I realized that I had forgotten to change my office hours in the side bar. Since September I have been at Metropolis Cafe on Wednesday evenings and not Tuesdays. If anyone has attempted to see me on Tuesday evenings at Metorpolis in the past two months and have wondered were I was, I appologise.
The side bar now reflects my curent office hours correctly.
Peace,
Larry
Tuesday, October 31
Thursday, October 26
Reconciler Almost Weekely Update
From Rabbi Abraham Heschel:
Our conversation in last week's service centered around conquering tyranny. What was inspirational to me was how quickly we saw the tyrannical within ourselves at work; how there is a way that the "self" becomes the tyrant and we find ways to keep God from leading us, from transforming our hearts. Heschel reminds us that the result of this dehumanizing work is not to make us animals. Scripture suggests that God cares for all nature (feeding birds and dressing the lilies of the field). So what we encounter is thedemonic and not the animal within us. This language is heavy and difficult for many, but the contrast is essential if we are going to even begin to understand the transformation that is at work by the Holy Spirit with in the heart of each of us and our community as a whole.
Announcements:
Our Bible study continues this coming Tuesday! Come one. Come all. We will be working through Acts and reading the Rule of Saint Benedict using a book that has daily readings from the rule with a brief reflection by Joan Chittister. Our hope is that in the 14 weeks of the bible Study that we will take these reading up as a daily devotional. All are also invited to join the community of the Holy Trinity in their evening prayer service at 7pm before the Bible study.
There will be no Sunday evening service on Sunday, November 26th. Most of us will still be out of town. Enjoy the holiday!
December 24 and 25: We will join Immanuel Lutheran Church for its services. On Christmas Eve there is a 6pm service. On Christmas Day the service is at 10am.
Do not forget to change your clocks this Saturday evening! Spring forward...fall back! Set your clocks one hour earlier when you go to bed!
Spiritual Direction: We would like to remind anyone who is interested that Larry Kamphausen is available for Spiritual Direction. If you are curious about possible resources or would like Larry to be your director, please contact one of the pastoral team.
Seabury Western Theological Seminary, the local Episcopal seminary, has invited us to write an article for their winter newsletter, Seabury Crossroads. This is a greatopportunity for us. The deadline is November 15th. Tripp and Larry will write the article, but if there is anything that you would like to share, please contact them.
Finally, in Advent you will notice one or two liturgical changes. Please keep your eyes peeled and your hearts opened to these changes. Let us know what you think about them. We will try the changes through the Advent season and then decide if we want to keep them in our regular liturgy.
May God grant you Peace and All Good Things this day,
Tripp Hudgins
"The striking feature of our age is not the presence of anxiety, but the inadequacy of anxiety, the insufficient awareness of what is at stake in the human situation...The cardinal problem is not the survival of religion, but the survival of [humanity]. What is required is a continuous effort to overcome hardness of heart callousness, and above all to inspire the world with the biblical image of [humanity], not to forget that [humanity] without God is a torso, to prevent the dehumanization of the human. For the opposite of the human is not the animal. The opposite of the human is the demonic."
Our conversation in last week's service centered around conquering tyranny. What was inspirational to me was how quickly we saw the tyrannical within ourselves at work; how there is a way that the "self" becomes the tyrant and we find ways to keep God from leading us, from transforming our hearts. Heschel reminds us that the result of this dehumanizing work is not to make us animals. Scripture suggests that God cares for all nature (feeding birds and dressing the lilies of the field). So what we encounter is thedemonic and not the animal within us. This language is heavy and difficult for many, but the contrast is essential if we are going to even begin to understand the transformation that is at work by the Holy Spirit with in the heart of each of us and our community as a whole.
Announcements:
Our Bible study continues this coming Tuesday! Come one. Come all. We will be working through Acts and reading the Rule of Saint Benedict using a book that has daily readings from the rule with a brief reflection by Joan Chittister. Our hope is that in the 14 weeks of the bible Study that we will take these reading up as a daily devotional. All are also invited to join the community of the Holy Trinity in their evening prayer service at 7pm before the Bible study.
There will be no Sunday evening service on Sunday, November 26th. Most of us will still be out of town. Enjoy the holiday!
December 24 and 25: We will join Immanuel Lutheran Church for its services. On Christmas Eve there is a 6pm service. On Christmas Day the service is at 10am.
Do not forget to change your clocks this Saturday evening! Spring forward...fall back! Set your clocks one hour earlier when you go to bed!
Spiritual Direction: We would like to remind anyone who is interested that Larry Kamphausen is available for Spiritual Direction. If you are curious about possible resources or would like Larry to be your director, please contact one of the pastoral team.
Seabury Western Theological Seminary, the local Episcopal seminary, has invited us to write an article for their winter newsletter, Seabury Crossroads. This is a greatopportunity for us. The deadline is November 15th. Tripp and Larry will write the article, but if there is anything that you would like to share, please contact them.
Finally, in Advent you will notice one or two liturgical changes. Please keep your eyes peeled and your hearts opened to these changes. Let us know what you think about them. We will try the changes through the Advent season and then decide if we want to keep them in our regular liturgy.
May God grant you Peace and All Good Things this day,
Tripp Hudgins
Friday, October 20
Almost Weekly Update
Let the person who cannot be alone beware of community.
Let the person who is not in community beware of being alone.
from Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoffer
Let the person who is not in community beware of being alone.
from Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoffer
Our weekly Bible study and reflection on the Rule of St. Benedict has proven to be quite fruitful. We have wrestled with the difficult nature of the Book of Acts, the seemingly random violence and the innate chaos of the Church at its inception. And we have questioned and pondered the Rule of St. Benedict. In the end, it appears that we find ourselves wondering where community resides now. Where can we find one another and Christian life together in the same place? Where is discipline. In short, as a friend recently said to me, we wonder to ourselves, "Where is the church?"Brother Roger of Taize said "For a life to be beautiful, extraordinary abilities or great expertise are not required. There is happiness in the humble giving of oneself." Perhaps this is the beginning...or continuation...of our search. Perhaps this is where we may begin to find the Church in the world and one another as brothers and sisters of the Risen Lord. It is surely only the beginning, but, O, what a beginning!
____________________________________________________
Announcements:
Our Bible study continues this coming Tuesday! Come one. Come all. We will be working through Acts and reading the Rule of Saint Benedict using a book that has daily readings from the rule with a brief reflection by Joan Chittister. Our hope is that in the 14 weeks of the bible Study that we will take these reading up as a daily devotional. All are also invited to join the community of the Holy Trinity in their evening prayer service at 7pm before the Bible study.
Believe it or not, the holiday season is approaching. As you all find out, please let the pastoral team know if you will be in town over Thanksgiving and Christmas. We are making plans with Immanuel about shared worship once again and we want to know your availability so we may make appropriate plans.
Spiritual Direction: We would like to remind anyone who is interested that Larry Kamphausen is available for Spiritual Direction. If you are curious about possible resources or would like Larry to be your director, please contact one of the pastoral team.
Peace and all Good Things,
Tripp Hudgins
The Pastoral Team
Wednesday, October 18
Fall Bible Study Reading Schedule
It was suggested last night that we post the Bible Studyon Acts and The Rule of Saint Benedict Reading schedule for Acts, so here it is:
September 19 Acts 1:1-26
September 26 Acts 2:1-5:42
October 3rd Acts 6:1-8:3
October 10 Acts 8:4-40
October 17 Acts 9:1-31
October 24 Acts 9:32-11:18
October 31 Acts 11:19-12:25
November 7 Acts 13-15:35
November 14 Acts 15:36-18:23
November 21 (Tuesday before Thanksgiving(?)
November 28 Acts 18:24-20:38
December 5 Acts 21-22:29
December 12 Acts 24-26:32
December 19 Acts 27:1-28:31
September 19 Acts 1:1-26
September 26 Acts 2:1-5:42
October 3rd Acts 6:1-8:3
October 10 Acts 8:4-40
October 17 Acts 9:1-31
October 24 Acts 9:32-11:18
October 31 Acts 11:19-12:25
November 7 Acts 13-15:35
November 14 Acts 15:36-18:23
November 21 (Tuesday before Thanksgiving(?)
November 28 Acts 18:24-20:38
December 5 Acts 21-22:29
December 12 Acts 24-26:32
December 19 Acts 27:1-28:31
Tuesday, October 17
Sermon: God Doesn't Want Our Money
Sermon: Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler
Proper 23 (28) Year B, 2006
Job 23:1-9, 16-17
Psalm 22:1-15
Hebrews 4:12-16
Mark 10:17-31
God Doesn't Want Our Money
One of the well-known interpretations of today's scripture passage usually relies upon the notion that the Needle's Eye was a passageway into Jerusalem. "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle…" We spoke of it in a Bible study at Community Church this past Tuesday. And I sat there and said, "You know, I have heard that too. That's one possible interpretation."
Now, however, I want to step back from that.
No archaeologist has been able to confirm such a gateway ever existed. And no scriptural interpreter has ever made that idea stick…well, that's not entirely true now is it? Suffice it to say that the idea is not consistent with the reaction of the disciples. Why were the disciples upset? Why would they say "But how is this possible?!" if all they need to do is unload a camel a little bit in order to get into the holy city of Jerusalem? That's not too hard now is it?
Unless of course there is no passage called "The Needle's Eye." Unless there is no simple unloading of a little extra from a camel's back. There is no easy way in…or out…of this quandary as the case may be.
This is one of those times when Jesus means a literal needle and a literal camel. Brothers and sisters…Jesus is suggesting that we all have to unload everything otherwise entering the Kingdom is impossible. Even our riches must be given up…given to the poor.
But I want to push things around a little today,
and say that God doesn't want our money.
A wealthy man walks up to Jesus and says, "You know. I am a pretty good guy. I follow the rules and pay my taxes. I don't speed. I keep my nose clean. I follow the commandments. What is next?"
We've heard the answer already this morning. We know where this goes. Jesus says, "That's all well and good, but there is one thing more that you must do. Give all your money, all your riches, to the poor...and follow me."
This is such a hard saying that someone seemingly willing to follow Jesus, someone upright and good and moral, turns around and walks away. He cannot even begin to do what Jesus asks.
What, specifically, is so hard about this? Why is it that the disciples, upon hearing this themselves say "Holy cow! You must be kidding, right?"
And if that were not enough, Jesus goes on. "Not only do you have to give up your riches, but your family...your friends, where you live...all of it…And follow me."
"With this the disciples were not comforted."
God does not want our money. No. God wants more than that.
10:20 He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these [commandments] since my youth."
10:21 Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."
In Matthew's telling of this story, the dialogue focuses upon what it takes to be perfect. "If you wish to be perfect…sell what you own." But in Mark's Gospel, there is something that the rich man lacks. The man is lacking. This is an interesting understanding of having too much. In this case, what the man possesses is symptomatic of a lacking of something else.
What if the man did not go away because he was upset about giving up his stuff? What if he really wanted to give it all up and follow an itinerant preacher around the countryside but his obligations to family and friendships, to business partners and property were all so great that he simply could not abandon ship and follow Jesus? I think that it is possible to read the scripture this way. His attachment is not about greed. No. It is about obligation and the burdens that we all bear…
the things that possess us, good or ill.
Whether he knew it or not, the rich man was being invited to let go of his burden…that thing that would keep him from God.
He lacked freedom.
Is it possible that our wealth, individual or shared, is a burden to us? Some of us have debts…and expectations, things we must have tremendous income in order to achieve…like a good education or topnotch medical care. Perhaps it is a nation's need for more and more resources to sustain its infrastructure. Maybe this is what we are being asked to give up, to change about our lives, and within ourselves.
I keep thinking of this in terms of the realigning of our social institutions that keep systems of "purchase power status" alive. No one escapes this system. The disciples recognize this, I think. And thus they proclaim the impossibility of it all.
And that is why we must pray for an act of God. But are we ready for that act of God to come through us?
God knows that we are stuck. God knows that we have an increasingly expensive educational system. Those of you who are sending your children to college know this. Those of us who will be paying college loans until we are in our fifties know this.
God also knows we have an increasingly burdensome health care system.
God knows about our dependence upon foreign oil…and everything else.
God knows about systems of wealth and poverty and how our political systems manage and manifest these economics.
God knows that wealth greases the wheels of the world. This is not some secret we keep from God.
But it is impossible. "Then who can be saved?" ask the disciples.
God does not want our money. As impossible as that is on its own, in some ways, that would be too easy. God wants our lives. So, those of you who thought you might escape this judgment earlier because you think you are not particularly wealthy are not off the hook. The same call rests upon all of us. No one escapes the difficulty of today's gospel lesson.
Your children are guests in your home.
Your parents belong to God.
Your spouse is not your own…but Christ's.
Your house is God's.
Your land is God's.
All you are and all you have is God's.
I met a pastor at Richmond Hill named Jim. He was angry at God.
He had recently discovered that his wife did not belong to him. Not in the classic sense of a man's property, but in the sense of vocation. Jim knew God had a plan for him, was leading him somewhere in particular…in this case, into a doctoral program. And the competing responsibilities of family and his vocation were an incredible burden.
But one day it occurred to him that God had such a call upon his wife as well. Perhaps it is easy to see for us, but in that moment Jim realized that his wife was God's first and foremost. That she was on loan to Jim…as a gift. And God had a plan for her life as well.
At first Jim was angry. He was afraid and could not trust God to care for his wife. But eventually Jim was glad…more grateful than he could express because this knowledge lifted a burden. God was taking care of his wife, his family.
But like the rich man, this does not mean that Jim can sit back and let God do whatever is necessary and neglect his marriage. No. Like the rich man, Jim must become an active part of God's work in the world. This is what it means to follow Jesus.
But can we see that this is very good news? By giving up all we are and all we have to God…God will return it one hundred fold.
To seek perfection (the idea from Matthew) is to overcome the inability to follow God completely - which is salvation – that thing the rich man is lacking.
Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun explains it in her book about the Benedictine Rule in this way:
"Be honest about what you are and you will come to know God." [The Rule] says, "If you recognize the presence of God in life, you will soon become more and more perfect." But this perfection is not the twentieth-century sense of impeccability. This perfection is in the Biblical sense of having matured, ripened, and become whole. (p. 74 The Rule of Benedict)
This is Matthews's perfection and it is Mark's salvation.
You see, salvation is a journey. But it is a no holds barred rigorous journey that demands humility, obedience to God's call to follow and compassion. In the end, it is only God that can save us. We cannot do it ourselves. And we are all in that same bind…some ready to hear and follow, and some not yet ready to let go of our burdens…to "let go and let God" as the saying goes.
And God does want to save us from our burdens…from the things that would keep us from following Christ. God wants to shoulder these burdens for us and to turn the world around.
Jesus, looking at [the man], loved him…
Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible,
but not for God; for God all things are possible."
God looks on us with love. God desires nothing else but our salvation. All the things that are burdensome in life…even our wealth, can be turned over to Christ. God is able to anything. And all things God does are for our benefit…to the end purpose of bringing about wholeness for all…to release us from our burdens.
God does not leave us comfortless...No. We have a hundredfold promise. But God does not leave us to our own comforts either.
Our actions, our goodness cannot save us. There is nothing that we have that can save us. Nothing that we have belongs to us...not our friend, or our family…not our wealth or our influence. It is God who will bring us to perfection. It is God who will work miracles with our hearts to open us up to the world so we too can give all we have like the disciples.
The passage is incredibly challenging. It is impolite. I find it frightening and even a little cruel.
It is, well, impossible.
Except through God, all things are possible...the care of our families and our obligations in a godly way, a generous way, a compassionate way that purposes who we are and what we have to the word of God's Kingdom in this world. This is possible. And we can have faith in this promise.
Just like God wanted to free Jim from the burden of his marriage and allow him to receive his marriage as a gift.
This is freedom.
But that freedom (of perfection...salvation) does not come without our willingness to turn all things over to God, to follow Christ by giving away our family, our friends, our worldly assurances and our riches. We do not sit and wait for God to do the impossible. An incarnational faith recognizes that we are instruments of this Godly desire.
In many ways we are already about this work. Through our ministries here we are engaged in this saving work…this ongoing perfecting of ourselves and the world.
We have the Social Justics committe, our Bible study, our invokvement with Sarah's Circle and finally our worship life together.
But all this, as great as it is, according to Mark this morning, is only the tip of the iceberg.
We are never done being saved…seeking perfection, or receiving what we lack from God. It is a journey after all.
The work of the Kingdom is an ever-present comfort and challenge.
God doesn't want our money. God wants our salvation.
May God bless us as we try to live into this hard word. May he return to us blessings one hundred fold. And may we find the freedom to follow Christ…this day and every day.
Amen.
Tuesday, October 10
Sermon Sunday October 8, Ordinary time Proper 22
Genesis 2:18-24
Psalm 8
Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-16
Our Gospel today is a difficult text. We are in the midst of passages from Mark that are among what are called the difficult sayings of Jesus. This Gospel along with the Hebrews and Genesis readings are the assigned for this Sunday by the Revised Common Lectionary that we follow. I was tempted to just preach on the very beautiful and mystical text in Hebrews But as your pastor and knowing that all of us are touched by divorce, some of us very personally, some of us as children of divorced parents and all of us have friends who are divorced, I could not in good conscience leave each of us all alone with our gospel today. I wish I could tell you that Jesus didn’t mean what he said, or that these aren’t the words of Jesus, or that this reflects Jesus’ culture. Yet none of those things are true. Jesus is clear, although the Law allows for a man to divorce his wife, this does not reflect God’s intention and denies the ultimate truth and reality of marriage, as given in the creation narrative in Genesis. Jesus goes beyond the Law directing us to God’s intention for marriage where there is no way to pull apart, to sever, the one flesh God creates in marriage. Therefore to divorce and remarry is adultery. I say this now at the top of my sermon because this is what we are going to struggle with in this sermon.
Also from the start I want to let you know that I am the oldest child of a second marriage. Facing the bluntness of Jesus’ words caused a mild crisis as I realized that on the face of it if my father had followed the ideal Jesus seems to set down in Mark, he should have never remarried. My mother should have never agreed to marry him and then my younger sister and I would never have been. Here is a mystery that is difficult for me to contemplate knowing also the continuing pain and chaos of my fathers divorce that simply is a reality that continues to bring an awkwardness to relationships that are complex and created out of a painful event. One of the most difficult things I had to face in my family therapy class in seminary was admitting that I have no idea what it is like to grow up in a family that is not wounded by the reality of divorce. My father’s first wife divorced him and married another man quickly there after, but my father and mother and my dad’s ex-wife and her new husband lived within blocks of each other in Glenview. So, I was born into a family of 5 older siblings though three were my half brother and sister’s stepsiblings. Because my half siblings and their step brothers and sisters were always over at our house I grew up with them as my family, until my parents decided to move to California for my dad to go to Seminary, and my dad’s ex-wife sued for complete custody of my brother an sister and suddenly at three I found I was briefly an only child until my sister was born two months latter and then I was the oldest. In a sense if my father had taken Jesus’ words at face value perhaps a little less pain in the world, but yet and here is the mystery also less joy, and clearly to me my parents have lived into the ideal of Christian marriage that Jesus points to in this passage. I do not know that I have answers but hopefully out of my experience and sitting together before this text we may gain some insight into the mystery of marriage.
As we begin to struggle with these words there are several things I wish you to keep in mind. First (And I owe this insight to my father) We need to hear Jesus’ words based on what we know to be the character of Jesus Christ: we know Jesus Christ acts and speaks out of the pure intention of love for humanity and individuals. We know of Jesus Christ is that his opinion is never a matter of simple rules or law, though he is also not a relativist. Jesus directs us to our being., he is concerned with true human being, a reconciled human being that lives according to our true humanity. Second since the fall there is only one true and perfect human being and that person was Jesus Christ, that person was never married, never had children and never had sexual relations. Third, We cannot understand these words isolated from other Scripture and the practice of the Church, so we will wander through the Gospel of Matthew and Paul’s letter to the Corinthians as well as Deuteronomy and Genesis, and listen to the teaching of the church. Lastly, there is grace, there is forgiveness, there is room for mistakes, but we must be careful how we apply this grace lest we end up with what Bonhoeffer calls cheap grace.
So how do you hear these words of Jesus? Do you hear condemnation? Do you hear strict law? Do you hear an impossible standard? Can you hear these words as loving words directing us to our true humanity and the true meaning of marriage and love? So some Pharisees, other rabbi’s quite close to Jesus theologically though also in constant debate with him, come to test him. I think in good Jewish fashion to test Jesus’ position and to debate a bit of Torah that as far as we can tell was hotly debated in Jesus’ time. This bit of Torah is Deuteronomy 24:1-4 (read) But they also phrase the debate in terms of the lawfulness of divorce, clearly the question was around what things allowed a man to divorce his wife, what was the meaning of “something objectionable”. Jesus as he usually does refuses to fall into the trap of the debate by asking an obvious question. “What does Moses say?” In asking this question though Jesus reveals the trap that the debate sets for all . As far as Jesus is concerned one is trapped in sin if you ask if divorce is allowed or “lawful”. So the Pharisees paraphrase Deuteronomy 24 1-4, Jesus answers, true but it is because of our hardness of heart that the Law allows for divorce. This is a shocker, isn’t the Law supposed to be harsh and unbending but no the law in this instance according to Jesus is accommodating to human weakness. Jesus though wants to talk about marriage not divorce. So he says the Torah in Genesis is clear, the answer to your question is and was from the beginning when God created Adam and Eve. Jesus says (read Mark 10:6b-8a) Jesus quotes Genesis1: 27 and 2:24. You can see Jesus brushing his hands together and saying and that is that, once you have married you are one with your wife (or husband) and this unity is created by God, so what God had Joined together let no one separate. There is your answer about the legality of divorce, it’s not law but human being, and ontology. The question you should be asking is God’s intention for marriage and what it means for you to be human. This intention has been known from the beginning of creation it’s about what God does in marriage in creating an intimate coequal and mutually supportive union. This is sacred, a sacrament even this question should not even be on your lips. Marriage is not a piece of paper a mere social contract, rather true marriage reveals for us something of who we are as human beings.
Apparently though the disciples are still a bit confused, so they say to Jesus when they are alone with him “So about that question what do you mean?” Jesus then answers with what I think are the really difficult words: (Read mark 10:111-12) Remarriage is out it seems, If one divorces one cannot remarry without sinning. The bond of marriage remains even with a certificate of divorce allowed by the Law. We should also not overlook that Jesus shows that he sees both men and women equally responsible for a marriage and what happens in its dissolution. Jesus in going back behind the Law does not see as Deuteronomy does as the man as being the sole or primary actor.
Is this all? No there are still three things we need to consider: Matthew has a slightly different take on Jesus teaching on marriage and divorce, then we need to consider Paul’s interpretation and application of Jesus’ teaching and lastly we need to understand the Church’s practice surrounding divorce and remarriage.
Matthew 19:1-12 recounts the same or similar interchange. The disciples are aghast at Jesus’ equation of remarriage after divorce with adultery. They say “Well then it is better not to marry!”, to which Jesus using the hyperbole of the image of a eunuch says you are right an appropriate response is to be celibate for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Another interesting aspect of Mathew’s account is that Jesus mentions an exception, around the issue of “un-chastity” which softens slightly Jesus’ strong statement on divorce. The problem is that scholars are not in agreement about what un-chastity (porneia in the greet, the word from which we get our word pornography) means. However this is interpreted two things come from this passage: 1) Jesus seems to connect marriage and celibacy as means of proclaiming the Kingdom of God and 2) there is an exception clause in Matthew’s version, though it seems to be a somewhat unhelpful one since it is not clarified by Jesus. There is much debate around these two divergences in Matthews’s version of Jesus’ teaching on divorce from Marks. The debate is as useless as the debate over the lawfulness of divorce, as it misses the point. For the disciples still get the point Jesus is saying that under most if not all circumstances it is not God’s ultimate intention and design for marriage to end and remarriage then is not an option for those who seek to live into God’s intention for our human being. However Matthews’s version leads us into the teaching and practice of the church and Paul’s application of Jesus teaching.
In what I say below I am indebted lay orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov’s book The Sacrament of Love and an Orthodox priest Father Zion’s book Eros and Transformation Evdokimov insists that what we find in Jesus’ teaching on marriage in these passages directs us to see an asceticism, that is a discipline in the marriage bond equal to and of the same type as the asceticism of the monk or nun. The point after all of Christian asceticism is not the denial of the human but the opening ourselves to the truly human. Evdokimov then sees two paths available to the Christian sexuality expressed in celibacy, institutionalized in monasticism and sexuality expressed in the loving permanent relationship of a husband and wife expressed in the sacrament of marriage. If Jesus is insistent on the permanence of marriage it is because of what it means for our salvation because of what it means for our human being. Jesus directs us to the creation narrative and removes the question from what is allowed and places marriage in that which is greater then the Law Jesus Christ himself and the eschatological fulfillment and recapitulation of all things in the fullness of the Kingdom of God. Jesus is so serious about divorce and remarriage because these disorders in our world threaten who we truly are as humans in Christ Jesus, as the new creation, as the Church which is already a foretaste of the kingdom of God.
Jesus by going back to Genesis and highlighting the one flesh and that a man should cling to his wife shows that the foundation of marriage as with all things is Love. Eros is salvific and proclaims the Kingdom of God when taken in the right context, in the permanence of the sacrament of marriage. That is that the love of a married couple is both a manifestation of the Kingdom of God when properly understood and is a grace of God, a gift. Thus marriage is then given within the context of the Gospel, it is to be entered into with the seriousness of the monk or nun or hermit, with the same desire to live a life disciplined by the Gospel and God’s kingdom to show forth God’s love in the world and thus find ourselves and those around us the transformed by the Kingdom of God.
Then what of our failures? What then of the failures we all know too well, perhaps even our own failures. What of for example the failure and success of my father in marriage? There is now no condemnation in Christ Jesus! Unlike many of those who claim to speak for Christ, Jesus does not strike out against those who have sinned. When Jesus meets the woman at the well he does not bring judgment of the society into his encounter. He speaks to her a Samaritan and she was not only married and divorce 4 times but currently she was living with a man to whom she was not married! Jesus doesn’t shun her, Jesus doesn’t say what are you thinking but he does call her to repentance to admit her failings. Jesus call’s her to a new. This is the point of grace to love us into true life, to love us back into who we are to be as human beings, as God intended and as God is recreating us to be in Jesus Christ.
Then a more serious event in which people try to trap Jesus, they have caught a woman who was committing adultery and they bring her to Jesus and say see look what she has done, you know the Law, she is to be stoned to death. Jesus looks around and throws the ball back in their court. “Oh really… well then you who are without sin throw the first stone.” and one by one they all drop their rocks and walk away leaving Jesus alone with the woman. Jesus tenderly takes the woman by the hand and says to her, “My daughter were are your accusers does no one condemn you, then neither do I” and then adds the key to grace that is never cheap, go and sin no more. There is always forgiveness, which also always already entails the call to leave aside our sin.
But in all of this we must keep in mind what Hebrews emphasizes and is found elsewhere in the new the New Testament Jesus Christ is the only perfect human. Jesus Christ not only took on our sins on the cross but in Jesus Christ God has become one with us and our humanity. Jesus is all we are to be as human beings, and he did so as one who was never married never had sex, as a celibate person he shows us our true humanity. This should be freeing to us in so many ways, living in a culture that makes out the romantic, marriage and sex as the be all and end all, the place of our ultimate fulfillment.
We have this very strong saying, emphasizing thatmarriage is supposed to be permanent the making one of man and woman, in a loving mutual relationship. Because of this is God’s intent Jesus says, to remarry after divorce is adultery. Yet we also find that Jesus does not condemn Jesus invites us to new life even after our mistakes. Did my father sin and still find grace, or is there something to Matthew’s version, that Mark in overlooks in lifting up the ideal. Is there something to the break down of some marriages.?
While most early church theologians on this subject simply reiterate Jesus’ teaching, starting with St Basil in the 4th century we begin to see making of allowance for divorce and remarriage in certain cases. This making allowance was based on interpreting Jesus exception clause. In the churches of the eastern Mediterranean the practice that began to emerge was that a second marriage was sometimes allowable especially in cases of adultery, a third marriage was allowable in but only after one had done penance, essentially admitting that the divorce and remarriage was wrong but also allowing for the mistake, and completely disallowed a fourth marriage after another. In the western Mediterranean under the influence of the church at Rome, a stricter line was held but developed a legal notion of annulment in which a marriage was declared invalid, or a non-marriage, thus divorce and remarriage was not permitted in church following Jesus’ teaching but there was an admission that some marriage’s aren’t marriages in the sense Jesus describes. Paul’s discourse on marriage and divorce to the Corinthians (7:10-16) in this passage Paul draws from the words of Jesus that are recorded in Mark 10 and Mathew 19, in which divorce is not allowed and if divorce occurs the parties are not to remarry. Paul like Matthew also has an exception that is often referred to as the Pauline privilege. Paul says that if one has an unbelieving spouse and that spouse wishes a divorce The Christian spouse is to allow it, and then Christian is then no longer bound. Evdokimov sees in this passage an expansion and interpretation of Matthew “except for un-chastity”, his connection is around the notions discord and peace in marriage. Because he sees in the Genesis account and also in his understanding of the Gospel the centrality of God’s being as love, the issue for him is whether there is that love andconcord that is ultimately redemptive in the marriage discipline of permanence allowing for the grace of one flesh. What is occurring here according to Evodokimov is that Paul is recognizing the end of the concord and peace necessary for there to be one flesh. The Christian in the case Paul puts forward is no longer bound because there is no longer the bond of one flesh. Evodokimov interprets the practice of annulment and the allowance of some divorce and remarriage in the eastern churches as a recognition that while it is true that what God binds together in one flesh is not to be broken there are circumstance where in this time, when the old world is still passing away and the fullness of the Kingdom is yet to come, when we find that certain cases either the bond of one flesh has died, or simply was never in there to begin with. The practice of the church both eastern and western shows us that the purpose of marriage is this bond of love, this one flesh, the mutual companionship, this grace of love in the presence of God of two, man and woman, being made one flesh. Yet, not all marriages are in fact true marriages or sometimes tragically what was once a true living and life giving marriage ceases to be, two instances of this would be adultery (and the adulterous spouse remaining unrepentant) and a non-Christian spouse deciding that the discord between the Christian spouse and the non-Christian spouse was too great and divorcing the Christian.
What then does all these interwoven New Testament texts and the practice and teaching of the Church on mutuality and companionship in marriage as God makes the married couple one flesh have to say to us as followers of Christ? In conclusion let me suggest what these things might be saying to us in our various states. So, you are single, yet to be married Jesus’ teaching should present you some question. What is in fact your calling? What are you seeking in marriage? do you see it as a discipline akin to being a Monk or nun? Do you begin understand what it means to be joined to another in one flesh. I scarcely fully understand it. Love, the love of God, the love of others the love of a husband or wife is all serious business, it is about who we are to be, but marriage is not the only way to be human, some are called to be eunuchs for the Kingdom, and Paul (perhaps a bit harshly but all the same still speaking the truth and the word of God), admonishes us in 1 Corinthians to consider that the better path for some of us is the single celibate life, not easy or easier but for some that is perhaps the better way to give witness to Christ. Yet at the same time Evodkimov reminds us lest we elevate the monk and nun that Jesus Christ came to redeem and renew all creation, and Jesus shows that marriage is part of Creation and thus also a way to live into and proclaim the Kingdom of God. There is then both warning and invitation to those of us who are single and yet to be married: marriage is a great mystery a beautiful and lovely thing, but should not be entered lightly. We should never see marriage as our only way to be as Christians, which really is the greater danger in Protestant circles, few of us are in danger of elevating the celibate, rather we have trouble believing Paul that such a life might be preferable.
To the married this says, seek the betterment of the other. Seek God together. Remember you have entered into a permanent relationship. There is no out if your marriage is a true marriage of love companionship and mutuality. God has and is binding you together as one, devote yourself to each other in seeking to proclaim and witness in your relationship the love of God and the Gospel. It may be difficult but this is asceticism no less demanding than that of monk or Nun. And if you stick with it if you allow the grace given to you in the sacrament of marriage to penetrate each one of you, you will enter the great mystery of the incarnation and of our salvation. By your very relationship you will proclaim the Gospel showing the world the relationship of Christ with the new humanity, the Church. Yet if you are married and there is such discord or if there is abuse, a violation of mutuality companionship and love, Scripture and the practice of the church through the centuries suggests that you are not bound to stay, sometimes in extreme circumstances we find that marriages die or never existed in the first place. In circumstances where there is the opposite of one flesh, a deep opposition in a partner to the grace of God which makes one out of two, you are not bound, you are free- there is grace.
For the divorced, you are left to struggle with Jesus’ words, there is no easy way forward for you. But if you take the wisdom of the Church, you are not alone, and the Church in her wisdom has said and says, with Christ after sending all away who would condemn because only one is without sin the perfect human, Jesus Christ, I do not condemn you go and sin no more. This probably means some deep and difficult self-examination, what was your part in the death of you marriage. But also, if you divorced to get away from one who was emotionally or physically abusive, you were no longer in a true marriage, and your only mistake might have been not seeing from the start the inability of your spouse to enter into a true marriage relationship. If this is so, then that this discord existed was indicative of one of two things either there was no marriage, or what was begun in God’s grace was stillborn. Both are to be mourned, but there is freedom to move forward, to say good buy, There might even be the freedom to marry again without sin. However, what ever the exact circumstance of your divorce, know that Christ stands before you saying I do not condemn you go and sin no more.
In whatever state you find yourself, Jesus’ words call us I believe into community into the community of his Son Jesus Christ. Marriage and singleness and permanent celibacy are matters of the Kingdom of God, they are not only our private affairs, and things merely for our individual fulfillment, rather they are grand mysteries, and should be treated with care. Marriage if it is true and good is a means of grace where God reveals our true humanity bring together male and female. However, marriage is not everyone’s call, you do not become a true human being once you are married. Because the perfect human the representative of al humanity, Jesus Christ, was never married. What we are called to always is discernment. I urge us then to seek discernment together. I urge you to allow the church to walk with you in your struggles, in your questions, in your call as married, single (temporary or permanently) or divorced persons. And if divorced don’t’ attempt to stand-alone and sort out the meaning of what has happened or how to move on. Jesus’ words and the practice of the church demand that in the very least you seek out the wisdom of other believers and your pastors. I encourage you to speak to Tripp or I, not that we can tell you what you should do, but we may be able to help you walk through the difficult and painful process of sorting through what happened and then help discern what God calls you to do in moving on. We are also to remember Paul’s advice that there is the strong possibility that the best way to move forward is to remain as you are now. That is the possibility for all of us. It is certainly the ideal for those of us who have already entered into marriage.
We are called to live according our true humanity, which is Christ. Our hope is in this that Jesus Christ is the perfect human and that if we are incorporated into Christ through faith and baptism we have a new life. This life is both the return and the fulfillment of the life God intended for us before the fall. Yet we are still in that time between the renewal of all things in the new heaven and the new earth and the passing way of the old cosmos dominated by sin and death. We will fall, and when we do we are called to repent and move forward. We are called to seek God. Remember there is grace but there will always be the question of discerning how to move on from our failures, and we can only do that in the company of the church. Jesus Christ reminds us there are some mistakes that have permanent consequences, that are not easily erased. Grace and forgiveness do not means living as if there was no mistake no hurt, but living into the ideals of our faith even when there is failure. Go and sin no more. In those words and there is a call to the community in Chris. Know you are not alone, know there is no condemnation, know there is a call to perfection, know that this is not law, but our true humanity, Jesus Christ.
Psalm 8
Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-16
Our Gospel today is a difficult text. We are in the midst of passages from Mark that are among what are called the difficult sayings of Jesus. This Gospel along with the Hebrews and Genesis readings are the assigned for this Sunday by the Revised Common Lectionary that we follow. I was tempted to just preach on the very beautiful and mystical text in Hebrews But as your pastor and knowing that all of us are touched by divorce, some of us very personally, some of us as children of divorced parents and all of us have friends who are divorced, I could not in good conscience leave each of us all alone with our gospel today. I wish I could tell you that Jesus didn’t mean what he said, or that these aren’t the words of Jesus, or that this reflects Jesus’ culture. Yet none of those things are true. Jesus is clear, although the Law allows for a man to divorce his wife, this does not reflect God’s intention and denies the ultimate truth and reality of marriage, as given in the creation narrative in Genesis. Jesus goes beyond the Law directing us to God’s intention for marriage where there is no way to pull apart, to sever, the one flesh God creates in marriage. Therefore to divorce and remarry is adultery. I say this now at the top of my sermon because this is what we are going to struggle with in this sermon.
Also from the start I want to let you know that I am the oldest child of a second marriage. Facing the bluntness of Jesus’ words caused a mild crisis as I realized that on the face of it if my father had followed the ideal Jesus seems to set down in Mark, he should have never remarried. My mother should have never agreed to marry him and then my younger sister and I would never have been. Here is a mystery that is difficult for me to contemplate knowing also the continuing pain and chaos of my fathers divorce that simply is a reality that continues to bring an awkwardness to relationships that are complex and created out of a painful event. One of the most difficult things I had to face in my family therapy class in seminary was admitting that I have no idea what it is like to grow up in a family that is not wounded by the reality of divorce. My father’s first wife divorced him and married another man quickly there after, but my father and mother and my dad’s ex-wife and her new husband lived within blocks of each other in Glenview. So, I was born into a family of 5 older siblings though three were my half brother and sister’s stepsiblings. Because my half siblings and their step brothers and sisters were always over at our house I grew up with them as my family, until my parents decided to move to California for my dad to go to Seminary, and my dad’s ex-wife sued for complete custody of my brother an sister and suddenly at three I found I was briefly an only child until my sister was born two months latter and then I was the oldest. In a sense if my father had taken Jesus’ words at face value perhaps a little less pain in the world, but yet and here is the mystery also less joy, and clearly to me my parents have lived into the ideal of Christian marriage that Jesus points to in this passage. I do not know that I have answers but hopefully out of my experience and sitting together before this text we may gain some insight into the mystery of marriage.
As we begin to struggle with these words there are several things I wish you to keep in mind. First (And I owe this insight to my father) We need to hear Jesus’ words based on what we know to be the character of Jesus Christ: we know Jesus Christ acts and speaks out of the pure intention of love for humanity and individuals. We know of Jesus Christ is that his opinion is never a matter of simple rules or law, though he is also not a relativist. Jesus directs us to our being., he is concerned with true human being, a reconciled human being that lives according to our true humanity. Second since the fall there is only one true and perfect human being and that person was Jesus Christ, that person was never married, never had children and never had sexual relations. Third, We cannot understand these words isolated from other Scripture and the practice of the Church, so we will wander through the Gospel of Matthew and Paul’s letter to the Corinthians as well as Deuteronomy and Genesis, and listen to the teaching of the church. Lastly, there is grace, there is forgiveness, there is room for mistakes, but we must be careful how we apply this grace lest we end up with what Bonhoeffer calls cheap grace.
So how do you hear these words of Jesus? Do you hear condemnation? Do you hear strict law? Do you hear an impossible standard? Can you hear these words as loving words directing us to our true humanity and the true meaning of marriage and love? So some Pharisees, other rabbi’s quite close to Jesus theologically though also in constant debate with him, come to test him. I think in good Jewish fashion to test Jesus’ position and to debate a bit of Torah that as far as we can tell was hotly debated in Jesus’ time. This bit of Torah is Deuteronomy 24:1-4 (read) But they also phrase the debate in terms of the lawfulness of divorce, clearly the question was around what things allowed a man to divorce his wife, what was the meaning of “something objectionable”. Jesus as he usually does refuses to fall into the trap of the debate by asking an obvious question. “What does Moses say?” In asking this question though Jesus reveals the trap that the debate sets for all . As far as Jesus is concerned one is trapped in sin if you ask if divorce is allowed or “lawful”. So the Pharisees paraphrase Deuteronomy 24 1-4, Jesus answers, true but it is because of our hardness of heart that the Law allows for divorce. This is a shocker, isn’t the Law supposed to be harsh and unbending but no the law in this instance according to Jesus is accommodating to human weakness. Jesus though wants to talk about marriage not divorce. So he says the Torah in Genesis is clear, the answer to your question is and was from the beginning when God created Adam and Eve. Jesus says (read Mark 10:6b-8a) Jesus quotes Genesis1: 27 and 2:24. You can see Jesus brushing his hands together and saying and that is that, once you have married you are one with your wife (or husband) and this unity is created by God, so what God had Joined together let no one separate. There is your answer about the legality of divorce, it’s not law but human being, and ontology. The question you should be asking is God’s intention for marriage and what it means for you to be human. This intention has been known from the beginning of creation it’s about what God does in marriage in creating an intimate coequal and mutually supportive union. This is sacred, a sacrament even this question should not even be on your lips. Marriage is not a piece of paper a mere social contract, rather true marriage reveals for us something of who we are as human beings.
Apparently though the disciples are still a bit confused, so they say to Jesus when they are alone with him “So about that question what do you mean?” Jesus then answers with what I think are the really difficult words: (Read mark 10:111-12) Remarriage is out it seems, If one divorces one cannot remarry without sinning. The bond of marriage remains even with a certificate of divorce allowed by the Law. We should also not overlook that Jesus shows that he sees both men and women equally responsible for a marriage and what happens in its dissolution. Jesus in going back behind the Law does not see as Deuteronomy does as the man as being the sole or primary actor.
Is this all? No there are still three things we need to consider: Matthew has a slightly different take on Jesus teaching on marriage and divorce, then we need to consider Paul’s interpretation and application of Jesus’ teaching and lastly we need to understand the Church’s practice surrounding divorce and remarriage.
Matthew 19:1-12 recounts the same or similar interchange. The disciples are aghast at Jesus’ equation of remarriage after divorce with adultery. They say “Well then it is better not to marry!”, to which Jesus using the hyperbole of the image of a eunuch says you are right an appropriate response is to be celibate for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Another interesting aspect of Mathew’s account is that Jesus mentions an exception, around the issue of “un-chastity” which softens slightly Jesus’ strong statement on divorce. The problem is that scholars are not in agreement about what un-chastity (porneia in the greet, the word from which we get our word pornography) means. However this is interpreted two things come from this passage: 1) Jesus seems to connect marriage and celibacy as means of proclaiming the Kingdom of God and 2) there is an exception clause in Matthew’s version, though it seems to be a somewhat unhelpful one since it is not clarified by Jesus. There is much debate around these two divergences in Matthews’s version of Jesus’ teaching on divorce from Marks. The debate is as useless as the debate over the lawfulness of divorce, as it misses the point. For the disciples still get the point Jesus is saying that under most if not all circumstances it is not God’s ultimate intention and design for marriage to end and remarriage then is not an option for those who seek to live into God’s intention for our human being. However Matthews’s version leads us into the teaching and practice of the church and Paul’s application of Jesus teaching.
In what I say below I am indebted lay orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov’s book The Sacrament of Love and an Orthodox priest Father Zion’s book Eros and Transformation Evdokimov insists that what we find in Jesus’ teaching on marriage in these passages directs us to see an asceticism, that is a discipline in the marriage bond equal to and of the same type as the asceticism of the monk or nun. The point after all of Christian asceticism is not the denial of the human but the opening ourselves to the truly human. Evdokimov then sees two paths available to the Christian sexuality expressed in celibacy, institutionalized in monasticism and sexuality expressed in the loving permanent relationship of a husband and wife expressed in the sacrament of marriage. If Jesus is insistent on the permanence of marriage it is because of what it means for our salvation because of what it means for our human being. Jesus directs us to the creation narrative and removes the question from what is allowed and places marriage in that which is greater then the Law Jesus Christ himself and the eschatological fulfillment and recapitulation of all things in the fullness of the Kingdom of God. Jesus is so serious about divorce and remarriage because these disorders in our world threaten who we truly are as humans in Christ Jesus, as the new creation, as the Church which is already a foretaste of the kingdom of God.
Jesus by going back to Genesis and highlighting the one flesh and that a man should cling to his wife shows that the foundation of marriage as with all things is Love. Eros is salvific and proclaims the Kingdom of God when taken in the right context, in the permanence of the sacrament of marriage. That is that the love of a married couple is both a manifestation of the Kingdom of God when properly understood and is a grace of God, a gift. Thus marriage is then given within the context of the Gospel, it is to be entered into with the seriousness of the monk or nun or hermit, with the same desire to live a life disciplined by the Gospel and God’s kingdom to show forth God’s love in the world and thus find ourselves and those around us the transformed by the Kingdom of God.
Then what of our failures? What then of the failures we all know too well, perhaps even our own failures. What of for example the failure and success of my father in marriage? There is now no condemnation in Christ Jesus! Unlike many of those who claim to speak for Christ, Jesus does not strike out against those who have sinned. When Jesus meets the woman at the well he does not bring judgment of the society into his encounter. He speaks to her a Samaritan and she was not only married and divorce 4 times but currently she was living with a man to whom she was not married! Jesus doesn’t shun her, Jesus doesn’t say what are you thinking but he does call her to repentance to admit her failings. Jesus call’s her to a new. This is the point of grace to love us into true life, to love us back into who we are to be as human beings, as God intended and as God is recreating us to be in Jesus Christ.
Then a more serious event in which people try to trap Jesus, they have caught a woman who was committing adultery and they bring her to Jesus and say see look what she has done, you know the Law, she is to be stoned to death. Jesus looks around and throws the ball back in their court. “Oh really… well then you who are without sin throw the first stone.” and one by one they all drop their rocks and walk away leaving Jesus alone with the woman. Jesus tenderly takes the woman by the hand and says to her, “My daughter were are your accusers does no one condemn you, then neither do I” and then adds the key to grace that is never cheap, go and sin no more. There is always forgiveness, which also always already entails the call to leave aside our sin.
But in all of this we must keep in mind what Hebrews emphasizes and is found elsewhere in the new the New Testament Jesus Christ is the only perfect human. Jesus Christ not only took on our sins on the cross but in Jesus Christ God has become one with us and our humanity. Jesus is all we are to be as human beings, and he did so as one who was never married never had sex, as a celibate person he shows us our true humanity. This should be freeing to us in so many ways, living in a culture that makes out the romantic, marriage and sex as the be all and end all, the place of our ultimate fulfillment.
We have this very strong saying, emphasizing thatmarriage is supposed to be permanent the making one of man and woman, in a loving mutual relationship. Because of this is God’s intent Jesus says, to remarry after divorce is adultery. Yet we also find that Jesus does not condemn Jesus invites us to new life even after our mistakes. Did my father sin and still find grace, or is there something to Matthew’s version, that Mark in overlooks in lifting up the ideal. Is there something to the break down of some marriages.?
While most early church theologians on this subject simply reiterate Jesus’ teaching, starting with St Basil in the 4th century we begin to see making of allowance for divorce and remarriage in certain cases. This making allowance was based on interpreting Jesus exception clause. In the churches of the eastern Mediterranean the practice that began to emerge was that a second marriage was sometimes allowable especially in cases of adultery, a third marriage was allowable in but only after one had done penance, essentially admitting that the divorce and remarriage was wrong but also allowing for the mistake, and completely disallowed a fourth marriage after another. In the western Mediterranean under the influence of the church at Rome, a stricter line was held but developed a legal notion of annulment in which a marriage was declared invalid, or a non-marriage, thus divorce and remarriage was not permitted in church following Jesus’ teaching but there was an admission that some marriage’s aren’t marriages in the sense Jesus describes. Paul’s discourse on marriage and divorce to the Corinthians (7:10-16) in this passage Paul draws from the words of Jesus that are recorded in Mark 10 and Mathew 19, in which divorce is not allowed and if divorce occurs the parties are not to remarry. Paul like Matthew also has an exception that is often referred to as the Pauline privilege. Paul says that if one has an unbelieving spouse and that spouse wishes a divorce The Christian spouse is to allow it, and then Christian is then no longer bound. Evdokimov sees in this passage an expansion and interpretation of Matthew “except for un-chastity”, his connection is around the notions discord and peace in marriage. Because he sees in the Genesis account and also in his understanding of the Gospel the centrality of God’s being as love, the issue for him is whether there is that love andconcord that is ultimately redemptive in the marriage discipline of permanence allowing for the grace of one flesh. What is occurring here according to Evodokimov is that Paul is recognizing the end of the concord and peace necessary for there to be one flesh. The Christian in the case Paul puts forward is no longer bound because there is no longer the bond of one flesh. Evodokimov interprets the practice of annulment and the allowance of some divorce and remarriage in the eastern churches as a recognition that while it is true that what God binds together in one flesh is not to be broken there are circumstance where in this time, when the old world is still passing away and the fullness of the Kingdom is yet to come, when we find that certain cases either the bond of one flesh has died, or simply was never in there to begin with. The practice of the church both eastern and western shows us that the purpose of marriage is this bond of love, this one flesh, the mutual companionship, this grace of love in the presence of God of two, man and woman, being made one flesh. Yet, not all marriages are in fact true marriages or sometimes tragically what was once a true living and life giving marriage ceases to be, two instances of this would be adultery (and the adulterous spouse remaining unrepentant) and a non-Christian spouse deciding that the discord between the Christian spouse and the non-Christian spouse was too great and divorcing the Christian.
What then does all these interwoven New Testament texts and the practice and teaching of the Church on mutuality and companionship in marriage as God makes the married couple one flesh have to say to us as followers of Christ? In conclusion let me suggest what these things might be saying to us in our various states. So, you are single, yet to be married Jesus’ teaching should present you some question. What is in fact your calling? What are you seeking in marriage? do you see it as a discipline akin to being a Monk or nun? Do you begin understand what it means to be joined to another in one flesh. I scarcely fully understand it. Love, the love of God, the love of others the love of a husband or wife is all serious business, it is about who we are to be, but marriage is not the only way to be human, some are called to be eunuchs for the Kingdom, and Paul (perhaps a bit harshly but all the same still speaking the truth and the word of God), admonishes us in 1 Corinthians to consider that the better path for some of us is the single celibate life, not easy or easier but for some that is perhaps the better way to give witness to Christ. Yet at the same time Evodkimov reminds us lest we elevate the monk and nun that Jesus Christ came to redeem and renew all creation, and Jesus shows that marriage is part of Creation and thus also a way to live into and proclaim the Kingdom of God. There is then both warning and invitation to those of us who are single and yet to be married: marriage is a great mystery a beautiful and lovely thing, but should not be entered lightly. We should never see marriage as our only way to be as Christians, which really is the greater danger in Protestant circles, few of us are in danger of elevating the celibate, rather we have trouble believing Paul that such a life might be preferable.
To the married this says, seek the betterment of the other. Seek God together. Remember you have entered into a permanent relationship. There is no out if your marriage is a true marriage of love companionship and mutuality. God has and is binding you together as one, devote yourself to each other in seeking to proclaim and witness in your relationship the love of God and the Gospel. It may be difficult but this is asceticism no less demanding than that of monk or Nun. And if you stick with it if you allow the grace given to you in the sacrament of marriage to penetrate each one of you, you will enter the great mystery of the incarnation and of our salvation. By your very relationship you will proclaim the Gospel showing the world the relationship of Christ with the new humanity, the Church. Yet if you are married and there is such discord or if there is abuse, a violation of mutuality companionship and love, Scripture and the practice of the church through the centuries suggests that you are not bound to stay, sometimes in extreme circumstances we find that marriages die or never existed in the first place. In circumstances where there is the opposite of one flesh, a deep opposition in a partner to the grace of God which makes one out of two, you are not bound, you are free- there is grace.
For the divorced, you are left to struggle with Jesus’ words, there is no easy way forward for you. But if you take the wisdom of the Church, you are not alone, and the Church in her wisdom has said and says, with Christ after sending all away who would condemn because only one is without sin the perfect human, Jesus Christ, I do not condemn you go and sin no more. This probably means some deep and difficult self-examination, what was your part in the death of you marriage. But also, if you divorced to get away from one who was emotionally or physically abusive, you were no longer in a true marriage, and your only mistake might have been not seeing from the start the inability of your spouse to enter into a true marriage relationship. If this is so, then that this discord existed was indicative of one of two things either there was no marriage, or what was begun in God’s grace was stillborn. Both are to be mourned, but there is freedom to move forward, to say good buy, There might even be the freedom to marry again without sin. However, what ever the exact circumstance of your divorce, know that Christ stands before you saying I do not condemn you go and sin no more.
In whatever state you find yourself, Jesus’ words call us I believe into community into the community of his Son Jesus Christ. Marriage and singleness and permanent celibacy are matters of the Kingdom of God, they are not only our private affairs, and things merely for our individual fulfillment, rather they are grand mysteries, and should be treated with care. Marriage if it is true and good is a means of grace where God reveals our true humanity bring together male and female. However, marriage is not everyone’s call, you do not become a true human being once you are married. Because the perfect human the representative of al humanity, Jesus Christ, was never married. What we are called to always is discernment. I urge us then to seek discernment together. I urge you to allow the church to walk with you in your struggles, in your questions, in your call as married, single (temporary or permanently) or divorced persons. And if divorced don’t’ attempt to stand-alone and sort out the meaning of what has happened or how to move on. Jesus’ words and the practice of the church demand that in the very least you seek out the wisdom of other believers and your pastors. I encourage you to speak to Tripp or I, not that we can tell you what you should do, but we may be able to help you walk through the difficult and painful process of sorting through what happened and then help discern what God calls you to do in moving on. We are also to remember Paul’s advice that there is the strong possibility that the best way to move forward is to remain as you are now. That is the possibility for all of us. It is certainly the ideal for those of us who have already entered into marriage.
We are called to live according our true humanity, which is Christ. Our hope is in this that Jesus Christ is the perfect human and that if we are incorporated into Christ through faith and baptism we have a new life. This life is both the return and the fulfillment of the life God intended for us before the fall. Yet we are still in that time between the renewal of all things in the new heaven and the new earth and the passing way of the old cosmos dominated by sin and death. We will fall, and when we do we are called to repent and move forward. We are called to seek God. Remember there is grace but there will always be the question of discerning how to move on from our failures, and we can only do that in the company of the church. Jesus Christ reminds us there are some mistakes that have permanent consequences, that are not easily erased. Grace and forgiveness do not means living as if there was no mistake no hurt, but living into the ideals of our faith even when there is failure. Go and sin no more. In those words and there is a call to the community in Chris. Know you are not alone, know there is no condemnation, know there is a call to perfection, know that this is not law, but our true humanity, Jesus Christ.
Tuesday, October 3
Sermon Proper 21 (26) Year B, 2006
Readings
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
I had the great fortune last night to preside over the marriage of two of my friends. We celebrated it at the Garfield Park Conservatory. It is a lovely place. If you have not taken the opportunity to go there and enjoy the greenhouses yet, I hope that you will some day.
The service went well. Almost the entire wedding party is involved in theater somehow. So they all take direction very well. I am told that my sermon went well...and I can tell you that the paperwork is in the mail. Simon and Allison are actually married. So, all in all, the service was a success.
I am sleep deprived, but the service was lovely.
One thing, however, that happens to me whenever I get together with my friends and their relatives for such an occasion is that I spend most of the evening talking about the church...being Christian and who is saved and who is not. I know you may be thinking that this is impossible, but when you stand around at a wedding reception having just outted yourself as a professional Jesus freak, you may find yourself talking about these things too...and particularly with people who claim no religious affiliation or are dissatisfied with their own somehow. It's not particularly relaxing. But it is interesting.
Mostly, however, it is entertaining. People make jokes about a Baptist minister who dances...and not particularly well. A gentleman with one or two too many cocktails usually poses a difficult theological question about, well, last night it was about predestination and the theology of John Calvin. So, I lucked out. He asked the one question I actually have an answer for. Of course, I don't know if he'll remember the answer...and I am not sure that I want him to. It was late and I was not making much sense.
But almost all the questions I am asked center around the issue of salvation and purity. People want to know who is in and who is out and most importantly, they want to know why. What reasons do any of us, especially us Christians, give for suggesting that someone is out?
It is like they see the church as the last few moments of the TV show, Project Runway, where the hostess, Heidi Klum, tells the contestant literally "you are out."
Inquiring minds want to know. Bright, creative, soulful people want to know...what does it mean to be saved?
Today's Gospel is about salvation.
With so many references to life or eternal flame, how can it be about anything else?
It is about how one understands the ins and outs of salvation...about who is saved and how they are saved.
And from what I know about the some of us in the American church in the Twenty-first century, even the mere mentioning of the word ?salvation? can send us into a philosophical tailspin. We want to know the context, the purpose and the end goal intended by the use of such a word. And for each person who works this through in their mind, a new and nuanced definition will come to the fore.
And what often happens in mainline protestant congregations is that we either turn our collective backs on the term as too laden with confusion and the possibility of doing harm to be useful. Or we nuance it into harmlessness and in turn uselessness.
I understand this urge. I do. I often respond to it. Heck, even in composing this sermon, I found myself wanting to avoid it entirely. ?Please, O please, God, don't let this sermon be about salvation.? I drafted a couple of sermons trying to avoid it...but to no avail.
I know from my own faith journey that salvation is a troublesome term.
Do I feel saved?
Do I know somehow that I am saved?
Have I divined it somehow?
Does someone else have to put a stamp of approval upon my forehead
like a celestial Food and Drug Administration?
I personally wondered if there were a series of hoops I was supposed to jump through in order to be saved. I tried quite a few of them. I refused some offers of salvation. Honestly. I also prayed the prayer and looked up the verse. I gave up this and took up that. I did. But I think that in all that fuss and bother I never really encountered salvation. Not really.
But there is hope. Yes, brothers and sisters, there is hope even for people like me that salvation might be found. Because here in Mark's Gospel today we find that the disciples themselves struggle with the notion of who is saved and who is not; who is in and who is out.
So, Jesus is hanging out with the guys...proclaiming the Word of God when John runs up and says ?Jesus, you will never guess what is going on! Someone we don't know is casting out demons in your name! What cheek! What gall! So we tried to stop him.?
And here comes the unexpected.
?You did what? You tried to stop them?!?
And the hyperbole rolls down like thunder. Not only should the disciples not stop these people but it would be better if they were to tie a millstone around their necks and throw themselves into the sea.
Have any of you seen a millstone? I'm not exactly sure what a first century millstone looked like, but I know what the 17th century millstone looked like and it was big. Heavy does not begin to describe it. When I read this passage I always imagine that it would take several people to help me do this thing...maybe a horse would have to help. And I always find it funny to imagine somehow...in some cartoon-ish way.
Jesus says that these people, these unknown faithful, the ones outside the clique, are promised grace. In fact, suggests Jesus, even people who give them water are worthy of the same reward as the disciples are.
But I get the point. Don't knock others who claim Jesus. Go to the bottom of the nearest body of water and stay there. Right.
Lovely.
But as if this were not enough...Jesus continues.
Cripple yourself.
Deform yourself.
Blind yourself.
Now, put on your hyperbole caps. This is exaggeration. Exaggeration or hyperbole was often employed as a rhetorical tool by preachers and teachers in the time of Christ. So try not to fall into the trap of literalism. But don't dismiss the exaggeration either. This is a pointed exaggeration. According to Mark, Jesus wants us to pay special attention here.
?Sit up and listen,? says Mark. ?Are you ready??
Whoever is not against us is for us.
I don't know about you all, but I read that and it sort of falls flat. Okay, Mark. Thanks for that. I appreciate it, but later on here you mention that I need to chop off my foot. I find this idea somewhat off-putting. Can we talk about it in stead?
Whoever is not against us is for us.
Maybe it is just me. Maybe I am the one who does not quite understand hyperbole. This is entirely possible. But in today's passage, I am convinced that hyperbole is the name of the game. There is something hidden in the use of it and it is intended to take us directly back to this statement of Christ's...
Whoever is not against us is for us.
It is so important for us to be wise when we read scripture...to come to it as children...with an open imagination and a willingness to be changed and enter into the tale being spun before us. It is this kind of wisdom the reading of scripture demands.
I forget this from time to time. I forget that faith and scripture are demanding in this particular way. I keep looking for some Extreme Sports/X-Games kind of difficulty. I want rigor! Give me something fit for Superman. I can do it! Triple Lutz? No problem. I am ready.
Well, I want rigor until I encounter the truly rigorous. Then I am trying to find a way to nuance it all. But Mark won't let that happen. Even in the nuances he gives us a difficult task...a challenging marker of faith and action.
***
What is so difficult and misleading about this passage is that it appears to be about the things we must do in order to be saved. All this talk about cutting and such is distracting. And that is certainly the world view of many who would have herd this word from Christ. But this is why Jesus speaks of the body and maiming it or blinding ourselves. Much of first century Judaism was centered around and within notions of bodily purity.
People were...and likely still are...concerned with physical purity.
People with physical deformities were not always welcomed to the Temple or into society at all. Lepers were shunned because of the contagious nature of their disease and the physical deformity it brought along with it. Being physically whole was the same as being spiritually whole. In fact, it was commonly held that if you were not physically whole, you may not ever be spiritually whole.
You all know how it is. We still do this. Now it is not the religious leadership that speaks of physical purity so loudly. It is a marketing agency somewhere. Physical purity is often the name of the game. Comeliness. Fitness. Beauty.
If we are honest, we have to admit that in many ways our culture is still a culture based on notions of purity...and its "saving nature." We still think in terms of who is in and who is out...what is cool and what is not, what is profitable and what is not, what is worthy of our attention and time and what is not...what is good...and what is not...
There is such a thing as physical purity.
And it is not all bad.
It is in fact part of our coming closer to God.
There is such a thing as health.
We are often told that the body is a temple. Absolutely.
We cannot divorce the Spirit from the Body.
Actions like prayer and worship are physical actions that have a saving nature to them. They are embodied. Actions like giving and working with or for the poor are physical and have a saving nature to them. But there has to be a limit to how we understand these actions...the embodied faith. Otherwise we find ourselves in the same trouble that the disciples found themselves to be in. There has to be some overarching guideline...a purpose or telos...an end goal or a desired distinction.
Jorge Sanchez, a poet and teacher says this, ?What good is purity if, in the end, you are no closer to God? What good is purity if, though you be saved, others are damned??
If it shuts people out...turn back and let people in.
If it shuts people down...turn back and lift people up.
If it places at risk the well-being of another person...stand in their stead and put yourself on the line..
If it does not communicate...name it, claim it and give it voice.
If being who we are does not bring us into communion with others, then we are missing the mark.
We may even have stumbled upon something that is salvific.
But once it becomes its own end, then it becomes scandalous to God and all of us are somehow at risk.
Jesus' point may be that we want to stay pure...clean...sighted and mobile. We want to control who is in and who is out, who is welcomed and who is not...whom we identify ourselves with and whom we would rather not. But Jesus suggests that grace, identification and salvation are simply more complicated than that.
Salvation is brought by grace through faith, suggests Paul. That grace, suggests our passage from Mark, is found in our relationship with God in Christ.
I fear that this statement may have some of you fearful that the search committee messed up and called a fundamentalist Christian by mistake.
But grace, and this is the cornerstone of our salvation, as found in Christ is a wide open invitation, opportunity and participation in salvation. Salvation is not predicated, as the disciples discovered, upon membership in the inner circle. It is not predicated on physical purity. These things are means of salvation, perhaps, but in the end they are not what saves us. Grace saves us. God's grace and love save us.
It is the grace of God that saves us.
This passage is actually about God's grace.
It is wide and bold and encompasses the world. And it is, according to how I understand my friends at the wedding, an integral part of being human. Salvation is something that people actually think about and struggle with.
And whoever is not against us, brothers and sisters, is for us.
Grace is not something that can be hoarded by any one community. It cannot be contained in any one ritual. True ritual and true communities serve as conduits for grace, and reveal it to the world. True community and true ritual purify and sanctify the whole world and not just a chosen few...(This was the crux of my answer to the gentleman who wanted to know about John Calvin and predestination.).
We, brothers and sisters, perhaps we are thinking that we have somehow avoided a trap by not talking about salvation...by not using the word...by not actively naming what we are working out. But I wonder now if we have avoided one trap only to fall into another.
The mistake we are perhaps making is that of omission. We don't talk about salvation and we pray that is a better approach than claiming we have cornered the market on it. But it is just not so. I more and more believe that people are talking about it and we are missing an opportunity...not simply an opportunity to increase the rolls of a congregation, but an opportunity to proclaim God's grace...to let them in on the salvation we have found in God.
Whoever is not against us is for us.
***
A better translation of the phrase ?causes you to stumble? may be ?scandalizes.? The Greek word is skandalon (skandalon) which should sound familiar enough to us*. Scandalous. And what is more scandalous than the person who is on the outside somehow finding their way to the inside? The high school outcast sitting at table with the cool kids...Perhaps it is finding out that there is no outside in the first place...except the one we create for ourselves. And by not communicating what we think of salvation...and I know we think about it, I have to ask if we are actually keeping people on the outside.
Please forgive me if I am overstepping my roll here. But this is more and more a real concern for me...not just here, but in all our churches.
My fear is that by not communicating clearly, we are creating a scandal. And I know that this is the exact opposite of our intention. We are trying to be generous. But to be generous we have to give something...we have to hand over something...being generous is not simply avoiding being stingy.
God's grace is generous. It is tremendously generous. All one need do is give a glass of water to someone following Christ. That's all! Are we prepared to be vehicles of such salvation? Are we prepared to purify ourselves in this way? Can we give ourselves away so freely? Are we prepared to give ourselves away through conversation and debate? Are we prepared to give ourselves away by speaking of salvation to the world and, like Christ, suggest that there is a wideness in God's mercy? Are we prepared to give ourselves away by claiming our own language?
We are not in this work alone...Whoever is not against us is for us...We too receive God's grace.
When we speak of ecumenism, we are speaking about salvation.
When we speak about Reconciliation, we are speaking about salvation.
As we celebrate World Communion Sunday today, we are talking about salvation...how it is given to all...
But now I wonder...
...does anyone know?
*In their interpretation of Mark, John Donahue and Daniel Harrington both suggest this alternative translation.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
I had the great fortune last night to preside over the marriage of two of my friends. We celebrated it at the Garfield Park Conservatory. It is a lovely place. If you have not taken the opportunity to go there and enjoy the greenhouses yet, I hope that you will some day.
The service went well. Almost the entire wedding party is involved in theater somehow. So they all take direction very well. I am told that my sermon went well...and I can tell you that the paperwork is in the mail. Simon and Allison are actually married. So, all in all, the service was a success.
I am sleep deprived, but the service was lovely.
One thing, however, that happens to me whenever I get together with my friends and their relatives for such an occasion is that I spend most of the evening talking about the church...being Christian and who is saved and who is not. I know you may be thinking that this is impossible, but when you stand around at a wedding reception having just outted yourself as a professional Jesus freak, you may find yourself talking about these things too...and particularly with people who claim no religious affiliation or are dissatisfied with their own somehow. It's not particularly relaxing. But it is interesting.
Mostly, however, it is entertaining. People make jokes about a Baptist minister who dances...and not particularly well. A gentleman with one or two too many cocktails usually poses a difficult theological question about, well, last night it was about predestination and the theology of John Calvin. So, I lucked out. He asked the one question I actually have an answer for. Of course, I don't know if he'll remember the answer...and I am not sure that I want him to. It was late and I was not making much sense.
But almost all the questions I am asked center around the issue of salvation and purity. People want to know who is in and who is out and most importantly, they want to know why. What reasons do any of us, especially us Christians, give for suggesting that someone is out?
It is like they see the church as the last few moments of the TV show, Project Runway, where the hostess, Heidi Klum, tells the contestant literally "you are out."
Inquiring minds want to know. Bright, creative, soulful people want to know...what does it mean to be saved?
Today's Gospel is about salvation.
With so many references to life or eternal flame, how can it be about anything else?
It is about how one understands the ins and outs of salvation...about who is saved and how they are saved.
And from what I know about the some of us in the American church in the Twenty-first century, even the mere mentioning of the word ?salvation? can send us into a philosophical tailspin. We want to know the context, the purpose and the end goal intended by the use of such a word. And for each person who works this through in their mind, a new and nuanced definition will come to the fore.
And what often happens in mainline protestant congregations is that we either turn our collective backs on the term as too laden with confusion and the possibility of doing harm to be useful. Or we nuance it into harmlessness and in turn uselessness.
I understand this urge. I do. I often respond to it. Heck, even in composing this sermon, I found myself wanting to avoid it entirely. ?Please, O please, God, don't let this sermon be about salvation.? I drafted a couple of sermons trying to avoid it...but to no avail.
I know from my own faith journey that salvation is a troublesome term.
Do I feel saved?
Do I know somehow that I am saved?
Have I divined it somehow?
Does someone else have to put a stamp of approval upon my forehead
like a celestial Food and Drug Administration?
I personally wondered if there were a series of hoops I was supposed to jump through in order to be saved. I tried quite a few of them. I refused some offers of salvation. Honestly. I also prayed the prayer and looked up the verse. I gave up this and took up that. I did. But I think that in all that fuss and bother I never really encountered salvation. Not really.
But there is hope. Yes, brothers and sisters, there is hope even for people like me that salvation might be found. Because here in Mark's Gospel today we find that the disciples themselves struggle with the notion of who is saved and who is not; who is in and who is out.
So, Jesus is hanging out with the guys...proclaiming the Word of God when John runs up and says ?Jesus, you will never guess what is going on! Someone we don't know is casting out demons in your name! What cheek! What gall! So we tried to stop him.?
And here comes the unexpected.
?You did what? You tried to stop them?!?
And the hyperbole rolls down like thunder. Not only should the disciples not stop these people but it would be better if they were to tie a millstone around their necks and throw themselves into the sea.
Have any of you seen a millstone? I'm not exactly sure what a first century millstone looked like, but I know what the 17th century millstone looked like and it was big. Heavy does not begin to describe it. When I read this passage I always imagine that it would take several people to help me do this thing...maybe a horse would have to help. And I always find it funny to imagine somehow...in some cartoon-ish way.
Jesus says that these people, these unknown faithful, the ones outside the clique, are promised grace. In fact, suggests Jesus, even people who give them water are worthy of the same reward as the disciples are.
But I get the point. Don't knock others who claim Jesus. Go to the bottom of the nearest body of water and stay there. Right.
Lovely.
But as if this were not enough...Jesus continues.
Cripple yourself.
Deform yourself.
Blind yourself.
Now, put on your hyperbole caps. This is exaggeration. Exaggeration or hyperbole was often employed as a rhetorical tool by preachers and teachers in the time of Christ. So try not to fall into the trap of literalism. But don't dismiss the exaggeration either. This is a pointed exaggeration. According to Mark, Jesus wants us to pay special attention here.
?Sit up and listen,? says Mark. ?Are you ready??
Whoever is not against us is for us.
I don't know about you all, but I read that and it sort of falls flat. Okay, Mark. Thanks for that. I appreciate it, but later on here you mention that I need to chop off my foot. I find this idea somewhat off-putting. Can we talk about it in stead?
Whoever is not against us is for us.
Maybe it is just me. Maybe I am the one who does not quite understand hyperbole. This is entirely possible. But in today's passage, I am convinced that hyperbole is the name of the game. There is something hidden in the use of it and it is intended to take us directly back to this statement of Christ's...
Whoever is not against us is for us.
It is so important for us to be wise when we read scripture...to come to it as children...with an open imagination and a willingness to be changed and enter into the tale being spun before us. It is this kind of wisdom the reading of scripture demands.
I forget this from time to time. I forget that faith and scripture are demanding in this particular way. I keep looking for some Extreme Sports/X-Games kind of difficulty. I want rigor! Give me something fit for Superman. I can do it! Triple Lutz? No problem. I am ready.
Well, I want rigor until I encounter the truly rigorous. Then I am trying to find a way to nuance it all. But Mark won't let that happen. Even in the nuances he gives us a difficult task...a challenging marker of faith and action.
***
What is so difficult and misleading about this passage is that it appears to be about the things we must do in order to be saved. All this talk about cutting and such is distracting. And that is certainly the world view of many who would have herd this word from Christ. But this is why Jesus speaks of the body and maiming it or blinding ourselves. Much of first century Judaism was centered around and within notions of bodily purity.
People were...and likely still are...concerned with physical purity.
People with physical deformities were not always welcomed to the Temple or into society at all. Lepers were shunned because of the contagious nature of their disease and the physical deformity it brought along with it. Being physically whole was the same as being spiritually whole. In fact, it was commonly held that if you were not physically whole, you may not ever be spiritually whole.
You all know how it is. We still do this. Now it is not the religious leadership that speaks of physical purity so loudly. It is a marketing agency somewhere. Physical purity is often the name of the game. Comeliness. Fitness. Beauty.
If we are honest, we have to admit that in many ways our culture is still a culture based on notions of purity...and its "saving nature." We still think in terms of who is in and who is out...what is cool and what is not, what is profitable and what is not, what is worthy of our attention and time and what is not...what is good...and what is not...
There is such a thing as physical purity.
And it is not all bad.
It is in fact part of our coming closer to God.
There is such a thing as health.
We are often told that the body is a temple. Absolutely.
We cannot divorce the Spirit from the Body.
Actions like prayer and worship are physical actions that have a saving nature to them. They are embodied. Actions like giving and working with or for the poor are physical and have a saving nature to them. But there has to be a limit to how we understand these actions...the embodied faith. Otherwise we find ourselves in the same trouble that the disciples found themselves to be in. There has to be some overarching guideline...a purpose or telos...an end goal or a desired distinction.
Jorge Sanchez, a poet and teacher says this, ?What good is purity if, in the end, you are no closer to God? What good is purity if, though you be saved, others are damned??
If it shuts people out...turn back and let people in.
If it shuts people down...turn back and lift people up.
If it places at risk the well-being of another person...stand in their stead and put yourself on the line..
If it does not communicate...name it, claim it and give it voice.
If being who we are does not bring us into communion with others, then we are missing the mark.
We may even have stumbled upon something that is salvific.
But once it becomes its own end, then it becomes scandalous to God and all of us are somehow at risk.
Jesus' point may be that we want to stay pure...clean...sighted and mobile. We want to control who is in and who is out, who is welcomed and who is not...whom we identify ourselves with and whom we would rather not. But Jesus suggests that grace, identification and salvation are simply more complicated than that.
Salvation is brought by grace through faith, suggests Paul. That grace, suggests our passage from Mark, is found in our relationship with God in Christ.
I fear that this statement may have some of you fearful that the search committee messed up and called a fundamentalist Christian by mistake.
But grace, and this is the cornerstone of our salvation, as found in Christ is a wide open invitation, opportunity and participation in salvation. Salvation is not predicated, as the disciples discovered, upon membership in the inner circle. It is not predicated on physical purity. These things are means of salvation, perhaps, but in the end they are not what saves us. Grace saves us. God's grace and love save us.
It is the grace of God that saves us.
This passage is actually about God's grace.
It is wide and bold and encompasses the world. And it is, according to how I understand my friends at the wedding, an integral part of being human. Salvation is something that people actually think about and struggle with.
And whoever is not against us, brothers and sisters, is for us.
Grace is not something that can be hoarded by any one community. It cannot be contained in any one ritual. True ritual and true communities serve as conduits for grace, and reveal it to the world. True community and true ritual purify and sanctify the whole world and not just a chosen few...(This was the crux of my answer to the gentleman who wanted to know about John Calvin and predestination.).
We, brothers and sisters, perhaps we are thinking that we have somehow avoided a trap by not talking about salvation...by not using the word...by not actively naming what we are working out. But I wonder now if we have avoided one trap only to fall into another.
The mistake we are perhaps making is that of omission. We don't talk about salvation and we pray that is a better approach than claiming we have cornered the market on it. But it is just not so. I more and more believe that people are talking about it and we are missing an opportunity...not simply an opportunity to increase the rolls of a congregation, but an opportunity to proclaim God's grace...to let them in on the salvation we have found in God.
Whoever is not against us is for us.
***
A better translation of the phrase ?causes you to stumble? may be ?scandalizes.? The Greek word is skandalon (skandalon) which should sound familiar enough to us*. Scandalous. And what is more scandalous than the person who is on the outside somehow finding their way to the inside? The high school outcast sitting at table with the cool kids...Perhaps it is finding out that there is no outside in the first place...except the one we create for ourselves. And by not communicating what we think of salvation...and I know we think about it, I have to ask if we are actually keeping people on the outside.
Please forgive me if I am overstepping my roll here. But this is more and more a real concern for me...not just here, but in all our churches.
My fear is that by not communicating clearly, we are creating a scandal. And I know that this is the exact opposite of our intention. We are trying to be generous. But to be generous we have to give something...we have to hand over something...being generous is not simply avoiding being stingy.
God's grace is generous. It is tremendously generous. All one need do is give a glass of water to someone following Christ. That's all! Are we prepared to be vehicles of such salvation? Are we prepared to purify ourselves in this way? Can we give ourselves away so freely? Are we prepared to give ourselves away through conversation and debate? Are we prepared to give ourselves away by speaking of salvation to the world and, like Christ, suggest that there is a wideness in God's mercy? Are we prepared to give ourselves away by claiming our own language?
We are not in this work alone...Whoever is not against us is for us...We too receive God's grace.
When we speak of ecumenism, we are speaking about salvation.
When we speak about Reconciliation, we are speaking about salvation.
As we celebrate World Communion Sunday today, we are talking about salvation...how it is given to all...
But now I wonder...
...does anyone know?
*In their interpretation of Mark, John Donahue and Daniel Harrington both suggest this alternative translation.
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