Wishing to be great?

by The Rev. Shelby Ochs Owen

This sermon is based on Mark 10:35-45.

Ah, the Zebedee brothers!  So close to Jesus.  And yet so far away.  These two, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were among those first called to be Jesus’ disciples.  Looking back to chapter one, we remember these two brothers were quick to leave their father standing in their fishing boat so they could follow Jesus.  They have now been with Jesus quite a while.  And now in the passage we read today we see just how far away from him they are in understanding who he is and how they might follow him, what true discipleship entails.  

By this point the disciples have been told three different times that Jesus will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, they will condemn him to death, they will kill him and after three days he will rise again. And the first thing out of the mouths of the Zebedee boys after Jesus has repeated this scenario of his suffering and death is, “Jesus, we want you to do whatever we ask you to do.”  “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one on your left, in your glory,”  which is to have asked for a place of extreme honor.  Jesus simply says, “You don’t know what you’re asking.  Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”  And then the other disciples are angry with the Zebedee brothers, perhaps because they are embarrassed but more likely they don’t want James and John to get ahead of them in rank or position, they don’t want them to hold more power or have more respect than they.

What is wrong with this picture? Where and how have the disciples failed to understand Jesus’ message? When did their heads and hearts get so misaligned? They certainly seem to have started out with the best intentions, the best of motivations-following Jesus!  Something seemed to be clogging their spiritual arteries.

“Donald Meichenbaum, one of the American Psychologist’s ten most influential psychotherapists, tells of the time that his car was struck by lightning while he was driving.  Once he was safe at home, Meichenbaum began to share his ordeal with his teenage son, expecting at least some degree of sympathy. Instead his son interrupted, ‘Dad, let’s go buy a lottery ticket.  They say the chances of being hit by lightning are like the chances of winning the lottery.’” Do we see a connection between the self-absorption of this young teenager and the self-absorption of James and John? A connection between this teenager’s inability to get past his own individual interests and these disciples whose vision is so limited?   And what about ourselves?  Do we possibly recognize a tiny seed or maybe even an overgrown root system of self-absorption in our own lives at times?

It is difficult to have pure motives all the time.  In fact, it is impossible to have pure motives all the time.  It is part of the human condition to have competing motives in our actions.  We may start out in a particular direction with a good enough, perhaps even Godly, motive, like the Zebedee brothers, and if we are honest and reflective with ourselves, we may see that quickly other motives begin to creep in, motives of greed or self aggrandizement or self security, motives of power or position, status, vanity or ambition.  So how do we move away from self-absorption, move away from acting on selfish motives and move in the direction of the divine?  Jesus’ answer was a reversal from what the disciples thought was the way.  Maybe Jesus’ answer is a reversal from what we, at times, think is the way as well.  Maybe Jesus had more in mind for these disciples of his.  Maybe Jesus has more in mind for us, as well.

Jesus was offering an alternative community, the kingdom of God, where a ruler is not a tyrant but a servant leader, where the goal is to serve and not to be served, where the first must be last.  This alternative community, the kingdom of God would be the vehicle for transformation and the way to wholeness. “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.  For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.”  It is difficult to say exactly when the truth of the message dawned on the disciples.  Maybe at this point in their journey.  Maybe not. They do seem to have struggled with Jesus’ message right up until the end.  But even though they strayed from Jesus when he needed them most, Jesus did not forsake them; Jesus stayed with them even in their weakness. Indeed he gave his life, he gave everything he had for a ransom for all - for the disciples, for the weak, for the strong, for the entire world.  Jesus’ sacrifice of his life was the ultimate paradigm for servant leadership and the ultimate act of love.  And in the end these same disciples gave of themselves; they were able to carry their own crosses and to love through serving others.  Ultimately they were transformed into their higher selves and were part of the unfolding kingdom.

If any of you saw the second presidential debate this week, you may have noticed an incredible verbal struggle at times, for both of the candidates and the moderator, to come out on top.  At several points all three were talking over one another in their efforts to gain control of the debate.  Comedy or tragedy, you can decide.  It would be easy to picture them literally stepping on top of each other in a big heap to see who would come out on top.  It was a fine reminder for us to search for a deeper truth, a reminder to pin our hopes of salvation on something that can bear the weight of our trust and hope, which is God alone.  None of us really know the motivations of our political leaders but as we move closer to the election, I wonder if we can consider the true test of leadership, that of a servant’s heart.  Can we take an honest look at our own motives for why we do the things we do and can we readjust our actions to reflect our call to serve others?

The Zebedee brothers wanted to be great, and they eventually found greatness in their ability to serve others.  The same is true for us.  When we serve others in love we release that self-absorption and a better self emerges. When we serve others in love, the kingdom of God unfolds.  We all have the capacity to serve, every single one of us, whether it is in sharing our material resources, doing physical works, praying or even simply sharing a kind word.  When we serve others we move toward wholeness because when we serve others we simply give what God has given us and we become more of who God intends us to be. So serve with love.   Let God do great things through you!   Amen.

MONEY!

by The Rev. Dr. John D. Lane

This sermon is based on Mark 10:17-22. An audio version of this sermon is available here.

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’” He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Yes, folks, today’s gospel is about money. Coincidentally, this is the time of year when people complain, “I go to church and all they talk about is money.” Jesus talked about money and possessions in something like 38% of his teaching. So preachers, if they are to be true to the gospel, talk a lot about money. Blame Jesus. He can take it.

But aren’t we all reluctant to talk about money? Even to raise the subject publicly seems tacky. A psychoanalyst recalls a patient he had been seeing 1-2 times per week for 3 years. They had talked about virtually everything, laying bare all the joys and problems of the man’s life. The patient opened up about his difficult upbringing, his marriage, his children, his shortcomings as a father and husband, what we would call his sins, the dishonesty that often pervaded his life, and so on. He described in vivid detail aspects of his life that could certainly be called kinky if not outright degrading. The analyst thought all was going well until he asked the man about his money and how he spent it. “That’s none of your business! I didn’t come here to talk about that!”

When we talk about money, people often feel either guilt or shame–guilt that we are well off and don’t do enough good with what we’ve got or shame that we aren’t able to keep up with the Joneses. As Erma Bombeck wrote, “Guilt is the gift that keeps on giving.” A lot of us think that the world is too permissive, that people no longer blush or feel guilty about much of anything. Money may be the one exception. Like the man seeing the psychoanalyst, we don’t want to talk about how we use our money, particularly our pattern of giving, because we feel guilty about it. This morning in this particular instance, as something that goes against all my bleeding heart liberal tendencies, I’d like to endorse guilt. It can motivate us to do better.

He said to [Jesus], “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Jesus finds the man’s biggest vulnerability, the thing that keeps him from becoming a true follower. His wealth gets in the way of his faith, and probably some other things as well. Rather than being a comfort to him, his money is a millstone around his neck. Like the analysis patient, the man had not come to Jesus to talk about money, but it is his vulnerable spot.

A couple of weeks ago, stock broker Roller Shipplett spoke at Rotary. Like Warren Buffett, Roller is wary of diversification as an investment strategy, and counsels his clients to limit their holdings to those companies they can understand and follow carefully. Find something you like and concentrate on it.

About 20 years ago, I took our son Edward to talk with a college admissions director, a year before he would be applying anywhere. She met with him then called me in. She said, “Edward is a fine student, high test scores, high grades, good recommendations from teachers and others. He is involved in many different extra-curricular activities, sports, church choir, pop quiz team, a nicely balanced record. But what I’m looking for is passion. I asked him, ‘Edward, what is your passion, what really grabs you and won’t let go?’ and he couldn’t really answer. My advice: before you begin to apply, find your passion, follow your bliss.”

What the rich man lacked was passion. Jesus was interesting, intriguing, inspiring, but money was the stumbling block keeping him from becoming a devoted disciple.

Around the time Edward was talking to the admissions director, I ran into a clergy friend whose two sons had recently completed college. How did you survive the financial pressure? I asked. “Well, it’s kind of like Alice in Wonderland. It’s completely impossible, but somehow you come out the other side and everything’s okay.” The same is true of increasing your giving.

I’m a strong believer in commitment, commitment to things that are important: God, relationships, civility, generosity. We have received many gifts, and we need to give back.

Over the next few weeks, you will be invited to cottage meetings to discuss your faith and God’s mission in this place. You will also be asked to fill out a pledge card. I implore you to attend the meetings and to fill out a card. And I ask that you give enough that it feels good to be doing it. If you don’t, you may feel guilty. And we then lie to ourselves that we don’t give as much as we can because we don’t like something at the church. They never sing hymns I know. People aren’t friendly. The bathroom is dirty. The clergy don’t seem to know me. I don’t like the preaching–particularly true this Sunday, I suspect.

If you are generous, you won’t have to go through all this bugga-bugga. I exhort you to be generous, to be more generous than you had planned, and for sure to be more generous than last year. A few of us have reasons why that isn’t possible, but I’m speaking to the rest.

I had a friend named Purnell Eggleston. He was an attorney in Roanoke and seemed to hold the office of Stewardship Chair for Life at St. John’s Church. Every October, Purnell would get up in front of the congregation and give an impassioned speech about why everyone at St. John’s should tithe–or start working toward tithing. Purnell was a wonderful man, and it was clear that he was deeply committed to what he was saying. It was his passion. On one such Sunday after church, a friend came up to him and said, “Purnell, you were really great this year! You almost convinced me.”

I’m no Purnell, but I hope I’ve convinced some of you to give generously. The pleasure of generosity is one of life’s hidden secrets. Try it. You’ll like it. And you’ll never go back.

Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

Not Alone

by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Genesis 2:18-24, Psalm 8, Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12, and Mark 10:2-16. 

An audio version of this sermon is available here. 

“It is not good for the man to be alone.”

This verse from the opening of our first reading sets the tone for all our scripture lessons today — in fact, it sets the tone for all our prayers and liturgy and communion as well. Everything we do here today is held together by the central proclamation of God’s will that we human beings should not be alone, God’s will that we be in relationships, all kinds of relationships, relationships in which we can give to each other and receive from each other with freedom and generosity and grace and joy. The message today is that it is not good for us to be alone; or, to put the same truth in a positive way: It is good that we are not alone. 

And that central truth echoes through all our readings. It’s there in the Genesis passage, when God makes a human being, and doesn’t want the human being to be all alone, and so plants a garden full of wonderful trees and plants and flowers and fruits, and puts the human being in the garden to till it and keep and be in a relationship of caretaking with it, and then makes all kinds of animals come out of the ground to manifest different aspects of God’s goodness and to receive names from the human and to be in all kinds of relationships, and then finally turns the human into a man and a woman for the most mysterious and amazing and surprising relationship of all. All that happens because God creates the world for relationships, and in such a world it is good that we are not alone. 

And that central truth is there again in Psalm 8, when the psalmist expresses awe and wonder at the intricacies of God’s creation, the heavens, the work of God’s fingers, the moon and the stars God has set in their courses — and then is pulled up short in sheer amazement that in all this wonder God makes human beings so important, God crowns human beings with honor and glory, God gives to human beings “mastery” — which means not just “control over” but “faithful caretaking of” — domestic animals and wild animals and birds and fish and things so far out of human ken that we don’t even have names for them, so that the whole Universe is one big exaltation of God’s Name. All that happens because God creates the world for relationships, and in such a world it is good that we are alone. 

And that truth is there again in Hebrews, where the author quotes from Psalm 8 to show that Jesus is the one who sums up and exemplifies God’s will for all our good relationships. Jesus is the exact imprint of God’s being, from whom all things come and to whom all things return and in whom all things are sustained by his powerful word. Jesus is the one in whom God’s revelation of love is made perfect, the one who shows us that God’s love is stronger even than death, the one who shares God’s love with us so that we may be sanctified, that we may be blessed and we may be a blessing. All that happens because God creates the world for relationships, and in such a world it is good that we are not alone.

And that truth is there in the Gospel, when Mark shows Jesus debating with Pharisees and welcoming children. The Pharisees challenge Jesus about the lawfulness of divorce, and Jesus says, Yes, in the Torah it is lawful — but just because it's lawful doesn’t mean it’s what God really wants. What God wants, Jesus says, is that marriages, like all other relationships, be tender-hearted, intimate, caring, mutual. Sometimes hardness of heart gets in the way of God’s ideal for relationships, sometimes hardness of heart does lead to divorce, sometimes hardness of heart leads to disciples trying to prevent children from coming to Jesus. But wherever there is hardness of heart, Jesus says, wherever there is acting in un-love, Jesus says, there we need to remember that God creates us for relationships, God makes us for each other, and it is not good for us to harden our hearts and try to go it on our own, but it is good that we are not alone. 

Over and over again in our scriptures today we hear that central message: It is good that we are not alone. And today at Trinity we bear witness to the Good News that we are not alone in two particular ways. 

Today we have our Blessing of the Animals. Every year at the beginning of October, near St Francis Day, we bring pets and four-footed friends and companion animals to the churchyard, and pray in thanksgiving and blessing that God has placed us in such a goodly multi-species company. In a way, every Blessing of the Animals is a re-enactment of today’s Genesis story: we name our animals, and in naming them bless them. The Blessing of the Animals is a reminder that we humans on this earth are not alone, but we are one part of a vast web of life, a delicate dance of relationship between people and animals and plants and bacteria in the soil and chemicals in the air and plankton in the oceans and microscopic creatures living in our own bodies and helping our bodies to function — we humans on this earth are not alone, and we could not live without all these others to sustain us. The Blessing of the Animals is a witness that it is good that we are not alone. 

And today we begin our fall pledge drive, Trinity Gives. October is Stewardship Month, and during October we will have cottage meetings and stewardship moments and shared reflections on how we pledge ourselves to the financial support of God’s mission at Trinity Church. And I think that pledging to the church is another kind of witness to the truth that it is good that we are not alone. Of course giving money to the church has the practical consequence of keeping the lights on and the doors open and the building maintained and the staff paid. But more than that, giving money to the church is a material sign of our relatedness, of how we recognize that we are in this together, how one person’s gifts and talents are complemented and completed by other persons’ gifts and talents, how my shortcomings are made up for by your abilities, how all our hopes and needs and aspirations and dreams are made more whole by being shared with each other. Pledging money to the financial health of the church helps to create this environment where our Christian relationships can thrive. We celebrate that we are not alone when we make music together, and support the program that makes the music in our pledge. We celebrate that we are not alone when we worship together, and support the people who lead the worship in our pledge. We celebrate that we are not alone when we are transported by the beauty of this building, and support the upkeep of this building in our pledge. We celebrate that we are not alone when we send mission trips to Honduras and Haiti, and budget financial grants to aid agencies that operate throughout our area, and engage our Sunday school classes and youth groups in service projects in our community, and support the parish infrastructure that enables those acts of service in our pledge. So much more than just writing out a check, making a pledge of financial support of the church is an outward and visible sign of our spiritual relationships. It is an act of caretaking, an act of stewardship, as much as Adam in the Garden or Jesus with the Children, that shows forth God’s amazing gift to us that it is good that we are not alone.

Stewardship Month, Blessing of the Animals, Genesis, Psalm, Epistle, and Gospel — everything this morning points us to God’s gracious gift that we are not alone. Let us be not-alone in communion here today, and in lives of love and service and relationship every day. Amen. 

God's Great River of Love

by Rev. Shelby Ochs Owen

This sermon is based on James 5:13-20. 

The prayer list in our bulletin here at Trinity is the longest I have seen in any church I have ever been a part of! The list is long enough that we actually divide it up among our three Sunday morning services.  And this is a GOOD problem to have! I think James our epistle writer for today would approve.  You may have noticed that on this list we have names of Trinity members and non-members, some who use only their first names and some who include last names, some are names of folks you know and some you will only know through offering their names to God in prayer; and some names will appear only once while others will remain on this list for years.  There is a great deal of mystery associated with this list and many questions raised.  Why pray? How does prayer work? DOES prayer work?

In our Epistle reading for today, James has concrete ideas of how his audience should respond to all sorts and conditions of people.  “Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of our Lord.”  He goes on to say, “confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.”  When you think about the Episcopal Sunday Eucharist service, we have many elements of these concrete suggestions in it: we sing or say songs of praise, we make prayers of intercession, meaning we pray for individuals who are in need of healing or some other need, and we have a general confession.  So in a very general sense and in some specific ways we follow through with James’ teaching.

At the time James wrote his letter a tradition of the laying on of hands and using oil for healing purposes had been well established.  While in ancient Jewish tradition, oil was used for anointing a king or priest, it was often a remedy for pain.  In the New Testament oil is connected with healing. The practice is associated with Jesus himself as he sent out the 12 disciples to cast out demons and anoint many who were sick as a sign of the reign of God come near.  You probably remember the story of the Good Samaritan where the Samaritan poured oil on the wounded man. Jesus laid hands on the sick. The apostle Paul did the same.  When James teaches his audience to pray and anoint with oil in the name of the Lord, he is saying that they are to do what Jesus did, they are to invoke the name of Jesus to heal; there is power in the name itself, but to use the name is also to do that which Jesus would do and have us do, to love the way Jesus loved. 

We have a healing service here in the chapel each Wednesday morning at 10:30a.m. Anyone is welcome to come.  Usually we have around 6 or 7 people participate in a litany of prayers that we all say together and then we come to the altar for individual prayers.   People ask for prayers for themselves and on behalf of others.  This is a sacred time when we bring people before God, entrusting them to his saving and healing care.  At the end of each person’s prayer, the priest lays his or her hands upon the person’s head and anoints them with oil in the sign of the cross, and says a prayer similar to this: “I lay my hands upon you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, asking him to uphold you this day, that you may know the power of Christ’s unfailing love.”  There is power in invoking Jesus’ name to heal.  The one who prays is not the healer but simply a vehicle or instrument of God’s healing grace.  It is God who heals.  Sometimes the person being prayed for actually feels something change or shift and sometimes no change consciously registers.  But whether we can see or feel the results, this simple act of faith is what we are called to do and trust God to do his work.  How prayer works and exactly what happens when we pray is difficult to say but prayer does draw us closer to the divine.  

When we pray for others, we are bringing them to Jesus, which is one of the most loving things we can do for anyone.  I often hear people say, when they are in the middle of a situation that seems impossible, “I guess all we can do is pray,” as if that is not much of an offering, as if that is a puny and powerless gesture.  What if we rearranged our thinking and chose to believe that praying for someone is to actually put their hand into the hand of God, that praying for someone is to bring them to the feet of Jesus himself so he can touch them? What can be better than that?

Sometimes the need for prayer for so many in our midst can seem overwhelming. Indeed this wonderfully long list of prayers in our bulletin can overwhelm some of us.  No doubt that each of us could and probably many of us do lift up more names as we go through our days.  A wise friend of mine Liz sees praying for others as an opportunity to give people over to God’s unfailing care.  With each person she prays for she sees it as intentionally placing them in the great river of God’s love.  This river is so wide, so deep, so huge, so beautiful, so beyond our imagining and as we give each person to God’s care through prayer they become part of this great river.  The river image can remind us to trust that God is in charge, that God is sovereign and that God is compassionate.  Then we do what we can do-- it may be to send someone a card or to call them or to visit or to take a meal or to take them to the doctor. (And these things are prayer, too…)

When we pray for others and for ourselves we enter the mysterious place where human and divine activity are one and we cannot even see where one ends and the other begins.  When we pray for others and for ourselves we are reminded that we are part of a community where people are in need of God and one another.  When we pray for others and for ourselves we are better able to see the divine image of God in others and in ourselves.  Prayer is the way we nurture the relationship between human life and the divine realm.  When we pray we make ourselves more vulnerable, and therefore more open to God’s healing touch.

 Where James writes that his audience is to call for the elders, the Greek word used is presbyteroi, which is often used by the later church to refer to priests but possibly here means simply those who are older in the faith.  So to put into practice this idea that we should ask others to pray for us, today I invite you to allow yourselves to be prayed for.  Immediately after you receive communion you are welcome to step over to the chapel to the right where I will be to lay hands upon you and anoint you and pray for you in the name of Jesus.  You don’t need to say a thing except your name or the name of someone who you would like for me to pray for.  We will pray and leave the results to God.  We will pray and we will place those for whom we pray in that great river of God’s love, which is not a bad place to be.

Not Being First

by Susan Peyton

This sermon is based on Mark 9:30-37. An audio version of this sermon is available here. 


One of the comforting things about the Gospel stories over the last few weeks, is how human the disciples were.  Jesus continually has to explain things, lead them on their journey, and probably wonder if they would ever get what he was saying.  Jesus did not pick the wisest men he could find, but rather, the ordinary, the common man.  All of us, in fact.  And I’ll bet most of us here have been a part of this story from Mark.  Not literally what he’s trying to teach them, but rather, the human interaction.  Scene one, happens in thousands of Math classrooms every single day of school.  Mrs Gross finishes explaining the problems for calculus homework.  Asks if there are any questions, and no one responds.  Again she says, are you sure there are no questions?  Silence.  On the way out of class, Susan says to Anne, “I have no clue what she was talking about, so I’ll call you tonight, okay?”  And Anne says, “uh oh, I thought you knew what she was talking about.”  There may be some good kids in the class, but no one was wise enough, or self confident enough to say, this makes no sense.  Something very simple, but many times we don’t want to admit we have no clue.  We are too proud, too ashamed, too frustrated to ask the questions.  That’s why I love it when I watch children, who simply say, “what is your name?”.  Just ask.  And just as calculus may be completely foreign to many people, the parables and teachings of Jesus are sometimes ones that take a little longer to peel the layers away.  I also hope the disciples finally learned to ask questions, or at least when they set off on their own journeys, they learned to ask directions.

And then there’s the second part of the story.  Get to Capernaum, Jesus wouldn’t let them stop in Galilee, so they finally get to their destination.  And Jesus looks around at them, and says, “Okay, so what were you arguing about?”  And a few of the guys were kind of hiding behind the others, and scuffling their sandals in the dirt.  “Um, nothing.”  And Jesus sits down and tells the disciples to gather around him.  And he says again, “Okay, it sounded like some of you were arguing on the way here, what was that about?” And he finally hears that each one thought they were the greatest.  My sister Anne and I loved to play with Mom, and we would alternate between saying she loved me best, or loved Anne best.  Even though Mom knew we were just fussing with her, she would always say, I love each of you the same.  It was important for us to know that Mom didn’t play favorites.  Sometimes one of us might need more help, or tried her patience too much, but she made sure we knew her love was the same for each of us.  Likewise, Jesus gets frustrated with the disciples.  They were human after all, and would compare themselves.  You know, they’d start thinking back to what Jesus had said about each one, and who got to sit next to him at dinner.  And then instead of saying who he liked best, Jesus says the first must be last and should wait on everyone else.  Don’t you wonder if they then start arguing about who had carried the heaviest bundle, or helped the most with crowd control?

Doug and I have had several occasions to witness everyone trying to be first in the last few days.  Doug hadn’t been to Wrigley Field, so we went to Chicago to see a few Cubs’ games.  And it started at the airport.  Everyone crowding in to be first, the same at the baseball games.  We all had tickets with our seat numbers.  It isn’t like anyone else will get our seat.  Now I will say that Friday they were giving out free Cubs tshirts, so everyone was scrambling to get into the stadium first.  But they were giving out 20,000 tshirts and their crowd is usually only 25,000, so most people would get a tshirt!

And at work lately, it seems to be a perverse badge of honor to work the most hours.  Really?  I’ve caught myself and realized how destructive this thinking is.  And how simple  minded.  You can’t work hard if you are exhausted.  Instead I can only compare myself…to me.  Am I remembering to look for the insignificant, the lonely, the ones in the corner?  Do I have the sense to welcome those who are harder to love?  And what if sometimes, I’m the one who is harder to love?  James speaks of wisdom, giving it characteristics that resemble other passages about love.  Wisdom to know yourself, wisdom to know to ask the question, not worry what others think of you for revealing that you don’t know.  Wisdom is pure, peaceable and gentle.  And it starts within us.

I’m taking a Dale Carnegie class for work.  I had always presumed that Dale Carnegie classes were all about public speaking, so tried to get out of it.  That didn’t work.  But, I’ve found out two of the other exercises are setting personal goals, and working on stress.  Frankly I can use all the help I can get on how to eliminate stress.  There are sayings from his book How to win friends and influence people.  Two principles really struck me:  ‘Don’t criticize, condemn or complain.’ And ‘fill your mind with thoughts of peace, courage, health and hope.’  Both of them speak to being wise, and caring about everyone else in your community.  Also, avoiding conflicts by following both of those principles.  We also were to focus on one of the principles, so I’ve been trying to stop criticizing, condemning or complaining.  It’s not going so well.  Perhaps if Doug and I spent a week apart, I’d do a little better on the “no criticizing” part.  Why is it so much easier to dwell on the negative instead of the positive?  Do we pray for ourselves or for others?  For our personal gain, or for the good of all?  Do I really need a phone that is smarter than I am?  And why do people scream at TVs, computers and cars or tractor trailers on the interstate?  It’s hard enough to work with people, what do folks think the TV is going to do, answer you back?
  
So this week, I will try not to criticize, condemn or complain.  I’ll look for the people who are the forgotten.  And I’ll try not to be first.  Amen.

Who Do You Say That I Am?

by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Mark 8:27-38. An audio version of this sermon may be found here.

Jesus said to his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”

In this dialogue from our Gospel lesson today, Peter responds to the question of Jesus, and he gives the right answer. But, as he discovers almost immediately, his right answer is not yet the whole answer. To identify Jesus as “Messiah” is not untrue — but in order to get closer to the whole truth, Peter has to learn more about what being the Messiah, the Anointed One of God, really means for Jesus. And Peter, and all the disciples, have to learn more about what being followers of the Messiah will mean for them.

Because in Peter’s day there were floating around several different and competing ideas about what the Messiah would be like. Some people expected the Messiah to be a military commander, who would rally the Jewish people to drive out the Romans and be a King like David. Some people expected the Messiah to be a supernatural figure who would bring judgment, and initiate the great battle between good and evil that would end this world, and would vindicate to the faithful. But Jesus explains that being Messiah means undergoing great suffering, and being rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and being killed, and on the third day being raised. That was a kind of Messiah that Peter had never thought of before, and it took some digesting for him to get used to it.

And if Jesus was a different sort of Messiah than Peter had expected, that made Peter a different sort of disciple than Peter had expected. A follower of a military commander would be a soldier, a fighter in the Jewish People’s Liberation Army. A follower of a supernatural judge would be a holy man, pledged to exceptional personal purity and exact religious ritual. But followers of Jesus, Peter learns, must deny themselves, and take up their cross, and not be ashamed of Jesus and his words, and be willing to lose their life for Jesus’ sake in order to find their life for Jesus’ sake.

Peter has to learn more deeply what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah; and in the process Peter has to learn more deeply what it means for him to be a disciple of the Messiah, too.

And what really fascinates me is that Peter's learning didn’t stop with the scene in today’s Gospel.

After the Resurrection, Jesus appears to Peter and asks him three times, “Do you love me?”, and instructs him three times, “Feed my sheep.” And Peter learns that the Messiah is One who calls us to be filled more and more with God’s eternal love, and that a follower of the Messiah is one who nourishes others with that love.

And even later, in a story told in the Book of Acts, the Ascended Jesus sends Peter a vision that tells him to go eat and drink and live with Gentiles and preach to them, even though Peter has never before in his life broken the kosher laws in order to fraternize with Gentiles in that way. And Peter learns that the Messiah is meant for more than just the Jewish people, and that being a follower of the Messiah means reaching out beyond your own circle of friends, beyond your own clan and kind, in order to share Good News with anyone, absolutely anyone, who has ears to hear.

All through his life and ministry, Peter was challenged to learn and learn again what it means to call Jesus “Messiah” — Peter was challenged to learn and learn again what it means to be a follower of Jesus the Messiah. Jesus said to Peter, “Who do you say that I am?”, and Peter kept discovering more and more and more in his answer.

And that’s the way it is for us, too. Jesus says to us, “Who do you say that I am?” — and Jesus challenges us to discover more and more and more in the way we answer.

When I was a child we had a Sunday School lesson about Jesus the Good Shepherd, and I learned to see Jesus as the one who would always keep me safe when things got scary, who would always go looking for me when I strayed off — and that being a follower of Jesus meant praying to him to show me the right way to go and the right thing to do.

When I was a teenager I got very intrigued with the image of Jesus as the rebel, who was always calling the authorities into question, the one with the long hair and the beard who gathered a commune and was their guru — and that being a follower of Jesus meant meditating on his wisdom and challenging anything that seemed shallow or un-intense or inauthentic. Hey — I was a teenager, and it was the ’70’s…

When I was in seminary I learned to see Jesus as the Great High Priest, who took common bread and wine and made them the holy sacrament of Body and Blood, who took death on the cross and made it the holy sacrament of new life — and that being a follower of Jesus meant taking the common things of our lives and consecrating them as sacraments and signs of God’s holy love.

When I studied liberation theology I learned to see Jesus as the one who stands with the poor and calls us to liberate the oppressed. When I studied ecological theology I learned to see Jesus as the Savior of more than just the human race, but the one who teaches us how to live in community and communion with the biosphere, with the ecosystem, with the whole Community of Creation in God. When I studied missional theology I learned to see Jesus as the one who lives out God's mission of New Creation, and who calls and empowers and sends us to be agents of creation in everything we do.

Jesus has said to me, “Who do you say that I am?” — and all of my answers have been right answers, and none has been the whole answer. The image of Jesus I had as a child wasn’t enough to meet the challenges of being faithful as a teenager. The image of Jesus I had as a teenager wasn’t enough to meet the challenges of being faithful as an adult. The image of Jesus I have now won’t be enough to meet the opportunities of becoming more fully alive in Christ that God yearns to give me in the future. Like Peter in the story, I have to learn and learn again what it means to call Jesus “Messiah,” and to learn and learn again what it means to call myself a follower of Jesus the Messiah.

And that is an adventure that we are all in together. We are all constantly outgrowing our images of Jesus, constantly needing to learn more deeply what kind of Messiah Jesus is, and what kind of disciples we can be. One of the great tasks — one of the great joys — of being in Christian community together, is that we can learn from each other new ways of seeing Jesus, and new ways of living our discipleship in mission and ministry and prayer and love.

And that is a big part of what we are doing here today. As we begin a new program year, as we commission Sunday school teachers and acolytes and choir members for another year of formation and service and worship, as we begin this week a new series of adult Christian formation study groups, as we get back into the full swing of our parish life together — it all centers on how we learn together new ways of seeing Jesus, new depths of understanding what it means to call Jesus Messiah and Lord and Savior, and new dimensions of what it means to call ourselves disciples and followers and missioners of Jesus.

Jesus says to us, “Who do you say that I am?” May we each answer from our heart, and show forth that answer in our lives. Amen.

Train Leaving Either Way

by The Rev. Shelby Ochs Owen

This sermon is based on Mark 7:27-34. An audio version of this sermon is available here. 


Have you, by chance, been listening to any political rhetoric lately? Have you had a moment or two when you said to yourself, “Did that politician actually just say what I think I heard?” There have been many bloopers and blunders in the political arena as of late, many “I can’t believe what he/she just said” moments, coming from both political parties. And there’s absolutely nothing new about that.

Well, some of us find ourselves reacting similarly to Jesus’ statement in today’s Gospel passage from Mark. A Syrophoenician woman, a Greek, comes to Jesus, bows desperately at his feet and begs him to heal her demon-possessed daughter. We might expect Jesus to grant her request without hesitation but instead, Jesus says to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Did he really just say that? Yes, he has just compared this woman to a dog, the “children” referring to the Jews and the “dogs” referring to all others. And just as the shock of Jesus’ highly insulting comment hits the reader, the woman comes right back at him, perhaps just as shockingly, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” The woman is a Gentile, a non-Jew, and many of the Gentiles in the region of Tyre were wealthy at the expense of exploiting the Jewish peasants, the farmers whose food they would have consumed. So there was bound to be a great deal of hostility from the Jews toward the Gentiles here.
Jesus is likely also exhausted, both physically and mentally. Not so long ago, just a chapter or so back, you may recall, having been in the full throes of his ministry, Jesus was trying to get away with his disciples for some rest, some quiet, some time alone ; Mark wrote, “they had no leisure even to eat” and he ended up feeding 5000 plus for dinner! Now Jesus is trying to get away again. “He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there but he could not escape notice.” So it seems that Jesus was eager to have that time alone. Perhaps he felt his cup was empty and needed solitude to be replenished, and here comes someone- a woman, a Gentile, someone who represents those who have oppressed his people and she is asking for something from him. “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Jesus’ mission was primarily to the Jews but it would eventually include the Gentiles. Did Jesus not know this yet? Did he grow in wisdom? Was this woman helping him to more fully understand his mission? “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Did she know something Jesus did not?

The story holds a certain tension that begs the questions of who Jesus was and who he was to become, and what does it mean for Jesus to be fully human and fully divine. In this passage Jesus, a very human Jesus, responds to someone in a very human way, perhaps out of his exhaustion and frustration but then he is taken in by her word, her wit and is indeed moved by her. This Gentile woman who may normally have been in a position of strength humbles herself and presents herself as one of the “least of these” to Jesus. She speaks a word of truth to Jesus, and he is quick to reorient his vision, to be opened to transformation. And being opened to the truth, being opened to transformation is always of the divine movement. Jesus and the woman were willing to be touched by the other, willing to be opened to the truth, willing to be opened to the divine.

Jesus does end up healing this woman’s daughter because it was within his nature to do so. He could not be anything but who he was, which is fully Divine. The encounter between Jesus and the woman reminds us of the irrepressibility of God’s reign, that God’s love knows no boundaries, no limits, no horizon. God cares for and loves all people.

In the movie “About a Boy,” Hugh Grant’s character Will makes an effort to meet women by joining a club for single parents even though he has no children and actually does not even like children. He meets a young boy whose mother is in this group and the boy takes a great liking to Will. Over time, the boy reflects back to Will that he sees right through him, pointing out the various lies and deception that Will has come to live with both outwardly and inwardly. The lovely thing though is that the clever boy still loves Will, even with his faults and outrageous behavior. Over time Will is opened to the truth in himself that the boy is able to point out, and Will actually develops a heart and becomes more fully a human being as he is able to actually love other people. The boy through his love is able to help Will be opened to the truth in himself and therefore opened to love. Will’s world which had been increasingly small in his previously self-serving and self-deceptive life expands into a wider view as truth and love make their way in.

We have choices every day about whether we will be opened to the truth or close ourselves off to it and choose to live in a much smaller, shriveled up existence. We can allow God to expand our worlds or we can let our world become narrow and restricted. As we age we will come across all sorts of situations in life where we have decisions to make. Will we be opened to God’s love and forgiveness for us and for everyone else? And will we be open to God’s call for us to love ourselves and everyone else? Not just those who are easy to love but love all those who come across our mental and physical paths? Each new day do we find ourselves more able to love or do we find ourselves getting more narrow in our view of who is worthy of our love? Jackson Browne wrote a song that includes the line, “There’s a train every day, leaving either way.” Which way is your train going? Is the train heading to a more narrow, fear filled, “me”-based, restrictive world or is your train heading to a more forgiving, more accepting, more loving, God-centered world? Is the direction you are heading all about you or is it about serving others, particularly the “least of these?”

Jesus may have believed his mission was only to the Jews and was willing to expand his understanding, willing to grow in wisdom, willing to be touched by those in his path. Maybe he needed the Syrophoenician woman to shake him up before he was willing and able to be opened to the divine truth that God’s redeeming love was for everyone, Jew and Gentile, woman and man, the oppressed and even for the oppressor. To be opened to the truth of God’s love, this is what God asks, no--- this is what God demands, of us, to expand our horizons of those worthy of our care, worthy of our forgiveness, worthy of our love.

There is a train every day leaving either way…