If you’ve been with us through January then by now you’re probably getting pretty adept at reading between the lines in the Gospel of Mark. We know that Mark writes very sparingly, and that everything happens in a hurry as there seems to be a breathlessness to it all and an urgency that’s driving everything. But I also want to remind us all that even though we’ve been doing a close and careful reading of Mark for 5 weeks now that we’re still only 39 verses into chapter 1! And that makes a difference because while it may seem to us like it took a long time to get to this point, in the narrative it’s still just barely beginning Jesus’ story. And that makes us see what I want to talk about today in a different light.
Let’s review what’s happened in Mark chapter 1 so far. It begins with a few verses of narration and context, and then John the Baptizer appears, and Jesus makes his entrance (v.9) and is baptized. As he rises from the water he has a profound spiritual experience where he sees the supposed barrier between God and humans ripped open and he’s enfolded in God’s Presence and voice.
Then he has a very briefly described 40 days being tempted in the wilderness followed by a trip to Galilee to begin his public ministry by preaching.
Now we’re all the way up to v.14.
Then he calls his first disciples, completely upending their lives, and by v.21 their gang has entered a synagogue for worship, and of course, Jesus creates quite a scene. That was what we looked at last week.
Let’s pause a moment here and think about what’s going on.
How would you describe what Jesus is doing during verses 14 to 28 – from the time he started preaching, calling disciples, and shaking up synagogues? I’d call it public ministry and engagement.
How would you describe his spiritual energy? I’d call it pretty high!
Now a possibly strange question. Would you say he’s sending energy out or drawing energy in?
The answer may not be obvious – or even matter!
I’m an introvert. Yes, I have a public ‘dancing monkey’ kind of job but being an introvert means I get my energy from my time away from people. You can’t judge an introvert or extrovert by their public persona – it’s where they get their energy from.
Extroverts get their energy replenished by being with people.
I enjoy being here and doing what I do, and I also end up flat out on the couch on most Sunday afternoons!
An extrovert might find themselves all charged up from being in the midst of this many people and find themselves primed and ready to go afterwards.
No one has any idea as to whether Jesus was an introvert or an extrovert. And the case I’m going to make this morning is that the rhythm Jesus follows is deeper than just being introverted or extroverted.
It’s a spiritual rhythm for everyone.
If I had lived those first 28 verses in Mark’s gospel I’d be utterly exhausted. Maybe he was too. Or maybe he was jazzed by it all. Doesn’t matter.
Ultimately, it’s neither physical nor spiritual energy we’re really talking about. It’s bigger than those.
Let’s look what happens.
Other gospels want us to be awestruck by Jesus. I think the writer of the Gospel according to Mark wants that too, but first he wants to make sure he’s got your attention. So he tells his story at a breathless pace and he leaves you befuddled and off-balance with the crazy stuff in this first chapter.
The heavens get ripped open and God’s Spirit is no longer thought to be separated from humanity. Jesus is driven into the wilderness and tempted for 40 days and then comes back. He travels to Galilee and starts preaching. He walks up to total strangers and says “Follow me” and they follow. And now he strolls into a synagogue and totally sends their worship service sideways.
Your head should be reeling at all this!
It’s just astonishment after astonishment.
Jesus will render us awestruck soon enough – but for now we’re being run over with a steam roller!
At this point, the appropriate reaction is to be thunderstruck!
I’m going to have some fun with this passage and take it into some strange interpretive territory, but first I want to acknowledge its primary meaning. First we’ll think about what it would’ve meant for the first audience hearing the story – and no, I don’t mean the audience Jesus taught in that synagogue that fateful Saturday. I mean the audience hearing Mark’s gospel in the early 00-70s.
First let’s think about synagogues. Nowadays synagogues function much like this church does, as the gathering, spiritual teaching, and social justice ministry focal point for a community of faith. But in Jesus’ day the centre of their religious and cultural world was the Temple in Jerusalem. The synagogues that Jesus goes into are more like prayer gatherings in someone’s house.
They would’ve had leadership but it wasn’t a Pharisee or a Priest (well, maybe in the bigger towns, but certainly not in tiny Capernaum). The leader was a scribe, which means a learned man, a village elder, someone with some religious training but not a formally authorized religious person. Today we might all them a Licenced Lay Worship Leader. This is because everything formal was focused on the Temple. All the sacrifices and pilgrimages and authorized teachings were at the Temple. Village synagogues were very low level compared to that.
And that’s important because it’s not like Jesus walked into a place like this with an organized denominational structure and a formally authorized trained ordained minister and just walked up, gave the scribe and elbow, and took over.
And this is why the people were thunderstruck at his teaching – because he didn’t teach like the scribe who was doing his best but didn’t have a whole whack of theological education behind him. (Then again, neither did Jesus!) Jesus taught with authority. Jesus taught with fresh insight and wisdom – more than they’d ever heard before.
Immediately, a man possessed by an evil spirit confronts Jesus.
Welcome to the shortest sermon in history!
Don’t get your hopes up. I’m not talking about my sermon – I’m talking about the first one Jesus preached in Mark’s gospel. And even though it’s only one verse long (Mark 1:15) it is jam-packed with massively important theological stuff. Enough stuff to last, oh I don’t know, 18-22 minutes!
Let me set the stage. We’ve been looking at the first chapter of the first gospel, Mark, for the past few weeks. We know that Mark’s gospel is short, matter-of-fact, and that everything happens in a hurry in this telling. Mark’s favourite word is immediately – a word we get twice in this short passage today.
We’re only at chapter 1 verse 14 and already Jesus has been baptized and spent 40 days in the wilderness being tempted. And now we learn about the beginning of his public ministry. We learn that John the baptizer was arrested and that Jesus had made his way back to his home province of Galilee. Mark is so sparse on details that you have to read between the lines a lot – and sometimes that can lead to interesting questions.
For example, some scholars speculate that Jesus not going back to Galilee until John was arrested suggests that Jesus hung out with John for a while, perhaps doing ministry together, maybe even being John’s disciple! In Galilee Jesus began preaching, and his first sermon – verse 15 – sounds a lot like something John might have said!
Here’s the sermon: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
The time is fulfilled.
There are two words for time in Greek – chronos which means clock time, the passing of minutes and hours, and kairos which means a special, opportune, unique, meaningful time. Chronos is an amount of time – Kairos is a quality of time. A kairos moment is one that feels spiritual and energized and holy. This kairos time is full and complete, says Jesus.
And the kingdom of God has come near.
We had proof of that a few verses earlier when during his baptism the heavens were torn open and the supposed barrier between God and humanity was obliterated.
The word translated as near suggests closeness, immediate imminence, and presence.
So, where is God’s kingdom? Right here, all around us, we’re in it.
And when is God’s kingdom? Now! It has drawn near – it doesn’t wait until everything is perfect, or until you die, God’s kingdom has drawn near – right here, right now!
So how does one access or interact with this drawn near kingdom? Repent! Same word John the baptizer used, and it means the same thing. It literally means to go beyond the mind you have, to change the way you understand and perceive the world, to turn from your former way and embrace a new way, Jesus’ Way, God’s kingdom.
It just makes sense. If you feel like you don’t have access to the kingdom now then you need to make a change, turn around, learn to perceive differently.
And believe in the good news.
Too many church people don’t understand the word believe. We think it means to use our heads and agree to a certain list of theological spiritual concepts.
That’s wrong. That’s not what believe is supposed to mean.
Believe actually means to trust, to have faith in – like you’d say to someone who was about to do something big and you wanted to encourage them – you’d say, “I believe in you!” That’s not about intellect – it’s about love, heart, trust.
So to believe in the good news actually means to trust with your heart, to see with your heart. And good news literally translates as gospel.
So that was Jesus’ first sermon. Awesome! A man of few words but every word was epic!
Ok, time for some more speculation into the gaps that Mark leaves. It says that Jesus came into Galilee preaching this good news message.
Where did he preach it? How many times? Who heard it?
Was he becoming known for it?
Were people talking about it at the water cooler at work?
Did the video of him preaching it go viral?
We have to fill in the gap, and we have to imagine that there was a big buzz about Jesus because if we don’t then the next few verses are really hard to believe. Jesus starts to call potential disciples.
1:16 As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea–for they were fishermen.
1:17 And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”
1:18 And immediately they left their nets and followed him.
Imagine you’re Simon or Andrew. You’re at work, doing your thing. Out of nowhere some guy walks up to you and says, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people!”
What’s your reaction? Be honest!
You’d think the guy was nuts! read on →
Last week we started the season of Epiphany, which is all about awakening and seeing and realizing things, and we started our journey through the first chapter of the gospel according to Mark. In case you weren’t here last week, I mentioned that Mark is the shortest gospel and it has a really interesting kind of flavour. Everything is direct, and matter-of-fact in Mark. And stories that you probably know well from the other gospels are really different here. Well, they’re the same story, but Mark tells it in a very simple and unembellished way.
Take today’s reading for example. It’s the story of Jesus’ temptation. It’s very familiar, but if you only had Mark’s gospel and none of the others I’m not sure this story would be familiar. I doubt we’d even notice it, because Mark doesn’t seem to give it much attention at all. If you know the temptation story think for a second about the details of it. Think about who Jesus talks to, think about what the temptations are, think about where the temptations happen, think about what you might do if you were tempted by the same things.
Now forget all about that stuff. Because if we only had Mark this would be our entire temptation story:
12 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13 He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
It’s not that Mark disagrees with the other gospels. The basic info is still there. But that’s all there is. Basic info. Forty days, tempted, wild beasts, angels. Done.
Why the difference?
The scholarly consensus is that both Matthew and Luke wrote their versions of the gospel with Mark in their hand. They used Mark’s basic structure and timeline as their starting point and told the same stories in more or less the same order. John’s gospel is really different, so either they didn’t have Mark or chose to ignore it! Mark, Luke, and Matthew are called the synoptic gospels – that means ‘seen together’ because they agree with one another.
So, all that should raise some questions for you.
Why do Matthew and Luke have fuller versions of the story?
Is it because Mark only knew the basics and the others knew more information?
Is it because Mark didn’t care very much about the stories?
Is it because Mark had the whole story but Matthew and Luke didn’t think there was enough meat in it so they made up a bunch of details to make the story better?
These are all valid options – and you can read lots of doctoral dissertations championing each of those theories. No one knows for sure why Mark wrote like this, but I’ll share some of the reasons I think make the most sense.
We need to remember that theirs was an oral culture, not a literate one. They didn’t have books because books all had to be hand copied, and most people probably couldn’t read anyway. So they told their stories orally, and they were incredibly good at it.
So why shift gears and write it down all of a sudden? Great question!
One huge motivation was that Mark was written in the shadow of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Whether it was about to happen or had just happened we don’t know, but we do know that things had gotten very bad in Jerusalem.
In the year 66 the Jews revolted against their Roman occupiers. There were uprisings, and war, and ultimately in the year 70 the temple was destroyed.
This is exactly the time we think Mark was writing.
If you’re in an oral culture, you change your main method of communication when you feel threatened and wonder if you’ll be around anymore to keep telling your story!
The temple was the centre of their culture, and it was literally crumbling before their eyes. This was catastrophic.
Imagine if we arrived this morning and this church was burned down. Now multiply that by about a thousand.
It was more than just a worship space to them. It was the centre of everything. And now it’s gone. Their world had fallen apart. That’s motivation!
And that sense of urgency may also explain why Mark is written the way it is.
There was no time to elaborate! Get the story down as quick as you can. We may not be here tomorrow!
And that may also partly explain why Mark’s favourite word appears to be immediately! Everything in Mark happens immediately.
Happy New Year! We’re going to be spending the first part of this year exploring the first chapter of the first gospel – the gospel according to Mark. Now, if you know your bible well you know that Matthew is the first book of the New Testament, but Mark was actually written about 10-15 years earlier than Matthew and Luke, and about 25 or so years earlier than the gospel of John. So, Mark is really first.
Curiously, and in stark contrast to the season we’ve just emerged from – Christmas – there is no nativity or birth story for Jesus in Mark. Well, perhaps there is, as I’ll suggest in about 10 minutes!
Instead, Mark begins with Jesus already as an adult. We’ll talk about all kinds of features of the writing in Mark over the course of the month, but the first thing you might notice is how direct and matter-of-fact Mark is. Church folks who have spent a long time in rooms like this and have good familiarity with the other gospels will tend to fill in the blanks and spaces that Mark leaves with details from the other gospels.
So it’s important for us to take a moment and remember that at the time Mark was written there were no other gospels!
This was it.
It’s a Spartan and unembellished text. And it will often feel raw and edgy.
That’s probably why it’s my favourite of the four gospels!
Today we get the familiar story of Jesus’ baptism – although the way Mark treats it may seem a bit unfamiliar! I’m going to go verse by verse and amplify the text as I go.
There is so much good theological material here! I hope you enjoy this! Mark 1:4-11.
1:4 John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness [a place that symbolizes transformation], proclaiming a baptism [which was not a unique innovation of John’s – baptisms were part of Jewish tradition as far back as Leviticus 13 and 15], a baptism of repentance [the Greek word is metanoia, which literally means to go beyond the mind you have, to have a change of understanding, a change of heart, to live a new Way] for the forgiveness of sins [sins are less about singular actions you did or didn’t do, and more about your state of being – a state where you feel you have missed the mark, fallen short, not lived up to the ideal God desires for us].
So, John appears in a transformative place, offering an old tradition for a new understanding to help us live out our ideals that God has inspired in us but that we’re not living up to. That sounds a lot like what happens at New Years every year! Hmm!
1:5 And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem [obviously an exaggeration, but still!] were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. To confess is to openly declare, admit, and acknowledge. The first step in making a change is admitting you need a change!
1:6 Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist [an odd detail for Mark who doesn’t like details, but this is meant to directly connect John to the prophet Elijah who’s described the same way in 2 Kings 1:8], and he ate locusts and wild honey.
1:7 John proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. There’s actually no definite article at the start of this sentence in Greek, so it isn’t actually “THE one” who’s coming, but rather just “ONE who is more powerful than I is coming after me”. That’s not a big deal, but it’s one of those subtle ways that editors inject their own theology into a text when it isn’t there in the oldest documents.
John continues,
1:8 I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Enter Jesus. But watch how quickly the narrative moves in Mark.
There’s no dialogue, there are no explanations or descriptions, it’s just down to business.
I’m going to resist the temptation. Kinda.
Texts like the one we’re looking at today are a huge source of contention both within and without the church, and it’s almost irresistibly tempting to weigh in on the debate.
You know, that whole thing about the English word virgin having certain connotations of sexual purity that neither the Hebrew word almah nor the Greek word parthenos have (both basically meaning ‘young woman ready for marriage’ – which insinuates virginity but does not require it) – and the debate about whether this is an immaculate conception or not (it could be, but the text does not require it) – and the debate about whether if they knew that conception required a contribution from the female too (which they didn’t yet know) that the story would’ve been told differently (possibly, but who knows). But I’m not going to get into any of that! [lol]
I’m not going to get into any of that because ultimately, for me and my understanding of the big message that we as people of faith are supposed to take away from this, ultimately all that is a secondary concern – a rabbit hole – a diversion away from something truly important. If you get caught up in the insemination paradox you’ll miss something really, really special.
Generally, we tend to lift Mary’s story onto such a high pedestal and describe it all in a once-in-the-history-of-the-universe kind of way that convinces us that Mary’s story could never happen again.
Instead, I’d like you to consider this mind-boggling alternative: Mary’s story always happens!
Or at least it could always happen, depending on the “Mary”.
If you step back from the particulars of Mary’s pregnancy and look at the story you might see what scholars identify as a classic call narrative. It’s a pattern found especially in the Hebrew Scriptures (our Old Testament) that features a greeting from a manifestation of God’s presence (often an angel), a startled reaction, an exhortation to “fear not!”, a divine commissioning (God wants you to do such and such), an objection (the classic “Yeah, but…” or “Who me?”), a reassurance (“yes you!”), and the offer of a confirming sign that you’re not just dreaming this whole thing.
That’s a call narrative
That’s exactly what happened to Mary in this annunciation story – and you can find similar stories about Moses, and Samuel, and Isaiah, and Jonah, and others.
Here’s a curious thought.
If you were hearing this story when it was first being told, back in the first century of the Common Era when the church was just starting and these texts were being written, the thing that would surprise and shock you in this story probably wouldn’t be the circumstances of Mary’s pregnancy but that it was Mary who was being called.
That would’ve shocked earlier audiences because she was a nobody.
The conventional wisdom was that God’s Presence hangs out with and commissions important people, not nobodies, right?
Put another way, the surprising thing about this is that Mary could’ve been anybody.
She could’ve been you.
And that’s the power of this story for us. Mary IS you! You ARE Mary.
You are constantly being greeted by the Presence of God because we are constantly immersed in that Presence every moment of our lives – we just don’t notice. And when we do notice it startles us and we’re befuddled and distressed and confused because coming to awareness of Something so awesome is perplexing! read on →
Yr B ~ Advent 3 ~ Luke 1:46-55 (Mary’s Magnificat)
I’m going to start today by talking about something that might at first seem disconnected from Advent and Christmas and Mary. There are numerous theological concepts floating around the church that give me pause, and one of them is the idea of the second coming. Stay with me here!
Advent is absolutely a season of waiting – but we’re not waiting for God to finally act and “send” Jesus back to us from some far off place. All that second coming language betrays a remarkable blind spot in theology. Second coming language makes it sound like Jesus isn’t already here – that his light is somehow absent from the world. I guess it’s built on the texts that speak of Jesus “ascending to heaven” after his resurrection, and the texts in the book of Revelation that describe his blockbuster return. That would give the impression that Jesus wasn’t here anymore.
But that also means that we’d be saying that major aspects of Jesus’ teachings were incorrect. Jesus says all sorts of things like John 14:20, “I am in you and you are in me,” and things like Matthew 28:20, “And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
So which is it? Is Jesus here or not? Because if he never left then a second coming makes no sense!
Why am I pressing this odd theological point?
Because I want us to shift our focus from passively pining away waiting for God to make the world all better, and for us to realize that what we’re waiting for and searching for is already here – waiting for us to awaken to it, embrace it, and enact it.
And that’s why Mary’s song of faithfulness, known as the Magnificat, is so incredibly important for us to understand – not so much for the exact content of the words that she sings, but for the circumstances of her life and her faith journey that put that song in her heart.
This is another key reason why churches work so hard to focus on Advent themes rather than Christmas ones at this time of year. It’s because Mary’s song is light years away from the usual stuff we get at Christmas.
But then again, especially from the lens of people of faith, Christmas is a weird holiday. Well, at least the way we celebrate it is weird. The major focus of it all is about gifts. The usual reason we trot out for that is that it’s because God gave the world Jesus, and the wise men gave the holy family gifts, so we are somehow participating in that gratitude and worship by giving and receiving gifts.
That’s a lovely sentiment. And it’s nice to be nice to people and celebrate your relationships by giving and receiving nice things.
But let’s not pretend that this is somehow a reflection about what’s really going on in the stories surrounding Jesus’ birth.
We should probably create a separate holiday called “Honour your friends and family day” – or as some have suggested just call it “Giftmas” and show our love through gifts and things that way.
That would be fine by me! Because then we wouldn’t mix up that stuff with the really big stuff that’s happening at Christmas in the bible.
We focus in on the Nativity story every year, but really, if you want to get down to the “so what?” of Christmas then Mary’s Magnificat story tells it all.
If Mary was a cartoon character she’d be picking up her blanket, walking to centre stage of the school auditorium, having the lights go out and a single spotlight shine on her and she’d be saying, “I’ll tell you what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown!”
Comfort. O comfort my people, says your God.
It’s a message so critical the writer of Isaiah had to say it twice! Comfort! Nope, not enough. Comfort, comfort! Yup. That’s it.
The Hebrew word translated as comfort is a really wonderfully rich word. Its root means to sigh! It certainly means to comfort as in to console and offer kindness and security, but it also means much more than that. The comfort the prophet offers is like a profoundly deep sigh. Go ahead and do a deep sigh right now. See how it feels. [sigh] That’s the comfort Isaiah is speaking of.
It’s about letting go of what had concerned and consumed you.
It’s about being released from that which imprisons you – things like guilt, negative self-talk, feeling inadequate, feeling like you let God down or didn’t live up to God’s expectations of you.
When it feels like the world’s ganging up on you Isaiah says something big: Comfort! Comfort, O my people! Deep sigh!
Our theme for Advent 2 is peace! Isn’t that what peace is? Isn’t that the heart of real, deep peace – to be released from your own personal bondage? It’s the peace of relief from the heaviness that parks itself on your chest and your consciousness.
Peace. Comfort. Deep sigh.
This isn’t just a Hebrew Scriptures thing either. The apostle Paul said something very similar in Romans 8:26. He said, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”
Now, here’s the question we don’t ask often enough. How did that heaviness get to your chest in the first place? How did you get into the bondage you feel like you’re in?
Did God put you there?
Let’s move on to Isaiah 40:2 and find out.
According to God, and this is God talking through the prophet, not me making something up to make us all feel better, according to God the message we’re supposed to hear in this passage is this:
“Hey! You and me – we’re good. All is forgiven. No worries. We’re golden. No harm, no foul, no grudges. All is well.”
It’s remarkable to me, and it bakes my brain, that this has been the consistent message of scripture through prophet after prophet, and through Jesus himself, and still after all these centuries we still don’t believe a word of it. We think,
“No way God, you can’t really mean that. I’ve done bad things. I’ve fallen short. I’ve screwed up. I’m the poster child for inconsistency. You couldn’t possibly let me off the hook.”
And God responds with a mind-boggling and heart-healing assurance:
God says, “But I’ve never ever put you on a hook. I am God. I am love. Love is all I can ever do.”
Friends, if that’s news to you, imagine what it must have felt like for the people of Israel. Isaiah 40 was written to describe the time immediately after the Israelites were released from exile and they were coming home. Now, we have to remember that for them, in their understanding of how God worked, that they were exiled because they had been disloyal to God. In their view the Babylonian army was an instrument of God used to punish them. That is fundamentally NOT our theological understanding. But it was theirs.
That’s why verse 2 here takes such pains to emphasize that whatever debt they thought they owed had been paid in full. Twice even! “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.”
Can you imagine how wonderful that must have sounded to a people who thought they had been punished for a couple of generations, and now they’re being told that their debt was paid? Double! And now they’re being forgiven and allowed to return to the land they had been exiled from.
What an amazing, unbelievable release that must have felt like! The 500 pound weight was taken off their chest. It must have been the deepest of sighs!
I doubt any of us have ever experienced actual exile, so how can we relate to this passage? read on →
Today we’re continuing our exploration of what it means to move toward being an Affirming Church. We already know that we are a warm and welcoming place, and that we will strive to remove barriers for anyone who wishes to join us in journeying ever deeper into the Way of Jesus. The Affirming thing isn’t to make us welcoming – we’re already that – it’s to help us become aware of the barriers all sorts of people encounter at churches and to work hard to communicate to people out there that we really are open to them.
Part of the journey is to learn about some of the groups of people that are largely absent from churches because sadly churches have made it difficult for them to attend – or worse, have consciously excluded them by judging them and telling them they were sinful (as if we aren’t!).
We are wheelchair accessible, we have hearing assist, we have large print bulletins, and we’re comfortable with sexual orientation questions – the LGB part of it. But I’m guessing that we’re generally less comfortable with the TQ parts – the transgender/queer parts – and mostly because I imagine that many of us just haven’t had the opportunity to learn much about it.
It’s pretty commonplace now to understand that a person’s sexual orientation isn’t automatically determined by their biological parts – but now we’re learning that people’s gender identity isn’t automatically determined by biology either. For those of us who are in the majority – that our biology, orientation, and identity all align in the dominant way this talk of differing identities can throw us at first.
But it shouldn’t. Identity is a constantly changing thing. Think about what it means to be a man or a woman today – now think about what those roles looked like 100 years ago. Generally speaking, women wore dresses (never pants) and stayed home and kept house and nurtured – and men brought home the bacon, wouldn’t dream of changing a diaper, and were taught to not show emotions. Imagine what someone from 100 years ago would think about our ideas of masculine and feminine. Gender norms have evolved in drastic ways – even in your lifetime!
Every one of us has several identity changes in our lives. The most common one is probably through marriage – especially if you’re a person who took your partner’s name. That’s a huge identity change – with a whole new name. And it’s actually very biblical!
In the reading from Genesis today, after a life-changing encounter with God, the person called Abram was renamed Abraham, and Sarai was renamed Sarah. Who renamed them? Who changed their core identity? God did!
Later in Genesis the person named Jacob wrestles with an angel (or maybe it’s God) and comes away with a sore hip and a limp – and a new name and identity. Jacob is renamed Israel. By who? By God!
In the New Testament we know the story of Simon who becomes the rock on which the church will be built. Simon becomes Peter. Who gave him this new name and identity? Jesus did.
I’m simply saying that our identity is a complex thing, and the idea that your identity might change from the one you started with – the one someone else gave you – is really common. It happens to all of us. So now I’d like to introduce you to my friend who’s going to help us learn some language and gain some understanding into the TQ parts of LGBTQ issues, because they are a person who has lived this identity story in a unique way. Friends, this is my friend Mynt Marcellus.
Yr B ~ Advent 1 ~ Mark 13:32-37 (The Message Translation)
And so we enter the Season of Advent – a season of waiting with anticipation for the coming of Jesus. That’s a loaded statement, of course, and we’ll unpack it in a few minutes, but for now let’s talk about Advent in broad terms. Way back when Advent was treated more like Lent. A sombre and introspective time of thinking about heavy theological things, and preparing the way. Over time we’ve shifted it a bit. Now we focus more on the waiting part. And considering when Advent happens waiting is really hard.
December is a month that’s been taken over by the hubbub and franticness of preparing for Christmas. People worry and fuss about decorating, and getting their shopping done, and entertaining (and being good for Santa). There are big concerts, and celebrations, and parties, and food, food, food!
Usually by the time Christmas actually arrives we’re exhausted from all the preparations! The 12 days of Christmas are supposed to START on Christmas day. Instead we tend to stop then. We’re tired of Christmas before the church calendar even says we’re supposed to start celebrating it!
And into that mix preachers like me get to stand here and tell everyone to slow down and wait.
Instead of shop, bake, clean, and party we offer theological words like hope, peace, joy, and love.
I trust you don’t hear me saying all that usual Christmas stuff is bad.
It just needs balance. And this Advent waiting and anticipation in church is a great balance to the way Christmas unfolds out there.
Church and culture don’t have to be enemies in Advent, but there is some tension. For example, you’ll notice that even though some radio stations have already gone to all Christmas music all day long we have only one Christmas carol during the worship service in the morning – and I do that reluctantly! We’re also experimenting with some pre-church carol singing because the mean minister won’t do it during worship!
Scripture too is a challenge during Advent because we can’t tell the nativity story yet. Even if we could get the world to stop focusing so much on Santa and instead to focus on Jesus Advent tells us, nope, not yet, gotta wait for Jesus until at least the 24th! Instead, all the texts are about waiting, and some of them are pretty harsh.
And that’s why we focus so much on those four themes – hope, peace, joy, and love.
This week the theme is about hope.
But the passage from Mark doesn’t sound like hope at first. It sounds like Santa saying “You better watch out!”
Mark 13:32-37 – a homeowner goes on a trip and leaves their servants in charge. The focus is on the gatekeeper. They’re supposed to make sure they don’t fall asleep on the job. To keep awake. To watch. To wait. (Sounds like Advent, right?) But then it says to watch and wait and stay awake because you don’t know when the master is coming!
Um, but we do.
We’ve got these neat things called calendars and it’s really clearly marked that on Dec 25th we’ll mark the day that Jesus was born.
(Yeah, yeah, I know it’s not the actual day – no one could possibly know the actual day – but that’s when we mark the day so we just go with it.)
Except even we in the church can’t wait that one more day and we actually celebrate Jesus’ birth on the 24th!
Scripture says we don’t know the day – don’t know the timetable. And yet we have these calendars that clearly mark off the days.
Some people start counting the days to Christmas in the summer!
Heck some even start the day after Christmas anticipating next year! (I doubt though that it’s Jesus they’re waiting for!) read on →
The message this morning has been taken from the Annual Congregational Giving Program sent to all Pastoral Charges from National Office.
Today’s message is called Living Thankfully Day by Day. When I read and re-read this message I wanted to change it to make it mine but instead I re-read and asked myself what is in this message. I found Questions, Trickery, Dreaming, Refugee statis, a Promise and finally Thankfulness. I am sure you will find all of these things and maybe more as I share with you the contents of this message. It is based on Genesis 28:10-22 “Surely God is in this place – and I did not know it”. This statement, at least part of it “Surely God is in this place” is very familiar to all of us here at Faith United. It is taped all through our building. Let us examine what the write of this message has to say.
Do you ever have those sleepless nights when you just can’t get your mind to shut down? Do you have times when life gets confusing and complicated, and try as you might you just can’t get to sleep? You try counting sheep, or taking deep breaths, or repeating a mantra, or even reading a boring book, but nothing works. As soon as you close your eyes, thoughts of what you should do, or what you should have done, or what you might try next keep popping up, and any sleep that does come is restless and fleeting. I imagine that Jacob was having one of those nights when he lay his head down on that stone at Bethel.
His life at that point was certainly confused and complicated. He was fleeing for his life, according to one story. He had tricked his brother out of his inheritance—stolen the inheritance, actually. Rebekah, his mother, overheard Isaac promise to bless the elder brother Esau as soon as he got back from hunting. While he was away, Jacob dressed up as Esau and fooled his elderly, blind father into giving him the blessing. His actions were akin to the one child who manages to get power of attorney from an aging and feeble parent and then empties the bank account while the other siblings are on vacation.
When he got back and found out the trickery, Esau was furious to the point of threatening murder. So his mother, Rebekah, who had been in on the plan, sent Jacob to live with her brother for a time till Esau cooled off. She didn’t want to lose them both! A different version of the story says that Jacob went to live with his uncle in order to find himself a wife from his mother’s people. She didn’t want him marrying one of the locals. As he fled to his uncle’s, Jacob was leaving all that was familiar and going to a strange land.
We read, “He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set.” The sun sets quite quickly closer to the equator. Jacob had been walking or running all day, trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and his enraged brother. He was exhausted and alone and it was dark, so he found a stone for a pillow, tried to get comfortable, and tried to sleep.
Can you imagine the thoughts running through his head? “At least I got father’s blessing. The inheritance is mine. No one can take it away now. But that won’t help if Esau and his gang find me and kill me. I hope Uncle Laban will take me in. Mother said he would, but things could have changed since she saw him last. Is he rich enough to give me a job; can he even afford to feed me? What are the women there like? How am I supposed to find a bride for myself? I thought matchmakers did that. Do they have matchmakers there? What if uncle doesn’t take me in? Where will I find work? I’m a farmer, but I don’t have land there. Will someone there need a farmhand? How long will I have to stay? Will I ever get to go home again?” Jacob eventually fell into a restless, dream-filled sleep.
Most of us don’t pay much attention to dreams today, but in Jacob’s time dreams meant something. Coming out of that dream, a “stairway to heaven” dream, he knew the ground he was on was holy.
“Surely God is in this place—and I did not know it!” There are times in our lives and places in our lives when the presence of God comes closer. Sometimes we don’t even know it, or recognize it, or believe that such an experience is possible, but it happens. The Celtic people called such places “thin places”—places where the barrier or the difference between the human and the divine is thin, almost transparent, and when we let it, the divine presence can shine through into our lives. When we have such an experience, like Jacob we are a bit afraid, awestruck, moved, and changed. Jacob was moved to make a promise to God. “OK, God, if you are with me, as I now know you are, and if you will be with me even as I travel and live in a foreign land, I will trust you to give me food to eat and clothing to wear, and I will trust that you will one day lead me home in peace. You will be my God, and from all the gifts that you give to me, I will give you one-tenth.”
Sometimes God gets through to us during the challenges that life sends our way. Paul was born 70 years ago to a doctor and his wife in a small city in Ontario. His life promised to evolve much like that of others his age: public school, university, good job, family, successful career, and easy retirement. His siblings’ life went like that, but Paul’s did not. His father died when he was about 15, and his mother moved the family to another town. Paul never did fit in. Life after that move was not kind to Paul. Mental illness, addiction, and a stint in the U.S. army in Vietnam all took their toll. But eventually, back in Canada, Paul learned to live with his situation, managing to get by on a small government disability pension, usually taking his medication, painting for enjoyment and to fill the time, and amazingly, living with an attitude of gratitude. Every week when he arrived at Bible study he reminded the group and himself to live with an attitude of gratitude. Paul, like the apostle whose name he bears, had known good times and bad times, and he learned that life works better when you give thanks day by day.
The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Philippi, “I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:11–13). The secret to life is thanksgiving—to live with an attitude of gratitude, knowing that God is in this place, knowing that God is with us whether we know it or not, remembering that all we have is a gift that God entrusted to us to use and to share. Jacob committed himself to share one-tenth, and so began the tradition of the tithe.
Living thankfully and sharing generously is not easy in our culture because our culture teaches us exactly the opposite. Our faith teaches us to give thanks to God for the abundance of creation. Our culture wants us to believe that we live in a time of scarcity. We don’t have time. We will never have enough money. We are exhausted. We don’t have the energy. We don’t get enough sleep. And if we do get close to the point where we think we might have enough, someone will be there to tell us that we need a bit more or that someone else has more, and we should too. So thankfulness is subversive in a culture that is grounded in scarcity.
Being thankful turns that scarcity thinking on its head. When we are thankful, we remind ourselves that indeed we do have enough, probably more than enough. We live in abundance. God has blessed us with abundance. So we give thanks. Our attitude of gratitude, expressed in our daily lives to family, friends, co-workers, and neighbours, is subversive. So let’s all be a bit subversive. Let us thank God every day. And let’s not be afraid to tell others how thankful we are. Every word, every act of thanksgiving is a challenge to the culture of greed and scarcity in which we live. It invites others into those thin places where we, like Jacob, can notice that surely God is in this place. When we pause to give thanks, we bring joy and peace and contentment not only to us but to those around us.
I know you’ve done it. I’ve done it too. Someone official asks you a question and you know what the answer is supposed to be and you give that answer even though you don’t believe it, or you haven’t actually done the thing they’re asking but you say you have. Or maybe you have some doubts about something but you’re standing in a crowd and rather than go against the crowd you go with the flow.
Too often our actions belie our words.
We don’t practice what we preach.
We may not like to admit it, because it demonstrates a lack of integrity on some level, but we’ve all done it. And the sad truth is that we usually get away with it.
However, if the person asking the question is a good reader of people they’ll know what you’re up to and call you on it. You’ll probably deny it at first, but they’ll know, and sooner or later you’ll probably realize you’re not getting away with it and then you have a choice to make – double down and continue to misrepresent yourself, or admit the truth and come clean.
And the sad truth about that is that we usually choose to double down because it’s uncomfortable and humiliating to own up to a shortcoming.
I call it the mirror moment. It’s that moment when you look in the mirror and you realize that you can’t kid yourself anymore, that you see the thing you’re doing or thinking is wrong, that you can’t keep doing it, and that you’re going to act or think differently from that moment on.
In today’s passage from Joshua he has a wonderful way to describe that mirror moment. He says that the people are witnesses against themselves. Isn’t that a great way to say it? When you’re looking in that mirror you are a witness against yourself. But let me go back a bit and say more about what they were doing wrong that needed a mirror moment.
After their 40 years of wandering in the wilderness the Israelites entered the Promised Land. Moses had led them that far but he did not go with them into the new world. He passed the leadership on to Joshua. Today’s reading comes from the end of Joshua’s story, long after he’d fought the battles, and it shows that he may have failed in his most sacred duty. The people of Israel had drifted away from the One God, Yahweh, and were worshipping other gods.
So Joshua calls them on it. The entire nation of Israel, all the various leaders and key people, everybody is gathered together and Joshua rises up before them and says that they are supposed to be serving or worshipping God like he does. It’s one of the most famous lines in the bible, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!”
But the people aren’t following suit, and Joshua tells them they’re not.
They answer back, “Yes we are!”
He says, “No, you’re not!”
They say, “Yes, we are!”
He says, “No, you’re really not, and you know it.”
And they say, “Yeah, ok, you got us. No, we’re not. But we will now!”
(I may be paraphrasing a little.)
What it actually says in the end is this, Joshua 24:22 Then Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the LORD, to serve him.” And they said, “We are witnesses.”
Joshua makes them look hard at themselves in the mirror and become witnesses against themselves, realize that their actions are proving the case against them, and they finally admit, “Yes, we are witnesses.”
In church we have a name for the mirror moment. We call it confession. Did you know that you make a confession every Sunday when you’re here? We don’t call it that because some people find the word problematic, maybe because it’s been used poorly in their past, but a few minutes ago we shared a prayer of invocation and transformation and in the end part we all say,
“Standing in your light, hearts broken open, acknowledging our humanness, seeking transformation, savouring your Holy Presence, we pray.”
That’s confession. That’s a mirror moment.
Hearts broken open, acknowledging our humanness – meaning that we realize that we’re not perfect – and seeking transformation – seeking a new way and leaving behind an old way.
So yes, we do confession every week here. It’s a critical part of a disciple’s faith journey. read on →
There are several words in our theological vocabulary that cause people a significant amount of angst – words like atonement, judgment, salvation, sin, tithing, evangelism, and why don’t you lead the devotion today (!). Today we’re going to wrestle with another tough word – worthy. Worthy means having great merit, value, and character. It refers to someone deserving honour, respect, and admiration. It’s a good word to associate with Remembrance Sunday because without question, we name those who served in the armed forces in times of conflict as worthy of our honour, respect, and admiration.
Worthy is a word that easier to say about others than it is to say about ourselves. We don’t like to say it about ourselves. The word makes us uncomfortable because in order to claim it you need to make a value judgment and assessment about yourself and determine that you are, indeed, deserving. But that flies in the face of much of our religious thinking, right? We insist that this whole faith thing is about grace and has nothing to do with merit, and yet this word worthy suggests merit is involved. Don’t worry, I’m going to give you an out in a minute. But for now, let’s wrestle.
We love the idea of God being worthy, and Jesus being worthy – worthy of honour, and praise, and fidelity, and awe.
There’s no doubt whatsoever for us that God is worthy.
Of course God’s worthy! God is God!
And compared to God or Jesus of course we’re not worthy – at least not in the same kinds of ways.
But we need to be careful not to go too far. I mean, it’s funny in the movie Wayne’s World when Wayne and Garth meet famous rock stars and go “We’re not worthy, we’re not worthy!” But it doesn’t mean they think of themselves as vile worms. And that’s the problem with the way religion has tended to think about worthiness. God’s holiness is perfection, we can’t get anywhere near that so we’re not worthy.
But that doesn’t mean we’re worthless!
If we were worthless why would God bother with us?
If we were worthless why would Jesus call us friend?
We are worthy of their love and Presence apparently. Why not take them at their word and embrace it?
But we can’t go too far in embracing it, I guess, because then we risk being full of ourselves instead of full of God. We lack humility if we see God’s light shining through us and confuse it with our own light. The fancy theological term for this is imputed righteousness – we aren’t righteous on our own, but we become righteous as Jesus lives in us and we share in his righteousness. And yet we still don’t like to think of ourselves as worthy.
Paul clearly thinks he’s worthy. Many readers think he comes off as arrogant. Maybe he’s just super confident of his faith. The scripture passage we’re looking at today comes from the very earliest bit of writing we have in the New Testament. It’s from 1st Thessalonians which was written in the 0050s. Everything else in the New Testament was written down after this. Paul is writing to a church community in Thessalonica that he started, shepherded for a while, and then moved on to start or plant other churches. This letter is him writing to them to check in on them and solve a couple of problems that arose.
Paul is not shy about claiming his worthiness! He says, “You remember our labour and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless our conduct was toward you believers.” (1 Th 2:9-10)
So is he arrogant or accurate? Maybe both! And I think we can learn a lesson from him.
False modesty is just as unseemly as arrogance. When you know you’ve done well, taken the high road, acted with integrity, accomplished good things, why would you say, “No, that’s ok, it was nothing.”
It wasn’t nothing.
It was important, and you did it.
If someone offers you an estimation of worthiness you should graciously accept it and affirm it. Unfortunately, Paul doesn’t wait for someone to name his worthiness – he names it for himself. Nobody’s perfect! read on →
You know how lots of times I tell you about how scripture passages that appear to be straightforward are actually very tricky and need really careful unpacking to get to the deeper meaning? Well, today’s scripture is not one of them. There’s nothing tricky about it. And there’s nothing subtle about it either. Once we hear it there’s no mistaking what Jesus is saying to us. The only mystery is why do we have such a hard time following his teaching?
I haven’t done this in a while, and if you’re a visitor today I assure you that I don’t talk about this all the time, but today you get a sermon mostly about money. Did you know that Jesus taught more about money than any other subject? Twenty-seven of Jesus’ 43 parables – that’s 62% – have to do with money and possessions. Approximately one of every ten verses in the gospels deals with money. The whole bible has around 500 verses on prayer, fewer than 500 on faith, but more than 2000 on money. Then, as now, money was a huge faith issue.
So it’s not surprising that Jesus’ enemies choose to use the minefield of money to try to entrap Jesus into making a mistake so they can discredit him. A subtlety in the text that you may not have picked up is that Jesus’ testers in this tale are described as the disciples of the Pharisees and the Herodians. In other words Jesus is facing off against agents of the church and agents of the state! They ineptly try to butter him up with false praise and then slyly ask him if it’s lawful to pay taxes to the emperor.
If he answers yes then the religious accusers will jump on him for abandoning the purity of the religion and if he answers no the state accusers will jump on him for going against Caesar. Jesus will have none of that simplistic, dualistic, either/or nonsense, and gives them a fantastic and penetratingly deep answer.
Jesus asks them to toss him a coin. Looking at it he says, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” (Matthew 22:20)
But the Greek word isn’t the word for ‘head’ it’s the word e-i-k-o-n – icon. An icon is something that represents something bigger. Another translation is ‘image’. Image is a powerful theological idea. We first encounter it in the book of Genesis when we’re told that humankind is created imago dei, in the image of God, as God’s icon.
So when you put that deeper meaning together you see that Jesus is actually asking a really profound question of us as he holds up that coin – and it isn’t really about Caesar at all. He’s basically asking “whose” you are.
Whose image? Whose image is imprinted upon your soul? Whose image does your life strive to resemble? Whose image is influencing your character, your actions, and your dreams?
Is it the image that’s printed on the coins? Because if you look at the state of the world it certainly feels most days like it’s money, or the frantic lust for money, that seems to be driving the bus.
Whose image? Whose likeness? Whose alikeness – as in who are you more alike? What does your life look like? If someone who didn’t know you well took a look at you, whose likeness would they see? Would it be more like Caesar’s or more like God’s?
I know, that’s not really fair – because when you look at someone all you can see is the tangible worldly stuff – the material stuff of money and possessions. You can’t see someone’s true likeness with the naked eye. The “God-stuff” is deeper.
And to be even fairer, Jesus doesn’t ask us to choose. Jesus doesn’t castigate people for having, needing, or spending money. He holds the coin, has us look carefully at it, and he asks us a key question: What is the rightful place of this coin in your life? read on →
Today’s gospel reading is another one of those tricky bible stories that appear to be straightforward but is actually quite deep. It works on several levels. On one level it’s a simple story about thankfulness. If someone does something nice for you, go back and say thanks. That’s great for kids time, and a lesson worth noting for all of us, but if you stay on that level you’re missing a lot!
On another level it’s a testament to Jesus’ ability to heal people. Although if you read it carefully he doesn’t seem to do all that much! Getting more personal, on another level it could be a teaching about how thick we are – that maybe we’re all 10 lepers and we need to keep hearing Jesus’ message over and over again and finally after so many times we’ll hear and respond.
On yet another level it could also be a shot at our tendency to think that when it comes to faith just following the rules and checking off the boxes is enough. It isn’t! Not by a longshot! So that’s in play here too. (We’ll talk more about this one in a minute.)
But ultimately, at its deepest level, for me, it’s a story about what real spiritual transformation looks like and where real gratitude comes from. It’s this level that I want us to focus on.
Let’s think about the word ‘love’ for a minute. This one single word has so many levels of meaning.
I love that song, I love that TV show, I love autumn, I love chocolate chip cookies, I love kids, I love you man!, I love Faith United!, I love you Jesus, I love you honey.
One word can seemingly interchangeably refer to the trivial and the profound.
You can probably see where I’m heading. Thank you is the same.
We say thanks for simple things like holding doors open or being handed something like a pencil, or a bulletin – and we use the same words when someone has just rescued our whole family from a pending disaster, or told us that we’ve just been judged to have achieved our life goal. Thank you! And all those levels of thankfulness are good – but some of them are pretty inconsequential and some are life-changing.
Ten lepers were healed. Only one returned to give thanks. But don’t think for a minute that those other nine weren’t grateful. Of course they were! Because of their illness they were banished from their society and their family, so being healed, being made clean, meant they could go back to their lives. It’s ridiculous to think they walked away with anything other than gratitude for Jesus.
But, when offered spiritual wholeness, instead of having it change their lives they chose to use the gift to continue in their regular ways. They said, indirectly of course,
“Thanks Jesus! This is great. Now I can go to the priests and be declared clean and get back to life as usual. I’m so glad I met you! This spiritual stuff is great! It pumps me up and inspires me on my path.” My path.
Please listen carefully here. There’s nothing really wrong with that. This story isn’t meant to judge the failure of the nine lepers. Christians have done that far too often! Those 9 didn’t fail. They received from Jesus what they were able to receive and their lives were better for it. That’s a win. Lots of people come to places like this and hear messages about Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit and they go away feeling more positive, and feeling uplifted, and their lives are better for it. Hallelujah! That’s awesome! “Thank ya Ja-eez-us!”
And yet, there’s also Something More. There’s something even better than all that. This scripture story gives us some clues as to how amazing and life-changing this gift of Jesus’ can actually be. read on →
