justice.  And we become a people who love others simply because it is our nature to do so. 

There are so many people in the world who are worried about sin.  People who are deeply concerned about whether they broke this rule or that rule or thought the wrong thing or didn’t think the right thing.  And thinking along these lines has the potential to lead us into viewing God’s law in the same way that the Jewish authorities did, substituting rules and regulations for a heart that loves and adores God.   What most people don’t realize is that, at its essence, God’s Law is not a list of rules and regulations to be followed.  At its essence, God’s Law is a description of what the human heart is supposed to look like.  Yes, it is absolutely essential for God’s people to avoid sin, but sin avoidance is not a matter of willing ourselves not to sin.  It is a matter of allowing the Spirit to transform us into people for whom sinful acts are foreign to our new nature. 

I’d like to close with another quote from Dr. Mark L. Strauss, “That Jesus is inaugurating the new age of salvation means that everything is changing.  The law is coming to fulfillment through His words and deeds.  With the coming of the kingdom of God, the law will no longer be written on tablets of stone but on the hearts of God’s people.  They will be filled, empowered, and led by His Spirit.  This transition from the age of promise to the age of fulfillment is the key to Jesus’ words.  The Gospel is New Wine.  It is something radically new and transformative that cannot simply be poured into the old wineskins of Judaism and the Old Testament Law.”

As for us… we want to make sure that we are the new wineskins that are prepared to hold the fullness of the New Wine of God’s love.

Walk in the Way of Love Sermon August 11, 2024

            I AM going to talk about Ephesians today, I promise.  But I’d like to begin by talking about Paul, who is the likely author of Ephesians, and I’d also like to talk about James, the half-brother of Jesus who is the likely author of the Epistle of James.  You see, for centuries, for millennia actually, there have been folks in the church who have believed that there was a disagreement between James and Paul about a very central and meaningful part of Christian theology, and the reason that I wanted to talk about James and Paul is because our story in Ephesians today really addresses itself directly to that disagreement, and in looking at what Paul and James had to say, and specifically Paul’s treatment of the subject as he expressed it in this letter to the church at Ephesus, we are given the opportunity to learn something really special about our faith.  Because, as so often happens in the Bible, and this is one of the truly wonderful advantages of having all of these books written by all of these different authors, we have the opportunity to see a truth as it is presented from a couple of different perspectives.

            So, what exactly is this controversy?  Well, it is in Ephesians, back in chapter two, that Paul makes one of his most famous and most impactful theological statements.  Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”  Paul’s theology of salvation by grace alone is a central tenant of Christian theology, and doctrinally one of the key issues that drove the Protestant Reformation.  So important is this idea that human behavior has no bearing on the process by which God reconciles us to Himself, that you will find commentary on this idea from every major theologian.  From the originators of the Reformation like Luther, and Calvin, and the Wesleys, to some of the most brilliant minds of the faith like Spurgeon, and Barth, and Bonhoeffer, we find this teaching at the front and center of Christian theological thought everywhere.  It is by grace we are saved, and not by works.

            And then we have James.  And the Epistle of James is largely devoted to the idea that the author expresses in his letter in chapter 2:14 “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no works? Can such faith save them?”  Can we see how there might possibly be a little discrepancy here? 

            I preach at Hope Church regularly, the folks there know me well, and they all know that I am a history nut.  I love history.  But I do realize that not everyone shares my enthusiasm for history, So, I am going to do my best today to try not to make my love for history too apparent.

            But a little bit of history is in order.  You see, Paul and James were addressing two different audiences, and two different situations.  Paul’s audience was a group of fledgling Christians, many of them Jewish, for whom obedience to the Law as the avenue towards salvation had been preached to them since they were little children.  And so, it was essential for Paul to help his readers to understand, that for humans to claim any part of the credit for their own salvation is not only stealing glory from God for what He has done but is also diminishing the sufficiency of the work that Jesus did on the cross.

Now, James’ letter was written to Christians of the Jewish diaspora, Jews who were scattered throughout the ancient world, many of whom were disconnected from temple worship in Jerusalem.  And some of these folks were making the theology of their faith more important than the walk of their faith.  And James wanted his readers to know, that as the Holy Spirit entered their lives, their hearts would be gradually transformed into hearts that resemble God’s heart, and that goodness of action is a natural by-product of that process.   And so, to reduce this controversy to its essence, Paul was addressing the issue of salvation, the mechanism by which we are reconciled to God, by God.  And James was speaking of sanctification, the process of taking our faith and making that faith evident in the everyday living of our lives. 

            And so, there really isn’t any discrepancy at all, and the part of God’s story that we read this morning really confirms this.  Because what we read in Ephesians today is a discussion that Paul is having about how to WALK in our faith. 

Just before our reading today, in Ephesians 4:17, Paul wrote “So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.”  And in this section, Paul actually has some pretty ugly things to say about the Gentiles, ignorant, hard of heart, insensitive, greedy, and indulging in every manner of impurity.  While his words sound harsh, I’m certain that Paul was using this kind of language to make a point.  Dr. Clinton E. Arnold has a wonderful way of explaining this passage, “Paul is not depicting every unbeliever as an axe murderer, He is simply making the theological statement that apart from a connection to Christ, all people are self-oriented, not God oriented.  [The Gentiles’] lives are devoid of any meaning that really matters because the will of their Creator is intentionally left out of the picture.”  Karl Barth has a very concise, and I might even say witty description of how the unbeliever approaches life.  He says that “they aim with silly methods at a meaningless goal.”  If one doesn’t know Jesus, one cannot possibly understand how to live a life that has eternal significance.

            And all of this brings us to today’s reading, which kind of looks at first glance like a laundry list of do’s and don’ts.  Don’t lie, tell the truth, don’t steal, work for a living, don’t speak ill of others, build them up with kind words, and don’t allow anger to cause you to sin.  It really looks like Paul is just giving us some instructions on how to behave; or on how to live a more moral life. 

But let’s look a little closer.  In that section just before the start of our reading today, Paul tells his listeners to “put off the old self”.  The Greek word that Paul uses here, is ἀποθέσθαι (apothesthai), which actually means to set something aside as one removing a garment, to take something and just put it away.  But, for some inexplicable reason, in this “laundry list” that Paul gives us in today’s reading, the English text keeps using the phrase “do not”; do not lie, do not steal… but the Greek text here continues to say ἀποθέσθαι.  So, what Paul is actually saying here isn’t “do not lie”, what he’s saying is put away all lying; put it away.  In each of these different things that Paul mentions, he is telling us to take these things and to put these things off; to remove them, just as if they were removing a soiled, tattered piece of clothing.  And then to replace that with brand new clothing. 

And in this case, the new clothing isn’t just behaviors, it is new attitudes, and new motivations, and new lifestyles, and new worldviews.  Because at its core, none of this is about behavior.  Christianity is not at all about what we do, it’s about who we are, or more accurately, who we are In Christ!  From the heart that is right with God will flow all manner of goodness!  Not out of a desire for reward, or out of a fear of reprisal, but simply because it would be foreign to our new nature to do anything otherwise.  This whole section of Paul’s letter is actually talking about us becoming an entirely new creation in Christ!  Something that is completely different from what we once were.  Something that is now guided by the Holy Spirit.

And it is here that we find the common ground between Paul and James.  James’ argument, right from the start, is that goodness will flow naturally from those who are filled with the Spirit, and James questions whether someone whose life fails to display the fruits of the Spirit actually has a saving faith.  So, rather than having controversary, what we have is two witnesses whose theologies are complimentary.

So, NOW I can finally talk about our text today!  We’ve already discussed at length how Paul is calling us to be a new creation, but there is something more going on here; and it is something wonderful.  Because Paul’s focus here encompasses far more than just individual righteousness.  Paul is actually tying our individual righteousness to the needs and the well-being of God’s community.  Dr. Arnold explains, “Because God has created the church to be a community of believers growing together to maturity, the development of social virtues is of paramount importance.  Therefore, Paul exhorts believers to rid themselves of vices that are detrimental to community life and to cultivate virtues that build up the community.  The most important and summarizing virtue is love, defined by the Father’s love for His children.”

As we look closely at each of the pairs of vices and virtues that Paul examines here, a picture begins to emerge of a theology that is deeply rooted in love for one another.  When Paul tells us to put off lying and to speak truthfully to one another, he tells us that the reason for this is that we are all part of one body.  We are connected to each other and where lying damages those relationships creating distrust and division, the truth creates an essential foundation of trust within the community.

In discussing anger, Paul tells us not to allow anger to lead us to sin and not to allow the sun to set on our anger.  It’s important to note that is OK to be angry, and Paul is not telling us here to put off anger.  Dr. Tony Merida explains; “We need to feel anger as Christians.  If we are indifferent to injustice, then evil will prevail.”  It’s important though, that we do not let our anger fester, but that we use that anger to produce positive results.  Aristotle once said, “Anyone can become angry, but to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way, this is not easy.  And so, when dealing with anger, we must take great care, first to see to it that our anger is rightly placed.  There is no room in the believer for anger that results from injured pride or jealousy or a desire to “get even”.  And second to see to it that our anger is channeled into resolutions of the injustices and the injuries that are damaging to the community and witness of believers.

In discussing stealing, Paul is recognizing the reality that some people in first century Palestine were seasonal workers, and there were many slaves, and some of these folks may have been inclined to steal in order to help them to make ends meet.  Paul calls these people to “do something useful with their own hands”, but he calls them to do this not just for the purposes of supporting themselves honestly, but also that they may have something to share with those in need.  Again, the emphasis is on the loving care of the community.

            Next, Paul tells us to take care in what we say.  We are to avoid any talk that is hurtful to the community and instead say only things that build up the community.  And finally, Paul tells us not to grieve the Holy Spirit.  And what does this mean?  It is the Holy Spirit that guides the believer into Christ-likeness, and anything that is done or said that is inconsistent with that Christ-likeness grieves the Holy Spirit.  And so, in order to avoid grieving the Holy Spirit, Paul tells us to “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.”  Instead, Paul tells us, we should “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave [us].

            Paul closes this section of his letter, summarizing his thoughts by saying, “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

            It’s not at all difficult to look at Ephesians 4 and see how the entire chapter is rooted in the idea of believers walking in love, not only love for the community of believers, but love for all of God’s beloved children.  Dr. Paul V. Marshall says that we should “Imitate Christ for the sake of the church, and for the sake of the world.”  In putting aside our old selves and living lives of grace and empathy and compassion, we become the voice and the hands and the feet of Jesus as we bring His Good News to the world.

            And speaking of being bearers of the Good News, I’d like to close with what is probably my all-time favorite quote.  It’s from Madeleine l’Engle, and she wrote, “We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”

            Let us live lives that reflect the extravagant and gracious love of God, lives that show His beautiful light to His community, and to all of His beloved children… Every one of them.  Amen

Not That Kind of King Sermon 7/28/2024

            Herod the Great was an interesting guy.  We know him as the king who was alerted by the three wise men that a new King of Israel had been born.  And who subsequently issued the order to murder every child under the age of two in and around Bethlehem, in order to protect his kingship.  Of course, as we shall soon see, protecting his kingship was business as usual for Herod. 

Herod was born into an Arab family.  His father, Antipater, was Idumean, but Antipater’s ancestors had been forcibly converted to Judaism, so Herod was a Jew, at least technically speaking.  But Herod’s mother was an Arabian Princess, so by blood, Herod was pure Arab.  When Herod was growing up, Israel was independent and was ruled by the Hasmonean dynasty.  After the death of their father, Hasmonean brothers Aristobulus and Hyrcanus fought over the throne of Israel, they ended up in a war, and both brothers appealed to the prevalent world power, Rome, for assistance, and so Rome sent Pompey to Israel.  But Pompey did not go to assist one or the other of the brothers.  He besieged Israel and conquered it, making it a client state of Rome, thus ending Israel’s independence… Oops!

Early in the Roman rule of Israel, Julias Caesar, who was friendly with Herod’s father, Antipater, entrusted Antipater with handling the affairs of Judea, making him an unofficial governor.  The young Herod was able to leverage his father’s connections with Rome to get himself appointed Provincial Governor at the tender age of 25.  While a practicing Jew, at least overtly, Herod’s Arab bloodline caused native Jews to view him as an outsider and to question his Jewishness.  Because of that questionable bloodline, a political marriage seemed to be in order, and so he married the Hasmonean Princess Mariamne.  He did this in an attempt to add legitimacy to his claim to Jewishness, and also to try to consolidate his growing political power.

Making a long story short, (I’ll bet you’re glad) Herod was declared King of Judea by the Roman Senate when he was about 38 years old.  After becoming king, the remaining heir to the Hasmonean throne challenged Herod’s authority, so Herod had him executed.  When the Sanhedrin, the Jewish ruling body, which had retained some autonomy even under Roman rule, questioned Herod’s authority, Herod ordered 47 of the 93 members of the Sanhedrin executed.  In doing this, Herod managed to kill some of the best and brightest minds of Judaism, which did not exactly endear him to the Jewish people.  A few years later, believing it necessary to protect his throne, he murdered his Hasmonean wife, Mariamne and their two sons. 

Herod lived in constant fear of rebellion and as such, summarily executed anyone who threatened his rule.  Herod also had a secret police force that spied on the people and would put a swift and brutal end to any talk of insurrection.  In short, Herod was a bit of a tyrant, and was not at all liked by the majority of the Jewish people.

But… Herod did have some good things going for him.  He was a prolific builder, rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple and turning it into one of the wonders of the ancient world.  He added a royal palace next to the temple, and added a theater, a stadium, and an amphitheater, all in Jerusalem.  He built the fortress at Masada, and built the city of Caesarea Maritima from nothing, a city that had planned streets, underground sewage, an aqueduct, a Roman temple, and an amphitheater.  Of course, it goes without saying that it was the Israelites who paid for all of this with their tax dollars; which added still another reason for the people to hate Herod. 

But Herod WAS a shrewd ruler, who managed to protect the political independence and liberty of the Jewish people, as long as that liberty didn’t interfere with their subservience to Rome.  And Herod was known all over the ancient world as an effective advocate for the diaspora; the Jews who lived, scattered throughout the Roman Empire, for whom Herod would engage the empire on their behalf when necessary.  Among his good works, Herod succeeded in having Jews exempted from Roman military service, forged a deal with Rome that exempted all Jews from having to participate in emperor worship, and managed to have the Romans allow the Jews relative freedom to practice their religion.  So, he truly was a very complicated man, and actually a very effective, if widely disliked, ruler.

  As for the Roman’s part in this, the Romans required that each day, in the Temple, a sacrifice was made for the welfare of the emperor.  You can imagine that didn’t go over well with the Jewish people.  Also, the Romans and not the Jews appointed the High Priest, so if the High Priest did not toe the Roman line, he would quickly be replaced.  And on top of Herod’s already high taxes, the Roman taxes were oppressive, and the Romans were quick in taking retribution against those individuals and families who had trouble paying.  Israel was heavily occupied by Roman troops, and those troops routinely mistreated the populace, harassing them, forcing them to perform menial tasks for them, and mocking them for their religious observances.

Herod the Great died not too long after Jesus was born, but, good and bad, Herod had set the tone for how Israel would fare under Roman rule.  Upon Herod’s death his son Herod Antipas succeeded him, becoming Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, and Antipas carried on most of his father’s oppressive policies.  It’s not at all hard to see how the Israelites really despised Roman rule.  It was intrusive, expensive, and humiliating, but the Israelites bore the difficulties, believing that Roman rule was God’s will.  All the while, however, Israel was anxiously awaiting the coming of the Messiah. 

There are two different threads of prophecy in the Old Testament that speak of the Messiah.  One thread recognizes the Messiah as the suffering servant.  This is the thread that Christians recognize as the First Coming; the appearance of the human yet divine Jesus who shows us the Father and dies for our sins.   The second thread contains the prophecies of the Messiah who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords; the Messiah who does battle with, and defeats, the evil forces of the earth.  This, Christians recognize as the second coming of Christ in His glory. 

But for first century Jews, and even for our Jewish brothers and sisters today, the Old Testament prophecies about the suffering servant are assumed not to be speaking of the Messiah, but are assumed to be speaking about Israel herself, and so the only prophesies that Jews consider to be Messianic are those of the Messiah ascending the throne of David and becoming a great military leader who restores Israel to the dominant place among the nations.  That this was the prevailing opinion of first century Judaism is borne out by several of the Dead Sea Scrolls where multiple commentaries and non-Biblical texts speak plainly of the expectation that the Messiah would subjugate Rome and restore the everlasting throne of David. 

It is into this circumstance, and into these expectations, that Jesus begins His ministry.

We’ve spoken at length over the last few weeks about the events in this week’s reading.  We’ve spoken about the miracle of feeding possibly as many as 10,000 people or more with 5 barley loaves and 2 fishes.  We’ve spoken about Jesus, walking on the water and His ultimate identification of Himself as the Great I Am.  But the one thing about which we haven’t spoken yet, is the reaction of the people to Jesus’ miracles.  The Bible tells us that a lot of the people who were following Jesus around, were following Him simply because they wanted to witness a miracle.  And in today’s reading, Jesus gives them one, big time!  So spectacular was this miracle of the feeding of the 5,000; so unmistakably an act of God, that it is the only miracle except for the resurrection that is mentioned in all four Gospels.  And it was so spectacular and so unmistakably an act of God, that John tells us that the people began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.”  John also tells us that Jesus knew that the people intended to make Him king by force.  And so, He withdrew to a mountain to escape the crowd. 

Very often, when we have our minds set on something, we find it extremely difficult to absorb new information that contradicts what we think we know, and it’s even more difficult for us to allow this new information to change our mindset.  It’s difficult because this new information creates something called cognitive dissonance, a condition that can cause an individual discomfort or anxiety because something that is a deeply held belief is being challenged or even proven not to be true.  Very often, the human response to cognitive dissonance is to dismiss proven truth in favor of the entrenched worldview that is in opposition to that truth. 

Even among the disciples we see evidence of a struggle over this, trying to replace the image of a conquering hero messiah with the truth of a loving servant God.  And scholars generally agree that even Judas’ betrayal of Jesus was not something done in malice, but rather was an attempt to force Jesus to declare Himself king, vanquish the Romans, and set up His eternal kingdom, with Israel forever and ever as the world’s dominant power.  It was a worldview that was entirely, well… a world view.  It was people interpreting God and His plan through the lens of their earthly experiences.  But God’s actual plan is something radically different. 

The world values strength.  The longing of the ancient Israelites was for their nation to be glorified, for their nation to reign supreme over all the earth.  Remember the story about when James and John asked Jesus to promise them that they would have the seats to His right and to His left when He came into His glory?  James and John were seeking the prestige and honor to which they somehow believed that they were entitled.  And this mindset really hasn’t changed much in the last 2,000 years.  Humans still generally value strength.  Prestige and honor are still goals to be pursued.  It is a very human tendency to desire to stand above the crowd and to be recognized. 

Isaiah tells us that God said, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.  As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.  Theologians have often described Christianity as “Flying upside down”.  For the Christian, the things of this earth are most emphatically not the things of God. 

Where the world envisions a king who would subjugate the nations and enforce God’s law upon the people, God envisions a world where obedience to Him is given willingly and joyfully because the people know that their King is loving, and compassionate, and passionately pursues the happiness and well being of His beloved children. 

The world envisions punishment and retribution for sin and even calls out for vengeance on those who have sinned, but God calls us to repentance, showering us with unmerited grace like a flowing river, and lovingly restoring the relationships with Him that have been broken by sin. 

The world envisions a hierarchy where some people are imagined to be inherently better or more important than others.  In this world, a person’s value is judged by race or color or age or gender or intellect, or social status, but God envisions a world where all are truly and completely equal, where love demands that every single one of God’s beloved children is afforded dignity and grace, and an exactly equal place in the fellowship of believers. 

The world envisions religion as lists of rules and regulations to be followed, enforceable laws where those who violate those laws are subject to wrath and judgment.  But God envisions a loving and intimate relationship with His beloved children.  A relationship where God lovingly provides for His children’s every need, and even more, a God who lovingly provides for the complete happiness of His children, and His children love and adore and obey God simply because of who He is.

The world envisions a place where people work to surpass others, where resources are hoarded and possessions become a measure of status, declaring your superiority over others.  But God envisions a world where people work to support others, where resources are shared in such a way that no one is left wanting.  In a complete reversal from the world’s values, the one who does the most for OTHERS, is the one most esteemed.  After James and John made their very worldly request to Jesus, Jesus answered them, saying, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave.  Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Psychologists describe a thing called confirmation bias.  It is the tendency of people to accept facts that conform to their worldview, while rejecting facts that contradict those views.  For the Israelites who wished to force Jesus to become king, they were seeking His kingship for all the wrong reasons.  From their worldly standpoint, they expected a worldly king; a king who supported all of the worldly values that they held.  But Jesus wasn’t interested in their worldly values.  Jesus came to show us this upside down kingdom of God.  He came to show us the nature of God’s love and compassion, and forgiveness, and the magnitude of His generosity and His grace.  He came to show us that there is indeed a way that is higher than our ways.  We need to learn how NOT to interpret God and His plan through the lens of our worldly experiences, but rather through the example and teaching of Jesus. 

To be a Christian is to ask God to incorporate us into His plan.  It is to embrace the wisdom of His upside down kingdom, and to allow God to make us a people who turn away from the ways of this world, and allow Him to transform our hearts into hearts that look like His heart.

Why Was Healing Important? Sermon 7/21/24

            Warren Wiersbe asks a great question, “From what you remember about Jesus’ life, what would have convinced you that He was truly the Son of God?”  Now, we have to admit… compared to the disciples, we have a bit an advantage.  Most of us have grown up around the idea that Jesus IS God, and so maybe we have a tendency to overlook just how radical this whole idea of God becoming fully human really is.  The disciples had no such advantage; and even though they were eyewitnesses to the life and teaching of Jesus, the disciples still struggled to understand.

            Our story today begins right after the disciples return from having been sent out in twos to bring a message of repentance, to heal the sick, and to drive out demons.  It was a successful journey for each of them and one has to wonder how they felt when they saw the power of God working through them as they healed people with just a touch.  These were ordinary people, not unlike us, who had been given this extraordinary power, and were now using that power to spread the Good News about the kingdom of God. 

            Mark tells us that when the disciples returned, they reported to Jesus all that they had said and done, but Jesus, recognizing that the disciples were pretty worn out-after their journey, suggested that they go to a remote place to get some rest, to refresh, and to get something to eat.  As an aside, it’s nice to see that Jesus Himself advocated for adequate rest and relaxation for those who have immersed themselves in doing the work of God’s kingdom.  Jesus and the disciples attempted to get away from the crowds by taking a boat what was probably a pretty short distance, to an area that was what Mark described as “a solitary place”.  It was a good plan, but some folks saw Jesus and the disciples headed across the lake and those folks ran on ahead and met the boat where it landed.  How many folks?  About 5,000.  Actually, John’s Gospel clarifies that it was 5,000 men, not counting the women and children.  Now, 5,000 men would fill the Ocean Grove Great Auditorium almost to capacity, and there were probably at least as many women and children, so this was not a small crowd!  As the boat came ashore, Mark tells us that Jesus had compassion on the crowd because they were like sheep without a shepherd.  And so He began “Teaching them many things.”  In stating that Jesus had compassion, the word that Mark uses is quite visceral.  The ancients believed that the seat of one’s emotion was in the bowels, and so in the Greek, the word was ἐσπλαγχνίσθη (splagch-ni-zomee) which Strong’s delicately defines as “Being moved in the inward parts”.  It was a word that was reserved for feelings of deepest empathy and compassion. 

            Our reading today completely skips over the well-known story of the feeding of the 5,000, but we need to bear in mind the fact that once again the disciples had a front row seat at another miraculous event.  That will become important later.

            In discussing Jesus’ statement about sheep without a shepherd, one of the commentaries that I used this week referred me to Ezekiel 34… the whole chapter.  And I’m not going to read the whole chapter this morning, but to summarize, God is speaking to Ezekiel about Israel’s leadership.  God tells Ezekiel to pronounce judgment on the shepherds of Israel because they take the sheep’s food and keep it for themselves.  They don’t provide care for the weak, they don’t heal the sick, they don’t go after the strays, and they bully and badger the sheep without mercy.  God then tells Ezekiel that He Himself will be the shepherd and will do Himself, all of the things that Israel’s shepherds have failed to do.  God then tells Ezekiel that He is going to judge the sheep also, because some members of the flock mistreat others, take their food and water from them, and force them away from the flock.  And so, God tells Ezekiel that David will be their shepherd and will feed and care for them while the malicious sheep will be banished. 

            In reading that full chapter of Ezekiel 34, we find a description of what Jesus was talking about when He explained the difference between Him, as the good shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep, and the hired hand, who cares not for the sheep.  Jesus, as the shepherd, is of course, both God, and the Son of David, and is therefore, the fulfilment of the Ezekiel prophecy as the true shepherd who cares for His sheep.  That care was abundantly illustrated when Jesus, rather than being bothered by the crowd that greeted them as they stepped off the boat hoping for some rest, immediately began to tend to their needs; both spiritual in His teaching of them, and physical in His miraculous feeding of them. 

            Even though this next part isn’t included in our reading today, I think the event adds an important dimension to our story.  After feeding the crowd and sending them away, the disciples headed out onto the lake again, with Jesus staying behind to pray.  And once again, the disciples experienced difficulty getting across the lake, and once again, Jesus saw this and walked on water to meet them. Interestingly though, this time Mark tells us that Jesus intended to walk right past them.  The disciples, when they saw Jesus walking on the water, were once again, terrified, thinking once again that Jesus was a ghost.  Jesus immediately said to them, “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” And then He climbed into the boat with them.  But there is one important thing here that is lost in the translation.  When Jesus said “It is I”, His actual words in the Greek, were ἐγώ εἰμι (ego eimi).  Possibly some of you may recognize these words by now.  At the burning bush, when Moses asked God what His name is, God responded that His name is “I Am”.  The transliteration of that Hebrew name into Greek is ἐγώ εἰμι, so what Jesus actually said to the disciples was “Take courage and fear not, for I AM.  Jason Meyer explains, “This whole story is a revelation of Jesus’ deity.  Jesus is not saying ‘Don’t be afraid, you know me, I am not a ghost’.  He is saying ‘Do not fear, because I am God!’”

            After Jesus got in the boat, He and the disciples, once again put ashore, and Mark tells us, “As soon as they got out of the boat, people recognized Jesus.  They ran throughout that whole region and carried the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was.  And wherever he went—into villages, towns or countryside—they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed.”

            The first thing I asked you all this morning was a question that Warren Wiersbe posed about what would convince you that Jesus was the Son of God.  If we were to look, just at the last few weeks, we would find Jesus walking on water, calming a storm, driving multiple demons out of a man from the Gerasenes, healing a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years, raising Jairus’ daughter from the dead, feeding 4,000 people, and then 5,000 people with just a few loaves of bread and some fish, and then walking on water again.  One might be inclined to think that, somewhere along the line, the disciples would have figured it out, but after everything they had witnessed, and the miracles that they had each done personally, they still mistook Jesus for a ghost and were terrified. 

Let’s think about all of this for a minute.  When the disciples advised Jesus to dismiss the 5,000 people so they could go into the town to buy something to eat, Jesus told the disciples “You feed them”.  On the surface, the disciple’s response, which amounted to them asking Jesus if he was crazy, did He realize how much it would cost to buy enough food to feed them all, seems entirely reasonable, and even pragmatic.  But… in the context of the fact that the disciples had JUST come back from a journey where they had performed miracles THEMSELVES, why is it that not even one of them considered the fact that Jesus might have enabled them to feed the crowd miraculously by themselves.  If only they had faith as small as a mustard seed…

Why were the miracles important?  In His miracles, Jesus is showing His disciples, and us, the truth of His divinity; the truth that He is indeed Emmanuel, God with us.  And what a rich statement that is!  The God who created the entire universe, simply by speaking it into existence, is also the God who loves enough to heal everyone who touches Him.  As with Mary and Martha when their brother Lazarus died, He’s the God who walks with us in our most difficult times, and cries with us in our grief.  As with Peter, He’s the God who refuses to let us sink when we take our eyes off of Him.  As with the crowds of 4,000 and 5,000 people, He’s the God who refuses to let His children go hungry and feeds them until they are full.  As with the little children, He’s the God who refuses to let anyone hinder their coming to Him.  As with the woman at the well, He’s the God who refuses to let a person’s less than perfect past interfere with His forgiveness and His restoration.  As with Peter’s mother-on-law, and the Centurian’s servant, and the man who was let down through the roof, He’s the God who conquers sickness.  As with Jairus’ daughter, and the Widow’s son, and Lazarus, He’s the God who even conquers death!  As with Mary Magdeline, and Joanna, and Susanna, He’s the God who breaks the barriers of gender and as with Matthew, and Zacchaeus, and Simon the Zealot, He’s the God who breaks the barriers of class and status.  And through His love and His grace, He brings forgiveness and wholeness and dignity to all who love Him.  This God who created the entire universe, simply by speaking it into existence, became fully human, and lived among us, that we may see and understand exactly who God is. 

In John 14, on the night that He was betrayed, Jesus was speaking to the disciples and Phillip asked Jesus if He would show us the Father.  Jesus responded, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?  Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?  The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority.  Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.  Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.”

“The evidence of the works themselves”.   To the disciples, and to His closest followers, Jesus revealed the purpose behind the miracles.  I mentioned a few weeks back that when we look at the miracles of Jesus, what we think we are seeing is Jesus somehow bending the rules of nature, doing something extraordinary and supernatural.  But that isn’t the case at all.  What Jesus is actually doing is not something that is contrary to the way that things are supposed to be.  What He is doing is returning things to the way that they were intended to be.  He starts with a world that is broken with sin and illness and death, and through forgiving the sin, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, giving hearing to the deaf, and even raising the dead to life, He is restoring the world to the way that God always intended for it to be.  And the best part of this is… He does ALL of this out of love.  In all of Jesus’ actions, all of His teachings, all of His miracles, there is an undercurrent of love that runs through all of it.

            And now, here we are, 2,000 years later.  And we read the stories, and we talk about the miracles, and in 2,000 years, their purpose still hasn’t changed.  God is still explaining to us, through the life, and teaching, and example of Jesus, exactly who God is.  This is why it is so important to hear the stories.  This is why it is so important to talk about the miracles.  Because the stories and the miracles lead us to the fact that Jesus is truly the Son of God.  And there is no more important thing that we can do in this lifetime than to learn that.  And once we have learned that, to lead others to Him that they may discover that for themselves.

A Disturbing Turn of Events: Sermon 7/14/24

For the last few weeks, we have been talking about how Mark uses “story sandwiches” or intercalations as a device both to draw the reader into his story and also to allow the “sandwiched” stories to interpret or to illustrate one another.  Once again today Mark is using a “story sandwich” as he intercalates the story of the sending of the disciples to carry the Gospel, and their subsequent return, with the story of the execution of John the Baptist.  Last week we spoke about how the rejection of Jesus when he was in Nazareth was an important lesson for the disciples to learn so that they would be prepared not only for success in their teaching and healing ministries, but also be prepared to be rejected. 

This week we have a much darker lesson.  Mark L. Strauss explains, “The most likely relationship [between the disciples’ story and the John the Baptist story] is that both episodes illustrate the nature and cost of true discipleship.  The Twelve are commissioned to set aside their possessions, comfort, and personal ambitions to proclaim the Good News of the kingdom.  John the Baptist meanwhile pays the ultimate cost of discipleship – giving his life for the Gospel.”

The King Herod of our story today is Herod Antipas.  While Antipas liked to be called “King”, he was, in fact, a Tetrarch, meaning a ruler of one fourth of a kingdom.  After the death of Herod, the Great (You remember him, he was the guy who tried to kill Jesus, by killing every male child under the age of two in and around Bethlehem).  Herod the Great’s kingdom was divided among his four sons with Antipas being declared Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea.  Herod Antipas ruled for about 40 years and was not only responsible for the death of John the Baptist; he was also the Herod before whom Jesus stood trial. 

Philip the Tetrarch was Herod’s half-brother, and one of the four brothers to rule Palestine after the death of their father Herod the Great.  Philip was married to Herodias but when Antipas made a trip to Rome where he stayed with his brother Philip, Antipas fell in love with Herodias and convinced her to divorce Philip so that she could marry him.  According to Leviticus 18:16 this was a direct violation of Jewish law.  John the Baptist reminded Antipas of this violation, every chance he got.  Because of this, Herodias hated John the Baptist, and wanted him dead, but Antipas was intrigued by John the Baptist.  Mark tells us that Antipas didn’t understand him, but that he liked to listen to him.  But, Antipas had John arrested, probably for two reasons.  First, of course, would have been to satisfy his wife, Herodias.  But the second reason was quite simply that Antipas just could not have John continually preaching to the people about how he had sinned in marrying his brother’s wife.  So, Antipas imprisoned John so that John couldn’t keep heralding that sin to Antipas’ subjects.  However, Antipas protected John because he knew that John was a righteous and holy man. 

We all know what happened next.  We’ve all heard the story about Herodias’ daughter Salome dancing, about Antipas offering Salome anything up to half of his kingdom, and how Salome, at her mother’s urging, demanded the head of John the Baptist.  That Antipas was wracked with guilt over his murder of John the Baptist becomes apparent when Mark tells us that, upon hearing of Jesus’ miracles, Antipas assumes that Jesus is John the Baptist, raised from the dead.  In the Greek, Antipas says “John the Baptist is ἠγέρθη (egerthe)”, which carries a specifically divine implication.  The translation of that word in the text would best read “God has raised John the Baptist from the dead”.  Mark L. Strauss again observes, “Antipas doesn’t just fear retribution from John; his conscience is telling him he has done a great evil and will answer to God.  Instead of repenting, however, Antipas responds with fear.”  Random question:  Do we think that God would have forgiven Antipas had he repented?  I have no doubt, because I believe that God’s grace is even bigger than we can imagine.

And so, I would like to talk about the message that Mark is revealing in this current story sandwich, and the essence of Mark’s message is that it is a discussion about the cost of discipleship.  But now I need to fast forward almost 2,000 years because in the 21^st century, no discussion of the cost of discipleship is complete without a discussion about Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  So with my sincerest apologies for another history lesson…

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian and pastor, and a founding member of the German Confessing Church which arose after Adolph Hitler took power.  According to Hitler biographer Alan Bullock, Hitler disdained Christianity, but at the time that Hitler came into power, 95% of Germans were Christian (32% Catholic and 63% Protestant).  As such, Hitler knew that, if he was ever going to have anyone following him, he was going to have to use the church.  And so, when Hitler unveiled the National Socialist Program, a 25-point plan for how the National Socialists would lead Germany, point 24 was a demand for “Freedom of religion for all religious denominations within the state, so long as they do not endanger [the states] existence or oppose the moral senses of the German race”. 

Hitler espoused a movement called “Positive Christianity”.  This was Hitler’s attempt to placate any Christians who believed that the Nazis were hostile to Christianity.  But in truth, Hitler was just trying to coopt the churches to serve his own purposes.  In 1937 Hans Kerrl, the Hitler appointed head of the German Church, which was the name given to the churches that supported the Nazis, said, “Positive Christianity is not dependent on the Apostle’s Creed, nor is it dependent on faith in Christ as the Son of God.  Rather it is represented by the Nazi Party.  The Fuhrer is the herald of a new revelation.”  There are those who believe that apostacy is insidious and hard to discern, but sometimes, all you have to do is listen carefully to what people are saying.

Hitler introduced a new Bible that eliminated most of the Old Testament and any positive mention of Jews in the New Testament.  This new “New Testament” now portrayed Jesus as “an Aryan hero of human origin who fought the Jewish people” ¹ This new “Christian” church eschewed Christian notions of meekness and guilt, believing that they “Repressed the violent instincts necessary to prevent inferior races from dominating Aryans” and Hitler ultimately sought to unite the entire Christian population of Germany into a church in which Hitler, and not Jesus, was the head of the church.  The Nazi affirming German Church became quite large and influential.  Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw wrote that, “while many ordinary people were apathetic… after years of warning from Catholic clergy, Germany’s Catholic population greeted the Nazi takeover with uncertainty, while among German Protestants, there was more optimism that the Nazi takeover would bring about a strengthened Germany and might bring with it “inner, moral revitalization”.  This goal of the German Protestants to have the church and the government working together to strengthen the nation and to enforce their morality on others is unfortunately, nothing new in the church.  Either before Nazi Germany, or after.

In response to the Nazi takeover of the church, a group of devout Christians led by Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Niemoller formed the Pastor’s Emergency League.  This coalition of pastors resisted the Nazification of the church and formed what became known as the Confessing Church.  So called because the church’s foundation was based on a confession; specifically the Barmen Declaration.  The Barmen Declaration, written primarily by Karl Barth, pointed out difficulties with the theology of Hitler’s church, and stated what the Confessing Church believed.  (And by the way, the Barmen Declaration is in the Presbyterian Book of Confessions as a part of the Presbyterian Constitution.  I’ve left a few copies of the Barmen Declaration on the welcome table in the Narthex this morning, for anyone who would like to take one and read it!  It’s only a few pages long.)

Needless to say, Hitler didn’t think very highly of the Confessing Church.  It was soon summarily outlawed, and Bonhoeffer and Niemoller were arrested and sent to concentration camps.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged at the Flossenburg Concentration Camp just two weeks to the day before the camp was liberated by the US Army.

In case you all are wondering why my sermon took a sudden turn away from Mark this morning…  Bonhoeffer is the author of a book called “The Cost of Discipleship”.  And as we reflect on the lessons that Mark is teaching in his story sandwich about the potential costs of bearing the Gospel, the words that Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, amplify Mark’s teaching in a very contemporary and very meaningful way.  In his book, Bonhoeffer speaks of the contrast between cheap grace and costly grace. 

In Bonhoeffer’s own words, “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” 

“Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjack’s wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at [bargain] prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap?…

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it, a [person] will go and sell all that [they have in order to] buy it. It is the pearl of great price to buy for which the merchant will sell all [their] goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a [person] will pluck out the eye which causes [them] to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciples leave [their] nets and follow him.

“Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a [person] must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a [person their] life, and it is grace because it gives a [person] the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: ‘[You] were bought at a price’, and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”

As we reflect on Mark’s lessons and Bonhoeffer’s words today, we soberly consider the cost involved with choosing to become disciples.  We can all be deeply grateful that we do not live in a society where our faith could endanger our lives, but that doesn’t mean that discipleship doesn’t come at a cost for us as well.  We already spoke about sacrificing possessions, comfort, and personal ambitions, but just like that person who sold all that they had to buy that one exquisite pearl, or to buy that one field that contained the treasure, what we give we give joyfully, because what we stand to gain is so unimaginably better than anything that we could possibly give up.  Jim Elliott once said “[A person] is no fool who gives what [they] cannot keep, to gain what [they] cannot lose”.  

Again, Mark L. Strauss explains, “Here we find the true essence of discipleship.  It is following Christ’s model, but always in service to Him.  It is a willingness to give up one’s life, not for our own glory, but for the glory of Christ.  As [Christians], this is one of the most difficult principles to apply.  So much of our self-worth is tied to our position, prestige, and influence.  To live a life of self-sacrificial giving, promoting the cause of others over ourselves, goes against our natural human tendency to self-promote.  Yet it is the epitome of authentic [Christianity].”

We all have been called to be bearers of the Gospel.  We have been called to a life of discipleship where we are asking God to allow us to be a part of His kingdom… to live in such a way that God’s love is exhibited in our day to day lives, in order that others may see God’s love in us, and seek to become a part of God’s kingdom also.  This has always been God’s plan.  Growing the church is not about trying to compel or coerce or enforce.  It is about disciples changing the world one heart at a time.  It is about showing our beloved brothers and sisters, by example, how to live lives of love, compassion, empathy, and grace.  It is about building a church whose members hearts look like God’s heart. 

This is our call.  This is our mission.  To be sent into the world, that we may show the world, the wonderful, extravagant, limitless love of God, in order that others may choose to seek that love for themselves.

¹The Aryan Jesus:  Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany by Susannah Heschel

Take Nothing for the Journey: Sermon 7/7/24

July 7, 2024

Take Nothing for the Journey

            The first century residents of Israel had a peculiar way of thinking about status and social mobility.  For us, living in a culture that embraces the “American Dream”, where we believe that dedication and hard work can bring a person material success and an improvement in their social status; a culture where we teach our children that anyone can grow up to be president, it may be difficult for us to understand a society that believed that you are born into a certain social strata, and were fully expected to stay there for your entire life.  But that is what first century Israelites believed.  If you were born a king or a governor then that was your place and your destiny, and God probably put you there for a reason.  Conversely, if you were born, say, a carpenter, then THAT was your place and your destiny, and God probably put you there for a reason too.  But there was more to this.  Also in first century Israelite thought was the idea that, if someone rose above their “place” … that vocation and social strata into which they had been born, then their ascendency from that strata would mean “climbing over” other people.  In other words, those who were previously above you in social standing, would now be moved below you in social standing.  And I suspect that those who were previously above you would not readily give up their sense of superiority over you, and so actions would very likely be taken to prevent you from making that upward bump in social standing.

            In our story today we see Jesus returning to Nazareth, the town in which He grew up.  James F. Strange, a professor of religious studies at the University of South Florida, did some extensive research on first century Nazareth and one of the things that he concluded was that the population of Nazareth at the time of Jesus was, at most, about 480 people.  Is it any wonder that, before he was introduced to Jesus, the future Disciple Nathaniel said “Nazareth? Can anything good come from there?”  Nazareth was likely one of those small towns where everybody knew everybody, and everybody knew everybody’s business. 

And so, here we have this little town, and all of the townspeople have been hearing all of these stories about how Mary’s kid Jesus was performing miracles and Mary’s kid Jesus was teaching in the synagogues, and now Mary’s kid Jesus was coming home, and it was probably going to be quite an event.  When the day came, and Jesus was teaching in the Synagogue, the townsfolk were initially astonished at how He was teaching with wisdom and authority. But it didn’t take long before the novelty wore off, and people began saying to themselves, “Wait a minute!  This is just Mary’s son, the carpenter.  What business does He have going around teaching like this?”  Mark tells us that “They took offense at Him.”  But the Greek here is really interesting.  The phrase “taking offense” is translated from the Greek ἐσκανδαλίζοντο (eskandalizonto), which is the source of our word “scandal.  But in the Greek, the word actually means “to put a snare in someone’s way, or to trip someone up”. 

Because most of the townsfolk would have known Jesus growing up, their familiarity with Him was a stumbling block that prevented them from recognizing the fact that Israel’s Messiah was standing right in front of them.  They all thought that they knew who Jesus was, but their pre-conceived notions prohibited them from looking any deeper and finding out who Jesus REALLY was.  I especially love how The Message translation of the Bible expresses this verse, “Because people think they know who Jesus is, they end up asking disdainfully, “Who does he think he is?”  Add to all of this the fact that there were some influential people in the town who probably resented the fact that Jesus appeared to be moving ahead of them on that social status ladder, and you have a recipe for Jesus to experience widespread rejection, and that is exactly what happened.  There is a parallel account to this story in Luke 4.  And while there is some disagreement among scholars as to whether Luke’s account is reporting the same event as this story from Mark, or if they are reporting two different visits to Nazareth, we read in the Luke account, that the townspeople actually took Jesus to the edge of a cliff with the intent of throwing Him off.  Luke tells us that they are not able to do so, because Jesus turns around and walks right through the crowd.

            But we shouldn’t be too hard on these folks from Nazareth.  Making up your mind about what you believe isn’t a particularly hard thing to do.  Keeping an open mind to new things that can expand your knowledge and understanding requires just a little bit more effort.  It’s much easier, and much more comfortable just to stick with what you know. 

Most of you know by now that I am an internet junkie.  I spend WAY too much time on Facebook, and I spend a bit of time on Quora also.  Quora fascinates me.  I end up answering a lot of questions there, because there are just so many people asking questions where it’s obvious that these folks who are asking the questions are just mired in their way of thinking.  My hope in answering them is that I may give them some food for thought that might just open their minds a little.  And this is important, because just as the familiarity the folks from Nazareth had with Jesus proved to be a stumbling block to their understanding of who Jesus really was.  So it is that there are many, many people today who identify as Christians but barely exhibit the fruits of the Spirit, if at all.  I’m not saying that these people aren’t saved, because God grace is immense, but I am saying that they are very often unfruitful.  And the reason that they are unfruitful is because they think that they have it all figured out what it means to be a follower of Christ, when the reality is that they are barely scratching the surface of their call to discipleship.  The Rev. Mary Austin once said “When you get rid of the God that you think you know, you make room for the real God to come in.” 

Christianity isn’t a destination, it’s a journey.  The believer makes a lifelong commitment to growing in understanding, in love, in grace, and in relationship with God AND with others.  To simply “pray that prayer” and then think “that’s it, I’m in” really robs a person of the riches and the joy and the peace that comes from the development of a lifelong, intimate relationship with God.  The people of Nazareth sacrificed all of that, because they couldn’t get past their initial assumptions.  Mark tells us that Jesus was amazed at their lack of faith.  Only twice in the Bible is Jesus said to have been amazed.  The other time it was positive!  He was amazed at the faith of the Roman Centurion whose servant He had healed.  But I think it’s probably not a good thing when it’s your lack of faith that amazes Jesus!

Mark tells us that “[Jesus] could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.”  Now one must take a little care with this passage.  I would imagine that, somewhere along the line, most of us have heard stories of people being told that they weren’t healed or that something bad had happened because they didn’t have enough faith, but that is just not how these things work.  Pastor Luke Sumner had a great explanation of this when he said, “I don’t think Jesus is measuring their faith, willing to heal people once it hits a certain level. Because this is not how faith works. Faith is not a quantity but a posture, a willingness to see what God is doing and say, “I may not be totally sure, but I am willing to take a step in that direction.”  Simply put, if the folks from Nazareth didn’t have faith, why would they even bother to go to Jesus to be healed in the first place?  And I think that this is what amazed Jesus.  The fact that those who needed healing wouldn’t even take a chance because it seemed to them to be a waste of their time.

One of the things that Mark does in his Gospel is to interrupt a story to tell another story.  These “story sandwiches” or intercalations, as they are called, are designed to draw the reader deeper into the story and to allow the “sandwiched” stories to illuminate each other.  We saw this last week when the story of the woman who was bleeding interrupted the story about Jairus and his daughter.  And this week Mark “sandwiches” this story of rejection and the inability of Jesus to perform many miracles, between the miracle stories of the last two weeks, where Jesus showed incredible powers; and the story that follows in the next verse about Jesus sending out the disciples in twos to spread the Gospel.

            So, our story continues with Jesus going to the surrounding towns, continuing to preach and heal, but now, Jesus divides the disciples into groups of two and sends them out also.  And I believe that the experience in Nazareth was an important one for the disciples.  Remember a few weeks back when the disciples were mega frightened at the fact that Jesus had calmed the wind and the waves?  The disciples had just experienced a period of Jesus displaying amazing power over illness, demons, nature, and even death.  So it was probably essential for the disciples to see the other side of the coin in Jesus being rejected.  This experience would have given the disciples more reasonable expectations of what they might encounter in their journeys.  Jesus anticipated that at some places the disciples may also be rejected, and even gave them the instructions that “If any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.”  Shaking the dust from your feet was a traditional Hebrew practice; something that Jews who were traveling outside of Israel did when they left Gentile territory and returned to Israelite territory.  It was a way of making a statement that you have nothing to do with the Gentiles that you are leaving behind.  For the disciples to shake the dust from their feet when they left a Jewish town was making a statement equating the Jews of that town, with the idolatrous Gentiles; it was not at all a kind gesture.  Jesus didn’t take His rejection at Nazareth personally.  It didn’t deter Him at all from continuing His mission of teaching and healing, and He didn’t want the disciples to be discouraged with rejection either.  Anyone think that after His rejection, Jesus said to the disciples “See, it can happen to the best of us?”  No?  Never mind. 

            So, the time has come, and Jesus is sending out the disciples.  And when He does, He sends them with some very specific instructions.  They are to carry nothing for this journey except for a walking stick and sandals; no bread, no bag for carrying supplies or personal items, no money, not even a change of clothes.  These are pretty difficult instructions, don’t you think?  There are those who, through the years, have interpreted this passage as a requirement of asceticism for preachers and evangelists, but I really don’t think that is Jesus’ goal here. 

We have to understand that hospitality was a matter of primary importance to the Jewish people.  The Jews would have been familiar with the stories of Abraham providing hospitality to three men who turned out to be angels, and it was deeply ingrained in Jewish thought that travelers should be welcomed as if they were God Himself visiting.  So, as the disciples traveled to the different towns, there were almost certainly people in every town who would have been willing, and even eager, to provide these traveling preachers with food and a place to sleep.  Interestingly, Jesus commands them that, once a townsperson has welcomed them into their home, they are to stay there for the duration of their visit to that town.  As one might imagine, if their preaching and ministry of healing was well received in a town, there may have been people of higher social standing offering the disciples finer food and more luxurious accommodations, but Jesus does not want the disciples to take part in any of that. 

So, what is there for us to learn from how Jesus instructed the disciples?  Because, after all, we also are sent by Jesus to share the Gospel.  The first instruction was that they go in twos.  Traveling in twos would have been prudent, as it would have been safer, as sometimes there may be robbers on the road (who by the way would have been pretty disappointed in the fact that the disciples were traveling with nothing but the clothes on their backs).  But more than that, the disciples were preaching a message of repentance, and from the standpoint of Jewish law, two witnesses were required in order to testify to the truth.  But possibly most important is the fact, that when all is said and done, Christianity is about community.  Pastor James Lawrence says, “For Jesus, there is no such thing as a lone-ranger Christian. Because life is too hard to go it alone. And being a follower of Jesus, is too hard to go it alone. We need His help and presence. But we need each other’s help, too.”

I believe that a big part of the reason that the disciples were sent out empty handed was to ensure their total reliance on God to provide for their needs.  And this wasn’t just a matter of what to eat and where to sleep, it was also about how to do the work that Jesus was sending them to do.  And that hasn’t changed in two thousand and some years.  We still need to rely entirely on God to equip us to do the work that He has called us to do, whatever that work may be.  The disciples preached and healed with confidence, not in their own abilities, but because they had been given authority by Jesus to act in His behalf.  That same authority to act in His behalf has been granted to us today when we choose to immerse ourselves in the work that God has called us to do as His disciples.

Lastly, we have the message of Nazareth…  Don’t be discouraged if we are rejected.  When rejected we simply need to shake the dust off of our feet and move on to the next task to which God has called us.  To be rejected in the name of Christ is not a failure on our part.  If God has provided the audience and God has provided the words that we speak, then for us to be rejected is entirely the fault of those who refuse to hear the words of life.

I’d like to close with another quote from Pastor Luke Sumner, “God is working to see a world transformed by love and justice.  God has called us to join in that work, and indeed, that work is most powerful when done together.  But too often, the systems and religious structures we build to help us do this work can also hinder the work, making it harder to see what God is up to.  So, our work in [the] coming season[s] is to join in this work by re-imaging a way of doing church that helps, and not hinders God’s kingdom, and by learning to see where the Spirit is moving, and inviting others to join us as we step out in faith to see how we can co-create a world of love and justice.”