That’s The Way To Do It: Bartimaeus and Prayer (Mark 10:46-52, Ordinary 30, Year B)

Mark 10:46-52

When the children were small, we used to take them on holiday each year to the Isle of Wight – the perfect location if either you were a young child or you wanted to travel back in time to the 1950s. If you’ve been there, you’ll understand that comment!

One year, we decided to visit Osborne House, Queen Victoria’s holiday getaway on the island. When we walked down to the beach that is part of the grounds, we found a traditional Punch and Judy show.

Now since Punch and Judy is hardly the epitome of political correctness and is therefore seen far less in recent years, this was a novel experience for our children. And to our son, who has always enjoyed slapstick humour, the sight of Mister Punch dispensing with his enemies by whacking them and then squeaking, ‘That’s the way to do it!’ was great entertainment.

‘That’s the way to do it’ could, in a more positive sense, be a slogan for our reading today about blind Bartimaeus. And especially if we contrast Bartimaeus with our story last week about James and John, which immediately precedes this in Mark’s Gospel. If James and John show us how not to bring a request to Jesus, Bartimaeus shows us a good way. ‘That’s the way to do it,’ Mark seems to say to us.

In what ways does Bartimaeus show us the right way to approach Jesus?

Firstly, he has humility.

As a blind man who with no social security is reduced to begging on the fringes of society to make a living (verse 46) he is in more than a humble position in the first place: ‘humiliating’ rather than ‘humble’ might be the word.

But his true humility comes through in the way he calls out to Jesus:

47 When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’

He knows something of who Jesus is – ‘Son of David’ is a messianic title – and he knows that the only right and proper appeal to him is therefore a humble one – ‘Have mercy on me.’

This is so different from the proud and arrogant way in which James and John came to request the seats on Jesus’ right and left when he comes into his kingdom. They expected power and recognition for themselves, or at the very least to bask in Jesus’ glory. Not Bartimaeus. ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!’

Mercy is the right approach to Jesus. We cannot compare to him. Moreover, we are sinners. The appeal to mercy is the only route.

Pope Francis wrote a book a few years ago entitled ‘The Name Of God Is Mercy’, and I wonder whether Bartimaeus had heard that mercy characterised the way Jesus dealt with people in need. Whether he did or not, we know that he got on Jesus’ wavelength.

Let’s not come trumpeting our greatness and our achievements, which is more in spirit with James and John, and which got them nowhere. Let’s remember instead that Jesus loves mercy, and that is the way to him. We are sinners in need of mercy, and he loves to hear us call out to him on that basis. The cry of mercy is a beautiful song in the ears of Jesus.

Secondly, Bartimaeus has persistence.

48 Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’

It’s as if people in the crowd were saying to Bartimaeus, ‘You’re just a blind beggar. What would the Messiah want with you? You’re no help to his cause! Oh, and by the way, your noise is ruining our special time with the great man. Shut up!’

Now it wouldn’t be surprising if someone as lowly in the population as a blind beggar like Bartimaeus suffered from what we call low self-esteem. He might very well have thought of himself as a nobody and as worthless. I’m sure cruel people would have tried to reinforce such a message on him.

And if he felt so low and worthless, then when these people in the crowd rebuked him for calling out to Jesus, the low self-esteem could have taken over and he might have acceded to their demand that he keep quiet.

But no. Mark tells us his response was that ‘he shouted all the more, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me!’ He won’t let anyone or anything stand in the way of his audience with the Messiah.

What stands in our way when we begin to approach Jesus? Is it a sense of worthlessness? Is it the voices of others, telling us we are no-one special and Jesus would never be interested in someone like us? Perhaps that inner voice says, ‘Don’t bother, you’re not very good at prayer anyway.’ These voices do not come from heaven: if anywhere, they come from the other place.

So do not listen to the messages that discourage you from approaching Jesus, because our sins are too many, or because we don’t amount to much in the world, or we’re not a very good Christian. Do what Bartimaeus did: be persistent. Press on with calling out to Jesus for mercy.

Because at some point those voices will subside: they will have to, because Jesus is calling you, just as he did Bartimaeus (verse 49). Then it’s time to throw aside our cloak, jump to our feet, and come to Jesus (verse 50).

Thirdly and finally, Bartimaeus has good motives.

Contrast the nature of Bartimaeus’ request to that of James and John. They want the power and the glory, but when Bartimaeus hears the same question from Jesus as James and John did – ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ (verse 51) – he simply asks for his sight. He just wants to be fully human.

And even then, his request to be fully human, to have sight like the next person, is not a selfish request. For what does he do when he is healed?

52 ‘Go,’ said Jesus, ‘your faith has healed you.’ Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.

Go, says Jesus, but Bartimaeus doesn’t go, he comes. He follows Jesus ‘along the road’ – more literally, ‘along the way’, and you’ll remember that the first disciples were called ‘followers of the way’ before ever they were called Christians. Bartimaeus follows Jesus on the way – and we know where Jesus is going. He is on his way to Jerusalem, where he will suffer and die.

Bartimaeus wants something that will benefit himself, but his first use of that gift is an act of discipleship. His request is not like a child asking for a toy at Christmas, he is asking for something good for himself that he then puts to use in the service of Jesus.

I have a friend who has asked God in prayer for more income. But he hasn’t done so to enjoy a more extravagant lifestyle. He has asked for more money so that he can bless others more.

As many of you know, I have an expensive hobby – photography. Mostly I fund it by selling old possessions and part-exchanging old photographic equipment. I love to buy a new lens for my camera, but they don’t come cheap! But while I want to enjoy the hobby myself, I also want it to benefit others. Right now, I’d like to think it’s benefitting you, because all these videos are shot on high quality equipment I have bought. I aspire to my purchases being pleasurable but not selfish, because I love to bring something good and beautiful to other people through my hobby. And so I pray about my purchases!

Conclusion

That’s the way to do it, James and John. Learn from Bartimaeus. Show humility as you come to Jesus. Be persistent through the discouragements. And have good motives, not selfish ones as you make your requests.

Doing so brings joy to Jesus. He will delight to hear you.

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Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want: What Do Your Prayers Say About You? (Mark 10:35-45, Ordinary 29 Year B)

Mark 10:35-45

The village where I live has various claims to fame, from an internationally known strain of the azalea flower being named after it, through the novelist Hilary Mantel being a former resident, and then the fact that in their pre-fame days the Spice Girls rehearsed here.

While the Spice Girls were preparing for world domination, they sometimes had lunch at a café in the village run by the churches, called The King’s House. (It’s no longer in operation, sadly.)

And so it came to pass than when a documentary was made some years later covering their ascent to fame, a scene of them at The King’s House was scripted and filmed. One of the volunteers there was assigned the rôle of taking their order.

The volunteer in question was one of our church members, a retired Professor of Botany at Imperial College named Jack Rutter. I never knew him, because he moved away and then died just as we arrived here. He was a brilliant man, but his vast knowledge did not stretch to popular culture.

Thus it was that he could be handed a line in the script which he could deliver with a completely straight face as the Spice Girls dithered over what to order from the menu.

He said to them, ‘Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.’

35 Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. ‘Teacher,’ they said, ‘we want you to do for us whatever we ask.’

36 ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ he asked.

Jesus says to James and John, ‘Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.’

Because when Jesus asks us what we really want from him, it reveals our hearts. So in the Old Testament at the dedication of the Temple, the Lord asks King Solomon what he wants, and he famously chooses wisdom rather than wealth. Next in Mark’s Gospel Jesus meets blind Bartimaeus and asks him what he wants him to do for him. Bartimaeus asks for his sight, and he then follows Jesus.

But when Jesus responds to James and John’s request that he do whatever they ask of him, he uncovers an unworthy, if not spiritually lethal request. For what they want is so contrary to the ways of God’s kingdom.

And perhaps that’s something we might reflect on generally: what do the kinds of requests we make in our prayers say about us, our values, and our priorities? Are they in line with God’s kingdom?

Sometimes, God’s answer to our prayers is ‘No,’ and on this occasion James and John get a very lengthy ‘No’ as Jesus sets out just how contrary to popular aspirations in his day (and ours) the kingdom of God is.

In what ways does Jesus say ‘No’ to what James and John really, really want? There are three, and they are all linked.

Firstly, Jesus talks about suffering.

Jesus asks them whether they can drink his cup and be baptised as he will be.

‘We can,’ they answer,

You will, says Jesus, but it’s not up to me who gets the best seats in the house. (Verses 38-40)

The problem James and John have here is that they interpret ‘cup’ and ‘baptism’ differently from Jesus. In the Old Testament, ‘cup’ is used figuratively in different ways. It can be a good thing, such as ‘My cup overflows’ in Psalm 23, and that’s the sort of meaning James and John have in mind. However, it can also be the cup of suffering, and that’s the line Jesus takes.

Jesus has to tell them that the life of the Christian disciple in following him will not be one big jamboree. For all the joy of the kingdom, following Jesus will mean suffering for your faith, just as Jesus himself suffered.

When we become Christians, some of our problems are all over but some other problems are only just beginning. Our sisters and brothers in other nations know this at great cost. For us it may be lesser.

I recently ran an advertising campaign on Facebook for one of my churches, hoping to drum up some letting income. A small minority of people launched personal attacks at me for doing so, one telling me to ‘f- off out of here’. I didn’t respond. I didn’t justify myself. I didn’t put him down. I just ignored it. I expect it from time to time as a Christian. I’ve had worse. Let’s not be surprised by it if we follow Jesus.

Secondly, Jesus talks about serving.

Gentile and pagan rulers lord it over people. They enjoy their status. They crush the people under them, says Jesus. I’m sure we can think of plenty of examples in our own world. He reverses this by saying that the key value to greatness is not gorging yourself on power but serving others. In fact, he doesn’t even say ‘servant’, he says ‘slave’, which was lower than a servant. (Verses 42-44)

It’s a sign of that Christian heritage that we refer to senior members of Government as ‘ministers’, a word which means ‘servants.’ I’ve said before in sermons that ‘Prime Minister’ means ‘first servant’, and one thing to do at a General Election is ask which party leader looks most like someone who would bring a spirit of service to the job.

But we need to remember it in the church, too, which is what Jesus was talking about. Even in the small pond of the church there are those who like to be big fish. There are sad individuals who crave the limelight, or who want to climb the greasy pole. Pick whatever metaphor suits you! But these people think it’s OK to put others down. They like to be seen as the important ones.

I see these traits in both my fellow ministers and in members of congregations. And Jesus reminds us that this is contrary to his kingdom. ‘Not so with you,’ he says (verse 43) – and that is present tense, not future. It isn’t that it’s something to be eradicated in the future, it’s something that shouldn’t even be present now if we had any inkling of what it means to be his disciple.

When you want to fill a vacancy in the church, be that an officer in the local congregation or a new minister, look for someone who doesn’t care about status but who does care about serving.

Thirdly and finally, Jesus talks about sacrifice.

45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

I’m using the word ‘sacrifice’ here not in the ritual religious sense but simply in the sense of giving up something or even everything.

Here is the way Jesus would be the triumphant Messiah who brought people into his kingdom: not by obliterating his opponents but by giving himself up to death, through which those who were kept captive by sin were set free.

We cannot sacrifice for others in the same way as Jesus, but the call to sacrifice, to give up things for the kingdom of God is still loud and clear to us from Jesus.

Life, then, according to Jesus, is not about all the things we amass. It’s not about the abundance of possessions. It’s not about having a bigger and better home. It’s not about having a better paid job than the neighbours. And it certainly isn’t about having access to the elite members of society.

Jesus says we will know true life when we have sacrificed for the kingdom of God. I wonder why we find this so hard? We wouldn’t think twice about sacrificing time, money, or possessions for children, so why not for Jesus and his kingdom? If that’s our issue, then are we like James and John people who are apparently in the religion game just for the benefits and not for the challenges?

Conclusion

Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.

If your life is centred on yourself then suffering, serving, and sacrificing are not going to be top of your list.

But if your life is focussed on following Jesus, then you may well pray for the grace to endure suffering for his name, to serve others rather than polish your own reputation, and to sacrifice things for the cause of the kingdom.

What do you ask for in your prayers?

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Wealth and Discipleship (Mark 10:17-31) Ordinary 28 Year B

It’s the story more commonly known as ‘the rich young ruler’ this week. What do we learn about discipleship from it?

Mark 10:17-31

In 1978, a landmark book on Christians and simple lifestyle was published. Entitled ‘Rich Christians In An Age Of Hunger’ and written by Ronald Sider, one of the most startling quotes in the book is this:

What 99 percent of all Western Christians need to hear 99 percent of the time is: “Give to everyone who begs from you” and “sell your possessions”.[1]

And maybe that’s why today’s passage is so uncomfortable for us. We see what happens to the rich man in this story, and we fear Jesus might require the same of us.

So what does our reading teach us? Well, its theme is discipleship, so the question is, what does it teach us about discipleship?

Firstly, we learn that Jesus comes first. That’s the essence of discipleship. We see this in the way that the man has obeyed all the commandments – well, at least outwardly. Jesus even throws in a commandment that isn’t one of the Ten Commandments when he includes ‘You shall not not defraud’ (verse 19) – or, as some manuscripts put it more fully, ‘You shall not defraud the poor.’

Yet that’s not enough, according to Jesus.

21 Jesus looked at him and loved him. ‘One thing you lack,’ he said. ‘Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’

It’s not simply that the man is expected to follow the religious rules, even if he can keep them. He has to obey Jesus.

That gets to the heart of Christian discipleship. We can’t appear before God and say, ‘I kept the rules. I was a good, moral person.’ Plenty of people think that’s what makes a Christian, but it isn’t, according to Jesus. We cannot pride ourselves on our character and think that’s what earns us a heavenly pass. It isn’t. At the Last Judgment, there will be millions of so-called ‘good people’ who are on the wrong end of Jesus’ verdict.

Why? Because they didn’t put him first. They didn’t listen to him and do what he asked them to do. The rich man wanted to inherit eternal life, but he didn’t want to put Jesus first.

And as he learned, putting Jesus first means sitting lightly to other things. They must not compete for our affections. What we have is not ours anyway, but something which God has entrusted to our care. If Jesus needs it for something else, as here, then the Christian disciple needs to obey her Lord.

Among the wider group of his disciples, others treated wealth and possessions differently. We hear at the end of our reading from Peter about how he and the Twelve have given up so much to follow him. We know from other parts of the Gospel such as Luke 8 that others put their wealth at Jesus’ disposal in other ways, such as the women of means who provided for him and his entourage. Each of them in different ways was putting Jesus first.

Perhaps each of us should pause and consider what is stopping us from putting Jesus first in our lives.

Secondly, we learn that Jesus’ love is uncompromising.

Did you notice that? I didn’t say ‘unconditional love’, which is what we often talk about. I said, ‘uncompromising love.’

I think it’s quite amazing that we read ‘Jesus looked at him and loved him’ at the beginning of verse 21. We know how Jesus was concerned for the poor. It would have been easy to be aggressive and hateful towards a wealthy person, such as this man – and indeed I have often seen Christians show naked hostility towards rich people.

I could have been like that. I grew up in very modest circumstances in north London. My parents were children during the Depression of the 1930s. My father’s father was out of work for five years. My mother was born to a single parent on a council estate. It wasn’t until he got to around the age of 60 that my father felt his salary was comfortable – and then depression took it from him as he had to retire early.

So you can imagine that coming to an area like this in Surrey as we did eleven years ago was potentially problematic for me. There were certainly aspects of local expectations and lifestyle that neither Debbie nor I liked then, and we still don’t.

But Jesus loved the rich man, and so must I. The difference is the kind of love Jesus offered him.

For we talk so readily of ‘unconditional love’ and we say, ‘Jesus loves us just as we are.’ And while that’s true so far as it goes, it’s only a half-truth. Just because Jesus loves us as we are doesn’t mean he wants to leave us like this. In fact, he loves us too much to leave us as we are. And he couldn’t leave the rich man in slavery to his wealth and his property.

So Jesus doesn’t offer the kind of love which says, ‘I love you as you are,’ with the silent implication that people can stay just as they are. He offers uncompromising love where he says, ‘I love you so much, but I won’t negotiate how you live, this is what I require of you if you are truly to follow me.’

Now that poses a problem for us when we think about wanting to welcome people into church, but maybe John Wesley had a helpful approach to this. As you know, he was big on putting people into small groups for the sake of their spiritual growth, but what a lot of people don’t realise is that he had more than one kind of small group. The one most people have heard of was the ‘class’, and there was only one requirement for joining a class, which was that essentially you were a spiritual enquirer.

However, if you were clearly a committed disciple of Jesus, there was another group for you, and that was a confidential group called the ‘band’.

Maybe we need to maintain these distinctions today. The rich man in our story would have made it into the class but not into the band, and then he would have even left the class.

What we need to remember is this: the love of Jesus is unconditional in that it is offered before we ever loved him, but it is also uncompromising because it calls us into the lifestyle of a Christian disciple.

Thirdly and finally, we learn that Jesus’ grace is transformative.

I’m thinking here of the conversation Jesus has with his disciples after the rich man has gone away. In the light of Jesus’ standards they wonder who can possibly be saved, and Jesus replies that what is humanly impossible is nevertheless possible for God. (Verses 23-27) Then Peter talks about all the sacrifices he and the other disciples have already made in order to follow their master, and Jesus promises them a mixture of rewards and persecution in this life, but unfettered blessing in the life to come. (Verses 28-30)

Contrast all that with the weak and insipid way we talk about grace in the church today. A recent Methodist document simply defined grace as ‘God’s unconditional regard towards people.’ Rather like the ‘God loves us as we are’ thinking we just considered, it’s only a partial truth. Grace is not only the way God reaches out to us and accepts us, it’s the way in which he changes us and fulfils that desire of Jesus’ uncompromising love to see us transformed.

You see, while discipleship requires commitment and effort from us, we all know our propensity to fail – that’s behind the disciples’ despairing comment, ‘Who then can be saved?’ But ultimately, we’re drawn to discipleship by the call of Jesus, and we’re enabled to be disciples by the Holy Spirit. So in the final analysis, it’s the work of God doing something good in us that we don’t deserve. And that’s grace. God makes the impossible possible.

But not only that, says Jesus, this grace shows that discipleship is more than the costly decisions we make to follow him (although that is part of it). As the New Testament scholar James R Edwards puts it,

But to conceive of discipleship solely in terms of its costs and sacrifices is to conceive of it wrongly – as though in marrying a beautiful bride a young man would think only of what he was giving up. … the reward of eternal life makes the sacrifices of discipleship look insignificant in comparison to the lavish blessing of God.[2]

God will bless the disciples of Jesus in this life, although there will still be the troubles of persecution, and he will bless again in the life of the age to come. That too is grace, along with the way grace enables and empowers us to walk the path of the disciple.

To conclude, let’s go back to where we started. Do we all have to sell our possessions? It depends on what Jesus asks of us, because to be a disciple means putting him first and following his will for our lives, rather than simply keeping a set of religious rules.

The thing is, his love meets us where we are but also draws us on into that life of imitating Jesus. And that call is one we will fail, but that’s where his grace comes in – again, meeting us where we are but transforming us and blessing us beyond description.

That, in outline, is the life of a Christian disciple.

[1] As found at https://brettfish.wordpress.com/2015/11/20/sell-all-of-our-possessions/

[2] James R Edwards, The Gospel According To Mark, pp 316, 317.

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Jesus On Marriage And Divorce (Mark 10:1-16) Ordinary 27 Year B

Once again some technical problems with focus in the video – sorry. Hopefully I’ll get this solved for next week.

Mark 10:1-16

In recent times, a dark underbelly of the Christian church has been exposed to the world, mainly through sex abuse cases, often where the victims have been children.

I have to say, it’s not the only dark side of the church I’ve witnessed. Today’s reading gives a first century example of something that still goes on in the church.

What is it? It’s manipulative politicking that seeks to put someone in an impossible situation. I’ve been on the receiving end of that. Worse still has been when accusers have made up false allegations against my wife as a way of getting at me.

I sometimes think that if I’d known in advance how nasty and slimy some church members would be, I’d have been reluctant to offer for the ministry.

Well, that’s a cheerful start this week, isn’t it? But it’s exactly what the Pharisees are doing to Jesus in today’s difficult reading. They are setting a trap. They are trying to discredit Jesus or put him in an impossible situation.

The Trap

Once again, I’m going to be critical of the Lectionary. Had we followed that strictly, we would have begun at verse 2, but verse 1 of Mark 10 carries some important information. It tells us that Jesus ‘went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan.’ That means he’s in the territory of Herod Antipas. In chapter 6, Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist has been beheaded following his criticism of Herod and Herodias divorcing their first spouses because they fancied each other. If Jesus now starts condemning easy divorce, then his life too could be in danger. It’s really quite cynical of the Pharisees to happen to come up with this question in this territory.

And of course Jesus could be made to look harsh and uncaring if he held a hard line. Jewish law allowed divorce.

On the other hand, what if Jesus sides with easy divorce? It would undermine and contradict the ministry his cousin had had.

And furthermore, the only argument among the rabbis was about what constituted legitimate reasons for divorce. They believed that a man could divorce his wife ‘Because he hath found in her indecency in anything.’ Some concentrated on the word ‘indecency’ and said that adultery was the only reason for divorce. Others concentrated on the words ‘in anything’ and said that the wife ruining a meal was sufficient cause for divorce.[1] On this basis, Jesus is being asked, which group of rabbis do you side with? And that reduces him to just another rabbi, no-one special – certainly not the Son of God.

What will Jesus do?

The Reversal

Jesus accomplishes a complete reversal. As so often in his ministry, he responds to a question with a question of his own. He won’t allow himself to  be trapped by his opponents’ assumptions.

But this time he’s especially clever. He asks a question where he knows what his opponents will say, and just as they’re feeling like they’re on solid ground he will take the ground from under their feet as if it were quicksand.

‘What did Moses command you?’ (verse 3) is his question, and he knows the Pharisees will jump to Deuteronomy chapter 24. Sure enough, they do.

4 They said, ‘Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.’

And they think they’ve got him. Now then, Jesus, choose a side and choose your fate.

But no. Jesus is not going to allow those women who have been cast aside like an unwanted toy by their husbands also to be treated as the mere objects in a debate. And the way he does that is by exercising his divine authority, bursting out of their trap where they wanted him simply to pick one rabbi’s interpretation versus another’s.

5 ‘It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,’ Jesus replied. 6 ‘But at the beginning of creation God “made them male and female”. 7 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, 8 and the two will become one flesh.” So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’

‘It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this rule.’ Who could know that except One who shared in the life of the Godhead? This isn’t the best interpretation that a rabbi can come up with: this is an authoritative divine declaration. What Moses gave wasn’t an instruction that allowed Jewish men to treat their wives as disposable; it was a concession that limited the worst effects of divorce on women in a patriarchal society.

The Pharisees thought they had boxed Jesus into a corner. But Jesus has landed a knock-out punch.

And just to emphasise the point, Jesus takes the whole thing back to first principles – something the Pharisees failed to do, and something today’s Church often fails to do as well.

The Principles

To take things back to first principles and to God’s design for marriage, Jesus goes back to Genesis. He quotes from Genesis 1:27, the verse which declares that all humans are made in the image of God, when he says,

6 ‘But at the beginning of creation God “made them male and female”. 

In doing so, he establishes the equality of men and women in relationships. It is not that one sex owns the other.

And then Jesus goes into the other creation account in Genesis chapter 2, where he quotes verse 24, and draws a conclusion:

7 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, 8 and the two will become one flesh.” So they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’

Jesus very clearly tells his opponents that rather than look for all the get-out clauses, you should look for what marriage is about in the first place.

And what is marriage in Jesus’ eyes here? It’s between one man and one woman, exclusively, for life, and where the sexual act belongs as the sign (almost the sacrament!) of that lifelong unity.

The Methodist ‘God In Love Unites Us’ report tried to wriggle out of these clear conclusions by claiming that Genesis 2 was only about mutual help. Well, it begins there but it blatantly doesn’t end there and Jesus won’t let it end there. He authoritatively declares as the Son of God that this text teaches much more than that.

So where does that leave Jesus when it comes to the question of divorce?

The Problem

Jesus addresses this more when he goes into the house with his disciples:

10 When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. 11 He answered, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. 12 And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.’

In the context, Jesus is referring to the people who throw away their spouse because they are no longer wanted. That was what the Pharisees had in mind. That was the ‘easy divorce’ culture that had grown up in Jesus’ day because Judaism had taken the teaching of Moses as a permission rather than a concession.

And not only do we know from this passage that Jesus had a concern for those who are treated as disposable objects by their spouses rather than equally made in the image of God, we also know from Matthew’s version of this incident that Jesus specifically allowed divorce for those whose spouses broke their marriage vows by sexual immorality.

And it is this twin approach of Jesus – holding out high ideals while having compassion for those who are hurt – that shape our Christian approach to marriage and divorce.

On the one hand, we say to those who want to set out on this adventure that it will take commitment of a level they may well not have known before in their lives. Marriage takes work. It doesn’t just happen, which is why the modern idea that ‘marriage doesn’t work’ or ‘we just drifted apart’ do not sit easily with the Christian vision of marriage. I remind couples whose marriages I am taking that in their vows they won’t say ‘I do’ – they’ll say ‘I will’, which is both a promise and a commitment to an act of will. In fact, they say, ‘With God’s help I will,’ because they will need God’s help to live up to their vows.

On the other hand, we are not here to castigate those who are let down by a spouse who treats them as inferior and does not consider them worthy of loyalty and faithfulness. I once met a couple who wanted a church wedding, but the bride had been divorced after her first husband left her for someone else. She had rather cruelly been told by a vicar they had approached before me that she was ‘damaged goods’.

Can we – like Jesus – support and celebrate life-long marriage, while tending to the wounds of those who have been hurt by those with whom they had exchanged vows?

Because I believe that’s what he calls his church to do.

[1] James R Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark, p299.

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Harvest Sermon: Reversing the Curse (Genesis 8:15-22)

A brief apology for omitting one technical step in my set-up before recording the video this week which led to the focus being on my bookshelves and not on my face. I didn’t have time to re-shoot. However, you may consider it an improvement!

Genesis 8:15-22

If I turned up this morning with all three volumes of The Lord Of The Rings, opened one of them at random, and read to you about the battle of Isengard, you might think it was interesting but how much sense would it make to you?

If you saw on the stage a scene from Romeo and Juliet where the two lovers are professing their devotion to each other but you knew nothing about the hostility between the Montagus and the Capulets, what meaning would you draw?

And if the first instalment you ever watched of Eastenders was Dirty Den serving divorce papers on his wife Angie in a Christmas Day episode one year, might you ask yourself, ‘Well, what led to that?’

These things don’t make much sense on their own, do they?

Yet that’s exactly how we often treat the Bible in church. It’s why I like to preach on a sequence of readings from the same book if I can. That’s why many of my sermons and videos in recent weeks have been from the Gospel according to Mark.

But on a special occasion like today we have to break the pattern and it means taking a passage out of nowhere. If only this week’s reading from Mark had been suitable!

Now you will recognise some of the context of Genesis 8 immediately. You will realise this is the end of the Flood, and that’s useful for understanding these verses, but we’ll need to set it in a wider story. This passage makes more sense in the context of what has already happened earlier in Genesis, and in the context of the great story that all the books of the Bible in their vast diversity combine to tell.

Putting it in that wider context, I’m calling this story of harvest and other good things one of ‘Reversing The Curse.’

The key reference here is not so much Genesis 6, where the story of the flood begins, although that is relevant. The big connection is with Genesis 3, where Adam and Eve fail to follow the terms and conditions on the apple and the tree of life. That poetic story of human sinfulness contains references to the damage that sin causes. It isn’t just that it fractures our relationship with God, it also damages our relationships with other human beings and so men dominate women (which only comes in the curse). Our connection with the wider creation also takes a hit. We see hard, physical toil at work as one sign of the curse, and we see the pain of childbirth as another. In the words of Bob Dylan, ‘Everything is broken.’

The flood in Genesis shows then that the problems in the Garden of Eden have escalated to the whole human race. This is the point where wickedness is in such a frenzy that God resorts to drastic measures.

But now, after the flood, God expresses his deepest desire, which is for salvation rather than judgment, and it’s a salvation that reverses all the curses of sin – the breaks with God, one another, work, family, and creation. And so we heard at the end of the reading,

21 The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: ‘Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

22 ‘As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.’

Despite ‘every inclination of the human heart [being] evil from childhood’ God will seek to save people from sin. One day it won’t be Noah’s burnt offerings of clean animals and clean birds (verse 20), God will take sacrifice for sin into his own being in the Person of his Son.

The brokenness between human beings is something God longs to heal, too, and we get a fresh start in this story with Noah’s family. They are far from perfect, and soon even righteous Noah himself causes embarrassment for his sons by getting drunk.

And as God shows this preference for salvation, the other ruptured parts of existence are up for healing, even if they are not mentioned here. If work now brings toil and pain, then it is a Christian call to work to heal that. Right now in golf, the Ryder Cup is underway between the USA and Europe. Samuel Ryder, who donated the gold trophy, was a Christian entrepreneur, who pioneered paying sick pay to his employees, not wanting anyone to go penniless because they were too unwell to work.[1]

Other Christian business founders have done similar things down the years. You’ve probably heard the stories about George Cadbury and Joseph Rowntree, but you can add to that list people such as Sir William Hartley the jam-maker, William Colgate, Henry Heinz, Henry Crowell the co-founder of Quaker Oats, and in more recent years Anthony Rossi, the founder of the Tropicana drinks company. All said that their Christian values should imbue their businesses and make things good and honest for their employees and their customers.[2]

The response to the curse of pain in childbirth mentioned in Genesis 3 is found in many ways, as Christians get involved in medicine, in pregnancy crisis centres, and in adoption and fostering agencies.

But by now you’re probably thinking, ‘This is all very well but I came to a harvest festival! Where’s the harvest theme in all this?’ It’s there at the climax of the reading. Verse 22 again:

22 ‘As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.’

Harvest is all of a piece with this. God with his desire for salvation is not content to look at a broken world where people do not have enough to eat, whether it is a crisis, ongoing unemployment, steeply rising energy bills, or the damage of climate change, especially in the developing world.

And that calls all of us to involvement. We cannot leave things as they are. We cannot tolerate unjust suffering and the treatment of human beings as just some kind of collateral damage in a wider political project.

Remember, God’s final word is not judgment but salvation. And salvation is not just a private spiritual knees-up between me and God, it is the remaking of the whole broken creation. So God lays it out that this means a good and steady source of food for all (seedtime and harvest), facilitated by a balanced climate (cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night).

Therefore, when we bring our harvest gifts today and we dedicate them to Woking Food Bank, we are not just saying that we are grateful we can enjoy our food. We are saying that, but we are saying much more.

As we have laid our gifts before the Lord this morning, I believe we are saying this: we will not rest while people do not have the harvests that we have. We will give. We will pray. We will campaign and we will act. And what we shout for in the larger world we will show in our smaller worlds, by our acts of hospitality.

Because the will of God is one where not only the rich can feast, but that all can be invited to the feast of the kingdom. Every time we come to Holy Communion we look backwards to the Cross where we are put right with God, forwards to the wedding feast of the Lamb, and to the present where the Holy Spirit enables us to become junior partners in the work of God.

And within all that, harvest festival is a pledge of allegiance to the kingdom of God. As the Holy Spirit helps us to co-operate with the will of God, we promise our own parts in the remaking of the world:

  • Our witness to the redeeming love of God in Christ that brings sinners into fellowship with him;
  • Our experience of reconciliation with one another which we put into practice to help heal other relationships;
  • Our efforts to return purpose and wholeness to the drudgery of work;
  • Our concern to be pro-life, not just from conception, but all the way to the grave;
  • Our campaigning and our lifestyle that seek to ensure all have a climate in which they can grow a healthy harvest.

For that is where the divine promise we read today of seedtime and harvest, summer and winter belongs in the great story of God – in a story in which our God is making all things new.

[1] https://licc.org.uk/resources/the-ryder-and-solheim-cups-golfing-for-gods-glory/

[2] https://issuu.com/salvationarmyuk/docs/wc_15_august_2020_web

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Rethinking Life (Mark 9:30-37) Ordinary 25 Year B

Mark 9:30-37

“How many times must I tell you?”

If you are a parent, how many times have you said that to your children?

And how many of us remember being on the receiving end of those words when we were kids?

Today’s reading is a ‘How many times?’ moment between Jesus and his disciples. It contains teaching that he gives them on more than one occasion, not just here.

And if we’re kind to the disciples, I can understand why they needed to hear this several times from Jesus. Because what he teaches them here is so contrary to what they would have picked up from the incumbent religious leaders of their day.

Yes, we are talking about teaching that needs to be repeated because it’s revolutionary and requires transformation in thinking and behaviour.

And perhaps surprisingly, even after two thousand years of Christianity, some of the things Jesus calls his disciples to rethink here are ones we keep having to rethink if we are to follow him more closely.

Firstly, says Jesus, his disciples need to rethink suffering – and specifically, his suffering as the Messiah.

He said to them, ‘The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise.’ (verse 31)

We know what a revolution it was for the first disciples to consider that Israel’s Messiah would be a suffering figure, not an all-conquering, triumphant warlord in the conventional sense.

And we stand on centuries of Christian tradition about all that Jesus accomplished through his death on the Cross – the forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with God and one another, the defeat of death and the powers of evil, all out of his love for us. We mark that with crosses in our churches and we celebrate it at Holy Communion.

But despite that, we too lapse from the centrality of Jesus’ suffering at times. We want to settle our arguments via the ‘might is right’ route. We like to see our political opponents well and truly ‘done over’ at the ballot box. We talk of that neighbour we’re never going to forgive. In one form or another we default to that ‘might is right’ approach, ignoring the way of Jesus.

The hymn writer named in Methodist hymn books as Frances Jane van Alstyne and known in most other books as Fanny Crosby wrote a hymn called ‘Jesus, keep me near the Cross’. The first verse reads,

Jesus, keep me near the cross,
There a precious fountain;
Free to all, a healing stream,
Flows from Calv’ry’s mountain. 

But I venture to suggest that being kept near the Cross isn’t just about remembering the mercy and forgiveness we receive, it’s also about modelling the life we live. Remember what I said last week about being willing to suffer for our faith.

Secondly, says Jesus, his disciples need to rethink serving.

Now we get to the argument the Twelve were having, and which they’re embarrassed about when Jesus asks them about it, because they were arguing about who was the greatest (verses 33-34).

35 Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, ‘Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.’

‘Sitting down’ – that’s the posture of an authoritative teacher, the same way there is a special chair, the kathedra, for a bishop – a cathedral is where a bishop has his or her place of authoritative teaching. It’s like universities saying that a professor ‘holds a chair’. What Jesus is saying here is important.[1]

And it’s a direct repudiation of our fame and celebrity culture, as well as the way we are deferential to people just because they hold a certain office.

Now you might think that sort of thing doesn’t exist in the church, but not only was it very real among the disciples of Jesus it’s also alive and kicking in the Christian church today. And it’s a poison.

A controversial American pastor called Mark Driscoll came over to London a few years ago and preached at an event held at the Royal Albert Hall.

After the event, a few people were waiting outside to get Driscoll’s autograph and a photo with him.

Afterwards, as they drove away in a taxi, the colleague [who was accompanying him] expressed amazement that a pastor would get this kind of response. In reply, Driscoll says:

‘I don’t know if you have noticed or not, but I am kind of a Big Deal.’[2]

Now you may say that’s an extreme example and to some extent it is, but given how we have our Christian celebrities, and given how we think certain people of a particular rank are more important in the Church than others, I suggest to you we have a problem here and we’re not taking Jesus seriously.

Mark Driscoll never learned his lesson and his large church in Seattle imploded. We need to learn the lesson for the sake of our own spiritual health and the health of the church. Our concern needs to be with whether we are serving people rather than whether people are admiring us and looking up to us.

And that takes us to the third and final lesson Jesus has for his apostles here:

36 He took a little child whom he placed among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, 37 ‘Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.’

What is this about? Some people have a very sentimental answer about it being to do with either the simplicity or the innocence of children. But I have to wonder how much time such people have spent with children to think that!

No: Jesus here is calling his followers to rethink status. In first-century Palestine children had no social status whatsoever. They were under the care and authority of others with no rights of their own.[3] How do we receive that in a culture where we’re forever banging on about our rights?

This brings everything Jesus has said so far to a climax: if you’re going to model your life on the suffering of Jesus and if you’re going to be more concerned about how you serve people, then the whole human addiction to status starts to fall away.

Should we be worried about the lack of status the church and her ministers have in our society? Sure, we know that some of that is an indication of just how widely the Christian message is rejected today, and that should concern us. So is the assumption that ministers are either here to fleece the flock of their money or to abuse children – we’ve given society ammunition to shoot at us.

But the lack of status should not worry us at all. It means we can be released from the trappings of power to get on with serving people with the love of God in Jesus.

The thing is, everything we’ve talked about today is counter-cultural. But we’ve heard the opposite for so long and in so many ways it’s become part of us and it takes a lot of teaching from Jesus for the upside-down nature of his kingdom to sink into our minds and begin to transform us.

For Jesus does indeed call us to swim against the tide of our society. To live on the basis that God uses suffering for good, and to live as a servant rather than a celebrity, quietly getting on with the ways of Jesus with no worry for our status contradicts the ambitions of so many.

I’m not surprised it took a long time for some of this teaching to sink into those first disciples, and I’m not surprised if the same is true with us. But I hope what I’ve shared today contributes to that radical change of life to which Jesus calls each one of us.

God bless you all as you seek to serve him each day.

[1] https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/jesus-radical-inversion-of-community-values-in-mark-9/

[2] https://gracetruth.blog/2021/09/14/i-am-kind-of-a-big-deal-insecure-pride-and-humble-confidence/

[3] https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/jesus-radical-inversion-of-community-values-in-mark-9/

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Take Up Your Cross (Covenant Service, Mark 8:27-38) Ordinary 24 Year B

Mark 8:27-38

We’ve had some very hot weather this week and it feels like it will be quite a while before the central heating has to go back on.

Nevertheless, I would guess that by a month’s time it is likely that many of us will have warmed up those radiators again.

Well, this is the point in Mark’s Gospel where the heat starts to turn up. Up until now, Jesus has certainly had criticism and opposition from the religious establishment, some of it serious, but mostly he has had a positive reception from the crowds in the north of the country. Now, as he begins the journey south to Jerusalem, he warns his disciples of what is to come and what it consequently means to follow him.

We come to this annual Covenant Service (although thanks to COVID-19 it’s our first for two years) as people who, like Peter, confess that Jesus is the Messiah. We know and accept the later story that Peter found hard to accept, about Jesus going to the Cross and rising again. These things are the Good News that are the basis of our commitment to Jesus.

In the light of that, it seems appropriate on a day like today to explore Jesus’ statement that

‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’ (Verse 34)

What do those three elements of discipleship – self-denial, taking up the cross, and following Jesus – entail?

Firstly, self-denial.

I have an amateur theory that in our society self-denial is for others, but self-fulfilment is for us. We can applaud the sporting hero who has endured years of disciplined training at the expense of other comforts along with a diet few of us would wish to eat when they end up winning a gold medal at the Olympics.

But for many of the rest of us, the exhortations to success are different: follow your dreams! Base your career on your passion! You must be personally fulfilled sexually!

Now it isn’t all wrong, because we are expected to use our gifts and our resources in the service of God, and the Covenant Service has a balance between ways of serving we will find personally rewarding and other ways we will find difficult. But the problem with our society’s values is that these things are usually expressed in very self-centred ways, and that’s where it’s wrong.

Today is a day when we say to Jesus that we are willing to deny ourselves for the sake of the gospel, because he did precisely that. He gave up the glory of heaven for earth, and life as part of a poor family, at that.

Today is a day to ask ourselves some questions. One is, what have I given up for Jesus? Because if I haven’t given up anything for him, I have barely accepted what it is to be a disciple.

And another question is whether Jesus is asking me to give up something for the sake of his kingdom now. It isn’t always bad things he asks us to give up. Sometimes it’s good things. We may look down on the Roman Catholic insistence on celibacy for their priests, but I know a Methodist minister who said to me he knew in his case that to fulfil his call to ministry he would have to give up all hopes of a wife and family. That was the only way he could answer the call.

So – where are we denying ourselves like Jesus for the sake of God’s kingdom?

Secondly, taking up the Cross.

We must not water this down to the saying, ‘Everybody has their cross to bear.’ This is not about the general suffering of the world, dreadful as that is.

This is about being willing to suffer for Jesus. Christians from the days of the apostles to our day have known that the call to follow Jesus risks martyrdom. Not only did many of the first disciples lose their lives due to their faith, the same happens today. In India under a militant Hindu nationalist government. In Pakistan and Iran under the influence of extremist Islam. In Cuba, North Korea, and China under Marxist governments.

We may be grateful that these are not the conditions in which we live out our faith, but we should not be glib. Even if we do not risk martyrdom, we know that there is at least a secondary application of Jesus’ teaching, the one brought out in Gospels other than Mark, where Jesus is recorded as referring to taking up our cross daily, and that’s our willingness to suffer for our faith.

The late John Stott put it like this:

The place of suffering in service and of passion in mission is hardly ever taught today. But the greatest single secret of evangelistic or missionary effectiveness is the willingness to suffer and die. It may be a death to popularity (by faithfully preaching the unpopular biblical gospel), or to pride (by the use of modest methods in reliance on the Holy Spirit), or to racial and national prejudice (by identification with another culture), or to material comfort (by adopting a simple life style). But the servant must suffer if he is to bring light to the nations, and the seed must die if it is to multiply.[1]

I wonder what Christian faith has cost any of us? If over a period of time we haven’t lost something significant from our lives then we need to reflect how serious we are about being a disciple of Jesus. Because it cost him everything.

Thirdly, following Jesus.

So what does it mean to follow Jesus? Perhaps that’s a strange question for many of us when we’ve been Christians for many years?

I see it as encompassing two things: imitating Jesus and going where Jesus goes (although arguably the latter is part of the former).

Here’s why I say following Jesus involves imitating him: it’s because that’s what disciples of rabbis did two thousand years ago. Disciples sought to copy as best as possible their master’s lifestyle – right down to some precise and even private details! To follow Jesus is to say, I want to be more like him. Today is a day when we pledge that.

But as well as doing what Jesus did we need to go where Jesus went – and go where he is going today, by his Spirit. In other words, there is not just the general imitation of his character (which is challenging enough!) but the openness to the specific directions he gives for each of us.

What do I mean? Questions like these: is Jesus calling us to go to the poor with his love in a particular way? Is he calling us to move home or to change our job? Is it as simple as Jesus wanting us to change where and how we are doing voluntary work in the church or the community? It can be small things as well as big things.

For me, I remember being clearly called away from leading a church Bible study group which I greatly enjoyed to serve a Youth For Christ centre committee instead. Both were rewarding, but I knew my time at the Bible study group had finished, and I was filled with a desire to move on.

In conclusion, all of these three callings as a disciple are deeply challenging. The self-denial of giving up cherished things. The taking up of the Cross in being willing to suffer for our faith. Following Jesus by doing what he does and going where he goes. It’s a tall order.

But Jesus points us to a future

‘when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels’ (verse 38)

and while he talks about it in the context of those who are ashamed of him, the positive converse of this is that here is the great joy and glory to come for those who love and serve him.

So have a vision today not only of the challenge it is to follow Jesus but also of the rewards in the age to come. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews wrote about Jesus,

‘For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.’ (Hebrews 12:2b)

Let us take up the cost of discipleship with one eye on the joy and glory set before us.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1023823078452194&set=gm.6304018576305311

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Following Your Calling (Mark 7:24-37) Ordinary 23 Year B

Mark 7:24-37

There is a meme on the Internet with these words: ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you read on the Internet.’

It then claims that the quotation is from Abraham Lincoln – think about it!

One area where we should be very careful not to believe everything we read on the Internet is when all and sundry offer commentary on difficult Bible passages. And boy do we have a difficult passage this week. What does Jesus think he’s doing, speaking to the Syro-Phoenician woman like that?

27 ‘First let the children eat all they want,’ he told her, ‘for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.’

Well, the stupid and arrogant brigade are only too quick to tell you. They say that Jesus was a racist and that even he had to learn how to treat people of other races well from the woman.

Of course, what they’re really saying is, you should all be as enlightened as us!

When you get a difficult passage like this and when you come across Jesus saying strange and apparently disturbing things, the first thing you need to do is study the text very carefully. Jumping to conclusions just based on how it reads in English without checking with specialist biblical scholars is dangerous. So is reading it as if it’s a contemporary incident in our culture.

For one thing, racism as we know it didn’t exist in Jesus’ society. There were forms of prejudice, yes, but not in the way that we shamefully discriminate against another race or a person of different skin colour. Therefore, to assume that Jesus was being racist is a fundamental mistake.

In any case, this comes in a series of chapters in Mark where Jesus is criss-crossing Lake Galilee between Jewish and Gentile populations. He has healed a Gentile like the Gerasene demoniac. In the previous episode which we considered last week, he has brought down the barrier of the Jewish food laws. To make Jesus a racist against the Gentiles beggars belief.

For another, we need to look at translation issues. If we think Jesus is referring to the woman as some kind of feral dog, we are wrong. The word is not that for a wild dog but for a pet dog, a lap dog, a house dog. This story (in its form here in Mark and also in Matthew) is the only time that word is used. Everywhere else the word for dog is a street dog – but not here.[1]

What does this mean? Jesus is painting a rather more endearing picture of a family where the children give scraps to the beloved family dog. It’s rather more affectionate than that painted by those who jump in screaming, ‘Racism!’

Now granted, it’s still provocative in a way because it’s not what you expect Jesus to say in response to a request for healing, but that’s because what Jesus is doing here is speaking in the form of a riddle. It’s designed to elicit a response from the woman, and that’s exactly what he gets:

28 ‘Lord,’ she replied, ‘even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’

And by the way – did you notice how she said ‘the dogs under the table’? She had definitely understood Jesus to mean family pets, not wild dogs.

Jesus is saying something like this. My first calling is to take the kingdom of God to Israel, the People of God. I’m not concentrating on the Gentile mission, which comes after that.

Nevertheless, given the woman’s faith, he heals her daughter by expelling the demon. Even Jesus with his focussed calling on bringing the message of the kingdom to Israel recognises that faith exists outside Israel’s boundaries and on occasions like this he can flex his calling to bring the love of God to this woman and her family.

And having got to that point, I think we can now make a couple of applications from the story to our own lives.

Firstly, are you living out your calling?

Jesus was clear: his priority was to go to ‘the lost sheep of Israel.’ That was his focus. The good news of God’s kingdom had to come first to those whom God had made into his people over many centuries. They were the priority in his calling. For he was the Son of God, which means not only that he was divine, but also that he was the True Israel. He was fulfilling the destiny of Israel. So he had to come to them first.

This determined what he did and where he went. He knew this was his Father’s will for him.

Every Christian has a calling. It isn’t always to a ‘religious job’, such as being a minister. It can be to a certain profession or industry. It can be a calling in family life. It can be something we’re called to do in the church or the community. It can be about the use of a particular gift or talent.

If you don’t know what yours is, then pray about it. In the meantime, dedicate the gifts and resources you know you have to the service of God, and consider the maxim offered by the spiritual writer Frederick Buechner when he said that vocation was ‘where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.’

Once you do have a sense of calling, then the example of Jesus means that it becomes a significant factor in determining what you do and what you leave aside. It helps you when people ask if you will take on a responsibility, because you can consider whether their request matches your calling. If it does, then fine. If not, then the answer is probably ‘no.’

Actually, I suspect that many of us need to say ‘no’ a lot more in order to be able to fulfil our callings. We get more hooked into a human weakness of wanting to please people and remain popular with them than we do following the call of God on our lives.

A few years ago, a very popular book for businesspeople and leaders in society was a title called ‘Essentialism’ by Greg McKeown. Basically, it’s a book that teaches you to say ‘no’ to everything outside your calling. McKeown says that if you have doubts about whether something is consistent with your calling, then you should say ‘no’ to it. I wonder whether many of us in the church should listen to him.

Secondly, though, are you flexible about your calling?

I say that, because I think that’s what Jesus showed in this story. Yes, his calling was to the people of Israel, but here he was in a place where there was less likelihood of him being able to do that. Tyre was a Gentile town.

So although he’s trying to stay low profile and undercover, when the woman discovers his presence and brings her heart-rending request he certainly has the opportunity to meet her need with his divine compassion without adversely affecting his calling.

Therefore, although following our calling is usually pretty decisive, we need to listen to God for those occasions when we need to be flexible rather than rigid.

Jesus homed in on that here as he told his riddle and the woman showed evident faith in her response. When he sees that faith, he acts.

In other words, he knows that God is at work here. The Spirit of God has surely been working in the woman’s life, preparing her for what will lead to Jesus’ life-saving intervention.

That, then, gives us an idea about when to be flexible about our calling. It’s not simply that we have some down time and a gap in our diary so we can fit in one of the people who is regularly badgering us. Instead, it’s about discerning the work of the Spirit who is doing kingdom things and making kingdom opportunities available.

One good way of discerning whether we’re being called to flex our calling is by consulting trusted friends. If you start to get enquiries and requests from people for your time and what they want are things that go beyond your regular calling as you understand it, then it can be wise to take the details of those approaches to your spouse, or to some wise friends. Let them help you discern an answer to these questions: does this request constitute a reasonable flexing of your calling or will it distract you from your calling?

In conclusion, then, when we dig into this story and get beyond the superficial ways of treating it, what we discover here is that the example of Jesus is very practical for us living out our calling, whether he’s called us to serve him in the church or in the world.

He wants us to follow our calling with a passion, but also to listen carefully for those occasional diversions from the route when something else is required of us.

As we do this, the kingdom of God will advance.

And that’s what we want. Isn’t it?

[1] On this and the general thrust of this sermon, see Ian Paul, Did the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7 teach Jesus not to be racist?

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Finding The Will Of God (Mark 7:1-23) Ordinary 22 Year B

Sorry about the typo in the opening titles!

Mark 7:1-23

I have known more than one friend who went vegetarian find themselves derailed from their noble intentions by the same stumbling block.

They couldn’t face life without bacon. The smell of it sizzling in the pan drove them back to the carnivore world.

I also know friends who are going vegan, because they believe the research that shows the amount of red meat production in the world to be a contributor to climate change.

Neither my friends who are former vegetarians nor those who are currently vegan made their decisions in the light of Jesus’ teaching in our passage today that all foods are ritually clean. There is a tiny minority of Christians who believe we should still follow the Old Testament kosher laws on food, but overwhelmingly the Christian Church has taken Jesus’ abolition of the kosher laws here as read and we make our ethical decisions about food on other bases.

If that’s the case, how is today’s reading relevant to us?

The answer is that it has a wide relevance to how we understand the will of God and put it into practice. It helps us guard against living our faith in the sincere but sterile way of the Pharisees and instead in the life-giving way of Jesus.

I have three ‘H’s for you.[1]

Firstly, the Holy Spirit.

The Pharisees had the Scriptures, such as were recognised at the time. Jesus had the same Scriptures. But what set them apart?

The Pharisees knew that the Scriptures weren’t exhaustive for every single situation you would face in life, and so they made up for that by fencing the Scriptures off with their own traditions which they believed enabled you to be faithful. You heard some of them in the reading. It was a sincere effort to do the right thing, but it wasn’t a godly one. It was much like the way we prescribe our own rules for churches and organisations.

But Jesus said these traditions were signs of how far from God they were, not least because the human rules and traditions tended to take over from the Scriptures.

Jesus lived differently. The Son of God lived as a man empowered by the Holy Spirit. As the Son of God, living by the power of the Spirit, he isn’t someone who can be contaminated by what is unclean. He doesn’t need the precautionary measures against ritual and moral uncleanness that ordinary people needed, according to the Old Testament Scriptures.

For us, the application is simple. The example of Jesus leads us into the New Testament era where all disciples of Jesus receive the Holy Spirit. We don’t become divine like him, but we do receive the Spirit when we commit our lives to him.

And it is living by the Spirit that is our answer to hedging every Scripture around with particular rules and regulations of our own making. When we live by the Spirit, who inspired the biblical writers, then we have our way of being faithful to divine teaching.

In his Epistle to the Galatians the Apostle Paul called on believers to keep in step with the Spirit, that is to live by the Spirit and be led by the Spirit (Galatians 5:16-18). For the Holy Spirit desires the opposite of sin and will guide us in the spirit of scriptural teaching, having himself inspired those same Scriptures.

So this is our first strategy in seeking the will of God – it is to listen for the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit making sense of the Scriptures to us.

Secondly, history.

Just because we believe the Bible is inspired doesn’t mean we can read a verse from here, a verse from there and another verse from somewhere else, treating them all the same. There is more to the Bible than that. We don’t seek guidance by playing ‘Bible Bingo’, where we almost randomly select verses and treat them all as having equal weight.

No. We set them in their historical context. We take account of where they fall in the canon of inspired writings to which the church submits. What is the cultural background? What is the historical context?

A good example is to compare two different things in this passage. We have the food laws, which Jesus says are no longer needed (‘Thus he declared all foods clean’, verse 19), but we have other ethical standards, including sexual behaviour, which certainly come over from the Old Testament, but which he clearly retains. Hence, the way the reading ends:

21For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, 22adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. 23All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’

What’s the difference? Historical context in the great story of God’s salvation that the Bible tells provides us with the answer.

In the case of the food laws, they do not originate at creation, where the first humans are given some simple vegetarian permissions, nor later in Genesis after the Flood where meat-eating is also allowed. They come specifically in the context of how Israel will inhabit the land. I have heard a doctor suggest they may even be specific to what was hygienic at the time, but I am not qualified to judge that.

The sexual laws here, banning fornication and adultery, however, have a much bigger context. They can be traced back not only to the prohibition of adultery in the Ten Commandments but to the earliest teaching about such relationships, way back in the creation stories, in Genesis 2:24, where sexual relations are defined as being between one man and one woman exclusively for life. Furthermore, Jesus and Paul both base their teaching on sexual ethics on that verse.

So history shows us that the food laws were for a particular context which has since passed, but the sexual ethics were for all time.

One of the things we can do when we are faced with difficult biblical teaching is to look for the context of the canon of Scripture, the cultural background, and the historical context. We may need to ask those more learned than ourselves, or to research on the Internet, being careful to keep to reputable websites. But probably many more Christian homes could do with having a one-volume Bible commentary on the bookshelf, and maybe one or two other helpful resources as well.

Two ‘H’s so far: the Holy Spirit and history.

The third is the heart.

Jesus is very clear here and in the Sermon on the Mount that it’s the inner attitudes which determine the way we live as Christians. What goes on inside our lives determines what comes outside into the world. What we dwell on, what we love, what we spend our time thinking about will have an effect on our actions.

That’s why so much of Scripture is addressed to the inner life of disciples. It’s not to keep everything inside and private. It’s to recognise that the rôle of Holy Writ is to address those inner attitudes and tune them towards our life with God.

What we cannot do is simply treat the Bible as a collection of rules that regulate human action. That would make it no different from the kinds of laws that Parliament passes and to which the Queen assents. If we treat biblical teaching as just a collection of laws that regulate our behaviour, we will find that it lets us down and that we let God down.

I once heard a Muslim teacher say that this was one area where Muslims and Christians disagreed. Islam, he said, had no time for the question of inner motives and the workings of the heart. It only looked at the outer actions.

Followers of Jesus cannot go down that road. When we read the Bible and seek to hear God speaking to us about our lives through it, one thing we need to do is to ask, how does this form my inner life? How does it impact all my affections and the things I love? As one Christian writer has put it, ‘You are what you love.’

If we do that, then we will draw closer to God and that will have the knock-on effect that we live in greater holiness. Let the Scriptures focus on our attitudes of heart and the result will not be that grimy list of sins that Jesus lists at the end of the reading: that is what comes when we focus on the outer rule-keeping without the inner formation of the spirit.

No: allowing the Scriptures to mould our hearts will lead instead to the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

So in conclusion, this is how we work with the Scriptures to discover God’s will. We listen for the voice of the Holy Spirit who inspired the Scriptures and are willing to be led by that same Spirit. We explore the history, including the cultural context and the place in God’s great story. And we let the Spirit use the Scriptures to work on our hearts, forming us into the people he wants us to be, rather than just folk who forever struggle and fail to conform to outward regulations.

[1] My inspiration for what follows (but not the three ‘H’s) comes from Ian Paul’s blog post, Do followers of Jesus obey OT food laws (Mark 7)?

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What’s In It For Me? (John 6:24-35) Ordinary 18 Year B

John 6:24-35

When it was announced in one of my previous appointments that I was due a sabbatical, the only reaction from my senior steward was, ‘What’s he going to bring back for us?’ There was no concern that it might be beneficial for me, or that I might need it.

It was rather like the ‘What’s in it for me?’ question that we often find in wider society. Politicians know how significant that question is, and so when elections come around their manifestos are packed with promises to the voters about what they will do for them, rather than casting a vision of a better society.

And ‘What’s in it for me?’ is very much the attitude of the crowd that has hunted down Jesus and his disciples after they tried to escape across the water when Jesus knew they wanted to make him king by force. That’s what Jesus tells them their motives are:

26 Jesus answered, ‘Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.

I’m not going to deny that there are many benefits that come from following Jesus, but the crowd were only following Jesus in a geographical sense. They weren’t following him as their Teacher, let alone their Lord and Saviour. They were in it for themselves.

And if we’re honest, sometimes our words and actions as Christians betray similar attitudes. ‘I didn’t get much out of that service this morning,’ say some people – completely missing the point that worship is an act of giving, not getting.

Instead, Jesus says this:

29 Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’

But is that good enough for the crowd? No! They want a sign like manna from heaven (verses 30-31), despite what they witnessed with the feeding of the five thousand. There’s just no pleasing some people!

Which I guess is the point. Jesus hasn’t come to please people, any more than ministers have. Sometimes when strangers discover what my work is they say to me, ‘It must be hard trying to please everyone.’

My response is, ‘It isn’t my job to please everyone.’

You get the impression that no matter what Jesus says, this crowd has little intention of becoming disciples. In fact, were you to skip to the end of the chapter you’ll find that apart from Jesus’ inner circle, nearly everyone bails on him.

And Jesus lets them go. He doesn’t soften his message for them. He doesn’t redesign his message around their ‘lived experiences’. That’s something today’s church would do well to ponder.

So what does it mean ‘to believe in the one [God] has sent’ (verse 29) and to feed on Jesus, ‘The bread of life’ (verse 35)?

Well, let’s eliminate one very basic, minimal thing. Believing in Jesus is not simply about believing he exists. Jesus is right in front of the crowd – they know he exists – so it can’t be that.

It’s something more. It’s believing in him in the sense of trusting in him – and trusting in him to the extent that we entrust our very lives to him. What does that involve?

Firstly, it’s going to involve trusting in his teaching, and that’s quite a radical step to begin with. So much of Jesus’ teaching cut across the norms of his day and that’s every bit as true, if not more so, today. Loving God and loving our neighbour ahead of ourselves? Forgiving people that our society freely calls ‘unforgivable’? Serving others instead of lording it over them?

Oh sure, when we see other people living selflessly, we applaud and we nominate them for an honour from the Queen, but to think that we should all do this – isn’t that a bit much? We’ll let these other noble people do the good acts vicariously for us.

But if we believe in Jesus and his teaching, we won’t make excuses like that.

Secondly, it’s going to involve trusting in his kingship, which is very different from the kingship that the crowd imagined. No military ruler killing his enemies here.

Instead, Jesus spoke language about being lifted up as if on a throne – you find this in John 12:32:


‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’

But he is referring to his death on the Cross! That is where he will be enthroned as King of Israel and King of all creation.

Believing in Jesus means trusting that his Cross is what changes the world. The Cross is where notice is served on the powers of evil. The Cross is where our sins are forgiven, and we begin the journey of living a new and different life.

Thirdly, it’s going to involve trusting in his love, because all that I’ve mentioned so far about the teaching of Jesus and of his Cross indicate what an upside-down approach to life he brings. Does he have our best interests at heart when he calls us to self-denial? How exactly can his death serve as the turning-point of history?

I believe Jesus knows that what he asks of us is the opposite of what the world broadcasts, but he invites us to look at all he has done for us and then answer the question as to whether we will trust him.

In particular, he reminds us of all he has done in giving up the glory of heaven to take on human flesh among the poor, and in going to the Cross for us.

All this is for us to trust in his love for us and hence also trust in his teaching and his kingship.

And with that relationship comes all the blessings we long for. They don’t come by us grabbing all we can have for ourselves with the ‘What’s in it for me?’ mentality.

By trusting ourselves into Jesus’ hands we gain more than bread to feed our stomachs: we gain the very Bread of Life, Jesus himself (verse 35).

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