Turning points and cross roads (sermon from Sunday, Sept 23)

Reading: Mark 8:27-38

(Jesus and his disciples journey a little beyond their usual territory.  They are north of Galilee in the Greco-Roman region of Caesarea Philippi.  It's a little more pagan than they are used to in Galilee, with Roman imperial offices and shrines to a variety of Greek and Roman deities dotting the countryside.

Even more unsettling is the conversation Jesus initiates about going to Jerusalem to die, and about the necessity of taking up a cross if anyone wants to follow him.  Shortly after this story, a few days later Jesus is transfigured in heavenly glory before three of his disciples, after which they all belong the long, southward journey to Jerusalem.)

Most of us probably have some experience with selfishness.  I’m sure we all know people absorbed with their own opinions, their own feelings, their own wants, and their own significance in the grand scheme of things.  One way we know them is how hard it is to be around them for long without wanting to get away.  It’s tiring to be just an audience to someone else’s performance, or an actor just playing a role in someone else’s drama.

Part of the problem, of course, is we tend to identify selfishness most easily in others.  It’s difficult to see our own.  Most of us – I include myself in this, can be completely oblivious to the ways in which we are absorbed in our own opinions, our own feelings, our own wants, and our own significance in the grand scheme of things.  We don’t notice it, because it’s about us.  But I’m guessing we all have some experience in practicing selfishness, and of having others more aware of it than we are ourselves.

This may be one reason our gospel lesson this morning is hard to hear. 

In the story, Jesus announces to his disciples that his commitment to the justice, peace and freedom of God’s kingdom – what makes him God’s messiah, is going to end him up in Jerusalem to die, and sooner rather than later.  And he tells those around him if they want to be his disciples, they too must deny themselves, take up their crosses, and follow him. 

Now, a couple of things about this.  This thing about his going to Jerusalem to die: in the context of this story, this has nothing to do with any theology of a perfect Son having to die a substitutionary death to appease the wrath of a righteous Father in order to save us from judgement.  That really isn’t part of Jesus’ theology, and if it were he would not go on to say we too need to take up our cross and do likewise.  It just wouldn’t follow.

He has something else on his mind here.  Rather than some legal-religious obligation to God, he’s talking about the real-life, down-to-earth consequence of living the way he is living.  The practical and political consequence of living the kingdom of God as fully and openly as he is across social and political boundaries, and against the interests of the ruling classes.  People die when they do that, and he knows he will be one of them.  But he is committed enough to the vision and to the coming of this kingdom for the good of others, the good of the earth, and the good of himself with others that he is willing to do that – to give himself and his life for it.

Another thing is, when Jesus connects the cross we are called to pick up with self-denial, it’s not the kind of self-denial we are called to practice in Lent.  Or that we practice in more secular kinds of Lent like weight-loss programs or any other self-improvement discipline we might take up for a while for our own good. 

Those kinds of things are good.  But when it comes to the cross and self-denial, Jesus is talking about something other than self-improvement.  He’s talking about moving beyond self-interest altogether, and about focusing instead on the interests and needs of others – whoever “the other” may be, and however “other” they may be from me.  And to accept the cost of doing that, whatever it may be.

Which is easy to say, not so easy to live. 

Just think of how slowly self-denial and the way of the cross unfolded for Jesus and his disciples.  It starts in Galilee with teaching and healing fellow Jews.  There is risk and recklessness in the way Jesus does it – in the ways he reaches across the boundaries that divide people up into sub-groups, and the new kind of community he establishes.  Some people – especially the poor and the powerless, love it, and others – especially the powerful and privileged, hate it.  But it all takes place in familiar territory, among their own people, in the midst of traditions, practices and expectations they share with others around them.  As hard as it is, it’s all still just a family affair.

Until the journeys start to lead out, bit by bit, beyond the border and into Gentile territory.  It starts innocently as a way of reaching the Jews who live there.  But step by step, journey by journey, it gets to be more.  A big turning-point we looked at two weeks ago is the encounter with the Syro-Phoenician woman who opens Jesus’ eyes – and his heart, to the place that she has, and that he needs to honour in God’s kingdom and God’s care.  After that, there’s the Gentile man who is deaf and dumb, whose friends bring him to Jesus for healing, and who Jesus just can’t refuse.

And suddenly a whole new world begins to open.  A world beyond self and one’s own circle – a world defined instead by the other – whoever the other may be, and however other they may be.  A world with globalized rather than localized good news.  A universal rather than a national gospel.  An inclusive rather than exclusive kingdom of God.  With Jesus no longer bound by the limited horizon of his Jewish tribe and Galilean family, opened to a way of life greater, more satisfying, and more fulfilling than the way of self-concern can ever be. 

We know this in our own lives, any time something draws us out – any time we have one of those turning-points towards really caring for someone and honestly caring about something beyond ourselves.  How often do we say, or hear others tell us, how in reaching out to care for someone else totally other, often in some alien or scary place, it’s the one doing the stepping-out and the reaching-out who is the one blessed, saved and made bigger by the encounter?

We know it here in our own church life as we try to follow Jesus and the way he teaches us to be his body in the world.  For a small church we do a lot.  And I don’t mean just peeling peaches and making and selling pies and serving spaghetti to raise funds, which is a lot.  But also making and serving dinner at the Wesley Centre, collecting for three or four different Christmas compassion projects at the most expensive and hectic time of the year, contributing year-round to a food bank, reaching out to support City Kidz in Hamilton and Banyala in Burkina Faso, and on top of this seeing some of our members going out to serve the needs of people in Peru, Bolivia, Haiti, the Dominican and next year in Zambia, just because they have the chance to.

In the name of Jesus as the Christ, as this little part of the body that he is in the world, we make the journey over and over again beyond self and into the realm of new and true life.  It’s a journey we make with Jesus together as a church, and a journey each one of us makes with Jesus in our personal lives.

And we welcome new life here as well – into our own little place, as we welcome others in.  We’re opening the doors a bit.  Inviting folks in, one event at a time, to have a safe and good place to gather for whatever they need.

Parker Neale – chair of Council, mentioned Tuesday night at the Council meeting that one thing he felt bad about was how easy it still is to get into the church and the Upper Room for the meeting.  Ours were the only cars in the lot.  We weren’t having to say “hello” and “excuse me” to people coming in for some community meeting in the Lower Hall.  We weren’t pushed into the sanctuary and struggling to be heard over a youth group meeting in the Upper Room.

He might be glad to know that on Sunday, Nov 19 – Anniversary Sunday and the day after the Spaghetti Supper, we’ll be having our annual treat of after-worship coffee and left-over desserts in the Upper Room, because that day there’s also a party for a family in the community booked into the Lower Hall. 

Good news!  In every sense of the word. 

Not without cost, to be sure.  Not without giving up and losing something we used to have.  The pin-prick and sometimes the real nail-pierce of the cross is felt within us as we open our eyes, our arms, our hearts, our wallets and our building to the needs of others. 

But as long as we know we are doing this in obedience to him and the way of life he shows us – going beyond self-interest to take on the needs and interests of others, is this not what this church –any church, is about?  Is this not how we find the new life we are promised?  And is this not why we are glad to be here?

How does Mother Teresa put it in the little quote reprinted on the back of our bulletin?

That the sacrifices we make, the losses we accept, the things we let go of that we used to have just for ourselves “are nothing but a sign that you have come so close to Jesus that He can kiss you.”

What I wanna know is, who let THEM in? (sermon from Sun, Sept 16)

Scripture:  Mark 9:30-37
 
Jesus and his disciples are traveling the countryside in and out of Galilee – teaching, healing and creating a kind of community across social boundaries of the day – what Jesus calls the kingdom of God.  Some receive him gladly, and begin to follow his way.  Others – especially those who benefit from the status quo, turn against him and start planning to kill him.

Jesus tries for a while to be a little less public.  But he does not give up on his commitment to living the kingdom of God into being.

In this passage when he tells the disciples to welcome children into their circle, it’s helpful to remember that children at that time were not regarded as well as they are today.  Children were without power or rights, were often abused, and were seen as a risk and burden until they grew up and proved themselves worthwhile.  In the Bible, “children” is also a way of referring to any powerless people in the world whom others do not want, but whom God, of course, especially loves.  And through whom God is known.

One woman.  She wanted to be a good mother, and care for her children.  Life can be hard and the world can be dangerous.  She felt so blessed to have a family, and just wanted to do the best for them.

She knew hardship in her own life – growing up in the Depression and as a child helping her parents on their little farm to raise enough vegetables for themselves and with enough extra to sell up and down the streets in the city.  With the death of her older, beloved brother while still in his teens, she also knew heartbreak and grief – a grief that she maybe never really got over as long as she lived.  She knew bullying, ridicule and shame from other kids at school – which she attended only up to grade 3.  Later in life, newly married and trying to begin her adult life near the end of the Second Great War, she also knew fear and aloneness as a Canadian citizen of German heritage – fear that came to a head the night of VE-Day when she locked the doors and pulled down the blinds in her and her German-born husband’s apartment because she honestly thought that now, having beaten the Germans overseas, the crowds celebrating victory out on the street would now surely be coming for them.

Life can be hard.  The world can be dangerous.  So she did what she could to keep her children safe.  The home she made was made to be a refuge from the world.  A place set apart, where bad things and bad people would be kept at bay.  Not allowed in.  Where only family and close trusted friends and manageable things would be welcome.  Where strangers and others and all the scary things of life would not be allowed to touch her children as they had touched her.

Another woman.  She wanted to be a good mother, and care for her children.  Life can be hard and the world can be dangerous.  She felt so blessed to have a family, and just wanted to do the best for them.

She knew loss and deprivation in life – growing up and trying to build her life in Germany as the Great War and its devastation began to unfold, and then engulfed her and everyone and everything around her.  She knew powerlessness as her husband and father of their first child was conscripted to the German army because of his training and skill as an engineer.  She knew sacrifice and risk as she fled their home and homeland with their baby in her arms and little else – often not even milk or food for her baby, let alone herself.  She knew helplessness as she relied over and over on the kindness of strangers to help her find her way to a new land, and relied on good fortune and the grace of God to help her and her husband and their sadly malnourished baby to be reunited and able to begin together again.

Life can be hard.  The world can be dangerous.  So she did what she could to show the children she was eventually blessed with ta way of helping as much as they could to make the world good and whole.  The home she made was safe and supportive for them all, and it was a refuge and a place of welcome for all kinds of others in need.  It was a place where new immigrants trying to make a start were welcome and were given food, clothing, and help in finding their way.  Where poor families who showed up at church were invited for Sunday lunch, and then invited back again and again until they became friends.  Where single moms needing a job, people in distress, and people not accepted by others were invited to the table, into the living room, and into her family’s life. 

Two mothers, trying to be good for their children.  Doing the best they knew to make the world good.  Two ways of being faithful to their calling.

Or is it maybe two different ways entirely of living out their calling?  One faithful, and the other fearful?  With a very big difference between the two?

It’s more than just an academic question for me.  Because I am in this story.  Mother number one, is my mom.  And mother number two, is the mother of my best friend.

And I really do believe both were good mothers.  Both did the best they knew how, and were able to do.  Both are deeply loved and appreciated by their children.

But I wonder if this choice and tension between the way of fear and the way of faithfulness is one of the basic things we all struggle with in one way or another all the time.

Fear and faithfulness – and the tension between them, are part of what the story of Jesus and his disciples is about.  In the story, it’s becoming clear how hard life can be, and how dangerous the world is.  “The Son of Man,” Jesus says – referring to himself, and also really to all who live out the way of God in the world as completely as him, “is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him…” 

And the question is how his followers will live in the face of that reality. 

Will they give in to fear?  Withdraw maybe into a private and personal space?  Build walls, close doors, and just look out the windows?  Do what others did at that time – line up their friends and their inner circle of respected and influential people, get themselves accepted in polite and upper-class society, and let their influence, their decorum, their good order, and their worldly attractiveness be their protection against the ways that we can fall and fail and lose what we have worked so hard to have?

You can do that, Jesus says.  Many do, and both the goodness of their heart and the story of their life are then shaped in particular ways by fear of their own vulnerability.

Or, he says, you can continue in the way I show you, and the way you’ve begun to walk with me.  A way of openness and welcome.  A way that opens you to people who may have nothing to offer you, and may in fact rob you of what you have.  A way that makes you welcome not just those who are nice and good and comfortable to be with, but also those who are quite other than that.  Makes you be especially on the look-out for those whom you can do something good for, whom you can be a friend to, whom you can make a difference for.  And who, when you welcome them and because you welcome them, make all the difference in the world to you and to your soul and to the goodness of your story.

Because, Jesus says, as reasonable and tempting as the first way is, it’s the second way that is the greater – even though it’s often the less practiced, because it’s the way of the kingdom.  The way of God and God’s messiah.  The way that brings us the kind of knowledge of God and God’s goodness that we really long for.

“Welcome them,” he says, and in the culture of the day that’s a pretty strong and full word.  It wasn’t just a matter of saying “hi, how are you,” chatting for a bit over coffee, and then going on your way. 

Think of the desert culture that the people of Israel came out of.  How when someone came to your camp you had to decide pretty quickly if you were going to count them as friend or foe.  And when you chose to count them as friend, what it meant to invite them in to your camp, share with them what precious little food and drink you had, let them be accepted as part of the family circle with a place like all others at the family table.  To feel responsible for them and for their well-being.

And when Jesus speaks of welcoming “the child” or “the children” he means really all the ones who are without power and prestige in the world, who are seen by others as a burden and a risk, who other people choose not to be open to, who are asked by others to prove their worth before they will be accepted.  In other words, the poor and the needy, the outsider and alien, all who are hurt and wounded, disabled, disempowered, sidelined by life, excluded and overlooked by so many of the good and right people.

This is the way of faith, Jesus says, and in welcoming such as these into our home and to our table, we find ourselves met by God’s messiah, drawn into God’s kingdom and blessed with the very presence of God that our deepest hearts long for.  This is the greater way, Jesus says, because this is the way to make the world that we make truly good and meaningful.

Life is hard.  The world is dangerous and scary. 

I wonder, what do we fear the most?  In ourselves, as families, as a church what are we most afraid of? 

How do our fears shape and control how we live, what we do, how we treat others around us, how we decide who is friend or foe? 

And what children – what poor, needy, unwanted, risky ones does God bring to us, to help bring us to new and good life beyond our fears?

Ephphatha -- as interesting to live as it is to try to say (sermon from Sept 9, 2018)

Reading: Mark 7:24-37

 Just by the voice she knew who it was.

“Hi, Mrs. Minister!”

She sighed.  One of those unbidden, spontaneous sighs that expresses so much.

She was busy.  And this greeting from her open door was one of the blessings and burdens, one of the opportunities and challenges of working at a church this close to The Projects. 

But didn’t she always tell her people that it’s in the interruptions that God comes?  That it’s through the cracks in the way we set things up that the kingdom of God seeps into the world?  Wasn’t it she who helped convince the Official Board to install the new signs over every external church door?  The ones that say, “All are welcome.  Everyone counts.”

So she lifted her fingers from the keyboard and her gaze from the screen, turned her chair towards the open door of her office, looked the interrupter squarely and kindly in the face, and resolutely said, “Hi, Jeanette.  How are you today?”

Jeanette was all smiles as she held out a CD for her minister to see.  “I got this at the Thrift Store.  It’s Hillsong,” she said.  Praise music.  In someone else’s castoffs, Jeanette had found – to her, a pearl of great price.  And she had her CD player with her, to be able to share it.

With another sigh the minister said, “Oh, that’s great!  Do you have a favourite song?  Why don’t we listen to it, so we can talk about what it means to each of us?”  And unspoken, “then maybe you can be on your way.”

Jeanette put the disc in, found a track, and turned up the volume.  The teenager and the minister together listened to the song of praise and adoration, and as the minister committed herself to listening she found herself remembering the Christian rock she herself had listened to years ago.  She listened more carefully, and particular words and lines of this song now began unexpectedly to speak to her, and catch her heart, and open it up to something – Someone, beyond her, that she knew very well and now in a new and welcome way as well.

It was no longer just her, the minister, managing a few minutes with Jeanette.  She was not in charge anymore.  Someone else was.  And it wasn’t Jeanette, either.  It was God.  But it was because of Jeanette and Jeanette’s song and the minister’s decision to take Jeanette’s song seriously, that the minister found herself delightfully, deeply opened in a new way to exactly the gracious presence of God that she so often preached about to others. 

Barbara Brown Taylor, a Christian preacher and teacher, writes this:  “The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbour as the self – to encounter another human being not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.”

It is hard, especially when we believe we have the truth and we have what other people need.

We don’t need to feel bad about that, though, because it was hard for Jesus, too.

In this morning’s story, Jesus is tired – worn out by the mission in Galilee and by the range of responses he is getting to his work.  He takes a break.  He heads out of Galilee to spend time with friends where he can rest and recharge.  He knows what he needs, sets the agenda for his spirit, draws a boundary around himself, and closes the door – just him and a few friends and God.

But you know what happens to closed doors.  What God thinks about them, and does to them.

In this case it’s a Syrophoenician woman – a Gentile, not one of God’s people at all, not one who he Jesus has come to help, who comes knocking and asks him to heal her daughter.  To which Jesus says, no, that’s not what I’m about, because you’re not who I’m here for.  You aren’t the mission God has given me; you aren’t one of God’s people. 

To which the woman says, are you sure about that?  And in the way that she puts it, and makes him take her seriously, Jesus can’t help but come to see that the mission really is somewhat bigger and more open than he had imagined.

Debie Thomas, in the blog, Journey with Jesus, puts it so nicely that in this story “it is Jesus himself who has to have his eyes opened and his ears unstopped, who must … allow himself to ‘be opened’ to the full, glorious, uncomfortable implications of the gospel.

“The Jesus we encounter in this story [she says] is fully human, shaped as we all are by the conscious and unconscious biases, prejudices, and entitlements of his culture.  And he is God incarnate, a holy Son … meant to share the Good News.  But even he needs to ‘be opened’ to how radically good that good news is.

“The Syrophoenician woman schools him… and the best part … is that Jesus accepts the instruction of the woman who challenges him.  He allows her – an ethnic, religious, and gendered Other – to school him in his own gospel…”  In other words, to help him more than he is able to manage by himself, to be the Jesus God has called him to be. 

Ephphatha.  Be opened.  It’s the way to really become what we think we already are.  The way to grow into the fullness of what we believe to be true.

A generation ago the members of this church wrote a mission statement to guide them in how they went about being church, and it has guided us well for a generation now.

Our church family [it says] celebrates the love of Jesus

through the active participation of children, youth and adults

in worship, music, prayer and praise.

Striving to live and grow in our faith in Jesus Christ

and united in our love of God,

we reach out to serve our community.

Respecting the beliefs, concerns and spiritual needs of others,

we offer a place of welcome, fellowship and support.

Openness is affirmed in every line.  Openness to the gifts of all members – children, youth and adults alike and equally.  Openness to the community, and the call of God to us to reach out.  Openness to the beliefs, concerns and spiritual needs of others – to make room, offer friendship, give support.

And that openness, when we’ve practiced it, has served us well.  The comfortable, and especially the sometimes uncomfortable encounters it leads us into, when we’ve taken them seriously, have helped us grow into the kind of church we are called to be.

Ephphatha.  Be opened.  In the stories of Jesus and in the history of the church this is the way of growing into the gospel that’s always bigger than we are and that we imagine it to be.

In three weeks we will be gathering for a few hours after worship – as many as wish to take part, to be guided in a process of creating a new mission statement for our church as it is now.  A mission statement for today, that will put into words what we are called to do now, and the kind of church we are called to be in Winona today.

And I wonder as we do that, what kind of openness we are called to take on, and commit ourselves to?  What others around us, what people different from ourselves are we called to go out to, and take seriously?  What kinds of encounters – comfortable and uncomfortable, when we let ourselves face them, will help us grow into the gospel we believe?

What kind of openness will help us now to be the kind of church we are meant to be, and can be? 

I like Debie Thomas’s closing words:

“ ‘Be opened’ [she says.]  Be opened to the truth that God isn’t done with you yet.  Be opened to the destabilizing wisdom of people who are nothing like you.  Be opened to the voice of God speaking from places you consider unholy.  Be opened to the widening of the table.  Be opened to Good News that stretches your capacity to love.  Be opened.”