Powerless before Glory

Mark 10: 35-45

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Professor, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

*******

I’ve been thinking about power and powerlessness a lot this week. Some of you know I’ve been sitting with a family in ICU for the last week while they wait for their son to wake up after a terrible car accident nine days ago. The family is of course powerless to wake him up, the doctor and nurses are keeping him alive and taking good care of him, his healing process will be long, everything about his family’s life has changed. Many friends and relatives have been spending their days in the lobby waiting, just waiting, and hoping, and chatting, and of course running the gamut of emotions through the stress and grief and fear and anger. I don’t want to say he’s ‘not one of ours,’ since God doesn’t do that whole ‘us and them’ separation, but just so you don’t think you’ve missed something, he’s not a member here, I just get to do this sort of thing with people who ask for a pastor because I’m local enough to get there, and sitting powerless with other people is uncomfortable, holy time. Of course there’s nothing I can do to fix anything, I don’t have any answers, I can’t explain why these things happen, I just get to sit in the awkward powerlessness with other people and pay attention to God in the midst of it.

This morning’s Gospel reading skips over a few verses from last week’s reading. I don’t know if that’s for the sake of cutting out repetition of verses we’ve already heard twice recently, or because the lectionary folks wanted us to focus differently, but I can’t help but back up to the end of last week’s reading and go on directly from there to today’s, so, from verses 32-34: 

And they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. And they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. And taking the twelve again, he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. And they will mock him and spit on him and flog him and kill him. And after three days he will rise.”

For some reason, after this third prediction of his betrayal and death, James and John come up and demand to sit at his right and left hands in his glory. It’s so insensitive of them. But on the other hand, it sort of makes sense. They don’t want to hear about suffering, don’t want to think about it, don’t want things to change, don’t want Rome to burst their bubble of hope yet again while they remain powerless to do anything about their oppression. Rome, remember, can just come in a steal any woman they please, use her up and throw her away. Rome, remember, is an empire that keeps the peace by making public witness of humiliating anyone who expresses a desire for equal protection under the law. In our recent American history, we might say that Rome is in charge of the most public state-sanctioned lynchings, and here Jesus is saying that his own people are going to hand him over to just such a lynching. Terror and powerlessness. He’s letting his disciples know that he knows this is coming, and he’s reminding them again that it won’t be the end of him, because he will rise after three days.

So, say James and John, let’s just jump right to the glory then, okay? We’ve got to be able to do something more than just sit by and watch, than just stand around and wait. Being powerless is such an awful feeling, especially when you’re powerless to save someone you love and hope for.

But, yet again, James and John have missed the point of who Jesus is. God has been watching us live with the consequences of our free will for generation after generation, calling to us, crying to us, through prophets and signs and miracles to turn around, to repent, to just be kind to one another and stop with the self-centeredness and the killing and the shaming and the isolating and the imprisonment and the abuse. We have turned our backs on God over and over throughout history, claiming we know better how to live in the glory we want. Our fight for glory only turns our world and our communities into broken bits of debris, adrift in the chaos. Then when we’ve made a real mess of things we turn in desperation to God and demand God fix what we have broken. God created this world out of chaos, so we claim in one of our creation stories, so we know God can do it again, but we’d rather God get out of our way, until we need God to swoop in with all of the power and bring us glory. This is how people have lived generation after generation. Heartbreaking.

So God isn’t getting the message across with the prophets, it seems, isn’t mending fully what we have broken, not even with the many sacrifices of the priests. Certainly we aren’t keeping order and justice with any consistency through the kings. We can’t fix this ourselves, so God comes in the flesh, descends into the chaos and the suffering and the madness and the gore. God comes deep down inside our powerlessness, to show us what real power, what real glory, what real salvation, is.

If you want to sit at the right hand of God, I know a few bedsides in the ICU with empty couches. 

If you want to sit at the right hand of God, I know a few prison inmates who could use a penal. 

If you want to sit at the right hand of God, I heard there are schools with ‘buddy benches’ in their playgrounds for the lonely kids.

If you want to sit at the right hand of God, look to your left, to your closest neighbor.

Because this is who God is, among us, with us, in our suffering and our everything. We can’t escape the realities of living in a world where our actions have consequences, and God doesn’t pull us out of it so much as crawl into it beside us. When Jesus talks about the cup he is to drink, remember that cup he poured out for us when he sat at that Passover supper with his disciples the night we betrayed him, that cup of his blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant, the cup of salvation, of cells and plasma that flowed in his veins and has been given freely for us. When he talks about the baptism with which he is baptized, remember that day when the heavens opened and the voice of God said “This is my Son, with whom I am well pleased,” and remember how God has claimed you and named you in baptism, too. When we talk about the glory of God, we talk about this passionate love which has been flowing throughout all of history and flows among us and within us in the here and now as much as it did two thousand years ago.

For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve. And to give his life as a ransom for you.

Can't earn it, can't lose it

Mark 10:17-31

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments; ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.” Peter began to say to him, “See, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father of children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

*******

My father has been retired now for two years. About six months into his retirement he went back to work. His own father never took a day of vacation, never took a sick day, until he had two years or more accumulated at the end of his career working for the postal service. Granted, my grandfather was a first generation immigrant from Denmark and grew up on a Minnesota farm during the Great Depression. Or so the story goes. Work has been a matter of survival, pride, and good citizenship. Grandpa struggled a lot in his last years, though, with grief over having missed so much of his children’s and grandchildren’s lives because he was at work so much.

Then there was a tweet written this past week from mega-church Pastor Creflo Dollar, who said that Jesus bled and died so that we could have financial security. This is the same guy who told his congregation that God wanted him to have a personal jet.

And were still sort of hearing about the Syrian refugees, who are fleeing in droves and many arriving with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Oh, and also, I got to spend an afternoon at Whittier with a community of people whose memories are slipping away, and another couple of hours with family and friends of a young man in a coma after a car accident.

I wonder how this morning’s Gospel speaks to people from these sorts of experiences, what it can mean to us here. We have a strange relationship to stuff, all the buying and selling and collecting and tag sales and all. I still don’t own any furniture, at 32 years old, though I’ve never wanted for comfort. I could probably build a table and a bed out of all my books, but desk and bed and chairs I’ve not yet acquired, and I like it that way. Traveling light is my preference. Except now it takes multiple car loads to move all of my books. So traveling light has kind of gone out the window, and I keep getting more books, and as roommates come and go they bring new kitchen supplies… I guess I’m sort of building a collection of “adult,” “responsible” stuff that I ought to have by now. So many kids my age have houses and spouses and kids and comfy chairs and kitchen tables of their own, many of us reflecting on how strange it is to have all these trappings of adulthood and not knowing where they came from.

This young man in today’s Gospel reading has many possessions. Whether he’s worked for home or inherited them or some combination of both, we don’t know. He’s a sincere fellow, it seems, wanting to please Jesus, to inherit eternal life from God, and he’s followed all the commandments about loving your neighbor. Can you see him, running up to Jesus, “Good teacher!” he says. Oh, he’s excited, all right. He’s finally going to meet the guy everybody’s talking about, the Rabbi who’s stirring up the hearts of people everywhere, the one who’s making the Pharisees squirm and really reminding folks about love. “Good teacher!” he says, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And the first thing Jesus does is burst his bubble, just a little bit: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” Maybe this guy has been rewarded for his behavior by doting parents, calling him a ‘good son’ when he’s done nice things, practicing that positive reinforcement so he continues his best behavior. Who knows? But this style of praise, a cycle of rewards for good behavior, only works sometimes. We don’t always do good, we don’t always feel good, we don’t always recognize good. Only God is good.

We spend a lot of time talking about good and bad, usually in relation to people, usually measured in how they dress or talk or what sort of money they have or how their children turned out. “Good” can often mean “useful,” or it did to my grandfather. Being a “good immigrant” he worked very hard for a very, very long time so he could contribute to society and help take care of his family. He passed that down to my father, who cannot stand being idle and needs to work, to be productive, to earn a paycheck even now that he’s a week away from sixty-eight years old. To Creflo Dollar, being a “good Christian” is shown in how much money God has given you, and if you have enough faith you will soon be blessed with abundant wealth, which you then have to show off in order to prove you’re faithful to God. Refugees need sanctuary and a good, honest welcome. Folks who are completely dependent on nurses and machines need good care. 

Jesus, on the other hand, looks at this young man who has probably been called a good man all his life, and loves him. The young man wants to know what to do to inherit eternal life, as though being welcomed into God’s family, being saved, is something we earn. And with all of our talk of “good” and “bad,” we sure get stuck in that mindset no matter how our theology tells us it’s not how God works. The question of why bad things happen to good people is one of the oldest questions there is, as though we only have to earn and always deserve what happens to us. The young man has been rewarded in life with many possessions. He can point to those things, to his faithfulness to the law, as proof that he himself is a good man, perhaps. Or at least that he is well on his way to becoming good, to becoming good enough. But he still doesn’t know for certain that he’s part of God’s family, still doesn’t know if he’s missing something, still doesn’t know if maybe there’s anything else he needs to do to inherit eternal life.

Imagine you’re a parent with one child who is always double-checking that you love them. Who thinks you must certainly hate them if they got less than a 4.0 grade average in school, or keeps trying to stay up all night on multiple work projects so they can buy you a better car or pay off your mortgage so that you will love them. And how terribly worthless that kid would feel if they got sick and you had to take care of them but they didn’t trust that they had done enough for you to really love them? If every time you told them you loved them they said you were only following the rules of being a parent and it wasn’t really love? How heartbreaking would that be? 

This young man with his many possessions and eagerness to inherit eternal life reminds me of my grandfather, of my father, of the refugees who have to prove they’re not a drain on society in order to find safe haven here. He reminds me of the kid on life support and the folks who will never get their memories back this side of heaven. He goes away sad when Jesus tells him to sell everything and give it to the poor, because who is he without his stuff and his proof of righteousness? He’s gotten all of these things because he’s been so good, how will he show that he’s so good once he has nothing to show for it? What good will he be to heaven if he can’t contribute anything to it? If he gives everything to the poor now, he will himself be poor, and what will he be able to do in the future that’s worth anything? 

We know these questions, we wrestle with our own worth so often, we take refuge in entitlement or we end up in despair.  But when this young man asks Jesus about inheriting eternal life, Jesus invites him to life eternal right now in the present moment. He’s always saying that the Kingdom of God has come near, isn’t he? Even when we’re not looking for it. But we forget, we cut each other off based on earnings. Simply put, the young man couldn’t point to his achievements as a golden ticket into eternal life. None of us can. We can not earn heaven. We can not build ourselves a resume’ worthy of eternal life. We never could.

And we’ve never had to. We are not our stuff, and we are not our achievements, we are simply and forever children of God. Saved by grace through faith apart from works for Christ’s sake. Jesus, looking at this guy, loved him not for his stuff but for his self. Just as Jesus, looking at us, loves us, not because we’ve earned it, not because we deserve it, not because we can prove he ought to, but just because that’s what Jesus does.

My grandfather’s grief at missing out on so much of our growing up is that same kind of hunger, that pull between needing to work to feed his family and needing to spend time with his family to know and to love them and to be loved by them. My father’s work ethic is admirable to a point and yet will no doubt be incredibly sad when they tell him he’s too old for the office work and will have to let him go. He had the hardest time getting hired at his age, and what’s a man to do who’s worked so hard for so long? Learning how to be loved regardless of station or “usefulness” might take some of us longer to learn than others, but it’s there, irregardless, for all of us.

Creflo Dollar’s got it all backwards about why Jesus bled and died. Yet Creflo Dollar has a mega church and millions of dollars, so it seems he’s doing something right, right? He’s preaching that God blesses us abundantly with wealth when we are faithful, but he’s measuring it out all wrong. Because the wealth that Jesus promises his disciples is not stored in mutual funds and bank accounts, is not shown in shiny gold watches and stretch limos, but in a family that stretches across time and around the world. Jesus tells his disciples “there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father of children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.” It’s not an easy road, but it’s full of love and relationships with so many people who are made in the Image of God, like Syrian refugees, and boys on life support, and people living with Alzheimer's, all part of one great family of God. One eternal family that just makes your heart break with love, that aches and groans with shared pain, that celebrates together the richness of eternity and rejoices at each new rebirth that comes, in reconciliation and forgiveness.

For we can never earn such love. Nor can we ever lose it. Because it does not depend on us. It never has, and it never will. It all depends on God, whose love will never fail.

Throw-away

Genesis 2:18-24

ADONAI, God, said, “It isn’t good that the person should be alone. I will make for him a companion suitable for helping him.” So from the ground ADONAI, God, formed every wild animal and every bird that filed in the air, and he brought them to the person to see what he would call them. Whatever the person would call each living creature, that was to be its name. So the person gave names to all the livestock, to the birds in the air and to every wild animal. But for Adam there was not found a companion suitable for helping him. Then God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the person; and while he was sleeping, he took one of his ribs and closed up the place from which he took it with flesh. The rib which ADONAI, God, had taken from the person, he made a woman-person; and he brought her to the man-person. The man-person said, “At last! This is bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh. She is to be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” This is why a man is to leave his father and mother and stick with his wife, and they are to be one flesh.

Psalm 8

ADONAI! Our Lord! How glorious is your name throughout the earth! The fame of your majesty spreads even above the heavens! From the mouths of babies and infants at the breast you established strength because of your foes, in order that you might silence the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars that you set in place - what are mere mortals, that you concern yourself with them; humans, that you watch over them with such care? You made him but little lower than the angels, you crowned him with glory and honor, you had him rule what your hands made, you put everything under his feet - sheep and oxen, all of them, also the animals in the wilds, the birds in the air, the fish in the sea, whatever passes through the paths of the seas. ADONAI! Our Lord! How glorious is your name throughout the earth!

Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12

In the past, God spoke to our fathers at different times and in various ways through the prophets, but in these final days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom he also created the material universe. This Son is the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature, and although sustaining all there is by the word of his power, yet made purification for sins, and then sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having been exalted as far above the angels as the name he inherited is more noble than theirs. Now it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. But someone has testified somewhere, “What is man that you take thought for him, or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honor, You put everything in subjection under his feet.” Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. But in fact we do  not yet see everything under his control. But we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor. For it was appropriate that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the champion of their salvation perfect through suffering. For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all of one origin. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers, when he says, “I will proclaim your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.”

Mark 10:2-16

Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female.” “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

*******

How easily we throw one another away. 

The Gospel today starts with a test. The religious leaders approach Jesus to see how he will answer their loaded question about the legality of divorce. Justice and care for the vulnerable is a pretty clear message in the law and the prophets, but for the real-life, day-to-day, religion at home sort of decisions, people read into Scripture what they want to hear, and if there is a loophole in the law, we will find it to justify our own way. We’ve used the Bible to both justify slavery, and to fight against it, for example. Scripture, it has been said, has a wax nose. So how do we interpret what we find there?

That’s the crux of the question to Jesus this morning. If Moses said we can write a letter of divorce and dismiss a wife who no longer pleases us, then why shouldn’t we? Moses is, after all, the one who led us out of slavery into freedom, and the one who brought us the law from Mount Sinai. He’s the ultimate authority on God’s law, when we want him to be.

But in real experience, Jesus knows, life was particularly difficult. Adjusting to freedom takes time, and old habits die hard. Women were property as wives, with dowries and all, and their worth was tied to their purity. If it was easy to divorce a woman on a whim, just to marry another so as to collect dowries, why not marry a new bride every year? Seems like a great way to build up your investments, pad the portfolio, and not have to deal with a nagging wife wanting love and affection and attention in exchange for all that extra wealth.

So few people actually considered the feelings - no, the survival - of the woman in the aftermath of divorce. Who would want to protect someone else’s ‘damaged goods’? Remember Joseph and Mary, when Mary was found to be with child out of wedlock and Joseph considered putting her away quietly? She may not then have been stoned to death for infidelity, but she sure wouldn’t have been received with gladness into an honorable marriage with any other man.

We’re suddenly in the month of October already, and two of the many causes which have laid claim to this month are those of bullying and domestic violence. Why we have to set aside an entire month, but only a month, to talk about these painful realities that don’t take a day off, that someone said these things need to be talked about and we have to set aside particular time for those conversations, when ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is a basic rule to all major religions? 

I don’t know the statistics, except that bullying is a lot more visible now that we have texting and Facebook, that domestic violence can be physical, mental, or emotional. It doesn’t always lead to bruises we can see. It isn’t always men beating women. Abuse comes in many forms, as a power play. Sometimes it leaves the abused cut off and the abuser might repent over and over again only to continue the cycle of violence. Often it is learned behavior. Always it is a violation of the marriage vows, a sin against what we claim to believe about the created order of things.

Because the first thing in the creation narrative that God says is definitely not good, is that it is not good for a human to be alone. So God creates all of the animals, in this the second creation story in Genesis, and brings them to the first dirt-person to name. I’ve seen a delightful drama of this story, where each animal comes to Adam and looks wistfully up at him, asking, “wife?” only to have Adam say, “no, not wife: donkey. Not wife: sloth. Not wife: crocodile.” All creatures, created with companionship in mind, but none quite fits the bill, not even the duck, until Adam is rent open and torn in two pieces for companionship, partnership, a helper who is different but equal. The word there, the ‘helper’ word, is used in the First Testament also for God, so this is no lesser servant person, no subordinate, but an equally valuable complement.

So how did we get so far from ‘bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh’ to ‘ball and chain’? How did we get from ‘helper’ to ‘make me a sandwich’? From the story that man leaves his home and clings to his wife, to double-checking on the legalities of deciding that the pretty girl next door can be traded in because she burned my toast again this morning?

We were not made for this, friends. We were not made to be one another’s means to an end, to be anyone else’s rung on a ladder, or trophy, or excuse, or even ‘cross to bear.’

We certainly weren’t made to be isolated one from another. Weren’t made to bite and scratch and claw, to bully and berate and belittle, to disregard and dismember. In the kingdom of God come near, we who have grown so accustomed to the pain of one another, who are so dead in sin and so full of spite and malice, are reborn children of God, new, forgiven, and free.

This story isn’t asking Jesus about sexual ethics and male-female marriages. This is testing Jesus about the value of a human person, a vulnerable human person, a needy human person, and the role of a person with power in relation to someone of socially lesser status. Is it lawful to divorce? Well, it’s certainly not ideal, but sometimes tying oneself to another person for life turns out to be toxic rather than life-giving, and those ties need to be severed to prevent strangulation. This is not to be entered, nor exited, lightly. There will be a cost, there’s always a cost when we talk about loving another person. Jesus knows this well.

The people of Israel know this well, too. Their prophets have told stories for ages about God as the jilted lover, with the people of Israel as the unfaithful bride. In many and various ways, God spoke to the people of old by those prophets, but now in these last days, God’s own self, who we call the Son, has come to speak with us face-to-face, to walk with us hand-in-hand, to love us so passionately that he dies with a spear in his heart and comes to us again, scarred by our rejection but arms still open to us in endless love and reconciliation.

Again, this is Jesus who does this. Jesus, as in God-with-us, Emmanuel. This is not a model for abused lovers to bear the scars of their abusers. Jesus is not just a model and a teacher, Jesus is our savior and our God. There are some things Jesus goes through that we don’t have to emulate or imitate. Letting someone beat us to death out of love is one of those things. That’s Jesus’ territory, taken up freely for the sake of loving us through death in a way only God can do, so that we can be raised up to new life beyond all of our pain and death. Jesus makes with us a new marriage covenant, with his own blood and body given and shed. 

And, somehow, Jesus does this knowing how many ways we will throw him away, again and again. God bleeds for us over and over while we draw blood from each other, while we deny life in our very midst, and yet life grows despite ourselves. God can be awfully annoying like that, refusing to be tied down by our rules, refusing to be limited to our expectations, refusing to stop loving anyone just because we’ve deemed that person unlovable. Even when we consider ourselves unlovable, God will never throw us away. 

That’s why Luther said the most important words we hear at the Table are “given and shed for you.” It is not good for a person to be alone, and so God comes among us in the flesh, to feed us with God’s own flesh and blood, so we never need be alone again. And like an apple tree grafted onto ancient roots, we are connected by that sacred bloodline of Jesus to all the other beloved of God, because even when we don’t love each other, we are loved still by the God who first formed us and put us all together in this fragile and beautiful world. 

Hands and Feet and Eyes and All

Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29

Psalm 19:7-14

James 5:13-20

Mark 9:38-50

*******

I was chatting with a friend last night about this morning’s Gospel, sure I knew where the sermon was going to go, when he reminded me of his history of self-harm. He is now in recovery, it has been years since he last cut himself for stress relief, but today’s words from Jesus make me wonder about how we’ve misused scripture. It makes me wonder, in much the same way that I wonder how a person wrestling with anorexia might hear teachings about the importance of fasting as a spiritual practice. It’s only been two weeks since our community gathered here to talk about Heroin, and the importance of building support networks, of refusing to allow shame to cut us off from each other when we are hurting. But this morning Jesus seems to be telling us to go ahead and chop ourselves up for the sake of heaven. Any time the Bible talks of how we treat ‘the body,’ I wonder if it means just our individual bodies, or the corporate, community, body, or both. This whole image of cutting off hands and feet, or dropping someone into the sea with a millstone around their neck, seems very old-school Gangster. This is not what we mean when we tell parents to find Godparents for their children.

What we do mean, though, is that the witness we bear, the way we live out our faith and our wrestling with faith, must have in mind how children see and hear and learn. Remember last week’s reading when Jesus brings a child into their midst and tells them to receive children as they receive him? Today’s reading picks up right after that, so the kids are there when John comes running up to Jesus to tattle on somebody who’s not part of their inner circle but is still casting out demons. The disciples couldn’t cast out demons the last time they tried, and Jesus had to do it for them, so they probably felt a little foolish for failing, and now they see this outsider doing what they couldn’t do. No wonder they tattled. 

But the children were watching. And listening. And learning. And Jesus didn’t like what they were picking up from this behavior, so he gently corrects John. And reminds the rest of them not to cause these little ones to stumble. What in the world would cause them to stumble, since all that John said was that someone outside of their clique was doing God’s work? Okay, well, perhaps that’s really all it was. Do you have to be a Christian to do God’s work? Does God only work through, and love, those who subscribe to a particular set of beliefs?

In the ancient church, discipleship happened in a certain way: first you belonged to the community, then you learned how to behave, then you were taught what the beliefs were that shaped that behavior. Nowadays we seem to try to go about it backwards: learn the rules, act right, then we let you in. But abstract thinking about theology isn’t how children’s minds work. The doctrine of the Trinity won’t serve a factory worker very well when the plant shuts down. We don’t all believe exactly the same thing even when we use exactly the same words to talk about what we believe! Cutting someone off from the community, as John was trying to do, just because they’ve gone about the work of God by a slightly different set of steps, only ends up with all of us cut out of the picture eventually. 

Because this is God’s church, not ours, God will do amazing things without regarding the boundaries we set up. The Pope has inspired many and challenged many in this visit to our country - even folks who aren’t Catholic are listening to what he has to say and how he says it! You and I are part of this work of God, not only here in the liturgy and the ministry we do in the name of Christ our Emmanuel Lutheran Church, but out in the rest of the world, in the places where we work and vacation and struggle, and even those situations where we’d really rather not think about God. 

I love this reading from Numbers that we have for today: Eldad and Medad prophesying outside the camp, against the expectations, out of order, without express permission to do so. But the verses that are missing from our lectionary reading, mostly to keep the story short and to the point, also include a bit of God’s stubborn character. The people have complained about not having enough meat to eat, so God promises meat. Not just a little. Not even simply the morning corned beef hash and hamsteak to go with the manna. No, in our missing verses this morning, God promises so much meat that we will be sick of it, so much meat that it will come out of our nostrils and they will decide it is better to be vegetarian after all. Then God pours out the spirit of prophecy on the seventy chosen and the two who remained in the camp. It’s a sort of challenge from an irritated God tired of hearing the complaints of an ungrateful people he’s given so much to. “Plagues and Passover and Promises, and all they can say is ‘where’s the beef’? I’ll give them beef, I’ll give them the entire herd of cows!”

God goes overboard with gifts, both physical sustenance and spiritual gifts. But too often we try to hold God back, to put restrictions and restraints on where God is allowed to show up, like Joshua complained to Moses and John complained to Jesus - these folks aren’t properly vetted! They can’t be doing what God wants us to do! John and Joshua are complaining about a grace that is bigger than our imaginations, in front of the very children whose imaginations are looking for the promised land, the kingdom of heaven. Moses tells Joshua to seek more of this gift for all people. Jesus tells John to go ahead and cut off his hands and feet if he thinks it’ll get him into heaven to do so, just don’t discourage the children.

We have used texts like these for ages to put strict holds on the works of God in the world. It hasn’t helped our thirst for violence or vengeance. It hasn’t cured our warring madness or calmed our fears. If anything, we have cut one another off, cut one another into pieces, for the sake of being right and righteous. After so many generations of wars and so much of history repeating itself, we ought to know by now that it is not hands and feet that cause us to sin, but hearts. Hearts which only God can remove and revive, hearts which God does in fact bring back to life over and over again, every time we succumb to fears and anxieties about our belonging.

My friend who is in recovery from self-harm made a fascinating observation about this Gospel text. Even if we end up in hell, hands and feet and eyes and all, Jesus Christ descended into hell, hands and feet and eyes and all, for our sake. Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, God in our flesh, whole and complete, entirely alive and entirely crucified and entirely alive again, entirely to welcome the world into God’s kingdom.  Whatever you believe, wherever you are and wherever you come from, whatever credentials you don’t have, you will not be cut off from the love of God. Like a child, you are precious to God, who will forever claim you as God’s very own.

Kids

Mark 9:30-37

30[Jesus and the disciples went on] and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it;31for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” 32But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.
  33Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” 34But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. 35He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” 36Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, 37“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

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I don’t know about you, but I have been avoiding these GOP debates for the sake of my blood pressure. I know why people think we shouldn’t talk politics in polite company, or religion, for that matter, even though our emotions betray how important these things are to us. On the other hand, I don’t know if it really is religion and politics that get us worked up as much as it is our fear about being wrong and the absolute survival instinct that kicks in when we have to prove ourselves right at all costs. We have lost the ability to listen to one another and public discourse has gone from respectful disagreement about issues to personal attacks and outright bullying. Then again, I’m not sure we’ve ever been far from our worst selves. One of my favorite movies, 1776, shows how the first continental congress fought while trying to have a conversation about independence, and it came to blows between John Adams and John Dickinson once they started calling each other names like “coward” and “landlord” and “lawyer.” Not sure if that’s a historically accurate conversation, but it’s sadly not surprising. This past week was the saint day for Hildegard, who was an Abbess, composer, scientist, and visionary in Germany at the start of the second century. The German film adaptation of her life shows how many obstacles were in her way as she tried to deal with the Abbot and find a cloistered place for her sisters, away from the brothers who they shared space with. When her visions were first made known, the higher authorities were terribly nasty to her, angry and jealous because she had a gift they did not have, and they treated her with contempt.

In this morning’s Gospel reading, I think we have a picture of the disciples arguing on the way from much the same sort of fear. Jesus has just told them, again, of his upcoming crucifixion, death, and resurrection. They don’t get it. They don’t understand what he’s talking about, they remember Peter was rebuked and called ‘Satan’ last time he spoke up in confusion, and they are afraid to ask Jesus what he means. After all, the disciples were not exactly the cream of the crop when Jesus called them. If they had been the best and the brightest students, they would have been apprenticed to important Rabbis after they made Bar Mitzvah, and wouldn’t have been working in the family business, or reduced to collecting taxes. If the community had thought these disciples smart and holy, they would have some extra measure of respect, but when Jesus called them they were basically nobodies. 

I posted on Facebook awhile back an article about how little we seem to value labor in our culture. For all of the talk of pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps, getting our hands dirty, earning our bread, we have it in our culture that if you want a respectable job you’ve gotta go to college and get a degree and work at a desk. If you work with your hands you don’t get as much respect as if you wear a suit and tie. When I was in High School, I was in honors classes, but wanted to learn how to work on cars my junior year. We had a whole wing of the building for ‘vocational tech’ classes, from mechanics to electrical work to marketing. But because I was on the college track, I was discouraged from those classes. The mocking chant from the geeks to the jocks was usually something about who was going to pump gas for whom when those nerdy kids who got picked on for being smart ended up working for Microsoft. As though there’s a difference in whose job is more important! Or, rather, as though there is a difference in how important a person is, based solely on their job.

The disciples had finally made it, they thought, by being disciples of this very important Rabbi who was shaking everyone up. They had gone from smelly fishermen to sought-after teachers. Except that now, this one lesson their teacher kept returning to didn’t make sense, and they were afraid to ask him what he meant. They didn’t want to look dumb. Didn’t want to make Jesus think he’d made a mistake in choosing them. Didn’t want to be known as hypocrites or frauds.

So what’s the next thing they do? They argue about who’s best. They’ve gotta build themselves up, make themselves more important, prove their worth to the movement, secure their place in the spotlight.

We do this so often when we get wrapped up in every little thing we fight about, don’t we? Do we actually have the answers when we argue about what’s going on in the world, or do we just want to have something to say so we feel important? Sometimes we do need to name big problems, work together toward solutions. When we had the gathering of folks here on Monday to talk about what to do with our local Heroin addiction, we needed to start that conversation, and hope it will continue with some community support for the sake of some much-needed healing. But when we take our public discourse into areas of blame and shame, we lose track of our hearts. Kim Davis has been all over the news for refusing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This is a problem, now that it’s legal according to the Supreme Court that those licenses be made available, and she does get paid to work for the government. But even more of a problem is the amount of public shaming of Kim Davis that came out of that conflict, and continues still. What good is it to argue that her claim to Christianity is true or false based on how she looks or dresses or how many times she has been married? What good is it to make a mockery of her character for an argument about the right to love another person?

But we are afraid. So afraid that if we don’t make ourselves big and important that no one will notice us or care about us. Afraid that we have to constantly prove our value or we will get thrown away otherwise. That is, after all, the way the rest of the world works. 

But that’s not how Jesus does things. That’s not what the kingdom of God looks like.

In Jesus’ time, children were not really people. Far from the Hallmark vision of adorable, squeaky-clean little cherubs all gathered on his lap with perfect hair and straight white smiles, children ran around like dogs, who also weren’t domesticated pets. Children may or may not live to adulthood, so there wasn’t a lot of energy wasted on them. They had no power. They were raised by women who had no power. They were completely dependent, often thrown away. Remember that slaughter of every child under the age of two after Jesus was born? Children of an occupied people are given even less care. It’s like Lord of the Flies all the time.

Children, however, are the object lesson Jesus gives his adult disciples for what the kingdom of God is like. Welcome this child, and you welcome me, he says. Welcome this one who is socially worthless, this one who is typically ignored if not beaten, this one who still runs wild and cannot be controlled yet by the ‘proper’ way of doing things. Welcome this person who is not yet counted as a person, Jesus says, and that is where you will find God. 

Children just exist, no matter how we try to put them into boxes, market to them, shape them into good little consumers, or bully them out of asking questions. They’re curious and not ashamed about it. They’re themselves even while they imitate the adults around them as they learn how to move around the world. They are dependent for many things, and they can surprise us in the questions they ask and the generosity they model. They can sometimes be little snots, too, and we welcome them anyhow, because we’re just bigger snots.

But more than that. Even in places where children are unwelcome, unwanted, intrusive and only in the way as collateral damage, Jesus is exactly all of those things, too. The Christmas manger and child Jesus in the temple may bring to our minds adorable images, with problems no bigger than a scraped knee, but children in this world are thrown away all the time, which is far from adorable. Children are beaten, mistreated, bullied, abused, neglected, sold, traded, and used for terrible, hurtful things, because grown ups have power and children don’t. So Jesus comes to us as a child. Jesus lives among us as a child. The kingdom of God is right here in our midst in the very ones we so easily discard.

It’s not about proving our worth, or making sure we have the loudest, most important voice at the table. Jesus was thrown away, nailed to a cross for public humiliation, for every time we throw one another away, every time we throw ourselves away into the fray of proving our importance rather than trusting the God who loved us into being. Jesus comes to us as a child who has been beaten. A child who has been bullied. A child who has been ignored. A child who still wakes up every morning, with or without dinner the night before or the promise of breakfast today, just to keep living in this hurting world. Jesus lives among us as that very child, to welcome each and every child who has known the pain of that experience, no matter if that child is five years old or sixty-five years old. If that child wears a suit or a pair of coveralls or the only shirt they own since running away from home. Jesus runs with the children, weeps with the children, laughs with the children, carries the children, died for the children, lives again for the children, loves the children. Jesus welcomes the children. Every last one of us.

Who is Jesus? Who are we?

Isaiah 50:4-9a 

The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens - wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my checks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. It is the Lord GOD who helps me; who will declare me guilty?

Psalm 116:1-9

I love the LORD, who has heard my voice, and listened to my supplication, for the LORD has given ear to me whenever I called. The cords of death entangled me; the anguish of the grave came upon me; I came to grief and sorrow. Then I called upon the name of the LORD: “O LORD, I pray to you, save my life.” Gracious is the LORD and righteous; our God is full of compassion. The LORD watches over the innocent; I was brought low, and God saved me. Turn again to your rest, O my soul, for the LORD has dealt well with you. For you have rescued my life from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from stumbling; I will walk in the presence of the LORD in the land of the living.

James 3:1-12

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, an dis itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue - a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. from the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.

Mark 8:27-38

Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

*******

Addi May and Ella Jayn, you have been joined to Christ today in a way that we have been celebrating for generations. People of God, we have promised today to live that life of faith together in a way that we have been promising for generations. We will spend the rest of our lives together learning what Jesus means in today’s Gospel reading: how to take up our cross and follow. How to save our lives by losing them. How to trust that Jesus is in fact the anointed one of God. Not an easy task, by all accounts. Anyone who has lived will tell you that life can be a mess sometimes, with moments of high victory and moments of deep tragedy. We try awfully hard to stay in those high and happy places, far from the madding crowd, but life doesn’t let us, as much as we strive to avoid suffering. 

So Jesus is talking with his disciples about his reputation. He has healed many sick, fed lots and lots of people, walked on water, already gotten into a few confrontations with the religious authorities, and he wants to know what the people are saying about all of this. One of the prophets, maybe? The prophets were always going on about justice and care of the poor. John the Baptist, maybe? That baptizer got into a lot of trouble for his preaching. But the disciples who have been walking most closely with Jesus, who do they think he is? Well, the Messiah, the anointed one. Any day now going to take back the kingdom of Israel from those Roman oppressors.

Well, they’re only half right, then. Yes, Jesus is the Messiah, or the word we use more often is “Christ.” But, no, the baggage attached to that claim is not the work Jesus is about. Ultimate power does not lay in destroying one’s enemies, but in building reconciling community with them so we are enemies no longer. This work of Jesus will lead to his being arrested and killed by the people he loves, and he knows that. The world so full of fear does not know how to reconcile itself to being loved so deeply, and Jesus knows that those striking out in anger and violence will make him their target. Yes, Peter, Jesus is the Messiah of God, but that does not mean what you think it means. It does not mean an end to the suffering of this life.

Because Jesus doesn’t save us from the sorrow of this life. Jesus saves us in all of this life.

Some would say that Baptism has become for most people nothing more than a crude form of ‘fire insurance’, protecting folks from the fires of hell after death. As though a dip in the pond and the right magic words will protect our eternal souls from eternal separation from God and the torment of just punishments for sin. As though this means if we just believe hard enough everything will turn out alright and life will forever be good and comfortable. As though we have made a choice to devote our souls to heaven and forget about what that means for our day to day life because, well, “at least I know I’m not going to hell.”

And they’d be right, but only half right. 

Baptism is a once and done thing. Even if you switch denominations, you’re baptized in the triune name of God, not in the name of the presiding bishop of your church, so you never need be baptized again. And, yes, you are able to point to your baptism as the sign that God has saved you and you will not be spending eternity in the fires of some hell we’ve been told might await those who remain unrepentant. Luther often called on the witness of his Baptism when he felt the devil tormenting him with his unworthiness to be saved. Because it was God’s action to claim him, to claim all of us, in the first place, not Luther’s own choice to sign up. But this is not some magic we can manipulate and control. And it is not disconnected from the rest of this life here and now and in the days to come. It does not mean life will forever be grand, or that we have to pretend it is.

The beloved community of God, into which you Addi May and Ella Jayn, have been Baptized, celebrates together and suffers together. To be a Christian means that we carry each other and allow one another into our lives of ups and downs. It means we are joined together as a people across the world with lives of every stripe and sort. When we are sealed by that Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever, it is our constant reminder of the love that first carried the cross for us. That Jesus the anointed one, Jesus the Christ, loves this world with such a fierce and unending love that we didn’t know how to deal with it, so we put him to death, but he didn’t let even that stop him from loving us. This is the promise which claims us, that the love of God will never stop chasing us, never stop calling us, never stop moving us deeper into community with the world God so loves.

Baptized, we live. We will watch these two girls grow. They will help us grow. We will together burrow deeper into the love of God for the world, and that love will draw us into the world, where we will celebrate and weep and ache for one another. Grounded in the deep and abiding and suffering love of Jesus, we will never be alone in our suffering. We will be called, again and again, into the suffering of others through the compassion of Christ. Tomorrow we will open our doors again and reach out to the community of God’s beloved, especially those who happen to be addicts and the ones who love them. We will not fix them, we will not be the answer they are looking for, we will simply be with them, offering what we have and listening as they share. Because the love of Jesus carries us all together.

Jesus does not save us from this life, but in life and for life. Life together with God in the here and now, just as much as life after resurrection. It is given freely, it is not something we earn, it is for the whole world, without reservation. It is the very life of God, given that you might live.

Dogs are people, too

Isaiah 35:4-7a

Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.” Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the dead unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.

Psalm 146

Hallelujah! Praise the Lord, O my soul! I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. Put not your trust in rulers, in mortals in whom there is no help. When they breathe their last, they return to earth, and in that day their thoughts perish. Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help, whose hope is in the Lord their God; who made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them, who keeps promises forever; who gives justice to those who are oppressed, and food to those who hunger. The Lord sets the captive free. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind; the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord cares for the stranger; the Lord sustains the orphan and widow, but frustrates the way of the wicked. The Lord shall reign forever, your God, O Zion, throughout all generations. Hallelujah!

James 2:1-10, 14-17

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or “sit at my feet,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you? You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. [For the one who said, “You shall not commit adultery,” also said, “You shall not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment. What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

Mark 7:24-37

Jesus set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.  He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go - the demon has left your daughter.” So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Ten Cities. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hands on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened." And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

*******

Sunday morning comics were part of my routine every week after worship. Dad would separate out the ads and sports section and leave the important stuff - front page, comics, Toledo living - so after church we could get to the good stuff. As much as I love reading the comics, I devour graphic novels, which are drawn in lots of different ways but are their own type of storytelling altogether. For example, there is a two volume set of graphic novels called "Maus" which tells the story of a man gathering Holocaust stories from his father who lived through it. I was a little slow at getting the connection when the storyteller and his family are drawn as mice, until the Germans showed up drawn as cats. Of course the Jews would be drawn as mice, because at the time popular media called them rats, so they would be easier to kill.

People are so much easier to dismiss when they’re not considered people. Kim Davis isn’t a person according to social media: she's a bigot and a hypocrite. The people she denied service to weren’t people, they were gays whose marriages were against the law of her god. Then there are the cops, and the bleeding heart liberals, the old dead white guys and the angry feminists, the sluts and the rednecks, the politicians, the tea partiers, the poor, the kids, the grieving, the thugs, the addicts, the alcoholics, the one percent, the government, the IRS, the schizophrenic… the myriad of names and labels we put on one another so we can get away from each other. I spent a summer working as chaplain in a psych ward and was there when one of our people got a diagnosis of schizophrenia - he was crushed. He said, ‘nobody’s gonna hire a crazy schizophrenic’. The occupational therapist reminded him he is a ‘person with schizophrenia,’ and one of the other patients started to list off the names of famous artists and musicians who also had schizophrenic brains. A few days later, while the television in the common room was blaring, one of the other people said we ought to write the network and complain about their Law & Order-type shows, that it was always those mental patients off their meds who were the victims or the criminals, never the heroes or ordinary folks. The labels made it easy to pigeon-hole them, to further feed into the stereotype, to expect that we knew everything about their value based on a diagnosis or cultural background.

Jesus was trying to get away from the crowds and rest awhile, but this foreign woman was desperate to save her sick daughter. Jesus dismissed her outright. He called her a dog, maybe she would go away and bark up some other tree and leave him alone. She wasn’t even one of his own people. Wasn’t a Jew. Wasn’t a man. Shouldn’t have been talking to him in the first place. “Feed the children, it’s not fair to take from them and feed dogs.” My dad used that same reasoning to explain why we would never have a dog at home when I was growing up. Too many kids were hungry to spend money feeding domesticated animals, he said. And that’s all the foreign woman was, an animal. Easy to dismiss, to throw away. Not even ruined goods because you’d have to first be valued goods to be ruined. She just didn’t count in the first place, not being Jewish. Wrong culture, wrong gender, wrong class, wrong time, just wrong. And our dear, sweet, lovely Jesus… well, can you imagine the babe born in a manger using the n-word today? Or any other ethnic slur? Because that’s what he did then. Or maybe this Labor Day weekend we can connect the idea with a factory worker coming to the boss because an 80-hour work-week wasn’t healthy for 12-year-olds who ought to be going to school, and that boss responding with a pink slip.

How have you experienced being thrown away? Being ignored, dismissed, not taken seriously? I know it’s been a rough summer for Fred while the dumpster outside his home is being filled over and over again with a lifetime of collections ruined by the elements. It’s hard to see a loved one put into a nursing home without feeling a little guilty about not being able to do what’s needed to care for them. To complain about being harassed and have no one believe you. To only get your parents’ attention when you’re in trouble and not have your struggles heard or taken seriously because you’re just a kid. To be left outside of the church because you haven’t dressed properly for the occasion, pushed out of worship with disapproving stares because a child is a bit too squirmy or talkative. Physically left out because there isn’t a lift or a ramp for your wheelchair or crutches. Denied access because you don’t speak the language and no one is trying to help you or learn from you.

I imagine this Syrophoenician woman a bit like Moses, calling God to account for God’s own promises and reputation. You say you’re compassionate and merciful? You say you’re bigger than any one country or kingdom? So why should your power to heal stop at the entry gate to the temple? Why should your forgiveness and grace only go as far as the Jews and no farther? Surely even the slightest outpouring of God’s presence on the earth can spill into neighboring territories!

The woman calls Jesus to account. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the children’s table.” She holds up his own character in sharp relief against the dismissal he’s just uttered. Everyone else already talks like that, calls her ‘dog,’ this man is supposed to be different. So be different, Jesus! Keep your promise, bring the Kingdom.

And he does. The Kingdom spills over even into Gentile territory, freeing that little girl from the power of that demon which held her. Freeing Jesus, too, it seems. In case we might forget that Jesus was also a human being who was part of a particular culture, this story shows a tired and cranky racist who learns from a cultural minority how to open his heart just a bit more.

So it makes a sort of story sense that his next immediate miracle is to open the ears and loose the tongue of a man who can neither hear nor speak well. When the man is brought to him, Jesus takes him aside, away from the crowds, probably still a bit tired himself, and I imagine him thinking of that Gentile woman when he sighs “be opened.” Maybe the kingdom of God is breaking open upon the world, bubbling up from the dreams and the demands of the oppressed and the outcast. Ears opened and tongue loosed, the man is restored to his community and can’t seem to stop talking about how it happened. Just as the prophet Isaiah foretold, the “eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the dead unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.”

Dry ground will have to break open to the power of water, as dry and tired hearts are broken open in the welcome embrace of Baptism. The solid and too-stiff boxes we stick one another in with all of those labels and expectations, they will melt under the flowing stream, under the waters of grace and forgiveness. Those waters run over us like water over sharp rocks gradually rubs them smooth, tumbling us against each other as we are formed in community, with all of our differences and complexities. We will have some baptisms here next week, celebrating that promise of God to break open our hearts to one another, just as God’s own heart has broken open for us. Water will flow, promises will be made, the kingdom will sigh and expand and grow around us and within us. And just like Jesus, we will learn to listen, and like the man who was healed, we will not keep silent, and just as God has promised, we will be forgiven every time that we fail at this. For we are not the labels we put on each other. Not dogs, not bigots, not progressives or tea partiers or independents, not dismissed as useless or inadequate or irrelevant, but children, all - children of God who feast on the crumbs of Grace at this Table, at the Lord’s own invitation. And the lame will leap and the speechless will sing, for the kingdom of God has come near.