Outward Journey / Inward Journey

Sermon for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (6 July 2008), delivered at First Congregational United Church of Christ of Bloomer, Wisconsin.

What if I don’t make it to church on time?  What if I get sick and die?  What will happen to the kids?  What if I can’t pay my credit card bill, or my mortgage?  What if I lose my job?  What if there’s another terrorist attack, or what if the government becomes authoritarian and tries to take away our rights?  What if the DVD doesn’t play because of the scratch on the bottom?  What if I get E. Coli from eating bad tomatoes?  What if global warming means that Florida will be permanently flooded – how would I get my oranges?  What if my grades aren’t as good as I thought they would be? What if I worry too much?

For most, if not all of us, life is full of anxiety.  Some worries and concerns are well-founded, and some are rather silly.  Some are about big issues that are entirely outside of our control and some are about mundane, every-day matters.  Some worries are trivial and allayed by a moment’s reasoned thought, and others keep us awake at night.  Of worries, there seems to be no end.

One troublesome question, though, has plagued men and women for centuries. It’s one that has especially concerned Christians, and has the potential to cause more anxiety than any other, because it deals with eternal, not passable, matters.  It is a question that has concerned some of the greatest minds the world has ever seen, like Saint Augustine and Martin Luther, and it’s also a question that can be asked, with equal sincerity, by an alcoholic who’s boozed her life away. 

It’s a question that can be at the forefront of our minds, or one that can be found only in the deepest dark and musty recesses of the heart.  It’s a question that some people spend their entire lives asking, while many others ask it only shortly before they die.

The question is, ‘am I good enough for God?  Because I’ve done a lot of bad things.  I might have done a lot of good things, too, but do those really cover up the bad things?  How much trouble am I really in?’  People who believe in God instinctually know that God is all Good, with not a blemish of imperfection; so how can a person, tarnished by sin, appear before Him?

Now you might be thinking, ‘well, I think he’s wrong.  I do do a lot of good things.  I give money to the church.  I volunteer.  I love my family ferociously, and I helped at the church brat stand a couple of weeks ago.  Besides, the sins that I do commit – they’re pretty minor.  I only tell little lies to protect people.  I only gossip a bit.  I’ve never cheated on my wife or husband.  Surely God only rejects other people who do great big sins, like fly planes into buildings, or cheat on spouses, or steal things, or …’.  You can fill in the blank.

Or, you might be thinking, ‘well, I think human nature is basically good.  And since God’s good too, He’s just going to shrug off our sins and say it doesn’t matter.’

I’m going to have you pull out your Bibles – if you don’t have one, we can make some use out of the pew Bibles in front of you.  Go to Matthew’s Gospel, chapter five, verses 27 and 28.  That’s page 1455 in the pew Bibles.  This is Jesus talking.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’  But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

So Jesus is saying that the sin of adultery isn’t just the physical act – we also commit a sin when we just look at someone and want to sleep with them.  That’s a pretty high bar that Jesus set!

Next, we’re going to look back on the Old Testament, to the Tenth Commandment that God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai, in fact.  Look at the Book of Exodus, Chapter 20, verse 17.  That’s page 114.

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house.  You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

So God forbids looking at something that belongs to someone else and thinking, ‘I want that!’, or ‘I want something just like that, or something even better!’  Who hasn’t thought those thoughts?

Who hasn’t committed adultery in their heart, like Jesus said?  For that matter, who hasn’t lied, or cheated, or gossiped, or cursed someone out, or succumbed to vanity, or broken some other Law of God?  I know I’ve done all of those things, and more!  And I strongly suspect that everyone here has broken one or another of God’s Laws and is in the same boat that I am.

Because in the third chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, the Apostle Paul writes,

            [A]ll have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

And later in this letter, in Chapter Six, we find Paul writing that

            the wages of sin is death.

And he’s not talking just about death in this life; Paul’s writing about eternal death, an eternal death that’s caused by sin that everyone is guilty of.  So I think we can understand why that question, ‘am I good enough for God?’ causes so much anxiety and so much worry.

The title of my sermon today is ‘Bad News, Good News.’  And here’s the bad news, and it’s really, really bad news.  The answer to the question, ‘am I good enough for God?’ is that no, no you’re not.  You’ve sinned.  I’ve sinned, everybody’s sinned.  And God hates sin.

We live in a culture, in a society, which glorifies supposedly self-made people.  People who solve their own problems.  So the solution to the sin-and-death problem seems simple enough: to get saved, what you need to do is pull yourself up by the bootstraps, adjust your bra, sort yourself out, and stop sinning and be holy.

That’s what Pelagius thought; Pelagius was a British monk during the time of the Roman Empire, in the fourth and fifth centuries.  He thought, and taught, that men and women could find God without any help.  He thought that since God wants holy people, what we’ve got to do is just stop sinning, and we’ll be saved.  For Pelagius, we save ourselves.

How human a tendency is that.  After all, adults tend to think that we can solve all our problems by ourselves, and since we realize that we’ve created the problem through our own sinful actions, it’s only natural to think that we can solve the problem too.  Popular spirituality reinforces the idea: it’s not uncommon to hear sentiments along the lines of ‘well, so-and-so was such a good person, she or he must be in heaven.’

The Church, in its wisdom, condemned Pelagius’ teachings as heresy, and I’m going to tell you two reasons why his idea that we can save ourselves is very misleading.

If we were to seriously hold that idea, we have to ask the question, ‘why the Cross?’  Why was it necessary for Jesus to die?  If the Cross was just an object lesson to show us how to pull our own selves up and get better, anyone could have done that.  But Jesus was far from being anyone; we believe that he was true God cloaked in flesh.  So it seems monstrous that he would be killed, unless his death was for something, affecting a real change in our legal status.  In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus says that it’s not healthy people that need a physician, but those who are sick.  ‘I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’

And during his time here, he didn’t hang out with the Pharisees, the people who tried to follow every law down to the letter.  He spent his time with women of ill-repute, rebels, and agents of the occupying foreign enemy.  So in the context of the Christian story, if we can sort ourselves out, that climatic part about Jesus’ and death, don’t really make any sense.

The other problem is the one that Paul is writing about in our New Testament lesson.  I’m going to read the passage again.

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.  Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good.  But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.  For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.  For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.  Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

‘I see in my members another law at war, […] making me captive to the law of sin.’  Can’t that be borne out of our own experience?  We can try and try and try to give up sinning, but those very efforts are tainted by sinful motives.  The law is so onerous, and we are so weak.  Perhaps the best objection to Pelagius telling us to shape up and save yourself is that simply, we can’t.  We see the ‘Good News’ in the last two sentences of this passage: ‘Who will rescue me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!’

We cannot save ourselves and the ‘Good News’ is that taking on flesh, Christ made common cause with us, in death washed away our sins, and in rising from the grave, he defeated them.  Through God’s grace we are saved, and not by our own works.  How then, shall we live?  A couple of weeks ago I read Paul’s rhetorical question: ‘should we continue in sin so that grace may abound?’  Absolutely not!

Pelagius was right about one thing: God does want us to be a holy people.  For that reason, God gave us Himself in the Holy Spirit to enable us to live lives more acceptable to  Him, even if we cannot, in this life, take away the stain of original sin.  When we grow in our spiritual lives as Christians by living in the light of our Baptisms and in Christ’s spiritual presence in Holy Communion, when we live our lives more in the light of the Cross, then sin loses its luster.  We ourselves become dead to it.  The first step, though, is to trust God for our salvation, and hand all our sins, and our anxieties over to Him.  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

I invite you to take some time to pray to God and confess to Him your sins.  We have the enormous privilege of being able to lay our guilt at the foot of the Cross.  Put them there, thanking Jesus for the work he did there so that we would not be found guilty.

[…]

Lord, we confess that we are sinners in need of your grace.  Forgive us our pride when we think that if we are just a little bit better, we won’t have need of Christ’s work on the Cross.  Thank you for your work, your death, and your victory over death.  Thank you for your Holy Spirit, and make us into a holy people which honors you.  Amen.

Sermon delivered at First Congregational United Church of Christ of Bloomer, Wisconsin on Reformation-Reconciliation Sunday, 2006.

Principal text: Mark 10:46-52.

I’m sure we’ve all heard different variations of today’s Gospel lesson.  There are many accounts of Jesus’ healing ministry in the Gospels.  The one we heard this morning appears in Mark’s gospel, but different versions of the same story also appear in the other two synoptic Gospels, Matthew and Mark.  I’ll read it again.

They [Jesus and the Disciples] came to
Jericho.  And he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside.  When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout over and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”  Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.”  And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.”  So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus.  Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?”  The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.”  Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.”  Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

In the last few times I’ve been in this pulpit, I’ve talked about how putting Biblical passages into their historical context can help us gain a better insight into the message of the text itself, and as I approached this text last night I found the same thing with today’s lectionary.  If we take a casual look at this morning’s Gospel lesson, it seems quite straightforward: a blind man demanded Jesus’ attention and receives his sight back.  But if we take a closer look it reveals a complexity that can teach us as Christians how to relate to the wider world of culture and politics.

I mentioned in a sermon a while ago that during Jesus’ time, the relationship between the Jews in Israel and their Roman rulers was complex.  I’m going to explore some of this complexity this morning because it relates to our passage.

During Jesus’ generation there were two major parties that vied for influence over Jewish life in Israel, the Sadducees and the Pharisees, and there were many differences between the two.  Probably the most noticeable was a difference in class: the Sadducees were few in number but powerful.  They consisted of the wealthy upper class, the rulers and the high priests, the select group of families that oversaw the running of the Jerusalem Temple.  And indeed, in their version of Judaism the center of Jewish life was the Temple building in Jerusalem.  The Pharisees on the other hand consisted of pretty much everyone else, of scribes and rabbis who worked in town and village synagogues where working people prayed, worshiped and studied.

There was a linguistic difference: the Pharisees spoke Aramaic for everyday use and prayed in Hebrew.  The upper-class Sadducees on the other hand prayed in Hebrew and spoke Aramaic, but also fluently spoke the Greek that the Roman rulers spoke which was the language of secular education.  On the whole the Sadducees advocated an accepting stance towards the Romans, co-operation with them and the adoption of Greek culture.  And for their support many Sadducees were rewarded with positions of power and influence.  The Pharisees for the most part opposed Jewish adoption of foreign culture and education, and resented the Roman presence.  On a day-to-day level the thing they most hated was Roman taxation.  Still for many years Roman military strength meant that little could be done about it, so many longed for a Messiah who would throw the Romans out and re-establish a Jewish kingdom.

Saint Mark was not concerned with Jesus’ genealogy when he wrote his Gospel.  Other Gospel writers included Jesus’ family history back to King David to verify their claim that Jesus fulfilled the prophesy that the Messiah would be a descendant of King David.  This didn’t seem to be important for Saint Mark, however, and there aren’t any references to Jesus’ family descent in his Gospel.  Except in the passage we read this morning.

The Pharisees’ tradition expected a Messiah who would be the ruler over an independent Israel.  His earthly kingdom was thought of in utopian terms: once the Messiah came, they thought, all things would be set back into their rightful places with a descendent of David on the throne.  For a subjugated, conquered, humiliated people it was a great hope to look forward to a figure who they thought would lead a revolt against the foreign rulers and re-establish Israel to its former glory.  In Hebrew, the title they gave to this man they looked forward to was Mashiach ben-David, the Annointed One, Son of David.

Now except for Jesus’ followers, no one believed that He was the Messiah.  Not the Pharisees.  Not the Sadducees.  It’s likely that when the blind beggar shouted out, he used the words Y’shua ben-David.  Jesus Son of David.  It wouldn’t have been like saying, “Jesus Son of Mary”.  Everyone in that crowd would have recognized the significance of that title.  It was the same thing as saying, “Jesus, Messiah, have mercy on me”.  And I would imagine that when they heard Jesus proclaimed as the Messiah, the people in the crowd had one of two gut reactions.  Some would have had a cold shiver.  The Pharisees didn’t believe Jesus was the Messiah.  He was too unorthodox, He didn’t have a band of warriors ready to defeat the Romans, He wasn’t ‘hero’ material.  Still, they didn’t want anyone to get the ‘wrong’ idea and they certainly didn’t want trouble with a Roman army that was all too ready to crush any hint of an uprising.  The Sadducees for their part had a vested interest in keeping things the way they were, in keeping the Romans in power and probably didn’t look forward very much to a messiah or someone pretending to be the messiah challenging the Romans.  When you consider their positions it’s no wonder Mark tells us that many people told Bartimaeus the blind beggar to shut up.

Other onlookers, though, instead of feeling dread, probably felt a glimmer of hope.  Is this the One?  I’ve heard the rumors, but is this really the One we’ve been taught about, the One we’ve been waiting for?  And then they watched as Jesus returned Bartimaeus’ sight.  Mark’s Chapter Ten concludes by saying that Bartimaeus “followed [Jesus] on the way”.

Today is Reformation Reconciliation Sunday, the day when we remember the start of the Protestant Reformation, which was an effort to renew the Christian Church.  The Reformation sought to return the teachings of the Church to Biblical principles and away from teachings that had no Biblical sanction.  

Perhaps the most egregious violation that the Reformation targeted was the Church selling indulgences.  The Roman church taught, and still teaches that before we can go to heaven we have to go to Purgatory for a time to pay for our sins.  The Protestant reformers found no Biblical justification for that teaching, no Biblical reference to purgatory at all.  Instead they found the Bible teaching that Christ’s death on the Cross was sufficient to atone for the sins of all Christians and that no purgatory is needed.  The Roman church taught that it has the authority to excuse individual souls from Purgatory when it chooses to do so, and during the medieval period in Europe they used this as a way to raise money for building cathedrals and basilicas.  My donating money to church projects, they taught you could get deceased loved ones out of purgatory quicker and easier.  In their efforts they even had a rhyme: “every time a penny in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs.”

Martin Luther was a monk, an academic, and a priest, and when he studied Scripture he noticed the sharp discrepancy between this practice of selling indulgences and what the Scriptures said.  He read Ephesians Chapter Two, which says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”  And in a brave effort to be true to the Gospel, to listen to the voice of a still-speaking God, Martin Luther posted his famous 95 Theses on the church doors in Wittenberg.  Summoned to account for himself in front of the authorities who demanded he recant his teachings, Luther dramatically, “my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything […] Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.”  For his trouble, those authorities then declared Luther an outlaw and issued a warrant for his arrest.

“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”  “My conscience is captive to the Word of God.  Here I stand.  I can do no other.”

Both Bartimaeus the blind beggar and Martin Luther went radically against the grain of their times.  They weren’t just politically incorrect.  They found that faith was, and is, risky.  Bartimaeus and Luther had the audacity to lift their voices above the crowds, to stand out.  Bartimaeus loudly and rudely proclaimed the truth of Jesus’ messiahship, confirming in some their worst fears and in others their greatest hope.  Martin Luther had the courage to critique unbiblical teaching and ungodly practices within the church, and against bishops and princes he called Christianity to conform with Scripture.

As Christians we are called to critique every day.  Christianity is not a faith that tells us to roll with the punches that society gives us.  We’re to look at our politics, at our entertainment, at our economic system, at our own behavior, and ask, ‘is this what God would have it be?’  And proclaiming Christ’s good news as we struggle to bring our lives and our worldviews into God’s will, we can ask for His mercy and his grace as we follow Him on the way.  Let’s take a moment to pray.

Have mercy on us, Jesus Son of David!  Have mercy on us, Son of David!  Grant that we, who are blind, would at last see You and continually call on You in every dark hour until we are safe at last in that kingdom of light which has already been prepared for us through you!  AMEN.

Delivered at First Congregational United Church of Christ of Bloomer, Wisconsin on Sunday, the 15th of October, 2006.

Principal lectionary text: Hebrews 4:12-16.

I’m going to say a few words before I carry on about how we relate to Scripture.  I don’t believe that we can understand what the Bible says unless we understand the contexts in which the various portions of the Bible were produced.  As some of you might know I studied Jewish and Islamic studies at university, and I can say that both Judaism and Islam teach that their respective Scriptures, the Torah and the Qur’an, are Divine dictations, that God transmitted word-for-word, letter-for-letter, the contents of those books to Moses or Muhammed, who perfectly transcribed them.

Christianity is different: it does not teach that the Bible, our Holy Scripture, was parachuted from Heaven and that the texts has no relationship with the time and place in which they were written.  We know that the Bible was written by human authors who were concerned with events in their own times and places.  Of course the Scripture is inspired by God, God-breathed, but not word-for-word dictations from God’s mouth.  The Old Testament prophets for instance, like our passage from Amos this morning, were profoundly disturbed by the lack of justice in ancient
Israel and by the worship of idols instead of the Living God.  Amos, a prophet from the Southern Kingdom and from a poor, rural peasant background, was speaking at a particular time and place: in the Northern Kingdom prior to its destruction by the Assyrians, and to a particular concern to that time and place: that Israel’s injustice and idolatry would lead to its doom.

When we regard this morning’s Old Testament passage, then, we can see not a disembodied text with only a questionable application to life in Bloomer, Wisconsin in 2006; rather we see an injunction requiring us to put away idols and worship the Living God, because we understand the consequences that befell the Israelites when they failed to do so.

If you recall three weeks ago, I was filling this pulpit in Rev. Schneider’s absence in Germany and the lectionary text from which I preached came to us from the Epistle of James.  And I spoke about the context that the Epistle of James came from, and those who were here that Sunday should remember that our historical knowledge of that book, specifically its authorship, is murky.  We don’t know for sure which James wrote the Epistle of James.  And I find myself here again, and I’m going to talk about another somewhat murky Epistle, the Letter to the Hebrews.

Like the Letter of James, we don’t know for sure who wrote Hebrews.  The letter of course was originally written in Greek.  Some scholars speculate the author was the Apostle Paul, but the literary style of Greek of Hebrews is very different from Paul’s other writings, so many different men and women in the early church have been suspected as the writer.  Regardless the book itself doesn’t tell us.  But the fact that the Letter to the Hebrews was written anonymously doesn’t mean that understanding its context won’t shed light on the text of the book.  By reading Hebrews itself we can assume that the author came from Jewish origins, because he or she was knowledgeable of the contents of the Old Testament and the teachings of Judaism.  The letter suggests that the author was either writing from Italy or writing to residents of Italy.  Moreover the people to whom the letter is addressed are Jews who came to faith in Jesus Christ away from Judaism, and the author was concerned that they would backslide away from faith in Christ back into Judaism.

I’m going to re-read our passage:

Indeed the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and  laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.  Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.  Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need.

There seems to be a trend in our culture to push Christmas further and further ahead; Christmas items seem to appear earlier every year in the stores.  Even though it’s only October, I’m going to bring up Christmas because it fits in with our passage this morning.  The Advent season for the church is a time of reflection and celebration of Christ’s first coming, and a time of anticipation as we await his second coming.  Of course our culture tells us that at Christmas we celebrate consumer capitalism and the worship of the Eternal Dollar.  But for Christians it’s a time when we think about the Incarnation, when God Himself took on a human body and was born of Mary.  And it is precisely this doctrine that early Christians of Jewish descent would have had difficulty with.  Judaism is a religion that strictly condemns any hint of idolatry, so God is conceived of as the complete Other, entirely separate from humanity.  The suggestion that the same God who made the universe could enter the created world and become flesh, like you or me, was shocking and disturbing.  It still is, really, but this is the crux of Christianity, what it all hinges upon.  I said that the author of Hebrews was concerned that the Christians would stumble in their faith and revert back to Judaism.  So he or she writes, ‘let us hold fast to our confession’.  Be strong; be faithful to Jesus Christ, because through His work on the cross Jesus was faithful to us.

The Incarnation was a difficult and shocking thing then, and if we’re honest, it’s a difficult thing to accept today.  There’s now am unfortunate tendency in the Christian Church.  I’m sad to say that even in the United Church of Christ there are ordained ministers who teach that Jesus was wise teacher or great prophet but can’t accept that He was the Son of God, God Himself.

What if I stood up here today and told you, insisted to you, that I, I Cody Williams, am the bowl of mashed potatoes.  Not a bowl of mashed potatoes, but the one and only bowl of mashed potatoes.  And then I’d start a career traveling around and talking to people, standing on street corners and handing out potato recipes, maybe starting an informal therapy service, counseling people how to treat other people while cooking, baptizing people in gravy, and all the while insisting that I, uniquely, am the bowl of mashed potatoes.  I’m being silly of course but bear with me.

If I continually insisted that I was the bowl of mashed potatoes, I think you’d have to think one of three things of me.  One is that I’m deceiving you.  You could think that I’m not a bowl of mashed potatoes, and that I know I’m not a bowl of mashed potatoes, but I’m telling people that I am anyways.  You could think I’m lying and am a bad person for trying to lead you into thinking that I am a bowl of mashed potatoes.

The second, and I think the most likely, is that you could think that I’m insane.  You could think that of course I’m not the bowl of mashed potatoes, but I believe that I am, so I’m not really lying.  But I’m crazy.  You’d probably try to have me committed.

The third thing you could do would be to accept that I am what I say I am.  You could accept my claims.

Now of course you could try to reason with me and say, ‘Look.  You are a man, and men cannot be bowls of mashed potatoes.’

For the Jews, Jesus’ claim to be God was about as unbelievable.  Jesus was a human being, and for Judaism, human beings by definition could not be God, and God, by definition, could not be a human being.  They were considered separate classes of things, and never the twain shall meet.  So the choice that was left to them what to think about Jesus’ claim is the same selection that is left today.  Take your pick: Jesus was either a liar, or a lunatic, or we can take a leap of faith and accept that He is who he says He is, Lord.  But we cannot believe that he was only a ‘good man’ and be intellectually honest with ourselves.

I hope, then, I’ve done a decent job of explaining why thinking that Jesus was both man and God would have been troublesome for Christians of Jewish descent.  When we look at our Hebrews passage, we find the author explaining how great a comfort the Incarnation really is.  In the person of Jesus Christ, God is no longer completely Other, separate from humanity.  ‘For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tempted as we are’.  Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has ‘been there, done that, got the scars’.  God not only created us and guides us, but He became One of us.  He knows what we’re going through, He’s suffered just like we have.  That’s our strength, that God loved ‘so loved the world’ that he came to dwell in it for our sake.  As we go through difficult periods in our own lives, we can’t do much better than to remember that.  ‘Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.’  AMEN.

Delivered at First Congregational United Church of Christ of Bloomer, Wisconsin on Sunday, the First of October, 2006.

Principal lectionary text: Mark 9:38-50.

If you recall last week’s lectionary passage from the Gospel according to Saint Mark, we found the twelve disciples arguing among themselves about which one of them was the greatest.  Jesus sat them down and put an end to their speculation by saying that ‘whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all’.

This morning’s subsequent passage is hardly more flattering to the disciples.  I won’t re-read the entire passage but I’ll read the first few verses, those I’m going to be preaching about this morning.

John said to [Jesus], ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us’.  But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.  Whoever is not against us is for us.  For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.’

Neither of these passages from the Gospel of Mark portray the twelve disciples in a very good light, and both remind us that the twelve disciples, most of whom became fathers of the early church. were very fallible humans themselves.  In them we can perhaps find unpleasant reflections of ourselves.  In last week’s passage, they were falling victim to the temptation of individual pride.  This week we find them in collective pride.  I can’t help but feel that John is performing the role of a busybody or a talebearer, informing Jesus of what he perceives to be the wrongs of others.  ‘Rabbi, rabbi, there’s someone out there performing miracles in Your name.  But we thought since we were Your favorites we should be the only ones to do that.’

We can imagine maybe that the disciples didn’t have a full grasp of the gravity of what was going on.  The age in which Jesus was living was a heady period of history; the relationships between the Jews and their Roman overlords were complex with some sections of the Jewish community supporting the Romans and others participating a low-level revolt that would culminate with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem some years after Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension.

The period in which Jesus lived was a period of transition for the Jewish faith, and scholars of religion today believe that there were many traveling rabbis teaching many different doctrines, and many claimed to be the Messiah.

The disciples had already recognized Jesus as the Messiah by the time the events described in our passage occurred, but it’s likely that they merely thought of him as a very wise rabbi, not the Son of God, God incarnate.  He occasionally said cryptic things like in last week’s passage, ‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again’.  Of course, we’ve had a look at the end of the story, we know the Good Friday and Easter story, so these things make sense to us, but to the disciples it would have made very little sense at all.

So from the point of view of the disciples, if Jesus was in their minds only a very wise teacher, it made perfect sense to complain if someone else aside from one of them was acting in Jesus’ name: after all, he was their wise teacher, and how dare some imposter come doing something which only they should rightly do?

Incidentally, John Wesley and other biblical commentators speculate, I think with a good chance of being accurate, that the unnamed man casting out spirits was one of the followers of someone who should be to us, with the gift of hindsight, not quite so alien or threatening.  Wesley thought that the man was probably a follower of John the Baptist, a group which  believed in Jesus but were not his among his disciples or followers.

Christ rebukes John, and reminds both him and us that Jesus’ ministry wasn’t only for a small group in the
Galilee two thousand years ago.  He reminds us that His ministry is universal.  There are some verses in Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians that I think are relevant to the message here.  Paul writes in Chapter One, Verses Fifteen through Eighteen:

It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill.  The latter do so out of love, knowing that I [Paul] am put here for the defense of the gospel.  The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains.  But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.

We know of course that Paul had rivals in the church, and that he felt that the motivations of some of them were impure as they preached the Gospel.

Did you know that the biggest megachurch in America, one in Houston, Texas, has more than thirty-thousand members, and that one megachurch in the Chicago area has three ‘satellite campuses’ where people can ‘worship’ while watching screens of the service broadcasted from a central location?  Personally, I suspect church leaders who use the same ‘business’ model as WalMart or multimillionaire televangelists who peddle influence in one of our country’s political parties; I believe they might have ulterior interests.  However Paul asks a rhetorical question: ‘but what does it matter?  The important thing is that in every way, whether from true motives or false, Christ is preached.’

From these two passages we find that the Christian ministry, the need to extend the Gospel to as many people as possible trumps our concern for intra-church politics and conflicts.  Christ’s rebuke to John is also a rebuke to the Christian church today, a church which all too often finds itself hindered by divisions and recriminations.  The important thing is that Christ is preached.

We’re all called to ministry, each and every one of us – the Christian religion is not one that leaves its work to a priestly few.  The New Testament calls the church the ‘body of Christ’ and every member is called to be a part.  Just like in the human body, different parts have different functions – my foot doesn’t do the same things as my hand, likewise different Christians have different vocations to serve the whole church.

How often do we fall into the same trap that the disciples did – denigrating and casting doubt on the works of others because deep down we envy them?  Christ’s response was candid, and He is willing to assume the best of those who are not hostile to the Gospel message.  ‘Whoever is not against us is for us.’  Echoing Paul, Jesus implies that the important thing is that the works be done, and He goes a step further.  ‘For no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me’.  Christian ministry, which we are all supposed to be engaged in, is by its very nature transformative, even if we don’t approach it with the right intentions.

If we’re cajoled into greater involvement in the life of the congregation, the community, in helping to spread the Gospel to those who are unfamiliar with it, in making the world a better place to live in, it changes our perspective on our faith.  The works that we do with others affect our inner life, and we become in the process better Christians, more conforming to the image of Christ whom we are to emulate.

Our scripture lesson this morning then both calls us into thoughtful ministry and involvement in Christ’s name, and decries vanity, selfishness, and envy that lead to divisions and conflicts.  When we see others of other denominations, political convictions, ethnic backgrounds, or nationalities carrying out good deeds for Jesus’ sake, we ought to praise God and ask that our hearts too might be changed as we go about our Christian work.

Let’s take a moment to pray.

Heavenly Father, I thank you for the work of the whole Christian church.  I ask that you bless the work of this congregation in bringing the message of your love to the community, and that our hearts and spirits be transformed as we strive to be faithful bearers of the image of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  In His name we pray.  AMEN.

Delivered at First Congregational United Church of Christ of Bloomer, Wisconsin on Sunday, the 24th of September, 2006.

Principal lectionary text: James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a.

My sermon today deals with this morning’s lectionary New Testament lesson from the Epistle of James, but I’m going to step back from the specific passage we heard to talk a bit about this letter, James, and the context in which it was written.

We know of course that the epistle is a letter, written to Jewish Christians in the very early church. The name ‘James’ is the English version of the Hebrew ‘Yakob,’ which was very common name indeed. So common, in fact, that there were several important figures in the early church with that name, including Saint James the Just, who was Jesus’ half-brother and the leader of the church in Jerusalem; Saint James the Great, an apostle and the brother of the Apostle John, and Saint James the Less, the brother of Matthew. All three Jameses have been suggested as the author of this text, and we’re not quite sure which one it is. Regardless, we know that the early church was undergoing a great tumult and the author of the Epistle of James wades into this conflict. We can read about this dispute in the book of Acts: the bone of contention was whether new Christians should be circumcised as under Old Testament law; some of the Christians of Jewish descent questioned whether uncircumcised men could be Christians at all.

The Apostle Paul had begun evangelizing the Gentiles and in the process taught that Christ made believers a new creation, not circumcision, which he viewed as irrelevant. This was an extraordinarily novel and controversial message, because the Jewish Christians had a couple thousand years of Judaism as their heritage which taught that the ritual was a physical sign of God’s covenant with humanity.

Nevertheless, the core issue in the row in the Church had more to do with Paul’s conviction that the Gospel is for all peoples, not only the Jews. Since Paul taught that Greek and Roman Christians, and indeed Wisconsinites and Minnesotans of all backgrounds as well as Jews were all one in Jesus Christ, then it follows that Old Testament law — you know, the six-hundred and thirteen injunctions given in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy which covered every aspect of life from what type of fabric not to wear to what to do if you get a skin infection – were fulfilled in Christ’s incarnation and crucifixion.

The school of the Pharisees that Paul and the other Jewish Christians emerged from taught that men and women could only be declared righteous before God – and therefore be saved – if they adhered absolutely and perfectly to all six-hundred and thirteen laws, which governed every conceivable aspect of life.

Paul correctly recognized the impossibility of this situation. And he led the early church to understanding that the role of the Old Testament law was to bring humanity to the awareness of our sinful and fallen state and our need for redemption in Christ. Because the law was impossible in practical terms, Christ came to earth and offered himself as a living sacrifice so that by God’s grace, through faith in Him, our sins would be washed away – that our slates would be wiped clean, as it were. This is the salvation message of Christianity.

Paul’s teaching led a lot of early Christian leaders to be concerned, however. They objected that if righteousness doesn’t come from our actions, that is, if it doesn’t come from obeying the Old Testament law, then it’s a short step to thinking that doesn’t matter what our actions are. There’s a word for the idea that we are able to engage in whatever activity suits our fancy, that Christians can be unconcerned about the whole business of sin and righteousness and correct behavior: it’s antinomianism, and antinomianism is heresy.

So this is the context in which James’ Epistle was written: it was written to a conflicted, divided church concerned that separation from the law of the Old Testament would lead to sinful license of all sorts, that Paul’s teachings would lead to disorder and chaos. The book of James reassures us that personal behavior does indeed matter, that we cannot be Christians that simply acknowledge the fact that God Himself, the creator of the universe, came down to earth, became a man, was executed and in the process atoned for our sins and three days later was risen from the dead – and then carry on our lives as if nothing has changed. James Chapter Two, Verse Nineteen tells us that even demons acknowledge the truthfulness of these claims – and then shudder.

No, for the Christian, a regeneration must occur, and it occurs as we integrate the facts about Christ into our hearts, not only our heads. I believe that for most Christians this isn’t a ‘flashbulb’ moment when all of a sudden we intuitively, from the heart accept Christ’s death and resurrection, and are reborn, like a bolt of lightening. Rather for most I believe it’s a process that takes years, decades, to fully integrate into our lives, and in the process ‘earthly wisdom’ – envy, greed, lust, selfishness slowly lose their appeal and give way to what James calls ‘wisdom from above’ characterized by purity and the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. This brings us back to our passage. I’ll read it again:

Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. Such wisdom does not come from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you murder and you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.

James recognizes that unrestrained sinfulness leads to bedlam and discord, and even more sin. Selfishness leads to envy which leads to murder, he writes. ‘If you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts’, if you are sinful, and that’s directed to all of us – James tells us not to boast about our sin, and not to deceive ourselves into thinking that sin doesn’t really matter. I’m interested particularly in verse eighteen: ‘a harvest of righteousness is sown […] by those who make peace.’ Of course when we talk of peace we don’t merely mean the absence of conflict with others. This passage says that our sinful desires are at war within us, so we can only find peace with others when we find peace within ourselves. A philosopher might say that our external experience of peace or conflict is determined by our inner experience of peace or strife. Inner peace comes through supernatural wisdom from above and its continual application to the banality of everyday life. ‘But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.’

We cannot hope to find that wisdom by our own means, but only with through the aid and power of Christ’s Holy Spirit. When He helps us integrate that wisdom into our hearts, then we find peace with both others and in our souls. And when we sow peace, as this verse tells us, we reap righteousness and right living before God. Our passage today ends with the words, ‘You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.’

By definition, wisdom from above cannot come from within ourselves; it is a gift given to us by God in the Holy Spirit. Let’s take a moment for prayer.

Heavenly Father, we ask for your holy wisdom. We ask that You help us put away our earthy desires and false wisdom which tell us to be selfishly ambitious, covetous, envious. Replace those desires with a peace which surpasses all understanding so that we can live rightly before You and with our fellow men and women. Give in us a right heart so that we seek these things not for our own edification, not to make us look or feel good, but for your greater glory and the furtherance of Your kingdom. AMEN.