Category: Faith

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,

“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Mark 1:1-8

My sermon from 2nd Sunday of Advent (December 7, 2014) on Mark 1:1-8. Listen to the recording at the bottom of the page or read my manuscript below.

****************************

How would you start Jesus’ story? If someone you know asked you, right now, to tell them about Jesus – exactly how exactly would you start?

Well – the beginning right? Since, like the song says, the beginning is usually a very good place to start. And, right now, we’re kind of in a season about beginnings – this season of Jesus’ start. Even though in the church we’re in this season of Advent – it’s hard not to have Christmas on the brain. Holiday sales, tree decorations, Christmas songs on the radio, wishlists to Santa – that’s the season we’re in. One thing I love to do each day is to see how the houses have changed along the streets I usually take. Each day, another house has a wreath on its door or new outdoor lights. Some houses are covered in giant inflatable ducks and snowmen, others have huge nativity scenes with life size Wisemen and a baby Jesus that looks much bigger than a newborn should. And then there’s the fun stuff – the lawn filled with characters from the Island of Misfit toys, or the one that really makes me and Oliver smile – the house with the lawn with a dinosaur, an Elmo, and Darth Vadar and R2D2 in Santa hats. All of this is a part of this season of beginnings. It points to Christmas. It tries to illustrate Jesus’s birth and entrance into the world. And this, this beginning is a very good place to start.

So when the author of the gospel according to Mark sat down to write – to put the stories of Jesus down on paper – the author faced that same question – where to start? Mark is writing 30 to 40 years after the resurrection. The first generation of disciples, the ones who walked with Jesus or learned from his first disciples, have been dying. The next generation of Christian disciples are taking their place. So Mark is in this period of change – in this period of transition – and he’s surrounded by stories – stories of Jesus’ miracles and resurrection – his betrayal and his life with the poor and unwanted – so Mark takes all that he’s heard, all that he knows, all that the Holy Spirit has given him – Mark takes all of that –

and begins with John.

The gospel begins with a wildman. John is a guy in the wilderness – dressed in camel hairs, eatings bug and honey, and he’s out in the middle of nowhere, preaching, and teaching and baptizing. People are hearing his story, hearing about him, and they’re leaving their homes to find John and to see what this wildman is doing.

And since I grew up in Colorado, it’s hard for me not to fill in the rest of whatJohn the Baptist looks like. To me, he’s like an old fashion mountain man. He’s big and strong, grizzled, with a thick full beard, and he spends his time chopping trees for firewood, wrestling bears, and only coming to town once a year. That’s the wildman character that I grew up with – and you probably have your own. And that image is important because Mark wants us to realize that we’re dealing with just that kind of wildman. He’s living away from the cities – he’s living in the untamed areas of the world where no political or social powers dominate. He’s living off grid before living off grid was cool where the land is untamed, where nature rules, and everything is just raw – uncivilized – but not uncontrolled. There might not be any cities or roads or fences – but Mark’s community knew that the wilderness – the untamed places – that was where God made God’s-self known.

Mark’s community knew their scripture. They knew their bible, what we call the Old Testament. They knew that when Moses met God, Moses was in the wilderness. They knew that Mt. Sinai, when God gave Moses ten commandments to share with the Israelites – to share with them what it means to live a life freed from Egyptian tyranny and slavery – they were in the wilderness. It’s in the wilderness where God sheltered David from Saul, where the prophets of old would retreat when the powers of the world did not want to hear what God wanted to say, and it’s in the wilderness where individual and communal sins were cast out away from the community during Yom Kippur. Only in the raw places could our false sense of self-control, of goodness, of being right and strong and awesome, be taken down – only in the untamed places could our failures and mistakes, our pride and our unknown participation in systems that harmed others be laid bare. Only in the wilderness could we see our sins as they truly are – and be met by the One who promises to not leave us where we are.

And it’s there where Jesus is going to appear.

In the wild – in the mess – in the unexpected places with unexpected people – that’s the stage that Mark is setting for the arrival of Jesus. Away from the cities, away from the political authorities, away from the temples – that’s where God is going to something brand new; that’s where God is going to break through. It’s there – in this untamed land – that John makes the bold assertion that something more is going to happen – that the One who will change the world is on his way.

That immediacy is important for Mark. There’s no build up, no years to wait before Jesus’ ministry begins. The Son of God is happening now. There’s no wait for the time to be right, no time for us to be prepared, no opportunity for the world to decide when to let God in. No, the Son of God is happening now. And it’s in the wilderness – in the messiness – in the untamed areas that Jesus comes first. It’s in the places that cause fear, that cause worry, hat’s where change will come – not in the proper places, or at proper time, but in the way that God promises – to be known, felt, and experienced in the wilderness – in our wilderness – in the untamed places that cause us worry, that causes us pain, that causes us to fear – that’s where God comes. That’s where Jesus will make his presence first known. We’re invited to come out, to go see a wildman, confess our sins, and seek a word of comfort and peace and love from God. For Mark – the start of Jesus’ story begins with the wilderness. It begins with that messiness. It begins with everything that wilderness means to us.

We carry within us our own wildernesses. We’re filled with moments, with experiences, with feelings that have left us spending parts of our lives lost, without connection, with feelings of burnout, fear, loneliness, failure, brokenness – these are moments of wilderness and these can carve themselves into us. They become part of who we are. They help form us, and lead us – and we carry them with us into everyday of our lives.

So returning to that first question I asked in the beginning of the sermon – how would you start Jesus’ story? What if we took a cue from Mark and we started first with talking about our own wilderness?

To start Jesus’ story with wilderness would mean that we would have to do a difficult thing – and that’s be honest with our own story, honest with all parts of our story and what the wilderness in our lives look like. We would need to be honest with the wildernesses that we find ourselves in – from ones that we’ve imposed on ourselves to those that have been imposed on us through no fault of our own. We’d have to be honest with the wildernesses we carry as folks who live here in Northern New Jersey, and in the United States – honest with our own history, our culture, and what our society has said about others, said about ourselves, and be honest about the wildernesses we’ve created for others who didn’t fit our norm.

To start Jesus’ story with the wilderness means to take the chance and the risk to tell our honest story, to tell our fears, our worries, our failures and sins. To start in the wilderness means to go into the wilderness – to go into the untamed places – to go into the uncomfortable places – and to ask for understanding, forgiveness, mercy, and love.

I believe that Mark started in the wilderness because he knew what happens in the wilderness. He knew that in the uncomfortable places, God comes. He knew that in the untamed experiences, Jesus comes. He knew that in the hurt and fear and despair, the Holy Spirit is there. Our wildernesses are never so big, never so deep, never so distant, that God will not go there. Our wildernesses are never so vast that they’ll keep Jesus from us. Because it’s in those untamed places that God comes. It’s in the untidy places that God makes Godself known. It’s in the places where we don’t want God to go that Jesus breaks in and doesn’t leave us alone.

In these first verses from Mark – we’re given an invitation to live into Jesus beginning by starting a new beginning ourselves. Because the story of Jesus is more than just a birth story, more than just a series of events that happened 2000 years ago in a country far from here. The story of Jesus is a story of encounter, it’s a story of meeting, it’s a story of presence in our lives. Any story about Jesus needs to start in the wilderness – in our wilderness – and needs to never only be a story that sounds like “Jesus did this, Jesus said this, Jesus taught this…” but should sound like “Jesus did this for me, Jesus said this to me, Jesus taught this to me and this is how I have struggled, this is how I have felt fear, this is how I’ve doubted, and this is how I’ve been changed.”

In this season of beginnings – of starts – of giant nativity sets and Darth Vadar in Santa hats – lets take this invitation from Mark to heart and enter into our wilderness, enter into our untamed places, enter into our fears – and lets discover just how God meets us there.

Amen.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Matthew 25:31-46

My sermon from Christ the King Sunday (November 23, 2014) on Matthew 25:31-46. Listen to the recording at the bottom of the page or read my manuscript below.

****************************

After hearing this reading from Matthew – doesn’t it feel like this really should be the shortest sermon ever? I should just stand here and say “Don’t be a goat! Amen.”

This text from Matthew feels simple. This is our last public teaching from Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus has been wandering around the Temple and outside of it, teaching to his disciples, those who are curious, and those who are trying to arrest him. And these are the last words in the Gospel of Matthew that Jesus utters before the Last Supper, before Jesus’s arrest, before his trial, and execution.

Jesus talks about the Son of Man returning in glory – returning from Heaven, with a huge entourage of angels, to judge the world. He sits on a throne and begins to split everyone into two groups. On his right – he puts those who he’ll bless and welcome into eternal life and he calls them sheep. On his left, he puts those who’ll be going someplace else and he calls them goats. The ones on his right did good – they clothed the naked, fed the hungry, visited the sick, saw those in prison. The ones on his left didn’t. It seems that their actions determined where they stand in this great judgment. Those who did good are blessed and get eternal life. Those who didn’t, don’t. It seems so simple, really. Here is the list of what we need to do to be a disciple of Christ: visit, feed, care, and love. That’s all it takes.

But – and there’s always a but – that’s not all that is shared in this story because our sheep and our goats do something very interesting. When they are split into two groups, and Jesus pronounces his judgement – explaining why they are where they are – both sides react the same way.

They’re surprised.

And it’s that surprise that makes this teaching not as simple as it first appears. If the goats and the sheep didn’t say anything – if they were just separated and we never heard them talk back to Jesus – then, yes, this teaching seems to be “do this and God will love you.” But the goats and the sheep – well – they talk back. They question. They look at Jesus and say “wait a minute…when did we help you….?”

So the sheep and the goats – they had no idea they were sheep and goats. They had no idea that their actions were being seen. They had no idea that their actions would have consequences. The goats – well – I think that’s an easy response for them. We hear in scripture, and we experience, selfishness. We know when we don’t give. We know when we don’t care for others. We have all experienced those moments – those hesitations – when we didn’t give that beggar a dollar even though something in our heart told us too. Or we didn’t pick up that phone call from a friend because we didn’t want to listen to them complain one more time. Or we just were so focused on our own needs that we just couldn’t see what was going on around us. The response – the questioning – by the goats makes sense.

But the sheep? That’s the odd bit here. Why are they surprised too?

It’s their surprise that makes this a hard text – a complicated text. If they weren’t surprised, then they knew that this result – this blessing to eternal life – was the way it was going to be. The sheep knew the end result so they behaved the right way. But they didn’t know. Instead, their good deeds were just a reaction to what was already inside them. They loved and cared for those who hungered, those who were sick, those who were a stranger – not because of any reward they would get – but just because that’s who they are. Their actions weren’t forced. Their actions were effortless. Their goodness and love was just part of their identity, their DNA – and it just comes out. These sheep are, to use the language of Matthew, are good trees and they bear good fruit. Their identity – their inner core – their sense of being – caused these actions of love, welcome, care, and support.

And that means these words from Jesus are a lot harder than they first appear. They aren’t about actions – they’re about identity – who we are and what makes us tick. And questions of identity lead into very personal questions – questions like: am I good? Do ethical things just come naturally – or are they forced? Am I trying to hard to do the right thing? Am I a sheep? Or am I a goat?

But before we answer those questions – we need to keep our eye focused on what comes next – on what happens when we turn the page – when we leave chapter 25 and head into chapter 26. It’s there when we see Jesus feed his disciples at the Last Supper – sharing that holy meal with those who’ll betray him, those who’ll deny him, and those who’ll run from him when he’s hanging on the cross. We need to keep our eyes on the One who’ll be stripped and mocked by the Roman soldiers. Who’ll thirst and be fed vinegar. Who’ll be imprisoned and no one will come to him. The One who’ll be nailed to the Cross – he’ll give up his life to reconcile the world to God – he’ll model just what it means to be the ultimate sheep.

This text from Matthew 25 is a hard text. It’s a text that accuses as much as it enlightens. It forces us to ask questions about ourselves – about our actions – about what we have done and about what we have not done – about whether we bear the good fruit that God calls us to bear – or whether we hesitate – make mistakes – fail to live out God’s love – God’s call to welcome the person who we don’t know and who doesn’t look or sound like us – or clothe the naked or feed the hungry or care for the sick.

This is a text that accuses – it shakes its finger at us – it calls us to account – and it forces us to turn to what’s about to come and what has come — and that’s Jesus Christ. Matthew 25 isn’t about what we need to do to be good Christians or faithful or whatever. Matthew 25 is about what Jesus did – about what Jesus brings – about what Jesus does – and about our need for Jesus in our life.

We know we’re not sheep. But, through Christ, we’re not goats either.

So what does that mean then? Where do we go from here? Do we wait until the good just kinda happens – until that faith mojo kicks in and we’re able to just spontaneously do all the good that we’re called to do?

No – we’re not called to wait. We’re not called to hesitate. We’re not called to decide when our faith is strong enough to help others because those in need are right in front of us here and now. We’re not here to decide when we’re enough – when we’ve got all we need to be strong, all we need to be faithful, all we need to be feel secure in helping out those around us. No, we’re not here to wait until we’re enough but, instead, to rest on the promise that Christ is enough. That Christ gives us strength. That Christ is with us. And that, in baptism, in the Holy Spirit, God’s promise is enough.

We’re not Christ but that doesn’t mean we can’t be Christ to our friends, family, neighbors, and strangers. We’re called to welcome – to invite – to share – to care – to love – not because we’re perfect; not because we’re awesome; not because we’ll always get it right. We’re called to do all these things because Jesus promises to walk with us – to be a presence in our life – to help turn us into sheep rather than let us remain as goats.

The challenge, then, isn’t to be filled with faith. The challenge is to live into God’s promise that we will be given that fullness of faith – that we will be given grace – that we are given all that we need, right now, to live, and love, as Jesus did.

The challenge is to be Christ-like: to notice the friend in need; to notice the stranger who needs hope; to notice those who hunger and thirst and who can’t hear the gospel because they’re too busy just trying to find something to eat.

The challenge is to see that next page – to know that, after Matthew 25, that hill on Calvary comes – that the actions of God to reconcile the world through Jesus Christ happened – that they matter – and that we might not be a sheep right now, we might still mistakes, we might still hesitate, we might not care or heal like Jesus did – but that doesn’t mean we don’t try —- not because it earns us favor with God —- but because that favor has already been given to us.

The world has already been saved —- and now, it needs to be loved.

Amen.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download