About the Cross

 Mark 8:27-38

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Years ago, while I was still preparing for ministry, I was under the care of Shenandoah Presbytery down in Virginia.  There was an all-women’s Presbyterian Church (USA) college in our bounds, Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, VA.  The Campus Pastor was Rev. Patricia Cox and I got to hear her preach several times as she did pulpit supply in the area.  I remember in particular a sermon of hers that had to do with the cross.  Let me try to recount some of it here.  Granted this is remembering a sermon from thirty years ago.  Most sermons are forgotten even by the minister by Sunday lunch.  This sermon was that memorable.

Being the campus pastor of a Presbyterian women’s college Rev. Cox saw many young women wearing a necklace with a cross on it.  Pastor that she was, Rev. Cox wanted to help them understand the meaning of this symbol they wore around their neck, that it wasn’t some sort of blessing charm or sanctified adornment, that’s its meaning was much more profound.  Rev. Cox boldly stated that we would see a lot less of people wearing crosses around their necks as sentimental, ornamental jewelry if we exchanged the cross for a symbol in our culture that would embody what the cross meant in Jesus’ day.  She would then, to great shock and awe, suggest that these beautiful, quaint, little ornamental crosses should be replaced with beautiful, quaint, little ornamental electric chairs.  In fact, we should even replace those big, gaudy crosses that ministers to like wear around their necks with big, gaudy electric chairs.

You see, the cross in Jesus’ day was the cruelest form of public execution there was and it was reserved particularly for those guilty of crimes against the Roman Empire or against the Emperor.  Back then, everybody would have recognized the cross as the most horrific form of capital punishment there was.  You would not have found people wearing necklaces of such a thing.  It would have been considered abhorrent.  

In case you didn’t know, it took several centuries for the cross to become the predominant symbol of the Christian faith.  The earliest Christian symbol seems to have been a fish.  The Greek word for fish, Ichthus, made a wonderful acronym for (Iesus)Jesus (Christos)Christ, (Theous) of God (‘Uios)Son, (Soter)Saviour and it also harkened back to Jesus’ miraculous feedings.

Today, here in Canada, wearing a symbol that would seem to popularize capital punishment would certainly turn some heads.  The House of Commons abolished the death penalty in 1976 and the topic is frowned upon.  Moreover, it seems hanging was the preferred method.  Can you imagine people wearing a necklace with a noose ornament on it?  That wouldn’t go over so well.  A noose would be more symbolic of racial hate crime.    

There are other ways to execute a person from which we might derive a replacement symbol for the cross: lethal injection, poisonous gas, or firing squad.  But, using a hypodermic needle, or a gas cylinder, or a rifle would still not be understood as a symbol for a form of execution.  A hypodermic needle necklace might rather represent sympathy for drug addicts.  A gas cylinder would be absolutely meaningless unless you are in to welder’s rights.  Wearing a rifle on a necklace around your neck would locate you in the camp of gun owner activists.  The electric chair, well, even up here in Canada everybody knows the only purpose of the electric chair was capital punishment.

Rev. Cox preached this sermon hoping to help her students understand how sentimental we Christians have become about the meaning of the cross.  She wanted these young women at the beginning of their adult lives to understand that the cross they wore was more than a fashion accessory.  It was rather a call to discipleship, a call to follow Jesus.  Now, these were the daughters of some very wealthy Southern Presbyterians and it is not likely that they put this cross around their necks understanding the gravity of the call to follow Jesus.  A good many of them would have received their cross to commemorate joining the church when they were12 or 13, or Grandmother gave it to them because it was important to Grandmother and they wore to remember her, or they had picked it up along the way to either identify with the Christian faith or to wear as some form of spiritual protection that keeps them safe on airplanes or just to be fashionable.  For the most part, they just did not realize that this cross symbolized the way of life of those who follow Jesus.

Anyway, looking deeper at what Jesus meant when he said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross, and follow me.”  Well, a little-known fact is that Jesus wasn’t the only person saying “Take up your cross.”  This was a somewhat common phrase used by people who knew they were doing and asking people to do things that would upset their Roman occupiers that could warrant crucifixion.  One of the things the Romans made the people they were crucifying do was carry their own cross to the place where they would be crucified.  This was also a very public event.  Crucifixions did not happen behind prison walls.  They happened along the roads as people entered a city.  They happened on hilltops.  The Romans made a point of crucifying people very publicly in order to make a statement about what happens to those who go against them.  It was intimidation.

Jesus’ invitation to take up your cross and follow him wasn’t an invitation to enter into an armed revolt against Rome and expect to be crucified.  He was making it quite clear that living according to his teachings, according to the way of the Kingdom of God which he proclaimed to have come near, would run against the grain of life in the Roman world.  Those who lived the Jesus Way would be seen as betraying the core values of the infrastructure of community life and as threats to community stability.  This running against the grain in the very least would invite public humiliation akin to that suffered by those that the Romans put on spectacle by making them carry their own cross to the place they would be crucified in front of everyone.  Many early Christians were harassed, run out of town, and banished from their trades, and some were martyred.

We have to ask what was Jesus teaching his followers to do that was so controversial, so against the grain? Jesus taught his followers to love God above all else and to love our neighbour as ourself.  He said to love and pray for our enemies rather than taking up arms and seeking vengeance.  He taught to live in a way that creates peace, economic fairness, justice.  He taught sacrificial generosity and living simply rather than accumulating wealth.  He taught to give shelter to those who have no home rather than building bigger houses for ourselves.  He taught taking care of the widow and the orphan not by just throwing money at them but actually taking them into your lives.  Clothe the naked.  Feed the hungry.  Give water to the thirsty.  Lend money expecting nothing in return.  Show hospitality to strangers and to refugees expecting nothing in return.  Visit prisoners and show even them compassion.  Forgive and don’t bear grudges.  Seek what’s best for others even if it comes at a cost to oneself.    

Jesus did not come to start an armed rebelling.  He came to start small friendship networks of people who in their loyalty to him and love for him would live according to his teachings.  These small friendship networks would spread the Reign of God throughout the world like a virus, but not be a death dealing plague like the Roman Empire was.  His followers would be a plague of healing, if you would pardon me for using an analogy such as this at a time such as this.  Love, love, love, unconditional and sacrificial love lived out by the followers of Jesus in their homes, neighbourhoods, towns, and cities – that’s the invasion of the Kingdom of God into our world.  That’s what Jesus came to start.  He did it by calling disciples who would learn his way of life and thereby embody him and in turn they would call disciples who would also learn Jesus’ way of life and then they would call disciples and so on and so on.  In the power and presence of the Holy Spirit this way of life, the Reign of God, would spread through the world and be for the healing of it until Jesus returns and ultimately heals God’s good Creation of Sin, Death, and Evil.

We look at this and say what a beautiful vision, how is it so threatening.  But do we realize how it would turn the world upside-down if the followers of Jesus actually took his teachings seriously.  The Jesus Way, the Way of the Cross, goes against everything we ourselves hold dear as good citizens of good nations that are the historical remnant of the Roman Empire.  Think about it.  The Jesus Way goes against our “pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps” approach to dealing with poverty; our “I’ve got a right to get really rich and have everything I want no matter if it’s at the expense of others becoming poorer and even if it kills the planet we live on” approach to the economy; our “my tax dollars should help us before it helps them who come to my country seeking refuge” way of dealing with immigration; our way of “white people get served first” when it comes to health care, education, and legal justice.  I don’t think I need to go further with this list of our core values as a culture. 

These core values are antithetical to the Jesus Way of life, the Way of the Cross, and yet they are core components of the ideological infrastructure of this great nation which has historically self-identified as Christian.  Oddly, we, the followers of Jesus, are the ones who over the centuries in the desire to protect our freedoms and to keep our comforts have turned the cross into the symbol worn on shields as we headed off to war.  We have reduced the cross to a nostalgic reminder that Jesus died for my sins so I can go to heaven when I die thinking that “me and my little sin problem” is all the Gospel is about.  In a culture where everybody is nominally Christian we came to understand the cross as simply the sufferings of the difficult circumstances we have to deal with in life.  We’ve reduced the cross to a piece of jewelry we wear to remind ourselves that “I’m a Christian.”  We’ve made it to be everything and anything other than the emblem of the way we will be treated by the world for living the Jesus Way.

Jesus calls us to take up our cross and follow him.  This is a call to take his teachings seriously and be his disciples before we are anything else; to be his disciples in our homes, in our workplaces, in our neighbourhoods, in our communities.  “Take up your cross” is a call to love proactively, unconditionally, and sacrificially realizing that it will for some twisted Satan-in-the-scheme-of-things reason draw negative attention to us.  

Winding down, I should give an example of Christians who actually got what it was to take up your cross and follow Jesus.  This is the last Sunday in February which is Black History Month.  This is the Martin Luther King, Jr. month, the Rosa Parks month, the Ebenezer Church month.  This is the month when many faithful followers of Jesus are being celebrated for taking up the cross.  The Civil Rights Movement arose among Christians who “Took up the Cross” and followed Jesus into speaking Kingdom of God truth to the powers that be even at the cost of their own lives.  There’s still a lot of work left to be done in that area.  Will we the followers of Jesus pick it up?  There’s more.  Do we love God’s good Creation enough to “Take up the cross” with respect to the environment?  Do we love those who don’t have not enough to live on enough to “Take up the Cross” on their behalf and vocalize their need for more than just a fair minimum wage?  I could go on.  Taking up the cross is more than just being a good person who keeps their belief in God through the difficult circumstances of life.  It is to live the costly life of actually following Jesus’ teachings, particularly his call to show proactive, unconditional, sacrificial love.  Amen.

 

Wilderness Survival

 Mark 1:9-15

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About the time of the storming of the U.S. Capitol Building Dana and I found ourselves in a conversation about wilderness survival.  Whether the one topic led to the other I don’t remember, but we found ourselves discussing whether we would be able to live off the land.  Dana is a pretty experienced canoe tripper and guide and I’ve got some outdoor experience.  We’ve got some experience in the bush but how to survive in the wild without your gear and the food you packed in is another matter.  In my opinion, knowing how to survive in the wilderness is an essential skill but pretty much everybody today is lacking in it.  “If” something truly societally overturning happened, we’d all be in a bad way.  In that case, to me, it seems that it would be a lot safer to head for the wilderness and live off the land than it would be to hang around the general population once the grocery stores have all been looted.   

Now, let me just say that I’m not trying to start some “prepper cult”.  I’m just throwing some sermon fodder out there because it’s the first Sunday in Lent and surviving in the spiritual wilderness is the topic at hand.  We’ve all been in that wilderness where the feathers have hit the fan, to put it politely, and we’re wondering where God has suddenly got off to and why this manure has piled up on me or on the people I love.  Knowing how to survive in the spiritual wilderness is also an essential skill which pretty much everybody is lacking.  I think this why it seems everybody is looting the proverbial grocery stores of life just trying to hoard everything “I think I need to survive” rather than heading to more solitary places and finding true life in what God provides.  There’s a sermon in all that toilet paper hoarding that went on at the beginning of the first COVID lockdown.

Wilderness survival, we need to know how to survive in the wilderness; so…since we read Mark’s Gospel about Jesus in the wilderness, let’s see if there is anything to gain there.  Well, Mark is very brief on what Jesus faced in his wilderness experience.  In Matthew and Luke, we find this lengthy drama of Satan coming at Jesus with three temptations that invited Jesus to use his gifts, his powers, as the Son of God to serve himself rather than the will of God the Father.  Jesus bravely fended him off by quoting Scriptures.  We don’t get that in Mark.  If we want any more than one verse we have to include what came before and after Jesus’s Wilderness experience.

Preceding, we have Jesus baptized by John the Baptist and during that the heavens were torn open.  Here’s some Bible Trivia.  In Mark’s Gospel only two things ever get torn open: here at the baptism, the veil between heaven and earth and when Jesus died on the cross, the veil that hid the Ark of the Covenant in the Temple tore in two.  Apparently, Jesus provides access to the hidden things of God.  Jesus then heard the Father’s voice, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased,” and the Holy Spirit came into him and drove him out into the wilderness.  In Mark’s Gospel only two things get “driven out”: the Holy Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness, and Jesus drove the unclean or evil spirits out of people.  I’m not sure what to make of these bits of trivia but they do make us go “Hmmm.”

There are some Old Testament correlations here we should also note.  The theme of forty days; Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days like Noah and the Flood and the forty years that Israel wandered in the wilderness during the Exodus from Egypt.  This would indicate that the Wilderness experience doesn’t last forever.  It is for a limited period of time.  That’s good to know.

Also, in the wilderness Jesus faced testing by Satan and lived with the wild animals.  Here, I see a resemblance to the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  They, the first of humanity, were in the Garden with the wild animals and were tested by the Serpent/Satan but failed.  Jesus, the first of the New Humanity, was in the Wilderness with the wild animals and was also tested by Satan; but Jesus succeeded.  Adam and Eve failed and God drove them out of the Garden whereas the Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the Wilderness.  Angels barred Adam and Eve from re-entering the Garden, but for Jesus, the angels serve him in the Wilderness providing him with what he needs.  In the end, Adam and Eve came out of the Garden to live under the curses God pronounced.  Whereas, Jesus came out of the Wilderness proclaiming that the Reign of God was at hand.  To put all this together, it seems that Jesus’s Wilderness experience is the undoing of Adam and Eve’s failing in the Garden of Eden.  

Well, I’m not so sure how all this Bible trivia is very helpful in teaching us how to survive in the spiritual wilderness.  There are some fun facts.  Bible geeks go “Hmmm”.   But there is not very helpful for wilderness survival unless pondering Bible Trivia is how you keep your mind from panicking while lost in the wilderness. 

So, having not found much guidance on how to survive in the Wilderness in Mark’s Gospel and realizing that “There are some questions that can’t be answered by Google” (That popular church sign phrase was coined by my former Clerk of Session and good friend, Mr. Bill Horton.), I used Yahoo and searched the web.  There I found four words of advice on wilderness survival that would help us both in the wild as well as in the spiritual wilderness.  

First, exposure to the elements can kill you in as little as three hours.  Therefore, shelter from the elements is the first thing to seek out in the wild whether it be shade in the heat or warmth in the cold.  In the spiritual wilderness, the topic of shelter is one of personal identity, who am I and how I derive my personal sense of security.  I’ll start this conversation with a song, an old favourite:

Rock of ages, cleft for me, 

let me hide myself in thee;

let the water and the blood, 

from thy riven side which flowed,

be of sin the double cure: 

cleanse me from its guilt and power.

Not the labours of my hands 

can fulfill thy law's demands;

could my zeal no respite know, 

could my tears forever flow,

all for sin could not atone; 

thou must save, and thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring, 

simply to thy cross I cling:

naked, come to thee for dress; 

helpless, look to thee for grace;

foul, I to the fountain fly; 

wash me, Saviour, or I die.

While I draw this fleeting breath, 

when my eyelids close in death,

when I soar through tracts unknown, 

see thee on thy judgement throne,

rock of ages, cleft for me, 

let me hide myself in thee.

Shelter, where does one find shelter, a safe place for our self in the spiritual wilderness?  Do we find it in ourselves, pridefully hiding ourselves behind the lies of accomplishment, of being self-made? Or, do we shelter our self in knowing we are God’s beloved children for whom Jesus died to set us free from death and give us new life as his ever-failing, ever-bumbling disciples.  In life and in death we are not our own.  We belong to Jesus who gave himself for us that we might live.  So says the Heidelberg Catechism.

Our second bit of advice; in the wilderness thirst can kill a person in three days.  Therefore, our second most important concern in the wild is water.  Thirst is different from hunger.  In the human body, water is what conducts the electricity that flows through our neural networks keeping everything alive.  One could say that water keeps life flowing in the body.  In the spiritual wilderness, water is the Holy Spirit, the presence of God with us.  Here’s another song.

 

Come, thou Fount of every blessing, 

tune my heart to sing thy grace;

streams of mercy, never ceasing, 

call for songs of loudest praise.

Teach me some melodious sonnet, 

sung by flaming tongues above.

Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it, 

mount of thy redeeming love.

 

Here I raise mine Ebenezer; 

hither by thy help I'm come;

and I hope, by thy good pleasure, 

safely to arrive at home.

Jesus sought me when a stranger, 

wandering from the fold of God;

He, to rescue me from danger, 

interposed his precious blood.

 

O to grace how great a debtor 

daily I'm constrained to be!

Let thy goodness, like a fetter, 

bind my wandering heart to thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, 

prone to leave the God I love;

here's my heart, O take and seal it, 

seal it for thy courts above.

 

In the spiritual wilderness our thirst is for the living water.  It is the thirst of wanting a reason to praise God.  If we can’t praise God, we are dead so say the Psalmists on several occasions.  We find the water by going one-on-one with God, having it all out until God gets through with the truth of the matter and we, like Job, can gratefully say, “God you are right about me and in awe I shut my mouth.”  That final bit of the truth of the matter is simply finding oneself the presence of God.  We won’t get the answer as to why we are in the wilderness.  Instead, we get God.

Thirdly, in the wild we can live for about three weeks without food.  Therefore, after shelter and water we must find food.  Food is what we get our strength from.  How about another song, if that’s not imposing too much on your ears and time this today?  

I hunger and I thirst; Jesus my manna be:

ye living waters, burst out of the rock for me.

Thou bruised and broken bread, my lifelong wants supply;

as living souls are fed, oh feed me, or I die.

Thou true lifegiving vine, let me thy sweetness prove;

renew my life with thine; refresh my soul with love.

Since first their course began, rough paths my feet have trod.

Feed me, thou living bread; help me, thou Son of God.

For still the desert lies my thirsting soul before;

O living waters, rise within me evermore.

In the spiritual wilderness, our food is Jesus.  “Jesus my manna be.”  We get our strength from Jesus and we find him in Christian companionship, Christian community, the community of unconditional love, the community that listens to us and prays with us, the community that takes the teachings of Jesus seriously and strives to be faithful to him, the community that lives in his Reign of God mandate.  Wherever two or three are gathered together for reason of him, Jesus is in the midst of them and feeds them.  Once again, we have returned to God’s presence with us.  This seems to be the common thread of wilderness surviving.

Lastly and of key importance, indeed the wilderness is a scary place, so don’t panic and, better yet, keep hopeful.  Attitude is everything.  If you get lost in the wild and panic, you are done.  Fear will consume and kill you.  So also, fear in the spiritual wilderness will consume every bit of spiritual and emotional wherewithal we have.  If there is a purpose to the spiritual wilderness, it is not only to learn the faithfulness and steadfast love of God, it is also to become aware of God’s presence with us.  This is true no matter the wilderness; whether it be the hospital bed, the hospice bed, the divorce bed, the unemployment bed, or even the malaise of life bed.  The wilderness is where we meet God and he gives us what we need to survive.  We go into it feeling cursed. We find ourselves tried and tempted.  Yet, we come out saying “Our God reigns. Hallelujah”, because somewhere in there we came face to face with God.  Amen.

  

A Moment

 Mark 9:2-10

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There is an experience from my own life that I will always think of when Transfiguration Sunday comes around.  I’ve told this story before so don’t be surprised if it sounds familiar.  It was a Sunday morning in early December in 1999 during my first pastorate down in Marlinton, West Virginia.  My father was dying with cancer and I was expecting “the call”.  It came.  My brother informed me at about 5 AM.  With it being Sunday, there were church services to be looked after.  I could have made some calls and took the morning off, but I wanted to be in church and do what I do that morning.  

I had two services to do that morning: my main church there in town and then my once a month up at Mary’s Chapel which meant a 25-minute winding drive up over Elk Mountain.  It was a warm December morning and it was quite foggy there in town, the type of fog that burns off later in the morning.  It took its time that day because it was December and not August.  When I left Marlinton just after 11 AM it was still quite foggy and I wasn’t looking forward to twisty turns going up Elk Mountain, but away I went.  About two-thirds of the way up I suddenly drove out of the fog.  The sun was burning bright.  The sky was clear.  The dew moistened trees and ground were glistening in the sun.  That just happened to be the spot where there was an overlook and I decided to pull in and take a moment because it was just absolutely beautiful and my dad just died.  

I got out of the car and went to the edge of the lookout and the top of the fog clouds were just right there as if to tempt you walk out on them.  It was just glory.  I felt so special in God’s eyes at the moment.  I felt like God had orchestrated that moment just for me just to let me know everything was going to be okay.  I was still God’s beloved child and everything will be okay.  

I have had quite a few blatant experiences of God in my life.  Up on Elk Mountain that particular morning is one them.  Because of them I feel I can say to whatever it is out there that wants to destroy any sort good in our lives and wreck our faith and hope in God, “Do what you want to me, say what you want about me, make my life fall completely to shambles, no matter what happens, I know my God is real.  I know he loves me.  He will work all things to the good for those who love him.  It may not be in this lifetime, but Easter is coming.  Resurrection is coming.  God is good.”  

Not to ruin the moment, but I think here in Mark’s Gospel the story of the Transfiguration, this experience that Peter, James, and John have of God (you know, a full God experience – the voice of God the Father, Jesus the Beloved Son, the Holy Spirit like a cloud overshadowing them as he did Mary and she became pregnant with Jesus – Trinity) this full God experience was supposed to establish their faith in Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God because the worst was yet to come.  When they come down from the mountain, they won’t be heading back to Galilee and Capernaum for some more wonder working by Jesus.  They will go to Jerusalem and Jesus is going to die. 

Something we need to know about this moment is that it happened at a low point in Jesus’s relationship with his disciples, particularly Peter.  In the months leading up to this moment some pretty big things had happened.  Jesus had been rejected by his home town, Nazareth.  He followed that up by sending the Twelve out on a wildly successful mission trip where they, like him, taught, proclaimed, healed, and cast out demons.  Then John the Baptist was put to death.  Jesus followed that by feeding at least 15,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and two fish and then he walked on water to catch up with his disciples out on the Sea of Galilee only to come to shore to yet again get into a dispute with the religious leaders over their abuse of traditions.  He followed that up by leaving the land of Israel only to be recognized by a Syrophoenician women who got him to heal her daughter of a demon.  Back through Galilee they went to the other side of the Jordan, to a very Roman area called the Decapolis where he healed a deaf mute.  Then he fed upwards of 12,000 in a desert with seven loaves of bread and a few fish. And then, after all that, the religious authorities, whom we would expect to have clued in by now, demand Jesus to give them a sign and prove he was from God, like he hadn’t been doing that all along.

If there was a pattern in all that it would be confrontation with the religious authorities followed by big signs and miracles proving Jesus to be the Messiah if not indeed somehow God in their midst.  The religious authorities had a problem.  God was moving right before their eyes, but their beliefs about God and the power over people that they held by being religious authorities kept them from seeing it.  It’s a classic example of how faith in a living God, a real person-changing relationship with God, can so easily be supplanted with rules about behaviour, rituals, and a cadre of individuals sitting as judges.  Rather than leading the people of God to a reverence for God and the healing hospitality of unconditional love, these religious authorities used fear to manipulate God’s people and create boundaries of exclusion.    

Continuing on in our march to the Mount of Transfiguration and the low point Jesus was at with his disciples; Jesus told his disciples to beware this yeast of the religious and political authorities which, as I just described, is using fear of God to get power over people; but the warning only confused the Twelve.  They thought he was mad at them for forgetting to bring along the bread leftovers from that feeding of the 12,000 that they could hand out along the way like they did after they fed the 15,000.  

Things went downhill from there.  They went to the little town of Bethsaida, a sister city to Capernaum, and Jesus oddly has some trouble healing a blind man.  After the first attempt, the man can’t see clearly, so he has to try again.  Is there reason to doubt him now?  Is his power waning?

Jesus then led the Disciples up to Caesarea Philippi, the farthest town in Israel from Jerusalem and the most Pagan and Roman town in all of Israel.  Everywhere you looked there was a shrine to some god or another and…there was also a temple of the imperial cult where one could pay homage to or even worship Caesar as Son of God.  There, Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say I am?” They answered, “John the Baptist, Elijah, or some other prophet.”  Then he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?”  Peter immediately rises to the occasion and don’t miss the gravity of the context.  In this most patriotically Roman of all places in Israel, Peter professes, “You are the Messiah.”  Matthew adds, “…the Son of the Living God.”  Mark withholds the Son of God profession because there’s a Roman Centurion who’s going to make that confession at the end of the story upon seeing Jesus crucified.  And, remember “Son of God” is what the Roman Emperor’s liked to call themselves.

Jesus is impressed that Peter’s got it, but he tells them to keep it under wraps.  Then he explains to them that because he is the Messiah he will suffer greatly and be rejected by the religious authorities who will in the end kill him.  But all hope was not to be lost for after three days Jesus was going to rise from the dead.  Peter took him aside and dressed him down.  I imagine it going something like this: “That’s not the way it’s supposed to go.  You’re supposed to cast the religious authorities out and the Romans too and set up God’s kingdom, not die rejected and…Jesus…people don’t raise from the dead.”  Jesus then sternly nailed Peter, “Get behind me Satan.  You are not thinking the things of God, but the things of Man.”  He called Peter Satan, the thing that tempted Jesus in the wilderness to use his power to rule the world for himself.  And then, Jesus called a crowd together and said that if anyone wants to be his follower, they have to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him because there is no true life in this world to be had.  

The cross Jesus referred to wasn’t just those difficulties in life.  The cross was what the Romans used to execute insurrectionists.  Jesus was blatantly telling the Disciples that following him is a death sentence not some self-righteous, hypocritical exercise of denying yourself chocolate and coffee during Lent.  He finished saying, “Truly I say to you, there are some of you standing here who will not taste death until they see that the Kingdom of God has come with power.”  That altercation left things more than a bit tense between Jesus and his closest followers.  

Here we come to the Mountain of Transfiguration.  It is six days later.  Do you remember what happened on the sixth day in the Creation story of Genesis?  Now would be a good time to recall that story because this Transfiguration story alludes to it.  On the sixth day God created humanity in his image and called the whole Creation very good.  Jesus led Peter, James, and John up the Mountain to re-Creation, New Creation, glorified Creation.  The Greek word for led them up is the same word you would use to say “offer up a sacrifice”.  We don’t translate it that way because its awkward, but think of Abraham leading Isaac his only son, the son of the Promise, up Mount Moriah to sacrifice him to God.  Jesus isn’t taking them up there to sacrifice them, but rather to….hmmm….I can’t quite find the words to give body to my hunch….

Suddenly everything is changed, glorified.  They step into the Kingdom of God come in power – Creation glorified – and Moses and Elijah are there.  Just like on the sixth day God pronounced the creation very good, Peter says as if it is the seventh day of Creation when God reposed “it is good for us to be here, shall I build some tents for the three of you to repose.”   It may have been good, but we also know that Peter is terrified.  He is aware that he is in the presence of God and rumour was that anyone who goes into the presence of God will either die or is already dead.

Jesus talked with Moses and Elijah, two prophets who had had also experienced similar disillusionment with God’s purposes as well as mountain top experiences where they got things sorted out with God.  They knew what Jesus was going through and had some advice to give.  Quite often it happens that God will put people in our lives who can relate to us at just the right time to help us sort it out.  And…sometimes God just goes all out and shows up himself.  Suddenly, a cloud overshadowed them like the Holy Spirit hovering over the primordial waters of darkness just before God said “Let there be light.”  And here, God the Father speaks, “This is my Son, the Beloved, listen to him!”  Astute people would clue in here and conclude that what Jesus has to say to his disciples is nothing less than the light of the knowing of God that God created on the first day of Creation.

Just as I am not quite sure what to do with all this, so also the disciples are pretty shaken here.  Top it all off with Jesus telling them to tell nobody about what just happened until after he rises from the dead.  That confused them even more and it didn’t change the fact that things were about to get worse.  As I said, they aren’t walking down the mountain to return to the good times of the Kingdom of God miracle working ministry that they had had in Galilee.  They are now headed to Jerusalem.

To be a little practical here, we are in a moment of disillusionment with this pandemic going on.  We look forward to the day when it’s all over and we naively think we will be able to just go back to life as it was.  I remember the first few months of the clearwater canals of Venice.  Smog had all but disappeared over major cities.  We were hoping that when this was all over there would be real change for the better economically, socially, and environmentally.  If we are looking for a fix to the world’s problems, then for all appearances this pandemic isn’t shaping up to be the catalyst for it.  It is for all appearances a bunch of needless suffering caused and furthered by human lifestyle choices.  

We ask the question where is God in all this.  One person responded to my sermon last week which was on God restoring this big Bubble called Creation that he made so that he could have a place to repose.  The response was that it is not very comforting to think of God reposing in the midst of this tumultuous world these days.  I can agree.  But to explain myself a little better…maybe….there are moments when we enter into the Sabbath rest of God, the Repose, the Presence of God and it is good.  Like the moment of Transfiguration, he pulls us aside and it is good, but the take away seems to come back to we need to do a better job of listening to him.  But here are also times like when Jesus and the Disciples were out in the boat and a wind storm blows up, waves are swamping the boat they are about to start sinking and it really seems that something out there is personally out to get them.  What was Jesus doing?  He wasn’t reposing in the back of the boat enjoying the goodness of bunnies and deer frolicking in his well-ordered, very good creation.  He was asleep on a pillow.  

To be honest, the present circumstances of life has me feeling like God is asleep on a pillow in the midst of this storm and there are people who have it a lot worse than me.  Their boats really are sinking.  It would be nice to see some healing, to see some demons get cast out, to see certain political and religious leaders actually get held accountable for their lying.  I want to say, “Jesus, forgive my lack of faith, my impatience, my focus on me, but wake up and calm this storm.”  

 But, I/we don’t see the world from God’s perspective.  We don’t know why God let’s happen the things he let’s happen.  “Why?” is a question best left alone.  It’s just best to let God be God and resolve ourselves to having the patience of Job.  But this I know.  Looking back on the moment of glory I had up on Elk Mountain.  Yes, my father had died and that hurt and it still hurts.  I knew beforehand that everything would be okay. Death just did what death does.  We had known for months that there was no miracle coming for Dad.  They didn’t have the treatments 20 years ago that we have today.  I wasn’t looking for God to do anything because I knew this was just the way life goes, but still God pulled me aside up there on Elk Mountain just to let me know he loves me.  I am a beloved child of God and so are each of you…and that’s the Transfiguration.  I’ll shut up now.  Amen.

 

 

Bubble Restoration

 Mark 1:29-39

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I would like to jump into our reading in Mark today by first jumping into the Creation story of Genesis 1. I think what is going on here at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel and his account of the beginning of Jesus’s work is that he is giving us a glimpse of Creation restored, a foreshadowing of the New Creation when Jesus returns.  I think that to really understand the meaning of Jesus’s work of healing people and casting out demons we need to appreciate his work on the scale of it being as big as the creation of the Creation itself.  

So, in Genesis 1 we have what many Old Testament scholars would say is actually a hymn, a hymn about how God made a beautiful place for God to come and repose in…you know, just a place to sit and listen to the birds and watch the bunnies and deer, and…best of all…do some people watching.  It would seem God just wanted a place that’s well-ordered and peaceful, a place to go home to that’s in working order to relax.  You see, everything was this watery darkness that was formless and empty.  Other neighbouring cultures who wrote creation stories like this would use words like chaos, disorder, or even evil to describe this primordial state.  There are monsters and other mean-nasties there.  It’s just not good, not a place God can repose.

God decided to do something about that and, first, They (and I say “They” because God referred to Godself as Us, a convenient invitation for us to think in terms of God being relational in nature – Trinity; Father, Son, Holy Spirit.) They, God, turned on the light to see what They (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) were doing.  Then, They created a big bubble in the midst of the primordial waters.  Then They made land, seas, and heavenly lights in the bubble that give it the order of Day and Night.  They filled the seas and skies with fish and birds and covered the land with vegetation and bugs and animals.  Then, They created humanity in Their own image.  They made us male and female which necessitated that there be loving relationship for our species to continue.  They called it all very good and came and reposed.  

So, Creation is supposed to be this well-ordered, peaceful bubble for God to come and repose and enjoy the beauty of it all and particularly fellowship with the one’s God made in God’s own image of “Us”.  But, if we read on in Genesis, we find that those mean-nasties from the primordial chaos outside God’s bubble can come in and mess things up.  That Serpent sure stirred up some muck in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve and all but ruined God’s bubble.  In time disease and death and broken relationships become rampant.  God has been working to set things right ever-since.

That story of Creation, the idyllic Big Bubble, puts me to mind of my grandparents and the home they created.  It was by no means perfect, but it was always a place I could go and repose and enjoy the sense of being safe, welcomed, and loved among people who were “for” me.  Granddaddy was a quiet, solid, wise, and compassionate man.  Grandma was gifted at making you feel at home.  You never had to worry about conversation with her.  As kids, we had plenty of laughs with her.  Grandma was almost always in the kitchen.  She lived to feed people.  The Big Bubble of their home was at its best on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve when the whole family was packed in there together with the thermostat set at 87F.  On those two days, I’m sure God was reposing and the “hominess” there was what he created this Creation for.  

There were times when the chaotic disordered world out there broke in.  I had an aunt who had a knack for not picking the right guy.  But Granddaddy and Grandma always opened up the “bubble” to him.  He was welcome at the table.  The Bubble began to collapse when Granddaddy’s emphysema finally took him.  Things weren’t the same anymore.  Sadness sat at the table with us.  Three years later my dad died and that pretty much did it for me.  Then, Grandma passed two years after that.  No more Bubble.  But, I’m very thankful for my grandparents. Jesus told the thief who died on the cross next to him “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”  When the big door opens for me, I’ve had a taste of where I’m going.

Anyway, back to reality, back to the Gospel of Mark.  I said last week that in Jesus’s day in small town Judaism outside the home, the synagogue and the marketplace were the most important places.  Last week we looked at the synagogue and how Jesus brought peaceful order back to the synagogue in Capernaum by casting out an unclean spirit from a man that like a church bully was using prejudice, fear, and mockery to dash the people’s hope that in, through, and as Jesus God was bringing in his reign as promised.  In today’s reading Jesus takes the reign of God into the home, into Peter’s home and it spilled over into all of Capernaum.

Let’s talk about Peter’s home, his bubble.  We don’t know much about Peter’s home, about his family.  There are three things we know.  His brother Andrew lived with him and he had a mother-in-law who lived with him.  We also know a little about the roles of men and women in the family back then.  Women looked after keeping the home – cooking, cleaning, raising the children, managing the servants, getting the groceries, etc.  Men looked after things outside the home – business, family reputation, participation in synagogue, civic duties.  Roles are different now.  Let’s not get sidetracked by the way their culture did things.  Outside of those three things we can only conjecture.  So…

We never hear about Peter having a wife or children.  He got married at some point, hence the mother-in-law.  Conjecturing, he likely married a woman who had no brothers and her mother was a widow and so Peter did a very honourable thing.  He took his mother-in-law into his care as well.  It was not a friendly world back then for widows with no sons.  I like to image that his mother-in-law was a lot like my grandmother.  She loved to cook and offer hospitality.  So where is the wife?  It is likely that sadness sat at his table.  Peter’s wife likely could have died giving birth.  Peter’s status as a honourable man would have increased tenfold in that he continued to take care of his mother-in-law as if he were her natural born son.  Peter’s home was well-ordered with compassion and honour, but it also knew the disorder of grief.

That brings us to Jesus coming to visit.  Jesus went to Peter’s home but there was no one there to offer the customary hospitality.  This could have brought serious shame to Peter.  Peter informs Jesus that his mother-in-law is in bed with a fever.  We don’t know what was causing this fever, but for it to be severe enough to keep her in bed meant it was quite serious maybe life threatening.  There were some popular ideas about the cause of fevers.  Demonic attack and punishment by God for sin topped the list.  Needless to say, no matter the cause this fever was another outright incursion of the disordered world outside God’s Big Bubble into the home of Peter bringing with it the possibility of death.  Peter’s bubble was greatly threatened.

What does Jesus do?  He doesn’t destroy Peter’s home because there is sin, sickness, and evil there.  He restores Peter’s bubble to the “very good” that God pronounced at the end of Genesis 1 so that God could come and repose.  Jesus does this in an eyebrow raising way.  He doesn’t have her brought before him to interrogate her as if to find fault in her for this plague that is upon her.  Rather, he goes into the bedroom of a woman (raise one eyebrow).  In her bedroom, he touches her, he takes her by the hand (raise both eyebrows.).  He raises her up out of the bed…and she is well…and she immediately returns to doing what she loves doing – serving, offering hospitality.  She is restored.  Peter’s bubble is restored to “very good” ...and…God is reposing at his table.  Jesus is reposing with them.  The next thing you know the whole town is outside the door bringing the sick and the demon-possessed to be healed.  In Capernaum that evening many bubbles, many homes were restored.

This little seemingly insignificant story of Jesus healing a woman with a fever is a signpost passage for what the reign of God looks like when it breaks forth amidst the disorder and chaos that is life today inside God’s Big Bubble that has been invaded by the forces of darkness from outside the Bubble and humanity is in collusion with them. 

This is the way the Reign of God works.  Jesus in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit comes into our bubbles, our homes.  He does not judge us for the sin sickness that is there.  But rather he meets us in our most shameful places of weakness (where we burn with fever, so to speak).  He touches us and raises us up.  

Greek lesson – that word for “to raise up” is almost always used as some form of a reference to resurrection from the dead.  Jesus raised up Peter’s mother-in-law and that points us to the Day of Resurrection coming.  In the Reign of God Jesus touches us and raises us up to renew us, restore us with resurrection life, new life in him – living with compassionate purpose in the sure knowledge of the love of God and God being with us reposing.

The appropriate response to being “raised up” is to serve.  Another Greek lesson – the word for serve is the one we get our word “deacon” from and the type of serving it refers to is offering hospitality and compassion to others.  It is the perfect word to describe the way a disciple of Jesus should live.  A little Gospel of Mark trivia – this word shows up four times in Mark’s Gospel.  When Jesus was in the wilderness being tempted by Satan for forty days, the angels served him. Deaconing is what angels do.  Peter’s mother-in-law, raised up and restored to health, serves Jesus and the disciples.  Also, when Jesus was dying on the cross the only people from among his immediate followers who didn’t desert him was a group of women who traveled with Jesus and the disciples serving him.  Deaconing is what faithful disciples do.  Finally, Jesus says about himself, “For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.  Deaconing is what Jesus does.

The reign of God – Jesus steps into our sick disordered lives.  He touches us.  He raises us up to new life and restores us.  Thus, we deacon.  We serve others offering hospitality and compassion.  This is God’s Bubble restoration project.  God is restoring the Bubble in which he reposes and finds rest and joy.  We are part of that.

In closing, I really miss being able to gather for worship and fellowship with the folks of my churches due this COVID-19 lockdown.  We are small congregations.  We don’t have a lot to offer in the way of programs and stuff.  But what we do have is Bubble.  We got Bubble, Big Bubble, especially when we potluck.  The longer I am your minister, the more I get to know you each, the more it feels like Grandma and Granddaddy’s home.  It really hurts when disorder breaks in and one of us falls ill or passes on.  Regardless, God is in our midst reposing and it is very good.  Amen.