Following Jesus to a Fruitful Life: Wonders

The truth is he’s very unsettling. This Jesus who marches through the pages of the gospel of Mark – he’s unsettling. The disciples are out being tossed around in a storm. They’re thinking they’re going to die. And where is Jesus? Back sleeping on a cushion.

When they wake him up he’s mad at them. He seems to expect them to be calm. He seems to expect them to trust that everything will be alright. He tells them to have courage and believe. Just believe.

Of course, this is after he stares down the wind and the waves the same way that he’s been staring down the demons in all of these stories from Mark. Do you remember two weeks ago when Jesus confronted the unclean spirit in the man in the synagogue? Do you remember what he told the man? “Shut up!” Not a nice thing to say. You can only get away with saying it to demons in polite society. But now this is what he says to the storm. “Silence! Shut up!” The evil forces of the world all get the same treatment, even if they are as natural as a squall on the sea.

He’s unsettling, this Jesus. He seems to know just how to get at the heart of the problem. He comes ashore and there is a man who has been possessed by demons. They have tried to bind this strong man but he keeps breaking the chains. He howls and dashes himself with stones. Nobody seems to know quite what to do with this man, but Jesus knows. He goes right to the root of the problem and addresses the unclean spirit. “Come out!”

The demons are Legion – a Roman military term referring to a grouping of about 5,200 soldiers. They beg Jesus to be sent into a group of neighboring pigs. And so Jesus casts them out and sends them into the pigs – 2,000 of them – and the go rushing off the cliff. It’s unsettling. Especially for the pig farmer. Although, if you’re a pig farmer in a Jewish country you’re probably not expecting a lot of return anyway!

Finally Jesus starts to allow the secret out. Before this Jesus had been telling everyone not to say anything about who he is. But this time, when the man who had been healed asks to come with him, Jesus tells him instead to go tell his friends what the Lord had done for him. And he goes and does just that. The word is starting to spread.

Then Jesus goes on and he meets Jairus. Jairus is the ruler of the synagogue in this seaside

town. He’s one of the religious leaders and most of them have not been too keen about this wandering Galilean prophet. Later in the story it is men like him who crucify Jesus.

We don’t expect these two to be in the same story together except as opponents, but Jairus has a little problem. No, make that a big problem. No, make that a life-or-death problem. Jairus has a 12-year-old daughter, a “dear daughter” he calls her, and she is dying. Suddenly nothing else matters. Suddenly it doesn’t matter that the rules of the day say that he’s not supposed to like this Jesus. It doesn’t matter that he’s a threat to social order. It doesn’t matter that he’s an unsettling figure and a menace to the status quo. When your child is sick you want someone to unsettle the status quo. You want someone to change the channel, run roughshod over whatever ails them. If you have children you know what I mean.

So when Jairus hears that this Jesus’ character is in town he goes down to see him. He fights his way through the crowd. He falls down at Jesus’ feet. No other religious leader in any of the gospels does anything like this, but this is a desperate man and he throws himself down at Jesus’ feet and says, “Come and lay your hands on my daughter so that she can be saved and live.” And Jesus goes with him.

Now this is a pretty nifty story. Social barriers come crashing down. Jairus was willing to set aside all the things that would have kept him from associating with Jesus. Jesus is willing to walk with this man who would normally be opposing him in order to heal his daughter. The next scene in this story should be Jesus going to Jairus’ home and healing his sick daughter. But a funny thing happens on the way to the healing.

Jesus has set out for Jairus’ house and once again, as usual in Mark’s gospel, throngs of people surround him. In the midst of this mob there is this woman who is going to make Jesus do a U-turn. Now she is not a prestigious figure like Jairus. In fact…she’s about as far down the social prestige ladder as you can get from the ruler of the synagogue. As a woman she would never have associated with someone like Jairus. As a woman, in that culture, she would never even have approached a man who was not her relative. That was just a no-no from the start.

But there was another reason this woman would not have approached others, especially men. You see, this woman had her own 12-year-old to worry about. For twelve years she had suffered from a disease which brought her physical pain. But the physical pain was not even the half of it.

In Jewish society, a flow of blood made a woman ritually unclean. Those who touched her became unclean. Today we say, “That’s silly. That’s absurd. That’s superstitious. That’s cruel.” But in her day it was the way of the world. So disease was not her only illness. For twelve long years she was a social outcast as well.

Not that she hadn’t tried to be healed. O, she had. She had squandered every penny she had on doctors and like the prodigal son who squandered away his fortune, she had as much to show for it.

To make a long story short, she wasn’t getting a house call from Jesus. She didn’t have the social pull or the right connections. So she decided to heal her twelve-year-old the only way she knew how…she broke the rules. She said, “I know there’s a crowd, but I’m going. I know he’s a man, but I’m going. I know an unclean person shouldn’t touch others, but I’m going. I know I’m not supposed to touch him, but I’m grabbing the hem of his garment! I’m grabbing the hem of his garment and when I do I’ll be healed. The hem of his garment will be enough. The hem of his garment will be enough!” And she snuck up behind him and before anyone could say anything she reached out and grabbed the hem of his garment…and it was enough. BAM!, as Emeril would say, she was healed.

It was like a jolt of lightning. And immediately she knew she was healed and immediately Jesus knew that something powerful had happened. He whirls in his tracks and he says, “Who touched me?” Today when we read this we wonder…is Jesus angry? Is he incredibly sensitive? To the disciples it was just a ridiculous question. They say to Jesus, “You’ve got to be kidding! You have all these people crushing in around you and you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”

But Jesus knows. The woman knows. She falls down at Jesus’ feet. The Bible says she was trembling and afraid, but not because she feared Jesus. The Bible says she was trembling because she knew what had happened. She had been saved. Saved…healed…made whole. The words make no difference. The same word means all three in the Greek. And all three had happened to her.

Jesus is not angry. He addresses her by the title, Daughter. Funny how daughters are getting healed everywhere in these stories. “Daughter,” he says, “your faith has saved you; go in peace and be healed from your affliction.” Wow. That’s some interruption.

But now the story can keep going, right? Now Jesus can go on and heal that other daughter, that other twelve-year-old. But no. There’s a complication. Word arrives from the synagogue leader’s house and the news is not good. “Don’t bother the teacher any more. It’s hopeless. Your daughter is dead.”

Now healing is one thing. Resuscitation…that’s something else. You can just hear the wheels turning in Jairus’ head. If only we hadn’t been interrupted. If only he had kept on moving when he was touched. If only…if only…the fear and darkness are creeping in.

But Jesus does not allow it to continue. Jesus says, “Don’t fear, only believe.” And Jesus can say this, you see, because everyone in that crowd had just seen this in action. Jesus can say this because everybody had just seen a woman break every rule, cross every barrier, do everything she possibly could, because she believed that the hem of his garment would be enough. She was a daughter who was effectively dead. She was a daughter who was sealed out of the society, shut out of the system, shunted to the side…and yet she believed that she was going to live and she was willing to risk everything because when you come right down to it…what did she have to lose? If there was life for her it sure wasn’t in sitting by the side of the road guarding her uncleanliness. If there was life for her it was not going to come by respecting the walls meant to protect others from her. If there was life, it was going to come through hope, through belief, through the hem of his garment...if I can just touch the hem of his garment.

Fear is death. Fear is death. What good is fear against a power that can bring a woman twelve-years dead back from oblivion? What good is fear against a God who can send a legion of foes off a cliff? What good is fear against a God who can calm the seas and still the winds? What good is fear against a God who refuses to respect the boundaries of the tomb? What good is fear against a God who won’t get real, who won’t accept that nice guys finish last, who won’t agree that the best we can say about life is that “stuff happens,” who won’t let our lives be defined by the worst things we’ve ever done, and who insists that despite all evidence to the contrary that the reign of God is coming and in fact, it’s already here! What good is fear with a God like that?

What is it that God and the angels are always telling biblical people when they show up? God appears to Abraham in a dream and before telling him about all the incredible things that will happen, he first says, “Don’t be afraid.” Hagar, the unfortunate surrogate mother who gets sent off into the desert to die with her child, Ishmael, God calls to her and the first thing God says is, “Do not be afraid.” The angel of God appears to Mary with the news that she’s going to be unexpectedly expecting and what are the first words he says, “Don’t be afraid.” Joseph finds out that Mary is unexpectedly expecting and is about to make a break from her and an angel appears and the first words the angel says are, “Do not be afraid.” Are you starting to get the picture? When God has something big to say…when God wants to tell us to look out for something wonderful that’s about to happen…when all the evidence around says…BE AFRAID…the first thing God says is, “DON’T BE AFRAID.”

And why is this important? Why do we care about this? Why is this the most important thing that we could hear today? Because we are living in a state of fear.

We pick up the newspapers and there it is. The break-ins and crime just down the street. The wars that drag on. The stock market which sinks, taking with it retirement accounts and dreams. The recession that threatens to become a depression. The deficit spending. The budget shortfalls. The gnawing sense inside of us that tells us we are vulnerable. The secret sins and quiet addictions that sap our energies and divert our souls. The relationships ruined by violence and abuse. Depression. Worry. Anxiety. Grief. Death.

But Christians are not called to live like that. Christians cannot live like that. It is a perversion of who we are meant to be if we let fear dictate who we are and how we live. This Jesus is unsettling, but he is leading us to life, to claim the territory where we live. To send the demons packing and to work new wonder. As Christians we did not receive a spirit of slavery to fear again, as Romans reminds us, we received a spirit of adoption which allows us to call upon God in the intimate way that a daughter calls upon her father and mother. As Christians we are not looking back and we are not allowing fear to be the one turning us around. We are always moving forward. Always reaching out into a future that is defined by the resurrection and by God’s final victory. The barriers have been broken and we are racing to keep up with the new world that’s coming. We may not grasp it all in this life. We may not understand it all. We may not be able to comprehend even the smallest bit of what God has in store for us, but if I can just touch that hem. The hem of his garment is enough. The hem of his garment is enough. The hem of his garment is enough.

We’ve come too far to turn back now. We are on a road that is all about hope and love and perfect love casts out fear. Hope and love are the foundation on which the church is built. Jesus leads us onward. Where he’s going is unsettling. But he has wonders to show us. Don’t be afraid. Only believe. Thanks be to God.

Following Jesus to Fruitful Life: Conflicts & Confrontations

Jesus said, “If you have ears to hear, listen.” When I was serving a church in England I often found the truth in the old saying that Britain and the United States are two countries separated by a common language. There were just some words that didn’t translate. Like the time when I came in for an evening meeting and asked a church member if the restroom was locked (because it often was). He looked at me, totally befuddled, and finally said, “Well, you can use the sanctuary.” For him a restroom was a place to rest.

It was the same sort of cross-cultural misunderstanding that my friend, Laurence, ran into when he was living here as a British person. During our seminary days in Dallas, he gave one of the best Christmas sermons I ever heard. The only problem with it was when he mentioned that Jesus was born in an outhouse and it just had a different meaning for us Americans who were listening.

“If you have ears to hear, listen.” What was Jesus saying? That the people he was talking to didn’t have ears? Most of them had working apparatus to hear. That wasn’t it. No, it was something deeper that he was after. He knew they had ears. He just didn’t know if they could listen.

Since we began Lent we have been walking through the book of Mark and we have been noticing some interesting things about Jesus. As Mark tells the story, Jesus is a relentless character. He is constantly on the move. By now you surely know Mark’s favorite word…immediately…and it describes how Jesus moves – with urgency and direction and purpose.

He sweeps up people as he goes. He calls fishermen from their nets and they go. He heals some people and soon there are such crowds that he can’t go into a house or even into a town without being overwhelmed. He’s magnetic.

He also runs head on into controversy. He keeps coming up against demons who are the only ones who seem to know who he is. They are the ones who declare that he is “the Holy One – the Son of God.” But he silences them and casts them out.

Even with this witness, though, the people can’t understand what’s going on. And this is where the ears thing comes in. They have ears to hear and eyes to see but their world view is so cock-eyed…they’ve been living in a distorted world for so long that they can’t hear truth…they can’t see reality…they can’t understand what’s going on right in front of them.

So when Jesus casts out demons they think he’s the one that’s lost his mind. That’s what his family says. Presumably not Mary and Joseph, but other members of his family think that he’s gone stark, raving mad. Others…scribes… religious functionaries who had come down from Jerusalem to see what all the fuss was about…thought that Jesus himself was possessed by demons. “He has Beelzebul,” they said, (Beelzebul being another name for Satan), “and by the prince of the demons he casts out demons.”

You can see where they’re coming from. If the world is so messed up that it seems like the only thing with any power is evil, anybody who displays power must be evil. It’s why nobody trusts a powerful person or a political movement. It’s why people roll their eyes when anyone mentions Washington. We have seen so much corruption and so much damage done by our leaders that we carry with us a justified suspicion of any political leader. We assume that anyone sent off to Washington or Richmond or Eastville will be corrupted by “the system,” which we may call names like Beelzebul.

And then there are those who do awful things in the name of religion. Right now in central Africa there is a group that calls itself the “Lord’s Resistance Army” and it is trying to overthrow the Ugandan government. Its leader, Joseph Kony, believes he is doing the Lord’s work by forcibly recruiting children into his army and by committing all kinds of atrocities in the name of Christianity. The group celebrated Christmas this year by using machetes to hack to death 45 people who were huddled together in a Catholic Church.[i]

We are so jaded and hardened that we find it difficult to recognize it when truth and goodness come our way. So maybe it’s understandable that the scribes would get it exactly wrong. But Jesus doesn’t let it stand. “A house divided against itself can’t stand. I’m not a demon come to fight demons. I am like a thief breaking into a strong man’s house. Unless the thief first ties up the strong man, then he’s not going to be able to steal from the house.”

Do you get what Jesus is saying there? He’s saying that the world is under the sway and the power of evil. The strong man? That’s the same Satan that Jesus confronted in the wilderness. The world has fallen so far away from what God intended that now it is like an alien landscape.

Which brings me to The Lion King. In the movie The Lion King, Simba is the young lion who is the rightful king of a pride that occupies the plains around a giant rock. When his evil uncle Scar orchestrates the death of his father, Mufasa, Simba runs off thinking he was the one responsible. And what happens to the Pride Lands when Simba goes away? Scar allows the hyenas to take over. There is no water, no food, no vegetation left. The harmony of the land has been destroyed and the reign of death has begun.

So Simba’s young friend, Nala, goes to find Simba and to tell him what has happened. She finds him hiding out in the jungle, frittering his life away with two new friends – a meerkat and a warthog. (If you haven’t seen this movie just bear with me!) Nala tells Simba that it is his responsibility to go back and reclaim the land that is his – to face down Scar and to send the hyenas back to where they came from.

Then do you remember what happens next? Simba has a vision of the ghost of his dead father, Mufasa. Rafiki, the baboon prophet, tells him to look into a pool of water and there he sees his father telling him who he is. “Remember who you are,” Mufasa tells the young lion. “You are my son, and the one true king.”[ii]

Now I don’t want to accuse Disney of stealing from Mark, but does this remind you of any scene we’ve talked about in the last few weeks? A pool of water? A voice from out of nowhere saying, “You are my son”? What does this sound like to you? The baptism of Jesus, right?

And immediately…after he has this vision, Simba goes back to the Pride Lands to confront Scar, the lion who has become the king of the hyenas. He claims his territory and exposes his uncle as a liar and a murderer. The movie ends with the clear implication that now the land can become what it was intended to be. Life can flourish. Every creature can play the role it is supposed to play in the circle of life.

This is what this coming of Jesus is like. Jesus is not some new corrupt power seeking to overthrow another corrupt power, which is what too many of our human power struggles are like. Jesus is the son of God – the one true king – come to bind the powers of death and to establish a new reign on the earth.

Of course he is going to seem insane to the people who have no frame of reference for what he is doing. Of course he is going to look like a dangerous renegade to the religious authorities. But to people who have not forgotten the promise that God made at creation…to people who have not given up hope that God’s reign will come…to people who are lost and hurting and downtrodden and lame Jesus is going to look like a man worth following. Because Jesus does not have his eyes fixed on wealth or fame or comfort or control. Jesus’ eyes are fixed on a hill outside the city walls of Jerusalem where a cross waits, ready to claim his life. But his life cannot be claimed. He is the one who determines the rules of the game. Darkness cannot win. Beelzebul and the demons have had their day.

So what does Jesus ask of the people who would follow him? As he travelled he began to teach them. And he told them riddles…parables that were not easy to understand. He talked about seeds and farmers. He told about one particular farmer who was not very careful about where he planted his seeds. He just went out to sow and threw the seeds all over the place.

Some seeds fell on the path and you know what happened to them. They just lay there on that hard ground and the birds came and ate them up. Some seeds fell on rocky ground where there was thin layer of soil, but the plants never really developed much root and, even though they sprang up quickly, the sun came out and scorched them and they withered away. Some seeds fell in the thorns and they sprang up, but they were competing with too many other things and they got choked out. But some seed…some seed fell on fertile ground and it grew and flourished and produced up to a hundredfold yield.

What does it mean? As Jesus explained it to the twelve later he said the seed was the word – the word which he had come to deliver and to be. And when the seed fell on hard ground it was like falling on deaf ears. Before it even penetrated the soil, darkness and evil snatched it away. The rocky ground was like the people who had heard the word and responded but who then fell away when hard times came. The thorny patch was like people who said that they wanted to respond to God but who were too preoccupied with wealth and the comforts of this world and they soon fell away. And the fertile ground….

Who is like fertile ground? When you do your garden this spring what are you going to do to the land? You’re going to break it and turn and open it so that it will be ready to receive the seeds and nourish the plant. It takes broken, turned around, opened up people to receive what God has to give. It takes people who know that Jesus is more than just a miracle worker and a charismatic teacher. It takes people who know that the way to follow Jesus is to first know that you need to follow Jesus. When Jesus is no longer one option among many, but the center of your life, then you are fertile soul for what God’s word can do.

Than image of the Pride Lands in The Lion King is a useful one for us. Because it’s not only the world that is overcome by darkness, but it is our lives, too. Our souls can be overcome by evil and death. We can give ourselves over to demons that tell us that we are not worthy, we’re not capable, we’re not lovable, we’re not redeemable. We can give ourselves over to demons that lead us to treat others with cruelty and indifference and disrespect and mistrust. And when we let these demons rule our lives we start to turn in on ourselves. Our souls shrink, like the Grinch’s heart. We become deformed creatures, distorted beyond recognition.

But God has not forgotten who we are. God has not forgotten what you can be. And God will go to the ends of the earth…to the wilderness…to the gates of hell itself to reclaim what rightfully belongs to God. And you are what rightfully belongs to God. This world is what rightfully belongs to God. The strong man has been bound. We are under new management now. King Jesus is on the move. And immediately the kingdom has come near.

Thanks be to God who did not leave us to dominion of demons, but who walks before us, inviting us to follow him in the way of life. Thanks be to God.

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[i] BBC News, 29 Dec 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7802804.stm.

[ii] http://www.lionking.org/scripts/Script.html#mufasa.

Following Jesus to a Fruitful Life: The Journey Begins

I am Mark. John Mark, if you will. Associate of Peter. Resident of Jerusalem and then Rome. Author of this gospel…this account of the good news of Jesus Nazarene who was also Jesus the Christ. At least that’s what they say about me, though the record is pretty scanty and my name is not even mentioned in the book. But I’m there.

The scene I remember is in a dark garden on a hill overlooking Jerusalem. I had rushed out to the hillside when Jeremiah, my friend, had given me a hint that something was up. Something was going to happen. I didn’t even really have time to get properly dressed. I just threw on an outer garment and ran after him.

By the time we got there a mob had formed. There were people with clubs and sticks. Men with swords. This was really it. We’d been expecting it all week. We knew that the religious leaders had it in for Jesus. We knew that Jesus had been upsetting them with his teachings and by drawing such huge crowds. He had come into the city like a king, for heaven’s sake! So they were going to make a move, and they obviously had.

Judas went up to him and kissed him on the cheek. Betrayed with a kiss. What a way to go. The mob moved in to seize him. Somebody – one of his disciples – pulled out a sword and struck out at them. All it succeeded in doing was clipping the ear off of a poor slave. It was a pitiful act.

Jesus was confrontational as ever. He looked at them as if he was the one in control of the situation. “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me in the night like some bandit? I’ve been in the Temple day after day teaching and you couldn’t arrest me there? You think you’re in control, but the scriptures foretold it all. So because they say it, let it be.”

Then it was like a wave went through the crowd. The mob moved in on him. The disciples ran. Onlookers panicked. It was like an explosion had gone off and everyone was fleeing the scene. Even me. I just ran and as I did somebody tried to grab me. I felt this tugging on my cloak and I knew if I stopped to try to get loose, they would catch me. So I slipped out of my clothes and ran away naked in the night.

I got home and bolted the door behind me. Who was this Jesus that I had followed until I lost even the shirt off my back? Who was this man who was turning the world upside down? What was God up to?

It all came together for me on that dark and mysterious night when Jesus was arrested. So when I wrote down the story I knew that I wanted to tell it that way. Because there is nothing easy about this man. There is nothing settled or comfortable. He was always an outsider…always on the move…always pushing at you, threatening to change everything about you. And if you were lost or blind or lame that was great. But if you were at ease and confirmed in your beliefs and your habits and your comfort…he was the biggest threat you can imagine.

Matthew and Luke start their gospels with a birth. Not me. I wanted to capture what it was like when he appeared on the public stage – like a stranger dropped down from heaven. No one knew who he was. Oh, John the Baptist seemed to know. He talked about the one coming after him who was going to be greater than he was. But when Jesus came up from the water at his baptism, Jesus was the one who saw the skies split and the Spirit of God descend like a dove. Jesus was the one who heard the voice saying, “You are my beloved Son. I am pleased to have chosen you.” Who he was was going to be secret that was only gradually revealed.

He started in the desert, where wild prophets tend to go. But he was more than a wild prophet. The first person he tangled with was Satan, the king of the demons. And while he was in the desert angels attended him.

Then he came out of the desert and claimed his territory. “It is time,” he said. “The kingdom, the reign of God has come near. Repent. Turn around. Believe the good news.”

It was like he was throwing open the door and saying, “This is my house. This is my space. Stop hiding from the truth. Believe it.”

And immediately…you realize how many times I used that phrase? It was because he was always on the move. One thing always led to the next. He never stopped. He walked out of the desert and staked his claim and then he started calling people out. “Simon. Andrew. Drop those nets and come fish for people. James. John. Follow me.” And they did it! Never stop to think. It was like they had been waiting for that call their whole lives and when it came they just moved like it was the most natural thing in the world.

He kept walking. And he came to a lakeside village. Capernaum. He went into the synagogue there and came face to face with a man who was possessed. I know you’re not into demons much these days, but in my day, we knew them when we saw them. This man spoke with the voice of several demons. “Jesus Nazarene,” he said. “What do you have to do with us? Are you here to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”

“I know who you are.” Nobody else knows, but the demons know! They know what the score is. They know that if God is in control, they will not be. They know that Jesus is a threat even if nobody else does. They know that the worst mistake humans can make is to assume that nothing is at stake, that there are no conflicts worth having, that there are no powers that resist God. Peter didn’t make his declaration until much later. But from the first, the demons could name Jesus for who he really was.

Jesus, however, knew that they were unreliable witnesses. He knew that the demons would try to twist his message. To twist him. They would seduce him with the belief that he could use his power. That he would not have to suffer. That he would not have to die. So Jesus tells them, “Shut up! And come out of that man.”

The man fell to the floor in a convulsion. He writhed around. Screamed out. Then lay still. There was a hushed silence in the synagogue. Something new was happening among them. Some new kind of conflict was going on. God had come to wrestle the demons and to win. They began to murmur amongst themselves. “Who is this man? How does he teach with such authority?”

Now Jesus was in the thick of it. He started to draw crowds who came for healing and to be relieved of demons. They packed the places where he stayed. They followed him wherever he went. And whenever he called the demons forth he would tell them the same thing. “Shut up. Don’t speak. Be silent.” Because they knew who he was. They wanted to paint the picture of who he was, but Jesus knew that for the world to understand who he was, he would have to go the whole journey.

So he kept walking. And the crowds followed. He healed a leper and now he told him that he could not speak. But he didn’t obey. The word spread even more quickly. He began to go back to the desert just to get away.

Once when he was in a house in Capernaum, so many people crammed inside that no one could get in. Four guys carried one of their friends, who was paralyzed, to the roof. They dug down through the roof and lowered the man in. Jesus was so impressed with their faith that he healed the man, much to the consternation of the religious leaders who were present. But Jesus knew what they were thinking. And he confronted them. The conflicts were beginning and they would only grow until they culminated in that night in a darkened garden outside Jerusalem.

Jesus knows there is a world of trouble here. Jesus was under no illusions when he walked into that desert to face down Satan and he had no fear when he walked back out to claim his kingdom. Demons would be forced out. Healing would come. And people would misunderstand.

But he would not turn back. He would not be deterred. He was going on a journey. And he invited us to come along. But he would not stop. If disciples would drop their nets and come on, they could be part of this kingdom. If they kept doing what they’d always done, they would never know. He was going on a journey to the cross and he would not be hindered.

So what about you? Are you ready to be provoked, disturbed, discombobulated? Are you ready to leave behind your nets, your distractions, your comfort, your possessions, your life as you know it, to follow this Jesus? Are you ready to be changed and transformed? Are you ready to tell the good news?

He was going on a journey. His eyes were fixed on some place in the distance. He was not afraid to claim his kingdom. He was not afraid to confront evil. He was not afraid to call us out.

So what are you afraid of? And what are you going to do when he calls?

Running to Win

This has been a bad week for athletes. Not that we haven’t had many occasions to be disappointed in athletes. It’s an old, old story. We put athletes up on a pedestal. We celebrate their accomplishments. They can’t live up to the expectations. They have some falling and their names are splashed across the headlines. We find ourselves saying things like a little boy was supposed to have said to Shoeless Joe Jackson after the 1919 BlackSox baseball scandal – “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”

So this week it was Alex Rodriguez, maybe the best player in baseball, admitting that he had used steroids to improve his play. He had lots of excuses. He knew he was the highest-paid player in the game and he wanted to justify his salary. He was insecure. Say it ain’t so, Alex.

And it was Michael Phelps, the best swimmer in the world, getting caught smoking what looked like marijuana at a party. We remember him from last summer. We remember the incredible routine he put himself through in order to be ready to swim all those races and win 8 gold medals. We know what hard work it took for him to be at the top of his game, in peak condition. But last week, there he was saying, “I'm 23 years old and despite the successes I've had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again."[i] Say it ain’t so, Michael!

They’re just the latest. We could add many more to the list. Michael Vick, the great quarterback for Tech and for the Atlanta Falcons who ended up in jail because of his involvement in dog fighting. Darryl Strawberry, Barry Bonds, Mike Tyson…the list goes on and on. Why do they disappoint us so much? They are human after all.

In part it’s because we want to believe that there is an arena in which people will dedicate themselves to being the absolute best that they can be. We want to believe that there are people who have remarkable gifts but who hone their natural talents through hard work and single-minded dedication to be the best that they can be. We want to believe that there are people who don’t take shortcuts, who don’t try to cheat, who don’t take steroids, who live lives in such a disciplined way that they are beyond reproach. When our heroes disappoint us, they take away our confidence that athletic perfection is possible. Say it ain’t so, Joe. Say it ain’t so that the thing we want to believe about you isn’t true.

“All athletes exercise self-control in all things so that they can win a perishable crown, but we do so for an immortal one.” I’ll tell you how old this is. Those were the words of Paul written two thousand years ago to the Corinthian Christians. Paul was trying to get the Christian community in Corinth whipped into shape. They were a distracted bunch, at odds with each other and not really focused on what they needed to be focused on. So Paul uses an athletic image.

He reminds them of the runners who often competed in races near Corinth. The Isthmian games were held very close to the city and his hearers would have known the spectacles that pitted contestants against one another. Paul says, “If you’re going to run in one of these races, you’re going to need to be single-minded. You’re going to need to train and to show self-control. If athletes will do all of this to win a prize that is merely a wreath on their heads that will wither away, how much more should we train for a race in which the prize will not fade away, but last forever?”

Then Paul, who was not really the athletic type from what we know, gives them some humorous images of himself. “You see,” Paul says, “I run, but with a purpose. I’m up early every morning whipping myself into shape. Like Rocky in the meat locker preparing for a boxing match, I’m in heavy training. Because I don’t want to be found talking about the race and not being prepared to run it. I don’t want to be preaching the gospel and not living it.” If you’re going to be an athlete, you’ve got to give it your all.

Paul likes this image of the runners in a race. He uses it a lot. In the letter to the Galatians he says that he went up to Jerusalem to tell the other apostles about his ministry “in order to make sure that I was not running, or had not run, in vain” [Gal 2:2]. He tells the Philippians in his letter to them that if they live out the gospel he proclaimed to them it will allow him to “boast on the day of Christ that I did not run in vain” [Phi. 2:16]. Later in that same letter he says that he is pressing “on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus” [3:14]. Guide my feet, while I run this race, for I don’t want to run this race in vain.

Do you get the sense that that’s what we’re doing here as Christians? Do you feel like you’re in a race? Is this Christian life that we profess something that guides your whole life? Or is it maybe just window-dressing? And if it’s more than that…if it really is about living a life of purpose and meaning and direction and giving ourselves over to Jesus…why are we content to only give God second-best?

This week I watched a television program that opened my eyes. It was called Kitchen Nightmares and it featured a British chef by the name of Gordon Ramsey. It’s one of those so-called reality shows and the premise of this show is that Ramsey goes into restaurants that are on the verge of failing and spend a week with them to put them on the right track.

Now Ramsey is no model of Christian character. He’s foul-mouthed and arrogant and condescending. But he is a very good chef and he knows how to run a restaurant. He has restaurants all over the world.

So on this show I was watching, he went into a small, family-owned Italian restaurant on Long Island. He started by having lunch and they brought him a crabcake, which was frozen, and some other side dishes which were well-below standard. Chef Ramsey was not pleased.

He was watching the wait staff and the managers and owners, too, and he noticed that there was a lot of tension between them. The owners were a brother and sister. The brother spent all of his time hanging out in the front, drinking espresso and schmoozing with friends. He also was spending a lot of the profits of the restaurant on a nice car and nice clothes. Meanwhile his sister was doing all the work and everybody in the restaurant was trying to work around him.

Back in the kitchen, the equipment was outdated and dirty. Two of the ovens didn’t even work and they were using them for storage. The walk-in refrigerator was leaking and the food was rotting. The chef and all of the kitchen staff were demoralized. Everyone was acting as if they didn’t want to be there. And they didn’t. But they were a restaurant. They had a purpose. Only no one was living up to it.

Chef Ramsey was not going to let them get away with it. Step by step he forced everyone there to look at what they were doing and to reclaim the restaurant. He got them to address the kitchen problems and to get proper equipment. He had them update the menu and the décor. He focused on getting the service improved. And he took on the biggest problem of all – the brother who would not pull his weight and who was eating up the profits. Very forcefully he said, “You are the problem. You’ve got to look at yourself.” And he did.

I know it’s television and I know it’s easy to edit your way to a happy ending on TV. But I found myself very inspired by several things. One – Gordon Ramsey had a vision. He knew what a kitchen and a restaurant were supposed to look like and he was not going to settle for anything less than that. He was going to build the future of the restaurant around that vision.

Secondly, Ramsey was energized by his vision. Everyone else looked tired and dragged out, just like people do when they find themselves in a dead-end job or when they feel trapped by circumstances. Ramsey knew how important it was that the people in that restaurant step out of their discomfort, even if they believed that change was difficult, so that they could experience something new.

Finally, as people in the restaurant owned their purpose and moved forward, they challenged and inspired the people around them to grow and change, too. Their dedication and commitment to excellence was infectious. It sometimes led them into conflict, but when they began to work together you could see smiles and a real sense of camaraderie.

These are the things Paul was encouraging in the Corinthian church! He called them to keep their eyes on the prize – to know why they were doing what they were doing. They weren’t together for no reason – they were the body of Christ! They had heard the good news about Jesus and they had been baptized into the church and now their lives were supposed to look different. They were living for a spiritual kingdom and what they did in their earthly life together was supposed to reflect this new reality. That was the vision that brought them together.

They were supposed to be energized by that vision. When they got distracted by backbiting and when they slipped back into old behaviors and when they thought more about themselves than their neighbors – then they stopped being the church. Paul knew that if they could just claim their identity as people following Jesus rather than their own desires then they would have more energy, more vitality and more abundant life.

Finally, just as with that restaurant, when Christians own their identity and seek to give God the best they have to offer, then they inspire and challenge the Christians around them to offer the best that they have. And they make others who do not know Christ wonder what’s up. The Christian life, when it is alive and vibrant, is a catchy thing. Just like the hook of a song you can’t get out of your head.

I want to challenge you today to give the best that you have to this Jesus that we sing about each week. If you really believe that Jesus represents the way, the truth and the life…if you really want the world to be a better place…if you really are seeking first the kingdom of God and its righteousness…if you really do want to know the joys of heaven, which begin right here on earth…if you really believe that God came into the world to transform the world, including you…if you really believe all of that, why are you holding back anything from God? Why is there anything in your life that you wouldn’t open up for Jesus to do something wonderful with?

You were claimed by God long before you ever knew it and long before you ever responded. You have been invited into a relationship with God through Jesus that never ends. There is a prize waiting for you if you will only claim it. So what are we waiting for? What are we holding back? There’s a race to run. Let’s race to win because we don’t want to run this race in vain. Thanks be to God.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Don’t you know that in the arena all the runners run but only one receives the prize? So you also should run to receive one. All contenders exercise self-control in all things so that they can win a perishable crown, but we do it for an immortal one. So, that’s how I run - not aimlessly. And that’s how I box – not beating the air. But I beat up my body, so to speak, and bring it into submission, so that, having preached to others, I might not be disqualified.

[i] ESPN Swimming, http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/swimming/news/story?id=3876804.

A Winning Personality

It’s important to have a winning personality. A man went into a diner and sat down at the counter. The grumpiest-looking waitress he had ever seen came over to take his order.

“Could I have a cup of coffee?” he asked. The waitress went and got the coffee and slammed it down in front of him, sloshing coffee over the sides as she did.

“Anything else?”

“Yes, could I have a slice of apple pie?” She went over, pulled the pie out from under the glass and cut a piece of pie. Again she slammed it down in front of him.

“Anything else?”

“Well, a kind word wouldn’t hurt,” the customer said.

“Alright – don’t eat the pie,” she said.[i]

Have you ever been places like that? Where the kindest word that can be said is ‘don’t eat the pie’? For way too many people, that is their experience of church. Rightly or wrongly, there are very many people who believe that the church and the Christians who form it are about as friendly as that surly waitress.

You may be saying to yourself, “That can’t be right. Churches are supposed to be welcoming places, inviting people through the doors. Our slogan in the United Methodist Church is “Open hearts, open minds, open doors.” We talk about the importance of God’s love and about telling the world the good news. But the world is not hearing the good news.

The Barna research group did some surveys with young people recently and they found some surprising things. Of the twelve most common impressions that non-believing 16- to 29-year-olds have of Christians nine of them are negative. Among the most common things the young people noted were that Christians were judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), old-fashioned and too involved in politics. 76% did say that they think Christians have good values and 55% said that the faith is one they respect, but maybe the most damning thing they said was that “Christianity in today’s society no longer looks like Jesus.” 23% of the non-Christians responding said that. 22% of the born-again Christians said that. To put it bluntly, for many people Christians are failing because they are being “unchristian”!

David Kinnaman, who reviewed the research with Barna, says, “Going into this…project, I assumed that people’s perceptions were generally soft, based on misinformation, and would gradually morph into more traditional views. But then, as we probed why young people had come to such conclusions, I was surprised how much their perceptions were rooted in specific stories and personal interactions with Christians and in churches. When they labeled Christians as judgmental this was not merely spiritual defensiveness. It was frequently the result of truly ‘unChristian’ experiences.”[ii]

Once again, if we go back to the history of the Church, we find that this is not a place we haven’t been before. The church has always been a place filled with “unchristian Christians” struggling to become more like Jesus. But just because that’s so doesn’t mean that we should be happy about it or content with the way things are. We should always be dissatisfied.

We’ve been visiting with the apostle Paul for the last few weeks as he talked with his unchristian Christians in Corinth who had a lot of questions for him as they struggled to be a new congregation of Jesus followers. We talked a few weeks ago about how they dealt with marriage. Last week we talked about how they tried to be a peaceful, mixed community made up of mature and weak members.

We get a hint from these chapters of what life in the Corinthian church must have been like. They were contentious folks. You might not call them old-fashioned, but judgmental and hypocritical…O yeah! They were definitely sorting themselves out by putting some members down and elevating themselves. Everyone thought they knew best and had the most desirable gifts to offer to the community.

It seems like they were even questioning Paul, wondering if he was really behaving like he ought to. In the early verses of chapter 9 in 1 Corinthians Paul is telling them all the reasons he could pull rank on them and all the reasons why he should be able to claim a living off of them due to his position as a minister of the gospel, but after saying all this he says, “I could claim my rights but I’m not doing that. I’m not going to impose any burden on you because I don’t want anything to stand between you and the gospel.”

You see, Paul knew what he could claim. He knew that he could have a wife. He could have a salary or some means of support from his work as a minister. But if anything was going to come between the ability of his audience to hear the good news and that good news, he was not going to let it be an issue. So he chose a life of celibacy and he chose to work to support himself.

He tells the Corinthians all this and then he goes on to challenge them to do something, too. They are caught up in this judgmental boasting game. They brag about their spiritual gifts. They jostle for position in the leadership. They think that because they excel in an area of spiritual leadership that gives them standing over others. But Paul says, “Look at me. I preach the gospel, not because it gives me a right to boast, but because if I don’t everything I am is all for naught. I feel an inner compulsion to preach the good news. Woe is me if I don’t preach. So what is my reward? That I will be free from all my other preoccupations and others will hear the good news.”

Then Paul goes on to talk about all the people he is engaged with and how he orders his life so that the people he is talking to can hear and see Jesus in him. “To the Jews I appear like a Jew. To those who live under the old Mosaic Law, I address them as one who is under the old Mosaic Law. To those who are outside that Law, I talk to them as one outside. To the weak, I am weak. I have become all things to all people so that I might by all means save some.”

I have become all things to all people so that I might by all means save some. We hear that and we hear a warning in our heads. “All things to all people? Isn’t that the problem with politicians? They promise one thing to a group over here and another to a group over there and in the end you wonder if they have any convictions at all.” That’s what we think but that’s not what Paul is saying here. He is not saying that he has no convictions. His life had been turned around by an encounter with Jesus. He had been going one way and now he was very clearly going the other way. He once was lost but now was found. There was no turning back.

What he is saying here is that he does not want to put any roadblock in front of anyone that will keep them from hearing what he has heard. He is going to go into the culture to listen, to see how they view the world, to know their concerns, to be with them where they are and to help them see how Jesus enters that very same world where they live to transform and save them. That’s what it means to have a winning personality.

How powerful is that? How many people need to know that Jesus has entered into THEIR world to bring life? Maybe they’ve lost a child to drug addiction and they’re afraid of what church people might say if they knew – what is it that they need to hear except Jesus is with them and with their child? Maybe you are depressed and distraught and you just don’t know how to get over it and you’re afraid to bring that cloud with you to church because what if church people won’t get it, won’t accept it…what if they tell you to just be happy—what is that you need to hear except Jesus walked through the valley of the shadow, too? Maybe you’ve just lost your last friend and the loneliness seems overwhelming – what is that you need to hear except Jesus felt abandoned and rejected, too? Maybe you feel like there are things you’ve done in your life are so bad and so far from what God wants that you could never be accepted…never be loved – what is that you need to hear except Jesus’ voice saying, “I did not come for the healthy but for the sick”?

While we were in Dallas last week we had dinner with some of the folks I worked with in West Dallas. We got together to remember a friend and colleague, Kathleen Baskin-Ball, who worked with us there and who recently died. But more than that we remembered stories about how we began that work. Most of us had not grown up in that neighborhood. Most of us came from different places, different cultures, different backgrounds. My friend, Juan Prieto, had come from Colombia. Another one from Kansas. Me from Virginia.

When we started we were all lost. We had to give up everything we knew about how to act and behave in order to learn what it meant to live in a place like West Dallas. We had to risk failing and falling, which we did many times. But that’s what it took to bring the gospel to a neighborhood overrun by the problems of broken families, broken lives, and broken promises.

I also got to hear about a lot of amazing new churches last week at the conference I attended. One of them was a small church growing in downtown Seattle called Church of the Apostles. A young, African-American woman named Karen Ward is the pastor, or abbess, of this church and they have taken over an abandoned Lutheran church in a neighborhood of people who are just like the young people I described at the beginning of this sermon – people who are skeptical of church and many of whom suspect that being Christian means being judgmental and harsh.

They do church in a radical way. By that I mean that they go right back to the roots to see how the early church did it. The early church lived in close community, sharing meals and resources. So do they. They also have three community houses where people live together according to a common rule of worship and work. They call themselves “new monastics,” trying to reclaim the ideals of monks and nuns by following the model of Jesus. And they also see themselves as icons for the rest of the community. They know that not everyone can or will become a new monastic, but the people who live in these houses hope that they will live out their Christian lives in such a way that others will know that they, too, are called to live in a relationship.

When the Church of the Apostles talks about what it expects of its members, some of the things sound very familiar to our ears. Members are called to love God and love their neighbors. They are to engage with the community and practice their faith. But they have some things, as well, that sound different. Members there commit to giving invitations and providing welcome. They are supposed to share stories and throw parties. They are called to create art and exchange gifts. And they are to renew culture and steward creation.

All sorts of people find their way to Church of the Apostles for their Saturday night worship. The community works with Karen Ward to plan the worship and they like to build things. Ward says that Home Depot is their worship supply store. Once when they were doing a series on water, they built a river in a wooden chute right through the middle of the sanctuary with running water.

They do these things to reach the people around them who need to hear the gospel and need to hear it in words and images they can understand. Experimental communities like this one are willing to become all things to all people in order that by all means they might save some. If you think about it, it’s exactly what God did – became one of us in order to save us.

So who needs to hear this word? Who needs to know that what the world imagines about Christians is in need of some revision? What sort of community shall we be to help a hurting world? What things do we not have to be so that we can be the light of Christ? Thanks be to God.

1 Corinthians 9:16-23
If I preach the good news, this is not something for me to boast about it, because that compulsion presses on me. Woe is me if I don't preach the good news. If I do this willingly, I will have my reward. If I do it unwillingly, I am simply acting on a commission.

So what is my reward? That in preaching the good news I may offer the gospel free of charge and not be absorbed with my rights in the gospel. Even though I was a free person with respect to all, I made myself a slave so that I could win many people. To the Jews I became like a Jew so that I could win the Jews. To those under the Law I became like one under the Law so that I could win those under the Law. To those outside the Law I became like one outside the Law, (even though I am not outside the Law of God but rather under the law of Christ), so that I could win those outside the Law. To the weak I became weak so that I could win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that I might by all means save some. I do all things through the gospel so that I may share in it.

[i] Adapted from Nigel Griffiths, http://living.scotsman.com/features/Top-jokes-to-cheer-you.4808592.jp.
[ii] “A New Generation Expresses its Skepticism and Frustration with Christianity,” Barna Research Group, Sept. 24, 2007, http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdate&BarnaUpdateID=280.