The Jesus Manifesto, Luke 4:14-21 (Ordinary 3, Year C)
I’m continuing my practice of recording my sermon videos using minimal notes rather than a full script. So once more there is no complete text to follow the video. Feel free to watch the video a second time to get the detail!
The Wedding At Cana: Not A Work Event (John 2:1-11, Ordinary 2, Year C)
If Boris Johnson had turned up at the wedding at Cana, would he have claimed he was at a work event? But don’t worry, this video has a whole lot more to say about Jesus than about BoJo.
The Baptism of Jesus: Tools for Mission (Luke 3:15-22, Epiphany 1, Ordinary 1, Year C)
Again, no script this week. I delivered this as extempore as possible with minimal notes to guide me.
The Baptised Life (Luke 3:7-18) Advent 3, Year C
A favourite story I like to tell about the birth of our son concerns the first time we took him as a baby to one of the churches I was serving. One man looked at him, then looked at me, and said: “Don’t you ever bring a paternity suit against your wife over this lad, because the judge will take one look at him, then one look at you, and laugh the case out of court.”
Even now, seventeen years later, you can see the physical resemblance. You would do all the more if you’d known me at that age. We may have different colour hair, but his hair colour comes through from my father’s side of my family. He is a mathematician, as I was. He is blue-eyed, like me. He is left-handed, as I am – albeit that he is more like my father, who was a relatively ambidextrous left-hander, whereas I am much more left-handed. Like my father, he has an excellent sense of direction and is extremely good at navigating with maps.
But he won’t make his way in life based on whose son and grandson he is. That will depend more on how he uses his gifts, talents, and opportunities.
And John the Baptist is trying to get over something similar to his hearers in our passage today. He tells people who claim they are the offspring of Abraham that they are more like the offspring of snakes. You can have all the religious heritage you like, he says, but it counts for nothing if you’re not living a transformed life. Being raised in the Jewish faith won’t count for anything on its own. Being baptised won’t mean diddly-squat unless your life changes. (Verses 7-9)
It’s something that is painfully relevant to some of the pastoral conversations I have when I first meet people in Methodist churches. It’s not uncommon for people to tell me how they’ve been a Methodist for decades, maybe all their lives.
And I wonder, why is that the first thing they want to tell me about themselves? Because it won’t count for anything with Jesus – unless, of course, they are faithfully living according to the life-changing teaching and spiritual experience that John Wesley underwent and then taught to others.
So you were baptised a Methodist? Well, big deal. Actually, nobody is baptised a Methodist, they are baptised into the Christian faith.
But if you were brought to church as an infant and a minister poured water on your head in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, then it doesn’t matter one bit that the Methodist Church says that any administration of water in the name of the Trinity is a valid baptism, because John the Baptist says that baptism only matters if you go on to lead a baptised life.
So enough of all this claiming of a religious heritage as if it’s a ticket to heaven. It’s nothing of the sort. Presenting your baptism certificate will not work in the way that showing your passport does at Immigration Control in a new country. All that God accepts as the passport to glory is a life of repentance and faith, a baptised life more than a baptised body.
If you want to come to a minister and start telling us that you’ve been a Methodist for fifty years, then make sure you’re actually living as a Methodist in the sense John Wesley taught. Make sure that you come to God not dependent on your own good works, but by faith in Jesus who died for you. Be thankful for his forgiveness and show it by your love for God and for other people. After all, Wesley was fond of quoting from Galatians: ‘The only thing that counts is faith working through love.’ Seek a constant renewing and reordering of your life, joining a small group of other Christians where you each hold one another accountable. Be generous and have a concern for the poor. Share your faith with others.
If you think that’s a bit strong, look at what John the Baptist required of the people who came to him for baptism. They were to share with the poor, not cheat, be truthful, and avoid greed. That wouldn’t be a bad starting place today, either! (Verses 10-14)
And if that’s the sort of person you are, then I’m highly likely to believe that you’re a traditional Methodist! That would show the kind of spiritual DNA that Wesley wanted to see replicated in people.
But if all you can do is wave a baptism certificate or produce your latest membership ticket with a flourish, well, John Wesley would have had harsh words for you and so too would John the Baptist. Both of them would have warned you about the judgement that Jesus will bring.
And so John talks about how Jesus the Messiah will come to baptise with the Holy Spirit and fire – with fire being an image of judgement. He talks about how he will separate the wheat into the barn but burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. It’s a challenging and powerful description of Jesus. (Verses 15-17)
Of course, some people won’t have it. They will say, that can’t be Jesus, he was all about telling us to love one another. Well he was about teaching us to love, but he also had strong words for those who would not love. He had particularly harsh words for those who used their religion for their own power or to put others down. Jesus was absolutely clear in his teaching that if you claim to be a disciple of his, then it needs to be seen in the way you live.
So all the people who call him ‘Lord, Lord’ but don’t do his bidding will have a shock. All the people who can’t be bothered to be prepared for his coming like the five foolish virgins in the parable will find that their future is not what they complacently assumed.
I have to ask myself, how am I preparing for the coming of Jesus? Not in the sense of, have I bought all the presents I should for Christmas, but in the sense of, am I adjusting my life to make it more fit for the arrival of the One who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords?
Do you ask yourself the same sort of question? Because we all need to do so.
This is why historically Advent has not been a time for feasting on mince pies but rather a season of penitence, like Lent. Preparing for the coming of the Messiah is a challenging matter.
But Jesus does come with the Holy Spirit. We are not left with only our own feeble power to alter our lives. When Jesus challenges us, he also provides the strength we need to make those changes. And we find that ability and energy in the gift of the Holy Spirit.
I want to conclude by saying that all week the ending of the reading has puzzled me.
18 And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.
Good news? It doesn’t much sound like good news, does it, all this fire and brimstone preaching?
But it is good news. It is good news in the ancient sense, in the way the term ‘good news’ would have been used in the Roman Empire. When a Roman herald arrived in a place and said he was going to proclaim good news, it would be the announcement that there was a new Emperor, or that the armies of Rome had won a great battle against an enemy.
In that respect this is good news. It is the news that the kingdom of God is arriving in the person of the King himself, Jesus. It will later become the news that the king himself has won the greatest battle of all on the Cross against all the forces of evil. And it is the good news that in the reign of King Jesus he brings love, justice, reconciliation, harmony, healing, and much more.
Therefore when we are challenged to repent and to reorder our lives, the call is to bring our lives into step with the kingdom of God – that is, to be loving, to pursue justice, to work for reconciliation, to bring harmony, to exercise healing, and so on.
If we are to prepare for the coming of Christ, then this is the kind of life to which we are called.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Rethinking Life (Mark 9:30-37) Ordinary 25 Year B
“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/
Take Up Your Cross (Covenant Service, Mark 8:27-38) Ordinary 24 Year B
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
Following Your Calling (Mark 7:24-37) Ordinary 23 Year B
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?
Big Circumstance 