Sermon-Sunday, September 24th

Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
In this week’s Gospel lesson, once again we see a situation in which the disciples display a lack of understanding of something that Jesus has just told them. But before you condemn the disciples too much, take into consideration everything that they have seen and what Jesus has said to them before this. Leading up to this Jesus had spoke to them in parables and metaphors, He had performed miraculous deeds and told them not to tell anyone. Immediately before this, Moses and Elijah appeared to a small group of these disciples during the transfiguration of Jesus, and the disciples also struggled to grasp the full meaning of that event.
But now, Jesus is not speaking in parables and metaphors. He is not performing a miraculous feet or appearing to them in a blinding white light. He is speaking to them in a literal, and straightforward manner. So really, who could blame them for being confused?
When He tells them, and us through the Gospel, that He would be betrayed into human hands, and killed, and three days later He would rise again, that is what He means. This is not a metaphor or a parable that He is talking about. He is talking about what is literally going to happen to Him and what did happen to Him.
And, when Jesus finally starts to speak clearly to the disciples, they still don’t understand what He is saying, and they were afraid to ask. Then they start arguing and we learn in the Gospel lesson that they were arguing about who was the greatest, presumably among them. Now this could mean they were arguing about which, of them, would hold the highest place in Heaven. It could also mean that they were arguing about who, among them, would actually replace Jesus after He left, showing that clearly they did not understand yet what the cross was about and what it would lead to. Either way they display a strong lack of understanding not only of what Jesus said, but who Jesus is.
Here they are, in the midst of their Lord Christ Jesus who was trying to say something to them and they couldn’t get it right. They couldn’t grasp what Jesus was saying. Here, our Lord is telling them about the very event that would define His ministry. He is telling them about something horrible and painful that He is preparing to go through, and the disciples make it about themselves.
So, what about you? When God tries to say something to you, how good are you at listening and hearing what He says? When God says something to you in His word, do you always understand it perfectly clear? If we did, then would we have the divisiveness that is so prevalent in the Body of Christ?
Certainly you all have your favorite verses and passages in God’s word that you consider your favorites because they speak to you on a very personal level. Maybe some of you are really fond of John 3:16 or psalm 23. I myself particularly like Romans 8:37-39 where Paul writes of nothing being able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. And these are all important verses and passages. We need the comfort, hope, and security that the Holy Spirit brings us through the eternal words of promise contained in those verses.
But what about when God speaks to you in a way that challenges you? Do you understand it then, or do you simply nod in agreement as if you do understand? Or do you maybe understand it, but tell yourself that the challenge that is being issued doesn’t apply to you because you feel like you’re OK. That way you are able to keep it at a safe distance. Basically what this comes down to is that sometimes you are just not prepared to hear what God has to say to you, or prepared to do what God might be challenging you to do. That is at the heart of the disciple’s confusion.
As the events unfold a little bit further in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus tells the disciples that whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. No doubt that you have heard this passage many times. But have you ever really thought about what it means for you? After all this isn’t just something that He says to the disciples, He says it to you also.
Do you think about what it means to be "last of all and servant of all?" Do you stop to think how completely counter that is to the worldview that we often see not just in the world but far too often in the church? Or, like the disciples, do you make it about you? Do you see yourself as one of the "first" to whom Jesus is saying must have their perspectives changed so that they become "last" and "servants of all."
Or do you keep yourself at a safe distance from the calling that Jesus gives you here by limiting the "first" whom Jesus refers to, to those that our western, consumer-driven culture would consider to be "first;" celebrities, politicians, millionaires, billionaires etc.
This of course would enable you to see this calling as a call for other people to serve all, but not for you. You’re not among those whom our culture would consider to be "first." You’re not a celebrity or a millionaire. Right? However, is that really an honest reading of it when you consider that by virtue of the fact that you have a home with a roof over your head and eat three meals a day, you are among the wealthiest 5% of the earth’s population ? This call to be a servant of all is extended to all of us, regardless of our income level.
In today’s lesson, Jesus also tells you that if you welcome a child in His name, you welcome Him and the one who sent Him. Do you think that Jesus used children here because of their innocence and purity? Perhaps a little bit and that is how the text has been understood over the years. But, in Jesus’ time, the idea of welcoming a child the way Jesus spoke of would have been very counter-cultural. Children were not given much status. They were seen as non-persons. They were seen more as property. The idea of welcoming children as people would have been inconceivable.
But that is the call that Jesus has extended to you, the call to extend that inconceivable grace and hospitality. When someone new comes into this community, this church, or even your home, do you welcome them as a child? When someone who seems unusual and perhaps even exhibits strange behavior comes into your familiar territory, do you get uncomfortable, do you silently wish they would leave, or do you reach out to them, love them, and welcome them as the child of God that they are? That is what you are called to do.
You are among the "first" whom Jesus calls to be "last of all" and "servant of all." This is not because of any material wealth that you have or don’t have. It has nothing to do with that. You are among the "first" because of what your Lord Christ Jesus has first done for you. On the cross, Christ Jesus took your sin and gave you His righteousness. He became last so that you would be first. And in baptism, as you were marked with the cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit, Your Lord welcomed you into His family as the beloved child of God that you are.
And now, in us the church, our Lord continues this counter-cultural work which defies logic, this work of becoming last of all and servant of all. And we do this in light of the eternal promise that in Christ Jesus we are loved, and embraced, and welcomed into His eternal kingdom among the "first."
Amen

Sermon-Sunday, September 10th

Isaiah 35:4-7a , James 2:1-10 [11-13] 14-17 , Mark 7:24-37

Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I'm going to start today by giving you some bad news. I'm going to burst your bubble this morning. What I am going to tell you this morning might just shock you. But you need to know this. OK, here it comes. This is what I have to tell you, "You are not among God’s first choice." There are some who were among God’s people before you. Oh you might have your moments where you pull yourself up by your pietistic boot straps and think that surely you must be among the blessed chosen race. But you’re not.
How do I know this? One word; gentile. That is what you are. You are gentiles. Webster’s defines the word gentile this way a person of a non-Jewish nation or of non-Jewish faith; especially : a Christian as distinguished from a Jew. You are not Jewish, and you come from a non-Jewish nation. You are gentiles, you are not among God’s people Israel. The second definition o that Webster’s gives is simply the words heathen or pagan. That’s you, you are gentiles, you are heathen, and you are not among God’s first choice.
Your are like the woman in today’s Gospel lesson. Our gospel lesson refers to this woman as a gentile of Syrophoenician origin. Now, in a worldly sense, being a gentile today doesn’t mean the same thing in our culture that it means in other cultures. But in ancient Jewish culture, just about everything this woman does in today’s lesson would have been considered taboo.
Coming to Jesus, possibly even touching Him and talking to Him in public, in ancient society, would have been considered extremely taboo for a gentile, woman to do in ancient society. For this woman to do what she did, to violate all of these customs of the day, she would have been taking a tremendous risk. It begs the question, would you have the guts to take that kind of risk?
After she asks Jesus to cast the demon out of her daughter, Jesus then even acknowledges this woman’s status in society, when He says to her "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." This woman that He is speaking to is among the dogs that He speaks of, she is among the dogs, which means we must be also.
But she is not dismayed by this. She fully acknowledges her status in her culture by referring to herself as a dog when she says to Jesus "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Jesus responds to her by saying that because of what she has said, she may go and promises her that the demon has left her daughter.
Now what Jesus meant by referring to her as a dog is not clear. There are all sorts of theories that attempt to explain it away. All throughout scripture the term dog is usually not used in a very complimentary way. Revelation 22 says "Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood."
Jesus is the very source of new life and we read in Revelation that by referring to her as a dog, Jesus was lumping this woman in with people like idolaters, and murderers and other people whom, it was believed, should not have access to the tree of life. In essence, as a gentile, like you, this woman should not have even had access to Jesus.
Jesus also could have been using the word as a common household metaphor which very likely may not have been understood as an insult. Whatever the reason was why Jesus referred to this woman as a dog, that is not the point of the passage. That is not where we find the heart of this encounter. Dwelling on the question of why Jesus referred to this woman as a dog is not where you find the great truth in this encounter. The most important element of the encounter between our Lord Jesus and this woman who, like you, was not among God’s first chosen people, was how Jesus responded to her humble request.
Jesus responds with new life. He grants this person who, in the eyes of many in her culture should not have even had access to Jesus, the new life for her daughter that she was asking for. She doesn’t try to impress Jesus with her own personal piety, but rather she acknowledges her low status and our Lord reaches out to her and gives her new life.
She remains in her low, cultural status but that is because the new life that Jesus brings to her and to you is not about raising you in an earthly and material level. It’s not about bumping you up to the next income level.
Much like in the OT lesson where we read of God’s promise to the exiled people of Israel that He will come and save them, what God is doing in Christ Jesus is bringing about something new. He makes Himself visible and He brings salvation to all of God’s people, be they Jew or gentile, be they rich or poor or whatever. In reaching out to this woman who had been pushed to the margins of society, Jesus answers the questions that James asks in the second lesson for this week.
God has chosen the poor in this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, and yes faith in Christ Jesus saves you. James asks does faith save you, and the answer is yes. When James says that faith that has no works is dead, he is not saying that faith is not enough for your salvation. He is not saying that your faith must be confirmed through your own personal efforts. He is not denying that you are saved by faith. All through out the Gospels there are stories of encounters that Jesus has with people where He tells them that their faith has made them well.
What James is saying is that yes you have been saved by faith, you have been freed from the bondage of your sin, now go share that joy with the world. Go tell your fellow gentiles, Jews, and heathens, your fellow sinners that they, like you have been chosen by God.
James mentions the law in this passage, but he doesn’t speak of the law as something that binds us, he speaks of the law of liberty. This is the freedom that you experience through the blessed gift of faith. This is the freedom that you experience because of the new life that you have been given in baptism. In baptism you have been claimed by the cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit, and you have been freed to live on the joy of the law of liberty.
This is the law that gives you the same freedom that we see at the end of the Gospel lesson for today where this group who, upon seeing Jesus heal a man of his deafness and give him the ability to speak, were so moved that they couldn’t help but go and tell everyone what they had seen.
The law of liberty that James speaks of frees you to live out the two commandments that Jesus promises can fulfill all the law and the prophets; the command to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind, and the command to love your neighbor. The law of liberty frees you to do what James writes of; to supply people their bodily needs, to share the Gospel with words and action, to not just tell people of the love of Christ, which is important, but to also show them with your actions. You do this not to as a way to know that you have been saved by faith, but rather because you have been saved by faith.
It doesn’t matter that God did not choose you first, He lives beyond those parameters of time anyway. What matters is that He chose you. In baptism, He claimed you as His own and freed you to live in the law of liberty; the law that calls you and frees you to not just proclaim God’s love but through the Holy Spirit to be the living embodiment of God’s love to the people on the margins of society, people like the gentile woman and the deaf man in today’s gospel lesson, people like your neighbor.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday, Spetember 3rd

Mark 7: 1-23


Brothers and Sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus tells you this week "..there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile."
The "geniuses" who put the lectionary together tried to pull a fast one on you this week. If you look on the back of the bulletin you will see that in selecting the Gospel passage this week they decided to omit verses from this passage.
And, as usually is the case when they do this type of thing, it got me wondering "What are they trying to hide?" So I read the missing verses and I decided that there was no reason to omit them and that is why you have two different copies of the Gospel lesson this week. Now, I don’t know why they left out verses 9-13, but there doesn’t really seem to be anything unscrupulous going on with that. I think maybe they just didn’t tie in to well with the other lessons. Regardless, it doesn’t hurt to read them either.
But what is it in verses 17-20 that the lectionary people are trying to hide from you? My guess is they were a little uneasy with the imagery of food entering into a person’s stomach and coming out into the sewer. Now, I don’t know what they were trying to hide. I mean the imagery is a little crude but is it offensive? And after all, they are the words of Christ Jesus, so I am sure He had a reason for using them.
Whatever the reason was for the omission, what the people who put the lectionary together ended up inadvertently demonstrating, with this omission, was the very need that you have to hear what Jesus was saying in today’s Gospel lesson.
There is obviously something in the words contained in verses 17-20 that they felt might offend you, or upset you, or disturb you, or defile you. They felt that these words, coming from outside of you, could potentially defile you, even though Jesus says that the exact opposite is true, that what goes out from inside is what defiles. Frankly it’s amazing to me that they didn’t notice the irony.
But the lectionary people are no different from any of God’s people. In the very next verse, one which thankfully did not get omitted, Jesus tells you that it is from the heart, from the inside of you that evil intentions come. And among these evil intentions He includes fornication, theft, murder, adultery, wickedness, deceit, and licentiousness. I’m not even sure what licentiousness means, but it doesn’t seem to be in very good company now does it?
How different is that from what you have been led to believe? How contrary is that to the mantra that we so often hear in our culture that it’s not what’s on the outside that matters but what’s on the inside? And how do you reconcile that with what Jesus says in today’s Gospel lesson about what is inside of us?
So often you will hear someone say to you, or perhaps you have even said to someone that you need to get in touch with your inner feelings. But what if the feelings that truly express who you are turn out to be wickedness, or deceitful or any one of those sins that Jesus mentions? And it’s easy to look at those and say "Well I’m not an adulterer, or a murderer, or a thief, so I must be okay on the insides."
But Jesus isn’t just talking about when the defilement that comes from within you reveals itself in an obvious manner. We can all see the danger in that. He’s also talking about something much more subtle and insidious than that.
Jesus is being confronted by a group of Pharisees and scribes who are disturbed that Jesus’ disciples are not following the traditions of the elders by washing their hands before they eat. What the Pharisees are talking about is a purity ritual. And this is not some legalistic, man-made doctrine that they made up just to be meticulous. This purification ritual goes back to Exodus when God commanded Moses essentially to begin this tradition.
And as we see in the Old Testament lesson for today from Deuteronomy, God commands Israel to heed to His statutes and ordinances and to observe them diligently. In observing the statutes and ordinances that God handed down to them, people would see just how close God is to His people Israel.
In the command that God gave to Moses that initiated the handwashing ritual, it’s written that it is done so that those who obey will not die. The commands are given to preserve God’s community and to show God’s faithfulness.
But the Pharisees and scribes had come to see it differently. To the Pharisees and scribes these commandments and ordinances were not something that they could look to and see God’s faithfulness. Instead they had become a way that they could look to themselves and decide who was ‘in’ and who was ‘out.’
Do you not still do this today? Don’t both congregations have written regulations about what behaviors are required for continued membership; worship attendance, receiving of communion, stewardship? I am not suggesting that you change any of your membership rules, I am simply pointing out that all across denominations, congregations, communities etc. you still have your own little purity rituals that get used as a way of determining who is in and who is out.
Jesus’ opposition is not to the rituals and rules themselves but in the way that they are applied. They have a purpose, but that purpose is not for what far too often they end being up used for, and that is as a means to look within yourselves and seek purification, salvation, and redemption from within. Jesus has already told you how futile that is, and yet you still do it.
Salvation, purification, and redemption does not come from within you. You cannot find the cure for sin from the very source of sin. Purification comes from outside of you and it keeps coming in spite of your own tendency to look within yourself.
I have been asked by different people, in many different ways how I know I am ‘saved.’ Time and time again, I give the same answer "I look to ‘the cross.’" Some people will understand and some sort of struggle with that, and they’ll say something like "Yeah, well what else?" or "But, what do you do to know that your saved?" Again, looking at yourself for purification, salvation and redemption is futile.
I will explain it to you this way. We all agree that salvation is a gift from God, purely the result of God’s unconditional love revealed to us in His Son Christ Jesus. Well, think of a time that anyone whom you would consider to be beloved, be it one of your children, grandchildren, your spouse, a friend or whoever, gave you a gift that was really special, and really touched your heart.
Now, how did you know that gift was for you? Was it because you were able to look within yourself, and get in touch with your feelings and then consciously decide that the gift was for you? Or was it because you were simply drawn into the reality of that special moment because of the generosity of your beloved? Was it that in the simple receiving of the gift and seeing the gift that you couldn’t help but believe? I’m guessing that’s probably more what it was like.
Well, that’s how you know that God’s gift of salvation is for you, by looking to the gift; by looking to the cross, to the empty tomb, to the baptismal font so you are reminded of how our Lord comes to you daily as you live in your baptism, to the Lord’s Supper as our Lord comes to you in the bread and the wine as will happen in a few minutes, and looking to scripture as our Lord speaks to you in His Word.
Rituals and regulations all have a purpose, but they should be applied in a way that leads you not to look to yourself and what you are doing, but outside of yourself to the gift of what has already been done for you on the cross; the gift of purification, redemption, and salvation. That is how you know you are saved.
Amen