preaching: You Give Them Something to Eat

Sermon text: Mark 6:30-44

Stream it from the Gathering Church site or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.

reflecting: Mark 6:30-44

Have you ever seen one of those “hoarder shows” on TV?  

They’re kind of fascinating, but they’re also kind of upsetting.  

Reality television is largely a case-in-point that truth, or at least “real life,” is stranger than fiction.  When I was watching, I was about to totally disengage with the lives on the screen, till a behavioral psychologist came on.  It seems that these professionals’ main role is to get to the bottom of some fundamental problem of “enough-ness” in their patient.

I can connect with this issue.  The old man on the program hoarded because, in his estimation, there was a good chance that at some point there just was not going to be enough.  He held onto things and food and memories because he didn’t believe that the future will be so kind to him.  

The sad irony was that this holding onto resulted in him being threatened with losing his home because it was dangerous, losing his relationships because he had alienated the people closest to him, and losing his own possessions because of rust, corrosion and rot.

Sunday we’ll explore a famous passage in Mark’s Gospel (Mark 6:30-44), but common to all four accounts, about Jesus feeding more than 5.000 people with just 5 loaves and 2 fish.  Sounds suspicious given the lack of “enough-ness” in Jesus’ camp.

We get the privilege of not only hearing the good news about how Jesus manages this, but we also get to participate in a meal of communion together, remembering another dramatic moment when Jesus fed his disciples with bread.  Look forward to seeing you then.

reflecting: Mark 4:21-34

This Sunday we'll continue on in chapter 4 of Mark's Gospel.  This chapter is laden with stories and teachings by Jesus on the Kingdom of God.  I can't help but remember, when I read this chapter of farmers and mustard seeds, when I was called on to preach one of my first sermons to a rural North Carolinian congregation two years ago.  It was pretty intimidating to drive to work everyday that summer past fields and barns and then try to explicate how the Kingdom of God is like something that they knew far more intimately about than I do.  

But maybe that's the point.

The Kingdom of God is like a seed, even like a mustard seed.  Small, but when nourished and come to fruition, yielding great and surprising things.  Mysterious at its core.  We rely on seeds and their fruit everyday (ie "our daily bread"), but can we really explain them, can we totally domesticate or control them, or do we, at some point just have to sit back and relish in the mysterious bounty and sustenance they provide us?

I look forward to meeting this Sunday to learn more about, to participate in, and to continue to imagine this mysterious Kingdom of God with you.  I thank God that his kingdom resists mine, or ours, or really anybody's attempts to control it.  I thank God for the mysterious, manna-like provision with which He keeps us and pray for the faith and patience and awe to really appreciate a loving God that works that way.  Finally, I pray that I get used to that kind of Kingdom, which looks and feels so different from any kingdom I would imagine on my own or try to make for myself.

Here is the manuscript for the sermon given (sorry there's no audio, but if you were there you'd understand why there is no audio!)

reflecting: Mark 4:1-20

This Sunday we dive back into the story that we put on “pause” since Holy Week.  We fittingly pick up Mark’s Gospel in chapter 4.  I say that it is fitting because the setting of this passage that features Jesus teaching is a lake.  This setting is especially familiar as we spent last Sunday at Camp Chestnut Ridge celebrating the baptisms of Steve, Tanner, and Mike.  We can imagine ourselves on the shore of Jesus’ lake because we’ve so recently worshipped by the lake.

We’re involved.  We’re invited to participate.

Beyond the mere setting, we’re also invited by Jesus’ teaching itself.  Jesus teaches by the lake, but hardly as some sort of professor.  Rather than lecture, he tells stories in parables.  Jesus uses these parables to involve us.  To invite us into the story.  To do the imaginative work of figuring where we are in the story.

To form us rather than just to inform us.  To leave us affected.

So when we read and hear Mark 4:1-20 this week, jump into the story.  Imagine the scene he paints with a sower sowing seeds that either die or flourish and bear fruit.  Let this simple agricultural story put the question to yourselves and your life.

What kind of soil does God’s Word land on in you?

What are the thorns in your life?

Where are you shallow?  Where are your roots weak?

Where are you bearing fruit and how is that fruit blessing people?

reflecting: Ephesians 6:5-9

The resurrection and work.

This connection is not, at least to me, as readily apparent as the things we’ve been focused on up to this point.

Easier to see how Jesus rising from the dead might represent a fundamental shift in the way we conceive of ourselves (identity) or others (community). It might even spur on a new way to talk to each other (psalms, hymns, spiritual songs) (kind of the ANTI-Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, instead of sealing us down because of traumatic event, it opens us up following the most pivotal positive event in human history!).

But work? What’s an empty grave got to do with work? Or maybe more importantly, how can we say that things are different when they don’t look like it?

Servants, respectfully obey your earthly masters but always with an eye to obeying the real master, Christ. Don't just do what you have to do to get by, but work heartily, as Christ's servants doing what God wants you to do. And work with a smile on your face, always keeping in mind that no matter who happens to be giving the orders, you're really serving God. Good work will get you good pay from the Master, regardless of whether you are slave or free. –Ephesians 6:5-9 (the Message)

This passage puts forth, with painful realism, that the revolution caused by Jesus’ resurrection from the dead might not look like much at all. Wouldn’t we expect Paul instead to say something along the lines of, “Slaves, you’re no longer slaves anymore, forget about what that guy’s telling you to do,” or “Masters, you should be ashamed of yourselves, don’t you know this way of doing things is done for?!”  

Instead of totally flipping over the social tables though, the resurrection does something maybe even more subversive here. The resurrection changes the terms. It teaches us that living into the miracle (if there ever was one!) of Jesus leaving an empty tomb, might (and probably won’t) mean leaving your job to pursue a sexier (and presumably holier vocation), it probably won’t mean telling off that boss of yours, or becoming your own boss. It (gasp) might not even mean going to seminary to learn how to be a professional God-lover.

Working in light of the resurrection is instead going to entail a lot of the hard work of service. It’s going to be a new perspective on the same old thing, seeing everything, every moment as an opportunity to demonstrate the kind of world that Jesus’ risen body sets up and anticipates. It shows off the fact that living only comes through dying, and that God is faithful and able to raise the dead, to heal what’s broken, and to bring about peace, justice, and restoration even in the darkest and most unlikely places. Oh, and maybe one of those places is where you punch a clock.

reflecting: Ephesians 4:4-6

There is one body and one Spirit- just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call- one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.  Ephesians 4:4-6

Sometimes it is hard for me to grasp this new identity that Jesus’ resurrection makes possible. Paul’s letter to the people in Ephesus tells them, like it tells us, that they are now free to be one. One with God and one with each other. Because of what God did through Jesus on the cross and afterwards we have this hope. We are called to this hope. Resurrection hope touches every part of our lives: our work, our words, our families, our communities, even our own hopes, dreams, and expectations. Because our sins have been atoned for (literally putting us at-ONE with God) we can live this new life.

As we prepare for next week’s baptism service at Camp Chestnut Ridge, we’re called by this passage to remember our own baptisms. To remember that moment when we dramatically signaled that we’ve died and been raised to new life with Christ. 

This is a time to re-repent, recognizing the ways we still live underwater, dead. 

But it’s also a time to re-rejoice, remembering what has surprisingly and mysteriously happened on Easter, and recognizing the “call to the one hope that belongs to your call.”

My prayer over the next week and a half is a prayer for one-ness. That we feel near to the God who has brought us close. That we share in this unity together as we worship and celebrate the one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Amen.

preaching: Psalms, Hymns, & Spiritual Songs

Sermon text: Ephesians 5:8-20

Stream it from the Gathering Church site or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.

reflecting: Ephesians 5:8-20

This Sunday I have the privilege of continuing the theme that we’ve been hitting on post-Easter. The resurrection is so central to the Christian faith it must have some pretty major implications.

It means that we have a new identity (Ephesians 2:1-10), marked not by our performance or the road that we’ve paved (cause that’s gotta end, and it will definitely end in the grave).

It means that we have a new conception and possibility for community (Ephesians 2:11-21), surprisingly open to different people than the ones we see in the mirror (and the resurrected Jesus tells us through Paul’s writings that this is an occasion for praise and not fear or strife).

And this week we find that we have a new resurrection language (Ephesians 5:8-20): Song. (song?!) That can’t be right, with all the bad stuff going around we need ways to speak that do things, good things, and you’re asking us to make music?

Here’s a parable about what possibilities song has following Jesus’ victory over death in the resurrection. I look forward to seeing you there!

reflecting: Ephesians 2:11-22

Sitting in church during Mark’s sermon on Ephesians 2:11-22 last Sunday, I was distracted in my thoughts by a book I’m current reading. It is, I think, a pretty regular phenomena for someone just finishing a school program forcing tireless amounts of academic reading over the past three years to want to read some of the leisured non-fiction they’ve missed out on.

I started with the short-story fiction of Flannery O’Connor. If you’re not familiar with O’Connor, she was a brilliant Catholic writer from Savannah who, perhaps better than about anyone, spun gripping tales about the “Christ-haunted South” in which she lived (and we still live).

As Mark expounded on Paul’s exhortations for Christians to understand and live into the “peace-making” work that Christ bought on the Cross and made possible by rising and defeating death, I mused on Flannery’s hard-hitting critiques of how much the church lags to do so. In her famous (infamous?) short story, Revelation, she introduces a terribly unsympathetic (pathetic?) character named Ruby Turpin. Mrs. Turpin sits in a doctor’s waiting room assessing those around her, measuring herself by demeaning others. She even falls asleep at night by trying to sort out the hierarchy in her head (confused about whether it be better to be a land-owning n____r or white trash). Regardless, she is glad to be who she is, pious and with quite a “good disposition.”

Just when you want to really hate Mrs. Turpin, her world gets turned upside down by a series of events that forces her to see that the “bottom rail” might be on top, and to cry out to God at the apparent injustice of such a thing, at “those people” being not just included in God’s mission but actually prioritized.

What bothered me though, in conjunction with Mark’s sermon, is that I’m not sure this is true. That the bottom rail does get put on top. Ephesians 2:14-18 says,

“For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.“

When it says this, it seems that rather than the rails switching places, the train skips off the track. Indeed, rather than the bottom rail being on top, the Cross and Resurrection have actually totally de-railed the way things are and will be. And the Church is the first place that we should actually see proof of this.

reflecting: Mark 2:18-22

Why a wedding? I’m still stuck on that.

Read back through Mark 2:18-22. 

Why, when asked about rule-keeping and rule-breaking, does Jesus go down this rabbit trail?

How, when these folks are asking legitimate questions about the ethical out-pouring of their worship, can Jesus get all sentimental and abstract and start talking about going to the chapel? We’re talking about obedience here. We’re trying to be God-lovers. Here. Now.

Last week at a talk at Duke, world-renowned artist Mako Fujimura brought this theme into better focus. He described the vocation of the Christian, for his talk specifically the Christian artist but more generally any follower of Christ, as being a Wedding Planner.

That's what we are...Cosmic Wedding Planners.

We are wedding planners because we always have an eye on the end. The Wedding Feast of the Lamb when we are united with Christ and worship God face-to-face forever.

Ask anyone who has ever planned their wedding how myopic their vision can get among all the stress and organization and details. How easy it is to separate the preparation from the celebration. How easy it is to forget the reason you’re doing all this in the first place.

But Jesus reminds us, as he reminded them. 

Our faithfulness now is not just for our own sake. Our present suffering is not for naught. 

Rather we plan constantly for a Great Wedding Feast. We keep our eyes fixed on Jesus so that we don’t loose the plot. Every bit of our planning (praying, loving, sacrificing, serving, cultivating our specific callings, and being faithful where God puts us) needs to know the end.

So why a wedding? 

Because, without a wedding, none of this makes sense. Without the groom waiting at the altar all of our work, even our best attempts, is in vain. Because, if we can’t recognize Jesus in our midst and can’t look forward to being united with him in the end, we’ve missed the point altogether.

reflecting: Mark 3:7-21

This Sunday, we continue to follow Mark’s narrative of Jesus’ ministry (Mark 3:7-21). Fresh off the heals of Jesus’ surprising encounters with the Pharisees and the crowds where he gives a fresh vision of the Sabbath, wineskins, and what it means to be in the presence of Christ (in short: the feasting and celebration that belongs to a wedding!), we find a bit of a summary of what’s been happening. 

Crowds. 

Impure Spirits. 

Different levels of recognition. 

And a sort of expansion and contraction. 

By that I mean, the withdrawing of Jesus before the crowding around him; the gathering of his disciples before the sending of them to preach and drive out demons. This might seem exhausting. We know what it’s like to be busy, over-extended, scattered. 

But it is Jesus, who brings us together. That brings us to Himself, in order to send us back out to involve others in this dynamic life with God. It is Jesus who also has the discipline to retreat to a quiet place, to narrow everything down to communion with his Father, before re-igniting His hectic life of being “for” others. 

This retreat and mission, contraction and expansion, receiving and giving, reminds me of something that Paul leads with in his Second Letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor 1:3-5): 

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. 

As we gather this Sunday, I invite you to come to the Fount, the source of comfort, refreshment, forgiveness, and life-abundance, that you may share in these gifts, be recharged, and be (as John Jay mentions) re-membered for the purpose of offering that the power, love, friendship, and resurrection-hope to others who are hurting in our families, communities, and world. I pray that we all might find time and space to be with Him, that He might then send us out.

Mako Fujimura @ Duke Divinity School

reflecting: Mark 2:18-28

This coming Sunday we’ll keep moving through Mark’s gospel (Mark 2:18-28) and catch Jesus in a couple of encounters with observers trying to figure out what following Jesus entails, and Pharisees, the good Jews who know what being in relationship with God requires and looks like.

First, the question is put to Jesus about fasting, essentially asking, “John the Baptizer’s followers and the Pharisees are taking this whole thing seriously, bending their wills and their bodies in order to worship God, why don’t you teach that to yours?  Why instead do you hang out late with these scoundrels?”  Keep in mind the major contrast that’s happening here, considering the previous scene shows Jesus wining and dining with Levi and Co (Mark 2:13-17).

Jesus’ response is a deeply theological one.  One that tells what time it is (not time for fasting, but rather feasting!?), and understands what’s going on not as anything less than a sacred event like Marriage (“how can the guests of the Bridegroom fast?”)  

This frames Jesus’ call to and hang with Levi not as something periphery, but as the main event to Jesus’ ministry.  If Jesus had just identified himself as a Doctor (Mark 2: 17), now he describes his coming as a Bridegroom looking for a bride.  In the Levi feast, we get a glimpse at what it looks like when Jesus finds one.  And celebration is in order; diet starts Monday, because today it’s time to party (ie Luke 15’s story of the Prodigal Son that we studied in last fall)!

The next encounter about the Sabbath again shows this reckless perspective.  It features a Jesus who does not seek to abolish the Law but to fulfill it.  It reveals a God walking amongst us that is so full of Grace that He and only he is Lord, only he has the authority (a big word in Mark’s gospel that keeps popping up…), to interpret what such a grace-full thing as the Sabbath means for God’s people.

What it means is that the Sabbath is a time for feasting; a time to understand the freedom and joy in God.  That God-with-us (the definition of Emmanuel) means abundance (John 10:10) and revelry.  But not just a party for partying-sake, but a party that celebrates when Jesus looks for his long-lost Beloved, often the least-likely looking bride in a soiled dress, and as the Bridegroom Lord, finds and claims her for His own!

reflecting: Mark 1:40-45

I don’t envy the folks that do bible translation and scholarship. I’m in the second semester of my second biblical language and am tired of it. Most days it’s incredibly tedious. You spend essentially a whole semester learning language and syntax, vocabulary and verb conjugations, and only get to the gratifying stuff way later. With this in mind, it’s puzzling to me when I actually come upon a verse or word that these really smart academics can’t boil down.

So we find at the end of Mark’s first chapter in Jesus’ dealing with the leper. A man suffering from leprosy, a terrible disease where your flesh rots even though you’re alive, comes to Jesus in order to be healed. Rather than asking earnestly, “Can you heal me? Can you stop me from being the living-dead? From being a social, religious, and physical outcast? Can you make me whole?” Instead, with desperate confidence he states, “If you want, you can make me clean.”

It is in Jesus’ response that the translators and commentators make their money. If you pick up ten bible translations mostly likely seven will say something along the lines of “being moved with pity and sympathy” (Amplified Bible), “moved with compassion” (NLT/KJV), “moved with pity” (ESV/NRSV/RSV), or “Deeply moved…” (The Message). The greek word that yields these translations has to do with the human bowels (splangknidzomai). His guts; the very depths of the Jewish understanding of the person. His compassion is literally sympathetic, it makes Jesus sick to his stomach. It churns his insides to see this man in this state.

The other three bibles will say something along the lines of “Jesus was indignant” (NIV 2011/TNIV) or “Jesus was incensed” (CEB). What is ticking Jesus off and why? Is he upset at the presence of this man’s brokenness before him, his deadness? Put off by the gross display of depravity? What gives?

Readers of Mark’s good news have long tried to marry these two emotions of Jesus. Based on what’s just happened (the speaking with authority and confronting demons in Mk 1:21-28), both give us a valuable insight into how Jesus encounters and overcomes evil. Jesus has just cast out an unsettling and unclean spirit from a man at the synagogue and his fame is spreading. Mark scholar Joel Marcus helps us understand that, “Jesus’ rage at the disease or at the demon that has caused it is mixed with his compassion for the man whom it has attacked, and by his gesture of touching the man he even risks contracting ritual impurity himself. But instead of impurity passing from the man to Jesus, the purity of Jesus’ holiness passes from him to the man, and the latter is cured” (from Marcus’ Anchor Bible Commentary on The Gospel of Mark, Vol 1).

Jesus doesn’t merely rage at the evil that is singling this man out and ravaging his body. Neither does Jesus’ healing good news handle his broken, dirty death with the kid-gloves of disinterested pity. He takes it on. He feels and risks. He gets angry at the right things (because this man’s sickness isn’t what it means to be human) and responds in the right ways (because of his authority, things can be different). 

This is good news that reaches down to his guts.

reflecting: Mark 1:21-39

I want to rethink job descriptions a little. It seems like most job descriptions should instead be called “job prescriptions.” After all, you get them at the beginning of your work, they prescribe to you what you should do, what your responsibilities are, and how you should spend your time. We all know that these job prescriptions don’t always indicate what you actually do. Maybe they call for you to do more work (Slacker!), maybe, for the work-a-holic, far less. Job prescriptions prescribe the task ahead. Job descriptions describe what’s actually happening, and what should continue to happen…

It’s with this frame of mind that we stumble onto a pretty odd job description for Jesus in Mark’s gospel. Verse 39, in chapter one, states, Jesus goes around “preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.” Wait, what?! Preaching and exorcising?!

Jesus says that this is why he’s come. Sure it’s at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, this statement is definitely a sign of more to come, but it is descriptive of what Jesus is doing. The two prongs of his controversial mission: preaching a message of God and confronting evil head-on.

These two facets are important for us not to separate, nor to privilege one over the other.

Jesus is not just a gifted speaker, wooing crowds with his religious knowledge and oratory polish. Though he was not afraid to encounter folks in a religious arena with the uncomfortable possibility that connection to and life with God might look different than what they thought.

Jesus is not just a social worker, activist, or community organizer, dead-set on eliminating personal and societal ills. Though he was certainly not afraid or ashamed to leave the synagogue and enter into the spaces of turmoil, ambiguity, darkness, suffering, and fear.

Mark sets up Jesus’ job description in a way that forces us to realize that Jesus is reordering things. Jesus exhibits authority to teach, because he’s the Word being taught. Jesus has authority to still the turbulent spirit in the man on the church house steps because he is “the Holy One of God.”

For us who are “in Christ,” receiving the authority and healing of Jesus, but also participating in it and offering it to the world, we better pay attention to this job description. Does it describe what we know? Is it descriptive of who we are on a daily basis? If not, let us continue to rethink, and by the Holy Spirit, relearn who Jesus is and what his authority means in our lives, our families, our community, and our world.

reflecting: Mark 1:12-13/Luke 4:1-13

As we’ve previously seen in Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ coming marks the beginning of a reign.  The names and lingo surrounding Jesus are regal and politically charged (“gospel,” “Anointed One,” “Son of God”).  And we all know that the whole point of having a king is to concentrate authority in one place.  In short, Jesus comes onto the scene and anyone (or thing) who has had dominion is threatened to have that power toppled.

In a world with violent political unrest in the headlines on a daily basis (Egypt, could be Haiti next…), we assume what it means for Jesus to do this.  When the “heavens are torn open” we might imagine some sort of theme music being cued, fanfare, etc.  But then, almost inexplicably, the Spirit leads Jesus into the dessert.

The writer of Mark’s gospel briefly alludes to this, but leaves the details out.  However, we can supplement our understanding with Luke’s account.  In chapter 4 in Luke, he narrates the three temptations Jesus faces in the wilderness.  These temptations and how Jesus meets them show what his kingdom and Kingship are going to be about: not just the ends but also the means.  In doing so they assault the ways we might be accustomed to think.  They show us a clear picture of who’s the real King and who’s not.

The hungry Jesus is challenged to make bread from stones.  Something he no doubt could have easily done.  He resists this temptation, because, while his kingship will meet needs in the most complete and sweeping way possible, drawing from a bottomless supply of resources, he will not turn the stuff of creation into a commodity.  Eugene Peterson mentions in his brilliant book The Jesus Way: “ The devil wants us to [give into this temptation]: follow Jesus but then use Jesus to fulfill needs, first our own and then the needs of all the hungry people around us.”  King Jesus won’t do it.  Instead he’ll go hungry.  He’ll suffer in order to bring his kingdom into being.

The second temptation is to throw Himself off the highest point so that a band of angels may catch him.  The devil challenges Jesus to dazzle.  To show off a bit.  To compensate for the, up until this point, anti-heroic shape his kingship is taking.  Jesus resists.  He will not be used as a “hedge against boredom.”  He will not be just another thrill to be sought, or cause to be rallied for.  Jesus’ kingdom campaign doesn’t need pyrotechnics or viral advertising.

The final temptation leveled against Jesus is to be co-opted.  The devil offers Jesus something he already has: authority.  Jesus resists.  He knows what he has and who he is.  He knows he doesn’t have to “sell-out” in order to “make it.”  He trusts his Father to accomplish his mission.  Perhaps “the devil wants us to use Jesus in the same way.  Use Jesus to run our families, our neighborhoods, our schools, our governments as efficiently and properly as we can, but with no love or forgiveness.”

Jesus, by establishing his Kingship in the wilderness, a Kingship that withstands these worldly, by-the-book measures, really exposes other kings (lowercase “k”); exposes them in the sense that they can’t rule like he can, nor are they willing to.  The very trials the devil put to Jesus, which he withstood, are the very trials we pray against in the Lord’s Prayer.  Because we know they’re tempting, but we also know who the Real King is.

I can’t help it, I’m a Disney-phile, but perhaps if coming out of the baptismal waters and heading towards the wilderness Jesus had a theme-song, it might have sounded a bit like one from the 1973 animated Robin Hood.

Living in an England ruled by Phony King John in a phony way, Robin Hood exposes him for who he is, a fake unfit to wear the crown or receive the people’s trust and obeisance.  Jesus not only announces this, but is the alternative: the real King pronouncing a “pox on the phony kings” who do things in phony ways.

reflecting: Mark 1:9-13

When the heavens above Jesus open in Mark 1:10, we are treated to a glimpse, a momentary peek, into the dynamic life of the Triune God.  Christians throughout the ages have come to know and describe their God as both three-in-one and one-in-three; one God in three Persons.  Thinking about this can wrack our brains, but it can also ignite our imaginations…  This means that our God lives in love and unity: with Himself.  That each Person of his being is distinct, but vitally connected, inextricable from the other Two.  That the God of the bible is a Community of Love in and of Himself.

When the bible says that God is love (1 John 4:8), it means that God’s very being is love and that this love happens within Himself.  God can love and dance (the best way early theologians knew how to describe this playful dynamic) without creation or without us.  So when the heavens are “torn open,” when the Spirit hovers over the baptismal waters and descends upon Jesus as a Dove (think Genesis 1:2 or maybe Genesis 8:6-12), when the Father commends Jesus as His Beloved Son (ie John 3:16), it is as if we are standing on sidewalk looking through a lit window to see the fullness of God residing.  This sets the table for the rest of Mark’s good news.

The wonder of Mark’s gospel, the reason he’s so intense, urgent and sometimes even impatient, is that he’s talking about God coming onto the human scene in a decisive and powerful way.  Jesus bursts into the world not as a mere Messiah (though that would satisfy plenty of expectations in itself), or not as a messenger bearing a good word for people to accept (after all that was sort of John the Baptist’s job), but as the very image (Colossians 1:15) of the God who creates, redeems, and loves, not because he has to but because that’s who He is and that’s what He does.

Mark documents this baptism scene in such a way that braces us for a HUGE perspective on the events of Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection that further unfold who God is, what God has done, and what God can be about for us now!

reflecting: Mark 1:1-8

As I start to read Mark in preparation for a lengthy sermon series at the Gathering Church, I’m arrested by the opening scene.  Mark cuts right to the chase, not softening us up with any genealogies or birth (/pre-Creation) narratives.  Mark’s “beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, Son of God” is only prefaced by a messenger.  Preconceived by the prophet Isaiah and actualized by a strange bird named John.  John, preparing.  John, pointing.  John (as we find in the evangelist John’s gospel), decreasing that Christ may increase.  I can’t help but recall Karl Barth’s comment on this scene as visually portrayed in the center panel of Grunewald’s Isenheim altarpiece (which a print hung above Barth’s desk for more than fifty years).  He offers in Church Dogmatics, “…one might recall John the Baptist in Grünewald’s Crucifixion, especially his prodigious index finger.  Could anyone point away from himself more impressively and completely?”  What a challenge!  What a vocation!  To  prepare.  To point.  To decrease that Christ may increase!

Come Holy Spirit!  

Let us remember our baptisms that we may live into this life of witness to which we are called.  

Let us point to Christ, who is the image of the invisible God.

Amen.

preaching: Advent I: Hope

Sermon text: Isaiah 2:1-5

Stream it from the Gathering Church site or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.

Download a Reading Plan and Devotional here: http://www.allgather.org/advent/.

Check out the upcoming 'Christmas Nights' record here: http://www.allgather.bandcamp.com/.

My Goggles and The Two Lost Sons

Originally posted at the Gathering Church.

It’s crazy what being thoroughly immersed in Scripture can do for you, or should I say do to you.  John Calvin famously equated Scripture to being the eyeglasses by which the Christian is able to see the world.  My fuzzy logic then follows that the deeper and more immersed you are in Scripture, as we’ve been and will continue to be in Luke 15’s Parable of The Two Lost Sons, the thicker your spectacles will get.

I’m not bragging when I say that 3 solid weeks in, I feel like I’m wearing those nerdy coke bottle glasses.  I say this not because I’m a particularly good or dedicated reader or that I feel at all like I’ve got this parable pegged, but because, the more I’ve wrestled with this text and the more I’ve forced myself to come at it honestly the more God has surprised me.

As I’ve tried to put myself in the world of the parable, I’ve come to wonder about how each of the characters (Father, Prodigal, & Elder Brother) thought of themselves.  If they were introducing themselves at a cocktail party, what might they say? 

“I’m such-and-such and I’m so-and-so’s Father,” might be the reply of the Father.  And as far as I can tell, this reply is the only identity that doesn’t change throughout the story.  The younger brother tries with all his might to un-son himself and to un-brother himself.  And we find later on the Elder tries to do the same.  How is it that despite the fact that the family is being torn apart, the Father’s seems rock solid?  Why does what the Younger Brother do bother the Big Bro so much?  Why isn’t the Younger Brother content with just being in the family and having what he is related to who his Father is?  Why does he try and go it on his own?

Here’s where those bizarre new scripture shades come in for me.

So I was watching Survivor on tv (nice segue, right?!)…  This season features famed college and NFL football coach Jimmy Johnson along with other folks of various backgrounds, most of which were leaders in their contexts.  Insert someone with a bit of self-assurance, fame, and confidence and all but a few of them took him as a threat immediately.  It was bizarre.  Jimmy seemed content to be there for the experience, he certainly doesn’t need the cash, and in no way was an advantage written into the game for him.  Why did everyone care?  Why were they threatened by someone having fun?  Someone more interested in fishing, giving pep talks, and calling to wildlife than in game-play and outwitting his opponents?

It made me wonder what ways I try to make up my own identity (like the Prodigal), not being content with what and where I am?

It made me wonder what ways, when my identity gets pulled out from under me (like the Elder), that I start flailing and trying to take others down with me?

It made me want my identity to be grounded in the kind of confidence that Jimmy exhibited (certainly in a small and imperfect way) on the island.  It made me look back to Luke’s parable with more admiration for the love of that Father, whose love was so solid that neither being abandoned and un-Fathered or being doubted and pestered could budge.

Mostly it made me want to live into the steady-love of God in a more assured way.  In a way that grounds me and in a way that sends me out as an imitator.

What have you been seeing through the lenses of this parable?