You Are My Son... Now Go Act Like It!

It's been a while since I posted my sermons, and for that I apologize. With the new year, I'll pick it back up, and (hopefully) post them sometime before midnight local time each night. This, of course, remains to be seen... but eight pm on Saturday night seems a good way to start, doesn't it?

There are so many wonderful directions to take the Scripture passages this Sunday. What is the "unquenchable fire?" Is it Hell, as so many people believe, or is it a cleansing, Holy Spirit fire, burning off that chaff within us that is not good seed? That's just one of the directions I wanted to go... but did not. Perhaps next year, eh?

The story of the Princeton Professor comes from Lindy Black of Lindy's Nuggets, by the way. It's one of my go-to locations for insight and often-awesome one-liners.

Please feel free to offer insights and constructive criticisms.

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

Acts 8:14-17

Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus). Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Our reading from the Book of Acts takes place very early on in the life of the Church. This passage follows the stoning of Stephen, when there is great persecution against the group of believers in Jerusalem.

Up until this point, amazing things had been happening, and the Church had been growing by leaps and bounds, but it had been confined to that one city. Even within the conflicts that church leaders had with the Jewish authorities, there was a common knowledge and experience. With this new outbreak of persecution, though, most Christians leave the city, and in fleeing the persecution spread the message of new life in Jesus Christ all across the region.

Even in, of all places, Samaria.

The person who first preached the Good News to Samaria had to either be the bravest person in Judea, or someone with such a poor sense of direction that they had no idea where they were when they evangelized.

After all, no self-respecting Jewish person would so much as speak to a Samaritan; much less spend enough time in their corner of the province to preach a message! They were… different, after all. Ethnically, Jewish people considered the Samaritans to be mutts: though the Samaritans claimed to be purely descendents of the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh and Levi, Jewish tradition held that they were a mixture of the bottom-of-the-heap Jews and the foreigners that the Assyrian king, Sargon II, brought in to repopulate the area. This was after the more gifted and powerful had been taken when the Assyrians defeated the Northern Kingdom in 722 BC.

And make no mistake; the Samaritans despised their Jewish counterparts just as much. Quite aside from the open xenophobia, where the very idea of a Jewish person’s foot touching the dirt of a Samaritan town made them unclean, there was the very real (and often violent) dispute over what books of Scripture were truly holy, and where the center of worship should be. For the Jews, of course, this was Jerusalem, on the mount known either as Moriah or Zion, depending on the Biblical scholar. But for the Samaritans, the place where God had chosen to establish God’s name was Mount Gerizim. Further, the Samaritans recognized only the Torah, or the first five books of our Old Testament, as being authoritative and holy.

So as much as we might think that the Jews and Samaritans were related by blood and tradition, and called upon the name of the same God, the revulsion each group felt for the other was an insurmountable obstacle.

Until the apostle Philip walked in to that one Samaritan village and told whoever would listen that God, in Jesus Christ, loved them… and the people who heard the Good News believed. By the way, Philip has no problem with his sense of direction. We meet him very soon after this passage, preaching the Gospel to an Ethiopian eunuch. Perhaps unique among the Apostles at that point in history, Philip truly sees no limitations on the love of God. When Jesus told him to go into to all the world and preach the Gospel, Philip took him literally.

I really wish that the writer of the Book of Acts had given us a little more detail about the moment when the Apostles heard about how the Samaritans had come to believe in Jesus. All we are told is that when they heard it they sent Peter and John to them, and that’s what counts, of course. But given the history of animosity between Jews and Samaritans, could it have been that simple?

Well, yes, given the fact that the apostles were so sensitive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, it certainly could have been. But I like to imagine a scene where Philip walks in to the Apostle’s room – in my head it’s the Main Office, and the apostles are sitting at a big first-century conference table doing apostle-y things. Philip is sweaty and out of breath from his hurried journey, covered in dust from the road. Everyone is happy to see him of course, until he blurts out: “Guys! Guys! The Samaritans believe!”

Ten mouths hang open in shock, everyone staring at Philip. The stunned silence goes on forever. Of course, in my imagination, the first person to speak is Thomas, and you know he has to say, “I doubt that,” right?

But it was true, and from that point on the Gospel spread like wildfire, from the Samaritans to that eunuch I mentioned, to the Gentiles, and on and on and on. No one was off limits. No one was unreachable.

And, in this regard, let me be clear: nothing has changed: today, right now, no one is off limits to the love of God. No one is unreachable to the grace and forgiveness found in Jesus Christ.

This is the day in the liturgical calendar when the Church commemorates the baptism of Jesus. It is a familiar account to most of us: when Jesus is baptized, the heavens are opened and the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus in the form of a dove, and a voice from heaven says “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

The story is told of a New Testament professor from Princeton Seminary who visited a high school youth group one evening. After the professor finished speaking about the significance of Christ's baptism as a revelation of God's presence in Jesus, one high schooler said, without looking up, "That ain't what it means."

Now, as someone who did youth work for a long time, I can tell you that it’s a good sign when a student disagrees. It means they’re listening. Luckily, this professor understood that. So the professor asked, "What do you think it means?"

The young man still didn’t look up. "The story says that the heavens were opened, right?" "Right." "The heavens were opened and the Spirit of God came down, right?" "That's right."

The boy finally looked up and leaned forward, saying, "It means that God is on the loose in the world. And it is dangerous."

The professor was, of course, not wrong. At the baptism of Jesus, God’s imprint upon and intentions for his Son were made clear. Christ the King was anointed, but in a way unlike any other king before or since.

The idea of anointing someone or something is to set that person or thing apart, make him or her or it – or certainly, recognize him or her or it – as unique, special, honored. It’s usually done with pomp and circumstance, though not always, and it is almost invariably an act performed with oil.

And yes, that happened with the baptism of Jesus. But Jesus was not anointed king with oil. Hear the Word of God from our Gospel reading: “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized…” You see? Jesus was first anointed not with oil but with water – and in a manner no way unique. He was baptized just like everyone else.

The Holy Spirit which descended upon Jesus as he was praying is also, since the day of Pentecost, available to all who believe… even, as we see in our reading from the Book of Acts, a people so hated, so removed, so unlovable as the Samaritans.

Bishop Desmond Tutu tells of a time when he was a parish priest, and was giving a Bible exam to some young people. One of the questions on the exam was “What did the voice from Heaven say to Jesus when he was baptized?” Most of the kids got the answer right, but one of the “wrong” answers stood out in Bishop Tutu’s memory: “You’re my son. Now go act like it.”

Whether we were sprinkled or dunked, whether we were infants or adults, we share the same baptism with water as Jesus. Through our faith in Christ, we share the same Holy Spirit that descended upon Jesus that day.

And like the student said to the Princeton professor, God’s spirit is loose, and God’s spirit is dangerous. No one can predict or control who God will love, who God will bring in as a fellow citizen of the Kingdom of God next.

Scripture affirms that we are a royal priesthood and joint heirs with Christ, whoever we are, whatever our background or ethnicity or nationality or gender or orientation. That wild, dangerous and unpredictable Spirit of God demonstrated in the eighth chapter of the Book of Acts that no one was outside the circle of God’s love, grace, and forgiveness in those first days of the Church – not the Samaritans, not eunuchs, not Gentiles… and that same wild, dangerous, egregiously loving, lavishly forgiving Spirit is still moving, working, and proving no one is outside that circle today.

And as the Spirit worked in and through Philip and Peter and John and the other apostles and believers in those early days of the Church, the Spirit works in and through you and I, joint heirs with Christ, a royal priesthood, today. And what that young person said to Bishop Tutu is what God says to each and every one of us in the here and now: “You are my children. Now go act like it.”

The Choice...

My thanks this week to the writing of the Rev. Dr. Delmer L. Chilton, Lindy Black, and Charlene Fairchild, among (I am sure) others.

I have to say that I am going to miss the "bread" passages. As I have written each week, I've been challenged to try and find a fresh perspective. I don't know whether I succeeded in those efforts, but the journey has been enlightening.

John 6:56-69

"Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever." He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.

When many of his disciples heard it, they said, "This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?" But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, "Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. And he said, "For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father."

Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, "Do you also wish to go away?" Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God." 

This is the Word of the Lord.

I don’t know how they ended up in the synagogue from the lakeshore, but there they were, shocked, puzzled faces turned toward Jesus as he invited them to gnaw on his flesh and drink his blood and to live in him.

The noise in the little synagogue was deafening. Not only did you have the folks who had eaten of the leaves and fishes the day before, now enraged that Jesus was claiming to be greater than Moses, incensed that Jesus claimed to have come from and be returning to heaven, apoplectic over Jesus calling God his Father… you had the rank-and file disciples, dozens of them, perhaps more, who had been following Jesus for months – perhaps years – now throwing up their hands in disgust and frustration.

“Dude, I mean, Rabbi, I just don’t get what you’re saying. I mean I hear the words, and I know what each individual word means, but when you put them together they make no sense!”

But the fact is that there is nothing more to say. Jesus has laid it all out for them, if they will listen: “I am the bread of life… I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world…”

So all Jesus said in response was, “Fellas, if you’re scandalized by this, you are gonna have a real hard time with what’s coming up.”

It’s funny. The people who went and found Jesus so they could see another miracle, get another meal? You’d expect them to leave; in fact, I’d be surprised if any of them had stayed around this long.

The ones our reading refers to as “disciples,” though… maybe they weren’t in the boat when Jesus calmed the storm, maybe they hadn’t seen him walk on water, or turn the water into wine at Cana, but they had seen lepers healed, they’d seen strength return to withered limbs and sight restored to blinded eyes, they had heard Jesus speaking the very words of the living God!

Why would they leave?

I guess up until now it had been fun. Maybe they had nothing better to do… maybe they just followed Jesus around on their off days, I don’t know. What I do know is that now they are faced with a choice: understand that Jesus Christ, in fulfilling the Law of Moses, is in fact calling them beyond that Law, beyond a system of rules and regulations and into a relationship with the Living God.

There’s no doubt that this is the hard choice, the dangerous choice, the scandalous choice. It involves moving beyond everything they have ever known, and everything the society they are surrounded by expects from them, and moving into the now-and-coming Kingdom of God, embracing a sacrifice on their behalf which hasn’t even happened yet.

But it’s that, or…

Go back to the familiar, the safe, the popular, the accepted.

And though they had seen the miracles, had eaten the bread and fishes, had heard the words of God… one by one, or in groups of three or four, these disciples chose…

And soon, all too soon, the synagogue – not a very large room to begin with – felt cavernous in its emptiness. A sandal scuffed the gritty stone floor, and it echoed. Jesus turned to those who remained. Where there had been dozens, perhaps a hundred or more… there were twelve. Some of them looked at the open door. Others looked at the floor, or off into space.

“How about you?” Jesus asked, softly. “Do you want to go, too?”

In my imagination, the question actually confused Peter, because (do you notice?) he never says “yes” or “no.” For him, and for the others, the question is moot.

Oh, no doubt they are sickened by the graphic words Jesus has used… the idea of gnawing on his flesh, like an animal tearing at the carcass of a fresh kill, is a difficult image for anyone to take.

But these men know things that they can no longer pretend to be ignorant of. Maybe the others, those now walking back down the dusty road to their villages and homes and comfortable old lives, can rationalize it and explain it all away, maybe they can ignore it, but these twelve cannot.

Jesus is asking them to make that same hard choice. Like Joshua standing before the newly-formed nation of Israel, and challenging them to “…choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…” the choice facing these remaining disciples is between the comfort and tradition of the life they had always known, and going against all of that, going against their vary culture, becoming social and religious outcasts, all based on the word of a man who claimed to be from God… who demanded they gnaw on his flesh, and slake their thirst with his life’s blood.

But for these disciples, this is not some blind choice, like picking a door on “The Price is Right.” It’s funny: they had seen and heard and experienced exactly the same things as those who had walked away. They’d seen a dead child live again, seen demons forcibly evicted from the bodies they possessed, watched five small barley loaves somehow keep feeding and feeding and feeding until thousands of people could eat no more…

Somehow, though, for these disciples, when Jesus spoke about being the bread that came down from heaven, it all clicked. Not that they had perfect comprehension, mind you – there would be many times to come where they would falter and miss the point – but in this moment, when Jesus asked the question, for them it came down to a matter of putting their future into the hands of the One who had been there for them in the past. And for them, the choice was already made.

Peter spoke for all of them when he spread his hands and said, “But where would we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe… no, we know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

The choice was made.

For far too many people, believing in God is like believing in UFOs or believing in the Loch Ness Monster – they acknowledge the probability that God exists, and that’s about it. Nothing really changes for them because nothing needs to change.

The easiest, most comfortable place to be is where the majority of the people that day in the synagogue at Capernaum were: straddling the fence between commitment and rejection, relying on Jesus just so far as the fulfillment of their perceived needs go, but unwilling to lay aside those “needs,” take up their cross, and follow Jesus.

But God calls us to get off the fence – pushes us off if necessary, like Jesus did that day on the lakeshore and in the synagogue with his hard words. For the Twelve, just like for you and for me, the decision to go all in, to place our lives and eternities into the hands of the One who gave us life in the first place, is one that we make anew every day.

In many ways, on some days the Twelve weren’t all that much different from those who turned away from Jesus. The Twelve made mistakes, lost faith, missed the point, and when things got really dangerous that night in the Garden of Gethsemane, they scattered.

But when Jesus rose from the dead, they saw him alive. And when the wind of the Holy Spirit blew on the day of Pentecost, they were there, the tongues of fire rested on their heads. Perhaps the difference between the disciples who stayed and the ones who left began when they chose their path that day in the synagogue.

Harry Emerson Fosdick put it like this: “He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end.”

May we be like the Twelve, who though they didn’t understand it, didn’t know where it was going, and had a lot of ideas and expectations that were almost exactly wrong, chose the pathway of eternal life, looked to Jesus, and said, “Who else could we go to? You have the words of eternal life.”

Flesh and Blood...

I am indebted to the work of the Rev. Dr. Delmer L. Chilton, "Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary," and Rev. Lindy Black for help in composing this week's sermon.

For those of you offended by the graphic language of the audible gnawing of flesh... that's kind of the point.

John 6:51-58

"I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" So Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever."

This is the Word of the Lord.

Sometimes, getting a little distance between yourself and a given situation allows you to gain perspective, to look at the big picture, to examine a situation logically, without the emotion of the moment getting in the way.

Sometimes, though, that distance actually serves to cloud perspective, blur the big picture, and confuse logic.

Two thousand years removed from the day on the lakeshore, it seems that, for many Christians, we suffer – at least in part – the latter fate when it comes to what Jesus is telling us in our Gospel reading today.

Though, to be honest, it’s easy to interpret what Jesus is saying here in a merely Eucharistic manner – in the language of the Lord’s Supper. After all, even though our Reformed Theology does not interpret the elements of the Lord’s Supper as being altered in any substantive manner in the ritual of communion, we use the language of the Body and Blood at the Lord’s Table. “The Body of Christ, broken for you…” “The Blood of Christ, shed for you…”

This passage has been used as an argument for the Catholic and Episcopal theology of transubstantiation, where the elements of communion become in some manner substantially transformed into the literal body and blood of Christ, as well as for the Lutheran theology of consubstantiation, where the fundamental substance of the body and blood of Christ are present alongside the bread and the juice, or wine.

And after all, hasn’t Jesus been talking this whole time about bread?

Well, yes. And to those of us on this side of the Resurrection, it’s a very familiar conversation, manna in the wilderness, bread from heaven, Jesus as the Bread of Life. It is a comforting, reassuring picture for those of us who have taken the name of Christ. And please understand that there is nothing wrong, and everything right, about that picture! We have the words, as well as the testimony of the body of believers and the affirmation of the indwelling Holy Spirit to help us make those connections.

Yet there is more… and the picture is violent and troubling, but it is a picture of liberation.

The people listening to Jesus that day were getting their face rubbed in the picture, you see. Jesus’ words were challenging them, pushing them to expand their understanding of the Almighty, to open their hearts to a measure of love they had never imagined, an inconceivable truth.

Here was this human being standing in front of them… granted, an extraordinary human being, someone who could perform great signs, who spoke the oracles of God… but a person, nonetheless. Bad enough he claimed to be better than Moses, but the crowd really got steamed when Jesus went so far as to say, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Our reading says the people “disputed.” The Greek word there actually carries a much stronger connotation – one of physical fighting! The crowd had erupted into violence! They were coming to blows with one another over this! Jesus had better say something quick to calm them down!

Well, Jesus did speak... but...

Have you ever actually seen someone throw gasoline on a fire? The closest I’ve come is starter fluid on flaming charcoal, but I’m willing to bet that it’s a pale comparison to what Jesus’ next words could have done to the crowd…

But they stood there, stunned, frozen, aghast, sickened and horrified.

“Eat my flesh… drink my blood?” Could he really be telling the crowd to roast him up and make a feast of him, like some band of ancient pagans? No wonder they stood there gape-mouthed, speechless!

But it goes further than even that! Jesus is not merely using the language of cannibalism, he is using words of violence. “Eat my flesh?” The Greek, trogein, is generally used of animals gnawing audibly on their food! No wonder we so quickly retreat to the comfort of the language of the Lord’s Supper! No one wants to dwell on such an abhorrent image!

And I can, in good conscience, do nothing to lessen the dreadfulness of the language… I dare not, because of the Cross.

Why would Jesus use such violent, such graphic and bloody language, when he knew it would offend and enrage the crowd, when he no doubt knew that even we, who call ourselves by his name, would recoil at these words?

Yes, it is a visceral, bloody, discomforting picture that Jesus paints for us in our reading today. Out of the mouth of any other person in history, it is the language of hyperbole, of gross exaggeration, of wild and fevered fantasy.

But not that many days after Jesus speaks to that horrified crowd, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords will, of his own free will, and out of a deep and abiding love for humankind, bear the torture of the scourge and the humiliation of the crown of thorns, take up his cross, and as his blood drains from him, Jesus will allow death to gnaw at his flesh until he appears to have been consumed.

The cross is offensive. The very idea! That the God of all creation would hang, naked and bleeding, until his life is drained from him, and do it as an act of love for that creation… it’s ridiculous. Gods don’t die, and they certainly don’t die to redeem humankind to themselves.

Besides, even if God could die, why choose such a slow, torturous and humiliating method? Why the cross?

Because, quite simply, it is in that act of submission to the will of God that death itself will be defeated in the Resurrection. It is in that act of unrestrained, vibrant love that humankind will at last be reconciled to God. Jesus not only said the offensive, shocking, gruesome and horrifying thing, he lived it… and he died it! And through it all, Jesus demonstrated for us, lived for us, the truth of what God’s love for you and for me and for the whole world is!

Oh we have done our best to calm it down over the millennia, distilling it into theological statements and doctrines and creeds. In fact, the very community that the Gospel of John is written to had been struggling with a Gnostic heresy which said that Jesus hadn’t really been human, he had just appeared human.

But make no mistake, Jesus stood before that crowd as a real person, with real flesh and real blood, and that real flesh and blood was sacrificed as evidence – stark, shocking, irrefutable evidence of God’s love – a violent, passionate, burning, all-consuming love.

God’s love is the kind of love that finds us at our lowest point, on our worst day, takes our hand, lifts us up, and guides us through.

God’s love finds us in the darkest corner of the farthest reaches of our separation, when we have done the thing we swore we would never do, when we have done our best to alienate ourselves from our Creator, when we have consciously and willfully done the worst we could do, God shines a light, destroys that darkness, and brings us out, forgiving us before we have even asked for it.

God’s love knows no bounds. God’s love doesn’t wait for permission, doesn’t pay attention to propriety or convention, is not at all interested in cultural mores or acceptable standards. God just loves.

Yes, it is really that simple.

The Gospel – the Good News – is that Jesus really, truly came down from heaven to live among us as the fleshly love of God – the wildly passionate, recklessly abundant, vibrantly inclusive love of God.

The Gospel is that Jesus really, truly died upon the cross, giving up his flesh and spilling his blood, to save us from our sins.

The Gospel is that God really, truly raised Jesus from the dead, brought him out of the grave to a new and eternal life.

The Gospel is that God, through Jesus Christ, really, truly has just such a future in store for each and every one of us.

Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us. May we, every day, walking in faithful fellowship in the Holy Spirit, keep the feast!

The Snorting of the War-Horse...

Many thanks this week for the insights of Rev. D. Mark Davis and Rev. Lindy Black.

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while." For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Our Gospel reading jumps completely over a couple of very important events – the Feeding of the Five Thousand, and Jesus walking on the water. Now, this is normally the kind of thing that makes me shake my head and grumble at the computer screen, while adding back in the verses that were skipped, but not this time.

This time, I confess, I got hooked on a phrase, fascinated by it: “As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd…”

Jesus has been spending the Gospel of Mark running around healing, teaching, doing signs and wonders, raising from the dead, and proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Most recently, Jesus has endured the ridicule and disinterest of the people in his own home town, and he has sent the apostles out in pairs to spread the Good News, and, in the meantime, Jesus has learned of his Cousin John’s death at the hands of Herod.

And now the apostles had returned, road-weary but eager to tell Jesus about all that had happened. They sat in a circle, there on the lakeshore, enjoying a meal: passing around a loaf of bread, some olive oil, and perhaps some vegetables, while the apostles filled Jesus in on their adventures.

Or, at least, they tried to enjoy a meal, they tried to have a conversation.

People kept coming up and interrupting. Perhaps they needed something specific, perhaps they just wanted to say hello, perhaps they wanted to get a close-up look at this rabbi and his band of devoted disciples. Whatever the case, Peter would start to say something and someone would interrupt. John would try and take a bite of bread and someone would ask him a question.

I suspect this kind of thing was par for the course for Jesus, who was always sensitive to the needs of others, always keen to find an opportunity to teach a lesson about the Kingdom of God. How many times do we read of Jesus being interrupted, or of stopping to teach a lesson, during a meal? But this would likely have been a new experience to the disciples and, after awhile, you could tell it was wearing on everyone’s nerves.

Make no mistake, the twelve enjoyed being celebrities… but it was getting to the point where they wondered if they’d ever get to finish dinner.

And this would have been a great place for Jesus to say, “Ha! Now you know how I feel!” but instead, he puts his bread down and says, “guys, let’s take a break. Hop in the boat, go find someplace quiet to eat, and take a nap.”

That was the plan, anyway. Just take a few hours, find an empty spot in the wilderness, finish supper and grab a couple hours’ shut-eye.

Besides, it isn’t a stretch to imagine what John’s death signaled for Jesus’ ministry. Herod killed John the Baptist with impunity, no one questioned his actions or challenged his authority to do so, or complained to Rome about it. John had been an irritant to Herod’s wife, had challenged his authority, and had been permanently silenced. How much more would the authorities – civil and religious – work to silence Jesus? Could there be any doubt that the road Jesus traveled would lead to the cross?

Perhaps this would be a good opportunity for Jesus to very quietly, very specifically tell these disciples, still glowing from their success as evangelists, what the future held for them… the terror and the glory which followed, and how it was all worth it for the glory of God and for the now-and-coming Kingdom of Heaven.

But as soon as their boat cast off from shore, word spread that Jesus and his disciples were on the move, and folks began to rush around the lake to meet the boat. It wasn’t that many people at first, but they were walking fast, with purpose, and as they passed by the towns that lined the shore of the lake, folks asked questions, got excited, and joined in the journey. Soon, it was a massive throng of people, moving at almost a dead run, circling the lake to meet Jesus on the other side.

And what a sight they must have been, too, when the disciples pulled the boat up on the shore and Jesus stepped out. Thousands of people, men and women and children, red faced and out of breath, dripping sweat from the exertion… and all eyes locked on the Son of God as he stepped from the tiny fishing vessel.

The Scriptures tell us that Jesus looked at them and he had compassion for them. And while that sounds like a very nice term, “compassion,” all warm and fuzzy and such, there’s more to the story.

The Greek word for “compassion” there – “splagchnizomai,” is derived from a word in the Greek translation of the Old Testament which described the removal of an animal’s innards during ritual sacrifice. Jesus’ reaction to the people is not one of irritation or of resignation. He sees their need, their lost-ness and their hunger for a word and a touch from God, and he is moved in such a deep, visceral way that it is as if his heart is literally torn from his body for them.

Jesus could have told them, “Hey, not right now, I’m on my break.” He could have sent them away, taken a few hours with his companions, and regrouped. No one would have blamed him, after all. That was his plan; that’s why he’d gotten the group on the boat in the first place. These people, they were an imposition, an interruption, and they never knew when to quit.

In classical Greek, “compassion” means the snorting of a war horse. I love that image: compassion chomping at the bit to move, to act, to forever alter the course of someone’s life – compassion is not a passive feeling, but a call to action!

Jesus saw them for what they were – aimless, hungry people, searching for hope and direction, starving for a word from a God they believed in, but barely knew. They lived life as if they were groping around in the dark for a light switch, not even certain if there was a light switch… Jesus saw all of this, and Jesus heard the snorting of the war-horse.

Now, as I said at the beginning, the Gospel records that Jesus fed these people with five loaves of bread and two fish, and we will look more closely at that event next week. But Jesus’ immediate compassionate response – seeing the people for what they were, sheep without a shepherd – wasn’t to merely feed, to just heal, to simply do signs and wonders.

This is not to say that these things are not important. In fact, when the reading picks up, after skipping the feeding of the five thousand and the night where the disciples see Jesus walking on the water, we find that so many people came to Jesus and received healing that if they so much as mimicked the woman with the issue of blood – touching the fringes of his cloak – they were made well.

But I find it fascinating that Jesus’ immediate response, his compassionate action when he looked into their searching, hungry, hopeful eyes, was to speak to their real need – the need for direction, the need for guidance, the need for a shepherd. Jesus immediately began to teach them.

Something else I find intriguing is pretty easy to miss in our reading. Notice how, in the first verses of the reading, Mark refers to Jesus and the disciples as a group – we read the word, “they” and “them.” But when they reach the shore, when Jesus sees the lost sheep, well, from that point on the narrative is singular. “he” and “his.”

I wonder, what happened to these disciples? Could it be that, despite the amazing things they had done and seen, they so easily slipped back into the role of observer? Could it be that the twelve – fresh from the experience of fulfilling their calling as apostles, from experiencing active compassion in the towns they visited with only the clothes on their back and a walking-stick – have now lapsed back into ignorant and fearful followers? They are followers, we have to give them that much credit, but they aren’t participating any longer in the way that they had been called and empowered to participate. The war-horse no longer snorts. They are now more ‘hangers on’ than ‘co-workers.’

There’s a principle we use in sales training: people will take the easiest option you offer them. If your questions or your sales close provide the opportunity to do nothing, then that is what people will most often do. That isn’t a value judgment, it is just human nature.

This seems to be what has happened to the disciples. They could have jumped out of the boat, waded into the crowd, and begun speaking to the individual, immediate needs of the exhausted and bewildered people. They could have told each of them about the Kingdom of God. Or, they could let Jesus do it – fall back into their habit of standing around getting confused at the things Jesus says. They made the easiest choice.

And it’s fun to point out the disciples’ shortcomings, to shake my head and say, “if I had been there, I would have been different! Yet, in reality, how often have I faced the choice between speaking to someone’s deepest need, and turning them away, directing them somewhere else so they can impose on someone else… and have made the easy choice, the most convenient choice? Perhaps I am oversimplifying it when I say that Jesus made the hard choice, but the fact is that, time and again, we see Jesus doing the difficult, inconvenient, unpopular, even dangerous thing – putting people before doctrine, compassion before convenience, and valuing love more than life itself. If our own discipleship involves the imitation of Christ, are we not called to do the same?

It’s been said that church is what’s left after the preacher leaves town and the building burns down. Church is also what happens when we answer the call to action – when we make the hard choice not to redirect or ignore, but to move with compassion as the hands and feet of Christ, teaching and feeding and walking and healing in the name of the One who died for us, rose for us, and lives for us.

May we never be satisfied to be observers, resting on the experiences we once had. May we instead see people for who they are, beloved creations of the Living God, men and women and children for whom Christ died, hear the snorting of the war-horse, and may we be moved to act with the same compassion which compelled that risen Christ.

"Who Then Is This...?"

My thanks for insights into this week's Gospel reading go to the tidbits and thoughts provided by Lindy Black on the always delightful blog page "Sermon Nuggets."

 

Mark 4:35-41

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. ⁴⁰He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

This is the Word of the Lord.

I always read this and thought about how bone-weary Jesus must have been, to be able to curl up on some cushions and sleep through a storm at sea. I mean, think of it: he’s been preaching all day to a crowd so large, so uncontrollable that, for his own safety, he had to get in a boat and sit just offshore. This is, of course, following the part where he heals on the Sabbath, calls the Twelve, and has to listen to his mother and brothers call him a nutcase, and that is in addition to all the other healings and exorcisms and preaching that he’d been doing, all running at a breakneck pace, every day some new experience, some new crowd, some new town. So he has to be tired!

But, of course, the point is not that Jesus is tired, or that he slept through a storm.

Storms on open water were not uncommon at all, and on lakes like the Sea of Galilee, they had a tendency to pop up out of nowhere, capsizing boats and killing the fishermen. But these were seasoned veterans, these disciples, many of them had known nothing but fishing their entire lives. They had been through these surprise storms before. Terrifying though it may be, I’m betting that, at first, the disciples simply hunkered down and did what they knew to do when storms happened: rely on their experience and expertise to get them though. Perhaps they didn’t give a second thought to who was sleeping in the back; after all, they knew to turn the bow into the waves, to bail the water from the boat, to row with all their might and make for land. They had this covered, thanks.

Yet as the minutes wore on, everything was going wrong. The waves crashed from all sides, the wind whipped madly, as if the very forces of nature themselves had decided that this one tiny boat was an insult, a fly to be swatted from the face of the earth. Rowing and bailing to the point of exhaustion, somehow these hardened, experienced lifelong fishermen couldn’t keep ahead. The wind and the rain and waves filled the boat until all hope was lost.

We aren’t told which disciple first realized that they had someone on board who had the power to command demons to leave those they possess, or whose wild imagination convinced them that this slumbering rabbi could do anything at all about rain in the first place. What we do know is that, rather than waking Jesus up with a plea for help, there is only a cold accusation: “We’re dying, and you don’t care!”

Back in the first chapter of Mark, Jesus was preaching in the synagogue at Capernaum, and drove a demon from a man. The words he used against that demon were the same he used against the storm – In both cases, Jesus rebukes, and in both cases, he demands “Peace,” or “be silent;” and “be still,” or “be muzzled”… and like the demon, the storm has no other option than to obey.

In the dead calm, I imagine one or two of the disciples still wildly bailing, so bent on trying to stay ahead of the waves that it takes them a moment or two to realize the storm was over. The rest are standing, slack-jawed. One of those who had been bailing asks, “what happened?” Someone whispers in reply, pointing at Jesus, “he happened.”

And as Jesus lays back down on the cushion to resume his nap, he asks these stunned disciples, “Why are y’all so scared? Don’t you get it yet?”

There’s another parallel to the story of Jesus casting out the demon in Mark’s first chapter. When the demon departs, the people are amazed, and ask, “what is this?” – wondering at the great power God had bestowed upon this itinerant preacher, who had authority over unclean spirits. Standing in the dead calm, the boat gently bobbing, steam rising from the wood as the sun began to bake it dry, the disciples ask, “who then is this…?” – the realization dawning that this ability was not simply a power at work in Jesus, but an indication of who Jesus was… who Jesus is.

While it is always tempting to simply treat this account as a comforting story of how God will deliver us from the storms of life, the message is much deeper. Yes, Jesus slept through the storm, but like I said earlier, that isn’t the point. And I almost want to say that the fact of Jesus calming the storm isn’t really the point, either.

After all, storms happen –Physical, visible storms like those that devastated parts of Alabama in April of last year; and storms that few people outside can see, storms that may not destroy homes or level towns, but which wreak havoc on families and individuals, quietly ripping hearts and relationships to shreds.

Storms happen. The point of the reading is not that, by asking loudly enough, by accusing God of not caring, we can avoid the storms. After all, isn’t it true that Jesus had to go through storms? Think of it: Jesus endured the storm of being rejected by everyone at one time or another. Jesus endured the storm of the Cross, where even God the Father turned away from God the Savior. There was the storm of Gethsemane, the storm of the Cross, and the storm of death and the tomb. There were most certainly storms, worse storms than you and I could imagine. Even to Jesus, storms happened.

The point of this reading is the question the disciples ask at the end: “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

The storm of the cross led to the Resurrection, where Jesus rebuked, silenced, and muzzled Death, hell and the grave, ripped open the curtain separating humankind from the God who loves them, and drew the circle of forgiveness, acceptance, and reconciliation with the Creator wide, leaving no one out! What seemed like a storm of utter destruction instead became the springtime rains that call the flowers forth to bloom in new life!

Our storms can lead to destruction, yes; we can staunchly rely on our own experience and expertise, and when these fall short (as they often must). We can give in to the terror of loss and lack, convinced that the God who loved us enough that the only gift good enough for us was God’s only son does not in fact care that we are dying!

But when our storms push us to the end of our rope, they can also lead us to awaken our God, or, better said, to awaken to our God, to draw close to our Savior, and to answer, for ourselves, the only question that truly matters: “who then is this…?”