Everything Is Different

Isaiah 25:6-9

Mark 16:1-8

Coming home in the evening a week or so ago, for just a second, just a split second, I could smell them. An overnight rain had pulled a few more new leaves out of their buds, and while I hadn’t seen any of the flowers yet, I knew, I just KNEW that in that split second, I smelled the lilacs in our backyard. I turned my head and tried to catch them again, but they was gone. I couldn’t find the scent, but it had been there. I swear. And when it was there, I knew. Spring was really here. In a quick sniff of the still night air, everything was different.

I was filled with joy. Filled with it! Sure the calendar and the equinox had signaled the start of spring a few days earlier. The amazingly good weather we have been having brought out the spring bucket of clothes from storage. Even the cat’s increased shedding, because of the increase in daylight I’ve been told, let me know that the season was changing. But none of those signs really meant anything, none of them really signaled to me that spring was really coming the way smelling the lilacs did. In that one moment with the hint of the scent, everything was different, and I was elated.

However, that exact same realization - - that something has drastically and dramatically changed - - doesn’t always bring such a jubilant response. For some people and in some situations it can be downright terrifying.

As soon as they could get there after properly observing the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome rushed to the tomb with spices. He had died on Friday afternoon, just a few hours before the Sabbath began in the evening and strict, STRICT Jewish laws about the burial of the dead before Sabbath and coming into contact with a dead body had prevented them from anointing his body earlier. So as soon as they could, as early in the morning as they could stand to get up, they went quickly to the tomb, wondering aloud to one another how they were even going to get the stone rolled away.

Before they could answer their own questions, though, when they arrived at the tomb, they looked up and saw that it had already been rolled away. I think the fear probably started to settle in at that moment. Who had beat them to the tomb? At the very least it was someone much stronger than they. Was it friend or foe? Was it disciple or dissenter? What it a thief? A soldier? A temple official? A curious gawker? Still committed to their task at hand they entered the tomb and saw a young man, sitting inside. “He has been raised; he is not here. He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.”

In an instant, they knew. Everything is different. Nothing in the world will ever be the same, and while it is easy to dismiss their response of fear and look for a different, more complete, more joyful ending, I think their fear is a perfectly acceptable reaction to the news that someone who was dead, lifeless, sealed in a solid rock tomb, now is NOT. It means, among other things that, all the rules have changed. The dead did not stay dead. And that is downright terrifying!

And then, as suddenly as this strange news came, our account this morning ended. The women fled from the tomb. Terror and amazement had seized them. They couldn’t even tell the disciples closest to Jesus, closest to themselves. They couldn’t tell anyone, for they were afraid. End scene. End gospel of Mark!

Except if you were reading along or if you want to flip to the page your Bible quickly even now, you will see it may or may not be the end of the gospel of Mark. There are a few more verses there that follow verse 8, a shorter ending and a longer ending, each with a slightly different, more detailed account of what really happened after the resurrection of Jesus. However, most scholars and people of faith don’t think that these words are original to Mark’s gospel. They don’t appear in the most accurate early versions of Mark’s gospel that have been found, and so most people don’t count them as authentic words of Mark’s gospel.

And so we have it - - Mark’s gospel ends with the women in fear and silence, and for centuries upon centuries, millennia even, that has been SO HARD for us to accept, so hard for us to live with. It didn’t take too long for the earliest scribes and editors to try their hand at gospel writing as they copied Mark’s original account. As some received copies and rewrote them by hand they added words to the end to try to wrap it up into a neater bow, to get the women out of their fear and the good news shared with others. They passed those on to others who kept copying the same words, and soon there were at least three versions of the gospel floating around the ancient church, all to try to prove that the faithful didn’t end in fear.

The attempt to do so is, to me at least, a little ironic and unnecessary. Isn’t there proof enough that the story didn’t end with silence? I mean, isn’t all of THIS, all of us, all of the churches around the world this morning full of rejoicing and singing and alleluias, proof enough that the women didn’t sit on their fearful story forever? Isn’t our own faith, our own impulse to gather on the eighth day, the day of the new creation, of new beginnings, of transformation, of resurrection, isn’t our own need to be here in this place with all these people proof enough that their reaction eventually changed? We know it did because EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT!

We know they got the courage to speak, to proclaim the good news – He is risen – because we are here proclaiming it today! Some day, at some point, Mary Magdalene, Mary, and Salome figured out that they couldn’t stay quiet, that they needn’t be fearful, that everything is indeed different and the world needs to know it! Some day at some point they broke their silence and became the first proclaimers of the best news ever - - “By the grace and loving power of God for all of creation, Jesus is alive and everything is different!”

The thing about some of these moments of realization when we just suddenly KNOW that everything is different, is that the full understanding of what that means isn’t always immediately obvious. Not to everyone everywhere, all at the same time. In our backyard that night a week or so ago, the smell of the lilac was fleeting. Almost as quickly as I noticed it, it was carried away on the night breeze. I caught it again for a moment just as brief on Thursday night, but it’s been gone ever since. Even when I pushed my face deep into the bushes trying to find it again, I couldn’t. I know it is there. I know I have witnessed it, but it’s just hard to find it again.

It can be that way with our experience of the resurrection. It can be hard to see, hard to believe sometimes, hard to remember it is something we know, something we have felt, something we have trusted when stories of death seem more prominent then stories of new life. Violence tearing apart the people and nation of Syria. Persistent threats and stories of modern day slavery in Sudan. Unbelievable accounts of dangerous bounties in professional sports, SPORTS, ENTERTAINMENT. Shootings in schools. Senseless murders based on the color of someone’s skin, even in this day and age. Cancer that strikes, young and old, with or without cause, in higher and higher numbers it seems every year. It just doesn’t always sound like a resurrection world, where everything is different.

But the resurrection is here. We find it in the out-pouring of love and compassion for an anonymous young life at the funeral yesterday in Winona of an unknown baby who was found in the river last year. We find it the way communities and churches and neighbors have rallied around the victims of tornadoes in Texas and Indiana this year. We find it in the relentless passion of peacemaking teams who continually go into dangerous nations and situations to bring the good news of a different way, to free those who are held in physical captivity, to release those who are bound to cycles of violence.

The resurrection is here when each one of us takes up the task of loving more than hating, forgiving more than holding a grudge, giving more than asking, accepting more than judging. The resurrection is here when we proclaim with our words and live with our lives the good news that love wins. The gospel of Mark seems to end in the middle of the story. It seems incomplete, and that’s because it is. Way back in the first verse of the first chapter of Mark’s gospel we are told that this account is “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” The next 16 chapters are just the beginning. The middle of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is still being written today by our faith in the resurrection displayed through our lives, our choices, our love, because now everything is different.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Thy Kingdom Come

Psalm 25:1-10
Luke 11:1-4

I find it interesting where Luke places the Lord's Prayer. This form of prayer that we have come to know and love and memorize and repeat weekly when we gather for worship (or at least a sort of a version of it) appears only in the gospels according to Matthew and Luke, and on top of that they are slightly different in each gospel. I debated which to include as today's reading for a while, because they each have unique aspects to bring to the conversation about prayer. In the end I chose Luke's version for a couple of reasons, its context being one of them.

The chapter and verse numbers that have been imposed on the text after Luke's writing make this less obvious to us now, but the Lord's Prayer is taught in this gospel immediately following the famous story of Mary and Martha. Mary and Martha are sisters who are receiving Jesus in their home. Culture, good manners, and a love for Jesus dictate that they show him hospitality when he is a guest. Martha, who was the one who actually invited Jesus in, gets herself busy quickly making preparations, we assume she's bustling around in the kitchen, fetching water to make Jesus comfortable, or other things like that. Mary isn't bothered by all these usual tasks and instead sits undistracted at the feet of Jesus listening to what he is saying. Famously, Jesus compliments Mary for her choice saying, "Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."

From there Luke launches into the story of his disciples asking him to teach them to pray. I don't think this is by accident, and for that reason I think the two stories teach us together. Mary is complimented for her decision to just be with Jesus. She is complimented for her lack of distraction by many other things. She is complimented, I think, for nurturing her relationship with Jesus and not letting her busy-ness get in the way. When the disciples recognize for what she has been complimented, they want to know how to do it, too. The closest thing they know to ask for is a way to pray.

Prayer is not a big divine help button, although, I know I often treat it that way. Prayer is not a divine "Phone-a-friend" where we look for a quick answer to a tough a question then move right along to the next. Prayer is not a place to list out our pleases, thank you, I'm sorrys, and what abouts like a big long grocery list, on tumbling after another with no space to breathe or listen. And most of all, prayer is not a one way street.

In our adult education last week, those who gathered heard Marcus Borg talking about spiritual practices in general and prayer more specifically at times. Borg related his own recollection that seemed to resonate with a number of us. He talked about how as a child prayer was a "supposed to," something you just did because you had to, almost a requirement even. He said he prayed without a thought to the purpose of prayer. As a child, for him, and I imagine for many of us, prayer was primarily about asking for things. I'd add that it wasn't even always the self-centered things of childhood - a new toy, a puppy, and less annoying sibling - but even prayers asking for good health for others, help with a difficult situation at school, a friend.

As he grew, though, Borg told us that prayer has become something different. Jesus lifted up Mary's example of focus, attention, and presence. Jesus praised her for her lack of distraction and her gift of time to their relationship. Like any human relationship a relationship with God can only develop by paying attention to it. A relationship with God can only strengthen when it is given focus and attention and presence. A relationship with God can only grow deeper by spending time in it.

This is what prayer is all about, spending time in relationship with God. Too often we worry about whether the words we have said were just right. Too often we stress about whether we started correctly, got it all in the right order, or asked for the right things. Especially when we are praying out loud before others or on their behalf we want to make sure we say everything in just the perfect way, but in reality our prayers are not our words to each other, our prayers are our time spent in relationship with God.

Prayer is the practice of opening our lives and our hearts and our minds before God. Prayer is the practice of being present with God. Prayer is the practice of so aligning our spirit's with the Spirit of God, so aligning our lives with the life of Christ, so aligning our creativity with the Creator of all, that nothing else can happen, but the kingdom of God of on earth. Prayer is the words we utter aloud or in silence, the words written or sung, the words moaned or even the words unformed, but prayer goes beyond any words we can imagine and even those we can't, because prayer is the act of Mary, sitting and listening and being present with Jesus. Prayer is the act of the psalmist, trusting in God, waiting with God, walking with God, being led in what is right, what is love, what is faithfulness.

Prayer is the act of making time for God and time with God so that our relationship with God is cultivated and" nurtured and strengthened. And when that happens, oh, then we see what our prayer can do. The whole of the Lord's Prayer, the words we find in Luke, an expanded version in Matthew, and the even longer version we pray most weeks in worship, can, I believe be summarized in the very first petition - - "Thy kingdom come."

"Your kingdom come," God's kingdom, we invite, not our own. God's kingdom we ask for, not the kingdoms of this world. God's kingdom, God's purposes, God's will, God's grace, God's forgiveness, God's provision, God's guidance, we ask for, not the wisdom of this world that is foolishness. "Your kingdom come" should be the center of all our prayers spoken and unspoken, and at the same time it is also the answer to each of these prayers. When we make request the center of our lives before God, the focus of our relationship with God, we find this request is granted IN the lives we live.

When we are open to God, when our relationship with God grows deeper and wider as we pay attention to it we find ourselves agents of God's kingdom, offering daily bread to those who lack it, asking for grace and forgiveness in our relationships where we need it, offering it when it is ours share. We find ourselves impelled to speak the truth in love, work for justice in unrighteous situations, and side with the outcast, the lonely, and the forgotten. When we dwell in the presence of God, when attention is paid to the most important relationship in our lives, we find God's presence and opportunities to exhibit God's kingdom of love and grace and mercy in our work, in our homes, in our families, and our community. We find that God's kingdom does indeed come in us.

This is what prayer is all about. It's not the words we heap on words. It's not the verses we have memorized. It's not anything more or anything less then opening our lives, our hearts, and our spirits to God's presence, so that God's kingdom, God's realm, God's will and God's purpose can be accomplished for us, and in us, and through us. This simple phrase, "your kingdom come," is the most powerful, most subversive, and most life altering prayer we will ever utter or embody. Your kingdom, we pray, not mine, not my family's, not my pastor's, not my government's, not my political party's, not my friend's, not my employer's kingdoms and will and purpose be accomplished, but God's kingdom is what we pray will come and reign and have authority in the world. When we open ourselves to God's kingdom, God's presence, then we have truly prayed. When we open ourselves to God's kingdom, God's presence, then God's prayers are answered through us. Then God's kingdom comes.

The practice of prayer is about so much more than the words we put together beside or in our bed at night. The practice of prayer is about so much more than the routine verse we recite around the dinner table alone or with others. The practice of prayer is about so much more than the words that we offer in unison when we gather to worship God each week. It's even more than the words Jesus us taught us to guide our prayers together. The practice of prayer includes all these things and more, but it is not held in only these things. The practice of prayer is, above all, the practice of being present with God, attentive to God, and open to God's movement and leading in our lives, so that ultimately God's kingdom will come - for us, in us, and through us.

Whether we pray by singing, by writing, by speaking, by chanting, by drawing, by dancing, by meditating, by building, by sculpting, by painting, by driving, by gardening, by laughing, by crying and especially when we pray by listening, may our relationship with God grow deeper this day and always.

Turn Around

Psalm 32:1-7
1 John 1:5 - 2:2

The other morning as I was getting the kids ready to leave the house in the morning, I overheard a confession from the other room. The kids, to my knowledge, had had a great morning; everyone was getting along well, staying on task, helping each other. Or so I thought. From the hallway outside their bedroom, as clear as a bell I heard William's voice, "Hey Karoline! Don't tell Mom, but I hit Margaret in the head with my light saber when she was still in her crib. It was an accident. But I hit her."

Knowing that Margaret was just fine since she hadn't made a peep and there was no sign of the this hit in the last hour I had spent with her, I moved right past worry about the injury to wonder at William's response. He had been sitting on this little nugget of truth for over an hour. His only witness to the "crime" was himself and his 21 month old sister who couldn't divulge the secret easily or audibly. There was no logical reason to share it with anyone, but apparently he felt he needed to let it out. He needed to get it off his chest.

His little not-quite-five year old soul was maybe an age appropriate version of the soul the Psalmist describes. While he kept silence it was groaning all morning long, his strength to go on carrying this burden dried up like water on the sidewalk in the heat of a summer day. Aren't these descriptions beautiful? Aren't they accurate? We can feel that feeling in our spirits, in our souls. That feeling of carrying more than we know we can; that feeling of our energy been drained right out of our consciousness because we know we have started down a wrong path. We have felt what it is like to know that we have moved further away from the people we were created to be whether it is in thought, word, or deed, and we have felt what it is like to want to be rid of that truth.

A few weeks ago when we were working our way through the first chapter of Mark's gospel we saw the Jesus' mission was one of reversal. He touches tshoe who carry the spiritual contagion of uncleanliness. He surrounds himself with "mere mortal" fishermen, not synagogue leaders. His identity is recognized by demons, but not religious men. Over and over again in the gospels he is upsetting the norms of life around him. He touches those who carry the contagions of uncleanliness. He heals on the sabbath. He includes women in his inner circle. He talks to foreigners.

Over and over again he challenges the expectations of "good religious folks." Over and over again he stands up in the face of a culture that honors money, political authority, and honor and proclaims God's blessing for those who are poor, those who have no voice in the public square, those who are empty before God and humanity. Over and over again Jesus demonstrated and taught that the way we tend to go, the direction we would choose on our own, the one that makes us feel good, the one, actually, that makes us feel better than others, is not the direction God chooses for us.

From the very beginning Jesus announces, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Repent, I said, isn't the scary word that sign carriers and street corner shouters have turned it into. Repent simply means to turn around, to go in the other direction. When Jesus calls it out to the crowds who listen to him, to his disciples who are near to him, to believers who still struggle to this day to join him, it means stop moving away. Turn around. Reverse your direction. Follow me.

Somewhere inside each of us is the urge to turn around, and the first step of turning around is acknowledging we're moving in the wrong direction. The letter from John calls it sin, darkness, unrighteousness. The Psalmist uses transgression, iniquity, and deceit. For William it was a whack with light saber. Intentional or unintentional, in our mind, in our heart, or in our actions, we find ourselves moving in directions away from God, but the promise the gospel delivers is one of reversal in Jesus our Christ.

Each week in worship we take the first step toward reversal corporately. We lift our voices and our hearts in prayer as we acknowledge the ways we have turned from God. We speak them out loud together, confessing even if not or own specific failings the ways humanity falls short of what God desires. This act of confession is something we do weekly, usually at the beginning of the service so that we are clearing the air right when we walk in the door. We are recommitting ourselves to walking in the way of God as we great the day with joy and praise. We are being cleansed and presenting ourselves wholly and completely before God in worship.

Likewise this practice of confession is one that is integral to the season of Lent. If each Sunday is a little Easter, a little celebration of the resurrection, in which we wouldn't think of worshipping without coming clean before God, how much more important is it stop what we're doing in Lent, acknowledge the ways we move from God, and begin the process of reversal, the process of following Jesus before the celebration of his new life on the feast of Easter? This whole season is about examining our lives, confessing to God the ways we have turned away, and recommitting ourselves to discipleship with our whole lives.

We take the first step toward reversal by naming that which has gone wrong in our attempt to follow Jesus faithfully, and when we do we should also always, every sing time, without fail, we hear the good news he proclaims. The kingdom of God is near. The possibility for a new future here. Turn around and enter that future today.

Cut It Out

Matthew 4:1-11

Isaiah 58

I didn’t grow up knowing much about Lent. It wasn’t something we talked about much in my church, and when we did it was at a time less than convenient for anyone but the retirees in our beachside Florida community. In my senior year of high school, though, I decided to try to remedy the situation the best way I knew how - by skipping school. Legally, of course, but still skipping school.

My plan started with a trip to my vice principal's office. One day a few weeks before Lent began, I made my appointment with Mrs. Brennan and declared that I was looking for a religious excused absence from school, once a week for the next several weeks. I needed to attend Lenten worship on Wednesday afternoons. I had the required signed letter from my pastor in hand. It was my ticket to a new understanding, I thought. or it could have been that I wasn’t in the right place at the right time.

Miraculously this worked. My Latin teacher, whose class I was missing, rolled her eyes when I told her of my plans. She told me to add it to the book I should write on how to skip school with permission from the administration. I had developed a knack for that by my senior year.

I don’t remember too much about those sermons, and I can’t differentiate now what I learned then and what I have learned later, but it was my introduction to Lent. The next year I went on to college, and had a further education in the season when I met my new best friends who were all Catholic. They taught me about giving things up for Lent - - chocolate, desserts, pop, potato chips, pretty much anything that might add a few pounds to the freshman 15. I came to think of Lent as God’s diet plan for the college student.

Lent wasn't always about chocolate. In its earliest days, the season of Lent was a time of preparation for those who were to receive the sacrament of baptism. Baptisms of adult converts and their households were held on Easter Sunday, once a year, in the early church, and a whole year was spent in study, prayer, and preparation. The final forty days of that year were an especially intense and holy time. Those who were already a part of the Christian community who felt a need to rededicate their lives, who recognized that the way they were living their lives was not the best representation of the body of Christ in the world, would often join the new converts in their final preparations for baptism.

As such Lent became a time of repentance and penance as it is now often considered, but it was at the same time a period of great spiritual growth and rebirth. It was marked by careful devotion to biblical spiritual practices. In Shrovetide, the week before Ash Wednesday, believers would make their confessions to God. They would discover their own required penance to be carried out in the forty weekdays of Lent. The season of Lent would be marked by personal acts of piety that corresponded to the sins confessed, but also general disciplines, like fasting, acts of charity, and prayer. Probably the best known of these in contemporary portrayals of Lent (whether faithful or mocking) is fasting, but many of us still wonder about how to do it or what it is for.

There is a strong biblical witness to the spiritual discipline of fasting. Moses fasted on the top of Mt. Sinai when he remained there to record the commandments of God on stone tablets. For forty days and forty nights we are told in Exodus he refrained from eating food or drinking even water as he dwelled in the presence of God, receiving the terms of God's covenant with Israel. Daniel, after having been saved from the den of lions, fasted as he prayed and mourned in the Babylonian exile. One fast recorded was twenty-one days long, in which Daniel cut out meats, rich foods, and wine. Esther, a young Jewish girl chosen providentially to be a queen while also in exile, asks the Jewish community to pray for her and fast for three days as she discerned her divine placement in the king's court. And, of course, there is Jesus' fast in the wilderness which we heard today. Still wet behind the ears from John's baptism he is led out into the desert by the Spirit where is fasts, presumably from food and water, for forty days and forty nights and is tempted.

There is something to be said for the practice of self-denial. In cutting something out of our lives that we love and crave and, maybe without even noticing, depend upon, we are reminded each time we begin to miss it, to turn our attention to God. Friends of mine from all walks of life answered a question I posed this week about fasting. One childhood friend chimed in that this year he is fasting from coffee, a difficult fast for him as it would be for many who cling to that morning routine. For him it also removes a "taste of home" from his life as he lives and works in China where most other tastes are foreign to his tongue. My friend Chris wrote, "It's amazing how something so seemingly small can provide so much comfort -- comfort that should be coming from His Cup, not my coffee cup."

Fasting, denial of food or water, accompanied by prayer has a long and rich tradition in Scripture and practice. Those who participate in this practice speak of a renewal of spirit, a realization of their dependence on God in new ways, humility in the face of a struggle, a connection to the self-denial and self-sacrifice of Jesus in a new way. For thousands of years people of faith, people of MANY faiths, have felt challenged, encouraged, and blessed through fasts, but the prophecy according to Isaiah seems to be pointing to another kind of fast. It's not better or more holy or more correct, necessarily, but a different way of thinking about a potentially important spiritual tool, especially, I believe, for the church in our culture, our context, our world today.

Ordinarily we think of humility as a hallmark of faith. Jesus speaks often of losing our lives in order to gain them, of humbling ourselves, not thinking too highly of who we are, what we have, what we can do. But there in Isaiah the prophet, speaking for God, seems to be saying that a day of humility is not the only fast pleasing to God.

In Epiphany one of the first ways we heard of God acting on the loose in the world was in a story about Jesus preaching in the synagogue. While he was there a man with an unclean spirit arrived. The demon challenged Jesus, recognizing his source and his divinity when no one else could. Seeing the torment this spirit inflicted on the man, Jesus cast it out, cut it out of the man's life in order that he could be free from oppression, from possession, from that which kept him from God and his community.

What if this could be a different model for fasting? Not a replacement, not something better than what has served so many for so long, but a different model, an additional one, one that addresses themes in our culture that encourage self-service and self-indulgence over serving others, putting their needs before our own. What if a Lenten fast was undertaken that cut things out that not just please me, but cut things out that keep me from pleasing God, that keep me pleasing from others, even things that harm others.

A fast of this kind might not look like fish Fridays and avoiding chocolate. A fast of this kind would probably look totally different. It might look like turning the TV off for a while and spending our time volunteering with the food shelf, Networks youth ministry, or Grace Place. It might look like deciding with our children that no toys will be purchased during Lent, but as a family we will purchase teddy bears given to children at Turning Point shelter for women and children fleeing domestic violence. It might look like lowering our voices in our homes and among our families, honoring each other as precious children of God, instead of asserting our will and authority with loud and angry shouts. It might look like the fast undertaken this Lent by a good number of friends who responded to my poll this week. They are fasting from fast food or eating out at restaurants or driving through drive-throughs and setting aside the money they would have spent on these things to give to organizations in their community that are fighting hunger.

Another friend spoke of doing everything she possibly could to ensure that the products she buys and uses in her home are fairly traded, that the corporations responsible for them treat their employees fairly. Still another friend and her family have decided to cut out all non-essential spending during Lent. They will buy simple foods, pay their bills, and continue their tithe to the church, but anything else, an app for the iPhone, a song to download, an afternoon at the movies, a coffee on the drive to work, the book screaming to them from the shelves of the store, ANYTHING not related to day-to-day living will be set aside for Lent. The money they save from this fast will be given, above and beyond their usual church pledge, to the church and other causes that aid people living in poverty at home and abroad.

Fasts of this kind honor what God was saying through the prophet Isaiah. Fasting and repentance, often thought of as very personal spiritual practices, have a communal or social aspect to them, too. A fast means nothing, Isaiah tells us, if we’re looking out for our spiritual health on one day, but treating workers unfairly on the next. Denying ourselves pleasures we enjoy, but at the same time ruining the enjoyment of others by fighting, mistreating, and striking others with our words, fists, or attitudes makes for a fast that is displeasing to God.

Isaiah points beyond simply spending time alone with God to other faithful actions we can incorporate into our lives as important parts of a truly faithful fast. Look out for the workers we employ. Watch our angry words and attitudes. Loose the ties that bind the oppressed. Share our bread with the hungry. Invite the homeless into our dwelling places. Cover the naked.

Isaiah's community took fasting seriously. They are not chastised for their lack of piety. But in the context of this passage, the lack of wholeheartedness, the lack of a holistic view in their practice of fasting was evidence that God's people were more interested in looking religious than in serving God and their neighbor. Their half-hearted attempts at fasting, attempts that looked only within, instead of also looking around to the community, were evidence that God’s people were more interested in getting ahead in their own relationship with God, instead of also aiding others in their spiritual and life journeys.

This is not the fast that God desires, a fast that only looks inward and only tends to my personal needs. The trumpet is sounding, Isaiah proclaims, and we are called to listen up: the fast God prefers is the one in which the hungry are fed. In God's realm, the rich person's fast shall make the way clear for the poor person's feast.

This Lenten season, we have been invited to participate in a fast before God, a fast that brings us closer to God and one another. Consider your fast in a new way. Consider casting out those demons that are holding onto your life, that are holding you at arms length from God by holding you away from others. Accept Isaiah's challenge to fast in a new way - sharing what we have to feed and clothe the hungry, satisfy ing the needs of the afflicted, challenging the systems in our community and in our world that oppress the poor.

Then our lights shall break forth like the dawn; then when we cry the Lord will say, “Here I am”; then our lives and our fasts will show the glory of the Lord to all.

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.