Sermon for the Twenty-Third Sunday After Pentecost, Year B, "Remnants and Restoration," Psalm 126 and Jeremiah 31:7-9 (Proper 25B, Ordinary 30B)

Sermon 10/27/24

Jeremiah 31:7-9 and Psalm 126

Remnants and Restoration

I have been thinking about you all in this challenging season. As I reminded you when I first joined the preaching rotation here, this church was the site of my first job during seminary. I was the youth pastor from 2000-2001. As part of my role I also helped lead in worship and preached about once a month, and this was my first job at a church other than my “home” church. I felt nervous and unsure of myself, but I was also excited to be in seminary and to be really “doing it,” this ministry thing I’d felt called to for a long time. I know this is a painful time. I remember the busy congregation of 25 years ago, and I know you’ve seen and mourned a lot of change, and I know the upcoming change of closure will be the hardest yet. 

I’ve been thinking about what it feels like to lose a place of deep connection in our lives, in our formation. The first home I ever really lived in, from infancy until I was about 9 years old, is still standing, and from the outside it looks the same. But the family that bought it from us completely tore out the inside. The rooms that were once my bedroom, my playroom, the rooms where my extended family gathered for so many Thanksgivings - they’re not there any more, not in any recognizable way. My grandparents’ home, around the corner from my childhood home, has been vacant for many years now, and is slowly crumbling, not safe for anyone to enter. The place I went to high school was demolished, making way for the district’s athletic offices, and a new high school across town. I can’t go into the halls I once walked as a student, a find my old lunch table or the music and theatre rooms where I spent most of my time. And my childhood church, where attend church with my grandparents and family until we moved twenty minutes away - that church closed many years ago now - a tiny country church that shrunk along with the town, and that has now been converted into a private home. 

It’s painful, it fills us with loss, I think, when we feel cut off from a part of our lives, particularly a part, a place, a season, a time that shaped us deeply. Our scripture readings for today both speak to communities who have known this kind of pain on a grand scale. The Ancient Israelites of the scriptures are marked by two major themes: the Exodus story, and Exile. After a season of warnings from the prophets to repent and return to following God, after warnings that they were failing to enact justice for the poor and marginalized, after warnings that their rituals were empty if the people did not truly give their hearts to God, and after warnings that if they did not change, then God would not prevent them from being conquered and controlled by foreign rulers, the Israelites found themselves sent out from their homeland. They were exiled from home. And it was devastating. The scriptures are full of lament and sorrow in the midst of exile. There’s a deep sense of loss. There’s fear, abandonment, grief, a replaying of everything that might have been done another way. 

But there’s also always still, even in the midst of what feels like the harshest punishment, God’s presence. God and God’s promises remain with Israel, even in exile. We see these themes in our scripture texts: In Jeremiah, the people are asking God: “Please, save us - the remnant. The leftover bits of your people.” The exile has come at a cost - lives have been lost. People have scattered. The clear identity of God’s people has been dulled. God, save the remnant. And God responds, “With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back.” The Psalm follows a similar pattern: “Restore our fortunes, God,” the people cry. And the Psalmist offers a blessing, imaging how God may answer: “May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves.” The remnant is enough. The people are saved. God restores. There’s a homecoming. 

Homecoming is certainly a theme in the scriptures - we can think, for example, of the powerful parable of the prodigal son, welcomed home by the loving father, no questions asked. A welcome home is such a powerful thing, isn’t it? As much as I started by sharing with you so many places in my life where I can never “go home” again, I find myself in a strange season in life where I am a student at Drew Theological School again twenty years after I attended here the first time. I graduated with my Master of Divinity in 2003, and in 2020, I started my PhD at Drew. I returned to a very familiar campus. I returned to many of the same faculty who were my wise professors the first time around, and have continued to teach me now, all these years later. 

But even though I have returned “home” to Drew, of course, it is not all the same. I don’t have the same classmates. The places I lived twenty years ago have been upgraded into luxury housing I could never afford. Seminary Hall has an addition - for which I’m thankful - but which also changes the building a lot. Many students take classes online, and fewer are on campus, in the building. And I’m different. I started the MDiv at Drew when I was 21 years old, not even five years out of high school. Now I’m a person who is in my 40s and who has spent years in ministry and had so much life experience that I didn’t have the last time at Drew. I’m home at Drew - but home is different, and “me” is different too. And thank goodness for that. I loved Drew then, and I love Drew now, but I’m reminded that being “home” at Drew has more to do with its values, its commitments to justice and love and compassion that I resonate with, its pursuit of diversity and wisdom that inspire me, rather than some unchanging material aspects. 

I’ve been thinking about my Drew homecoming as I think about these Exile texts and as I think about you all. I hear you in the voice of the prophets and the voice of Jeremiah - a remnant - the remaining people, perhaps feeling like you are about to be exiled, and perhaps already longing for home. What do God’s promises look like for you? Because I do believe God’s promises are with you. I do believe that God will restore, rebuild, grow new life in and with you. But what does that look like when you can’t come home in the way that you might have hoped? 

I mentioned to you that my childhood church is now a private home. I have so many memories of my little childhood church. It is where I learned the stories of the bible, and memorized scriptures in Sunday School. It’s where I was confirmed - it happened a few years earlier than usual there, since we were a small congregation. It was where I first took communion. It was there, as a five year old, that I collected the used bulletins after church each week to save because I was going to be a pastor when I grew up. It was where I made my first request for a favorite hymn at a hymn sing, and where I first made a prayer request out loud on my own. So many precious memories. When we voted on the closure of that church at our Annual Conference, my Uncle, who was a District Superintendent at the time, when to speak at the microphone. And what he said was: this church may be closing, but the impact it has had is not over, because this church produced pastors, and church leaders, and faithful disciples of Jesus Christ who continue to follow Jesus even though it won’t happen from inside those same walls anymore. This church planted seeds, and produced fruit, and the harvest will still continue. This church has a legacy that matters. 

Friends, remnants sometimes get treated as a byproduct, waste of something else that was created that is leftover and not worth much. But thankfully, we serve a God who can do a whole lot with a very little. God loves a remnant. God brings life from what is leftover. God work restoration where it seems there was nothing left. God takes the pieces of our broken hearts, and rebuilds. And so even when “home” isn’t here to return to, God builds home within us, and we bear the fruit of all the seeds that have been planted in us along the way. 

Some of the details of what is “home” are changing. And we are changing, ever and always. But the constant is God, who is with us at home, and with us in exile, and with us as we find home again. Thanks be to God, our home. Amen. 

 

Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, "Picnic and a Boat Ride," John 6:1-21 (Proper 12B, Ordinary 17B)

Sermon 7/28/24

John 6:1-21

Picnic and a Boat Ride

Our gospel lesson today is a text that’s probably familiar to most of you, at least somewhat. And it is one of the rare events that appear in all four gospels outside of Jesus’s death and resurrection. So we get the sense that this story is important. Of course, each gospel writer gives it their own spin, and John, whose gospel is the most different from the other three, also has the most variations in his account of this event. So let’s make sure we read carefully. 

Jesus has been teaching and healing. He crosses the Sea of Galilee with his disciples, and the crowds follow him, because of the healing work he’s been doing - they see it as a sign from God, and also, of course - they want to be healed! When Jesus sees the crowds coming, he turns to Philip, one of the Twelve, and asks, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” In other gospels, it is the disciples who raise this question. But John says that Jesus poses this question in order to test Philip, because Jesus already has a plan of action. 

Philip and the other disciples seem a bit overwhelmed by Jesus’ question. Philip notes that even a large sum of money wouldn’t feed such a huge crowd - and Jesus and the disciples evidently don’t have a large sum of money. Andrew has noticed a boy with five loaves of bread and two fish, but what could that amount of food - plenty for a few - do for a crowd of 5000 people? But Jesus simply has them all sit down, and then he gives thanks over the food, and starts passing it out. Everyone somehow eats all that they want, and now there is even food left over. The leftovers gathered, and there are now 12 baskets of leftover food where there was once only 5 loaves and 2 fish. A miracle. 

When the people see the miracle, they call Jesus a prophet, and they want to force Jesus to be their king. They want him to be their leader, their ruler. This isn’t what Jesus is about, though, not in the way they want. And so he withdraws from the crowds on his own. The next verse I’ve never really noticed before, but it caught my eye this time thanks to a commentary by Alicia D. Meyers that I was reading. We read, ‘When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them.” The disciples just…leave. I’m not sure where they were going. Maybe they had plans already, and knew Jesus would meet up with them. But they don’t go looking for Jesus, as far as we’re told, anyway. They don’t ask him what they should do next. They don’t check in. They just get back on the boat and leave town. 

And then the sea becomes rough and a strong wind is blowing over the water. It’s a dark and stormy night - but suddenly they see Jesus, walking along on the water, coming to them in the boat. They’re terrified. We’re not sure why; they’ve seen Jesus do miracles, after all. But maybe walking on water was just a next-level kind of thing. But Jesus says to them something he says many times, particularly in John’s gospel: “Do not be afraid.” And then suddenly, they’ve reached their destination safely. 

It can be interesting to use this text to consider what we think about miracles, particularly the supernatural kind, the bend-the-laws-of-the-universe kind. Did Jesus miraculously make the food multiply? Or did something else happen? Did Jesus really walk on water? How? Why don’t we see miracles like that today? Or were they reserved for Jesus, never to be repeated? But although these questions can make for an interesting conversation (or sermon), I want to push us in a somewhat different direction today. I think we learn in this passage both something about what we might expect (or not expect) from Jesus, and what Jesus expects from us. 

That’s right: Jesus has some expectations for us, his disciples. In our text, John tells us that Jesus wanted to test the disciples, and see what solutions they would come up with to address the hungry crowds, even though he already knew what he planned to do. How do we feel about that - the idea of Jesus testing us? The other gospel authors don’t mention anything like this, and this idea of the disciples being tested is more consistent with John’s style of writing and his understanding of how Jesus was at work in the world. But still, it’s here for us to wrestle with. I will admit that the idea of God testing us doesn’t really jive with my theology most of the time. It makes God seem too manipulative to me, like we’re being set up, guinea pigs in some divine experiment. I don’t think God is like that. 

But I have to remind myself, and maybe you do too, not to conflate “test” with “trick” or “trap.” Sometimes tests can be designed to be tricks or traps, but they aren’t necessarily the same. Sometimes being tested is a good thing, a necessary thing. We use tests all the time, so that we can assess what people know and what they don’t and whether they’re ready for the next thing. Right now, believe it or not, my nephew Sam is 17 years old, and he’s just about ready to take his road test for his driver’s license. We have to test young drivers to see if they’re ready to be on the road by themselves, for their safety and the safety of other drivers. A road test isn’t a trap or a trick. It’s an assessment. Sometimes a test reveals areas where we’re not prepared. Even failing a test isn’t always the worst thing that can happen. I think of my best friend in high school - it took her three failed road tests before she finally got her license. Now she’s an adult and a mother and a nurse and a more grounded and careful person than she was at 16. She failed a test - and it helped her mature as a driver and a person, and now I feel very safe being her passenger! We might know some things very well, but a test might reveal that we’ve overlooked a particular topic or have an area of misunderstanding. It might reveal that we’ve made progress, but we’re not ready yet to move on to the next thing. Tests can be hard. They can give us some anxiety. But they don’t have to be tricks or traps. 

So when I read here that Jesus is testing the disciples, I ask myself what he was looking for in his disciples. I think he wondered what they had learned so far in their time with him, as they’d accompanied him in his teaching and preaching and healing. And I think he wondered what they were ready for. How far would they follow him? How would they be as leaders themselves? Well: neither the crowds nor the disciples make a good showing, I’m afraid. Because the crowds are too focused on what they want from Jesus: signs and magic and a king. And the disciples are busy fleeing to the other side of the sea without Jesus. A consistent theme in John, and in John 6 in particular, is that the crowds want to know what Jesus can do for them tangibly: they want food, they want physical healing, and they want him to be a king, maybe one who can overthrow the oppressive Roman government. I sympathize with their longings - who wouldn’t want someone to lead who could do those things? Why wouldn’t we want to follow someone who can keep us fed and keep us healthy? But it seems like that’s all they want from Jesus. The crowds seem far less engaged in what Jesus is teaching, less interested in letting their lives be transformed by God. 

And then there’s the disciples, those closest to Jesus. First, even those they’ve already seen Jesus do amazing, unexplainable things, they can’t imagine a solution to his question: “How will we get these people something to eat?” Maybe they’re content to let Jesus figure out the answers. How could they be expected to come up with a solution - they’re not Jesus, after all. Maybe they’re not sure they can trust him yet. Is it all too good to be true? And then, again, when Jesus has withdrawn from the crowds anxious to make him a king, we hear nothing of the disciples. What are they doing? Are they, too, trying to force Jesus into a role? Are they helping manage the crowds? Or standing off to the side, waiting for Jesus to tell them what’s next? I wonder what they’re thinking when they decide, in fact, to leave, to go back across the water to where they came from. Are they ready to ditch Jesus altogether? Are they anxious to be away from the unexplainable events of the day? Just go back to their normal routines? We just know that when Jesus shows up, walking on the water, they’re afraid. Maybe afraid of what this means for them. How can they be good enough to follow Jesus? Yet, how can they do anything but try to keep following? No wonder they’re afraid: awed and dazzled by Jesus, feeling confused, unworthy, incompetent, and yet feeling like what choice do they have but to keep trying to follow him anyway. 

 It’s easy to look at the disciples in the gospels and see all the mistakes they make, and convince ourselves we’d do better. But I think they’re portrayed as they are so that we can take comfort, actually, in knowing that we’re not the first to struggle with fears and doubts in our discipleship. We’re not the first to wonder if we can trust Jesus, and yet also want Jesus to fix all of our problems. We’re not the first to feel incompetent at discipleship, and yet keep coming back to try again. The disciples get it wrong, a lot, and even worse than this. But they keep going. Jesus keeps teaching them. I don’t think they ever feel quite ready. But somehow, they’ve changed our lives, changed the world, millennia later. 

Jesus does test us, I think: checking in on where we are in our discipleship. But I’m reminded of the grades I used to get in elementary school. Not the grades for how well I was performing academically. Instead, there was a whole section on how we were performing socially. Were we learning to be thoughtful, well-adjusted classroom citizens? You couldn’t fail in that section. You could get an “unsatisfactory.” But teachers tended to opt for the more hopeful “needs improving.” Or the encouraging “improving” that might come on the way to “satisfactory” or “excellent.” I think when Jesus tests us, the scale is a little bit more like that. Ready to challenge us where we need improving. But always ready to affirm us, build us up, teach us some more, lead the way, and tell us: Do not be afraid. So, take heart, friends. Jesus wants to know what we’re going to do about the broken-hearted world around us. Probably, we’re going to mess it up. But instead of demanding that Jesus fix it for us, or running away altogether, let’s stay and learn from the teacher, and then practice, practice, until we’re improving, until we’re thriving, until we’re ready for whatever Jesus calls us to next. Amen. 

1. Thanks to Alicia D. Meyers, at The Working Preacher for sparking this line of thought. “Commentary on John 6:1-21.” 

https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-17-2/commentary-on-john-61-21-6

Image: JESUS MAFA. Jesus multiplies the loaves and fish, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48287 [retrieved July 29, 2024]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, "Finish It," 2 Corinthians 8:7-15 (Proper 8B, Ordinary 13B)

*Posted out of order, but here's a sermon from earlier this summer.

Sermon 6/30/24

2 Corinthians 8:7-15

Finish It

Have you ever seen an unfinished building or construction project? I remember growing up one of my best friends lived in a home that her father had just built. Only there were little bits and pieces that he never quite finished. For example, there was a door that was meant to go to a porch and stairs into the yard - but the porch and stairs never got built. Be careful - that door led to a ten foot drop! Years later it did get finished, but I was well into adulthood before that happened. There are several famous building projects around the world that have never been completed like some of these we see on the screen,  including this one, the National Monument of Scotland, also known as “ Edinburgh’s disgrace.” (1)  Closer to home, many of you have probably visited Boldt Castle in the 1000 Islands region, the castle built in the early 1900s by millionaire George C. Boldt, and then abandoned while still mid-construction because of the sudden death of his beloved wife Louise. Some of you may have even visited the castle years ago, as I did as a child, when not much had yet been done to restore the property, and everything was covered in graffiti and it all radiated: abandoned project.   

There is something both fascinating and sad about these unfinished projects. A lasting and visible reminder of plans someone had that ultimately weren’t completed, a vision that couldn’t be carried out for whatever reason. What about projects in your own life? Are you the type of person who always finishes whatever project you begin? Or do you have a tendency to get intrigued by many things and give them a try, but maybe leave some partly done and move on to the next thing? My own record is kind of a mixed bag on this.  I tried to teach myself how to knit, for example, and worked on the project of trying to knit a scarf at irregular intervals over the course of several years before I finally acknowledged it was never going to happen and gave my 2/3 of a scarf away for someone else to finish. Sometimes, I’m sure I’ve found a new passion - but then I lose interest.  Other times, though, I’m pretty disciplined about following through. For example, the ordination process in The United Methodist Church took me 9 years to complete, start to finish, and at the time I was ordained, that meant I had been in the process for more than a third of my life! But I never wavered. I pasted the document listing the steps of the process on my wall, and checked them off one by one. Sometimes, I’m committed to finishing what I started, no matter what. What’s something you were determined to do and committed to seeing your vision through to completion? 

Foremost on my mind these days is finishing my PhD. I’m in what is hopefully my last year of a five year program, working on writing my dissertation. The PhD student drop out rate is incredibly high - some statistics I’ve seen suggest that more than 50% of people who start a PhD never finish it. Sometimes people drop out right at the start, because they find out the program is more rigorous than expected and they weren’t quite prepared. But there’s a lot of other reasons folks drop out too, even quite near the end, when all that is left is the dissertation. It’s expensive, being a PhD student, and sometimes people drop out for financial reasons - they don’t have enough income, they need to go back to full time work, they can’t make ends meet. Sometimes they don’t have enough support from advisors and faculty who encourage them and check in. And sometimes people who do well with the structure and deadlines of the coursework part of a PhD really flounder when there is no structure or clear timeline when you get to the dissertation part of the program and have to be very self-directed. Sometimes people just decide all the struggle is not worth it. I’m quite certain every PhD student has at least considered throwing in the towel. I know I’ve had my moments. But I am determined. I will finish this thing. 

 That’s the apostle Paul’s advice in his letter to the Corinthians from our text for today. “Finish it,” he says. The church at Corinth had committed a year ago to take up a collection, a financial offering to go and support the work of the church in Jerusalem, the “home base” congregation of Christianity in the early church, a community that was frequently in financial need and relied on the support from congregations in wealthier communities. The Corinthians had pledged their support and started gathering funds. But for some reason, they’ve delayed in completing their task. Things are taking longer than planned, and maybe some folks aren’t even sure they want to give anymore. Early in 2 Corinthians and elsewhere in his letters, Paul alludes to tensions between the Jerusalem church leadership and other parts of the growing Christian movement. There were many disagreements and debates to work out over who was leading the movement, who could be included, and how people could become part of Christianity. Perhaps, in the midst of the struggles, the fervor of the Corinthian church for supporting the church in Jerusalem had waned. Perhaps, with the passage of time, people were no longer as excited about the mission as they’d once been. Perhaps they’d encountered more struggles, more demands on their resources. Whatever the reason, Paul’s letter seems to imply that there’s a real question of whether or not the Corinthians will complete the task to which they’ve committed themselves. 

But if they listen to Paul, they will finish it. Paul builds them up, reminding them of their gifts, their love, their excellent generosity. He doesn’t command them, he says, but he does want to see if their promises were genuine or not. He reminds them of Christ’s generosity, and of the generosity of congregations that have less abundant financial resources than they do. And he says to them: “Finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it.” You had a vision, you planned to give from your abundance - now do it. See the task to completion. 

 Friends, I know that you are in a season of transition. It’s been a season of upheaval and change in our denomination, and though I have longed for some of the changes that have been made, I know they’ve also come at a cost to congregations and clergy and resources. We’re in a long and ongoing season of transition around the role and influence of the church in the larger society that can be discouraging. And I know that you are also in a season of pastoral transition, which is always one of the most difficult times for congregations. I’ve been through lots of pastoral and congregational transitions - I know it can be exceptionally easy to sort of “opt out” during seasons of change. It can be easy to lose sight of the plans and vision that you once had, especially if now, carrying out that vision looks different than it did when you were first dreaming together. I know that the lure of complacency, of apathy, of taking the path of least resistance and least effort can be so strong. 

 But I also know that staying the course is worth it. Where do we find the strength? As Paul urged with the Corinthians, I think we find strength by remembering the gifts God has given us. We recall the commitments we’ve made. We remember how God has been with us, and how God promises to go with us into the future. We put our faith in a generous Christ, who calls us to follow him. We count our blessings. And we declare: We will finish it. In this season of change, I encourage you to think about the plans and visions, the hopes and dreams you have both in your personal journey of discipleship, and as a congregation. What plans and promises have you made? When you were dreaming big, what did you see in the future? Where have you felt God’s presence, and God’s leading? What have you felt inspired to do? How did you feel when you were first stepping out on faith? In the past, what has helped you stay motivated, dedicated? Remember, and renew your commitment. Recommit to the vision. God is still present, still leading, and still giving you all the resources you need to move forward with purpose. Speaking to another congregation, the church in Philippi, Paul says, “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6) God is faithfully completing good works in our lives day by day. Let us be faithful too, completing what we’ve begun. With God by your side, finish it. Amen. 

1.  https://www.fodors.com/news/photos/10-famously-unfinished-buildings-around-the-world

Image source: https://foundr.com/articles/leadership/personal-growth/finishing-the-project

Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B (Proper 11, Ordinary 16), "Of Sheep and Shepherds," Mark 6:30-34, 53-56, Jeremiah 23:1-6

 

Sermon 7/21/24

Mark 6:30-34, 53-56, Jeremiah 23:1-6

Of Sheep and Shepherds

I’ve been thinking a whole lot about leadership lately, and who it is we want to lead us and why. Yes, as you can imagine, I’ve got the upcoming presidential election on my mind. No, don’t worry, I’m not about to get into who to vote for - or who not to vote for - or why. Today I’m more interested in thinking about what we value in leaders. What kind of leader do you think the President of the United States should be? I found an article that addressed several characteristics that seem to make for effective presidencies in American history, and the top qualities include: A strong vision for the country's future, an ability to put their own times in the perspective of history, effective communication skills, the courage to make unpopular decisions, crisis management skills, character and integrity, wise appointments, and an ability to work with Congress. (1) That sounds like a pretty decent list. But it is a rear view mirror list. In other words, it was a list made reflecting on presidencies after they were over, not in the midst of electing a new president. I tried to find something that gave a good sense of what we’re looking for when we’re electing a new president. The best I could find was a recent survey that asked people how they rated a pre-selected list of attributes. So, the survey decided on some important traits, but people got to rank them. There were some party-line differences, but people valued strength, honesty, and competence. Most of all? Across party lines, people said “taking responsibility” was their most desired characteristic in a leader. (2) Now, that desire can be interpreted in a lot of ways, but I suspect at least part of why people say they want someone who will take responsibility is because they feel like our leaders don’t do this already. How often do we hear our leaders - presidents or governors or members of congress or otherwise - say: that mistake was my fault and I accept responsibility? Examples do not immediately spring to my mind. 

I read recently on social media some words from John G. Stackhouse Jr.: “God, after all, has a long record of allowing societies to reap what they sow and get the leadership they deserve. It's called judgment, not blessing.” I’ve been thinking about that a lot. This idea: God gives people the kind of leader they want, even if it turns out to be an awful decision, even when it turns out the people are really bad at choosing leaders. Are we bad at choosing leaders? Stackhouse is certainly commenting on current events, but he’s also making observations about the biblical record. Our history, as people, of choosing poorly when it comes to leaders, is not new. It’s in fact a quite, quite old problem. That’s what our text from Jeremiah is talking about. When God first called together a people, Israel, God said that God would be the only ruler they needed. But eventually, the people started clamoring for a king, because they wanted to be like the other nations around them - they all had earthly rulers, and the Israelites wanted one too. And so God gave them what they wanted. And, as Stackhouse suggests, it mostly turned out to be a terrible decision. With few exceptions, ruler after ruler did what was evil in God’ sight, leading the people down destructive paths, resulting in wars, and poverty, and hardship, and most of all: idolatry and alienation from God. 

In Jeremiah, God has had it with rulers who are not the shepherds God intends them to be. Shepherds are supposed to care for and protect the sheep - at all costs! But instead, God says, the rules of Israel have been destroying and scattering the sheep - God’s people. There are consequences, God says. But as always, God makes promises too: God will be the shepherd earthly rulers are not, and gather the people. And God will raise up shepherds who will lead with righteousness and justice so that the people can live in safety. So what kind of leader do we want? What kind of shepherd does God seek out for us? Can we accept the shepherd God longs for us to have, instead of insisting we know better? 

There’s more talk about sheep and shepherds in our gospel lesson, where we start out with Jesus just seeking some peace and quiet after the relentless pace of his teaching, healing, and ministry. Picture this: you are exhausted. It has been a long week at work. Some things have gone wrong. And all week, you’ve been looking forward to a quiet Saturday at home, where you can sleep in. You’re just going to relax. No agenda. No schedule. No plans. And then, there’s a knock at the door. Or the phone rings. And suddenly, that time for rest and relaxation has vanished. And it’s not even that whoever interrupted your time is not a friend, a person you enjoy. It’s just that you were so exhausted, and you so needed a break. Has this ever happened to you?  

That’s what happens to Jesus and the disciples. They were trying to take just a little break, because with all the work they’ve been doing, they haven’t even had time to eat. But the people, who so want to see Jesus, experience his teaching, his healing, find out where he’s going, and while Jesus is traveling by boat, they hurry ahead on foot, so that by the time Jesus reaches his destination, they’re already there waiting for him. And Jesus doesn’t groan when he sees them all waiting. He doesn’t huff and puff and demand that he needs his alone time. Instead, we read: “As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus is moved with compassion. The Greek word in the Bible for compassion is my very favorite. The word is a mouthful: ἐσπλαγχνίσθη - esplangchnisthe. It means something to the effect of: your guts are tied up in knots with the level of concern you have for someone. You are physically moved with emotion for the person you’re considering. You feel such concern, such care that it affects you physically. And this word is mostly used in the Bible to describe how Jesus feels about the crowds, the people. In fact, this word is used more times about Jesus than all others instances in the Bible combined. When Jesus sees people, his guts twist with the deepness of his concern. Compassion. His intestines twisted in knots in deep concern for what he saw. A true shepherd, like the one the prophet Jeremiah wrote of, is like this one: one who laments when the sheep are without a shepherd, and is moved to the core of their being to step in and lead, to step in and be that shepherd. 

I wonder: is compassion a leadership skill? Do we want a leader who is compassionate? What kind of leader does it make you if your best skill is that you have gut-wrenching compassion for people like Jesus does - all kinds of people, in all kinds of situations, some of their own making, some deserving more than they’ve gotten, some deserving less - all kinds of people? What kind of leader does it make you if your best skills are compassion, mercy, grace? Well, we can see what kind of leader his signature compassion makes Jesus into: It makes Jesus the kind of leader who can’t seem to stop pouring himself out for others, even when he’d really love a nap. It makes Jesus the kind of leader who says that he came to be a servant of all. It makes Jesus the kind of leader who eschews every attempt to elevate and glorify himself, to take a throne, to rule over. It makes him the kind of leader who cherishes children as those with important wisdom to share. It makes him the kind of leader who notices the widows, the poor, those who have been deemed sinful, those whom no one wants to touch,even the ones who are considered enemies - he notices and sees and embraces. It makes Jesus the kind of leader who gives his life for others. It makes him a true shepherd, a good shepherd, who cannot just pass by when he sees lost sheep. 

Sometimes I think we need reminding of just who it is we’ve committed to following. As people of faith, we’ve committed to following someone whose leadership skills may not be on the top list for presidential candidates. Elections matter. Secular leaders matter. Of course they do. I think we should vote, and vote thoughtfully, faithfully, trying our best to vote in alignment with our deepest held values. But I’m reminded of a post that was going around on Facebook way back in the Obama/Romney election in 2012. It showed Romney and Obama each with a statement near them that read: “Hope of the world.” But then it was crossed out. And it said at the bottom: “That job’s already taken.” I love that. Jesus is the hope of our world and the only one we should seek to follow. The empires of the earth - all of them - rise and fall. But Jesus is eternal, and our place in God’s heart is forever, and God’s love and compassion for us is everlasting. Let’s be followers of the leader God chooses for us. Let’s have the characteristics and qualities of Jesus be the ones we seek out. Let it be the compassion of Jesus that we long for the most, and most strive to imitate. Let’s be sheep in the fold of the shepherd who loves us down to his very guts. Amen. 

1. https://www.ushistory.org/gov/7e.asp

2. https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/31249-leadership-qualities-president-poll-data

Sermon, "In Denial," Mark 8:31-37

Sermon 2/20/24

Mark 8:31-37

In Denial

My sermon title is both a reflection of our gospel text for today, and a reflection of how I felt about preaching today. I’ve come to this moment kind of dragging my feet, for a variety of reasons. And one of them was that I just did not want to preach on this text. Of course, I didn’t have to - we don’t demand lectionary preaching in chapel. But I just felt like I wanted to preach from the lectionary during Lent. The other texts for today are all about Abraham and Paul’s take on Abraham, and let’s just say those passages were not filling me with inspiration. Briefly, I was imagining a sermon on the Transfiguration text - it is an alternate text for today. But then our wise friend Leah Wandera chose that, appropriately, for Transfiguration last week when it is the primary lectionary choice, and preached a powerful message - you should give it a listen if you missed our online service last week. So here I am, and here we are.   

Truthfully, I’ve always liked this text, and specifically, what I consider the heart of this passage - “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Please don’t tell this to my dissertation committee and give them encouragement to come up with more questions to ask me about my prospectus draft, but I’ve always liked it when things are challenging rather than easy. I mean, easy things have their place, for sure. But I like a challenge, and Jesus’s words are certainly that. Whenever Jesus describes discipleship in ways that seem demanding, I’ve found them motivating rather than discouraging. I like to think that rather than setting the discipleship bar low so we can all just step over it, Jesus sets the bar high and then helps us reach high enough. So, this call to deny one’s self and take up a cross is a challenge I want to rise to meet. What good is easy discipleship? 

But my dear friend Heather, another clergywoman, and now also a Drewid, a DMin student here, has always hated this text. It raises her feminist hackles. Women, she says, are always being asked to deny parts of themselves already. They are always being asked to give up pieces of themselves, to give up parts of themselves for the good of others. She doesn’t need Jesus asking her to do it too, making women denying themselves into an act of religious faithfulness. 

Is that what Jesus means when he asks for self-denial? Sacrificing parts of ourselves? Our contemporary culture, at least in the United States, has tended to interpret self-denial like a second opportunity to make good on New Year’s Resolutions that have failed shortly after January 1st. Lent becomes a kind of season of self-improvement. We can deny ourselves chocolate for Lent and get a two-for-one deal: obeying Jesus, and trimming some excess from our diets and our bodies. Our Lenten journeys become disordered reflections of our disordered views of ourselves. If we don’t love ourselves very much already, and we don’t love our bodies, and we don’t love the skin that we’re in, and we don’t love who we are, perhaps we welcome a chance to deny ourselves - we’re ready to shed the person we are that we’re so ready to and so easily able to find fault with anyway. Deny myself? Yes please! Lent in this way becomes just another promise of new and improved selves that can never meet our hopes. 

If not that, what, then, does Jesus want from us? What is it, exactly, that we need to deny of ourselves, about ourselves? Does self-denial mean stripping ourselves of our individual identities? We’re all one in Christ - we’re disciples, united in cause and purpose - and identity? Is this the self-denial of the way of the cross? This doesn’t fit right either. One of the things I’ve learned at Drew is that denying myself, denying pieces of myself, can actually be a privilege that gives me power over others. I am, to draw on a favorite essay by Donna Haraway, situated. (1) I have a particular perspective. I am White. I am a citizen of the United States. I am a cisgender straight woman. I am a Christian in a Christian-majority nation. I am a middle-class person, even if I’m also taking on the role of broke grad student for a few years. I’ve had access to - let’s be honest - excessive amounts of schooling. I am situated. Is self-denial about denying all the particulars of who we are? Haraway likens that to what she calls the “god trick” - pretending that we have the same all-seeing and all-knowing perspective of the divine being, looking down from on high. Jesus does say we should set our minds on divine things, doesn’t he? Is self-denial about striving for God’s point of view instead of our own? Can we accomplish that through self-denial, and trying to shrug off labels of our particularities? 

In the midst of all of these unappealing ways of denying ourselves before we’ve even gotten to the part about taking up a cross, is there any chance for saving our lives here? I’m pretty sure I remember that in the text somewhere. Losing our lives, yes. But saving them too. That’s in there, right? How do we deny ourselves, lose our lives, and save them all at once? Are there ways that we can understand the call to self-denial that lead to life? 

As Yeongrok and I were talking about music for chapel today, he said my sermon text made him think of the song The Summons. I almost didn’t include it, but I had been thinking about it too, and the words from John Bell in one of the verses. It’s a question from God to us: “Will you love the ‘you’ you hide if I but call your name?” What is the “you” that you’re hiding? 

I think when Jesus talks about self-denial with the disciples - in the particular context of the oppressive state violence that Jesus believed was in his future as a person who kept relentlessing prodding at systems of injustice - I think he’s telling his disciples that they need to lay down their clinging to self-protection, to safety and security, so that they can take on the cross - rather than the sword - with courage, as they face off against Empire. Our particular context is different, of course. But these words call to us all the same. 

What if denying ourselves looks like denying our obsession with individualism? Not as in denying that we are situated, and acknowledging the positionings that sometimes give some of us extraordinary power and place. Rather, maybe denying ourselves looks more like putting away the misguided notion that we are somehow self-contained. Putting away a notion that we are in control, and a contained, boxed-in self that stands alone. Thinking again of our music for today, I’m amazed at the number of Lenten songs that put us in isolation - it’s just me and Jesus in the lonesome valley, doing it all by ourselves. I’m always wary of anything that suggests that it’s just between us and God, when Jesus so firmly and frequently reminds us that all of our neighbors fill the spaces between us and God. Maybe denying ourselves actually means we can deny this privatized notion that we have that we are solo, contained, doing it on our own, so “unique” that we cannot be in solidarity and in community.

Taking up a cross and confronting injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves isn’t the work of an individual. I think maybe taking up the cross is always the work of a community. In fact, the image of Simon of Cyrene being called on in the gospel to help Jesus carry the cross comes to my mind. Jesus needs help carrying the cross too. Denying ourselves is the ongoing, difficult work of shedding the beliefs that we can or should do it on our own, that we are on our own in our pain and struggles, on our own in confronting the powers and principalities, that we’ve got it figured out on our own, that we only need our own perspective, that we can box ourselves in. Deny this understanding of what self means. Take up the cross, the work of a community - the work of solidarity, of kinship, of working for justice. The work of carrying the cross, together. 

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. Amen. 

1. Haraway, Donna. "‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective'." (1988) In Space, gender, knowledge: Feminist readings, pp. 53-72. Routledge, 2016.