Sunday, October 21, 2018

It Shall Not be So With You*

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B/Pentecost 22/Proper 29
Mark 10:35-45
…But I added verses 32-34 which is Jesus’ third and most explicit teaching about what awaits in Jerusalem

 

Our garage is a good fifty yards from our back door
And when our kids were in middle school 
I drove them to school
And without fail
As we were walking toward the garage
At about a third of the way there, as the garage door was raising
I would hear
“I Call Shotgun!” 
And the shouter began to sprint
In case you aren’t familiar with the game
The rules are simple
The first to shout-when in sight of the vehicle-gets to sit in the front.
That front seat…
It was the object of some kind of powerful craving

Is that what James and John were succumbing to
A powerful craving…for a seat…a place of power and prestige?

It’s almost a little too easy
To think of those two…James and John…calling ‘shotgun’
And I think, “really…really…are you really that thick headed?”

For weeks now we have been hearing Jesus 
Patiently teaching the disciples
About just what kind of Messiah he is
And about just what kind of kingdom this ‘kingdom of God’ is
He has picked up the children…using them as metaphors
He has said the last shall be first
Losing your life will gain it
Be a servant
Be a slave 
And today…
As the narrative is drawing nearer and nearer to Jerusalem
…today, this third time…he is at his most explicit
About what lies ahead

And James and John…and the rest of them
Well…their hearts and heads are still stuck in SHOTGUN

But it is a tough message
Last will be first
Be a slave 
Lose your life
Suffer and die

It was a tough message then and it is still tough today
In the face of that message
-especially without knowing the end of the story-
Who wouldn’t run for shelter…calling ‘shotgun’ 

The important thing about this episode in Mark’s gospel 
…It seems to me…
Is the reality of the Cross 
and just how hard it is NOT to run the other way!

I remember in the late 70’s
There was a ‘charismatic’ movement going on in my church
And my friend Kimberly was really into it
And she had posters and jewelry
And of course crosses
But not the crosses I was used to seeing
Not the crosses with Jesus’ bloody and dying body hanging there
No…these crosses were rainbow colored
And sparkly
And they had “Hallelujah” written on them

It was as if the movement was saying
We’ve had enough of Good Friday
Let’s focus on Easter Sunday instead.
And that reminded me of 
Jesus asking James and John “What is it you want?”  
And they say
‘to sit…one on your right…the other on your left…IN YOUR GLORY’
All they are hearing is the GLORY part…
It’s like they are punch drunk on the notion of GLORY

It is easy to poke fun of James and John
But the truth is
I am absolutely certain 
that I would not have performed 
Any better than James and John.  
I would have been all about ‘Shotgun.’
Because honestly
I don’t know a thoughtful Christian who has the whole cross thing all figured out
And just as soon as I think I have my head wrapped around it
---poof more mystery pops up

Today I have two tiny nibbles… 

It had to take the cross…at some level every Christian knows that.
We cross ourselves
We have jewelry and tattoos
And Christmas ornaments and wall art
And shiny Brass processional crosses
There is no denying…it is our central symbol
Why?
Why the cross?
Why not Jesus living to a nice old age and dying peacefully in his sleep?

I need to go back to the scene…
or better yet…the series of scenes that make up Jesus’ passion
There are
Those who mock
Those who spit
Those who scourge
Those who kill

And there are 
Those who betray
Those who abandon and hide
Those who utterly fail

Especially in Mark…everyone fails
Just Jesus…utterly alone

And therein lies tiny nibble number 1
EVEN THERE
ThatEven There…alone on that cross after a terrifying series of events
Hangs our EVEN THERE God

Even There
When it can’t get any worse
For Jesus and at times for each of us
Even There
We are in fact not alone
God is always in it with us

Thinking about EVEN THERE
puts me in Jesus’ place

But Jesus isn’t the only character in the Passion scenes
One great theme of Mark’s Gospel is Discipleship
What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus?
What does the cross have to do with it?

The corollary to Even There is
‘It shall not be so with you’
‘It shall not be so with you’

I think of the scene again
Of the Roman soldiers
Those who mock, spit, scourge and kill

And I think of the disciples
Those who betray, abandon and hide

It doesn’t seem like it
But for us…struggling disciples in the year 2018
that is…in fact…good news
As my Dad would say “there is nowhere to go but up”

In her wisdom
The Church calls us to confess
Publicly…every week when we gather
We check in on our discipleship
We check in knowing full well
That we have both doneand left undone
We have been both Roman Soldiers and Terrified Disciples

But this confession of ours
Is grounded in the sure hope of our EVEN THERE God
We confess our hope to change
…to change just as much as we can handle…for today;)
            

The Gospel is so very realistic!

The cross won’t let us off easy
It confronts us
It sheds light on our human capacity for sin 
But it never leaves us there
The cross pushes us through…it invites us to a new way

‘It shall not be so with you’
‘It shall not be so with you’

When emotions flair
And the swirl of blame and scandal suck us in
And we find ourselves jockeying for position or hiding in fear

Jesus speaks gently…‘It shall not be so with you’

And then we make our way here  
We come here
We fall on our knees
And we confess
And while we do we call to mind 
What we have doneand what we have left undone

And in each other’s company 
We hear that gentle whisper
‘It shall not be so with you’



Sunday, October 7, 2018

Liberating Texts*

October 7, 2018
Pentecost 19 - 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mark 10:2-16, Genesis 2:18-24


Three years ago, I was oh so lucky to be scheduled to preach on this liturgical day…
This the 19th Sunday after Pentecost in Year B;) 
And I remember going through the litany of ways
A multitude of listeners might be offended by our chosen texts 
Both The Gospel Mark and the Genesis reading

It is the real and painful truth
that these words can burn and sting and open up never-quite-healed wounds.
_______

It is also true that
Both of these texts suffer from 
long and oppressive histories of interpretation
But I am happy to report that over the past 30+ years 
There has been some really good corrective scholarship

I found myself eager to preach the Genesis story
But I have been taught that if Mark 10: 2-16 is read
It must be addressed!  
We have Jesus, 
the Pharisees,
the disciples,
and the children

Those children…for three weeks now…they won’t go away!
The Children are the thread 
The Children frame this section of Mark’s unfolding story
The Children are the constant… the cue, the prop 
They remind us that this part of Mark’s Gospel
Is about the HOW of discipleship
The Children are, the example
The example of how to allow oneself to be vulnerable…
…that is how a disciple learns about being the greatest[1]

The Pharisees…trying to test Jesus…ask a question
The word translated ‘asked’ doesn’t quite catch it though
This ‘asking’ is weightier and hotter
Mark uses this word when the mood
…is interrogating and confrontational 

In first century Judaism there was no question about the legality of Divorce
Jewish law allowed for it
But there were different schools of thought about the reasons
Burning the morning toast at one end
On the other...weightier matters---infidelity for instance

Women…Isrealite women…were never allowed to initiate divorce
So any safeguards…any interpretation of the law that added restrictions 
That would add protection for women and children from more acute suffering

The Pharisees are ‘testing’ Jesus
They are trying to get some ammunition to use against him
They ask a question at the level of LAW
But Jesus doesn’t answer questions at the level of their asking
He goes deeper
He answers at the level of the heart

Like the Pharisees… too often we want this text to be about the legality of divorce
We want to know forensics…
What can be justified?
What can be allowed?
What can be tolerated?
And so along with the Pharisees we stay at the level of the law[2]
And miss what is meant to change our hearts

Inviting us to go along with Him
Jesus reminds us that laws aren’t arbitrary
There are principles behind them...a vision

Can you see Jesus…this man who has been going around healing everyone 
Can you see him freeing a suffering woman her from an abusive relationship…
I can
But the thing is, Jesus wouldn’t stop there!
Jesus is concerned with all HUMAN FLOURISHING!
And so
He would seek out that partner…the one doing the abusing
He would seek him out like he seeks out the lost sheep

Can you see Jesus
Having caught up with the abuser? 
He’d sit him down, 
and make him SEE 
Make him see how he is destroying himself, 
and then...
he’d infect him with a new way of being
He'd heal him too

What God joined together, let no one separate
The emphasis is on God
But because I don’t think any of us are perfect 
            at inviting God into our relationship building efforts
What we end up with now and again are relationships that
We humans have wrongly joined together!!!
When relationships rupture with all the pain that entails
…isn’t that just the place for the healing presence of Christ and the Church?

Legalities aren’t interested in the actual persons
In actual relationships
But God is!
God is interested
And that takes us to GENESIS 2
----- 
I used to hate this Genesis text
It always smacked of continuing a story of male dominance 
and female subordination
And indeed over the years it has done just that

I found this example from a 15thCentury manual…if it weren’t’ true it would be funny

“… she is more carnal that a man, 
as is clear from her many carnal abominations.  
And it should be noted 
that there was a defect in the formation of the first woman,
Since she was formed from a bent rib, that is, 
a rib of the breast, which is bent as it were 
in a contrary direction to a man.  
And since through this defect she is an imperfect animal, 
she always deceives.”[3]

Stealing some words from our 15thCentury interpreter…
I’d like to address the
abominable, defective, bent, contrary, imperfect, and deceptive 
interpretation of what has become one of my favorite passages.


Genesis 2:18-24
The Lord God said,
“It is not good

(In Genesis 1, remember, God creates and ‘it is good, 
and it is good, and it is very good’ 
this is first time anything is NOT good)
that the man 
(ha-adam…which I like to suggest means an earthling 
or maybe a proto-human
there is no sexual differentiation yet 
so we are short of totally human at this point) 
should be alone; I will make him a helper (helper sounds diminutive…
but the word translated ‘helper’ most often in the Hebrew Scriptures 
refers to God…so NO sense of subservience here) 
as his partner.” So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner. 
(There is humor here…a cockroach? Nah…can’t see that.  
A horned Owl? Nah…let’s stay away from horns. 
The tempo suggests a slowly increasing longing) 
So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs (God has given up beginning with the ground or the soil.  Let’s use flesh and bone. The word translated rib could also be translated ‘side’…SURGERY TIME) 
and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man (man is no longer 'ha’adam' but ‘ish’ which is gendered)
he made into a woman 
(‘Ishshah’…gender aka the fullness of humanity now exists!) 
and brought her to the man.
Then the man said, 
“This at last (this is so powerful preceded by all that building longing!)
is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh; 
this one shall be called Woman,
for out of Man this one was taken.”

This is a story about what it means to be a human person
There is no such thing as a SOLO human
There is no humanity until there is a relationship of equals
I can’t help but think of the Holy Trinity
That God’s very nature is a community of persons
Father, Son and Holy Spirit 
A trio of persons engaged in a loving dynamic relationship of giving and receiving

AND THIS MATTERS!

Because the world…the culture-at-large…at least a good portion of it
Asserts something quite different!
Don’t WE…I’ll say ‘we’ because we are all a part of this culture
Don’t WE prize instead
Independence…individuality…autonomy…
Aren’t they the pinnacle of human fulfillment?

If I am honest
I will admit that while
I can stand here and confess that I believe 
These truths hiding in Genesis 2
About God’s intention for 
Interdividuality
Mutuality
Healthy co-dependence 
Communion

All the while
Secretly hoping and praying that it is 
Just not true for ME!

I don’t want to be a child
Or like a child
Being a child
Means there is a parent close by
It means I am dependent

But that is precisely our stance before God
That is in fact what it means to have a Lord
One Lord
The Lord

My I
My deep and personal I
Only stands grounded…only makes sense
Insofar as I admit to a THOU…
that Ultimate Other who loved me into being
Who continues to love me into being
Who Invites me into communion
And who continually asks me to do the same
In relationship to those around me

That is the invitation to all of us
To become childlike disciples
Childlike in the sense of being dependent on God

We humble ourselves in our communion
We humble ourselves 
when we participate in both sides of giving and receiving relationships 

Making of ourselves an island
Maintaining all those defenses
Expending all that work and energy 
To PROVE that we can go SOLO
That we don’t need anybody…
THAT is the opposite of Christian freedom


The heart of the matter
The vision…God’s vision…that grounds all the law
Is of a human family that lives in communion

We, in fact, participate in the throbbing heart of God 
When we live into that vision 

And we can, always…be better at it 
...with a little help from our friends…
We can be better at opening ourselves to that vision

In truth…
we are most certainly in this thing together

And for that I say
Thanks be to God!


[1]Thank you Andrew Prior:
https://www.onemansweb.org/theology/the-year-of-mark-2015/the-children-and-divorce-mark-10-2-16.html
[2]Thank you David Lose:
http://www.davidlose.net/2015/09/pentecost-19-b-communities-of-the-broken-and-blessed/
[3]Thank you Juliana Claassens for your whole wonderful commentary on Genesis 2:18-24 but especially this little quote;) https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3792