"Getting Back on the Right Track" - Pentecost 23B

St.  Mark 10:17-31

“Getting Back On the Right Track”

Last Thursday I ushered for the memorial service of a titan of Chicago business.  His family was huge in publishing and when the need for their product was made obsolete by the internet he turned that fortune into an even bigger fortune in financial services.

Close to three hundred people attended the funeral which became a celebration of him.  His brothers talked about his business acumen.  His son talked about all the places his father took the family for vacations and his daughter spoke about how he taught her the value of a dollar.

This guy has so much money and was such a big fan of train travel that what he used to do was lease a private car to take his family and friends across the country for their vacations.  As a rail fan I must admit I was becoming a little jealous of all the places they visited - the California Coast, the U.S. and Canadien Rockies, the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest.  All viewed from the back of a private car stocked with fine food, top shelf liqueur, and the highest quality cigars.  (I would skip the cigars!)
Admittedly he was a larger than life character.

When it came to the homily the preacher was the priest in charge of a large social service agency for the Archdiocese of Chicago.

He took off on the topic of trains and how they were made up.  It was a pretty good idea.

 The baggage car was where the man placed all his accomplishments.  The second car was the business associates.  The third was friends while the private car was for family.

Preacher that I am I kept waiting for God to be mentioned and when Father turned his attention towards the engine I thought it had.  You know, God pulling you through the tough times and giving you the energy to move forward in life.  But no, Jim the deceased was the engine. 

Then he talked about the couplings between cars.  Once again my mind turned to God.  Surely it was God who kept us all bound together.  Nope, that was Jim too.

In the homily God was nowhere to be found - not even the caboose.

As we were walking out of the service another one of the ushers said to me: “There were a lot of egos in that room.  So many that there wasn’t any room for God.”

The funeral train went off the tracks because there wasn’t any room left for God.  Riches, the man’s personality and his lucrative business career didn’t leave much room for God because he was so successful.

I wonder if he ever thought to ask the question another rich, successful, man asked of Jesus.  “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”1

Most people don’t give the rich guy kneeling in front of Jesus much credit for coming up with such a really good question.  Instead they try to psychoanalyze him.  Something must have been missing in his life.  Maybe managing all his money was burden too great to handle?  Maybe he was rich in things but poor in spirit?  Or, maybe he had a great question that he just had to ask about eternal life and how to get it?

Jesus doesn’t care to talk to the man about his psyche, or even his spiritual being, he asks the man about his actions. 

His commandment keeping score is outstanding.  This man has a lot going for him.  If we were Jesus we’d snap him up in a nano-second as a member of our church.  He’s pious and he’s rich!  What more could you ask for in a member of the congregation.

Instead of signing him up Jesus gives him an assignment with a demand so high that it is impossible to meet.  He tells him to “Go, sell everything you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”2

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 that for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Scholars have wasted gallons of ink trying to explain this away.

Some have suggested that is was a mistranslation of the word camel.  In the Greek a simple vowel change can make the word for camel into the word for rope.  Nope.

Then there was the interpreter [who around 850AD] came up with the brilliant idea that there was a low gate into Jerusalem called “the eye of the needle,” through which camel could squeeze in if unburdened. Get it! If we let go of some of our stuff we can indeed get through the needle’s eye. Sorry, no such gate ever existed.3

 So what are we left with?  I think we are left with Jesus telling us about our 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.


That is the God Jesus tells us to put our trust in.

If we continue to put our trust in what we have accomplished, or what we have, or our 401(k)s (And hasn’t that been a scary ride this past week?) we are going to be on the wrong track.

Trust God more than the laundry list of characters and things Jesus goes on to describe and the train will be back on track. 

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”4

We’ll be free to serve God and our neighbors without any thought of reward.  We’ll be free to serve God and our neighbors 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 and think about all that God can do with us and through us 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. 

That’s all Jesus asks of us. All he asks is that we follow him and if we do people will say of us - whether we are rich or poor - at least, they were always on the right track.

Thanks for listening.

____________

1.  St.  Mark 10:18b.  (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

2.  St. Mark 10:21. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

3.  William H. Willimon, ""How Hard to Be a Disciple"," Pulpit Resource, B, 46, no. 4 (October 1, 2018), p. 8.

4.  Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life, (Cowley Publications, Cambridge, Massachusetts), p.121-126.

"Calvinball" - Pentecost 20

Exodus 19:3-7 & 20:1-17

Every other Tuesday morning a group of men gathers in the downtown offices of the Kirkland and Ellis Law Firm to study scripture.  Most of them are members of The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago and somehow, in ways too convoluted for a sermon, I got recruited to attend and help keep the guys biblically and theologically on track.

It is mostly led by the laity but every once an awhile one of the retired pastors who attend steps up to lead.  I chose last Tuesday because I was preaching here and wanted to do a good job.  ☺

The first question I asked them was: “How would you preach this text?” 
One of the brighter lights in this group responded (and I am not making this up!)   “I would probably find the equivalent in a couple of other religions and societies: Buddhism, Hinduism, the code of Hammurabi and see what they have in common.”

Now I ask you, when was the last time you heard a sermon on the code of Hammurabi?  Probably never and your not going to hear one today because I like you a lot and I’d like to be asked back.

Instead we are going to ease ourselves into shallower waters, much shallower waters, by beginning with what the children and I were talking about together with Calvin-ball.

It was a game invented by Bill Watterson for his two comic strip characters - a young boy who was an only child named Calvin and whose best friend who was a stuffed Tiger named Hobbes who could be seen in action only by Calvin and the readers of the comic strip.

It is not that Calvin-ball didn’t have any rules it is just that Calvin and Hobbes made the rules up as they played.  So, one moment a tree would be the goalpost and the next, on a whim, it would be the fence, or a fireplug, or the house.  Inbounds and out-of-bounds lines would change at a moments notice.  What was fair and what was foul was always open to interpretation and reinterpretation.  It was a crazy game that usually ended up with them getting hurt, getting angry, or getting in trouble.

If you are like me and have been walking around with your stomach in a knot over what has been going on in our nation and metropolitan area since we have seen each other1  I suggest that it is because we have found ourselves caught up in a game of Calvin-ball where rules are enforced or unenforced on a whim and there is no longer any in-bounds or out of bounds causing people - sometimes innocent and sometimes guilty - get hurt.

The fact of the matter is that we need rules and the Ten Commandments are a very good place to start.

They are known to our Hebrew sisters and brothers as as "the ten words", "the ten sayings", or "the ten matters".

They are words about two very important matters: How we are to relate to God and how we are to relate to our neighbors. 

Legend has it that the first three - which deal with our relationship to God - were inscribed on one of the two tablets Moses carried down from the mountain while the other tablet contained the “sayings” about how we are to relate to our neighbors. 

People have viewed them through Christian eyes as being cruciform.  The trunk of the cross being the three that talk about God and the crossbeam the other seven about how we should live our daily lives.

We know them.

Those of us who come from the Lutheran tradition and endured confirmation classes memorized them along with Luther’s explanation of them in his Small Catechism to the point where the words: “You should so fear and love God” send shivers down our spines.  Not because of our fear of God as much as having to stand in front of the class and recite them from memory.

We know that they are the framework upon which almost all civil law is built.  And if we read on in Exodus we see them forming what almost looks like a civil code that covers almost everything from marriage rites to property rites to what you should do with the local psychic.  The answer to that last one is the very extreme, “put them to death.”

Hebrew scholar Michael Carasik, known for his The Bible Guy blog reminds us:

Everyone is familiar with the image, made famous in art and so much a part of how we think of the Bible that it is used in movies and cartoons, of Moses coming down the mountain with two stone tablets that have the Ten Commandments engraved on them. But not everyone remembers that, when Moses finally did come down the mountain, [in Exodus 32] he saw the Israelites worshiping the Golden Calf, lost his temper, and broke the stone tablets.2

 It is at this point it is almost as if a game of Calvin-ball breaks out. 

Moses seems to be taking forever and the people conclude that something must have happened to him.  So, they turn to Aaron and ask him to build for them a golden calf which he does.  “The people exclaimed, ‘O Israel, this is the god that brought you out of Egypt.’”\\

It isn’t.  But this is what happens when you are making things up as you go along.  Suddenly you can make a god out of anything - gold, money, power, prestige, you name it and humanity can make a god out of it.

When inning becomes our god we can celebrate when our side wins and another side loses.  We can tell ourselves then that the ends really did justify the means.   Rules from God and even the rules we made up get changed in mid-game and people wind up, just as they did in Calvin-ball, hurt, angry or, when adults play, even destroyed.

Listen to how  Eugene Peterson paraphrased the scene in The Message:

Early the next morning, the people got up and offered Whole-Burnt-Offerings and brought Peace-Offerings. The people sat down to eat and drink and then began to party. It turned into a wild party!

 God spoke to Moses, “Go! Get down there! Your people whom you brought up from the land of Egypt have fallen to pieces. They made a molten calf and worshiped it. God said to Moses, “I look at this people—oh! what a stubborn, hard-headed people! Let me alone now, give my anger free reign to burst into flames and incinerate them.3

 .
God is angry because at this wild, wild party the people had not only a good old time at the punch bowl but a good old time at the finger bowl.  They were doing all the stuff to each other that God had expressly forbidden including treating each other like physical objects instead of human beings.  If the first three commandments bit the dust with making of the golden calf the last seven were smashed to bits in the wild party that ensued. 

I think that when we treat others like that God does get angry.

A conservative rabbi, Louis Ginzberg, stated in his book Legends of the Jews, that Ten Commandments are virtually entwined, that the breaking of one leads to the breaking of another.3

And it doesn’t take much to see that in our day either.  Think of the turmoil we put ourselves through.  A nation and a city on edge  is no party.  Being  separated from God as we are separating into tribes that won’t even listen to each other is no picnic.  This is Calvin-ball turned into something ugly when it gets played at this kind of high stakes level. 

You and I know that.  We know it is not right to be angry and divided from one another.  We know it is not right to believe or disbelieve somebody because they don’t belong to our tribe.  We know it is not right to kill one another by our words and certainly not by our deeds.  We know we are breaking God’s heart and leading to our own destruction whenever we start to follow our own wills and ways instead of listening to God.

Another one of the guys in my bible study shared a cartoon from The New Yorker that shows Moses holding the commandment tablets and yelling at God: “Now, how about some affirmations to balance all this negativity?”

How about this affirmation to balance things out?  Jesus said: “I give you a new commandment that you love one another just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

This means that we treat one another in a vastly different manner, see each other from a vastly different angle, feel compassion for one another.

More directly it means that we see every survivor of abuse as if they really were a faberge egg.  It means we weep with and for the families of victims.  It means we look beyond our tribal and political loyalties and reject those who would try to capture hurt and pain for their own political purposes.  It means we love those who are injured in the process.  It means that in all we do  we strive for healing that love may triumph.

Saint Paul was right!

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant  or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;  it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.4

At the end of every game of Calvin-ball Calvin and Hobbes, broken, bruised and angry as they might have been, make up.  Their love never for each other never fails, never ends.

Let’s hope that we, all of us, everywhere, everyone who bear the name of Christ, can do as well or better, than a cartoon boy and his pretend tiger.

 Thanks for listening. 

_____________

1.  This sermon was preached on the weekend when the McDonald/Vandyke trial concluded and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court was confirmed.

2.  Mark Rooker,  The Ten Commandments: Ethics for the Twenty-First Century.  (Nashville, Tennessee: B&H Publishing Group, 2010), p. 3.

3.  Michael Carasik, "The Ten Commandments," The Bible Guy, April 20, 2014, , accessed October 06, 2018, https://mcarasik.wordpress.com/2014/04/20/the-ten-commandments/.

4.  Exodus 32:4.  (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible]

5.  Exodus 32:6-10.  (MSG) [MSG= The Message]

6.  Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, trans. Henrietta Szolt, vol. 3, 5 vols. (New York, NY: Jewish Publication Society of North America, 1969).

7.  St.  John 13:34-35.  (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

"All In the Same Boat" - Pentecost 19B

Saint Mark 9:38-59

There is and old saying from the African American Church that goes: “We Americans came to America on different ships but we’re all in the same boat now.”2

You may not feel this way and after the events of last week you would be well within your rights.1
  
Who lives like this?  Who talks like this?  Who can be this angry all the time?  Apparently some in Washington have made careers out the encouraging the belief that “we are split between hostile groups, each with its own TV networks, fast-food chains and sporting apparel - FOX News vs.  MSNBC, Chick-fil-A vs. Chipotle, Under Armour vs.  Nike.

But all of those great divides says Steve Chapman, editorial board member of the Chicago Tribune, is “an image from a fun-house mirror, composed of mis-leading distortions.”

Independents now make up a plurality of the public.  Self-described moderates outnumber either liberals or conservatives. [And]most people don’t spend much time watching cable news.
Most people are not very conservative or very liberal.  But “the middle has no home in either party.”3

Still politicians in their ads and by their actions try to divide.  They tempt us to come to the conclusion: “A plague on both your houses.” No more of this he said/she said!  No more of this “well I may be a crook or a kook but my opponent is a bigger one.”  No more of this mud slinging.  No more of this “I’ve made up my mind, don’t confuse me with the facts.” A plague on both of you. 

And the reason why some of us give up is that their behavior is godless.   “Washington is a place,” said Mark Shield of the PBS NewsHour, “where everybody is expected to belong to a church or synagogue but nobody is expected to go.”

So they probably have never heard of this encounter with Jesus and his disciples about who is “for us” and who is “against us.”

The disciples were more than put off by a man who was using Jesus’ name to cast out demons.

It could be that they had just tried to do the very same thing themselves only a few hours earlier by Mark’s time and failed.  They had just tried to cure someone of the very same malady and came up empty.  They also may have been upset about this or they may have been upset that the other guy may not have been following Jesus for as long or as closely as they had been.  To them he is just one upstart doing what they couldn’t do so they stop him.

If it had been our day they might have said, “Call the legal department!  File an injunction!  Charge him with copyright violation or patent infringement – anything to stop him from poaching on our territory.”

As usual, Jesus does something that is completely unexpected, counter intuitive.  He says: “Do not stop him.  For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad against me.”4

Then he goes on to tell us what we should be doing.  “Why, anyone by just giving you a cup of cold water in my name is on our side.  Count on it that God will notice.”5

Bible commentator David Donovan told about his daughter “hiking the Pacific Coast Trail, a 2600 mile trek through desert and mountains. She has been blessed at numerous points by “Trail Angels” – people who provide water or other support.  My wife and I thank God for the Trail Angels.  Never once have we suggested to our daughter that she should check their doctrinal beliefs before accepting their aid.”5

There is always the temptation to ask a lot of question or at least wonder about their motives.  Do they want something from me?  Are they trying to get my vote or convert me to their church?  And that’s only about a cup of water!

The nation and the church can become divided over deeper issues.  Democrat/Republican, Liberal/Conservative, Red State/Blue State, you name it politicians can fight about it while the ship of state sinks.

The church isn’t much better.  Mega-churches/Local churches; liturgical/contemporary, fundamentalist/mainline, those who do/those who don’t...  You can fill in the blank for what ever those dos and don’t are.   

My partner grew up in a really, really, really, conservative church in the very northwest corner of Iowa.  His church was one of those “don’t churches”.  They didn’t like the Presbyterians because they were a social club.  They didn’t like the Episcopalians because they were a country club.  And they didn’t like the Lutherans because all they did was drink beer.  My first guess is that the people in those other churches didn’t have very nice things to say about them either.  There were leaks in the ship of the church.

My second guess is that all of them were doing a good work - giving that cup of cold water, if you will, in Jesus name.

Yet they were all cut off from each other for reasons that Jesus describes as no less than being trashy.

Somehow a word got mistranslated in today’s gospel.  The word “hell” in our text in the original Greek is Gehenna and comes from the Hebrew, ge Hinnon, the Valley of Hinnon,  which was the place were all the rubbish from Jerusalem was taken to be burned.  It was a stinking, steaming, garbage dump.

The church has always been referred to as the body of Christ and so what Jesus is saying in a very graphic way is that if there is anything in us that is hindering us or any of his little ones from following him it must be removed lest we wind up literally “down in the dump”.  If there is anything that is causing the church to be divided we need to find out what it is and do anything we can to remove it so that the body of Christ might be united in witness to a world that desperately needs what we have to give.

I’ve come to believe that maybe God doesn’t see what we think are divisions in the same way we do.  I think that while it is not my cup of tea God may like a little “smooth jazz” in worship on a Sunday morning. I’d like to think that while you and I like a formal, structured worship God may like the freedom of those non-liturgical churches or the blessed silence of a Quaker meeting.  I think that God can like the “smells and bells” of what the Anglican or Episcopal church call, with tongue firmly planted in their cheeks, “a smoking service” while at the same time enjoying the red hot emotion of a charismatic revival.

The saying about America can also be said about the way we approach God.  We may have come on different ships but we are all in the same boat now.

And we are to sail on by being salt and light to a world that seems to be sinking deeper and deeper into the bland, bland, darkness.

In one paraphrase of Scripture Jesus says, “Don’t lose your flavor!  Live in peace with one another.” 7

How do we do that?  By coming to the conclusion that people who are not against us are really on our side.  That even if we disagree with them, about religion or politics, or what sports team to root for (Even the Packers or the Bears!) they can still be our sisters and brothers in Christ. 

By admitting that, by and large, very few evil people have ever walked this earth.  And concluding that we all need each other because we are all in the same boat.

Let the motto of Northwestern University, my Alma Mater, borrowed from Saint Paul, be our guide:

Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. [Do this} and the God of peace will be with you.8

May the God of peace be with us as we salt of the earth people sail on trying to be a light for the world.

Thanks for listening.

____________

1. Sermon was preached during the confirmation hearings for an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

2.  Clarence Page, "Even in Our Diverse Tribes, We're Still Americans," Chicago Tribune, September 26, 2018, Morning ed., sec. 1; p.  19.

3.  Steve Chapman, "A Polarized America? Not Quite," Chicago Tribune, September 23, 2018, Sunday ed., sec. 1; p.  24.

4.  St.  Mark 9:38.  (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

5.  St.  Mark 9: 41.  (MSG) [MSG=The Message]

6.  David Donovan, "Salt & Fire," Sermon Writer: Making Preaching More of a Joy, September 13, 2018, , accessed September 28, 2018, https://www.sermonwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/2018-09-30-Proper21B.doc.

7.   St.  Mark 9:50.  (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible]

8.   Philippians 4:8-9.  (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]