The Greatest Commandment

Sermon November 3, 2024

            Do we have any Bible geeks here?  Does anyone know how many commandments rabbinic tradition recognized in the first five books of the Bible?  There were 613!  Of these, 365 were negative, or “don’t do that”, and 248 were positive, or “do this”.  Some of these commandments were considered by the rabbis to be “light”, the violation of which was thought to have minimal impact, and some were considered “heavy” and violating these “heavy” laws could carry some significant consequences.  In light of all this, it isn’t too hard to understand how some of the teachers of the law might have wondered which was the most important commandment, and indeed discussions of the relative importance of various commandments abound in the rabbinic literature of the second Temple era.  And so, it’s not surprising in the least that the Teacher of the Law in our reading today would have approached Jesus with the question that he asked. 

            This Scribe, or teacher of the law (And these descriptions can be used interchangeably) heard a discussion between Jesus and the Sadducees discussing the resurrection.  This discussion happened just before our reading today, and in those verses, the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection, asked Jesus a hypothetical resurrection question which Jesus answered, and which our Teacher of the Law friend believed that Jesus had answered wisely.  And so, this Scribe, having recognized the wisdom of Jesus’ answer decided to ask Jesus a question himself, but unlike a lot of the questions asked by the Jewish religious authorities, this question did not appear to be intended to trap Jesus or to set Him up for something.  It appeared to be a question posed of genuine interest.  And the question that he asked was “what is the greatest commandment”?  Since this was a hotly debated topic among his peers, and given the fact that Jesus had 613 commandments from which to choose, the Scribe was probably deeply curious as to what the wisdom of Jesus’ answer might be.

            Verses 29 through 31 in today’s reading tells us that “Jesus answered him “The most important one is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.   Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.  The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  There is no commandment greater than these”.  What Jesus said here, He paraphrased from two different verses from the Hebrew Bible.  The first half, the part about loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, is taken from Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and is actually a prayer called the Shema.  A Jew will recite this prayer twice a day, once upon waking up in the morning and again before going to bed.  The second part of what Jesus said, the part about loving your neighbor, is paraphrased from Leviticus 19:17-18. 

            After Jesus said these things, something truly remarkable happened.  We are so accustomed to the animosity that the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law exhibited towards Jesus, that when this Scribe answers in a complimentary way, it is almost shocking.  The Scribe said to Jesus, “Well said, teacher.  You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him.  To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”  Not only did the Scribe agree with Jesus and commend Him for His answer, but the Scribe also shows a remarkable understanding of the fact that loving God and loving others takes precedence over the Jewish sacrificial system. 

            We’ve spent a few months in Mark now, and the tension between the Jewish authorities and Jesus has been one of Mark’s primary themes.  Mark’s purpose has been to explain to his readers that the Pharisees have basically lost the plot.  They have become so focused on behavior; the ACT of obeying the Law, that they have lost sight of the fact that it iss not about what they do, but about who they are that matters to God. 

They seem to have misplaced a few Bible verses, like Jeremiah 7:22-23 that says, “When I brought your fathers out of Egypt, I said nothing to them about burnt offerings and sacrifices.  I gave them only this command: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you will be my people. Walk entirely in the way I commanded you to walk, so that it may go well with you.’” Or perhaps they have forgotten verses similar to this that can be found in Isaiah or Malachi or Psalms, or Ezekiel.  Or maybe, somehow they missed out on the passage in 1^st Samuel that says “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.”  The Pharisees and Teachers of the Law have failed to see how the Law is really about the condition of their hearts, but our Scribe friend today seems to have it figured out.  And Jesus is appreciative of the Scribe’s answer.  “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” Jesus tells him. 

            There is enormous depth in what has just happened here.  In pairing these two different passages from two different places in the Hebrew Bible, Jesus has revealed the connection between loving God and loving others.  Our response to the first command to love God is exhibited in our love for our neighbors, and when we love our neighbor, we are actually exhibiting our love for God because we are showing our faithfulness by obeying His commandments.  The apostle John echoed this thought in his first letter when he said, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar. For whoever does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?  We have this commandment from Him: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”  Dr. Mark L. Strauss further explains, “Those who truly love God will also love those who are created in His image.  Furthermore, those who love God are reckoned as His children and so reflect His divine nature, which is pure love”.  [1]

            And now returning to our story, Jesus goes even further.  In declaring these commandments to be greater than all the others (All 613 of them), Jesus helps us to understand the fact that a heart that is filled with God’s love seeks to follow all of God’s commandments, not out of a desire for reward, or out of a fear of reprisal, but simply because the inclination to follow God’s commands in an integral part of who they are. 

The heart that loves God is generous, because the heart that loves God is unwilling to accept others being hungry or homeless, and so seeks to fill those needs as circumstances permit.  The heart that loves God is compassionate because the heart that loves God is unwilling to accept others being hurt or mistreated, or marginalized, and so, we love and care for those who the world disdains.  The heart that loves God is gracious because the heart that loves God is unwilling to ignore the fact that every single person bears the image of the Living God, and so, we forgive and restore those who have fallen or have lost their way. 

You’ve heard me say before that the Law is not a list of rules and regulations to be followed.  The Law is a description of what the human heart is supposed to look like.  Timothy Keller said, “When Jesus said that all the laws boil down to ‘love God and neighbor’, He is saying we have not fulfilled a law by simply avoiding what the law prohibits, but we must all do and be what the Law is really after – namely, love.” [2]  And the Jewish philosopher, Philo, spoke about this also when he said, “[These two are the most important laws].”  [The] regulating of one’s conduct towards God by the rules of piety and holiness, and [the] regulating one’s conduct towards [others] by the rules of humanity and justice.” [3]

            This is one of the primary lessons that Jesus came to teach.  Being a disciple of Jesus means having a heart that looks like His heart.  To follow Jesus means to imitate Him; to love as He did, to care for others as He did, to passionately pursue justice, fairness, and righteousness as He did, and to give our selves in service to others, just as He did.  Paul tells us in Romans 13:8-10, “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.  The commandments, ‘’You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not covet,’ and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: ‘’Love your neighbor as yourself.’”  Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law”.  Warren Wiersbe says, “If we love God we will experience His love within and will express that love to others.  We do not live by rules, but by relationships, a loving relationship to God that enables us to have a loving relationship with others.” [4]  This is what it means when I say that when we truly have God’s love within us, we will follow God’s commandments without even trying, because not to follow those commandments would be foreign to our new nature in Christ.           

            And along these same lines, there is another truth buried in today’s lesson.  One of the interesting things that we find in studying today’s verses and comparing them to parallels in Deuteronomy and Matthew is the fact that the things with which we are called to love God are named differently.  Our Mark reading tells us to love God with ‘‘Heart, soul, mind, and strength’‘, but when we look back at the original Deuteronomy passage we find that we are to love God with ‘‘Heart, soul, and might’‘, and when our Scribe friend quotes the Deuteronomy passage he replaces ‘‘mind’‘ with ‘‘understanding’‘ and omits ‘‘soul’‘ entirely.  And in Matthew, we are told to love God with heart, soul, and mind.  These words don’t only vary in the English translations, the differences are present in the original languages also. 

            And so, there are two observations that I would like to make about these discrepancies.  First is the interpretations of the words.  While we, in the twenty first century, interpret matters of the heart as being emotional issues, in the first century, the heart was the center of the will.  Where we interpret soul as the inner being, in the first century the soul was the seat of affection.  The mind was understood pretty much the same then as now, being the center of intellect and strength, and while our meaning of power is shared by the first century readers, for them it also carried a component of aptitude or ability.  And so, taking all of these passages together, we might choose to translate this as ‘‘Love the Lord your God with all of your will, all of your affection, all of your intellect, and all of your abilities.  Or, as Pastor Daniel L. Akin said, ‘‘The heart speaks to the emotions, the real me on the inside.  The soul speaks to the spirit, the self-conscious life.  The mind speaks to our intelligence and thought life.  And strength speaks to our bodily powers, perhaps even the will.” [5]

And all of this ties in to the second observation, which is, no matter which body parts we assign to this passage, its true meaning, and the reason that different words having been used in different passages are inconsequential, is that what we are really being taught here is to love God with everything we are and everything we have.  The simple truth is, God deserves no less than all of us.  And if we circle back to Jesus’ naming of the two most important commandments, we find that we are also called to have the same all encompassing love that we have for God, for others as well.

I know, I make this sound like it is easy.  But we all know that it is not.  However, it’s important to remember that Christ-likeness is not a destination, but a journey.  It is something that we will never fully receive until the day that our faith becomes sight.  But while we are on this journey, we have the extraordinary opportunity to touch the lives and the hearts of others by loving as Jesus did.  WE can be the person who makes a difference in someone else’s life by showing them God’s love and by teaching them the incredible good news of the Gospel.  Let us seek to be the people who do that.

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[1] Dr. Mark L. Strauss, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament: Mark, Pg. 542

[2] Dr. Timothy Keller, Mark, Pg. 163

[3] Philo, The Special Laws, II, 15:63

[4] Warren Wiersbe, Be Diligent, Pg. 142

[5] Daniel L. Akin, Exalting Jesus in Mark, Pg. 288

Turn the Other Cheek

Sermon October 27, 2024

            “It was a slap in the face”.  What do we think when we hear that phrase?  How do we, in the twenty-first century United States interpret that?  Interestingly, our first thought when we hear this phrase isn’t one of physical violence.  Our first thought is that of a rude awakening, a dismissive gesture that is intended not so much to injure physically, as to injure emotionally.  Because the majority of the time when we use this phrase, we use it idiomatically.  We are not actually talking about a physical assault; we are talking about something that someone said or did that caused discomfort or emotional pain.  In her hit song “You Oughta Know” Alanis Morissette said “It was a slap in the face how quickly I was replaced.  Nobody actually hit her, she was commenting on something that had happened that was hurtful to her.  And the fact is, this idea of a slap in the face being a dismissive and scornful act is not at all new.  The first century inhabitants of Israel would have understood this in a very similar way.

            Our lesson today talks about how Christians are to interact with other people, particularly… difficult people.  We begin with a very familiar Bible quote, and as is the case with many widely known Biblical quotes, I believe that the majority of those who hear or repeat the phrase, misunderstand the actual, Biblical teaching behind it.  The phrase is “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”.  It is a phrase that many folks believe is a justification for violent retribution; if you are going to hurt me, I am going to hurt you.  However, if we look at the original verse that’s found in Deuteronomy 19 in context, what we discover is the fact that this verse is directed only to courts of law.  This is not an individual authorization for people to take the law into their own hands, it is part of a group of instructions to judges and officials to help them to administer justice effectively and appropriately. 

Not only is this an instruction to judges and officials, but we find that in a passage in Leviticus 19 personal retaliation and retribution is specifically condemned.  Leviticus 19:18, “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.“  Interesting!  The presumption here is that you have just been wronged in some way, and yet we are told that our response to that injury is to love our neighbor.  And this is coming from the OLD TESTAMENT!

Getting back to the verses in Deuteronomy 19, we find that the verse about an eye for an eye is actually a limiting verse, meaning that judges are called to make sure that punishments fit the crimes.  Judges are called in this verse to sentence without mercy, but what they are not called to do is to issue a sentence that is more severe than the original infraction.  So, counterintuitively, this verse is actually designed to protect the accused from excessive punishment.  And understanding the fact that this verse is meant for judges and officials, combined with that Leviticus passage that we just read, we are able to see that the Bible is emphatically not telling individuals to take retribution into their own hands. 

And as an aside, this is a perfect example of the fact that no verse of the Bible can be taken on its own.  Every verse, every word in the Bible, needs to be understood in the light of the witness of the entire Bible.  When we read Deuteronomy 19:21, “Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” And we pay no attention to the context, or that passage in Leviticus condemning personal retaliation, it would be very easy for a person to take violent retribution on someone and then claim it to be Biblically sanctioned, but as we have just seen… the Bible doesn’t support this at all.  So extreme care must be taken any time we try to justify something Biblically.  One of the first things that I learned in my Seminary Old Testament classes was the importance of filtering everything that we read in the Bible through the lens of the law of love.  That is, does this teaching spring from a heart that loves God and loves others?  And is this teaching consistent with the love exemplified by the life, teaching, and example of Jesus?  If the passage, as we understand it, doesn’t pass this test, then we are failing to understand the text in its original intent, and we certainly shouldn’t be using this text in its misunderstood form to justify behaviors.

            And now I will get off of my soapbox and get back to our lesson.  As Jesus repeats the “eye for an eye” phrase, He follows it with the instruction not to resist an evil person.  And then He tells us that “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”  And here, I think an explanation is in order, lest we misunderstand what is being taught.  The Bible is not telling us not to defend ourselves.  On more than one occasion, the New Testament tells us that the disciples carried swords: almost certainly for self-defense.  Exodus 22 has a lengthy discussion about protection of personal property and the rules relating to self-defense, so the Bible is not asking us not to defend ourselves.  But if we are not being asked not to defend ourselves, what ARE we being asked?

            Well, let’s think about this for a moment.  First, let me state that for first century Jews, a person’s left hand was not to be used for anything except for unclean tasks.  In fact, for a Jew to gesture with the left hand meant they would be excluded from the community for 100 days.  So, Jews would, for all tasks that didn’t require both hands, use their right hand exclusively.  So… picture this… you are facing me.  And you are about to slap me in the face, and you are going to slap me on my right cheek.  How are you going to do that with your right hand?  In order for you to hit me on the right cheek, you would have to be hitting me with the back of your hand.  This would not be a slap that was intended to injure me physically.  It would be a dismissive and disrespectful act intended to “put me in my place”.  So, this verse is not telling us to endure physical abuse, it is telling us not to respond with violence to an insult, but rather to endure the insult in the interest of promoting love and peace.  To turn the other cheek to someone is to invite them to express their anger towards you physically in a way that is not demeaning.  In other words… to stand tall; to make a statement that, as one bearing the image of the Living God, you are to be treated as an equal, not as a nobody.  And at the same time saying that regardless of what another may choose to do, you will show them that you will respond to their unkindness with kindness, to their hate with love, and to their violence with peace.

            Jesus continues with His teaching.  ‘If anyone wants to sue you and takes your shirt, hand over your coat as well.’  First century attire would have consisted of an undergarment, an overgarment, referred to here as a shirt but was actually more like a tunic or a dress (for lack of a better way to describe it), and a cloak or overcoat.  The Law states in Deuteronomy 24 that if you take someone’s cloak as collateral, it must be returned to that person before sunset, as the coat was necessary to keep one warm in the cold of the night.  So what Jesus is saying here is for His followers to offer more than what is required.  To give up both your shirt and your cloak would leave you standing there in court in your underwear.  But if you have lost a lawsuit and have been required to give up the shirt off your back, offer more than what is required in the interests of love and peace.

            Jesus next tells us that, “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.  Roman soldiers were permitted, by law, to conscript anyone they wished to carry their equipment for one mile (well, actually for one thousand steps).  Jesus tells us that, in the interest of love and peace, we should go beyond that which is required and carry that equipment for 2,000 steps instead.  If you are watching the TV show “The Chosen” (and if you are not, you should really check it out!) there is a great scene where Jesus and the disciples are accosted by a group of Roman soldiers and forced to carry their equipment.  The soldiers rudely put their helmets on Jesus and the disciple’s heads, give them heavy packs to carry, and treat them all with abject disrespect.  When they reach the 1,000-step limit, an argument ensues as Jesus informs the soldiers that they will all be continuing to carry the equipment for another thousand steps… the soldiers are understandably a little wary about this offer, as if it is a trap of some sort, but Jesus explains Himself in a very loving and compassionate way, and so they continue to carry the soldiers equipment.  But during the next thousand steps the demeanor of the soldiers changes.  Most of them take back their helmets and their treatment of Jesus and the disciples becomes much more respectful.  The writers of the show did an extraordinary job of expressing the thought that is the foundation of today’s lesson, that kindness and a willingness to do more for another than is required is an extraordinary way of promoting peace.

            Jesus ends this part of our lesson by saying, “Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”  In a world where people tend to cling tightly to that which is theirs, Jesus calls for generosity as the believer recognizes the needs of others and seeks to fill those needs as circumstances permit. 

            In speaking of our passage today, Pastor Brent Kercheville said, “You will notice in each of these illustrations we are seeing our rights being voluntarily revoked. We do not say, ‘I have a right.’ We give up our rights for others. In Christ Jesus we do not say that we have a right. Personal sacrifice replaces personal retaliation-just as Jesus showed us in his own life.  This is the big idea: we do not make our rights the basis for our relationships with others. Be prepared to take a lowly position as a humble servant. Be prepared to sacrifice your rights for a life of following Jesus. Be prepared to pay the price of imitating Jesus.” [1]

            Being a peacemaker is not an easy task.  It requires a willingness to place the needs of others ahead of our own needs.  It requires us to be meek.  But I would like to take a moment to define Biblical meekness, because I don’t think it means what we might think it means.  Meekness, in the Greek, is πραΰτητι, (prauteeti) and in first century Greek, πραΰτητι is a word that was used to describe a horse that has been trained.  Biblical meekness does not mean being powerless or weak, Biblical meekness means to have great power, but to have that power under the control of a master.  We have this great power within us, but it is not a power to serve ourselves.  It is a power to serve others.  Pastor David Guzik of Enduring Word tells us that when we serve others, when we do more than the Law requires us to do, “That is sacrificial Christian love, and it is radical, but it transforms the world when we express it”. [2]

            And this… this is our mission.  We are called to be disciples.  We are called to allow the Spirit to transform our hearts into hearts that reflect the love of God.  And when our hearts reflect the love of God, the world will see His love for them, exemplified in us.  And in the process of reflecting this love, we will find that we are able to form deep connections with people in ways that would just not be possible otherwise.  And not only are we able to create these deeper connections, we are also able to reach some people with whom we may not see eye to eye, and with whom we would never be able to establish a dialogue in any other way.  But reflecting God’s love in our words and actions results in our being peacemakers.  Because God’s love promotes peace and understanding.  God’s love residing in our hearts leads us to be people of empathy and kindness, and to the world, those traits are both compelling and unifying.

            Mother Teresa once said, “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.”  We need to be touching the lives of others with the love of God.  And we need to be doing that praying that the love of God will touch their hearts as well, because when it does, it creates one more little oasis of peace in this world.  And the more of those little oases that we can create, the more we will accomplish in fulfilling our role as God’s peacemakers.

            Amen.

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[1] Sermon:  Matthew 5:38-42, Sacrificing, Brent Kercheville

[2] Enduring Word, David Guzik

Sermon June 25, 2023

Who… was your favorite teacher?

And why?

Did anyone have any trouble coming up with a favorite teacher? 

Of course not, everyone has a favorite teacher.  My favorite teacher was George Hoffman.  Some of you may know him, he was the band director at Monmouth Regional for quite some time, including the three years that I attended there.  Mr. Hoffman was, quite simply, the best teacher I ever had.  And it’s curious that I should think that.  I moved to New Jersey from Ohio the summer after my freshman year in high school and the band program at the school that I was blessed to attend in Ohio was perennially one of the best bands in the state.  Monmouth Regional?  Not so much.  But here is the thing about Mr. Hoffman.  For those of us in the band who were serious about music, and there were a few of us, Mr. Hoffman would have moved heaven and earth to give us the opportunity to become the best musical version of ourselves that we could possibly be.  He was a great educator and mentor, he was encouraging and supportive, and he was persistent in pushing us to be our best, and that’s why I think he was such a great teacher.

I would imagine that many of us have similar experiences with our favorite teachers.  Tell me, was your favorite teacher widely liked in your school?  It’s OK, you don’t have to answer, we are Presbyterians, after all.

So, as I said before, the Monmouth Regional band was rather average.  Without going into a lot of the things going on in the school system that directly contributed to the quality of the band (or lack thereof), most of these things were not in Mr. Hoffman’s control, but nevertheless there were a few students, and probably a few parents as well, who didn’t think very highly of Mr. Hoffman because they blamed him for us not having a better band.  As for me, well, for the first time in my life, I, usually a rather marginal student at best, was the teacher’s pet.  And so, I occasionally found myself defending Mr. Hoffman from those who didn’t share my enthusiasm for what I felt to be the depth of his skill set, and I suppose it makes sense that some of those of a differing opinion didn’t think very highly of me either.

In today’s Gospel lesson we read “Students are not greater than their teacher, and slaves are not greater than their master.  Students are to be like their teacher, and slaves are to be like their master.  And since I, the master of the household, have been called the prince of demons,the members of my household will be called by even worse names!”  Jesus warned the disciples plainly that, because of the opposition to Him and His message, the disciples should expect opposition as well.

It’s probably pretty easy to understand why the band director of a less than stellar band program may have his detractors, but to a world that is accustomed to hearing at least the basics of the Gospel message and that mostly views Jesus (if not always His followers) in a positive light, it may be a little harder for us to understand why Jesus faced such opposition.  Well, two thousand years after the fact, it’s hard to see just how revolutionary Jesus’s message was. 

The priests of Jesus’s day had over a thousand years of religious tradition and regulations covering nearly all of life’s daily routines.  Their job was to instruct and lead the people into the following of the traditions and the minutiae of these regulations, and to them, Jesus was making a mockery of their faith. 

The priests, especially the Pharisees, were deeply committed to ritual purity, to meticulously following the laws both written and oral, and if you didn’t follow those regulations to the letter, then you were “unclean” and a “sinner”.  On Bible.org, Bob Deffinbaugh gives us this description of the Pharisees “(T)he Pharisees… were a religious party.  The word “Pharisee” literally means “Separatist”, the name given to them by their opponents because of their “holier than thou” haughty attitude.  Their supreme aim was to strictly follow both the written and oral law.  They looked down upon the common people who did not have the slightest chance of fulfilling the complex requirements of the Law.  However, the common people admired the Pharisees as representing the ideal followers of Judaism.”

It was those who didn’t “have the slightest chance” of fulfilling the law that were embraced by Jesus.  His association with, and acceptance of, these “sinners” made him unclean in the eyes of the Jewish authorities, and worse than that, Jesus regularly admonished the leaders over their lack of care and concern for those whom they had rejected, the ones that Jesus referred to as “the least of these”.  Jesus flouted the law to which the priesthood was so deeply committed, failing to follow prescribed hand washing rituals before meals, healing on the Sabbath, which the religious authorities considered to be prohibited work, touching lepers, and allowing Himself to be touched by a bleeding woman, all of these things rendering Him “unclean”, and in the eyes of the religious authorities, a “sinner”.

But by far, the biggest problem that the authorities had with Jesus was the fact that Jesus, on multiple occasions, identified Himself as being one with the Father.  In Mark 2 Jesus healed a paralytic who was let down through the roof of a house.  When Jesus healed him, he didn’t say “get up and walk”, He said “Your sins are forgiven”.  The religious authorities were outraged because only God can forgive sin.  In John 5, when the Jewish authorities questioned Jesus as to why he healed a man on the Sabbath, Jesus said “My Father and I are always working”, equating Himself with the Father, which the authorities believed was blasphemy.  In John 8 Jesus, speaking of Abraham, said to the people “Before Abraham was even born, I AM”.  Though the “I am” statement may not mean much to us in our time, His Jewish audience would have instantly recognized the fact that Jesus used the name “I Am” which is the same name with which God identified Himself to Moses at the burning bush.  In John 10 Jesus said to the religious authorities “The Father and I are one”, and before the Jewish Council in Matthew 26 Jesus said, “In the future you will see the Son of Man, seated in the place of power at God’s right hand and coming on the clouds of heaven”.  To those who understood what Jesus was saying, there was no doubt that Jesus was claiming to be Messiah.

This message that Jesus was bringing, this Gospel of Good News to the poor, releasing of the captives, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and the coming of the year of the Lord’s favor, this astonishingly Good News, because it was announced by a human, was interpreted by the religious authorities to be the height of blasphemy.  And this is the message that the disciples were called to bring to the world.  Is there any wonder that the disciples were persecuted?  And yet in spite of the difficulty and the persecution, the disciples love for Jesus, and the disciple’s “fear” of God, was such that not bringing His message to the world was never an option. 

You may be wondering why I said “the fear of God” please allow me to make an observation about this phrase.  In the Greek, the word is θεοσέβεια and it is not a word that bears the meaning of being afraid, but rather it is a word that means reverence.  The Gospel is not something that we share because we are terrified of what will happen if we don’t, or because we hope to gain a reward if we do, the Gospel is shared, by the disciples and by us, out of our devotion to God.

Like the disciples, we carry this message because of love.

Our Gospel lesson today is a difficult one:

“Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth! I came not to bring peace, but a sword.  ‘I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.  Your enemies will be right in your own household!  “If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine.”

It’s hard to read this passage, especially for folks who are family oriented, which is probably most of us.  It seems kind of harsh, doesn’t it?  But, contrary to how we may read this, this passage is not telling us to turn our backs on our families.  You see, there is a little gem almost hidden in the midst of our Gospel lesson today.  Verse 32 “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven”.  Is this something that you want for yourself?  How about your family?  If we read a little further in our passage today in verse 40 we find Jesus saying “Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”  Do we want Jesus welcoming our family?  You bet we do!  This seemingly difficult passage isn’t about abandoning our families.  On the contrary, this passage is about loving our families so much that our priority is not keeping peace in the family by not “rocking the boat”.  Our priority is to live our faith before our families; to be the witnesses that we are called to be to the world before those who are the most important to us. 

Now I know the idea of witnessing carries some pretty bad connotations, and please understand that this isn’t a call to be obnoxious.  We’re not here to knock on our family member’s doors and hand out tracts.  Nor are we called to be judgmental, trying to identify the sin in the lives of our family members and tell them how to correct them.  Sharing our faith should be a gentile thing.  There’s a saying attributed to St. Francis of Assisi.  “Share the Gospel, use words if necessary”.  Our lives are our best witness.  Living a life of love and grace before the world will speak louder than pretty much any words we may think to say.  This thought is illustrated beautifully in one of my favorite quotes from Madeleine l’Engle that I love and repeat often.  “We do not draw people to Christ 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.”

What our passage is telling us today is that, if our families oppose us, love them, and be a faithful witness anyway.  If our families are unkind to us, and we suffer their slings and arrows, love them, and be a faithful witness anyway.  If our families choose to ignore us or to belittle us, love them, and be a faithful witness anyway. Even if our families abandon us, love them, and be a faithful witness anyway.

God loves us with an amazing, extravagant, gracious, all-encompassing love.  If the world fails to understand that, it’s because they don’t see enough of His love reflected in the lives of those who profess to follow Him.  Let us be those faithful witnesses.  Let us be the people who do show that love to the world… and to our families.

What’s Wrong with “What Must I Do”?

Sermon October 13^th, 2024

            It is very possibly the single, most often inaccurately quoted verse of the Bible.  So common is the misquoted version of this verse, that it has become a part of popular culture, and yet I think that most people don’t realize that what the popular version of the verse says is not what the Bible is actually teaching.  How many have heard the phrase, “Money is the root of all evil”?  It IS common, isn’t it?  But that is not what the Bible is teaching. The quotation, in context, from 1^st Timothy 6 is this, “The LOVE of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”  This Bible teaching isn’t about the evils of money, it is about the evils of the LOVE of money.  You see, there is nothing wrong with having money.  There is nothing wrong with having a lot of money. 

The Bible is full of very faithful people who were wealthy.  Genesis 13:2 tells us that “Abram had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and gold.”  Job had 7,000 head of sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen… he was extremely wealthy, and yet God said about him that, there is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”  Two weeks ago, we heard that “Solomon made silver and gold as common in Jerusalem as stones”.  Joseph of Arimathea was wealthy, and in Luke 8 we read about Joanna and Susanna who supported Jesus financially from their own resources.  So, there are plenty of instances of wealthy and faithful people in the Bible. 

Money is most emphatically not the problem here.  The problem occurs when the love of money supersedes the love of God, or the love of others.  And you actually don’t even have to HAVE money for money to be a problem, because you can love having money, you can love acquiring money, and you can even love attempting unsuccessfully to acquire money.   So, like so many other things that we have learned about over the last few months, this also is a teaching about the condition of the heart.  In our story today, Jesus teaches us how this all works.  And it’s an interesting story, so let’s get started.

            Those familiar with this passage call it the story of the rich young ruler, but all Mark tells us is that a man came running up to Jesus and knelt in front of Him.  We find out that he is young because Matthew tells us that, and we find out that he is a ruler because Luke tells us that.  And as far as his being rich is concerned, all three synoptic Gospels tell this story, and all three wait until the very end of the story to tell us that he’s rich.  Anyway, this man knelt before Jesus and said, “Good Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?”  Rather than answer the question, Jesus begins by asking a question of His own.  “Why do you call me good?”  Jesus said, “No one is good except God alone”.  At first glance, this seems like an odd way for Jesus to respond.  I mean, what exactly is He saying?  This verse has been used by some as an argument to deny the deity of Christ, but Jesus is not implying here that HE isn’t good.  Rather, Jesus is setting the stage for the answer that is about to come.  But I can’t answer this question until I answer another one.

            Jesus continues, “You know the commandments: Never murder. Never commit adultery. Never steal. Never give false testimony. Never cheat. Honor your father and mother.”  The man replied, “Teacher, all of these I have done since my youth”.  This man, earnest though he is… is approaching Jesus with the assumption that he can somehow earn his way into heaven.  And so, before Jesus even answered the question, He had made a statement about goodness.  And the reason that He made that statement was to preemptively challenge the man’s assumptions.  If the man hoped to gain entry to heaven by earning it with his personal goodness, well, if only God is good, where does that leave him?  If goodness is a prerequisite for heaven and only God is good, then the man has a problem.  Dr. Mark L Strauss explains, “Jesus nullifies the man’s assertion about his own goodness before he has made it and sets up the conclusion that no one can merit God’s salvation”. [1]  And so, Jesus has set the stage for a very important lesson on God’s grace, and at the same time, a very important lesson on idolatry. 

            Now, following the story, we don’t yet know that the man is wealthy.  And yet, did anyone happen to notice anything unusual about Jesus’ response?  With the Ten Commandments, the first four commandments speak to the relationship of God’s children, with God, and the last six commandments speak to the relationship of God’s children with one another.  Here, Jesus lists only those commandments that relate to our relationships with others.  And in naming the commandments, Jesus moves honoring one’s father and mother from the beginning of the list to the end, but that isn’t the unusual thing that I am looking for.  Did anyone happen to notice that Jesus has replaced “do not covet” with “do not cheat”.  The Greek here is ἀποστερήσῃς (aposterēsēs) which, according to the Bill Mounce Online Greek Dictionary means “To be unjustly withheld, to cheat or defraud.”  Why do we think that Jesus changed the wording of one of the commandments? 

            Well, the man is already rich.  He is probably able to buy almost anything he desires, but as is so often the case with the wealthy, it’s likely that what he really covets… is more.  The Old Testament prophets spoke often and vociferously about economic injustice.  Amos said, “They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals.  They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed.”.  Micah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea all specifically condemn the economic exploitation of the poor, and so it appears that what Jesus is doing here is identifying covetousness as manifesting itself in fraudulent means of acquiring more wealth.  In other words, do not allow that which you covet, to cause you to cheat another, in order to gain it.  One needn’t look far today to see examples of this principle at work in the schemes, influence buying and corporate malfeasance that can sometimes characterize the ultra-wealthy.  This is not something that is new.  In fact, archaeologists have found letters written by ancient merchants warning them not to do business with specific other merchants because they couldn’t be trusted.  The LOVE of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

            Returning to our story, our rich young ruler said, “all these [commandments] I have kept since I was a boy.”  Next, Mark tells us that, “Jesus looked at him and loved him.”  And then, the most unimaginable thing happened.  This man had humbled himself by falling at Jesus’ feet and had asked a question that showed concern for his spiritual condition.  The man was on the right track to be sure, but Jesus knew the condition of the man’s heart and cut straight to the issue.  “One thing you lack,” [Jesus] said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”  And then, Mark tells us that, “At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.”  The NIV uses the word “sad” for the Greek word “στυγνάσας” (stygnasis).  The NRSV uses the word “shocked” but in Mattthew, that same word στυγνάσας is used to describe the dark and threatening sky before a storm.  This is actually a word of despair. 

            The man was actually presented with an opportunity to follow Jesus, personally.  A chance, not only to be gifted a place in God’s kingdom, but also to learn directly from Jesus how to live a life of eternal significance.  Who knows what might have happened in this young man’s life, or the impact he may have made for future generations?  But he walked away in despair because his wealth was more important to him than having a relationship with the Living God.  Interestingly, the man had said that he had followed all of the commandments since he was a boy, but in this one moment, Jesus showed him how he had failed at the very first commandment, “Thou shall have no other Gods before me”. 

            Timothy Keller said, “The rich young ruler had come to the right person: Jesus.  He had asked the right question: How do I inherit eternal life.  He had received the right answer: Honor God and follow Jesus in complete trust like a little child.  Sadly, he did not respond correctly, and he walked away from the only true source of eternal life.  When Jesus called the young man to give up his money, the man started to grieve, because money was for him what the Father was for Jesus.  It was the center of his identity.  To lose his money would have been to lose himself.” [2]

            Jesus, turning to the disciples, said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”  Mark tells us that the disciples were astonished, but then Jesus doubled down on His comment, saying “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

            It was a common Jewish perspective that wealth was a sign of God’s blessing.  Deuteronomy 28 begins with a long section explaining how the faithful will be blessed by God, and Proverbs 10:22 says flat out “The blessing of the Lord brings wealth”, so it stood to reason, at least for the disciples, that those who were wealthy were recipients of God’s blessing.  But at this point, it shouldn’t surprise any of us that Jesus, once again, turned the wisdom of this world upside down. 

            So, let’s take a moment to recap and see what exactly Jesus is teaching here.  “Why did you call me good?” Jesus asked.  “Only God is good”.  There is nothing that we can do to earn our way into heaven… nothing.  The standard that would have to be reached to attain goodness is entirely and completely unreachable.  Our rich young ruler friend couldn’t earn his way with his actions or his wealth.  What was required was for him to place God first, above all else.  Or… to give up his life for the sake of the Gospel.  Sound familiar?  Dr. Mark L. Strauss again, “Salvation comes not through human effort or meritorious work, but rather through the renunciation of self and dependence on God – becoming like a child.” [3]  And so, today’s lesson ties in with what we learned last week about the ways in which one must enter God’s kingdom as a child. 

            But there is just a bit more to our lesson today, and the remaining part of our lesson is steeped in the Good News of the Gospel!  After Jesus’ comment about the camel and the needle, the disciples asked in incredulity “who then can be saved?”  Does anyone remember how Jesus answered?  “With [humans] this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.” 

            My friends, salvation is a gift, freely given by a loving and compassionate God, who knows us better than we know ourselves, and yet delights in us because He alone knows what it is that we are capable of becoming.  God calls us, woos us, and loves us completely and relentlessly.  He will never turn from us or abandon us, and He removes our sin from us as far as the East is from the West.  In exchange, He asks for nothing but our love and devotion.  So, can our rich young ruler friend eventually be saved?  Of course he can, because what is impossible for humans is easy for God.  But remember my question about what our rich young ruler friend might have become?  Though saved, his reward in heaven would be minimal, because what he gave was minimal.  Can the thief on the cross next to Jesus be saved?  Absolutely!  In fact, Jesus personally invited him to paradise.  And we also can stand on this precious promise that what is impossible for us is easy for God. 

            Peter spoke to Jesus and said “See, we have left everything and followed you”.  Jesus’ response to Peter is a response to us as well.  “No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.  But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

            Romans 8:28 tells us, “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”  Those who stand on this promise know that the riches of this life are insignificant compared to the riches that God has in store for those who trust Him.

            Oh! And that part about the first being last and the last being first?  Remember that the one who is greatest in the kingdom of God is the one who is a servant to all.

---

[1] Mark L. Strauss, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, Mark Pg. 440

[2] Timothy Keller, King’s Cross, Pg. 132

[3] Mark L. Strauss, Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, Mark Pg. 448

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)

Sermon June 30, 2024 Don’t Be Afraid, Just Believe

            A few years back, when Covid was still a very scary thing, we eventually ended our quarantine and began venturing out… carefully.  Most folks were wearing masks, and we were still very carefully social distancing, and if we were out and about and someone coughed or sneezed, they got the side-eye from everyone around them, didn’t they?  Everybody moves a few steps away from them, and if it was you that coughed or sneezed, you felt like you had to make an explanation.  “It’s allergies”, or “I was just tested this morning and I’m negative”.  And hopefully you won’t cough a second time because now you are just a pariah.  Not too long after my store re-opened I got bronchitis.  I was tested multiple times during that bout of bronchitis and was negative, I didn’t have Covid but still, I would cough, and my customers would straight up walk out of the store.  I stayed off of the selling floor as much as I could while I was sick, and literally tried to walk out the back door if I felt a cough coming on.  I really felt like an outcast; like people genuinely did not want me around.

            When we talk about the Jewish laws that related to ritual uncleanness, I’m not sure that we understand just how alienating it was to be declared unclean.  But just as much as a person coughing during Covid felt like an outcast, I’m sure that it was much worse for the ritually unclean of first century Israel.  You were completely excluded, not just from the assembly, but from your own friends and family.  If you were unclean, anyone with whom you came into contact was made unclean also.  And so you were really excluded from absolutely everything.  You couldn’t work, you couldn’t socialize, you couldn’t attend worship, your whole life pretty much came to a standstill.  But, for the most part, as bad as it was, it was still, for most folks, just an inconvenience.  A day or two of isolation and then everything was back to normal.  But for some folks, lepers, shepherds, and the woman in our story today, it was a permanent inconvenience; and then some, because the isolation became debilitating.  You couldn’t live with your family, you couldn’t buy anything at the market, you weren’t even allowed at the market.  You couldn’t eat at your own home; you couldn’t sleep at your own home.  This woman who was bleeding would have lost her home, her husband, her children, everything.

            But today’s reading doesn’t start with the woman’s story, so we’re going to have to come back to that.  Our story today actually starts with Jairus.  Jairus was the head of the local synagogue, he was important, he was influential, he was almost certainly wealthy, and he had a 12 year old daughter, Luke tells us that she was his only child, and she was dying.  In the Greek, Jairus referred to his daughter as θυγάτριόν (thy-gat-ri-on) which was a diminutive that would appropriately be translated “my baby girl”.  His daughter wasn’t a baby, she was 12, but I’m sure that every parent here understands exactly what it was that Jairus was saying.  Jairus’s daughter was everything to him.  Now, given the fact that by the time these events took place, the synagogue was, in large part, in opposition to Jesus, Jairus was risking his career and his reputation in coming to Jesus, but the only thing that mattered to him at this point was his “baby girl”. 

            Our story tells us that “when [Jairus] saw Jesus, he fell at his feet.  He pleaded earnestly with him, ‘My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live’.”  Jesus immediately went with him.  I’d like to focus for just a minute on the faith of Jairus.  It took a great deal of courage for Jairus to even come to Jesus.  Perhaps Jairus had heard the priests talking about healings that Jesus had done, or maybe Jairus investigated on his own and heard stories, or maybe he even saw a miracle in person.  But for whatever reason, Jairus believed that Jesus could heal his daughter.  And so he risked the ostracism of his peers, and turned to the One who he believed was his baby girl’s last hope.  As is so often the case, people will turn to God most readily when things seem to be most hopeless. 

            But on the way to Jairus’s house, there is a delay.  An unnamed woman (Though Catholic tradition identifies her as Veronica) has been bleeding for 12 years.  She believes that if she is able, just to touch the hem of Jesus’s garment, she will be healed.  With a large crowd pressing Jesus in from all sides, she makes her way through the crowd, touches the hem of Jesus’s garment, and instantly realizes that she has been healed.  When Jesus feels the power that healed her go out of Him, He asks who touched Him.  The disciples, probably incredulously due to the crowd pressing Him in on all sides, basically said to Jesus “What are you kidding?  A hundred people have probably touched you”.  But Jesus knew that someone had touched Him in order to be healed, and now the woman has another problem.  Remember our discussion about being a Covid pariah?  Well, every single person that she had touched in that crowd as she worked her way towards Jesus has now been made unclean, as has Jesus.  I would imagine that the woman was hoping to touch His garment, be healed, and slip away into the crowd unnoticed, but Jesus wasn’t about to let that happen; and for a very good reason.

The text tells us that she “fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth.”  She told Him the story of her disease, how long she had suffered with it, how much she had lost, and how she believed that she would be healed if she were just to touch the hem of His garment, and I would imagine that she also apologized profusely to all of the people that she had just made unclean, especially Jesus.  At this point, I am sure that she expected Jesus to rebuke her for having made so many people unclean, but what Jesus did next was remarkable.  Jesus first told her that her faith had made her well, but then, Jesus called her “Daughter”, and she is the only person in the entire New Testament who Jesus did call “Daughter”.  If we stop to think about this, this woman had been through a 12 year long, terrible ordeal.  I don’t think that we can even imagine the depth of what her illness had cost her, but her loss wasn’t just physical.  Her marriage, her family, her friendships and relationships, all lost.  Whatever money she may have had she spent on doctors who were unable to heal her, she had to live on the fringes of society, probably scrounging to find food to eat and a suitable place to sleep, and undoubtedly routinely being scolded by people who discovered her illness and who may have been upset because they had been made unclean by her.  In short, she was an outcast in the worst possible way.  When Jesus healed her He didn’t just heal her physically.  In calling her “Daughter” and in telling her to “Go in peace” Jesus was restoring her to the community from which she had been excluded for 12 long years.  Warren Wiersbe commented, “To be made whole meant much more than receiving physical healing.   Jesus had given her spiritual healing as well.”  And Mark L Strauss expands on this thought with, “For Jesus to say “go in peace is not simply [telling her] not to be afraid of what she has done, but to go in the wholeness and completeness of life because [she] has been rescued by the Lord”.

            Just as Jesus is about to return His attention to Jairus, some people came from his house and told him that his daughter had died.  One can only imagine the frustration that Jairus must have felt.  If only this woman had not interrupted Jesus, we may have made it home in time…  But Jesus hears what is said, and He tells Jairus “Don’t be afraid, just believe”.

            When they arrived at Jairus’s house, there was already a crowd of paid mourners, as was the Jewish custom.  The Jewish Mishna, the book of oral traditional laws, says, “Even the poorest in Israel do not hire less than two flute players and one wailing woman”.  Jairus was wealthy, so there must have been quite a crowd of paid mourners.  Jesus asks the crowd “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.”  Knowing full well that the child was indeed dead, the crowd’s mourning turns to derision.  As they laugh at and mock Jesus, he throws them out of the house.  In the Greek, the word used to describe Jesus’s action was ἐκβάλλω (Ekballo) which, according to Thayer’s, means to drive out with a notion of violence.  This is the same word that was used when Jesus threw the money changers out of the Temple.  And there is a whole sermon in this verse alone.  Our most sacred responsibility as believers is to love God AND to love one another at all times and in all ways possible.  In the midst of grief that was only moments old, try to imagine how painful it was for the family to hear all of this laughing and mocking coming from those who were supposedly being paid to support the family in their grief!  As is so often the case, when Jesus becomes angry, it is because someone has done something that is hurtful to others.

  As Jesus unceremoniously clears the house of everyone but the family and Peter, James, and John, Jesus takes the child’s hand and tells her to get up.  The girl immediately rises and begins walking around.  Jesus tells the family to give her something to eat, then He commands them, and the disciples, sternly, not to tell anyone about what happened.  I spoke a few weeks ago about Jesus’s requests that His miracles are kept a secret.  There was a great, though decidedly unauthoritative, quote from the TV show “The Chosen” that explains this.  In the show, after the Jesus character tells the family not to say anything, He says “It is not yet time for the commotion that will result.  None of you need the attention, not all of it will be good.”  Even though this isn’t authoritative, I do believe that it helps us to understand the dynamic of Jesus wanting to keep the news of His miracles quiet.

One of the things that jumps out from our story today is the issue of uncleanness.  Touching the woman who was bleeding made everyone ritually unclean for one day.  Jesus touching a dead body rendered Him unclean for a whole week.  While the ritual cleanliness laws were scrupulously observed by most first century Jews, Jesus would not permit laws born of oral tradition to interfere with His loving care of His children.  The disciples were probably aghast the first time they saw Jesus touch a leper.  In fact, just in the last few weeks we have seen several occasions where Jesus violated a law in the interest of filling a need.  Healing a man’s hand in the synagogue on the Sabbath, allowing His disciples to pluck heads of grain to eat on the Sabbath, and here ignoring the cleanliness rules twice in one day.  Do we think that maybe this should teach us something? 

We can snicker at some of the rules and regulations that the Pharisees demanded that everyone follow.  They may even seem a little silly to us, but the 21^st century church is steeped in tradition and we need to be cognizant of the fact that we also need to be on our guard that we don’t allow our traditions to interfere with the real work of the church, which is to be bearers of the Good News, to love and care for others, and to worship God in spirit and in truth.  (Not necessarily in that order). 

In studying Jesus’s actions, time and time again we see love placed above all else.  Though it may not always be apparent at first glance, the love and concern that Jesus shows to His beloved children is displayed throughout the Gospels in situations exactly like our two examples today.  Why do we think that the first thing Jesus did after raising Jairus’s daughter was to ask the family to give her something to eat?  Her physical needs, and the bleeding woman’s spiritual needs were the first priority to Jesus after He healed them.  And both were actions born of love.

Mark L Strauss had a wonderful observation on today’s reading, “[Another] important theme in this episode is Jesus’ care for those of low social status.  Jesus turns away from Jairus, a religious male of high social status, to meet the needs of a woman whose gender and illness render her of little value by society’s standards.  As both a female and a child, Jairus’s daughter would also be low on the social pecking order.  Through Jesus’ willingness to touch and heal these two women, He challenges both social norms and purity laws and demonstrates the restorative power and inclusivity of the kingdom of God.”

But there is one more lesson for us to look at today.  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. 

Strauss says, “From a Biblical worldview, human death is not a natural part of an endless “cycle of life”.  It is a tragic intrusion into God’s created intention for humanity, an aberration resulting from a fallen creation.”  When Jesus tells us not to be afraid but to have faith, what He is telling us is not that He is going to save us from all of life’s trials and tribulations, what He is telling us is that He is in the process of restoring the world to that which it has always been intended to be.  A world without pain or suffering or death.  A world where we will be able to love God and love one another unencumbered by the sin that has polluted our world and polluted our actions.  In telling us not to be afraid but to Believe, what Jesus is telling us is that, as God’s beloved children, our place in His new heaven and His new earth is assured.  Is there any better news than that?