Bread for the Journey

John 6:24-35

1 Kings 19:4-8

Life can do that in an instant, can’t it?  We can go from sitting on the top of the
world, to scraping the sides of the barrel as we try to crawl out of it in the
blink of an eye.  Things can go from the
best of times to the worst of times before we even know it.  The doctor walks into the room with a worried
look on her face and grim news to deliver.
A friend, a spouse, a child, or a parent who has always been there could
suddenly be gone.  The simple dreams of
children who grow up, find jobs, find spouses, and have children fly away when
things happen in a different order.
Friendships crack under pressure, relationships fracture under betrayal,
the person we thought would always be by our side suddenly isn’t and on top of
that we begin to doubt if what we thought was true ever really was. 

Or maybe the plummet from mountaintop to the lowest point on
the earth is harder to see on the outside.
Maybe the relationship we are losing isn’t that of a friend or family
member, maybe it’s our relationship with Christ.  Faith in God who is mighty, who is strong,
who has done miracles for the world and before our very eyes for others,
suddenly doesn’t seem to matter, doesn’t seem to stand up in the face of the
danger that is before us.  Faith in Jesus
who promises his yoke is easy and his burden is light, feels like a heavy
weight on our shoulders when we struggle to understand his love for us, his
call to us, his presence with us.  Faith
in the Holy Spirit that others seem to recognize as active and moving in their
lives is absent in our own. 

Maybe the faith in God that we see in other people, faith
that looks strong and unwavering, faith that sees God’s presence at every turn,
faith they can talk about, sing about, pray for hours and hours about, just
seems out of reach, mind-boggling, unreal.
Maybe it all just seems too preposterous to fake anymore.  Maybe it all seems way too important to be
entrusted to our untrustworthy hands.  Maybe
holding onto the mystery of faith seems more trouble than it’s worth, and we
just want to walk away from it all, walk day’s journey or more away, and just
lay down and sleep.

Have you ever felt like that? 
Have you ever just wanted to sleep, to stop thinking, to stop wondering,
to stop worrying about whether you’re doing all of this right, or praying often
enough or strong enough?  Have you ever
gotten tired to listening to voice coming from someone you can’t see?  Have you ever wanted to just lie down under
the broom tree and sleep to get away from everything that is plaguing you, your
worries, your grief, your brokenness, even your struggles with your faith in
God?

I have.  And not just
once long ago after which I had this amazing youth group camp conversion experience
which solved all my faith problems forever.
I have, as a teen.  I have as a
20-something graduate student - - a 20-something SEMINARY student no less.  I have as a 30-something wife and mother of
three kids, a pastor of a church.  I
have, and I do go through times like this when like Elijah I just want to go to
sleep instead of face my fears, my doubts, my crises of faith, my empty
relationship with God.

A day’s journey away from anyone he knows, Elijah has
successfully withdrawn into the wilderness.
A lone tree dots the desert, a lone place of shade and shelter in the
stark landscape of his faith.  Satisfied
that he has withdrawn far enough, he surrenders to the sleep he craves… even if
just for a moment.

“Suddenly,” it says in 1 Kings, suddenly an angel appears,
not letting him sleep for even an instant, not letting him disengage from the
divine presence.  “Get up!” the angel
commands.  “Get up and eat!”  At his head Elijah finds a cake baked on the
hot stones of the desert, and a jar of water, not much different than the jars
he used to intensify the miracle  God
performed at the sacrifice just days before.
Elijah ate and drank, his physical needs satisfied, and lay down to
sleep again.

But again, the angel, this time also touching him, urges, “Get
up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.”  God’s persistence in the relationship is
relentless.  God’s desire for even this
one prophet to continue on the faith journey is so strong, even the heavenly
beings are employed to bring him back into the call.  God’s trust in Elijah’s potential as one who
will point to truth in the midst of a world that follows too easily what is
false, is so high that Elijah can’t be left to just sleep.  God’s desire to remain in relationship with
Elijah is so deep that Elijah can’t be lost to fear and loneliness, and
feelings of inadequacy.  His call, his
journey onward is a given; it’s assumed that there is more to his tale, more to
his walk with God.  That Elijah has
farther to go is not in question for the angel, for the agent of Yahweh, so
strengthening Elijah for what comes next is her purpose, reminding Elijah of
the persistence of God’s grace and providence her mission.

Elijah feeds on the cakes provided.  Elijah eats what is given to him by God.  It’s some pretty impressive cake because apparently
it is enough to sustain him for the forty days and forty nights ahead has he
continues his journey, his destination finally clear to him, to the mount of
God at Horeb.


Cakes that strengthen him
for forty days…

I want some of that.  I
want some of that sustenance, some of that proof, some of that taste of God’s
grace, God’s promise, God’s presence.  When
I am lying listlessly in the deserts of my faith, a cake baked on the hot
stones that will fill me for as long as I can imagine sounds absolutely perfect,
so perfect in fact that nothing else will do.

But have you tried to eat such rich and heavy food on an
empty stomach?  Have you ever indulged
too much when you’re coming out of a time of fasting, either forced or by
choice?  Have you ever experienced the
discomfort, the dissatisfaction that comes when your eyes have been too big for
your stomach?  How about when your
spiritual eyes have been too big for your spiritual stomach?

Or the problem I more commonly face is wanting all or
nothing.  Sometimes the cakes that fill
for forty days aren’t just lying there when I wake up.  For me, anyway, they are RARELY sitting there
waiting for me to feast, be filled, then continue on my journey.  Rarely, OK never, have I been able to move
from the lowest desert of spiritual loneliness to the tip of the mountain in
the presence of God on just one serving of cake.  And sometimes that frustrates me so much that
I just want to give in.   Where can I
find this cake that will sustain me for FORTY DAYS?!?!?!  And when I can’t, with exhaustion and defeat,
I ask “If I can’t have it all back at once, if my emptiness can’t be filled in
an instant why should I even try to fill it at all?”

But once as I sat under the broom tree in the desert, a
friend, an angel of Yahweh sent to point out the food in front of me, reminded
me of something different.  We don’t have
to worry about the days.  We don’t have
to worry about how long the cake will last, how long the food will sustain us,
how long it will reinvigorate our bodies and spirit, how long it will
strengthen us for the journey.  We don’t
have to wait for the biggest cake of faith on which to feed, because the Bread
of Life is with us all the time.  Our bread
is provided not forty days at a time, but daily, our daily bread is set before
us.  “May don’t worry about how many
days,” my friend wrote to me once.  “Can
you be fed by the bread of life at all?”

Like manna in the wilderness that rained down from heaven for
the Hebrews to gather as they left Egypt and made their way toward the Promised
Land, the bread of life is available in perfect serving sizes for us to eat and
be filled every day.  The bread of life
doesn’t need to be stockpiled or rationed; it doesn’t need to be shoveled hand
over fist into our famished bodies in order to last for forty days, forty
nights, for as long as we can imagine, for eternity, because the bread of life
will never leave us.  The bread of life
is God’s gift the endures forever, that can fill our bodies and spirits, that
gives life to the world.

The goal is not to consume it once and for all.  The goal is not to feast on it in one
sitting, in one stage of our life, in one moment of baptism or confirmation or
conversion so that it will last forever.
The bread of life is what we chew when we devour the Word of God with
the people of God, like in the Story small groups that are forming for the
fall.  The bread of life feeds our faith,
again and again, not just when we are children, but when we come back to the
Scriptures with new eyes, new experiences, new challenges in our lives.  The bread of life, eaten little by little,
day by day, gives us strength to live again, to trust again, to believe again
tomorrow.

The bread of life is what we feed our children when we talk
with them about the lessons they learn in Sunday School, when we read Scripture
together as families, wondering aloud about what it means, not being fearful of
not having all the answers.  The bread of
life is what we ingest when we gather as the body for worship, for reading and
hearing the word, for celebrating with simple gifts of water, bread, and juice,
for praying and hearing the good news of God’s grace.  The bread of life is what break and share
with the world when we speak words of peace, when we touch others with
compassion, when we work with love for justice for all.

The bread of life is meant to be eaten and enjoyed day after day,
sitting at the table in companionship with God, giving energy for our walk, giving
strength for our life.  The bread of life
is a meal for the road.  The bread of
life is bread for the journey.  “Get up
and eat.”

More Than a Feeling

  

1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17

Mildred and Richard were in love. They had known each other since childhood, but as they grew up they fell in love. In 1958, when Mildred was 18, the left their small, nurturing hometown in Caroline County, Virginia to be married in Washington, DC. Having returned home, five weeks later, in the middle of the night, the newlyweds were abruptly awoken, handcuffed, and taken in jail. Their crime? Being in love.

Richard and Mildred Loving (really, that was their last name) were in love with each other in a time when their love was prohibited because Richard was white and Mildred was black. They lived in Virginia under the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 which not only prohibited interracial marriage in Virginia, but it prohibited Virginia interracial couples from circumventing the law by legally marrying elsewhere and returning to Virginia to live. They were charged, pled guilty, and sentenced to a year in prison that was suspended for 25 years on the condition that they leave the state. The Lovings left Virginia again and moved to the District of Columbia.

In 1964, frustrated by the fact that they couldn’t visit their family in Virginia they were referred to the ACLU for legal help by then Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Three long years later, after their case made its way to the United States Supreme Court, the Lovings won the right to be in love and be married. Their sentence was overruled and the Virginia law was struck down as a violation of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Richard, Mildred, and their three children returned home to Virginia.

Love can’t really be legislated. Can it? We can’t tell people who NOT to love. Can we? And, for me at least, knowing that we can’t tell people who not to love, it’s hard to heard Jesus’ commandment TO love. Commandments about love are counter-intuitive to how I usually think about love.

Love as our culture commonly talks about it is something we possess. Love is a thing we try to get or a feeling we fall into. It’s butterflies in the stomach. It’s an aching, a longing, a desire. It’s a cure for an ailing heart, the key to happiness, an elusive prize waiting to be found, won, or given away.

But here in John’s gospel love seems to be something different - -something that can be commanded. Love seems to be more than a feeling for which we hope, or an impulse that flows from desire. Love is something we MUST do.

Last week we heard in the first letter of John the simple, yet profound statement at the core of the gospel, “God is love.” If we cut to the chase about all of this, about faith, about life, about our call as the church, we get to this message, “God is love.” I even said it was simple. Ha! It’s simple as in singular. It’s simple as in an argument with few points or counter-points, but let’s not be so naïve as to think it’s simple in living

The love we talked about last week was certainly more than a dizzying or warming feeling at the sound of a voice or the sight of a face. It is, in the words of John, abiding love, and abiding love is the love of Jesus. It is intruding, disruptive, difficult to offer, and maybe just as difficult to receive. Abiding is the act of dwelling with another, even a stranger wherever she is found. It is a willingness to go the distance, descend to the depths of pain and suffering, and stay there with him in darkness until the glimmer of light appears on the horizon. Abiding love is the love of hospitality, the love for the stranger that is just as strong as the love for family, friends, for self. It is love that is open to a change of plans, love that that is given without judgment, without convenience, without checking the calendar or plans for the day, or for the life. It’s the love of Jesus’ command.

It isn’t easy, is it? It isn’t easy to open our lives, ourselves to the deepest needs of others. It’s not like the things on our “to do” lists are optional. It’s not that we are TRYING to ignore the people in front of us who are aching for friendship, companionship, a good word, a hot meal. It’s just that there are all these other things we need to do first. It’s just that abiding with someone takes time, it takes an energy of the spirit that we just don’t think we have right now. Maybe once my finances are in order, I can help someone else with theirs. Maybe once I feel calm and refreshed, I can offer refreshment to another. Maybe once I have experienced the abiding love of another, I can abide with a stranger. Maybe once I have felt loved, I’ll know how to love others.

But then there comes this commandment again. “Love one another as I have loved you.” It’s not even “love one another when you feel my love for you.” Jesus doesn’t give us time to get it, to feel it, or to understand it. He doesn’t give us the excuse to wait until we have found love before we share it. He commands us to do right here, right now, because he knows love is more than a feeling. He also knows we may never get up and do it if it’s dependent on our experience or knowledge or feelings of preparedness. So, having loved us from the beginning, Jesus tells us to go out and love others. Actually, he doesn’t just tell us to do it, he tells us what it looks like and even shows us.

Love is what we do. Love is an action. Love is more than a feeling; it’s a sacrifice. Love is laying aside our schedules, our priorities, our preferences. Loving is putting down our comfort and our security to love other people. Love is active. Love is setting aside, but in setting aside it is also taking up, taking up the causes, the burdens, the pains, the injustices of others. Love is what we do with who we are.

The gospels don’t tell us very much about what Jesus was feeling. Here and there we get a few snippets of his emotions – anger, frustration, tears and sorrow occasionally – but for the most part time isn’t spent reporting or speculating about what Jesus felt about what he encountered and experienced. The bulk of the time in the gospels is spent telling us what he said and what he did. The bulk of the time in the gospels is spent showing how Jesus shared the good news with the people he met, how he healed them of their injuries and ailments, how he included the people who were left out, how he fed the people who were hungry, how he gave living water to the people who were thirsty. We don’t know how Jesus felt while he was doing what he was doing, but we know by what he did that he loved.

Today in the United States is the day that has been set aside for honoring mothers. It’s a day of flowers and gifts and brunches and pampering for many, but it can also be a day of longing, confusion, and sorrow for others. Historically speaking, the latter is more appropriate to the founding of the holiday than the former.

Mother’s Day has varied roots throughout the world. Many different cultures and religions have a day set aside to honor and give thanks for those who bring forth life. In earlier Christian understandings Mother’s Day wasn’t even about human mothers, but about the Mother Church. In US religious history this understanding was dismissed by the Puritans who barely even celebrated with obvious joy Christmas and Easter, much less a holiday that celebrated the institution of the Church.

No, our modern US Mother’s Day has its roots in the Mother’s Day Proclamation written by Julia Ward Howe, better known for penning the words to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” In 1870, deeply saddened by the carnage of the Civil and Franco-Prussian Wars, disturbed that the sons of one family could be responsible for the death of the sons of another family, Howe called on mothers and all women actually to shape their societies, to work for peace on all levels, not just in their homes, but in their nations, and in the world. 

"Arise, then, women of this day! 

Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs." (1870 Mother's Day Proclamation)

Howe’s call to women was a call to love. All the “feelings” in the world won’t do anything unless they are applied. All the compassion, all the heartache for the loss of life that we hear about, all the sadness over what we see on the streets of the city, in shacks of forgotten villages, in the slums of the world, all the concern we can muster when we hear about the young who are abused, the elderly neglected, men, women, and children who hunger for a bite to eat - - all of it won’t do a THING if we don’t love with our actions.

Jesus hasn't just commanded us to love each other, he has shown us how to love each other, and he has given us what we need in order to do it, and he promised us joy and victory over despair when we love with actions like his.

The good news in Jesus is that he did not sit by the wayside and watch a world in pain waiting for the perfect status, the perfect checkbook, the perfect platform from which to love. He loved from where he was. He loved the people he was with. He loved with everything he was and everything he did. And now he has sent us to love in the same way – by acting on it, by healing and helping and wiping away tears, by calling injustices unjust, by working for peace not discord, by forgiving and welcoming and listening, by judging a whole lot less and serving a whole lot more. And, thankfully, he has promised to be with us, the source and shape and strength of love in the world.

Cut to the Chase

Psalm 133

1 John 4:7-21

Do you remember when billboards like these began to pop up?  Pithy little notes, apparently written by God.  

 

Life is short.  Eternity isn’t.  (One of the newer ones.)

Well, you did ask for a sign.

I miss how you used to talk to me when you were a kid.

What part o “Thou shalt…” didn’t you understand?

Keep using my name in vain, I’ll make rush hour longer.

Have you read my #1 bestseller?  (There will be a test.)

We need to talk.

I understand that the billboards began in south Florida in 1998 when an anonymous donor decided to create andad campaign, not for a business, not for a particular church, not for anything else, but to try to create a spiritual climate and get people thinking about a daily relationship with a loving and relevant God. (www.godspeaks.com)

My favorite is this next one from the original campaign in 1998 - - 

“That ‘Love thy neighbor’ thing… I meant that.”

It just cuts to the chase, doesn’t it? It gets right on down to the heart of the gospel, the core of Jesus’ preaching, teaching, healing, disturbing, dying, rising, and living. “Beloved, let us love one another.”


Sometimes short and simple is best. (I know, a dangerous statement to make from the pulpit…while preaching…what is usually a less than short message…but certainly not the longest in town!)

Sometimes short and simple is what is needed to get the message across in a way that jars someone just enough to hear it in a new way, but not so much that they are thrown completely off course.

Sometimes short and simple is what it takes to guide a mission, set a vision, and move a community forward.  “Beloved, let us love one another…. God is love….”

This is what it is all about.
This is what our faith is all about.

This is what our church is all about. 

This is what our life is all about. 

This is what our God is all about.

LOVE!  It’s short.  It’s simple.  It’s love.

Yet over and over and over again we make our faith and our life together about so much more.  We make it so much more complex.  We add layers upon layers of rules and expectations and understandings and policies, oh the policies. 

Our fear of the unknown,

our fear of losing control,

our fear of where love might take us,

our fear of what we might be asked to do,

our fear of what we might have to give up takes over

and then before we know it,

without even noticing we have completely clouded what it’s all about,

what following Jesus is supposed to be all about. 

It’s not about fear. 

It’s not about judgment. 

It’s not about setting up rules. 

It’s not about deciding who is in and who is out. 

It’s not about protecting the carpet. 

It’s not about perfecting the music. 

It’s not about coming up the most elaborate craft. 

It’s not about the tastiest snack (no matter how much we love those tasty snacks). 

It’s supposed to be about love,

·         love that looks like a father sending his only son to show the world what life is really about,

·         love that looks like the one who is divine coming to abide with us, dwell with us, live with us,

·         love that looks likes self-giving and self-sacrifice

·         love that looks like the holy one entering the experience of the profane,

·         love that looks like boundaries of gender, ethnicity, religious party, political leanings, class, all being broken down,

·         love that looks like touching the untouchable, speaking to the forgotten, feeding the hungry, praying for the hurtful.

It’s about love because God is Love, and Love chose to live among us. 

Love chose to walk in our experience,

to live in our skin,

to see with our eyes,

to face our temptations,

to hunger our hunger,

to cry our tears,

to laugh with our joy. 

Love chose to dwell with and love chooses to dwell in us, showing us how we can love each other. 

Everything we do as people of God, as people of Love, then should be about doing this same thing.  Everything we do should be about living with our brothers and sisters, those people who have been born into the same human family as we have been born even if they live in this family in very different ways. 

Everything we do as people of Love should be about dwelling in each others’ experiences –

seeing through another’s eyes,

facing another’s temptations,

hungering another’s hungers,

rejoicing in another’s laughter. 

Everything we do as people of Love should be about breaking down boundaries and giving ourselves in love to our brothers and sisters around us, to the world around us.

In just a little bit we are going to ordain and install new officers in our church, ruling elders and deacons who have been called by God through the voice of this congregation to lead us through their service.  On behalf of the whole church I’m going to ask them to affirm a whole lot of different things in ten different questions about their faith, their understanding of their call to leadership, and how they will be guided as they guide this church.  And as much as a I love our tradition and understand, at least a little bit, why we ask all those questions, on a day like today, in light of a Scripture like this one, I wish we could ask just one simple question - - “Do you accept the call to lead with God’s love in this church and the world?”  That’s what it’s all about – for the officers of the church, for the members, for the friends, for the people of God and God’s love everywhere.  When we cut to the chase, it’s all about showing love.

In Joy and Disbelief

Luke 24:36-48

During my second year of seminary I was selected to participate in the Middle East Travel Seminar, a three week study tour of biblical and archaeological sites in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Israel, the occupied territories of Palestine and Greece. The application and interview process was rigorous as sixty seminary students from five schools were chosen for this almost fully funded trip of a lifetime. One thing that was reiterated over and over again throughout the process, in the way that only happens when someone has previously complained about their own experience, this was NOT going to be a spiritual pilgrimage.

All around the land we call the “Holy Land,” for thousands of years, people have been making pilgrimages. There are churches and chapels and monuments scattered everywhere, some of them 15- and 16-hundred years old, marking THE mountain Moses climbed in order to receive the tablets of the ten commandments from God, THE mountain on the east side of the Jordan where Moses died, the underground cave-like stable where Jesus was born, even THE very rock that served as a table for the fish breakfast that Jesus shared with his disciples in another resurrection account from the gospels. There are plenty of places to which someone could make a pilgrimage, but it didn’t take long to figure out why our trip organizers warned us that is not what we would be doing.

My leader, Dr. Jerry Mattingly, was kind of a character. As a local, state-required tour guide would be making her speech about the holy site we were seeing, Jerry would hold up fingers in the back row. Five, ten, fifteen. We thought at first he was grading her tour guide skills, but eventually we discovered he was correcting her assertions.

“This is the site where Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law.” Or according to Jerry, somewhere within 10 miles.

“This is the site where Jesus’ body was buried” Or according to Jerry, somewhere within 500 yards.

“This is the site where Jesus was baptized.” Or according to Jerry, 15 miles up or down the river. Give or take.

This is why they warned us. Instead of developing in us a sense of awe at the innate holiness of each site we saw, Jerry put questions into our minds about the accuracy of the claims of the churches which were built on top of the holy ground on which Mary delivered Jesus. He let doubts creep into our minds about the HUGE STORMS that supposedly threatened the lives of the fishermen on the mere lake the Scriptures call the Sea of Galilee. Obviously, this could not have been a spiritual pilgrimage, because doubts are not very spiritual right?

The story we heard this morning took place on Easter evening or maybe the day after. In Luke’s gospel the resurrection is discovered by the women, then confirmed by Peter when their account is thought to be an “idle tale.” But two disciples, Cleopas and his companion didn't stick around for Peter’s confirmation. After the women discovered Jesus’ missing body and heard the witness of angels at the tomb, these two hit the road out of town. They aren't present when Peter shares his apparently NOT-so-idle tale, but instead they get an up-close-and-personal encounter with Jesus as they are walking to Emmaus, a town seven miles from Jerusalem. After eating dinner with Jesus they turn around and head back to Jerusalem, even in the middle of the night, to tell the rest of the disciples what has happened.

When they arrived, they told their story. Presumably they also heard about Peter’s trip to the empty tomb and then right in the middle of all this story-telling and confusion, Jesus finally appears! Not stolen, not lost, not buried, but resurrected. Whatever THAT means. Right in the middle of them.

They've all been talking about resurrection for a while, but obviously this is their first experience with it. The Pharisees and Sadducees, the dominant religious “parties” of the day, fought about it all the time – would there be a resurrection or not? Would it be bodily or just spiritually? Is it going to be when the Messiah comes or at the end of time? Who will be included? People were used to talking about when, how, and who will be resurrected, but really, when it came down to it, nobody REALLY knew what it would look like, what it would be like when someone actually WAS resurrected. So here was Jesus, right in the middle of them, and as if he could hear their questions running a mile a minute through their heads - - “Is he real? Is he a ghost? Can we touch him? Can we see through him? Does he sleep? Can he fly?” - -

He interrupts them, offering them his hands and feet as proof that he is real. He invites them to touch him and feel his skin and bones so they can know that he isn’t a ghost. And then while they are still caught between both rejoicing and wondering, he asks them what seems like a really ridiculous question, “Does anyone have anything to eat?”

It answers some questions (Yes, he has a body and it needs nourishment. No, he isn’t a ghost. Yes we can touch him. No, I sure HOPE we can’t see through him to see what eating looks like on the inside.). And joy, what joy it brings! But at the exact same time this simple act of eating also leads to so many more questions, doubts, even disbelief. (The dead don’t walk around. Bodies don’t just stand up after dying. What is the end if being killed and sealed in tomb isn’t the end? What in the world does any of this have to do with what God is doing?) So yes, his presence brings joy in their midst, but just like Luke said, it brings confusion, doubts, and even disbelief.

But this can’t be right, can it? Because everyone knows that doubts are not very spiritual, right?

Doubts have a bad name in the version of Christianity that seems dominant in our culture. Doubts are dismissed by some of our traditions as unfaithful, disrespectful, disingenuous. People who ask questions about how things happened in Scripture, people who are willing to say Scripture tells us less about “how” the world was made and more about “why” the world was made, people who wonder about the need to believe every detail written down between the covers of the Bible are literally and factually true are put down by many of the Christians who are holding the microphones on television and the radio, who are typing what is in print and on the internet. Thinking for ourselves is encouraged in pockets of faith, but the loudest voices, the ones way too many of our non-Christian neighbors can hear are the ones who say this is a take or leave it faith. You’re all in or you’re not in at all. Doubts are not very spiritual.

But guess what - - That’s not the viewpoint Jesus holds in this story. I love, love, LOVE the way this resurrection appearance takes place. I love, love, LOVE the way joy and disbelief are held right next to each other. I love, love, LOVE the way the disciples who were closest to Jesus still can’t quite figure out what’s going on. And I love, love, LOVE that Jesus doesn’t abandon them because of it.

Jesus doesn’t turn right around and walk out the door when the disciples can’t wrap their minds and hearts around what has taken place. He doesn’t give up on them and go find the Roman soldier who was able to declare with full faith and conviction in Luke’s gospel “He was innocent” and in Mark’s gospel, “Truly this man was God’s son!” He doesn’t stop them in their tracks and demand that they choose sides, that they sign on the dotted line, that they affirm a set of specific beliefs and understandings about every little thing that happened. Jesus doesn’t do it!

Jesus goes to great lengths – even COMICAL lengths – to show them his body is real because it’s so unbelievable, but even when they still don’t believe he doesn’t stop believing in them. Jesus doesn’t give up on his disciples. He doesn’t chastise them. He doesn’t get angry with them. He sits down, he eats with them, and he teaches them, in the middle of their joy and their disbelief. In the middle of their excitement and their wondering. In the middle of their celebration and their confusion.

We forget sometimes, that THIS is what the church is about. We forget sometimes that the questions are as welcome as answers. We forget that there isn't any one tradition or denomination or theological leaning that has it all right all the time. We see church marketing plans that ask us "Have you found Jesus?" because they claim they have a hold of him. Well, I'd love to start a different kind of campaign, one that puts signs out in front of churches saying "Got questions? We do, too." I'd love to start a different kind of campaign in which we don't have to pretend we know it all, that we understand it all, that we believe every last thing, but a campaign that is bold enough to say we gather with joy and disbelief, with reverence and wonder, with excitement and questions to see Jesus, eat with him, hear the Scriptures and how they tell of God's working in the world, and to be his witnesses in the world. That's a campaign I can get behind.

They told us before we went on the Middle East Travel Seminar that we weren't going on a spiritual pilgrimage, or more accurately, that they weren't leading a spiritual pilgrimage. They must have assumed like so many others that we might think questioning the tradition wasn't very spiritual. For me it was the exact opposite. For me the questions led me to think about what I was learning, what I was hearing, what I had heard for years and years in the church. For me the questions forced me to decide whether it mattered if I knew exactly where Jesus' feet had touched the ground, exactly where Moses encountered God, exactly where words of blessing and beatitude were spoken. For me the questions, the doubts invited me to enter into a relationship with God that wasn't based on geography and historical fact, but was based on the witness of people of faith who have gone before me, the witness of people of faith who struggled just as much as I do with what it means to follow this resurrected Jesus.

Here’s the thing - - Jesus isn’t scared of our questions. Jesus isn’t scared of our doubts, our disbelief, our confusion, and our wondering. He doesn’t get mad at them, he doesn’t look down on us for them, he doesn’t tell us they have to be wiped away before we are loved. And he definitely doesn’t tell us we have to have them all worked out before we can work in his name. The same disciples who stood there in disbelief are the same disciples who are equipped and sent as witnesses. The same disciples who are tentative about jumping into the pool of faith with both feet are the same disciples who are called to the ends of the earth to tell the story.

And thankfully they didn't wait until they totally get it all, until all their questions are answered and they know and believe and trust in exactly what's going on. They jumped in with their questions and doubts and disbelief, too, and apparently that's OK with Jesus. He came to where they were and commissioned them to serve with all their joy AND their disbelief. And he comes and commissions us to witness in the same way.

Transfiguration Sunday

Mark 8:31 – 9:1

Overwhelmed
I hardly even look anymore. I know I should. I have a responsibility to do it. I used to take pride in the fact that I considered myself well-informed and up-to-date on the news, but I barely crack up a newspaper and conveniently miss the world news at dinner time. I just can’t stand to hear it. I know I’m not alone because when I mentioned in several different circles this week that I would be talking about feeling overwhelmed almost everyone who heard it offered their own version of that same confession. The weight of the world just seems too heavy to even read about, so we are tempted instead to ignore it.

And it’s not just the news from around the world that’s a problem. Maybe we could handle that if things in our more tangible “real” lives were a little smoother. Maybe it would be easier to pay attention even to the difficult news we hear places like Syria if our own political system seemed more civil that it has been recently. Maybe we could begin to contemplate the violence in other parts of the world if we weren’t worried about threats of violence in our community. Maybe it would be even possible to look at any of this if our joints weren’t failing, if our hearts weren’t skipping beats, if the cells in our bodies weren’t growing in wrong places and fighting against themselves. I’m not saying it’s right to get caught up only in our own struggles, but it’s true. It’s what happens.

Then throw some sermons from church on top of all that – sermons that encourage us to touch the people no one else even considers touching, to speak up and speak out against the evils and injustices in our culture, to announce a message of reversal where the power have none, the rich are brought down and the lowly greatly honored – throw that in the mix and, well, yeah, it’s overwhelming!

He began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering. No wonder Peter tried to quiet him down. He told them they needed to carry their own crosses. He told them they needed to lose their lives. He called the generation sinful and adulterous. He said the kingdom of God was coming even before the time of their own deaths – a kingdom they expected would be accompanied by divine horsemen and blessed warriors coming to topple an oppressive government and set their nation on the top of the pile.

I don’t doubt for a second that they were overwhelmed.

Mark 9:2-8

On the Mountaintop
Each summer my high school youth group took a trip to Montreat. Different people mean different things by “Montreat.” Montreat is very small town in North Carolina. In the town is an even smaller Presbyterian college, Montreat College. Next to the college campus and overtaking it in the summers is a Presbyterian conference center by the same name. Each summer my high school youth group went to THAT Montreat for their legendary youth conference. It was a literal and figurative mountaintop experience in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. Inevitably each year we would read together the story of the Transfiguration during one of our nightly devotions.

The temptation to want to stay on top of the mountain is not hard to understand. Peter’s desire to build a few dwellings, camp out, and call it good is a desire to which I can relate. Up on the mountaintop it was all clear. Up on the mountaintop it was easier to see. Up on the mountaintop it impossible to deny, in Jesus of Nazareth is the presence of God. Moses and Elijah were there, confirming Jesus as the next great prophet and agent of God’s promise. The cloud overshadowed them as it did on mountains before when the voice of God would speak to mortals. “This is my Son, the Beloved,” it spoke, announcing the truth that they needed to hear.

In the middle of all that threatens to overwhelm – the crowds of people sick and demon-possessed; the daunting task of ministry before them; the illness in our own lives, families, and friends; the uncivil political discourse; the financial worries all around – in the middle of all that makes us want to run away, God is present and has a word of grace to speak. “Listen to him.” Up there on that mountaintop, Peter and James and John caught a glimpse of God. It was a quick peek at the reality that is so hard to see sometimes. It’s like the veil between heaven and earth was lifted, even if just for a moment, and they could see what was true all along. God was with them.

God is with us. It’s the exact same truth we celebrate every time we gather to worship, but especially when we celebrate the sacrament of baptism as we will today. God is with us. God does not forget us. God does not expect us to go through our life alone. By the water in the font that comes from God, we are blessed and reassured of God’s presence. By the water in the font that comes from God, we are cleansed even before we can clean ourselves. By the water in the font that comes from God, God’s all-encompassing peace, God’s never-ending grace, God’s overwhelming love is revealed.

Mark 9:9, 14-27

Coming down the mountain
As much as Peter wanted, they couldn’t stay up that mountain. The experience was amazing, brilliantly shocking, yet simultaneously calming, but they couldn’t stay up there forever. They couldn’t ignore the world below them, the world that included people with broken bodies and souls, nations fighting against nations, bank accounts that were empty or near empty, relationships stretched to their limits. No, the experience of Jesus transfigured and the appearance of Moses and Elijah was a revelation of God in the most extraordinary of ways, but none of them could stay up there forever, because there was still work to do in the world.

The world still needed the gospel. The world still needs the grace of God in Jesus, and the disciples of Jesus are called to share it. When they got to the bottom, before they were there even, the crowds were already rushing to them. The man with his demon possessed son was already there waiting, clamoring to reach the one who could heal his boy. When they got to the bottom, before they were there even, they were called to touch and to heal.

We have been here on the mountain together. We have wondered how in the world we are going to be the disciples Jesus calls us to be. We have lamented over the brokenness in our lives and in our world. We have begged to see God to know that it is all for something. And here on this mountain we have seen our answer.We have seen a glimpse of God’s all encompassing grace in the baptism of a beautiful child of God before she even knows of God’s love. We have heard the words of God’s promise to be with Savannah, to be with us. We have made our own promises to support Savannah as she grows in faith, reaffirmed the promises we have made to every other child whose baptism we have witnessed, remembered the promises that were made about us. We have seen Christ revealed to us right here in this place.

And now we have to go back down the mountain just like the disciples did. We can’t keep our heads in the clouds or in the sand. Just like the crowds were waiting there for Jesus and the disciples to return, the pains and fears and discord of our time are right outside our doors, too, and we have to go down to meet them. Jesus and the disciples came down the mountain because they couldn’t hide away with what they knew, with who they knew, with what they had to offer the world. Like the disciples we have to come down from the mountaintop experiences we have with Jesus and carry his healing into the world. We have to come down TOGETHER to follow where he leads.

God is on the loose and proclaiming the message

Mark 1:29-39

Thanks to modern technology while I watch more TV than I probably should, I don’t watch a whole lot of commercials. Ordinarily I zip through the advertisements placed in the shows I’ve recorded which make my evenings, especially in election years, much more pleasant. There is the problem however, of watching live sports events. When I do that I just have to bear with it and watch what’s there. Thankfully, every once in a while, there’s a clever ad that makes it all worthwhile. The image you see in front of you is a still shot from one such commercial.

I can laugh at it because in some ways I see myself in it. The folks there are waiting in line outside an electronics store. While it’s not named the stereotypes involved and the hints about their phones tell us they are Apple lovers - - not the fruit, but the products… like my own iPad here, like the iPod I use when running. I don’t have the phone, but you can catch my drift. I can see myself when I’m being parodied.

Anyway, these Apple users, shown in cities all across the country, are waiting in line at the electronics store, somewhat excitedly, somewhat grumpily, for the next update to their precious phones to be released when they notice something right in front of them. They see young men and women using a device that they can see is almost exactly the one for which they are waiting. ALMOST. The screen is bigger, the picture better, the service clearer, but…it’s not their beloved brand. It’s a Samsung. You can see the looks on their faces. They are defeated. They are behind. They are very clearly left out of the next big thing.

Being left out is a feeling we all know in one way or another. Whether we have been left out on the playground when teams are being picked, or the sorority or fraternity in college, maybe among a group of friends gathering for dinner, or hopefully not, but possibly even in the life of the church when it becomes dangerously close to a country-club-type existence, being left out is one of those universal human experiences. For some it is even one of the biggest fears about living in relationship with other people. There’s this nagging worry that somehow, somewhere we won’t know what is happening, we won’t be included, we’ll lose our place in the community.

Simon’s mother-in-law was left out. A fever had her left out. She was stricken with illness, confined to bed, and unable to go about her daily tasks, unable to fulfill her role in the family, in the community. Right away Jesus heals her without much fanfare and though her immediate return to service could be written off as a burden of women in a patriarchal society, there’s a hint to more in the way that it is reported. Immediately upon being healed, she began to serve them.

It doesn’t say she waited on them or helped them. She served them. It’s a word reserved for a special purpose. It’s the word used to describe what Jesus’ purpose is, he “came not to be served but to serve” (Mark 10:45). It’s the word from which we get our word for deacons, an ordained office called to serve the body of Christ and the world with compassion.

Immediately upon being healed she returned to her call, not all of womankind’s call, not to be “in the kitchen where she belongs,” but her call, her ministry, her place of service. Immediately upon being healed she was brought back into the role she held, she was no longer left out of the circle of people who are fulfilling their purpose, living their life with meaning, doing what they are meant to do. She was healed so she would be able to serve. So really, she was healed so she could be sent out.

Mark pairs this healing with the exorcism we heard last week. They lose a bit of their combined impact when they are split over two Sundays like this. Mark writes this first chapter of his gospel with such urgency. Everything happens “immediately.” We lose a bit of that when we divide the fast action of one day over the course of two or even three weeks. However, as soon as they left the synagogue, the crowd with its collective mouth still dragging on the floor, Jesus and his new brand disciples went straight to Simon’s mother in law’s bedside. In three quick verses she’s healed and up fulfilling her divine call.

The exorcism and the healing are placed side by side, and they go hand in hand. In the first a man who is gripped by an unclean spirit is freed from that possession. A man who is cast out from society, ignored, worse, even shunned for the evil that holds onto his spirit, is released from that captivity. Jesus brings him back into the circle of companionship. He who is left out is brought in.

In the home of Simon’s mother in law, the reverse takes place. She is used to serving. She is used to working among people. She is used to showing compassion and hospitality, but she is laid low by a fever and can’t participate in her called role. She is left out, but left out in a different way. A woman who is already accepted by her community, used to GOING OUT, used to serving others, can’t. She is held back. She is left out from the privilege of using her God-given abilities.

Yet, Jesus reverses both conditions. The one who is cast out and shunned is brought into wholeness and community. The one who is held back and insulated is sent out to serve. This, Jesus says, is the message he needs to get out and proclaim. It’s what he has spent his day proclaiming with his actions; it’s what he proclaimed from the minute he started his ministry. “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15). It’s the whole reason, he says, that he is on the loose – to proclaim the message, a message of reversal, a message of repentance.

Repent! We hear the word and we think of the folks whose eye contact we avoid, carrying signs, shouting on street corners, lining the walkways into sporting events and political debates. “Repent!” Jesus proclaims as he travels the countryside and people come flocking. “Repent,” we hear, and we shrink away, turn aside, and start to feel guilty for what we did or didn’t do. We think of being made to feel guilty or getting caught. We immediately berate ourselves for being jerks, punishing ourselves as we think we should be punished, taking God’s job and making it our own, which we are really really good at doing.

But that’s what we’ve done with the word. Or at least that’s what’s been done to it in our presence, and we have just gone along with it. The folks on that Galilean countryside, however, heard it different. They heard it in the way Jesus enacted it as he displayed the exact ministry, the exact kingdom of God that came near in him.

Repentance isn’t about feeling guilty and groveling. It isn’t about beating ourselves over the head, stopping us in our tracks, rendering ourselves immobile. In fact, the call to repent is one of the most active calls in the gospel. It’s not a call to shame; it’s a call to action. It’s not like screaming “Stop!” It’s like screaming “Turn around! Come this way!”

Repentance isn’t an exercise of the mind or the perfect words we speak in prayer. Repentance is the reversal of our way of life. It’s a turning away from whatever keeps us from living in as if God’s kingdom has really come near and turning toward the good news. The message Jesus proclaims, and the action to which he calls us, is one of complete reversal. Those who are left out are brought in and included. Those who are broken are healed in order to make others whole.

In this one day in Mark’s gospel, in Jesus’ first day on the job, Jesus shows the message he proclaims. Jesus shows the message we are also called to proclaim. The kingdom of God is near. The way God intends for the world to be is coming close. In this person, in this Jesus, we will see what it’s all supposed to be like, and the shocking thing is that everything we thought was true, everything that we thought held power and was holy and was blessed isn’t necessarily powerful, sacred, and desirable. Jesus spends the rest of his ministry expanding on what he started in this very first day.

He takes the least holy, the demon possessed, and cleanses them, brings them in, and gives them a place at God’s table. He takes the broken and sick, and touches them, lifts them up, heals them, and sends them out to serve in his name. He points to those who are powerful in the world, leaders of armies and nations, and declares their power is nothing compared to God’s. He looks at those who guard the temple and the presence of God and shows them their building is empty; God’s Spirit cannot be confined to sanctuaries made by human hands. He says the peacemakers are blessed, not those who divide and conquer. He says the poor wll inherit God’s kingdom, not those who try to buy it with their wealth. He says the sinners are welcome, not those who see no need for grace in their life. He says the old will not get tired. He says the young have credibility.

This is the message he proclaims. This is the good news he scatters through the countryside. This is what it means to repent, to go in a completely different direction, to go in God’s direction. This is what we are called to proclaim in his name - - an amazing grace that shatters the assumption of the world in which we live, that breaks down the barriers that have been constructed around God, that calls for a complete reversal of the way we are used to treating each other, ourselves, and God. We are called to proclaim, to ENACT a kingdom that is entirely different from what the world expects, a world where the weak are not whole, the poor are excluded, those of different races aren’t even considered fully human.

That world is not what God desires. That world is full of unclean spirits. That world is sick with the fever of injustice. That world is NOT REAL. The kingdom of grace, the kingdom of renewal, the kingdom of welcome, the kingdom of servanthood, the kingdom of reversal is real. The kingdom of God is real. And the kingdom of God is near. Believe it. And proclaim it. Amen!

God is on the loose and casting out demons!

He was a divided man. You could see it in his disheveled hair, his wild eyes, his fidgeting hands. He just couldn’t stop moving, correcting himself, going this direction then that trying to keep his body and his mind under some kind of control when all they wanted to do was race away just out of reach, where he couldn’t get a grasp of his own self. Sometimes it meant that he just couldn’t stop shaking, that man who was there in the synagogue. He couldn’t stop crying out, speaking at all the wrong moments, saying all the wrong things, shouting out when everyone else was composed, pulled together, perfectly…appropriate. The rest were calm and focused and attentive to the worship leader, but he was, he was, possessed.

Something else had a hold of his body and mind. Something else was fighting for control of the thoughts he was thinking, the moves he was making, the words that danced on the tip of his tongue. Something else had entered into his body, his life, and whatever it was it was holding him captive, gripping him, so tightly that he couldn’t break free from its bounds. It was evil, both the way it tormented him inside and the way it separated him from everyone else. The way it separated him from God.

Some people pitied him, sorry for whatever he had done to deserve this hell on earth. They looked down their noses at him, wished it would go away for his sake and for theirs, but never getting close enough to see if there was anything they could do. Everyone feared him. What held him was other-worldly. It was demonic. It was unclean. Was it contagious? Could they catch it? If they were near him would his fate jump from his life to theirs? Would they be infected? Would they be shunned the way they shunned him? Would they be relegated to a life divided, a mind divided between two wills, a body divided between two masters, a spirit divided from God?

He pitied and feared himself. He couldn’t remember a time that it wasn’t like this – so terrible, so horrific, so completely out of control. He longed for a way back to the way things used to be, knowing life wasn’t perfect, but at least it was one life, one mind, one spirit. When he could close his eyes to dream even just for a moment dreams that weren’t painted with demonic colors he could imagine his life without the spirit, even just for a moment, and it felt free. It felt light. It felt…divine.
Unclean spirits. Demons. Possession. Exorcisms.

We don’t quite know what to do with these things, do we? Maybe I should just speak for myself. I don’t quite know what to do with these things. It’s not every day conversation for me except when one of these difficult passages shows up on the preaching calendar. I knew a pastor once who claimed he could smell evil spirits when they came near, but that’s not the kind of thing you hear everyday, especially from us nice controlled, reasonable, level-headed Presbyterians. These sorts of things, these sorts of accounts feel just a bit outside of my reach, and when I come face to face with Jesus’ ministry of casting out demons I get a little squirmy, a little uncomfortable; I feel a little lost.

This report of an unclean spirit challenges my modern or post-modern sensibilities. It throws me for a loop, and then unfortunately, often, it gives us an excuse to just skip over this important act of God in Jesus – the first miracle Jesus performs in this gospel. While there must be something important here, there must be something incredible going on, it’s so foreign to my understanding it’s tempting to skip over it, ignore it, and stuff it in the back of the drawer.

Understandings of the demons in Scripture range from the literal to the symbolic. But however each of us understands the unclean spirit, there's one thing on which most of us can agree. The demon that possesses the man in the synagogue is disrupting the life God intended for him. The possession is in direct conflict with the will of God in his life. That’s what “unclean” means. Uncleanliness in the Jewish tradition was not a physical dirtiness, it was a spiritual corruption. It meant that the creation that God had made and called good had not suddenly turned bad, but that there was something that was marring it, something that was smudging it, something that was separating the good creation from the perfect Creator who had molded it. There was a layer of “ICK” between God and God’s beloved creature, and things were not as they were supposed to be.

In the case of an unclean spirit, however, you understand that, literally to metaphorically or somewhere in between or somewhere undecided, it means that something is holding onto the man before Jesus, something is vying for control of his thoughts, words, behaviors, and spirit. Something is working hard to distort the will of God, successfully it seems, and things are not as they should be in the kingdom that Jesus’ proclaims has come near. That’s a demon I can get my head around. That’s a demon I have seen and known.
I have been possessed by demons of jealousy. I have wanted what others have so badly that I have forgotten who I am and with my own thoughts and unquenchable desires have muddled and tarnished the image of God within me. I have tried too hard to be something other than what God created me to be, working against God’s impulses in my life.

I have been possessed by demons of pure anger. I have held grudges that built walls that restricted the flow of God’s love through me. They have artificially blocked my experience of God’s love flowing to me. They have held me back from reconciling. They have held me back from forgiving. They have divided my mind, body, and spirit so that as Paul says in the letter to the Romans, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

Have you known these demons to possess you? Maybe your demons are other demons. Some people describe their unhealthy cravings for alcohol, drugs, or gambling as demons. Others speak of ungodly and all-consuming desires for money, for power, for prestige that contort their understanding of what God has said is important, the divinely-given vision for what leadership looks like, the Christ-like call to servanthood. Demons of deceit mar God’s will for openness and honesty. The demons we know from the inside or out threaten our relationship with God; they distort our understanding of the reality God has created, the kingdom Christ has brought near.
Going beyond the individual experience we can see demons in the world in attitudes and institutions that perpetuate racism. There are demons that possess society distorting God’s will for wholeness for all people, for abundant and healthful and grace-filled life for all of God’s creation. There are demons that we allow to divide our spirits, to compartmentalize our faith so that the church is all too silent on issues of fair wages, just working conditions, and accessible health care. There are demons that we allow to divide our witness as followers of the God who welcomed those who were cast aside, ignored, and even stoned by the rest of society. There are demons that possess our minds, convincing us that somehow someone else will take care of the poor, the lonely, the widow, the orphan, those far and those near who are enslaved by economics, enslaved by greed, even enslaved by real people not just overseas in deserts and jungles, but 20 miles down the road in the human trafficking trade and probably less than a mile down the road in our own town.
These demons are real. They are present in the world. They present among us. They are present in our lives. They have everything in common with the demon that held the man in the synagogue in that they grip us, they toss us around, they replace our impulse to live a life in close communion with God, in the realm of God, by the design of God, right here, right now. They separate us from God and from the created order as God intended it to be.

These demons are real, but they will not be tolerated. That’s what we see in the gospel according to Mark. Jesus doesn’t deny the demon’s existence. He doesn’t ignore its reality or smooth over its effects. But he also doesn’t accept that what he sees is the way it has to be. Jesus refuses to let the man live a divided life. He refuses to allow him to be held captive by anything that stands between a child and his God. He refuses to let this man’s world continue on the trajectory it is following and right there in the middle of the synagogue, surrounded by people who are watching, waiting, and wondering what he will do about this disturbance, this disruption, this denigration of God’s will and God’s creation, Jesus commands that unclean spirit to come out.

It isn’t pretty. It isn’t easy. It doesn’t come without convulsions and crying, but he does it. He sends the unclean spirit away with audacity and authority, and it works. He does the same for us. The demons that plague our lives, the demons with which we sometimes even conspire, are not a part of God’s will and desire for us. The demons in our neighborhoods and our nation are not a part of the reign of God that Jesus carries into the world, and he’s not afraid to cast them out. He does the same for us and he asks the same of us.

This is how God is on the loose. This is the One we commit to follow. It’s not safe. It’s not easy. It’s not comfortable. It’s rarely neat and tidy. It means letting Jesus cut out and throw out those things that grip us and hold us back from following him fully and completely, those things that stand between us and our God. It means taking a look at what’s right in front of us and calling the demons demons. It means, looking at those things in our lives, in our culture, in our society, in our community that hold us back from being a part of God’s kingdom of grace and welcome and justice and refusing to tolerate their existence in our midst. It means we can’t ignore hunger. It means we can’t deny the disparity between rich and poor. It means we can’t excuse corruption that holds people or corporations to different standards of decency. It means we can’t remain silent when we have gathered what we need, when we have moved on to what we want, when there are others lagging far, far behind.
This is how God is on the loose in Jesus our Christ. This is how God is on the loose in the world. So, if we really mean what we say when we say we want to follow him, if we really mean what we say when we say we want to be his disciples, then it means we have to stand up and take action. We have to be a part of the reign of God that counters everything that stands in the way of God’s grace, and love, and peace. We have to call demons “demons” and we have to be a part of casting them out, healing what divides, and letting the reign of God come pouring down. May it be so for us and for the world. May it be so.

God is on the loose and calling us to follow!

A couple of years ago I signed up for a Twitter account. Twitter, if you’re unsure, is one of the many social media networks that is, bit by bit, changing the way we receive and react to information in our world. In 140 character messages users, who range from your neighbors to world leaders, send out information to their friends, their acquaintances, their fans, and the world about what they’re doing, what they’re thinking, where they are, and in too many situations what they ate for lunch that’s now giving them indigestion. Personally, I bounce on and off of Twitter. I can only take so much information for so long, so I go through waves of using it and not.

The whole system works by encouraging people to “follow” one another. If you’re familiar with Facebook this is sort of like “friending” someone. Each user of Twitter can customize what tweets they see by choosing whose messages they want to appear in their feed. You can follow your friends and make plans for coffee, talk about your afternoon, or react to that bad call the ref just made at the football game. You can follow acquaintances you have bumped into because of shared interests in politics, sports, or career paths. Do you want to know what life is like after Star Trek? Follow TheRealNimoy. Do you crave a sound byte of wisdom to get you through the day? Follow the DalaiLama. Do you want to know what the soup of the day is? Follow Keys Café.

You can even follow Jesus - - - or at least one of a myriad of funny and not-so-funny jokesters pretending to be Jesus who tweet on his behalf every day. Like one of my favorites “JesusofNaz316” who tweets things from the absurd, like “Blessed are they that have highly unusual names, for they shall likely land jobs at NPR.” To the wise like “Be ye thankful for nurses and nurses aides.” To the occasional thought-provoking and faith challenging like “Grace is not a thing to acquire. Grace is an action to perform.”

Yes I follow Jesus - - - on Twitter. Do you think that’s what he meant?
Apparently this cartoonist didn’t think so….


But sometimes I’m not sure our more conventional and accepted means of following are that much better.

My week from last Saturday Jan 14 until the end of the day on Wednesday Jan 18 consisted of no less than 5 meetings thick in Presbyterianism. In those days I was a part of conversations, meetings, and church business sessions on just about every level of our church organization. There was a presbytery meeting one day, a congregational Nominating Committee another, two straight days of synod business (the organization of the church that covers the upper Midwest), and our session met on Tuesday night. At the same time this week my eyes and attention were turned toward a meeting of some Presbyterians from all over the nation taking place in Orlando. Every level of our denominational structure was before my eyes and thoughts and prayers as some point this week, and if you saw me and you thought I was looking dazed and confused that was probably why.

There is a lot going on in Christ’s church at every single one of these levels. There is a lot that is going on that seems good for Christ’s mission, but at the same time there is also some anxiety about the next step in the life of the church, the future of the church in the 21st century, that is causing some stress in the system. As I was involved in some of these discussions, as I “followed” others on Twitter, I kept coming back to our Scripture passage for today and heard myself asking, “Is this what following is all about?” Put another way, is the institution of the church trying to follow Jesus in best sense of the word, in the way the disciples followed him or is the institution more worried about saving itself?

Don’t misunderstand me here. I am not suggesting that we throw our structure out the window and go it alone. I could ordinarily be accused of being sinfully proud of being Presbyterian. We are in no way perfect, but I believe whole-heartedly that the Holy Spirit is working in and through us. I believe whole-heartedly that most of what we try to do in our life together is in the name and manner of Jesus our Lord. I believe our structure, however complicated and convoluted it may seem sometimes, is a good a faithful way to support disciples of Jesus. However, at some point in each of my gatherings or conversations this last week, I found myself asking “Is this what following is all about? Is this making fishers of people?”

My question led me to look further at what it means to be disciples even just by looking at how the first disciples were called and how they followed. The first thing I noticed right off that bat is that Jesus didn’t call the disciples to build a church. He didn’t call Simon and Andrew, James and John and tell them to go build a building, write a constitution, and organize committees. He didn’t pull them away from their nets and their boats, their families and their co-workers for the purpose of creating an institution. He called them to follow him, and he promised that they would gather people.

That’s it. He didn’t tell the how to ordain, who to ordain, or even TO ordain people at all. He didn’t tell them the kind of building to make or who would own it. He didn’t tell them what committees they would be on or even that there would be committees. He invited them to follow him, to go where he went, to do what he did, and to bring other people along. And he did all of this without even mentioning the church. In fact, in Mark’s gospel, Jesus and his disciples spend precious little time in any sort of house of worship, be it a local synagogue or the temple in Jerusalem. They visit occasionally, but it is not the scene of most of their action. Most of their ministry takes place not among people who are already on board, who already believe in the promises of Jesus, but among those who have yet to hear and experience the good news of God’s love.

This isn’t to say the local church and even our regional, national, and international partnerships are bad. Jesus certainly does NOT deny the importance and the gift of the community. When disciples are sent out in his name to heal and teach and forgive sins, they are sent out in pairs, presumably to support each other, to work together, to hold each other accountable. Jesus pulls his disciples aside as a group in order to spend time with them and build their community, again for mutual support and teaching about the kingdom of God. He entrusts to them the work of building up that kingdom and sets them out to work on that task together, but he doesn’t give exact directions of how their life in community will be and doesn’t make the maintenance of that community the center of everything he teaches.

I think the church can be a very very good and effective tool for supporting ministry, but ultimately the church has got to be about enabling the people of God to be disciples of Jesus, his followers called and sent. Everything we do in the church, locally in our Property, Education, and Membership Committees, regionally as a presbytery supporting pastors and congregations or as a synod building larger partnership, nationally and internationally in denominational structures, everything we do in the institution of the church has got to ultimately be about equipping people to follow Jesus and display his grace in the world.

The church can’t exist simply to maintain itself. We have not been called into being just to add numbers to our rolls and gather together once a week. We are called to follow, not like Twitter by keeping our ears open for the next little thing he says, noting it and then walking away. We are called to follow with our very footsteps, our lives actions and activities, God who is on the loose, moving in this world, healing those who are broken, forgiving those who have fallen short, loving those who are unlovable, touching those who are untouchable, welcoming those who have been excluded, ignored, and shunned by the world and society in which we exist, the world and society which we are tempted to replicate even in our churches. We are called to invite people to join us, not boost our egos by adding to our numbers and get magic credit in the sky or even to ensure our institution lasts forever. But we are called to share what we have experienced in Christ’s grace and include more in our community to learn from each other, to support one another better as we take seriously the call to be disciples, learners, witnesses, and servants of Jesus our Lord, Jesus our God.

Last week we heard the account in John’s gospel of Jesus calling some of his first disciples. In that story, Jesus got his first disciples the way many people find new people to follow on Twitter, they were recommended to him by a friend. John the Baptizer recognized Jesus as the Lamb of God and two of his disciples then became disciples of Jesus. In Mark’s gospel this week the first disciples come to Jesus when he calls to them while they are hard at work, casting a net into the sea. They are fishermen. Jesus is walking along the Sea of Galilee when he saw Simon and his brother Andrew, apparently standing on the shoreline. With little else to convince them of his importance or divine nature, he simply says to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”

It makes a great children’s song, but I often wonder why they bothered to follow. Fishing for people may sound interesting, but it doesn’t put food on the table. Simon and Andrew first and then the brothers James and John after them, walked away from their livelihoods to go be with Jesus. James and John left their father in the boat with the hired men to follow some guy who just called to them on the beach. They risked everything they had - - their source of daily food and income as well as their inheritance down the road. In one moment and with one decision they left stability behind and walked away instead with someone who promised them people over food.

It’s a strong and daunting model of discipleship. Following Jesus is anything BUT just clicking on his name and reading what he has to say every day. It isn’t anywhere as easy as scrolling through his thoughts, retweeting them in our feed if we think they are particularly good on any given day, but virtually forgetting them when the phone is turned off a few minutes later. When Jesus calls disciples to follow him, when Jesus calls US to follow him he expects us to drop everything we’re doing, get out of the lives we might otherwise live, and follow him.

Jesus’ “follow” is a completely different “follow” than we have come to know - - whether we’re talking about following on Twitter or following a news story or following a conversation or a line of thinking. Jesus’ “follow” is about much more than just keeping track of where something is going. Jesus’ “follow” is active. It’s sacrificial and it demands our commitment to Jesus’ mission of wholeness for all people, grace in the face of opposition, and a reversal of the powers of this world. This is what it means to be a disciple. It’s not about building an institution that occupies a building; it’s about participating in the kingdom of God. It’s about following Jesus into the world where he is working and inviting us along. It’s about displaying his presence in the world so boldly that the nets of his love will be full.