Pentecost 22B - "The Doctor is In"

 Saint Luke 1:1-4 & 24:44-53

Today we celebrate the day in which we remember the life and work of Saint Luke who we believe wrote the Gospel that bears his name, was a physician, and because of his work in both fields has the high honour of having this church and many others named after him.

In that sense he reminded me of another physician turned author, Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland who had the same dual careers of author and physician.  In his first book he told of why he decided to become a doctor. 

Before there were two digits in my age, I had seen the hope (I choose the word deliberately) that a doctor’s presence brings to a worried family.

There were several frightening experiences during my mother’s long illness... [Where] the mere knowledge that someone had gone to the drugstore phone to call the doctor and the word that he was on the way, changed the atmosphere in our small apartment from terrified helplessness to a secure sense that somehow the dreadful situation could be made right.

That man — the man who stepped across the threshold with a smile and an air of competence, who called each of us by name, who understood that beyond anything else we needed reassurance, and whose very entrance into our home conveyed it — that was the man I wanted to be.1

 Nuland’s childhood physician did who not have a modicum of medications, and tests, and procedures that our physicians had.  In fact, in another book, The Uncertain Art, he himself reflected on the fact that for most of his career as a physician he lived without most of the diagnostic tools doctors have at their disposal today.  

Obviously, St. Luke was working with even less.  There was very little in his black bag, if he even had one, to bring.  All he could probably do in his day was stride across the threshold armed only with air of confidence and the reassurance that the dreadful situation could be made right.

Is it any wonder why Saint Luke was drawn to Jesus?  His skill, his kindness, his air of confidence that things could be made better must had been what attracted him to this man who seemed to be a better physician than Saint Luke would ever hope to be in his life.

So, when Luke sat down to write his orderly account to a person whose background to this day remains unknown but who name meant “friend of God” he does so with the precision of a physician looking into the background of a patient and the soul of a poet.

You may not realize it, but it is Saint Luke we have to thank for all the trappings of our Christmas story.  With the precision of Bob Woodward some of the more imaginative among us like to believe he sat down with many of the characters who were involved to get the “deep background” on exactly what happened.  

Matthew did a great job telling us about the doubts and faith of Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father, but St. Luke broadens out the cast of characters to people whose words affect us and inspire us to this day.

So, Luke gives us the encounter of Mary with the Angel Gabriel who tells her that if she goes along with the plan he is proposing she will give birth to a wonderous child.  Luke brings us right into the room where that tense conversation happened. Gabriel first tells her not to be afraid – for in his announcement there is much to be afraid of – and then has to wait, and wait, and wait until Mary finally, after some difficult questions, for Mary to say “Yes.”

Then Dr. Luke takes us to the house of her cousin Elizabeth already heavily pregnant with the one we will know as John the Baptist. Elizabeth, who upon seeing Mary “spoke out with a loud voice and said, ‘blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”2  These words along with Luke’s recorded greeting of the Angel Gabriel to Mary, “Mary, full of grace." gives us the words of the second most recited prayer in all of Christendom, the “Hail Mary” which, in addition to being what fans call the last ditch effort in any sport, has been on the lips of the faithful for centuries, “Hail, Mary full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.” 

Elizabeth’s assurance gives Mary the strength to sing of her hopes for her child, this very special child. “His mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation.  He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly.”3

The Good Doctor, Saint Luke, through Mary’s magnificent song is telling us what Jesus was to be about.

And most of all, Saint Luke gives us the Christmas Story.  It maybe the reason we leave the dishes in the sink and put on our winter coats to hurry off to a late evening worship on Christmas Eve. We venture out into the darkness to hear again the story of an imperial decree which forces a heavily pregnant Mary and her faithful husband Joseph to take a journey to Bethlehem where Jesus was born in a manger “because there was no room for them in the inn.”4

Aren’t you glad that Doctor Luke left his surgery and took time to give us all the images we love so much at Christmas?  Shepherds, angel choruses, we have Luke’s hard work to thank for these.  

But even more important for this day is that when decades pass in the life of our Lord, and we find him staring at his cousin John the Baptist the “voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord.’”5

John was preaching and baptizing.  And the people came. They left furrow in the field and the bread in the oven to hear John preach and be baptized by him. Then, St. Luke tells us, “when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”6

Today we are going to react the scene St. Luke gave us.  Like the people in St. John the Baptist’s day who marched down to the river Jordan we are going to march to the back of this church and the baptismal font hymnals in hand, singing. Then we are going to affirm our baptismal promises and baptize Miles, surrounded by his parents, and Sydney’s classmates, their parents, and you, the people of God.

We are going to celebrate that all of us who have been dunked, or dipped, or sprinkled, or spayed by the waters of baptism have heard the same promise that was said to Jesus at his baptism: ““You are my Son[my daughter], chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.”7

We’ll hear those words spoken over Miles as they were once spoken over us. And we’ll have Saint Luke to thank for putting down whatever tools doctors used in those days and taking the time to record them for us so that in every dreadful situation of terrified helplessness we’ll have the reassurance that “the Lord is with us” and that marked with Christ’s love we are his chosen, his delight.

________________

1.  Sherwin B. Nuland, How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1995), 247.

2. St. Luke 1:42. (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]

3. St. Luke 1:42. (NKJV)

3. St. Luke 1:42. (NKJV)

4. St. Luke 2:7. (NKJV)

5. St. Luke 3:4b (NKJV)

6. St. Luke 3:21–22. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Edition Updated Edition]

7. St. Luke 3:22b. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2004).

Pentecost 21B - "Mules Through the Eye of a Storm"

 Saint Mark 17–27 & 28–30

"Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”1

I must confess that nobody I know personally would ask such a question.  

They might as in, “Good teacher, what must I do to make my life better, richer, fuller” but the matter of eternal life is not on their radar. They too are busy with their work, raising children, being good partners and persons now to worry much about the hereafter.  

While, according to a 2021 PEW Research Centre poll found that “73 percent of Americans believe in heaven,”2 chances are we don’t think about it much even though every week we affirm our belief in “the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” We probably speak of that belief to others only in a moment of loss and bereavement. 

“She in a better place,” well say or maybe “He’s in God’s hands now” but that is almost as far as we’ll go.  In countless years in the funeral business, then as clergy, and back in the funeral business again no one has come up to me after a funeral and asked “You look like a pretty smart fellow so “What must I do to inherit eternal life.”

But last Tuesday, over a very nice lunch at University Club of Chicago, I heard stories of women and men for whom life itself and eternal life is very much on their minds.  At the Chicago Bible Society’s Guttenburg Award luncheon we heard stories about this very fine organization’s good work in gifting the inmates of the county jail systems in the metropolitan Chicago area with Bibles in English, Spanish and other languages and providing jail chaplains to meet the needs of those detained. “We touch the lives of thousands every year with the gift of God’s Word.” their website proclaims with justifiable pride.    At lunch on Tuesday, we heard examples of men, woman, and their entire families who in the depths of trouble are asking not only “what must I do to get my life and the life of my family back on track but ultimately “what must I do to inherit eternal life.”

In that sense they are miles, light-years, away from the wealthy, I’ve got it all together, young man who runs up to Jesus on that fine day and asks the seemingly out of the blue question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

This guy is one of us. He’s a hard-working, jobs producer for goodness sake.  

He thinks it’s a matter of doing. Jesus sets him up by asking about the commandments, prompting a funny (to us, not him!) reply: “I have kept all these since I was a boy.” Jesus doesn’t chuckle or admonish. Instead, “Jesus looked at him.” How tender, how personal. “And he loved him.” A total stranger, confused. “Jesus loved him.” 

And because he loved him he says: “One thing you lack...”

"Whew!" The guy might have been thinking to himself. “Just one? Easy! Thought it might be a dozen or a hundred.”3

O, but that one thing is a doozy.  “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”4

So, we wonder why “at the very least, Jesus couldn’t work in increments, easing his new convert into the values of the kingdom: "How about you write a small check to charity this year? Nothing scary, nothing that will break the bank. Just a token?" Precisely because he loves the young man so much, Jesus tells him the truth. Not the half-truth, not the watered-down truth, but the whole truth.”5  He has to give it all up, give it all away, and follow Jesus.

“If this message does not take our breath away, if we are not shocked, appalled, grieved, or amazed, we have either not yet heard it or heard it so often that we do not really hear it any more.”6

However, this is one of those things, as they say on television, that you should not try at home.  Don’t take this sermon so literally that tomorrow when your partner or spouse gets home there no furniture, no appliances, not even am an empty house because even the house has been sold.  I don’t want you telling your loved ones that you took something Pastor Nelson said in a sermon to heart and liquidated everything. You’ll get us both killed!

When the rich man goes away with a frown on his face we may be led to ask the same question the disciples did.  With the criterion that high who can make it?  Eternity is going to be really empty if the standard to get in is unattainable.  

At this point Jesus gives a really crazy analogy.  “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.”

In a Christian Century article The Rev. Stacey Simpson wrote:

I remember the first time I read this story. I was seven years old, reading Mark’s Gospel in bed. When I got to verse 25, I was so alarmed that I slammed the Bible shut, jumped out of bed, and went running down the hall. I shook my mother out of a sound sleep. “Mom,” I whispered urgently, “Jesus says that rich people don’t go to heaven!”

“We are not rich. Go back to bed,” came my mother’s response.7

_What I think Jesus is introducing us to is his idea of God who is so gracious, and so winsome, and so powerful that God could, if God wanted, take a full sized camel (One hump or two, take your choice!) a drop that camel right through the eye of a needle and have that dromedary emerge dazed but unscathed on the other side.

If we continue to put our trust in what we have accomplished, or what we have –  our houses, lands, and 401k’s, we are going to be on the wrong track but if we follow Jesus, things will be different.

Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor explained what we receive this way.

It is a dare to [us] to become a new creature, defined in a new way, to trade in all the words that have described [us] up to now – wealthy, committed, cultured, responsible, educated, powerful, obedient – to trade them all in on one radically different word, which is free.8

 We’ll be free to serve Christ and our neighbours without any thought of reward.  We’ll be free to serve Christ and our neighbours without any cost/benefit analysis.  We’ll be free from trying to save ourselves by parading our good deeds before God. 

When we forget about thinking about all we’ve done we’ll be free to follow Jesus wherever he leads.  Jesus turned the rich man’s question about eternal life into a challenge to follow him. 

Sometimes that challenge will lead us into strange and difficult places.

Ever since Hurricane Helene roared through and devastated the community around Black Mountain, North Carolina I have been reading the heart-breaking and heart-warming Facebook posts by my friend Greg Kerschner.  He and his wife, Shannon, who I have often quoted from this pulpit as one of the finest preachers I have ever heard at Fourth Presbyterian Church here in Chicago and now at Central Presbyterian in Atlanta, purchased a getaway and eventual retirement home in the area.  They named it “Blueberry Grove” and was a beautiful place but now it has been severely damaged.

However, what happened to my friend’s place pales in comparison to the losses suffered by the surrounding area.  People have lost their homes, their livelihoods, and in some cases even their lives.  Greg has shared pictures and they are enough to break your heart.

Other stories were enough to cause one’s heart to sink.

When a few politicians tried to take advantage of the ongoing disaster by lying or, in the case of the really stupid, making stuff up like the government is causing these storms, there came a ray of light in the midst of the darkness.

It came from Dr. Scott Black Johnson, Senior Minister of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York, in his sermon last Sunday when he told his congregation about some very special people known as the Mountain Mule Packers. 

Dr. Johnson reported that “the Mountain Mule packers are being housed at the Presbyterian Retreat Centre at Montreat, North Carolina.

The motto of the Mountain Mule Packers is “We train good people and good mules to go to bad places.”  This past week the Mountain Mule Packers were the first to arrive in many remote valleys, and hilltops, places that are still unreachable by trucks, or four-wheelers, or even helicopters.  They brought heavy packs of food, and water, and Insulin to people to people in desperate need. 

These folk are easy to spot, these men and women riding mules wearing t-shirts blazoned with the words of Psalm 46 “God is our refuge and strength a very present help in trouble.”

These people don’t look at all like us – a little more hardened around the edges than we are.  They may not worship like us or even vote like us but they have devoted their lives to doing Jesus’ work. In their case: Bringing “good people and good mules to go to bad places.”

I think that is what Jesus is interested in.  He’s not so much interested in smooth words spoken at a safe distance, but he is interested in getting Bibles to people whose lives are broken.  And I think he’s interested “in a faith that inspires people to train mules, pack them full, and trot toward places of need” 9

When that kind of faith is shown maybe not a camel but at least a mule might be able to pass through the eye of a needle.

_________________

1. St. Mark 10:17. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]

2. Jeremy Weber, “Heaven and Hell: Americans Answer 20 Questions on Who Goes and What Happens,” Christianity Today, December 12, 2023, https://www.christianitytoday.com/2021/11/heaven-hell-universalism-reincarnation-pew-afterlife-survey/.

3. James  C. Howell, “What Can We Say October 13? 21st after Pentecost,” James Howell’s Weekly Preaching Notions, accessed October 12, 2024, https://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.

4. St. Mark 10:21. (NIV0 [NIV=The New Internation Version]

5. Debie Thomas, “What Must I Do?” Journey with Jesus, October 3, 2021, https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/3176-what-must-i-do.

6. Lamar Williamson, Mark: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: Presbyterian Publishing Corporation, 2009). p 188.

7. Stacey Simpson, “‘Who Can Be Saved?’ October 10, 2021: 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time,” The Christian Century, September 22, 2000, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2012-10/who-can-be-saved? 

8. Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life  (Norwich, CT: Canterbury, 2013), 121-126.

9. Scott Black Johnson, “Shall the Christian Nationalists Win?” Sermon preached at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church of New York. October 7, 2024

Pentecost 20B - "Open for Business"

Saint Mark 10:2-15

Some of the most embarrassing moments in my life have come for me when I have failed to mind my own business.  I can tell by the way some of you just sat bolt upright that it has been the same way for you.

You know what I mean.  It comes in those moments when we hear ourselves expressing an opinion that we had best kept to ourselves.  Those moments when we have heard ourselves say, “You know what you should have done...”  and immediately know that the person neither wanted or appreciated our feedback. 

Minding our own business fails come when we notice that the lights were on late at our usually early to bed neighbours and find ourselves wondering what is going on over there.

They come when there is a strange car seen night after night in front of another neighbour’s house and we get up to see someone walking to that car in “the wee small hours of the morning” and wondering if that person isn’t doing “the walk of shame.”

It comes when we express a strongly held belief and, having failed to “read the room,” discover that nobody within earshot shares our opinion.  These embarrassing moments can come when we have forgotten what we, hopefully, learned from our parents or teachers and failed to keep emotional or, worse yet, physical boundaries.

Not minding our own business is a sure way to find ourselves in trouble and it was a skill that seemed to be sorely lacking in the religious leaders of Jesus’ day.  They just weren’t very good at “minding their own business” sometimes with disastrous results. 

Witness their question: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”1

It was a loaded question to be sure, but it also was a cruel question. There were certainly people overhearing this little dust up who were divorced and ostracized because of it.  There were certainly people in the crowd who were never married, some were “childless cat ladies” others were people without children who were thought by the over opinionated not to have a real stake in their country.2 

There were certainly people listening in who were in abusive relationships that they could see their way clear to get out of. 

Besides, as Jesus deftly points out to those nosey religious leaders, the law of Moses did allow a man to divorce his wife, but their union was not based on love but a purely transactional relationship between their families. Social Scientists tell us:

Under normal circumstances in the world of Jesus, individuals really did not get married. Families did. One family offered a male, the other a female. Their wedding stood for the wedding of the larger extended families and symbolized the fusion of the honour of both families involved. It would be undertaken with a view to political and/or economic concerns.3

So, most marriages were arranged by the couples fathers not so much in the best interest of their children but in the interests of both family's financial stability.

Jesus isn’t interested in any of this.  Rather, it he suggests to the hardhearted religious leaders of his day that it might be well for them to mind their own business. That might be excellent advice for any hardhearted of us to heed too.  

Some churches have excluded the divorced from the reception of Communion even though no less of an authority that the Holy Father, Pope Francis, has said: “I have never refused the Eucharist to anyone, to anyone. I never, never refused the Eucharist. As a priest, that is. Never.” Pope Francis then added: “The problem is not the theological problem—the problem is the pastoral problem.”4

That is exactly how Jesus approaches it though, I doubt, he would have seen it as a problem except for the hardhearted who couldn’t seem to mind their own business.  What they were missing in trying to figure out on a purely legal basis whether divorce was permitted or not was the human element.  

People get hurt when families break up.  It’s hard on the couple and it’s especially hard on the children no matter how young or old they are to see their families — the one thing they expected to be a constant in their lives – fall apart.  It’s even hard on the extended family and friends.  Those in Jesus’ day, those in ours, who can’t seem to mind their own business must not be the ones that add insult to injury.

That may be the reason that Mark brings two seemingly disconnected stories together.  Divorced women especially in Jesus' day were marginalized and children were “of value primarily as the Near Eastern equivalent of Social Security.”5  They were had to provide for you in your old age.  They “had few rights and essentially no social status”6

and besides that, they were unruly.

My guess is that the children Mark was talking about were not as well behaved as the children of Saint Luke Academy are on Wednesday mornings in chapel.  And even they, on occasion, get a little wound up as my little presentations get drowned out by hyper-frenetic activity.  Fortunately, I have teachers to intervene but for the disciples it was different.

If you let yourself imagine the scene you can see the contrast.  There is Jesus and the religious leaders having a very, very, very serious discussion about matters of divorce, the family, and societal stability.

Meanwhile, in the back row there are the children being children.  They may have been talking. (Talking in church, how horrible!) They may have been wiggling and giggling at nothing in particular.  They may have been elbowing each other in the ribs or pulling the hair of the person in front of them.  And when the adults try to bring them closer to Jesus instead of spiriting them away for an Ice Cream cone it is all too much for the disciples who can no longer “mind their own business” and try to give them “the bums rush.”

Think about that for a moment.  Those disciples who had been with Jesus for a long time now had forgotten everything he had taught them!  They are trying to keep not only the little ones but their parents from getting close to Jesus!  They are setting up boundaries, the same kind of boundaries the religious ones were trying to set up between the married and divorced, now between Jesus and little children squirrelling around in their parents arms.

Jesus sees and takes those children up in his arms to remind all what his business has been all about.  It’s about inclusion.  Sometimes the church forgets that which is why we needed both stories today that are put before us in the Good Book.

It seems to me that it is especially important to hear these stories on the day when we celebrate the 64th anniversary of this building to remind us of what our business is.  They are there to remind us that buildings can be fortresses that keep people out or they can be 

welcoming places that invites people in.  

The strange stories we have before us this day when we are trying to celebrate what the church has been there to remind us of what the church must be.  We can no longer divide ourselves up into groups who are in and groups who are out.  We no longer have the luxury of being the biggest and best game in town.  

Sundays no longer belong just to us – we have to figure out how to share them with all kinds of different activities. We can no longer divide ourselves between the unmarried, the married, and the never will be married. We can no longer divide ourselves along the lines of orientation, or gender, or age.  We can no longer be about the business of building walls that divide and keep people out.

The stories we have before us today are there to remind us that “the Kingdom of God belongs to the broken and the broken-hearted. It belongs to the betrayed, the unfaithful, and the rejected. It belongs to the abused, the unwanted, and the incompatible. It belongs to the fooled and the foolish. The Kingdom of God belongs to those with hardened hearts and to those recovering from hard heartedness.”7  

Jesus' ministry belongs to us all, every one of use and it is our business to share it. 

May this be the business this church tends to this day and everyday into the future.

________________

1. Saint Mark 10:2.  (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]

2. Rachel Treisman, “JD Vance Went Viral for ‘cat Lady’ Comments. the Centuries-Old Trope Has a Long Tail,” NPR, July 29, 2024, https://www.npr.org/2024/07/29/nx-s1-5055616/jd-vance-childless-cat-lady-history.

3. Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 2003), 240.

4. Mark  P. Shea, “I’d Like to Say: Stop Weaponizing the Eucharist,” Franciscan Media, February 23, 2024, https://www.franciscanmedia.org/st-anthony-messenger/may-2022/id-like-to-say-stop-weaponizing-the-eucharist/.

5. William H. Willimon, “Jesus Christ Is Lord, Therein Is Our Hope,” Pulpit Resource, Year B, 52, no. 4 (October 1, 2024): 3–5.

6.    Matt Skinner, “Commentary on Mark 10:2-16,” Working Preacher from Luther Seminary, November 11, 2020, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-27-2/commentary-on-mark-102-16-2.

7.    Amy Gopp, “Holy Union,”  Day 1, October 1, 2024, https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/66eed19e6615fbbbf2000003/holy-union-rev-amy-gopp-mark-10-2-16-october-06-2024.

Pentecost 19B - "Family Stories"

Genesis 1:24-31

Psalm 8

Genesis 2:19-20

Saint Matthew 6:25-33

Every family has a story.

I was reminded of this while worshipping last Sunday at Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London in a very fine sermon preached by Dr. Naggi Dawn, who surprisingly was visiting from Rhode Island where she serves the Episcopal Diocese there as Resident Theologian.  

Her story was of a long road-trip her family made on the usual tour high school seniors make to visit colleges. 

She told of deep, heart-to-heart conversations about all sorts of matters from sports to spirituality.  Personally I thought, in a age where young and old seem to be welded to their tablets and i-phones, this was a gigantic feet unto itself.

They must have tucked all the electronic devises in the trunk because she also talked of them playing Scrabble, the license plate game, and “slug-bug” where the first person who spotted a Volkswagen Beatle got to punch the person next to them.

She was honest because she also reminded the rest of us, who were beginning to think that she came from a family of saints, that there were disagreements aplenty.

Every road-trip has the potential to become a family story the begins with the words “Remember When...”

Remember when there was a time before car seats and seatbelts, and you could let your child ride in the front seat propped up on just enough pillows for him or her to see out the front window.  Remember when the only passenger restraint device was, in my case, my uncle's right arm, thrust out and stiff-arming me to prevent me from hurting into the unpadded dashboard or front window at a sudden stop. This was usually followed by someone in the backseat yelling: “Watch where you are going!”

Lowell’s family had a different approach.  Mom and Dad always had the front seat and the four children road in the back.  In order to give his siblings more room they placed Lowell on the shelf of the back window.  (I’m not making that up! Ask him yourself at coffee hour.)

Surprisingly enough this was preferable to being seated directly behind his father where the slightest brush of a foot against his seat would bring forth a scolding.

Road trips can be the fodder for a great many family stories as ours was last week when we rented a car to drive from Penzance to a place called Port Isaac.  For those of you who are fans of the “Doc Martin” television series Port Issac is better known as Portwenn the home of the grumpy doctor and his eccentric neighbours.

Lowell did a masterful job driving stick-shift for the first time in years and keeping to the left side of the road.  It was my job as navigator to look out for traffic that seemed to be coming at us in all directions and also remind him, sometimes gently but often sternly, “Left side! Left side!”  To which he would reply, sometimes gently and sometimes sternly, “I know! I know!”

Thus, we managed to avoid those moments when “two pieces if moving metal were about to bang together in a very big way.” And the face of the driver in the oncoming car seems frozen “as if in a candid photograph, looking ... with a mixture of bewilderment and apology.”1

That we are both standing here today is our testament that our road-trip had a happy ending and therefore contribute to our little family story.  Some road-trips do not especially if they are forced.

When the story of Genesis was transmitted to the people the Children of Israel were captives, strangers in a strange land. In a psalm that was a part of this family story they would say of this time: 

“By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat down, yea, we wept When we remembered Zion. We hung our harps Upon the willows in the midst of it. For there those who carried us away captive asked of us a song, And those who plundered us requested mirth, Saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How shall we sing the Lord’s song In a foreign land?’”2

 They needed a new family story.  And so, they remembered one.  It came from their oral history but it was not history it was more like pastoral care.  They needed to know that at the centre of their family story there was a creator that, in the beginning, made everything good, beautiful, lovely.  They needed to know that they were children of that creator and that no matter how tough times seemed they still belonged to them.

The temptation now is to wax grand eloquent of nature’s beauty and how good and gracious everything is, but the events of the last two days would make it seem like this preacher, or any preacher, has lost touch with reality.

Nature is not benign as posts from Facebook friends who live in the south has brought home in stark and saddening ways.  Pictures from the area in which they have a house, serve a parish, and attended conferences at the Montreat Conference Centre in North Carolina show washed out roads where as my Pastor friend Shannon Kershner, remembered she used to go for her regular runs.  A town square that she and her husband used to visit completely gone.  And one heartbreaking post from her: “Does anyone know if our house is still standing?”  Thankfully it was but there were many others that were not.

Nature can be cruel.  And sometimes the creatures that were given charge over the good world that was created can be even crueler.  The question: “Does anyone know if our house is still standing?” can be asked by countless thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza caught in a middle of a war they did not start.  It can be asked by the innocent men and woman of Somalia who are caught in the midst of marauders on both side seeming bent more on destruction than anything else.

All this may want us to hang our harps and our heads by the waters of Zion as we think of what is and what might be.

At such a time as this is is well that we take a moment to remember the Saint whose feast day we celebrate this day.  Saint Francis of Assisi is best known for being the patron saint of animals.  Many of us have statues of him in our yards honouring him for that but there is more to his family story.

Part of his family story included all of creation.  As Barbara Brown Taylor points out in her book An Altar in the World: Saint Francis of Assisi “loved singing hymns with his brothers and sisters that included not only Brother Bernard and Sister Claire but also brother sun and sister moon.  For him . . .  a single bird was as much a messenger of God as a cloud full of angels.”3

But so was every other human being Francis came in contact with and this was were his family story got him into trouble with the head of his family, his father, who intended his son to inherit all the wealth the family had amassed:

Taking the Bible quite literally, picking up whatever Jesus said or did and putting it on his to-do list for the day, Francis divested himself of his advantages, including his exquisite, fashionable clothing, which he gave away to the poor. His father, Pietro, a churchgoing, upstanding citizen, took exception, locked his son up for a time, and then sued him in the city square.4

It wasn’t a very nice thing for a churchgoing father to do to his bible-practicing son but that too was a part of his family story and can a part of ours, too.

When Jesus took his extended family out into the fields and invited them to look at the birds of the air and the flowers of the field he was reminding them of the creators care.  That’s a feel good message if there ever was one but it also comes with the charge St. Francis heard, to care for “the least, the last and the lost.”

When we do that “care for the least, the last, and the lost” we’ll be honouring the good creation that the creator has given us and our family story will be complete.

________________

1. Bill Bryson, In A Sunburned Country (Toronto, , ONT: Anchor Canada, 2012), 158.

2. Psalm 137:1-4. (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]

3. Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith (New York: HarperOne, 2010).

4. James Howell. “What Can We Say March 8? Lent 2A.” James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notions. Myers Park Presbyterian Church, January 1, 2019.

 

Pentecost 15B- "Own It"

 James 2:1-10 [11-13] 14-17

Saint Mark 7:24-37

Sometimes you just got to own it.  Much as you don’t want to.  Much as it hurts.  Much as it causes you to search deep into your soul, you just got to own it.

You may wonder how your friend found out.  You may wonder how he knows but then the letter comes from your friend Jimmy who is always reminding you that if you want to really follow Jesus you have to be different, act differently, than the rest of the world.  

You may wonder how he knows but he obviously does otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered to write you and your friends a letter to remind you that no matter how much faith you have, no matter how many pious phrases you can string together, your faith without works is, if not dead, at least on life support.

James {has} a letter that does not pull any punches. The rhetorical style of this passage is not intended to comfort and assure, but to jolt readers into action. Where some New Testament texts appear to draw a distinction between faith and works, James is rather blunt on the issue: faith without actions that evidence that faith is not actually faith at all.1

 Somehow, he has found out that even in your new, fledgling community, you are “trying to combine snobbery with faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ.”

Somehow word has gotten back to him that: “If a man enters your church wearing an expensive suit, and a street person wearing rags comes in right after him, and you say to the man in the suit, ‘Sit here, sir; this is the best seat in the house!’2 and either ignore the street person or say, ‘Better sit here in the back row,’ haven’t you segregated God’s children.”3

And we might say to ourselves: We don’t do that.  That isn’t us. That isn’t our church!  We’re a friendly congregation. Listen folks, every church in Christendom sees itself as a friendly congregation. 

In the history of Christendom, I have never heard a person when asked to tell me what they liked best about their church respond with: "I like how unfriendly we are."

But I’m willing to “own it” along with Dr. David Kech who, in a Christian Century article  wrote:

Maybe it is just me, and maybe I have been in too many churches with very tight budgets, but I can easily imagine that if there is any chance that this rich person is going to connect with the church, church leaders are suddenly imagining how they can finally pay for the repair to that failing air handler. A rich person represents many things: opportunity, respect, status, power, wealth. And all of these can be very useful. The church has needs, after all, and imagine what we could do with . . . And look how welcoming we are! We’ve just received this person with open arms.4

But what about everybody else?  Here “James is talking about something more daring.

James’s point is not to encourage the ushers to smile with equal warmth toward all who come to worship but instead to remind the church that in the economy of God’s grace, the very ones for whom the world has little regard have become the guests of honour in the household of God. 5

 That’s hard to remember.  Which may be why we have also before us this day the painful little encounter with Jesus and a woman who daughter was tormented by a demon.

No matter how many times I read this story I always wince at Jesus’ reaction to the woman whose daughter was suffering so badly that she would risk crossing national and social boundaries to get what she so desperately needs.

I have only been a dog-parent so I can only imagine how much more the feeling of anguish and helplessness parents get when their child is in trouble.  Parents have to be at wits end when they have tried everything and nothing has worked.  

That is where this Gentile woman is when she, desperate for help, drops to her knees in front of Jesus and begs him for his assistance.  And what does our sweet, gentle, Jesus say in response?  “It is not good to take the children’s food and throw it to the little dogs.”6

We are in shock!  The people at last Thursday’s on-line Bible study were flabbergasted. Some who were new to the faith had not ever heard this passage before.  Nobody told them about this side of Jesus and they rebelled.  One suggested that Jesus was just having a “bad day.”  (Like a ‘bad hair day?”) One wondered why Mark even included this little conversation in his gospel.  Why not leave it out so we could go on with our pristine vision of Jesus as the perfect one. 

They rebelled because nobody we know or even know of would ever call another human being a dog.  Nobody we know or even know of would ignore the pleas of a parent on behalf of a child.  Nobody we know or even know of would exclude a whole people because of their country of origin.  Nobody we know or even know of would act like that.  Those words are unacceptable out of anyone’s mouth and coming from the lips of Jesus they come like a slap on the side of the head.  These words leave our ears ringing.

I have always loved the way scholars have tried to soften the words and stop the ringing.  Gallons of ink and reams of paper have been spent trying to explain Jesus little outburst away.  This is not the Jesus we know or even want to know.  This is Jesus who is almost unrecognizable making us profoundly uncomfortable.

Some have suggested that it was simple exhaustion.  Others have suggested that when Jesus called her child a dog, he really meant a puppy.  

You know, a cute, little, adorable puppy who wakes you up seventeen times during the night to be let outside only to sniff around the yard for forty minutes trying to find just the right spot.  Oh yes, puppy makes everything better.

I stand second to none in my love for puppies and dogs but to refer to another person as a dog is to dehumanize them. So, what are we to do with this passage?  What are we to do with Jesus talking like this? 

With no other scholars I can find backing me up here is what I think, and I think this because of the events of the last few months.  If Jesus and scripture ever offered a critique of our society this would be it.

Remember who Jesus was.  He was a rabbi, a respected man in the community, whom people looked up and he is now calling another person a low life.

And think about her!  Who is she?  She is not only a woman who by law was forbidden to talk to a man in public who was not her husband.  Not only a woman but a woman from a country that many considered inferior full of “rapists, drug dealers, and other bad hombres.”  Think a member of a small, blown-to-bits community in Gaza asking a favour of some powerful Jewish politician.  They would think nothing of calling her a dog.

Think of a parent who lost a child or had a child injured in yet another school shooting turning to one of our politicians and having them reply with a shrug of the shoulders and telling them that: “I don’t like to admit this. I don’t like that this is a fact of life.”7  Not even so much as a crumb.

Around these two – Jesus and the woman – stands a crowd.  While some in that crowd may have been surprised at Jesus calling the woman’s child a dog perhaps another third was nodding their heads in agreement. 

“You tell her Jesus!” they might have been smiling and saying to themselves.  “This woman has no business bothering you!  You give her what for!”  As we look closer to agreeing faces and nodding heads, we see the worse in us and in our society and we have to own that.

But this is one strong woman!   She has Jesus and the rest of us in a very tough spot when she simply agrees with him saying: “Of course, Master.  But don’t dogs under the table get scraps dropped by the children?”8

She has him!  She has us!  We all have to own our part in this conversation just as much as we have to own the behaviour James was talking about.  Yet she has us.  This powerless woman has become the powerful one in the scene.

I cannot imagine Jesus losing an argument, given his ability to leave the powerful speechless. He often questions religious authority and quotes scripture to make points that religious leaders cannot refute. In other cases, he simply asks questions that leave his listeners confused and unsatisfied with their own ineffective answers.

And yet a Syrophoenician gentile woman is apparently able to win an argument with Jesus himself.9

She has Jesus and all the rest of us in a very tough spot because we have to answer a very difficult question: “Is the Gospel for everybody or is it only for a select few?” We have to own that often we have seen the Gospel as only for a select few who act like us, believe like us, look like us, love like us.  

In this strong, tough woman Jesus has met his match.  He had sparred with some of the brightest and best minds of his day is bested by someone who, in a single sentence has reminded Jesus and all of us that if the Gospel isn’t meant for everybody than is it really isn’t any meant for anybody?  We have to own our answer to that question too.

The always wonderful former Episcopal priest, Barbara Brown Taylor, brings us right into the centre of the scene. “You can almost hear the huge wheel of history turning as Jesus comes to a new understanding of who he is and what he has been called to do.”  The Syrophoenician woman’s faith and persistence teach him that God’s purpose for him “is bigger than he had imagined that there is enough of him to go around.”10

When he owns this and we own this eyes are opened.  There is more than enough of Jesus to go around.  There is more than enough of Jesus for everybody, everybody, who comes through the doors of our church.  There is more than enough of Jesus even for those people who would never even think of coming through the doors of our church.  There is more than enough of Jesus for everybody!

The Gospel isn’t dependent on who we are or what we are.  The Gospel isn’t dependent on status or orientation.  The Gospel is for everybody.  

Jesus has had a wakeup call with his little encounter with the woman.  Sometimes losing an argument can change us, help us grow, own our mistakes and learn from them.  

Jesus has learned and that is why no sooner is the deaf man brought to him he took him aside and healed him.  No outward show and, above all, no judgement, just a touch and a word. “‘Ephphatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened.”11

There will be times, I promise you, there will be times when Jesus will need to touch our ears too to help us live out the Gospel. Maybe Jesus will needs to shout or maybe just whisper to us “Ephphatha” in order that we may speak to each other, see each other,  the way Jesus has spoken to us, sees us.

We have to own the fact that there are times when we haven’t loved, don’t love, everybody as we should but the message of the Gospel is that when we don’t, Jesus does. With eyes wide open Jesus doesn’t stop at loving just you and me here in our Sunday best.

Jesus loves all of us and all of us equally.  There is not a sumptuous feast of his love for some and table scraps for others.  We don’t have to sit up and beg for his love.  We don’t even have to scrounge around on the floor looking for it.   Jesus’ love is here for everyone fully, completely, unreservedly.

When we own that message and own that sometimes we have fallen short when proclaiming it I think our ears and other people’s ears will be unstopped and they will join us in telling others the wonderful joy, and peace, and love that is to be found in Jesus who welcomes all.

Own that!  And then share it!  And eyes and ears will be opened.

________________

1.  Kelsie Rodenbiker, “Commentary on James 2:1-10 [11-13] 14-17,” Working Preacher, August 21, 2024, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-23-2/commentary-on-james-21-10-11-13-14-17-6.

2.    James 2:1. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (London, ENG: HarperCollins, 2000).]

3.   James 7:2-4. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2004).

4. David Keck, “‘Proclaiming God’s Abundance or Dwelling in Perceived Scarcity?’” The Christian Century, August 25, 2021, https://www.christiancentury.org/lectionary/september-5-ordinary-23b-james-2-1-17

5. Thomas G. Long, “God Is Partial,” The Christian Century, August 31, 2009, https://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2009-08/god-partial?

6. St.  Mark 7:27b.  (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]

7. Fancis Vinall, “JD Vance Calls Reality of School Shootings a Bleak ‘Fact of Life,’” washingtonpost.com, September 6, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/06/jd-vance-school-shootings/.

8. St.  Mark 7:29.  (MSG) 

9. Katie Van Der Linden, “Sunday’s Coming Premium: Can Jesus Lose an Argument?” The Christian Century, September 2, 2024, https://mailchi.mp/christiancentury/sundays-coming-premium-words-of-stability-and-hope-357512?e=58919ce9b

10. Debie Thomas, “Be Opened,” Journey with Jesus, September 2, 2018, https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/1907-be-opened.

11. St. Mark 7:34. (NRSVUE) [The New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition]

Pentecost 14B - "Wash Your Hands"

 

Saint Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-21

"Every day Mama said, You’re going to crack your head wide open, but no sir. I broke my arm instead.”1 That little gem from The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingslover that I mentioned last week perfectly sums up most of our childhoods. Except, I hope for the broken arm part.

Every child has heard a variation on these words and every adult has probably said them.

“Don’t run with scissors,” was one of the mantras.

“Be careful when you are crossing the street.” was good and helpful advise especially in Chicago where we believe that even if you are in a crosswalk, once you have stepped off the sidewalk you are fair game.”

Most of us were told that we had to wait forty-five minutes after eating before we could go swimming.  According to the Mayo Clinic website, "We know now that really there is no scientific basis for that recommendation," and that “this is not a dangerous activity to routinely enjoy."2

Some warnings came with a warning. My aunt used to say whenever an activity hinted of danger: “If you hurt yourself, don’t come crying to me.” 

My mother, on the other hand, had perhaps the strangest admonition of all when my friends and I were roughhousing in the pool and she would call out, “Mind your spleen.”  I was never quite sure what she was getting at, but my former professor of Anatomy and Physiology partner assures me that rupturing a spleen probably would not be caused by high school guys horsing around in a swimming pool.

Perhaps the most display of impending doom came in A Christmas Movie when after a lot of coaxing  little Ralphie finally remembered to tell Santa that what he really wanted was a Red Ryder Carbine Action Air Rifle and Santa said: “You’ll shoot your eye out kid.”  Santa was right! He probably would have.

Not long ago, however, there was one command that all of us heeded: “Wash your hands!”

For those of us who made it through without the loss of a loved one or someone we knew it is hard to believe that it was only four years ago, in 2020, that a pandemic swept this nation and the world.  In events that are probably best forgotten but seared in our memories, everything virtually shut down. 

Remember how difficult those days were for the church?  At first, we couldn’t gather at all, the dangers were just too great.  So we all scrambled to get something, anything, online.  

Then when we did come back it was only at a social distance.  We sat six feet apart.  We were cautious about everything and most of all about washing our hands.  We washed our hands and then we washed our hands again.  When we didn’t think washing would be enough, we used anti-bacterial gel by the bucketful.  We spritzed it on our hands when we came in the door.  

At Our Saviour in Aurora, we stationed a couple of people at the head of the aisle to give it another shot before we came forward, almost one at a time, for communion.  And we didn’t follow all the rules out of some kind of blind obedience but because we loved and cared for each other.    We acted like it was a matter of life and death because it was.

For neither the disciples or, for that matter, those who challenged them it was not so. 

Most of us would have looked at this scene and responded at best with a “Huh?  What’s got you so upset?  So they didn’t wash their hands? So what?”  Had my aforementioned Aunt been there she might have said, “Who cares? You have to eat a bushel of dirt before you die.”

It certainly wasn’t about germs. Nobody even knew they existed until Louis Pasteur and his colleague Joseph Lister came along in the 1860's.3

The disciples were in no danger of dying but they were rankling some feathers.  As George F. Will said once: “Some people only feel half alive if they are not upset about something” Today the watchers and the holy ones are harping on hygiene. 

As Dr. Thomas G. Long observed:

It gets rolling when some scribes and Pharisees notice that Jesus’ disciples eat without first washing their hands or their food, and they ask Jesus for an explanation. Admittedly, their choice of phrasing turns their question into something of a cocked revolver: “Why do your disciples eat with unwashed hands instead of following the ancient and holy traditions?” which is roughly equivalent to saying, “Why have you chosen to play golf today instead spending Sunday in church as almighty God has commanded?” This isn’t a question; it’s an accusation.

It clearly provokes Jesus’ rage, setting him off on a long, passionate, sometimes sarcastic speech aimed mainly at his inquisitors. He begins nearly at full throttle...4

 In J. B. Phillips masterful paraphrase, Jesus replies:  

“You hypocrites, Isaiah described you beautifully when he wrote—‘This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. And in vain they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”5

 Let’s all catch our breath for a moment and try to understand where everybody is coming from in this battle of words.  Maybe it would be a good idea to, instead of vilifying the Pharisees with a knee-jerk response, to try and see where they are coming from. “Their goal was to help ordinary people become more observant of the law as a way of affirming or reinforcing their Jewish identity” while living in “the Roman Empire and in the diverse culture of the Mediterranean World."6

So, “they tried to live by purity laws in their daily lives ... because they believed this honored God.”7

So the sloppy disciples, shoveling food in their faces without taking so much of a second to wash their hands were believed to be dishonouring God.  The only thing the Pharisees are guilty of is exhibiting is a case of gross over generalization. 

Yet is it any wonder why Jesus drove them crazy.  He seemed to have a flagrant disregard for the same ritual purity they held so dear.  He was always ignoring Sabbath laws by healing people – even people who did not show an immediate need – the Sabbath.  He touched a leper and a woman who had suffered for years. And now his disciples were behaving like slobs.  

What if everybody did this?  What would become of their well-ordered lives?  And, even worse for the keepers of religious traditions, what would become of their faith? 

As Debbi Thomas observes and then asks:

Again, it’s easy for us to look down on the Pharisees, as if we in our enlightened modernity would never make their mistakes.  But honestly, are we any different?  Don’t we sometimes behave as if we’re finished products, with nothing new to discover about the Holy Spirit’s movements in the world?  Don’t we cling to spiritual traditions and practices that long ago ceased to be life-giving, simply because we can’t bear to change “the way we’ve always done things?”  Don’t we set up religious litmus tests for each other, and decide who’s in and who’s out based on conditions that have nothing to do with Jesus’s open-hearted love and hospitality?8

 We sure do! We do it every time we, as some of my Episcopalian friends would say half in earnest and half in jest. “You worship God in your way and we in hers.”

When we think not only that we’ve got everything figured out and that our ways are the best ways we freeze time and there is no room for growth, or worse yet, understanding others who are not like us.

So folks, we live in a time where the same tensions exist that existed in Jesus’ day. 

Some people think that rules are of no consequence and that rules and laws and ordinances and statues are about nothing other than restricting and restraining.  You want to spoil my fun with all your rules and regulations!  You want to limit what I can do when I want to do it!  That is not what Jesus is talking nor the Pharisees are talking about.  Neither are talking about fence building but rather living life with constant reminders – like washing hands – of the presence of God who invites us to a way of living in which life becomes all that it can be.

Yes, there are rules.  Rules that prevent us from falling on our head, or breaking our arm, shooting our eye out, or even on very rare occasions, rupturing our spleen.  And they all our based on the most important rule of all given to us by Jesus as a summation of all the law and the prophets. “{Y}ou shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’  And ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’”9

And, if that is too much for you?  Well then. At least wash your hands every once and awhile.

________________

1. Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2022), 116.

2. https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-minute-should-you-wait-30-minutes-to-swim-after-eating

3. “Germ Theory,” Encyclopædia Britannica, August 16, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/science/germ-theory.

4. Thomas G. Long, “Moral Words, Evil Deeds. (Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23),” The Christian Century, August 25, 2009, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2009-08/moral-words-evil-deeds

5. St. Mark 7:6-8. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (London, ENG: HarperCollins, 2000).

6. Cynthia Campbell, “Ordinary #22B (Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23),” The Christian Century, August 22, 2006, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2006-08

7. Sandra Hack Polaski, “Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23,” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year B, 3 (Louisville: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2021): 276–78.

8. Debie Thomas, “True Religion,” Journey with Jesus, August 22, 2021, https://journeywithjesus.net/essays/3122-true-religion.

9. St. Mark 12:30-31. (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]