How We Believe

Mark 9:38-50; James 5:13-20

It was hard to escape the story this week. Live coverage all day. Blanketing social media. Do you believe him? Do you believe her? Who do you believe?

The Kavanaugh hearing in Washington played out all day as a theater of belief.

How credible is she? is he? what’s the evidence?

How do we know what really happened?

That was what we were supposed to be able to find out, on Thursday; how we are supposed to know who to believe. But the commentators who narrated all that, hour by hour; the reporters who asked senators and experts those questions about credibility and evidence, were asking the wrong questions.

Because belief isn’t really about checkable facts, or about rational agreement.

And who you believe isn’t as important as how you believe.

Belief isn’t intellectual. It’s behavioral.
That’s what Jesus is talking about today. James too.

James prescribes behaviors that turn us toward God, behaviors that are belief, for many situations.

Are any among you suffering? Any among you overwhelmed with the pain of politics, perhaps? They should pray. Not just ask God for the pain to go away, but pray: commit your time and attention to offering yourself to God and listening for God. Believe by behavior.

Or if you’re feeling good? Sing, drop a beat, shout out loud, or dance your praise to God – be visible and audible with your joy.  Believe your happiness with your body. Don’t keep it in your head.

Are any among you feeling cut off from your community by illness or force of nature, by trauma, by your own errors and omissions? Reach out to those who will bring the signs of God’s love into your brokenness, and create an opportunity for you to be made whole. Behave your belief in community and call the community to behave their belief in healing.

And Jesus is teaching his disciples – again – that what you do matters more than what you think.

Teacher, John says, we saw someone casting out demons – using your name! – without signing up with us.

“Don’t get in his way!” Jesus responds.

What that person is doing will make him a believer, a disciple, a part of me, even if he never intended it.

Invoking Jesus’ name in order to help and heal affects your heart and soul – even if you only meant it ironically, or to trick someone, or to seize power for yourself.

What you do – the good you do, the name you speak with your own mouth – changes your heart, even if you don’t “believe” it does.

If you give a dollar to that person on the street because they happen to have a cross or a “God Bless You’ on their beat up cardboard sign, you’ve turned your heart toward God, even if you’re pretty sure you just got scammed.

It’s good news that our habits and small daily actions can draw us closer to God, to Jesus, even while our minds are full of doubt, or self-interest, or distraction.

Great news. But not all the news. Jesus is pretty clear that the opposite is true, too. That what we do, intentionally or in unconscious daily habit, can draw us to God, or it can be dangerous.

Whoever puts an obstacle, a trap, in the path of the least of my disciples, well, you’d be better off drowned, he says.

So if the way I live, the people I hang out with, the way I spend my money, or post on Facebook, turn someone who wasn’t already close to God away from God, better to sink under the water and stop breathing.

Even if the way I proclaim Christian teaching turns someone away from the love or transformation Jesus is calling them to – like John trying to stop that exorcist from using the name of Jesus without doing it right – better to drown.

Good intentions don’t wash out wrong actions.

Better to die than to get in someone’s way on their way to Jesus.

Better to swim with the fishes.

Jesus is using strong language on purpose here. He doesn’t want anyone to miss how serious he is about full access to him: for the little people, the marginalized, the oppressed, the unsuccessful, the losers, and the barely-believers. He wants full access, with no one and nothing standing in their way. And Jesus really does want us to take responsibility for one another’s spiritual well-being, for making sure we keep the way to Jesus wide open for everyone.

That’s going to take a lot of attention to what we’re doing, isn’t it? If we have to watch everything we do and everything we say to make sure it’s not going to get in anyone’s way on their way to Jesus? That’s going to affect how I commit my calendar, how I drive, what I say, what I buy, where I shop. It’s a big deal.

Jesus is asking a lot of us.

But Jesus isn’t just asking that of me, or of you, but of everyone we come into contact with.

Jesus doesn’t want anyone getting in your way, either.

Not even you.

If your hand gets in your way, gets between you and Jesus, cut it off. You need Jesus more than your hand. Or your foot, or your eye.

If what gets things done for you, what’s supporting you, or what keeps your attention is getting in between you and Jesus, you are better off without it, even if it’s one of the necessities of life.

If your smartphone causes you to stumble – if the email and the texts and the maps and the apps pull you away from, or substitute for, your relationship with Jesus, cut it off.
It is better for you to miss ALL the emails and be out of the loop than to go to unquenchable fire.

if your job gets between you and Jesus, quit. It is better to enter the kingdom of God poor and unemployed than to have a successful career and be cut off from God.

It sounds unreasonable, doesn’t it?

Cut off your hand?! Quit your job!?

Well, that’s exactly how unreasonable Jesus is about anything that gets in your way.

Not for Jesus’ own sake, not because God needs attention, but because we need God. Because Jesus wants to be so close to us that nothing at all can separate us. Wants us to be so secure in our deep and abiding and transformative access to God that we can never find ourselves cut off, never find ourselves alone and blocked from God’s strength, afraid and cut off from Jesus’ courage.

Jesus won’t let us let anything get in our way.

And how we believe – the daily actions and habits that remove the stumbling blocks from our own path, and from in front of others – the way we behave our faith, so that Jesus can draw our hearts closer even if our heads doubt, is more important than who we believe, this week in Washington and on our TVs, or week after week in our church and our daily lives.

Jesus is entirely serious about how much what we do matters; entirely serious about not letting us let anything get in our way as he calls our hearts and lives closer and closer and closer to him, today and always.

The One Who Has It All

Proverbs 31:10-31; Mark 9:30-37

How rare she is, this strong and capable woman, the one who has it all – and notably, does it all: runs the household from before dawn to late at night, runs her international business the same, so that nothing can harm her or her household.

Everyone respects her family and they look fabulous, too. Neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor bullies nor famine nor anything else can scare or deter he. Structural sexism can’t stand in her way. She’s buff. She takes generous care of everyone in need. She is a great boss and employer as well as outstanding wife and mother. Sheryl Sandberg has nothing on her.

And I’m exhausted just saying all that.

Only a few quirks of vocabulary prove that this portrait was drawn about twenty-five centuries ago, instead of twenty-five minutes ago. This looks so much like the idealized hyper-achiever that has a strong hold on the public imagination in our world: not just about “women who have it all”, but successful men, too. This is the image, conscious or otherwise, that ties so many of us to our cell phones and emails while we’re working and parenting or grand-parenting twenty-four seven.

This ancient poem looks a lot like the image that lives in the implied stories of today’s magazines and best selling business books and in employers’ imaginations, and that none of us are.

No matter how successful and competent you are, I promise you can’t keep up with this woman.

There’s a reason for that.

This strong woman, this woman of valor, isn’t us.

She’s God.

This woman of character, whom the Book of Proverbs tells righteous young men to seek out, is not me or you or any of the girls in their neighborhood. Lady Wisdom is the God those biblical young men – and you and I – are supposed to seek with all our hearts: to follow, commit to, to love and give ourselves to.

This ancient poem is not a job description for us, it’s a love letter from God, full of the joy and wonder and grace that God provides for those who love and commit to her.

Nowhere does it say that you or I are to imitate this valiant woman. The only instruction given to the seeker of wisdom, to the one who wants to draw close to God, is to give her a share in what she has given you, and to praise the one who does all this.

In other words, we don’t have to have it all.

God has it all for us.

And that’s what the disciples were forgetting, that day or week on the roads of Galilee, when they were talking to each other (but not to Jesus!) about which of them was the greatest.

They’d forgotten – or they’d missed it the hundred times Jesus taught it to them before – that God isn’t looking for the greatest. God doesn’t award first prize – not to anyone, ever. Jesus isn’t looking for disciples who can have it all, do it all, be it all.

Because God has it all for us.

For us.

God doesn’t hoard greatness for God’s own sake; God has all this greatness for our sake, to care for and share with and benefit us. As if we were the household – the employees and servants, the children and spouse, of that generous, competent, extraordinary, valiant woman whose praises we are invited to sing.

That’s why there can’t be a “greatest” among the disciples, can’t be a “greatest” among us, can’t be any difference in discipleship status between our gifted, inspiring, exciting Presiding Bishop preaching to the world, and a toddler whose parents never bring him to church chattering and fussing through the lovely solemn quiet or competing with the sermon.

No difference, Jesus tells his disciples, between that child and God’s own self. Because we don’t have to earn or compete toward greatness. God has all the greatness we need, and has it for us.

I hope that comes as a relief. Not just for any of us who’ve been trying to achieve greatness, or have it all. But also for any of us who’ve been trying to nudge or push or coax or force others to be greater: trying to get our kids or spouses or volunteer helpers to be more frequent church attenders, greater leaders, or higher achievers.

God has all the greatness they need; as well as all we need, and has it for us.

So we can let it go.

We not only don’t have to achieve it for ourselves, don’t have to exhaust ourselves and struggle with others in running after it all; we don’t have to hold on to it for ourselves, either. We can let it go.

That’s the other thing Jesus’ disciples mostly haven’t figured out yet – both in the story Mark is telling, and in most of our present-day lives. That’s why they’re confused when he tells them that the Son of Man is going to be turned over to the government, killed, and rise, and that whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.

They haven’t w\understood yet that the Messiah doesn’t need to avoid the humiliation of crucifixion in order to preserve God’s greatness in the world. And that we don’t need Jesus to win over the government to protect our greatness. Because it all belongs to God.

We don’t need to win first place. We don’t need to protect our position – don’t need to fear losing wealth or respect or independence or athletic achievement or academic success or number of Twitter followers. We can hold all that lightly and give it away in service to others, because it’s God’s greatness, not our own.

We don’t have to protect any of that for ourselves because God has more than enough greatness for us – each and all. Enough greatness for when we come in last, lose it all, or give up the race; especially when we send others ahead of us.

And yes, sometimes the greatness of God that’s poured out on us is pretty painful. Like crucifixion, sometimes God’s greatness is a sharing in the pain of the least-deserving, and least-respected. Sometimes God’s greatness is the grinding daily work of serving the oppressed and living as the marginalized. And God welcomes us – those first disciples, you and me – to share in that odd and excruciating greatness, because it is God’s greatness, and because in sharing that, we also find that God is pouring out generous care, love and strength and beauty and confidence, pouring out all that we can have when we have it all, on us. On all God’s household.

And all God asks from us is that we receive those gifts of greatness: all glitter the world admires and all the humble strength and service that God loves. And that we have it all and share it all, not on our own behalf, but because it is what God has given us, and praise the giver.

The Cross We Take Up

Mark 8:27-38

Why on earth would anyone want to follow Jesus?

Who would want to sign on with a leader who announces that – rather than make the change we want to see in the world, rather than liberate us from the oppressive government or systems we live under – instead, he’s going to become a victim of that oppression, suffering and dying and rising?

A leader who rejects the friend who tries to talk him out of this defeatist and depressing sounding attitude?

And who goes around publicly inviting people to get killed with him?

Who wants to sign up for that?

I don’t.

Just like Peter, I signed up to follow the Messiah who is here to heal and save: heal you, me; save the world from ourselves, and most of all defeat the evil around and oppressing us.

Two thousand years after Jesus lived and taught and died and lived again, it can be easy enough to feel comfortable with Jesus telling his disciples that he’s going to suffer and die and rise.

I hear this, and I recognize the story I know, a story we tell several times a week in the Creed and the Eucharistic prayers. I know the story, so it doesn’t shock me the way it shocked Peter and James and John and probably a couple of Marys, and the rest of the disciples, when Jesus first told them.
It doesn’t bother me, unless I remember that this means that Jesus may not be planning to overthrow the evils I’ve been expecting him to tackle and defeat in our lifetime, any more than he overthrew the Romans oppressing Israel in the first century. Or at least, not in the way I want God to do this.

And it doesn’t bother me that Jesus invites us to take up our cross (I’ve been singing happily about that for nearly forty years now), unless I really think about what it might mean to voluntarily embrace crucifixion – even if it’s only metaphorical.
I’m not especially interested in dying right now, nor in losing my self – losing the identity I’ve gotten comfortable with and becoming someone I don’t even know.  New life sounds more uncertain than attractive, from that perspective.

We’ve learned, over the centuries, how to soften the shock for ourselves, but I think Jesus still wants us to feel it. Wants us to know how radical an invitation he’s offering.

It’s not an invitation to suffering for suffering’s sake, nor because suffering or dying are holy on their own merits, but Jesus’ invitation is to suffering – or whatever work or strain or risk or loss – for the sake of something you love so very much more than yourself.
Just the same way Jesus embraced all that risk for the sake of God’s extraordinary, all-encompassing love for human beings. For us.

Jesus wants us to feel the shock, I believe, and to embrace the risk in his call to us to love as we never dreamed we could love. Wants us to understand that loving something so very much more than I love myself is, indeed, a way of dying to myself. Jesus wants us to know how much that love costs, as well as the incredible reward of abundant life that kind of love can bring.

Sometimes when you love that way you can see and feel that cross in your hands and the weight on your shoulders, as you empty your budget or your schedule or your tear ducts or even your blood into the pain of a beloved friend, a child or parent. Or when you empty your self-image, your identity, your wallet, your emotional and physical strength, into the dream of God or into the pain and need of the world: for justice, peace, good news, healing or daily bread.

Other times, when you love that powerfully, you don’t always know it consciously, or feel the weight of the cross as you take it up.

I don’t always believe, or know, that I love God’s work in the world, or God’s call that way. Often I don’t want to love Jesus quite that much – it’s overwhelming. But I can tell you that the self I used to know was never going to live in New Jersey. And here I am in the midst of life extraordinarily abundant with you.

Sometimes the cross looks like the call of Mother Teresa, Dr. King, or Oscar Romero.

Sometimes it looks like a cross-country move you hadn’t planned on, and which transforms you anyway, lost and saved all at once, by loving something or someone so very much more than yourself.

That’s the cross Jesus invites us to take up; how he invites each of us to follow him, and all of us together.

It’s an invitation we took up, consciously or not, in baptism, vowing to love and follow Jesus, and to live in imitation of him, including dying and rising.

That’s what we do in baptism, if you hadn’t noticed before. What two more of us do today, as Kathy and Reese are baptized. Through the power of the water – water we can’t breathe in, when it washes over us – we die with Jesus, and in the same water, rise to share in his resurrection: to have, in our own lives, eternal life.

A few splashes of water, in a tidy church ceremony, aren’t very dangerous. But we’ve been watching the deadly power of water all weekend long, as Florence pours through the Carolinas. We’ve been seeing all that power that can wash away who and what and where we were and leave us in a whole new landscape, a new life we aren’t even going to recognize at first.

In the promises we make in baptism, and renew any time we participate in someone else’s baptism – promises of proclaiming good news, seeking justice and peace and human dignity, loving our neighbor and seeking Christ – we commit ourselves to taking up our cross: loving God’s mission, God’s people, God’s life, in our daily actions and choices, loving more than we ever dreamed we could love.

And in taking up that cross of love, risking suffering or loss or strain or unintended transformation, we accept Jesus’ invitation to share his divine experience. Loving as God loves, infinitely more than we can ask or imagine, risking resurrection, new, unknown, abundant eternal life here and now and always.

It’s probably not what you wanted to sign up for; maybe not what you thought you signed up for when you first met Jesus, or when you were baptized. But it is what Jesus has been telling us all along. That love, cross-shaped and awkward as it may be, is already pulling us through every risk and strain and loss, to resurrection life.