Thompson's Blog

Divinely Invested
Mark 12:38-44

12:38 As he taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, 39 and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! 40 They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” 41 He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. 42 A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. 43 Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. 44 For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

I don’t have the skills to be an actual accountant, but I pretend to be one in my spare time. I never had the discipline or the aptitude to do the math homework that accountants have to do, and I don’t really like to sit still for long periods of time, but I do have some passion for financial details. I’m a little obsessive about tracking our home income and expenses.

I’ve got banking and credit card apps on my phone and I try to enter all of our receipts on my Quicken software. I don’t like Quicken as much as I liked my old Microsoft money program that went the way of the dinosaurs. I had to make the switch to Quicken about a year ago when I dropped my old laptop and had to get a new one. I was pretty dismayed to learn that my beloved home accounting program wasn’t available anymore, so I’ve been learning to use Quicken, but I miss my old Microsoft money.

I don’t consider myself to have an unhealthy amount of love for money. I love it as much as most people, but I’ve never been obsessed with making a lot of it. I’m not proud of that – I’m just not wired that way. I’m not very entrepreneurial, but as I say, I am a bit of an accounting geek.

And I have this friend who is an accounting disaster. She’s someone I got to know while I was in campus ministry. She was a perpetual student at UALR, and she’s probably the most astute student of literature I’ll ever know, but she is not so good at home economics. She’s about 15 years older than I am. She’s got some significant health problems, and she doesn’t have any known living relatives, but she’s got this group of friends that sort of look after her. Different people do different things for her, and my job is to help her manage her money. It wasn’t easy to get her financial house in order when I first began looking in to her situation, but we got things straightened out, and it’s not so hard anymore because she doesn’t have that much to manage, and she’s able to live within her means.

I helped her get in to Good Shepherd Retirement Center – which is a great place for her and her rent is subsidized. It wasn’t a very hard application for her to fill out because she gets one check per month and she has no assets. She’s got some medical debt, and she pays a little on her debts each month, but they only get what we’ve decided she can afford, and they accept it because she doesn’t have anything they can seize.

It’s actually been very satisfying for me to help her get her business in order, but it’s been an education for me as well. I had no idea there were so many predators out there. She doesn’t have anything, but there are these people who try to get what she has.

It’s happened on several occasions, but just last week she called me and told me they were trying to put her in jail. It really scared me when I heard her say that – she’s had those thoughts before when she needed her medication adjusted, but when I asked what was going on she explained that someone was calling her and telling her that she owed a bunch of money and if she didn’t pay it she was going to have to go to jail. This person said he worked with the police, and if she didn’t pay up she was going to go to jail.

I was happy to hear that someone had actually called her and made this threat. Crooks are easier to deal with than paranoia. I assured her that the police don’t call before they arrest you, and she believed me. She doesn’t answer that person’s call anymore. It’s terrible that someone would take advantage of someone like her, but apparently this has been going on for a long time. This is what Jesus was talking about in this very passage.

The man trying to take advantage of my friend wasn’t parading himself as a man of God, but he was portraying himself as a law enforcement official, and that’s not far from the position of the men that Jesus found to be so detestable. Of course the man who called my friend knew he was a criminal, and this is a bit different from the misguided religious authorities that Jesus was talking about. They somehow considered themselves to be serving God by taking advantage of disadvantaged people. And according to Jesus that’s the lowest form of human behavior.

Of course we all know what bad behavior looks like, and we all know that we should try to avoid behaving like that, but the really compelling part of this morning’s passage is the appreciation Jesus had for the woman who had so little but who gave so much. It is easy to give a lot when we have a lot, but it’s not so easy to give anything when you don’t have much – unless what you have is a profound level of trust in God. There are occasions when people give themselves so thoroughly to God, and this is a good thing for us all to remember, but I think what we experience more often is how perfectly God uses the small things we are able to give.

I was at a preacher’s leadership training event a few years ago when one of the participants told this story about the sermon she turned in to the Board of Ordained Ministry as she was going through the ordination process. One of things candidates for ordination have to do is to turn in a video of a live sermon they had preached, and she said she had put off doing that to the last moment, and she only had one Sunday left to record her sermon. I can’t remember what came up for her that week, but she had some kind of pastoral crisis to deal with, and she said she had very little time to work on her sermon. She didn’t have much a sermon prepared for that Sunday, and she was already intimidated by the thought of having her sermon recorded.

But she proceded to preach her sermon, and she said it was in fact one of the worst sermons she ever preached. She was feeling pretty awful about the whole thing, but as she began to wrap her sermon up there was a man in the congregation who had begun to cry and he made his way up to the front of the church, and when he got there he announced in this tearful voice that he wanted to give his life to Jesus. She had not planted that man in the congregation, but it was caught on tape, and it redeemed her terrible sermon.

I love that story. That’s the kind of story that enables me to be a preacher. I know I need to do my best to present the gospel in a compelling way, but I also know that God can use the most pitiful offering to do remarkable things. Sometimes I forget that it’s not entirely up to me, and that makes this work of preaching an unduly heavy load, but the truth is that my first task is not to get in the way of what the Holy Spirit is already doing in our midst.

The good news is that the work of God doesn’t depend on the quantity of what we have to offer. Jesus was more impressed with the pennies that the poor woman gave than the fortunes that the rich men provided to the treasury of the Temple. We are terribly misguided if we think the work of God depends on what we choose to provide. The only thing that really counts is the amount of love that is behind what we are able to give.

Few of us are able to give of ourselves as totally as this poor widow was willing to do, but God has blessed many of us with those experiences where we are able to see what God can do with the meager offerings we provide. Most of us can only stand in the shadow of this woman who’s gift revealed such perfect trust in the love of God, but I know how good it can feel to be giving in a genuine manner.

It’s all but impossible for any of us to match the total giving that this poor widow demonstrated, but what she primarily revealed is the attitude we are to have when we give to God and to our neighbors. We are to give what we have with love. Giving is not to be a way of putting ourselves on display or of inflating our standing among our peers. Our giving is to be a way of expressing our love for God, and when we do that we are investing ourselves in something bigger than ourselves and we are making ourselves available for the kinds of dividends that bring joy in to our lives and wholeness in to the world.

We shouldn’t be overly impressed by anything we are able to offer, but you can never underestimate God’s ability to use what we provide to do remarkable things. And it’s not our job to try to measure what we get in response to what we give, but I don’t think it’s so bad to try to keep track of ourselves. We need to pay attention to the ways in which we are investing ourselves, and it’s not so bad to pay attention to the ways in which the small things we are able to do are multiplied by God to produce astonishing yields. We’ve probably all got a little bit of an accountant in us, and these are these types of transactions we need to be tracking. Thankfully God’s economy is driven by grace, and we receive so much more than we provide.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Unbounded Life
John 11:32-44

32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus began to weep 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” 38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” 40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” 43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him and let him go.”

I don’t have many memories prior to when I was 7 years old. But we moved from one house to another house when I was 7, so I know that anything that happened in or around that first house happened during those first seven years. I don’t have many memories from that place, but the memories I have are pretty vivid. One of the earliest memories I have of that house took place out in the yard. I remember the day I learned that it takes more than a superman cape to fly. I was an avid Superman fan when I was a child, and my parents had gotten me a superman outfit. I felt pretty empowered by that outfit, and I have a distinct memory of trying to fly over a short hedge. That was the day I learned what it feels like to get the breath knocked out of you.

It’s interesting for me to think about what kind of mind I was working with back in those days. The boundary between reality and imagination wasn’t fully established. I wish I could remember what it feels like to think that a red cape could enable you to fly. And of course even then I’m sure my 5 yr-old mind knew I couldn’t just fly on demand, but the way I remember the situation I was running away from someone and I just got caught up in the moment. The boundary between what is and what if got cloudy, and I launched myself in a prone position over that hedge.

I actually found that superman outfit when I was going through stuff at my parent’s house after my father died, but the cape was missing. I don’t know if I wore it out or if my parents took it away from me out of fear that I might try to use it’s power again. I don’t remember getting caught up in another such moment when I tested my capacity to fly, but that episode reminds me of what a remarkable thing a child’s mind can be.

The story we are looking at this morning is an account that requires an unusual mind to comprehend. It’s a story that challenges our view of reality. It’s unique in a number of ways. The story portrays a very supernatural event. This is not like some other gospel stories where someone who has just died comes back to life. You could argue those were situations where the person might not have fully slipped over to the other side before they were revived. But in this story there’s no doubt that Lazarus was dead. He had been in the tomb for four days and deterioration had begun. There are some unique elements to this story. But it’s also unique in the sense that John is the only gospel writer who recorded this story.

We only read twelve verses of this story, but this story takes up the first 53 verses of this 11th chapter of the Book of John. The story begins with Mary and Martha asking Jesus to come to their house because their brother is sick, it reveals the way in which Jesus was in no hurry to get to their home, it describes the various people that were on hand when Jesus arrived and who all witnessed the moment Lazarus stepped out of the tomb. The whole story is a very thorough description of what went on before, during, and after this remarkable event.

The story reads a lot like a scene from a play or something. John tells this story as if he was standing right next to all of these different people in different places. The details that he reveals are remarkable. It’s a compelling story, and while it’s possible to take it at face value, I don’t think it unreasonable for us to wonder about it and to ponder what exactly John was wanting us to understand.

Is this the actual story of a real man who died and was raised from the dead after his body had been deteriorating for four days? Is this simply the account of a moment when Jesus exercised the most extraordinary deed of power that a man has ever displayed?

And if it is, I have to wonder why none of the other gospel writers chose to mention this significant moment in the life of Jesus Christ. Our memories are funny things. I can hardly remember yesterday, but I do remember the day I tried to fly over that hedge fifty-something years ago. We remember significant things, and it seems like such a public portrayal of power would have been one of the things every gospel writer would have documented if this had happened as John reported it. This is a significant story, but I’m inclined to think this story reveals something other than one remarkable thing that happened on the way to Jerusalem. I believe John told this story the way he did to portray the miraculous possibility for new life that Jesus can offer to anyone on any day.

In order for us to see what John was revealing I think it’s helpful for us to know where this gospel writer was coming from. John wrote his account of Jesus about seventy years after Jesus had been crucified. John was connected to a community of Jews who had experienced new life through the resurrected Christ, and he wanted to share his understanding of the way in which he and his community had found their way to God by looking to Jesus. John was a true believer among other true believers, and they were surrounded by people who had no use for what they believed.

Scholars believe the writer of the Book of John was a Jewish follower of Jesus, but it was unacceptable within the dominant Jewish community of their day to believe in Jesus, and life for these Jewish Jesus followers was torturous. They weren’t just frowned upon – they had been evicted from the Jewish community. And they had lost so much of what they cherished: their families, their homes, their friends, their traditions, and their livelihoods – some had even lost their lives. But they had found something as well. Jesus had enabled those who followed him to find their way in to true life, and they were overjoyed to have this new life that he had given them. What Jesus provided for them was the ability to see beyond the surface of life. Their allegiance to Christ put them at terrible odds with people who refused to believe, and it cost them dearly, but it was worth it! It was as if they had been released from the tomb.

I’m reminded of the way in which a child can put on a uniform and see the world in an entirely different way. I’m not saying that following Christ is an exercise in childish imagination, but I do believe that when we put on the cloak of Christ we come to see the world in an entirely different way. The enemies of Christ weren’t people who didn’t believe in God, but their unwavering allegiance to the way their faith was structured caused them to become unwelcome to the new message that Christ brought them. They not only refused to see and hear what Jesus was teaching they hated him for what he did and they hated anyone who joined him. They were blinded by their animosity. Raising a man from the dead wasn’t good enough for these people – it only increased their resolve to put him to death.

I don’t believe the most essential message of this text is the remarkable power of Jesus to raise an actual dead man from the tomb. I believe what John is wanting us to understand is how powerful it is for us when we reject the religiously dead practices of our day and embrace the fresh spirit of the living Christ. This is what I think it means to put on the cloak of Christ. And true life is the gift that comes to us when we become unbound from the rags of dead traditions.

Now I don’t think the enemy of Christ is what you might call traditional religion. I don’t think our problem is that we worship God in much the same way they worshiped God a few decades ago. I’m not one who believes that the answer to church decline is to simply incorporate new technology in to worship. Contemporary worship is not the solution to dead religion.

The problem we face is much more subtle than the problem that the earliest Christians faced. Their problem was that they couldn’t even mention the name of Jesus without getting thrown out of the building. Our problem is that we speak of Jesus as if we already know what he wants us to be doing and that we’ve already got it covered. I’m not saying we aren’t doing the work of Christ in some significant ways, but I am saying that we are probably playing it pretty safe.

I can testify that a superman cape will not provide you with the kind of lift you need to fly over a short hedge and to land softly. But what would it mean for us if we were to put on that cloak of Christ and to test it’s ability to guide us in to abundant life. I think this story we have in our scripture lesson today is about the two possibilities that religious practice can provide for us. We can become overly enamoured with our own faith traditions and by doing so we can become dangerously blind to the work of God to redeem the world through Jesus Christ. Or, it can enable us to hear the voice of Christ calling us out of the tomb. It can release us from petty bindings and free us for abundant life.

That’s what I’m wanting. And that’s what I think Jesus Christ can provide for us. It’s not easy to see what’s binding us, but I believe it’s easy to get caught up in deadly agendas. I believe it takes work for us to break out of unhealthy religious understandings, and I believe Jesus is calling us to do that very thing.

With prayer, with courage, and with diligent desire to put on the true cloak of Christ I believe we can join the saints that have gone before us and soar in some remarkable ways. I believe Jesus Christ does have the power to release us from deathly patterns of existence, but Jesus never made anyone listen to what he was saying. It takes willingness on our part, and it will take consistent effort, but I believe there is such a thing as abundant life and I hope to stay in touch with it. I hope you share my desire for unbounded life, and I hope that together we really will learn to fly over the short hedges of life and in to the kingdom of God.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Living Large
Mark 10:35-45

35 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” 36 And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” 37 And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” 38 But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” 39 They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; 40 but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” 41 When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 42 So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

I have had the good fortune of not having to deal with an overabundance of success in my life. This probably isn’t what you are hoping to hear from the pastor of a church that’s currently experiencing some significant financial strain, but it’s true. I’m not a professional failure – in fact I feel pretty good about what I’ve been able to do in the various places to which I’ve been appointed, but I’ve never performed in a manner that has been overly impressive to our institutional leaders.

I say I’m fortunate in that way because I’ve never really had to struggle with an over-inflated sense of self-importance. I’ve never been lead to believe that I was God’s gift to the United Methodist Church and had to deal with the egotistical demons that come with that territory. It could still happen. The Newport Miracle may take place in 2016, and if it does I’m sure I’ll become overly impressed with the role I’ve played and it may be that I’ll have to learn how to deal with some new types of sin.

It’s not that I don’t have any demons to wrestle with, but I just don’t have that variety of demons that comes with massive adoration.You might say I understand the sin of envy more than the sin of pride, but I’m sure I could go there, and I’m willing to deal with a new set of sins. Arrogance isn’t my default fault, but if our attendance were to double I’m sure my ego would readjust to a higher sense of self-importance. Like James and John, I’d be wanting to have that conversation with Jesus about where I might best fit in the kingdom of God.

So that’s why I think of myself as being blessed with moderate success in ministry and in life. Now I’ve had a taste of lime-light, and I’ve had some nice photo-opportunities with some A-list people, but I’ve never had trouble keeping myself in perspective. Maybe God has been watching out for me in that way, but in all honestly, I think I can take most of the credit for that myself.

For example, a few years ago Sharla and I went to Boston for a vacation, and before we went I was telling my cousin and her husband about our trip, and they said, oh, you’ve got to go to a Red Sox game and have some clam-chowder at Fenway Park. This wasn’t on our list of things to do, but they said they knew someone with the organization and that they could get us some tickets. It sounded great to me, and I talked Sharla in to going, so they lined it up for us.

My cousin told us to go to the VIP window to pick up our tickets, which felt a little out of place for us, but we did, and sure enough there were tickets waiting for us. We went where we were told, and in order to get to our seats we went through this nice club room, and we emerged into the stadium in this elevated and canopied area that was directly behind home plate. After finding our seats we actually went back down in to the more public area of the ball-park to get something to eat and drink because we didn’t want to pay the prices of the club menu.

When we got back to our seats we noticed that our area was serviced by a waiter, and before long he came and asked if we wanted anything. We didn’t want to be too cheap so we ordered something to drink and some clam chowder, and when I gave him my credit card he said he didn’t need it because the seats we were in were covered by Larry Lucchino.

We didn’t know who Larry Lucchino was, but we were grateful, and soon our neighbor asked us how we knew Larry. We explained how we got the tickets and that we had no idea who Larry Lucchino was, and he explained to us that Larry Lucchino was the CEO and General Manager of the team. And that sort of changed everything for us. I was already having a good time, but I began to have an even better time. I probably shouldn’t own up to this, but I have clear memory that the price of a beer was $8.50, which was a very moderating factor for me, but that suddenly went away.

By the middle of the game I had become great friends with many of the people sitting around us, and I’m sure our conversation was filled with impressive details of our lives in Arkansas. I was living large. The waiter came out at the beginning of the 8th inning and announced that the restaurant and bar was closing, but he leaned down and said that didn’t apply to us, so I took full advantage of that by buying a final beer for a couple of people sitting around us.

Soon after that Larry Lucchino, himself, came out and sat down with us. I felt like I was in the presence of baseball royalty, but that didn’t keep me from talking. I began talking to him like we were old friends at a reunion until all of a sudden a batter hit a hot foul ball that went straight from the bat to Larry Lucchino’s forehead.

I don’t know if he could have dodged or stopped the ball if he had been paying attention to the game – I never saw the ball until it hit him in the head. But I instantly felt like I had been a huge distraction to him. I certainly hadn’t helped protect him from the ball. A couple of guys suddenly appeared and ushered him away for medical attention, and I felt horrible about the situation. I was haunted by the thought of how much better it would have been if I had reached over and saved the CEO and General Manager of the Boston Red Sox from that blow instead of contributing to the circumstances that lead to his injury.

I left Fenway Park with a terrible sense of regret. I had an opportunity to be the hero, and I felt like the goat. He had provided us with this tremendous sense of hospitality, and I had caused him to go home with what the news reported as a detached retina. I texted my cousin about what had happened and they thought I was joking until they had the story confirmed by Larry Lucchino’s wife.

That really was an unfortunate turn of events, and I hate that he got hurt in the way he did. I still wish I could have been the hero, but what I also know is that it’s not the great successes we have in life that put us in touch with the source of true life.

I’m currently reading a book called Falling Upward, by a man named Richard Rohr. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan monk, and he is in high demand as a speaker and teacher. He has what many consider to be a profound understanding of spiritual truth, and in particular of how Jesus taught us to live in relationship with God. I’m oversimplifying his message when I say this, but Richard Rohr believes that its our failures and our various forms of inner restlessness that motivate us to seek understanding, and often it’s our outward successes that cause us to remain distracted from that which is deeply real.

Rohr believes that God hides in the depths, and that we will never find true comfort and satisfaction if we remain on the surface of life. In this book I’m reading he talks a lot about the first half of our lives as compared to the second half of our lives. On some level that breaks down in to the early part of our lives and the later years of our lives, but I don’t think he would describe these two halves of our lives as being strictly chronological. He knows we all have to spend a good amount of our time seeking to establish and maintain our physical lives, but that it’s often when our outward lives are disrupted that we begin to seek an inner life, and that it’s the inner life that provides us with the greatest satisfaction.

James and John weren’t yet full of understand of how God’s kingdom is structured when they began asking Jesus for places of honor in his kingdom. They were thinking that God’s kingdom is like every other kingdom on earth, where there is clear ranking about who is most important and who is of the least consequence, but that isn’t how it works in the kingdom of God.

In the kingdom of God, it’s the people who are the least regarded on earth that have the easiest access to the deepest truth. Now nobody has automatic access. People can remain ignorant of the way God operates in our lives regardless of their station in life, but Jesus didn’t want us to be confused about who is greatest in the Kingdom of God. He didn’t want us to think that God rewards us in the same way that the world rewards us.

This isn’t easy territory to navigate. The desire to be successful in life is not a bad thing. We all enjoy a higher quality of life because there are people who are driven to do things well, but success in life has a cost, and failure has it’s rewards.

Jesus wants us to live large in a truly grand way. He wants us to find our way in to the kingdom of God and to experience the true richness of life. James and John weren’t wrong to want to abide in important places in the kingdom of God – but they didn’t know what they were asking.

I hope to be a success as the pastor of this church. I hope we experience the kind of growth we need that will enable us to pay all of our bills and to expand our work in the community. But I hope we will never be so impressed with what we do that we forget to go where God abides – which is not in the numbers or in the headlines – it’s in the depths. God’s kingdom isn’t like any other kingdom. It doesn’t shine on the surface, but it provides us with nourishment from the deep, and it’s only by the grace of of God that we find it.

It’s hard not to seek success in conventional ways, but its often when we stumble that we connect with that which is most real, most lasting, and most satisfying. The Kingdom of God is beautiful in that way.
Thanks be to God. Amen.

Upward Mobility
Mark 10:17-27

10:17 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?” 18 Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. 19 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.'” 20 He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” 21 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.” 22 When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. 23 Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24 And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 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.” 26 They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” 27 Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.” 28 Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” 29 Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, 30 who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age–houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions–and in the age to come eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

I can’t help but wonder what John D. Rockefeller thought about this passage of scripture. And I’m sure he did think about this passage of scripture because he was a faithful member of the Erie Street Baptist Mission Church in Cleveland, OH. I know this because I recently listened to an extensive biography about this man who died as the richest man in America in 1937.

I really didn’t know anything about John D. Rockefeller until I listened to that book about him, and it was interesting. Although, I really don’t think I would have enjoyed his company that much. He was much too austere for my taste. He wasn’t unfriendly, but he wasn’t particularly engaging, he never touched alcohol of any kind, he went to bed early, he worked long hours, and he didn’t socialize very much. He did appreciate bicycles and in his retirement he developed an obsession with golf, so he and I do have some common ground. And as I say, he was a devout Christian. He taught Sunday School throughout his life, and I wish I could have asked him how he understood this particular passage of scripture.

I’m not a rich man in comparison to John D. Rockefeller, but in comparison to my friend who lives at the Union Rescue Mission in Little Rock and who works at the nearby Kroger so he can eat and make payments on his six-figure student loan debt – I am a rich man. And this passage of scripture sort of grabs my attention in an uncomfortable way. I’m not sure how my financial portfolio would compare with the unnamed rich man in this passage of scripture, but I think I probably have more in common with him than I do with the desperate masses of people who came to Jesus hoping to be healed or fed.

Many – possibly most of the people who were drawn to Jesus were in some kind of desperate need. So many of them were sick or starving or ostracized, and they were looking to him to relieve their immediate needs, but this wasn’t the case with this so-called rich man. This man had the luxury to contemplate the meaning of life, and he came to Jesus with interest in obtaining eternal life.

I think it’s important to note that he didn’t approach Jesus with fear for his eternal soul. He wasn’t running scared for his soul, but he was looking for something more. He asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, and I think he expected Jesus to give him some advice on how he might tweak his spiritual discipline a small amount in order to put him on the road to excellence, but that isn’t what Jesus did. What Jesus told him was far more transformational than he expected. Jesus told the man to go sell everything he had and to come back to join him.

Needless to say, this isn’t what the man expected to hear, and he couldn’t bring himself to do what Jesus suggested – which is unfortunate because we’re told that Jesus loved this man. Jesus didn’t tell him to go sell all of his stuff in hope of getting rid of the man – I’m thinking Jesus was probably happy to be approached by someone who wasn’t needing him to do something for them. Jesus saw great potential in this man, but it turns out this man was more concerned with maintaining his retirement plan on earth than pursuing eternal life in the kingdom of God.

This man was offered the opportunity to hang out with the living son of God, and he chose to hang on to his stuff. It was a sad exchange, but I don’t think anyone is surprised by his decision. I can imagine myself doing the same thing. It feels good to have financial security, and when you have financial security you don’t want to let go of it.

Prosperity is such a hard thing to deal with. I think the only thing harder to navigate is poverty. I heard a song with some great lyrics the other day. I googled the lyrics and discovered that the singer/songwriter is a guy named Chris Janson. I think his song addresses our troubled relationship with money in a beautiful way. He sings: Money can’t buy me happiness, but it can buy me a boat – and a truck to pull it…

I think it’s accurate to say that neither money nor poverty buys happiness. I also think most of us prefer to deal with the challenges of affluence over the challenges of poverty, but we don’t need to underestimate the power of financial security to limit the expansion of our souls. Jesus said: It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God. And this isn’t easy for me to hear.

One of the interesting things about John D. Rockefeller was that he had more anxiety about what to do with his money than he had when he was engaged in the process of building the Standard Oil Company, which provided him with all of his money. John D. Rockefeller had some powerful detractors and critics as he went about the business of creating a monopoly on the oil business at the turn of the 20th Century, but he was never really troubled by what people had to say about him. He was a true believer in what he set out to do, which was to create a monopoly that would create a standard price for oil and oil products, and while he had some slight misgivings on some of the things he had to do to create the company he basically believed he was doing the right thing for himself and for society.

He didn’t believe he was being disobedient to God in his work, but once he made so much money he had all of these people asking him for help, and he found that to be maddening. He felt like God expected him to use his money for the right things and not to invest it in the wrong things, and he was pretty tormented by all of the requests he got.

John D. Rockefeller found a nice alternative to selling everything he had and giving it to the poor – he set up a foundation. And that was sort of a novel thing to do. The Rockefeller Foundation wasn’t the first philanthropic foundation to be established in the country, but it was one of the first, and it was operated on a scale and in a manner that was unprecedented. I’m not saying this is the avenue to eternal life, but I think John D. Rockefeller could testify to the peril of wealth. His money actually created quite a burden for him.

I don’t believe this passage of scripture is an admonition for us all to liquidate our holdings and to give our assets to the poor. Now if you have had a personal invitation from Jesus to do that, and you know where he told you to report I encourage you to do as he said and to go where he said to go. But one of the last things we need is another desperately poor person in our community. This isn’t a universal instruction for us all to embrace poverty, but it is a universal warning about the threat of wealth. Affluence can easily become a huge spiritual obstacle. Jesus probably wasn’t exaggerating when he said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to go to heaven, but that’s not the only thing he said.

He also said that what’s impossible for people is possible for God. Once again I’m reminded that we don’t earn or finagle our way in to the kingdom of God. There are many obstacles to the development of our spiritual lives, and if we were on our own I think we would spend our lives banging against one or the other, but God continually provides us with opportunities for spiritual renewal. This rich man may have failed to seize the opportunity Jesus offered him that day, but that might well have been the beginning of his transformation.

Jesus said the first will be last and the last first. This rich young man didn’t go home feeling like he was first in line anymore, and that’s not all bad. It’s the experience of spiritual bankruptcy that often puts us on the path to spiritual transformation.

Yearning for more isn’t all bad. Maybe you think you only need enough money to buy a boat and a truck to pull it, but chances are, God will help you realize that there’s an even better place to be than on a lake with a yeti cooler. Jesus came to teach us to set our sights on the highest possible experience of life. Having some desire for upward mobility is a good thing – as long as you aren’t content to obtain mere financial security. We have a high calling. We are called to abide with Jesus in the Kingdom of God, and we should do all that we can to get there. Our invitation and our challenge is to tap in to the real richness of life. We all have our obstacles, but we all have opportunities as well, and by the grace of God we’ll take them.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

It’s Not About Divorce
Mark 10:2-16

10:2 Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 3 He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” 4 They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” 5 But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. 6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7 ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” 10 Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11 He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; 12 and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” 13 People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. 14 But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. 15 Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” 16 And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

In an opposite way, this passage reminds me of that old saying about money. That whenever someone says over and over that it’s not about the money – it’s about the money. In the case of our scripture reading this morning, the Pharisees are asking Jesus about divorce, and Jesus has a lot to say about divorce, but I really don’t think this passage is about divorce.

If I thought the point of this passage was to heap condemnation on people who have suffered through the pain of divorce I wouldn’t touch it. If I thought Jesus’ intention was ramp up pressure on people to stay married at all cost I would skip over these verses. If I thought the enterprise of Christian living was simply a matter of following a very precise set of rules I would find another occupation. If I thought divorce disqualified people from full membership in the body of Christ I would have no hope for the church, but that’s not how I see it.

I doubt if there is any single issue I could bring up that would conjure up as much pain as this issue of divorce, and I hope you’ll forgive me for even mentioning the word. I know this passage seems to heap a new load of judgement onto that pain, but I don’t believe this was Jesus’ intent. He was issueing some strong judgement with his words, but the wrongness he was addressing was not really about divorce. Jesus spoke some words that seem hard to hear, but he was responding to a tricky question, and he had a shrewd reply.

The Pharisees weren’t questioning Jesus in hope of obtaining answers to questions that were actually troubling them. They weren’t really interested in knowing what he actually thought was legal or right – they were just interested in getting Jesus to say something that would be self incriminating to a significant group of people.

Apparently divorce was the subject of much debate in those days, and there were two main schools of thought on the issue. Both sides agreed that the Mosaic law allowed for a man to divorce his wife. There’s this passage in Deuteronomy that said a man could divorce his wife if he found something objectional about her. But there was quite a disagreement as to what justified a divorce. One group thought that a man could only divorce his wife if she engaged in an adulterous affair with another man, while the other group was willing to consider an objectionable dinner to be grounds for divorce.

The Pharisees were trying to set Jesus up as being at odds with one group or the other by having him interpret the intention of Moses’ law, but Jesus didn’t take the bait. He comes across as sounding like a member of the Taliban, but he wasn’t advocating intolerance. They asked him what was legal, and he gave them a legalistic answer. He sounds terribly hard-hearted, but I believe his true intention was to reveal the unrighteousness of the Pharisees.

What he did was to show that it was possible to be legally pure and spiritually wrong. In a sense what he said was that it wasn’t good enough to follow the letter of the law. The Pharisees based their righteousness on their ablility to abide by all the laws, and Jesus pointed out that it was possible to follow the law without being faithful to God.

By answering the way he did he exposed the unrighteousness of those who thought they were the most righteous. Jesus raised the bar impossibly high for those who sought to become worthy of God’s favor. Jesus basically said that if you are counting on being perfectly righteous there can’t be any compromise of God’s will – which is even harder than the Pharisees made it out to be. Jesus considered some of the laws in the Torah to be corrupt. He basically said Moses was pressured into making some adjustments to the law.

Jesus had bad news for those who based their relationship with God on their ability to abide by all the rules. The Pharisees lived very disciplined lives, and Jesus didn’t fault them for that, but he didn’t allow them to think they knew what it took to become perfectly righteous.

The Pharisees asked Jesus what was lawful and he told them that God’s law is even more demanding than Moses had portrayed it. If you want to be perfectly righteous there’s no room for divorce or any other form of behavior that is less than perfect. And I’m pretty sure that the One who can see into our hearts can recognize the ways in which we all engage in some form of idolatry, thievery, murder, adultery, coveting, Sabbath breaking, lying, blaspheming, or parental dishonoring. And that’s just the top ten ways to offend God.

Jesus has bad news for anyone who thinks they can meet all of God’s expectations. It’s not just the divorcees who are disqualified from perfect righteous – it’s hopeless for any of us who have ever harbored a desire for anything we don’t already have or a malicious thought about anyone.

The good news is that we don’t have to be perfectly righteous in order to be perfectly loved by God. Jesus wasn’t willing to compromise the holiness of the marriage covenant, but he didn’t lift up a perfectly righteous person as the example of someone who would enter into the kingdom of God. Jesus didn’t say that the person who has never done anything wrong is the person who is the most capable of receiving the kingdom of God. Jesus lifted up a child and said: Whoever doesn’t receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.

And it wasn’t their innocence that he was recognizing. Children weren’t revered in those days in the way we revere children. In the rank of human value in that society, men were the most important, women were second class citizens, and children were on their way to becoming of value. I’m sure they loved their children, but they were the most invisible members of the community. They didn’t earn their keep. They weren’t in charge of anything. They hadn’t achieved anything. They were powerless, and the disciples didn’t consider them to be worthy of Jesus’ attention. They were preventing them from being brought to Jesus to be blessed, and it was in response to the way they were being disregarded that Jesus chose to highlight them as having the right qualification for entry in to the kingdom of God.

I think it was their lack of religious qualification that Jesus found so endearing about children, and that serves to undermine the way we often categorize who is most qualified for God’s favor.

Jesus clearly saw broken relationships as being contradictory to God’s desire for humanity, but that is not to say that people who divorce and remarry are unredeemable sinners. In fact people who fall short of maintaining the covenant of marriage generally undergo a pretty devastating experience. To experience divorce is to experience public failure, and I think it becomes a little harder for divorced people to engage in the kind of self-righteousness that Jesus found so offensive. I think it’s often easier for people who’s failures are put on display to develop the kind of attitude that Jesus found to be redeeming.

It’s so funny to think about who it was that recognized Jesus as the embodiment of God, and who it was that couldn’t stand him. The officially righteous people were totally put off by Jesus, while the losers and the lost couldn’t get enough of him.

Now I’m not saying that you need to ditch your spouse and develop a drug addiction if you want to get close to Jesus. I’m not suggesting that the best way to get to Jesus is through a personal train wreck. Living without regard for God or anyone else is detrimental to the developement of spiritual life, but I believe an inflated sense of righteousness is the greatest obstacle to an authentic relationship with God.

It isn’t our ability to live perfect lives that makes us candidates for life in the kingdom of God. The way we live our lives does make a difference, but it’s often our mistakes that enable us to become better candidates for living in relationship with God. Jesus didn’t point to the Pharisees as the one’s we need to emulate – he pointed to the children.

It’s not about being qualified. It’s about seeking to live in relationship with the one who loves us regardless of what we’ve done. Thanks be to God for those powerful experiences that enable us to see ourselves for who we are, and that put us in touch with the redeeming grace of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Eliminating the Obstacles to Life
Mark 9:38-52

9:38 John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” 39 But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. 40 Whoever is not against us is for us. 41 For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward. 42 “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. 43 If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. 45 And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. 47 And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, 48 where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched. 49 “For everyone will be salted with fire. 50 Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

We called my grandfather on my father’s side, Tom. His name was actually Thompson, but Thompson really only makes sense as a last name, which is what his mother’s last name was, so they called him Tom. My father’s name was also Thompson, but he went by Buddy. I got my mother’s maiden name for my middle name, which was Williams, so I’m not Thompson Bernard Murray, III. If that had been the case they might have called me Trey or Bernie or something. But my parents decided to call me by this whole awkward mouthful of a first name – Thompson. I’m not really complaining. It’s a name that has served me pretty well. It’s not easy to say, so people aren’t that quick to call on me, and that’s ok. It’s probably good not to get selected for things from people who just met you.

Names are powerful things. It’s not easy to understand how our names affect our lives, but I’m sure we are all conscious of how our names are used. There are people and issues to which we are willing to lend our names and other things that we don’t wish to be associated with our names. Just this last week I heard from a young man I knew as a student at UALR who is in Haiti trying to get his Visa renewed. I don’t really know how these things work, but he had been living in West Virginia for the last few years working on a Ph.D, and he had to go to an American Embassy in a nearby country to get recertified to be here.

He grew up in a west African nation that is predominantly Muslim, and I’m sure he is being heavily scrutinized. I knew him to be a person who came to this country in hope of getting away from the backward religious practices of his family, and I was happy to give him a good recommendation. Marcus had converted to Christianity, but that’s not the only reason I was willing to give my name to his cause. I knew him well enough to trust his intentions, and I want to be associated with people who have good intentions regardless of their faith.

You might say I gave him my name. I wouldn’t do that for anyone, but I was happy to give it to him. I don’t have a particularly powerful name, but I gave him what I have.

We see in today’s scripture a situation where some of Jesus’ disciples were unhappy with the way somebody was using Jesus’ name. They weren’t upset about what the man was doing with the name of Jesus, but they considered him to be an unauthorized user of his name. The disciples don’t come across very well in this passage. They seem to be grasping for a technicality to disqualify a rival of some kind.

I don’t know if they were thinking this was an intellectual property violation or someone who was operating without franchise. But Jesus considered it to be a petty complaint. Jesus was more disturbed by the thinking of his disciples than by the behavior of the unknown man who was using his name to do battle with demons. Jesus knew that there are times when bold action needs to be taken to eliminate a problem, but the disciples were focused on the wrong problem.

The problem wasn’t that an unknown person was using Jesus’ name, the problem was that the disciples were wanting to be in control of who used his powerful name. This raises all sorts of issues about who is authorized to do what in the name of Jesus. The recent visit of the Pope brings a lot of attention to what you might call religious franchise issues. And we United Methodists have our own issues in regard to ordination. The issue of pastoral authority is and has always been a large issue for the church. The fact that this issue came up among the first twelve disciples was a bad omen for the Christian movement. I think the good news is that what Jesus taught is so resilient it has withstood every obstacle it has created for itself.

But Jesus warned us to be careful in regard to how we treat one another. If we aren’t careful we can use his name improperly. Jesus had no tolerance for anyone who used his name in such a way that it would cause a little one to stumble. We don’t really know if Jesus was speaking of a young person or a person who was new to the faith – it really doesn’t matter. Jesus had no tolerance for the misuse of sacred power, and he had some very clear advice for people who were inclined to use good gifts for bad purposes. I quote: It would be better for you if a great millstone were tied around your neck and you were thrown in to the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble it would be better to cut it off and to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell …

This is some curious advice. He doesn’t say it would be better for the rest of us if bad people were eliminated either altogether or in part, but it would be better for that very person. This is some powerful advice. He is telling us that there isn’t anything as threatening to us as this possibility of using our good gifts in bad ways. He says it would be better for us to be dead than to live in a way that causes others to stumble. Some might argue that Jesus engaged in some hyperbole to make a point, but I’m inclined to believe that this is what he thought. Preserving our lives was not a big issue for Jesus. Preserving our souls was.

I can’t read this passage of scripture without thinking of my grandfather, Tom. I spent a lot of time around my grandfather when I was growing up. He liked to hunt and fish and he made sure I had those kinds of opportunities. He went to Sunday School and church every Sunday, and he would leave at 12 noon if the service was over or not. Tom didn’t suffer from ambivalence. He did what he thought he needed to do, and that was it. I don’t think my mother found that to be a particularly endearing quality, but that was who he was.

Tom had a small stroke when he was in his late seventies, and it left the little finger on his right hand sort of curled up. It wasn’t a huge impairment, but it got in the way when he went to shake hands with someone. He liked to shake hands with people, and it really bothered him that his little finger would be in the way of that. So he went to the clinic one afternoon and he asked his friend, Dr. Beaton, if he would cut his little finger off just beyond that first knuckle.

Dr. Beaton wouldn’t do it that day in his clinic, but he made him an appointment at the hospital and he actually had that procedure done not long after that.

Now this isn’t exactly what Jesus was talking about. This decision to have the end of his finger cut-off wasn’t a bold act of soul-preservation. It was more along the lines of cosmetic surgery, but I do appreciate my grandfather’s sense of decisiveness. I don’t think my grandfather thought of himself as someone who always did the right thing, but he didn’t hesitate to do what he thought he needed to do to get what he wanted to get.

I think Jesus wanted us to have that kind of clarity, and the thing he wanted us to be clear about is who it is we are seeking to serve. Are we using our knowledge and our trust in the name of Jesus Christ to do battle with the demonic forces that continue to abide in our world, or are we lingering around and getting in the way of the little ones who have heard God’s call and are seeking to find their way in to the kingdom of God.

The threat of eternal damnation in hell isn’t as visceral for most of us as it may have once been. I’m inclined to think the decline in church attendance is directly related to the decline of fear of hell. I can’t site a study to that effect, and I’m not really bemoaning this development. I don’t think we were so well served by that particular version of the faith, but I do believe we need some urgency to get it right.

And when I say we need some urgency to get it right I’m saying that we need deep desire to get life right. I don’t think we should live in fear of spending eternity in hell. But we should have some fear of spending years on earth living in ways that dulls our souls and encourages others to do the same. I think I should have some fear of investing my life in a manner that uses up a lot of resources and produces no fruit.

Tom created a little fish pond when I was in elementary school. He stocked it with some catfish and bream and bass. We would go out there and fish every now and then and sometimes we would catch something he called a Ricefield Slick. It was sort of a bream-looking fish, but he didn’t like those slicks, and he would tell me to throw them on the bank. I didn’t quite understand at the time the difference between fish that grew to be good fish to eat and fish that just consumed resources and produced offspring without ever becoming edible. Throwing those fish out of the water always seemed a little harsh to me, but I would do as I was told, and I sort of get it now.

And it makes me hope God doesn’t view me as a Ricefield Slick.

These lives that we’ve been given are precious gifts. We’ve been given access to some power and some abilities that can be utilized in some beautiful ways. Jesus ended up speaking of us as salt. Few people love salt as much as I do, but we all know that a little salt can make all the difference in the way something tastes. I’m the kind of person who thinks a little salt can go on anything and a lot of salt can go on other things, so I really resonate to this challenge to become as valuable as salt.

I don’t know how salt can lose it’s saltiness, but given how inexpensive good salt is I don’t think there could anything of less value than un-salty salt.

Jesus is calling us to be good salt – to be the people who enhance the flavor of life. Jesus wants us to use his powerful name well. He wants us to use the power of his name to do the work of sharing God’s redeeming love. We need to get out of the way of the little ones who are finding their way to the path of true life and we must get in the way of those evil forces that bring misery and destroy lives.

We are called to become truly alive. May we have the wisdom to cut-off or let go of whatever it is that is keeping us in the grip of death. There are large decisions for us to make and how we use our lives makes a world of difference. We can be as valuable as salt for the banquet or as disposable as a Ricefield Slick in a catfish pond.

I don’t mean to scare anyone, but I think Jesus wanted us to have some fear of squandering the opportunity we all have to resist death and to find life. Thanks be to God for this seemingly irresistible invitation. May our love for God overpower the love we have for unessential things and enable us to live with true abundance.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Ultimate Living
Mark 8:27-38

8:27 Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” 28 And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” 29 He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” 30 And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. 31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” 34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

I’m not getting much help from Jesus this morning when it comes to getting more people to show up for our worship service. He’s not providing me with a very good marketing tool. He’s not exactly telling us how to make America great again! The essence of this morning’s teaching from Jesus is to give up everything dear to you and make yourself available to die a miserable death. He says such suffering leads to true life, but it’s hard to hear that – the suffering part makes it hard to hear the resurrection part. Maybe I’m being a little negative. A more positive preacher probably wouldn’t summarize the teaching this harshly. But I don’t think this is far from what he had to say.

Peter didn’t like what he heard Jesus saying, and he tried to get Jesus to reconsider what he was about to do, and Jesus told Peter that he was speaking for Satan. The truth is that these are hard words for us to hear from the man we aspire to follow. In some ways it would have been nice for us if Peter and the rest of the disciples had been able to do as Jesus said and kept all of this a secret. We could go on thinking that the most important thing in life is to destroy our enemies and to accumulate personal wealth. Of course, we often forget what Jesus taught and we don’t seek to gain life by following Jesus down that difficult path of self-giving love.

The teaching of Jesus Christ is quite counter to the way we are conditioned by society to seek true life. I know that’s true, but it’s hard not to want to gain life in the usual way – to be rich and powerful. This is an oversimplification of the situation. I’m not sure exactly know how to live in our world without any regard for money or how self-giving we are called to be. It’s not simple, but I don’t think this is an excuse to not recognize the radically different way Jesus called for us to play this game of life.

Life isn’t a game, but games reflect life in some ways, and I think games can help us understand some things about life. I like games. There are some games I like to play and some games I like to watch. I wouldn’t say I’m the kind of person who likes to win at any cost – others might say that about me, but in my mind I play for fun. Of course it’s generally more fun to win, so yes, I play as hard as I can, but I don’t generally try to destroy my opponents. OK – there might be some opponents in some games that put me in touch with desire to destroy the opposition, but I try not to go that place. In all honesty I’m probably incredibly competitive and I like to win, but I mainly like to play. I love a good game.

Games are funny things. They can take your mind in different directions. Games can heighten your self-consciousness, but they can also allow you to totally lose your sense of self. They can carry you away so to speak. Playing a game can generate an extreme form of selfishness, but almost simultaneously a good game can cause you to forget about yourself.

Getting totally caught up in a game doesn’t happen to me easily. I generally stay in that place where my ego is straining to win and fearing the agony of defeat. I’m usually highly conscious of how I’m doing and where I stand. Sometimes my participation in a game concludes with my ego being stroked in a nice way, but most of the time games provide me with good lessons on the value of humility. Of course I can take great pride in the extent of my humility. I’m really good at humility. I’ve had a lot of experience with humility.

But there is one game that always put me in that nice mindset of playing really hard and getting lost in the game. The game is called Ultimate Frisbee, and it’s a beautiful game. I’m sure some of you know how to play the game, but for those of you who had the misfortune of growing up prior to the arrival of the Frisbee or are otherwise unfamiliar with the game I’ll give you a brief description of how you play the game.

You have two teams – with seven being the optimum number of players on each side, and you play on a field that’s a little shorter and narrower than a football field. Like all good games you can adapt it to whatever size field you’ve got and play with as many people as you have on hand, but seven on a side on about a seventy yard field is the ultimate arrangement so to speak. To start the game, each team lines up on their goal line and one team throws the Frisbee to the other team. That team takes the Frisbee and tries to advance down the field by throwing it to each other. You can’t run with it. You run to catch it, but as soon as you catch it you’ve got to stop. If you drop it or it gets intercepted the play immediately goes in the other direction and you score by catching the Frisbee behind the other team’s goal line.

I love this game, but I can’t really play it any more. My 57 year-old back has become really fragile, and I would end up in rehab at Lindley’s if I got caught up in a game, but given the opportunity it would be hard for me not to forget about the consequences and play like my life depended on it.

I’m not saying I was ever a great Ultimate player, but it probably is my best game. I spent many hours on the lawn in front of Old Main playing this game, and there was a time when people liked having me on their team – not that I was keeping score or anything.

I loved playing this game. And it had a spirit about it that I thoroughly enjoyed. Players were to call their own fouls – even in tournaments, and according to the rules, players were simply to resolve their disputes by remembering that it is a joy to play the game. It wasn’t hard for me to remember this rule, and I was a good player because I did remember what we were out to do – which was to play hard and to play fair.

It’s funny how the beauty of this game and my aptitude for playing it continues to grow with the years since I last played it, but in all honesty it was a game that helped me understand what it means to lose yourself. When you love playing something you launch yourself out there without fully considering all the consequences.

I’m not wanting to trivialize the words of Jesus by comparing them to a game, but I do think a good game can help us understand what Jesus was inviting us to do. On some level, Jesus reminds me of a coach who was needing his players to understand a whole new game plan. The disciples knew they were going to Jerusalem to disrupt the godless enterprise that ruled the people of Israel, but Peter couldn’t believe how Jesus said he was going to do it.

When the disciples told Jesus what glorious things people were saying about him I think they thought he would have been pleased to know that he was being compared to all the key people in Israel’s history. And Peter probably thought Jesus would have been impressed to hear him say that he considered him to be the messiah, but if he was, he didn’t react in the manner that Peter expected.

Jesus may have been pleased to hear Peter call him the messiah, but Jesus wasn’t going to play the role of messiah in the manner that everyone expected. Jesus wasn’t playing the game of life in the conventional manner, and he told his disciples that they needed to play it differently as well if they wanted to join him in victory.

You’re probably tired of me playing around with this game metaphor, but if I quit playing around with the metaphor I’ll have to get specific about the way this metaphor translates into actual life. Losing life in order to gain life wasn’t just a metaphor for Jesus. For him, that was the actual consequence of resisting the unholy alliance of the religious and secular leaders who were in control of that small corner of the world at the time.

People knew that the collaboration between Judaism and the Roman government was a godless alliance, so it was no surprise that Jesus would go to Jerusalem to confront it, but Peter didn’t expect Jesus to resist it by offering his life. This must have felt a lot like defeat to Peter because he didn’t yet understand the power of resurrection – in fact Peter doesn’t even seem to hear Jesus say he would be resurrected three days after his death.

Resurrection isn’t an easy concept for any of us and this may have a lot to do with the fact that in order to embrace resurrection we have to accept death, and we don’t want to make room for death in our lives – not even in a metaphorical sense. We are much more inclined to pursue strategies that will bring us more of what we think of as the good life now.

We don’t want to die miserable deaths (even metaphorically) at the hand of our adversaries, but Jesus knew that losing life for the right thing is better than grabbing life in the wrong way. Jesus trusted God to establish the final score, and this is a hard thing for us to accept.

I’m not sure what ramifications this story has on each of us as individuals and our church as a whole. As I already indicated, we live in an incredibly complex society, and I don’t know how you navigate it without any resources or personal survival skills, but what I hear Jesus saying is that we need to let go of the normal rules if we want abundant life.

Peter didn’t think Jesus knew what he was doing, and your neighbors may think the same about you if you truly fall in line behind Jesus, but Jesus did know what he was doing. Peter didn’t really get it at first and your neighbors probably won’t either. Following Jesus is a scandalous way to live because it may well cause you to look like a loser, but things like that don’t matter to people who follow Jesus.

It’s a strange game that we have been invited to play. There’s only one rule in this game, and that rule is to live with love in your heart for God and your neighbor. To follow Jesus is not to be bound by the expectations of our society but to live a life that’s guided by the Holy Spirit and there’s just no telling where that will take you.

Jesus didn’t want anyone to be surprised by the difficulty of this game, but there’s no limit to the abundance of life that we can experience if we will allow ourselves to get caught up in this ultimate endeavor.

It’s the ultimate challenge. It offers the ultimate reward.
Thanks be to God for this ultimate invitation.
Amen.

The Turbulent Journey to Peace
Mark 7:24-37

If I were to give you a thumbnail sketch of my faith journey there would be a significant dividing line between the way I viewed God before I met Lewis Chesser and after I met Lewis. Just as world history is divided between BC and AD, I guess I can divide my theological life in to BL & AL — Before Lewis and After Lewis. Sometimes I want to blame him for the way he altered the course of my life, but on most days I’m grateful to Lewis for the role he played in saving my soul.

Now that’s a powerful phrase I’m throwing out this morning. You might think I’m sounding a little like a Southern Baptist by claiming that my soul has been saved. This might be encouraging to some of you and frightening to others, but the truth is I’m not claiming salvation in the way it’s often portrayed. I would say the traditional understanding of salvation is to simply believe your soul is going to heaven instead of hell when you die, and that’s probably how I understood things before I encountered Lewis, but I don’t see it that way any more.

You might say I’m optimistic about what happens to all of us when we die. There may well be some reckoning involved in the process. Coming to Jesus in the afterlife will probably be more pleasant for some people than for others – I’m not privy to those details, but I’ve come to believe that salvation is something we can experience on this side of death. I fully trust that our relationship with God extends beyond death, but I believe that God can bring us some of that peace that passeth all understanding while we’re still hiking around on earth, and that’s what I think of as salvation.

I think what we see in these two stories this morning are portrayals of salvation experiences. Both of these stories illustrate the way in which Jesus brought some peace in to the lives of some people who were feeling pretty torn up. There are some strange twists to these stories – as is often the case when the spirit of God comes in to the house, but normal rules don’t apply when God is involved. These stories aren’t particularly pretty, but they end well, and I think that can always be the case when we are open to the various ways in which God works with us to bring salvation and peace in to our lives.

I wasn’t healed as quickly as was the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman or the man from the region of Tyre, but I feel like I experienced a similar level of life transformation through my involvement with the Wesley Foundation while I attended the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Lewis Chesser was the director of that campus ministry program while I was there, and as I say, it was a life-altering experience. I wasn’t a bad person prior to meeting Lewis. In fact you might say I was a more well-behaved person before I got involved in that community. Fear of spending eternity in hell can keep you out of some trouble, but I was having a hard time being good enough to keep my perceived notion God happy.

I transferred from Hendrix to the U of A as a sophomore. I tell people that I don’t think I had a problem with Hendrix – I had a problem being a freshman in college. I just didn’t like my freshman year, and I needed to do something different, so I went to the U of A in hope of becoming a Mechanical Engineer. I didn’t really know what Mechanical Engineers did, but I was interested in solar technology, and someone said I should go in to Mechanical Engineering, so that’s what I set off to do.

The Education Director, Emily Cockrill, at First United Methodist Church in Wynne knew Lewis from Annual Conference business, and she said I should go by the Wesley Foundation when I got to Fayetteville, and I did. I had an immediate connection with Lewis because he commuted on a bicycle, and I was a committed bicycle rider in those days. I also got to know some of the people who came around there. There was a handful of people who lived in an old house on the Wesley Foundation property – it was called the Pierce House, but other people often dropped by there, and it was an interesting assortment of people. It’s not easy to describe what that community was like, but it might best be described as a sociological refugee camp. There were some starving artists & musicians, some recovering addicts, some practicing addicts, some ping-pong enthusiasts, some leftover hippies, some poets, some people who were restarting their lives after failed marriages or careers, and a few lost children like myself.

But all of these people were never assembled at the same time. The program at the Wesley Foundation didn’t involve large numbers of people. It was sort of a struggling institution on some level, but I can testify that it was a place that touched a good number of people in a really good way. It probably put-off a good number of people as well, but I can tell you it provided me with the soul-soothing medicine that I needed.

I dropped by several times during that first fall semester, and I would show up on Sunday mornings for the worship service. I probably met the criteria for being clinically depressed, but this was 1977 and you didn’t really talk about such things. I don’t think my brain chemistry was off – I just didn’t know what I was going to do with my life, and I felt alienated from life. I had navigated high school well, but I felt lost when I went to college. I felt like God and everyone else was waiting for me to get with the program, and I didn’t know what program to get with. I was carrying around some deep despair.

But I would show up at the Wesley Foundation for tea and conversation pretty regularly and Lewis asked me if I would show up on a Saturday to help bring down a dead tree that was on the property. The Wesley Foundation property was on the corner of Leverett and Maple St. (right across Leverett from the Kappa house for those of you who are familiar with the campus), and this tree was leaning toward Maple St., but Lewis thought that we could put a rope high up in the tree and a bunch of us could pull it in to an open area away from the street as he made the cut.

I think there were probably about 6 of us that showed up to do the pulling that morning. Lewis had the chainsaw. He started cutting and as he got close to what he considered the critical point he gave us the signal to start pulling. We started pulling and Lewis kept cutting until the saw got in a bind and quit. We pulled as hard as we could for as long as we could, but
nothing happened.

The saw was stuck in the tree. The tree was still standing, and we were just standing there with a limp rope in our hands. But we didn’t stand there long before we heard the distinct crack of a tree that was about to fall down. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard such a crack, but it’s a powerful sound. It’s not that loud – at first. It’s a small sound, but it has a lot of meaning to it. It means a few tons of wood is about to hit the ground.

This is one of those moments that has stuck with me for a long time. Somebody had the good sense to rush out and stop the one car that was coming down Maple. My soon-to-become best friend, David, said something that you can’t repeat in church, and I just stood there and watched as this huge tree came down and spilled into the road. It was only the top limbs that hit the road. It wouldn’t have killed an unsuspecting driver, but insurance companies and lawyers would have been involved.

That was the event that sealed my relationship with the Wesley Foundation and with Lewis. It might have driven other people away, but I don’t think I had ever been so involved in such a failed operation, and it was somehow compelling to me.

The transformation of my understanding of God didn’t happen quickly and my despair didn’t evaporate immediately, but through the conversation, the preaching, and the response to the preaching that went on around there my understanding of God dramatically shifted. I came to see God as less of a judge and more as a compassionate healer. I came to let go of my sense of trying to be deserving of God’s love and to accept that God loves us regardless of who we are and what’s wrong with us.

I think that’s the essence of these stories that Mark tells us about this tenacious Syrophoenician woman and the disabled man from Tyre. The way Jesus responds to this woman sort of makes you wonder what Jesus was thinking, and in all honesty I don’t know why Jesus said what he did. It seems like he could have been nicer about the whole thing, but what it ends up highlighting is not just the universal nature of God’s love – it reveals the way in which it’s often our brokenness that moves us to seek the source of salvation. This woman was not put-off by the harsh words of Jesus because she knew what she needed and she was relentless in her effort. There are no boundaries to the love of God, but that doesn’t mean we have easy access to it. Some tenacity may be required.

I don’t take credit for my own salvation. I really don’t even give Lewis credit for the healing of my despair and the salvation of my soul, but he did some good pointing to where I could find it. Lewis sort of went out of his way to not portray himself as the one to be revered. He didn’t intend this, but by dropping that tree in the opposite direction of where he wanted it to go Lewis revealed himself to be significantly less than perfect, and somehow that spoke to me in a good way.

I like to think that the subtle but profound crack that I heard just before that tree came down was also the sound of my own unfortunate image of God starting to crack and come down. I know I don’t have a perfect understanding of God, but through the ministry of the Wesley Foundation I was led to believe that I’m perfectly understood and loved anyway. And that’s what salvation looks like to me. I’m not free from despair, but it’s more of an occasional distraction than my orientation point. I no longer trust myself to get everything right, but I feel like I can continue to grow in my relationship with the One who does.

I didn’t become a Mechanical Engineer while I was in Fayetteville, but I did become a more devoted follower of Jesus Christ, and now you might say I’m employed by him. I might not be one of his best salespeople. I never was that good at sales, but I love Jesus. He can spit, touch my tongue and stick his fingers in my ears anytime. I feel that he provided me with new life, I’m grateful to have it, and I want more of it.

I believe that regardless of where we are or what’s wrong with us there is this opportunity for new life. It was hard for some people to see that God was fully present in the life of Jesus Christ, but others couldn’t be persuaded otherwise – even by Jesus himself. Jesus isn’t necessarily who we think he is, but he can provide us with what we need. I thank God for that, and I thank God for the new possibilities that exist for us all as we grow in our knowledge and understanding of this man who fully embodied the love of God. Thanks be to God for Jesus Christ and for the way in which he continues to live among us! Amen.

When Cleanliness Becomes Godlessness
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

7:1 Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, 2 they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. 3 (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; 4 and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) 5 So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” 6 He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; 7 in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ 8 You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” 14 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: 15 there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” 21 For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, 22 adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

This morning’s passage presents a situation in which I’m almost inclined to side with the Pharisees. It’s always a good idea to wash your hands before you eat! But what we have here isn’t a debate about the value of proper hygiene. What we have here is a disagreement about proper religious protocol – about what it is that offends or pleases God.

I’ve recently preached from the 6th Chapter of John, which is an exhaustive examination of Jesus as the bread of life. You might say John portrays Jesus as something good to ingest, and today we’re presented with another teaching that involves eating, but it’s a converse message. Mark reveals the way in which Jesus exposed what it is that really makes us sick.

Jesus was confronted by the leaders of the Jewish community because his disciples weren’t going by the rules that they revered. The Pharisees defined faithfulness to God as adherence to certain religious rules and practices, and you were only considered to be ritually clean if you observed all of the religious ordinances. Being ritually clean was a big thing within that community, because people who were considered to be unclean or defiled weren’t allowed to go into the Temple or the village synagogues.

And being kept out of these institutions was a much bigger thing than being told you can’t step into the sanctuary. Being told to stay home from church would probably feel like a reward to some people, but being kept out of the Temple or the synagogue was a large problem for members of the Jewish community. It was to be told they were banned from the center of their community.

I think the equivalent experience for us would be to be banned from Wal-Mart. I’m not saying you should be showing up at Wal-Mart on a regular basis, but my guess is that most of us do. It’s sort of become the place you go to get what you need, and that’s the role the Temple played in Jerusalem and the synagogues played in Jewish villages. We don’t actually have an equivalent place because we don’t live in a community that is as homogenous as these Jewish villages were, but I think we can all imagine what it would feel like to be banned from an essential place, and such banning was a real possibility for people who were living in the days of Jesus.

Being officially defiled was an undesirable state to be in, but it wasn’t a permanent condition. At least it didn’t have to be. There were rituals for unclean people to follow in order to be readmitted into the community, and that was probably what the Pharisees thought Jesus’ disciples needed to undergo, but Jesus challenged the system. He explained that it was the thinking of the Pharisees that needed to undergo some transformation.

This was a dangerous thing to do. It was dangerous because the Pharisees saw themselves as the protectors of righteousness. They didn’t think their belief system needed to be corrected — they just thought it needed to be properly observed.

And of course we all know that people in powerful positions don’t like to have their faults exposed. Actually I don’t guess any of us like to have our faults exposed, but people in powerful positions often have the means to keep their bad ideas in place.

This controversy over hand-washing reminds me of the story of Ignaz Semmelweiss, who revealed the value of hand-washing to the physicians at General Hospital in Vienna, Austria in 1846. It’s an interesting and a tragic story. There were two maternity wards in this hospital. One was staffed by doctors and medical students, and the other one was staffed by midwives. And the staggering fact was that the death-rate for the mothers was five times higher in the doctors ward than it was in the midwives ward. Dr. Semmelweiss was troubled by this discrepancy, and he embarked upon an investigation to discover the cause.

He had a number of incorrect theories, but he finally determined that one of the factors that was different on the doctor’s side was that many of the doctors were engaged in research on cadavers in the basement of the hospital and they would often go from their laboratories to the delivery rooms without proper washing. This was prior to our understanding of microbiology, but he developed a new protocol for hand-washing prior to entering the delivery room, and this changed everything.

Unfortunately there were doctors on the staff who refused to believe that they were responsible for the high death rate, and instead of accepting his theory as the truth they fired him. Dr. Semmelweiss was a better scientist than he was a politician, and instead of lobbying effectively for change he totally alienated himself from the medical community, and they actually had him committed to an insane asylum, and that is where he died from an untreated infection in a wound that was inflicted upon him upon arrival.

It wasn’t long after that that the truth of his finding was pretty much universally accepted, but it happened slower than it should have because of the arrogance of the established leaders of that community.

Systems don’t like to get challenged. Some systems are worse than others, but no system reacts well to change. You might say the nature of a system is to maintain the way it works, and any kind of change is perceived as threat. I think we probably all appreciate the resistance we have to change, and I think it’s probably good for all of us to remember the first message Jesus ever delivered – the first thing he called for people to do after he had been baptized by John the Baptist was to repent and believe in the good news! And to repent is to change your mind.

I certainly don’t like to think that Jesus discouraged hand-washing, nor do I think Jesus was uniformly disrespectful of his elders, but Jesus clearly challenged the conventional wisdom of his day about what was pleasing to God and what it took to become defiled.

I guess one of the things I like about being a United Methodist is that we aren’t too quick to define who is in and who is out of God’s favor, although I’m sure we all harbor our own ideas about that. Some would say that’s the problem with the United Methodist Church – that we don’t define what it takes to be saved as clearly as we aught, but I’m inclined to think that it’s never good to define that which is essentially mysterious in too narrow of a manner. It’s easy to become overly attached to what we believe and to become less attached to the One in whom we believe.

There was a time in my life when I was much clearer about what God expected of me and everyone else. There was a period of time in my life when I thought I knew all the rules, and I pretty much followed them. I wasn’t a very happy person, but I was pretty clear about what it meant to be Christian. That was before I began to read what Jesus actually said and did. And that was before I actually came to know some people who I previously considered to be out of bounds.

Some people within the broad community of Christianity are real clear about what God expects. For some people there is no doubt about what’s acceptable and what’s not, and who’s going to heaven and who’s not. Some would say this clearly indicates where I’ll be going when I die, and that it doesn’t bode well for my eternal soul, but that’s just not how I see it.

I do believe there is a high level of expectation for those of us who aspire to follow Jesus, and the expectation is for us to be guided by the rule of love. I don’t think there’s anything harder to do than to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Jesus said it’s a narrow path that leads to eternal life, and I believe that, but it isn’t a well-marked path. It’s a path we have to discover through a life of diligent prayer, of intentional study, and through acts of self-giving love for other people.

Jesus challenged the well-established religious beliefs and protocols of his day, and I have no doubt he does the same for us. It’s not that we shouldn’t have firm convictions about things, but we should never allow our convictions to override our love for the truth, and I believe it’s our relationship with the living Christ that will continue to lead us in to the truth.

I mentioned in my first sermon here that I took a long bicycle trip in May of 2014. I went from Little Rock to the coast of South Carolina, and I basically followed a route that was determined by Google maps. I’m going to do a slide show of my trip after church one Sunday in October, which I’m pretty excited to do because it was a such a good experience for me. I’ll tell you all about it then, but the route I followed was largely defined by the bicycle route option on Google maps. It steered me wrong a few times by suggesting I follow roads that weren’t paved, but for the most part it put me on non-interstate highways and bicycle friendly roads.

One really interesting routing experience I had was when I was in a rural area of northern Alabama. It was sort of a rainy morning and I had my phone tucked away in my handlebar bag, and I was listening to navigation instructions on my earphones. The google-map-woman’s voice came on and told me to take a right which steered me in to the gravel parking lot of this sports complex outside of a small town and then it told me to head east 300 feet. I thought the Google-map-woman had lost her mind because it directed me to go toward a tree lined ditch, but I went over there, and I saw there was a small bridge going over that ditch. That still seemed crazy, but I went over it and what I discovered on the other side of the ditch was a paved bicycle trail that went all the way in to Atlanta. It was an old railroad bed that they had turned in to a bicycle trail and it was the best bicycling environment you could ask for.

This wasn’t a particularly Christian experience, but I think it illustrates what it looks like to follow Christ. When we follow Christ I believe we are lead to step in to places that are outside of the boundaries that we normally construct for what life is supposed to look like and where faith is supposed to take us. I don’t think it’s unusual for us to find ourselves in places that seem far from where we think we should be – only to discover that there’s a small bridge that leads us to a place that opens up a whole new way of living.

It’s not always so clear and so gratifying, but I don’t think it’s unusual for genuine faith in Christ to take us to places that challenge our beliefs and expand our understanding of what it means to be a faithful disciple. It’s a narrow path, and it’s hard to stay on the path, but it’s the path that leads to true life. It’s not a predictable and well-defined journey. It’s a challenging journey and joyful journey. This journey is not guided by rules – it’s guided by the Holy Spirit, and thanks be to God for that!
Amen.

The Uniform of Faith
Ephesians: 6:10-20

10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. 14 Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. 15 As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. 16 With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. 19 Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.

This passage of scripture challenges me to examine my view of reality, but it also makes perfect sense to me. I love this image of suiting up properly for the work of God, and it makes me think about what it is that I’m up against.

The truth is that I have a much clearer image of God than I do of the devil. I have a lot to say about who God is, but in all honesty I don’t pretend to know that much about God. I know that God is far bigger than my mind can comprehend, but I am in love with my image of God. I may be wrong about how I see God, but I understand God to be perfectly benevolent. I believe that God loves and understands each of us so perfectly that there’s nothing any of us can do to prevent God from loving us. I’m not saying I believe God loves everything we do, but I believe God loves us unconditionally, and I think my image of God is consistent with the way in which Jesus portrayed God. Jesus didn’t just love the people who deserved to be loved. He loved his friends and his enemies. He loved properly religious people, and he loved outrageously sinful people.

I like to think that my image of God is well informed by what Jesus did and taught, but I also know that my concept of God is largely informed by the way I was raised and the good fortune that has come my way in life. I was born to loving parents, and in to a community that made me feel welcome in the world. I’m not saying that my life has been one easy step after the other, but I’ve never felt assaulted by evil. This could change tomorrow, but I think it’s accurate to say that I’ve experienced more hospitality in my life than hostility, and I think this has had an impact on my theology.

I think these factors have come together to provide me with a more fully developed understanding of God than I have of the presence of evil, and for that reason it’s a challenge for me to think about what it means to be properly equipped to protect myself from the wiles of the devil. This is not to say that I have no idea how bad this world can be or how well I can cooperate with the presence of evil. I don’t consider myself to be a Pollyanna – I know that bad things happen and that people do horrific things.

While I trust that the love of God is larger than any other agenda in the universe, I also believe that evil is insidiously present in every nook and cranny of this world. I can think of evil as being a little bit like the mosquitos around here which are lurking everywhere. I don’t necessarily feel as assaulted by evil as I do by the mosquitos, but I know I am in need of deliverance from both! Jesus taught us to pray for deliverance from temptation and evil, and I don’t doubt that I need it. I know myself to be a weak and self-serving schemer who is a few short steps away from seeking any form of ungodly good and service available. I think it was Mark Twain who said he could resist anything but temptation, and I think he was speaking for most of us when he said that.

As I say, I believe God loves us all unconditionally, but I know we all create our own challenges to the love of God. I also believe there are things we can do to diminish those challenges and to grow in our relationship with God. I fully embrace this wisdom of Paul who wrote this letter to encourage the people of Ephesus and the rest of us to protect ourselves from the particular ways in which we are vulnerable to the manifestation of evil.

While I don’t unquestionably accept everything that Paul is credited with writing as being the absolute truth or perfectly sound teaching, I do trust these words that we are looking at this morning. These aren’t just lofty and poetic phrases emanating from a man who was sitting at a desk in a serene location. That’s what I do, and while I don’t think I’m leading anyone astray with the things I say, I don’t think I write with the same authority that Paul had as he sat in a grimy cell – imprisoned for sharing his belief that God was made known in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul had encountered Christ in such a powerful way the threat of imprisonment was overshadowed by his passion to share what he had experienced and what he believed.

Paul was suffering for what he believed – which adds a lot of credibility to what he was saying. And what I understand him to be saying is that we need to be on guard against the enemies of the spirit more than we need to protect ourselves from threats to our physical wellbeing. Paul was in a physically vulnerable situation, but it wasn’t for his flesh that he was concerned. Paul didn’t let the physically harsh circumstance he was in distract him from the thing that was truly threatening to him – which was of a spiritual nature. Paul had the wisdom to see beyond the immediate threats to his body and remain focused on the powers and principalities that were behind those threats.

His battle was not with the individuals who had put him in prison. Paul recognized that his struggle was with the spiritual forces of evil that were behind the people who abused him and placed him in prison. He knew that he needed to guard himself so that he could maintain love in his heart while he was in a very hateful situation.

When I think of what this means for me, what strikes me is the vast difference between the circumstances that Paul was in and what the Ephesians were facing, and the situation in which I find myself living. What I’m thinking is that I need to be as vigilant in my resistance to the evil powers that are behind the surface of the world in which I live as Paul was to those powers that were lurking behind the surface of his world. I don’t believe that we live in a world that is less threatened by the spiritual forces of evil. I think it’s probably just harder for us to see the ways in which we cooperate with those powers that are at work in this world that do harm to our souls.

I don’t want to overstate the case of how active the evil powers are at work in our neighborhood. I’m honestly very grateful to live in a place where I don’t feel threatened on a daily basis by people who are motivated to set of bombs or to carry out other forms of mass violence. I wouldn’t trade the problematic world in which I live for the one that Paul lived in or the world in which so many others are living in today. I think it would be hard for me not to be hateful if I had family members injured, tortured, or killed by a rival religious sect or tribe. I don’t know how well my soul would be doing if I lived in a place without adequate food, water, medicine or shelter. I’m might not have such a benevolent image of God if I lived in a place that was wracked by war, famine, or industrial waste. I’m not proud to say this, but it’s probably true.

I just don’t know how to reconcile these things, but Paul provides some testimony that is important for me to hear. I hear him saying that we should always do what we can to protect our souls. We need to don the equipment of faith that will enable us to resist the evil powers that are always lurking behind the façade of life.

As a person who hardly ever goes outside without putting on my trusty Tilley hat that is designed to protect my vulnerable head from those invisible forces that can do harm to my skin, I find Paul’s words to be compelling. I’ve never been a soldier, so I don’t have full appreciation for the way it feels to put on equipment that’s designed to protect you in battle, but I like to be properly protected. There aren’t many days of the year when I don’t wear boots of some kind, and I don’t wear shorts very often. Part of that is motivated by vanity, but I also just feel more protected when I’m wearing long pants. And I’m pretty quick to put on a back brace when I’m going to be doing a lot of heavy lifting.

I’m pretty mindful of protecting my flesh, and Paul has pointed out that I need to be even more mindful of protecting my soul. I think this probably means slightly different things to all of us, but what is true for us all is that we need to pay attention to how we spend our time, to what that we give our attention, and to where we invest our resources. What is it that we are feeding within ourselves? And what are we encouraging to happen in our community and beyond? I think Paul would say that such things are reflections of how well we are resisting or cooperating with the evil powers that are behind the surface of this world.

We live in a very mysterious world. I don’t get it in so many ways. Evil is out there, but so is God. I trust that God’s love will prevail in this world, and I pray that we will all do all that we can to cooperate with the love of God in whatever way we can for as long as we can. I think John Wesley said something to this effect about 250 years ago. He is credited with saying: Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times that you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can. And I think this remains to be good instruction for us. This world is torn in many ways by insidiously evil agendas, and if we don’t intentionally seek to do the good we can do we may well find ourselves supporting the enemies of God and contributing to the deterioration of our souls.

Of course the best form of protection comes to us in the presence of the Holy Spirit, who convicts us of our sin when we are going in the wrong direction, and who enables us to see what we can do to resist evil and to stand with God.

Thanks be to God for the opportunity we all have to live our lives in relationship with God and in opposition to the evil powers of this world. We all abide in God’s world, and we are all invited to be God’s people.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.