High Expectations

Mark 8:27-38

What are people saying?

What are you hearing about me?

Jesus seems to be conducting something of an opinion poll as our story opens today. And the responses place Jesus solidly in the long tradition of God’s prophets – those who bear God’s Word to God’s people. This is old news to many of us, listening and watching. Interesting, but impersonal – like a lot of contemporary opinion polls.

 

When Jesus turns the question to “Who do you say I am?” some of us may take it more personally, checking in on our own confidence or doubts about who Jesus of Nazareth really is and what he’s all about, while others of us still feel like comfortable observers – we’re watching a conversation from a long time ago, with Jesus’ special chosen disciples, after all.

 

And then the story takes a turn (the same turn it always takes, but a sharp turn nonetheless).
From focus group or theological teaching moment to a hard and direct conversation about death.

Many of us are squirming now. Or should be.

 

Because death is uncomfortable to talk about in the midst of life.

And it doesn’t sound especially friendly, or welcoming, or, for that matter, sane to announce that you’re going to be arrested, rejected, murdered, and resurrected.

Or to encourage everyone around you to do the same.

 

I’d be quietly unfriending that person on Facebook, if someone I knew was doing that. Or checking to see if they’ve got mental health support services. Peter tries a bit of that with Jesus, and is told in no uncertain terms to butt out. This is for real.

 

It’s a stark statement from Jesus: that the popular man who heals and inspires people, and brings us right in touch with a sense of holiness and God’s care for us is expecting, shortly, to be suffering, killed, and resurrected.

And that he expects other people – us?!? – to do the same.

 

Does Jesus really want us to embrace rejection, the loss of all we have and are, and literal death?

Want you and me – not just his specially chosen few, but us – to die for or with him?

 

Yes.

 

And yes, my gut lurches every time I look straight at that possibility.

But I’m convinced this is a real ask, a real expectation Jesus has.
That if we want to follow him, we will actually reject, renounce our selves, and deliberately accept death.

And, that when we lose self, life, everything, we also – gain it?
But not by avoiding death?

 

It’s weird, hard to understand. And just plain hard.

I don’t want to.

 

Rejecting your own life, your whole self, is a really stark and repellent demand.

It’s a wonder Jesus has any followers if this is what he’s asking for.

His expectations are too high for reasonable people to meet. And he’s talking about being ashamed of us at judgment day if we don’t meet them.

What happened to the nice, welcoming, loves-everyone Jesus we’ve heard about? The one who wants to save us?

 

Good news and bad news, friends.

This demanding, stark, potentially terrifying Jesus is precisely the radically loving, welcoming, generous Jesus.

The demand to give up our lives entirely is a demand to live in that radical, divine, extraordinary, generous love that Jesus brings us.

 

Tough as it is, it is welcoming in a profound way, because Jesus is opening this invitation to anyone.

“If any of you want to become my disciple,” he says.

I’ll take anybody. Garbage collectors, the neighbor with the tackiest yard signs, Wall Street tycoons and day laborers, tax accountants, immigrants, girls… even politicians.

In a context where to be chosen as a disciple of a popular and well-known rabbi was probably the end result of a lifetime’s focused education and training and the kind of family investment now reserved for beating the odds into an Ivy League university, Jesus standing in front of a random crowd and saying “if any of you want to be my disciple, you can” is bombshell-radical welcome, generosity, and empowerment.

 

Nobody is disqualified.

Not the person who has been bored out of their mind by church and Jesus’ other followers, not the person who’s been insulted and rejected, not the hopeless underachiever, not the person who’s broken all ten commandments (or all 613 in scripture, depending how you count) just to keep score.

Anybody can be a disciple – an apprentice – even a close personal friend of this miraculous, popular, powerful Jesus.

Anybody can decide to follow Jesus, which means to become like Jesus.

Which means to become deeply, personally close to God, to become a human being infused with, filled with, the presence and power and love of God’s own self.

 

And here’s the thing – the thing that I think is so obvious to Jesus he doesn’t do a really good job of explaining what happens when you renounce yourself and lose your life for and with him. It’s that this incredible closeness to God, to God’s self, enables all the self-sacrifice as well as demanding all the self-sacrifice.

The renunciation, the losing of our selves, is the same thing as experiencing the glorious, rich, soul-filling closeness to God Jesus shares. The same thing as the deep, joyous, earthshaking love obliterating all our selfishness and fears.

 

And Jesus is telling us that that’s what he expects from us.

Expects that we lose ourselves in love.

 

Sometimes, we give ourselves up because the love takes the lead. Sometimes we get to feel the warmth  and joy of love making it almost easy to give up time, or wealth, or choices or opinions or kidneys or other things we take personally, other elements of ourselves.

 

Other times, the hard decisions of self-denial come first – and then love reveals itself to us.

A bone marrow donor discovering after the difficult process of donation a sense of deep, supportive, familial love and friendship for the stranger who received that physical part of her self.

Someone slowing down his frantic rush out of a burning building – deciding to risk his life – and discovering that he feels no resentment or fear, just love and hope, as he helps lift the office’s most annoying colleague out of danger.

You, reluctantly choosing to go to a movie or concert you expect to hate, because it’s what your child or spouse or friend has been longing for. Then realizing that though you’ve been dreading it for so long (and it is pretty terrible), you’re feeling the peace of love in the experience of it. 

Or resenting how much laundry detergent costs, and then – after you grumpily add two more bottles to your cart to bring to the Trinity household needs pantry – feeling your heart lift. And realizing that’s God’s love taking over your heart, whether you planned for it or not.

 

Renouncing ourselves – giving up our life for love – doesn’t just happen once, in one decision to follow Jesus.

It’s such a big deal, such a high expectation, because Jesus is calling us to a constant attitude of choosing to step away from our self-interest, self-protection, and right into the proactive, generous, overwhelming love of God, whatever it costs us.

 

Over, and over, and over, and over, no turning back.

Until our whole lives become a sacrament of that generous, welcoming, hope-fueling, divinely joyful love that doesn’t need to protect ourselves, but delights in giving up our selves.

 

Because we have become like Jesus.

Become love.

Boast in God's Mercy

Mark 7:24-37

Did you ever have one of those uncomfortable conversations?

The kind where you need to ask for help from someone?

From someone you’re not sure will give that help, even when you ask as nicely as you can?

 

We might have more of them than usual at the beginning of a school year, or the start of a new project or program.

When you need help, but you’re just not sure if this person you’re talking to is the right one to ask.

Or you’re trying to get help for someone else, but the person you have to ask is the class bully or the biggest suck-up, or a teacher or a boss who seems to not like you, or even a stranger.

 

That’s kind of what’s happening in the stories Mark tells us about Jesus this week.

Both of the stories are about people coming to Jesus, and asking him to help someone else.

And in the first story, the story of the woman whose little child is sick, there is every reason for her to expect that Jesus won’t want to help her.

 

She’s from a different sort of clan – one that doesn’t get along very well with Jesus’ people, with the people of Israel in the first century.

They are having this conversation in a part of the country where her kinfolk are probably the richer, more privileged folks, and Jesus’ kinfolk are probably the poorer folks, and there’s probably some resentment between the two groups.
Jesus’ folks might be angry about it if they hear he helped out one of those landlord types who everyone assumes just take what they can get all the time.

And to top it off, she wants divine help, a miracle, when the two of them have different religions.

 

But she comes to Jesus anyway, and she asks very carefully. “Bowing down” to show she doesn’t think she’s better than him.

Please, please help my baby. She is so sick from this evil demon, and I know you are the best person to heal her. I really need your help.

 

And Jesus says exactly what she might have expected him to say. What anyone else might have expected him to say.

I can’t waste God’s power on this. You don’t belong. It’s not fair to take what my people need, and give it to your people.

 

That’s pretty uncomfortable for you and me to hear, maybe, after we’ve had generations of teaching that we can trust Jesus to help anybody.

But from a popular opinion perspective at the time, that’s exactly what he would be supposed to say.

But this woman – this momma who knew she was going to have a very uncomfortable conversation when she had to ask for help – this woman tells Jesus that in spite of what everyone else would expect, she trusts that he really will help everybody.

Everybody.

There is enough to go around, she tells him.

I don’t want to take away what your people need. But there is enough, more than enough of God’s mercy, for your people to have what they need, and for my baby to be healed.

 

And Jesus says, “You’re right.”
And her daughter is healed by a miracle so powerful that it happens right that instant, without even seeing or touching the child.  

 

And Mark tells us that story so that now, thousands of years later, we know too that there is always enough of God’s mercy for everyone to have enough.

Even if we have to get into a very uncomfortable conversation about it.

 

Mark tells us this story

– and the story after it, where a bunch of people come to Jesus, and tell him about another person who needs healing, and Jesus takes the time to carefully and specially heal that person, too, with God’s power –

Mark tells us this story so that we can “make our boast of God’s mercy,” just like we prayed in our collect, our prayer of the day at the beginning of the service.

 

You can look in your program, at how we prayed to be able to be like that woman, that momma, in the Jesus story:

Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts;

for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength,

so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy;…

If that woman in our story was from the richer, more powerful social group that many bible scholars think she was, it would have been easy for her to “confide in her own strength” – to assume that the resources she had at hand, in her own community, were better than whatever this roving teacher from the other side of the tracks had to offer.

But instead, she “made her boast of God’s mercy”. She went right to the man of God – went right to God – and said “God’s mercy is enough. More than enough. It’s all I need, and it’s exactly what my baby needs. I know, I trust, you will heal her.”

And God did not forsake her. God didn’t leave her on her own; God helped her.

Just like we prayed today.

 

Prayed – and keep praying – that we can trust God that much ourselves.

 

Because we need that kind of trust.

We need to know God will help us when we have to ask for help.

We need to believe – in our guts, not just our heads – that God loves us bigger and stronger and more abundantly than we ever need.  That God loves us more than anyone else can dislike us, and more than anyone can ever say no to us.

 

We need to know that, to trust that, because there will always be things we need help with. Problems too big for us to solve – violence and prejudice and whether everyone has a good job, and a good school, and good medical care and enough to eat – but that we can help solve because God helps us.

 

There will always be uncomfortable conversations – times when we need help and know it might be hard to get. Or times when someone we don’t much like needs help from us.

And if we can trust in God’s mercy, all of those conversations will be a little easier, because we will know that God has enough love and help and kindness and healing for everyone.

We can have those conversations trusting in God, instead of in ourselves.

 

There are lots of things we can do out of our own strength and skill – things that are easy for us right away, sure, and also new things that are hard when we start but are skills we can learn, whether it’s trigonometry or essay writing or programming or dribbling a ball or managing a team or a database or a new language.

 

And there will always – always – at work and at school and at home – be things that we can’t do, or won’t do, without help. Keeping our friends and families safe and healthy. Making the world a friendly place, where everyone wants to help others.

 

And there are things that God will always – always – help us do, even if we don’t know how to ask.

To be brave. To be generous. To help one another. To love – love other people, love ourselves, love God.

 

That’s why we pray, today, and often, that God will help us always to trust God.

So that we can do more than we think we can.

And so that God can do everything we - and everybody - need.

 

How Do They Know?

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23; James 1:17-27

How do people know that you are a Christian? A follower of Jesus?

 

Or how do you know that someone else is a disciple, a Christian?

 

Do you just say it outright? “Hi, I’m Emily. I’m a Christian.”

Or use that as an answer when someone asks “and what do you do?” in a get to know you conversation?

I’ve seen a lot of t-shirts in the grocery, in airports, wherever, that proclaim that the wearer is “Team Jesus”, or something like that.

 

Or do you know by some kind of action?

Showing up at church every Sunday? Crossing yourself before you step up for an athletic endeavor or to make a presentation in a meeting?
Because you imitate Jesus by something like working as a healer or turning over tables in the marketplace?

 

Or maybe it’s as simple as that mid-century hymn that tells us

“They will know we are Christians by our love,

by our love.

[Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.]”

And that claim is based in scripture, when Jesus tells his disciples shortly before his death that “…everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (Jn 13:35)

 

So there’s our answer. Simple.

Right until someone asks about what it looks like to love. 

Love one another, or love God.

And has a different opinion about what that looks like than you do.

 

Which is a bit of what’s going on in Mark’s gospel story this morning.

When the Pharisees demand to know how Jesus and his disciples can love God’s law and honor God if they don’t wash their hands before eating.

 

Specifically, that’s not a concern about hygiene; it’s a ritual handwashing, an imitation of the Torah law that instructs priests to wash as a symbol of holiness before entering the sanctuary and offering sacrifices at the altar. 

What our translation calls “defiled” hands aren’t sinful. They’re just common, ordinary; just not set specially apart for the worship of God.

 

But the Pharisees are on a campaign to make all of God’s people in Israel as holy all the time as the priests are when serving at God’s altar. God called Israel a “kingdom of priests” and a “holy nation”, so they think we should act like that.

Mark may be exaggerating when he claims that “all the Jews” wash hands before eating, but probably – given the influence of the Pharisees – most people would know that’s a custom all the “really holy” people do. And some of them – certainly the Pharisees – would be shocked and worried when this miracle man who claims to be holy like God doesn’t do the simple holy rituals, or teach his disciples to do them.

 

So are these Jesus-followers really holy? Is Jesus himself really close to God?
If they aren’t doing this basic and popular ritual of respect for God, of keeping oneself ready to worship and honor God at all times?

 

Without this visible sign, how will anyone know that Jesus and his followers respect God? Love God?

 

Jesus, of course, has an answer for that.
And, as usual, his answer comes at the question a little sideways.

 

Answering “how will we show we love God?” With the declaration that nothing about these ritual practices, nothing about these signs, can separate us from God.

Whether we wash our hands for ritual holiness, whether we cross ourselves at certain prayers, whether we fast before receiving communion, whether we light the candles or forget, none of those ritual actions of holiness - done or left undone - can separate us from God.

(They might help us feel more ready to worship and pray, but Jesus isn’t teaching about helpful spiritual practices today. He’s insisting that omitting them can’t cut us off.)

 

Instead, he says, it’s what comes out of us that makes us “unholy”; what comes “out” of us that can separate us from God. He waves aside concerns about ritual purity, and insists on deep, unfakeable, spiritual purity – of being like God in our hearts, instead of being ritually prepared to encounter God.

 

The things that separate us from God, Jesus says, are harboring, displaying, and acting on evil intentions. Theft, deceit, slander, excess, arrogance, greed and all the forms of the desire always to have more.
When those “come out of us” in our words and in our actions, then we’re separating ourselves from God, from the holiness and love of God.

Those words and actions that come out of us are the things that show we are not with God.

 

He explains this in detail to his closest followers, who – like the Pharisees and the big crowds that follow Jesus – are a little puzzled by this insistence that ritual purity doesn’t matter. (Any of us who’ve watched a cherished church tradition that’s spelled holiness to us be overturned by new teaching can sympathize with how they feel!)

It’s not the holy rituals that make us holy and ready for God. It’s what we let out into the world that can pull us away from God.

 

Jesus doesn’t go on to the corollary that “what comes out of us” can also show how close we are to God, but that’s a natural progression. And an idea that’s picked up by James, writing to Jewish Christians after Jesus has died, risen, and returned to the heaven that he came to us from.

 

Be “doers” of the word of God, James says, not only hearers. Bring out of you the actions and words of holiness, of love, of being close to God. If the goodness of God is not coming out of you, it’s not enough. It’s not full, complete, whole.

 

It would be easy to read James as claiming that we have to do good works in order to get close to Jesus – more of those outward signs, like handwashing. But James is telling us the opposite – that those “good works” – generosity, care for others – come from the “implanted word”, from the holiness and love of God that are already rooted in our hearts. He’s just trying to make sure we don’t ever make the mistake of trying to keep that love of God only in our hearts.
James – like Jesus – wants us – and all God’s world – to see, and benefit from, that love “coming out of us” in words and actions that heal, build up, and pour love on God’s people and the world.

 

James doesn’t want us to smother, stifle, or ignore the love and word of God implanted in us; he wants us to set it free – to let it be seen, and memorable, and effective.  So that the holiness of God, of Christ, is known through us, rather than our holiness known to God.

 

So maybe the question I should have started with – is not how others will know we are Christian, but do others know we are?

Do others know – do we know – that we are living the love of God, pouring out from inside us, not to make us holy, but to celebrate God’s holiness in us, and pour it out, for all to know God’s love.