What Faith Is Worth

Mark 9:38-50

I found myself in two different conversations this week about how the primary work of the church is to help people grow in faith. 

The main reason we exist, at Trinity, or in the whole Christian church, is to be a place, a community, where we get closer to God, get better at following Jesus, find it increasingly appealing to love our uncomfortable neighbors as well as the delightful ones, grow more confident in the stories of the Bible and our own stories, and deepen our trust in God.  

All the things we do together – worship, outreach, fellowship, music, building maintenance, hospital visits, pledge campaigns, making coffee – make hundreds of times more difference in the world and in our lives if they are rooted in and powered by our faith. 

Two conversations this week, and now a third. Because here’s Jesus, just now, talking about the same thing, more personally and graphically. 

If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire…. if your foot trips you up, pulls you off the path of God’s love, cut it off… if your eye traps you, keeps focusing on things that distract you, or pull you away from God, tear it out.

You don’t need a foot, or your eye, or your hands as much as you need the closeness with God, the confidence and trust in God that Jesus teaches. The parts of ourselves we can’t imagine life without are less life-giving than our faith, Jesus says. 

The parts of ourselves you and I can’t imagine living without may not be hands and eyes. I know I’ve often said to friends that if I lose the ability to read, or to enjoy learning, you might as well pull the plug immediately.  You have something about you, too, that you can’t imagine life without: an ability, a talent, a personality trait that just somehow makes you, you.

And here’s Jesus saying “if there’s any chance that gets in the way of your faith, in the way of your deep connection to and trust in God, cut it off. Cut it off right now.”

He’s not fooling around. And this shouldn’t be all that surprising. Just a day or two ago in gospel time Jesus was trying to teach his disciples (and us, two Sundays ago) that we have to “deny ourselves”, take up the risk of loss and embarrassment, face down death, to follow him, to have the miraculous, unshakeable closeness to God that leads through everything we most fear to resurrection and abundant life. Just like Jesus himself models for us.

There is a lot that you and I – and Jesus’s other disciples, from Peter and John and their contemporaries right up until now – very reasonably fear losing.

And Jesus is telling us in no uncertain terms that your faith – your connection to God, your trust, your hope, your confidence that there’s more to life than just what’s around us – that faith is more important than anything it would hurt us to give up. More important than hands and eyes and feet and your identity itself.

I don’t just think he’s right because it’s my job. I also think that because the thread of faith - the need deep inside me to stay connected to God’s love and power and story, and to other people who know that love and power and story – has pulled me through some of the places in my life when I had lost parts of myself. When I’ve felt frustratingly, un-solvably helpless, and when I’d given up on ever finding out how to be myself again.  

Or I hear a story in my family about losing an eye – well, the sight in the eye – and I feel a little anticipatory terror of the independence and delights I’d lose if it happens to me. And sometimes – just often enough – I remember how it feels to trust God enough to ask for help – and accept help – when I need it, and I know that “losing an eye”, if it happens, won’t actually be the end I fear.

If you’ve ever wondered what your faith is actually worth in this world, Jesus is telling you – telling us – today. It’s worth more than eyes and hands and feet and self. More than everything. 

But it’s not just your faith that’s worth that – to Jesus, or to you.

Jesus is also telling us that other people’s faith is worth that much to us. More, even.

“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.”

If something you or I say or do or leave undone trips up someone else’s faith, makes it harder for someone else – especially someone “less important” than us – to follow Jesus, or connect with God, it would be better to immediately “sleep with the fishes”.

Not pulling any punches, are you, Jesus?

The faith of other people – other people less important than you or I – is worth our lives.

So removing all the barriers that might keep other folks from following Jesus, connecting with God, growing in faith – that’s just as important, maybe even more important, than our own faith.

That may sound daunting. It’s also actually good news in two ways.

As Mother Angie mentioned last week, helping other people helps us.
I know I feel more deeply rooted in my own faith when one of you has brought me a question you’re struggling with, and we work through it together.
Or when a non-church friend complains to me about the way the Bible or Christian tradition is being used to separate people on the internet, how it makes them hate stories or traditions they used to love, and I get to help them navigate their way back to the hope they found in the Bible or religious community in the first place.

I feel more deeply rooted in my faith, too, when I think about the barriers we’re planning to remove from our beautiful building as we complete our capital campaign. Creating barrier-free access to our worship and fellowship spaces for folks who use wheelchairs or struggle with steps means we’re opening Trinity’s particular ways of growing closer to God in worship, music, study, service, and friendship to people who get treated as “less important” in much of everyday life. 

But that’s just the outward and visible sign of how the work we do in our buildings is meant to shape our hearts and habits so that it’s natural for all of us to remove barriers to faith that come in the form of words and actions instead of steps and doors.

Helping others in faith genuinely and powerfully strengthens our own faith. But that’s not the only good news about the stark priorities Jesus is talking about today.

He is also pointing out that it’s not actually all on us.

Today’s story starts with John worrying about people who aren’t part of the original disciples group using Jesus’s name to heal and free people.
They can’t possibly be doing it right.
Or they’ll dilute our message, draw people away from us, or interfere. Right?

“Not at all!” says Jesus. “No one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.” 

We don’t have to correct or convert people who desire connection with Jesus and go about it in a different way than we do. We don’t have to correct or convert people who practice small kindnesses motivated by our faith, but don’t see themselves as having faith. 

The name and the power of Jesus will do that work, because God creates faith, God enables that connection and trust and power and love. 

It doesn’t depend on us.

We just make absolutely sure we don’t get in the way.

To live in faith and grow in faith is the most important thing in our lives. It’s the most important thing in history, in the universe, because it makes us stronger in all the other important, transformative, loving, life-giving things we could do.

Our faith and the faith of others is more important even than life itself.

Which is why God’s building it all around us, as well as in us, all the time.

You and I just have to keep from getting ourselves in the way. 

And getting barriers out of the way – in ourselves and for others – is the most life-giving thing we can do. 

I’m in. Are you?

Take Up

Mark 8:27-38

“Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.”

That has to be one of the least attractive things Jesus ever says.

Considering he’s just said he himself is going to undergo great suffering, rejection, and death before rising, it’s pretty clear he’s inviting us to embrace the same thing: suffering, loss and death.

And also rising?

It might be the scariest thing he says, too.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to take up much of anything this weekend. Much less a cross.

The transition from summer to “school year” often makes this week chaotic, even if you’re long past anything to do with school. 

Lots of our friends and neighbors are still trying to find the big chunks of life and work that Ida flooded or blew away. 

Yesterday was the twentieth anniversary of the attacks on airlines and landmarks that changed the course of America, and we’ve all been carrying burdens of remembered suffering, grief, and change. And we’re worried about the refugees the “war on terror” just blew onto our doorsteps.
Covid hasn’t ended yet, not on any of the time frames we’ve set for it, It’s just round after round of expectations and concerns.

And of course there’s more in the world; there’s more in our personal lives.

Maybe you’re living your best life right now, ready to take up anything. But I don’t want to take up anything else right now, thanks.
I want to breathe, and enjoy the weather.

I want to think about the future – about the dreams and plans and excitement we’re launching through our Campaign for Trinity, our party this morning.

How about you?

Whatever you're ready for, or not, here’s Jesus this morning, saying,

“deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.”

Take up suffering, loss, and death, and come close to me.

Yes, I want to be close to Jesus, but that cross plan just doesn’t sound appealing.

But what if I’m wrong about that?

What if the call to embrace death and suffering isn’t a call to misery? 

What if “taking up my cross” isn’t something that requires teeth gritting and shoulder squaring and resignation?

As one of my friends observed to me this week, none of us get out of this alive, anyway.

Death is part of us. 

No matter what Jeff Bezos thinks he can buy or invent, all of us get older, bits of us break or stop working, we die. 

People we love die.

Maybe taking up our cross isn’t choosing death and suffering and loss. 

We’ve got that anyway.

Maybe taking up our cross is choosing not to be intimidated by death, or suffering, or loss. 

Choosing not to run away from that universal truth -- so that we’re free to do the things that scare us, free to try things that might be too hard, free to give away what I don’t want to lose, free to fail and break and rise again.

Free to be fully present to all of life - in things as big as hearing a serious diagnosis or marrying the love of your life; fully present and alive in things as small as the bug bite on your ankle or the taste of a ripe tomato fresh off the vine.

Maybe taking up our cross as Jesus takes up his means looking at our natural fear of death, or suffering, or loss, and saying “okay. I see you coming. I might still be afraid of the pain of loss, but I’m not going to run away from it. I’m going to live and love with all of me, and you can’t stop me.”

Years ago, when I first met the cat who lives with me (who many of you have seen on Zoom), I was fresh in my grief for another cat who’d held my heart for more than a decade, and had just died. When Dobby grabbed my ankle, sprawled on my lap, and adopted me, I knew I was adopting grief, down the road, if I chose to love him. But choosing to love him is entirely life-giving. Even when it means cleaning up inconvenient messes and worrying about his health. Even when he’s bitey and restless and will not let me sleep and I don’t like him very much. Even when it hurts to know we’re not forever.

That’s a really small example, but it’s what you and I do all the time when we choose to love, to give ourselves and our hearts. 

Many of our choices to take up love are more complicated and less clear cut. Commitments to marriage and parenting and deep friendship take longer and are more complex than adopting a cat. 

Still, in the hours and days and years that we fall in love, that we build a slow and irrevocable commitment to someone else, we’re choosing a life that doesn’t run away from the hours and months of rearranging our schedules for someone else’s needs – because being there with or for one another is much more life-giving than being alone. We’re choosing a life that finds more life in the way we hurt when someone else is in pain, as well as the way we feel more joy when it’s shared. 

We choose love and life, too, when we look at our fear of failure – and all the suffering of embarrassment and disappointment and loss that comes with failure – and say “that’s not going to stop me”. 

And then go ahead and start a school strike to protest human trafficking or climate change, even though one voice will never be loud enough and you’ll get mocked. 

Go ahead and join a movement to integrate public transportation even though all the odds are stacked against you, or to build a world where everyone can eat healthy, abundant food even though governments can’t get it done and history and economic interests are more powerful than you.

Or found a company (or even a government program) that’s going to not just get humans into space, but make life more livable on earth as in the heavens. 

Or set an ambitious goal that needs a whole lot of people to stretch themselves and their wallets and hearts to believe in and build a congregation that’s more accessible, stronger, safer, more welcoming for all. (And also better air conditioned.) 

Or go ahead and love your enemies – the ones you’re afraid of, and the ones who just annoy you on the news and in the office or school and on the internet.

And all that? That’s just the tip of the iceberg of possibility. That’s what I can imagine in one busy weekend. There’s so much more potential that God can imagine, more ways Jesus can invite us to grow closer to himself and to take our own part in God’s work – in the ultimate defeat of death, and the whole and lasting renewal of the world.

And that – that power and freedom and possibility and transformation and hope that come from refusing to let fear stop us – now that’s attractive. That might even be exciting to take up when I’m too busy for anything new. 

The joy and wholeness that come from choosing love, even when it hurts, that’s attractive, too. That looks like life abundant. Like the life I need when I’m worn down by how much we’ve already taken up.

Jesus is offering us a gift – of power and love, freedom and hope – when he invites us – commands us – to put ourselves aside so that we can take up that brave, risky, exhilarating life that can’t be intimidated by suffering, death, or loss.

It’s the scariest thing he asks of us, or offers. But it may, after all, be the best.

I’ll take it.
How about you?

Holy Priorities

Mark 7:24-37

Is Jesus really refusing to help someone with a sick kid? That doesn’t seem right.

He’s even pretty rude and forceful about it, and I don’t like that.  I may be tempted to imagine Jesus would be mad at all the same people on the internet and cable news that I’m mad at, but when it comes right down to seeing Jesus deny a healing… That’s not the Jesus I want to see. 

It’s as if he’s denying or resisting the mission of God, the healing and reconciliation that’s the whole reason of God-among-us.

And then, too, there’s this other healing he’s trying to keep quiet. Jesus not only takes the man away from the community that brought him, in order to heal him in private. Then Jesus tries to suppress the news of the miracle, to keep a bunch of volunteer evangelists from proclaiming how good he is.

It’s as if he almost doesn’t want the gospel to spread. Doesn’t want more followers.

That can’t be right, can it?

None of this fits the image of Jesus I have in my head.

But it’s all been part of the story of Jesus for about as long as there’s been a story of Jesus. There must be a reason we tell these.

In the story of the woman with a sick child, Mark wants us to notice that Jesus is focusing on priorities.

“Let the children be fed first. It’s not fair to take food from the children and give it to the dogs.”

Mark wants us to remember that Jesus’ job on earth, at this point in the story, is primarily to renew the relationship of the children of Israel with God. 

God’s care encompasses all people, yes.  But as long as Jesus is fully human, Jesus’s fully divine self works with human limits. 

Not everything is possible all at once.

Right at this moment, in this incarnation, Jesus’ priority is work with the people of Israel.

Maybe Jesus tries to keep that other healing private and quiet, because his priority isn’t fame – the publicity and attraction of doing all things well – but rather faith – the trust and commitment to Jesus – whatever he does – that allows us to see all that God is up to in our world and lives.

And priorities are a good thing. 

Some of us, this week, may be able to bring non-perishable food for Cathedral Kitchen, and diapers for baby refugees to church, 

and pour out our compassion and help toward flood- or tornado-devastated neighbors in towns nearby, 

and Haitians devastated by the recent earthquake

and Afghan allies who couldn’t leave Kabul and now fear for their lives 

and folks facing eviction right now because Covid cost them their jobs or income, 

and countless other humanitarian crises all at once.
Maybe.

But most of us have to choose: to find one or two humanitarian priorities, while we also help our families and workplaces and church navigate whatever COVID means this week, respond to a friend terrified at a new diagnosis, do the work in front of us, dream and work for a stronger future, and manage to eat something healthy along the way.

We can’t do everything, so in order to do something, we have to set priorities. 

And we watch Jesus make that clear today.

In very strong language.

(I can’t excuse the rudeness of calling another human being a dog, but it’s possible that’s meant to shock us – you and me, the observers of the story – into knowing something is out of place, more than it’s meant to insult the Gentile woman who wants her child healed.)

We watch Jesus make priorities clear.

And then we watch God at work.

Because God can do everything, and this woman says so.

The dogs eat the crumbs the children drop.

You can feed the children first, and see the dogs fed at the same time.

And Jesus responds not by changing his priority, but by affirming that while Jesus stays focused on one thing, God has healed. I think he might even be saying that God has healed through the woman – “by your word” – rather than through Jesus. 

I think that may happen for us, too. When there is a part of God’s work that is beyond your scope, or my scope – God gets it done, and invites us to recognize the work of God being done through someone else.

And there always is – always will be – a lot of the work of God that’s beyond your scope, and mine. So it’s good news that God makes a way.  

Good news that makes it possible for us to do more, freed of the burden of trying to do all the things. Good news that helps us recognize the miracles God does through others, and that makes us stronger together.

A friend recently shared with me some advice she’d gotten from another friend.

When we ask ourselves if something is the right thing to do, we should also be asking the questions

Am I the right person? and

Is this the right time?

Say you wonder if it’s the right thing to sign up to sponsor a refugee family. And you may see it as the right thing to do to welcome the stranger as Jesus teaches; a patriotic thing to do, in welcoming an ally; a good thing to bring the community together.

Then you also ask:

Am I the person who can commit to generous friendship even when it’s awkward and tedious helping someone navigate a new culture, grocery shopping, travel and transit? Am I good at receiving a gift of a strange-to-me home-cooked meal with gratitude, learning about myself as I help others?

Some of us may recognize that part or all of that is beyond our capabilities. 

For others of us, there’s joy in that question, in that work we could do. Curiosity, courage or a sense of conviction that empowers our commitment.

And you ask: Is this the right time? 

Maybe the urgency is compelling, and there’s no time like the present. Maybe another commitment just ended, or you’ve been looking for a way to grow and learn.
Or maybe you see instead that another commitment this year means you should explore how to be ready next year.

The right thing to do, the right person, the right time. 

Those questions work for ministries at church, for choices in our families, even for decisions at work and school. Even the most secular of jobs has opportunities to love and serve our neighbors, and to share in God’s mission of healing and renewal.

Those holy priority questions can not only show us what God is calling and empowering you to do by showing you the joy or confidence or love or talent that helps you embrace God’s compassionate, healing, transformative work.
Those questions can also show you when you’re not called to something who it is who is doing the work of God you aren’t called to do.

And seeing that, recognizing and affirming that: 

telling a friend you see how his persistence in speaking the truth, or caring for a lonely, cranky neighbor, is building a channel for God’s healing; 

or telling a lawmaker that the bills she is sponsoring are making a difference;
or telling the world the good news of a miracle-enabling doctor, a heart-healing author’s work – 

all these ways of recognizing God’s work in someone else and proclaiming it is an important gift and task.

Freedom from the burden of doing all the things makes all things possible. 

Holy priorities keep us out of God’s way, when God has others to do the work.  

In today’s story, Jesus could embrace the limits of his full humanity, bound by time and physics, could share that experience we have, and proclaim God’s healing work through someone else. 

Freedom from the burden of all things empowers us to do more in some things. 

The Gentile woman with the sick child knew she didn’t have to worry about how Jesus’ mission to the children of Israel was going. So she could see the power of the crumbs under the table and claim that healing for her child.

In Mark’s story today, in our own stories, yours and mine, Jesus is making a way for God to work with and through you and me.

And that is his first priority. Ours, too.

Thanks be to God.