Mark 10:32-45
David A. Davis
October 18, 2015

It is the third time now. The third time in the Gospel of Mark. It is the third time that Jesus tells the disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be rejected, be betrayed, be handed over, be condemned, be mocked, be spit upon, be flogged, be killed… and after three days he will rise again. It’s the third time. The third time for what the tradition labels “Jesus and his Passion Predictions.” It is also the third time for the disciples to display what might be described today as an awkward response; as in “that was awkward”. In the 8th chapter of Mark after Jesus tells the twelve what is to come for the Son of Man, Peter took him aside and rebuked him. In Mark 9, after Jesus describes again what is going to happen, the disciples get into an argument along the way about which one of them is the greatest. Now in chapter 10, it is James and John the sons of Zebedee who step up to the plate.

As Mark tells it “Jesus took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him… James and John the sons of Zebedee came forward to him and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ And Jesus said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ And they said to Jesus, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” Awkward! Actually, Matthew’s telling of this conversation is even more uncomfortable. As Matthew tells it, it wasn’t James and John who asks for the privileged seat in glory. It was their mother. The mother of the sons of Zebedee came to Jesus, knelt before him, and asked a favor of him, that James and John could sit on the right and left. Their mother asked! Whether it was them or their mother asking, when the other ten heard about it the two maneuvering for the good seats in the kingdom they were ticked. And the gospel audience for ever more is all a buzz, mumbling, grumbling, asking, “What on earth were they all thinking?”

Knowledgeable readers of Mark’s gospel will remember that these conversations between Jesus and the twelve, the few chapters where they occur are framed by two accounts of Jesus healing blind men. When it comes to Jesus, his person, his work, the blind men see. But the disciples, not so much. We, the experienced readers, this isn’t our first gospel rodeo, so we catch the irony of James and John asking to be on the left and right. Because it won’t be long before two criminals will be up there hanging on the Savior’s left and the Savior’s right. As for James and John and any comprehension of the not so subtle references to suffering and death? Not so much. Those of us whose faith has been nurtured at the fount and at the table, our relationship with Christ shaped by what the II Helvetic Confession calls the grace-filled promise of “God’s word, of signs and of things signified”, we get the reference of “the cup I drink” and “the baptism with which I am baptized.” Our privileged knowledge of the sacramentality of his suffering and death. But for the disciples, for James and for John? Not so much. It is the standard interpretation. The interpretation accepted and passed along. The church’s portrayal and characterization of the disciples and the unfolding gospel drama, the gospel as comedy, the gospel as tragedy. The blind men get it. Even the demons get it. The readers get it. The church gets it. You and I, we get it. But the disciples don’t get it!

One of my seminary jobs back in the day was to record various lectures, sermons, guest speakers. One evening I was sent over to the Center of Theological Inquiry on Stockton Street to record a lecture by the Scottish theologian T. F. Torrance. To let you know how long ago this was, I had to carry a portable reel to reel recorder across campus for the occasion. The audience was fairly small. I was in the back of the room with head phones on not really knowing then about all the theological big wigs in the room. Everyone all dressed up. All very formal. And I assure you, I didn’t understand a word of what the lecture was about. That point was hit home even more when Professor Torrance started speaking in Latin. Then everyone in the room was laughing except me. He was apparently telling a joke, or making a funny, in Latin and all these distinguished academics broke out in an ivory tower type controlled laugh that comes when you want everyone else to know how smart you are. So of course, there in the back of the room, I laughed too.

That’s sort of how this typical, accepted interpretation comes off. How the church’s portrayal of the disciples feels at times, like a smug laugh. The gospel narrative unfolds again and again, Jesus telling of his pending suffering and death and resurrection. The disciples respond over and over again in this awkward, uncomfortable, puzzling way. And the reader leans back in the chair with hands behind the head and heaves a sigh and shakes the head almost mystified by the ineptitude of the 12. The well-educated Sunday School graduates pat each other on the back and offer a prayer of thanks that at least they know better…now. The gospel audience, the church, we sit in our nice front row mezzanine seats watching it all play out again, convincing ourselves we understand the whole play about Jesus and the gospel and the call to servanthood. We get it! So the laugh you hear, it’s a controlled, theologically informed laugh.

The assigned reading for the day, the verse where the reading is supposed to begin, the lectionary cut of the text starts at v. 35. That’s right where James and John ask Jesus to do whatever they ask. It is as if the liturgical tradition, the intended trajectory undermines the disciples. The intended lesson for the day prejudges the disciples with a focus on that “ridiculous question.” Notice I started the reading earlier. Right where we left off last week. Right after the first will be last and the last will be first. “They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid.” The New Jerusalem Bible reads, “Jesus was walking on ahead of them; they were in a daze and those who followed were apprehensive.” The King James says “Jesus went before them and they were amazed and as they followed they were afraid.” Amazed. Dazed. Apprehensive. Afraid. Going up to Jerusalem.

The first time Jesus speaks of the suffering of the Son of Man, he and the disciples were way up north in Caesarea Philippi, miles away from Jerusalem. The second time he tells the disciples about it, they were in Galilee, around Capernaum. They were at home, light years away from all that Jerusalem symbolized and meant for the life and death of Jesus. Now, for the third time, as for the third time, ‘They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem.” When it comes to the stories of Jesus and the descriptions of his travels and the way the four gospels point to his whereabouts, there may be no more loaded of a phrase, no more symbolic of an expression, no directional cue more crucial, no passing comment less to miss than this one: “going up to Jerusalem.” Up to Jerusalem. They were on the road going up to Jerusalem. Jesus was walking on ahead of them and they followed along scared to death. “Jesus took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him.” It is the third time that Jesus tells the disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be rejected, be betrayed, be handed over, be condemned, be mocked, be spit upon, be flogged, be killed…and after three days he will rise again. The third time. But this time, they were on the road going up to Jerusalem and they were scared to death.

On the road going up to Jerusalem, who could blame them for being scared? And there certainly isn’t much to laugh at. That question about the right and the left in your glory. They might have been holding out hope for a messianic, political, military victory and a seat to come at the head table. They might be clinging to a hope of a place by the throne in the kingdom of heaven when all the chaos, destruction, and death settles. The right and the left in your glory. Or, in all their fear on the road up to Jerusalem, maybe they’re just begging for Jesus to keep them close, for Jesus to not let them go, for Jesus to always save a spot for them. Jesus didn’t sigh and shake his head or wag his finger and tell them its about time for them to know better. He didn’t laugh at them. Jesus points to his own suffering, his own servanthood, his own death, his own place in the world-upending, love poured out, wisdom of God. “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.” God in heaven has prepared a place for those who will be at my right and my left. That’s not for me to choose. But… “whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

If they are asking about a place at the table of power and prestige and victory, Jesus responds with a word about selfless servanthood. If it is about ensuring a spot at the heavenly banquet, Jesus tells them to let God worry about that and start serving others now. If it is about wanting Jesus to stick close to them further on up the road, as he alludes to the cross Jesus seems to be asking whether or not they will be sticking with him. As their fear just about paralyzes them there on the road up to Jerusalem, it wasn’t like Jesus was saying “why don’t you wait here” or “why don’t you sit this one out” or “come up when you’re ready” or “maybe later” or “when you have more time” or “when you understand better” or “when things settle down” or “after you retire” or “when you have kids” or “wait until your spouse asks you” or “when you get around to it” or “when you feel better” or “after you get sick” or “once you’ve saved enough” or “when its convenient” or “when you’ve figured out the whole resurrection thing” or “when you find a church that’s good enough” or “hey, don’t worry about it, maybe next time.” No, when you can cut that fear with a knife on the road up to Jerusalem and awkward doesn’t begin to describe it, Jesus is still saying to James and John and the other ten, “Follow me”.

Will Willimon, a retired bishop in the United Methodist Church who used to be Dean of the Chapel at Duke University, tells the story of a conversation he was having with a small group of university students. He was sharing with them how he lamented that so few students came to services on Sunday at Duke Chapel. “Go easy on yourself,” one of the students responded to him. “Duke is a very selective school with very bright students,” she said. “I think most of them are smart enough to figure out,” she continued, “that if they gave their lives to Christ, he would only make their lives more difficult. I think it’s amazing you get as many students to come to Jesus as you do.”

The church’s portrayal and characterization of the disciples and the unfolding gospel drama. The blind men get it. Even the demons get it. The readers get it. The church gets it. You and I, we get it. It’s not about whether you get it. It’s about whether you will follow.

© 2015, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

Mark 8:27-38
David A. Davis
September 13, 2015

            It is the turning point in Mark’s gospel. Here at the end of the 8^th chapter; Jesus and the disciples at Caesarea Philippi. In terms of the story, the plot, these paragraphs begin a shift from all the healings and teaching in and around Galilee to a narrative movement that now heads to Jerusalem. That Jerusalem turn, it is paralleled in content with Jesus speaking for the first time about the suffering and death and rising again of the Son of Man. These pivotal verses in Mark, they bear such a weight of content for study, there’s so much going on, so much “gospel meat” that it sort of feels like the anchor or the center, the thickest part of the shortest Gospel. “Who do you say that I am?…You are the Messiah…The Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected…and be killed…and after three days rise again….Get behind me Satan!…If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

            As Jesus and his disciples were on the way to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, Mark invites the reader to listen in on their conversation. That piercing question from Jesus, the “who do you say that I am?”, it comes in the overhearing. Along with how he “sternly ordered them” not to tell anyone about him. It is as if Mark’s audience finds themselves listening in on what was a private moment. It doesn’t get any less awkward when Jesus talks about the suffering of the Son of Man and Peter takes Jesus aside to tell him to stop with the nonsense and Jesus, probably yelling back, calls Peter “Satan” of all things. It’s the sort of thing that ought to make you uncomfortable, like you ought not to be listening. You sort of don’t know whether to turn away or to keep listening, start taking notes, and then study the whole scene for a couple thousand years.

You are the Christ. And the church then and ever since affirms and explores the messianic identity of Jesus. The question for the Christian takes on an existential air for generations. “Who do you say that I am?” The not telling part, labeled by the tradition as “the Messianic Secret” leads to shelf after shelf in the library of gospel studies. Jesus and his Passion Predictions. No shortage of material there on how Jesus foreshadowed his death and resurrection throughout the gospels giving the reader a glimpse ahead while the disciples fall a step behind in terms of putting it all together. As for the matching rebukes between Jesus and Peter, it sparks the lasting fascination and character study of the Apostle Peter. The one Matthew’s Jesus refers to as the “Rock upon which I will build my church.”

The thickest part of the shortest gospel. An analysis of just these few verse, that brief private conversation offered up for hearing, the terminology that rises from the page like a first whiff of a bowl of soup, it sounds, it smells like the syllabus of an introduction to the New Testament class. It’s the kind of reading and study and reflection that Christians like us eat with a spoon. A Christian faith from the neck up kind of thing. And then, just then, just when you’ve sopped up all the knowledge you can from that iconic Caesarea Philippi moment, and you’ve studied and read and listened and talked, the whole nature of the conversation changes. It all shifts from overhearing to direct address. It turns out the only thing more uncomfortable than eavesdropping on the awkward encounter between Jesus and his disciples is when Jesus turns and includes you. Or as Mark puts it, “Jesus called the crowd with this disciples and said….” So easy to miss, Jesus shifting from the twelve and calling to the crowd. As all of Mark’s gospel begins the turn to Jerusalem, this is Jesus calling to the crowd, to the reader, to his followers, to you and me, Jesus calling to you, pointing to his own cross, and saying, “this is we’re it’s all headed, why don’t you come along?” Talk about uncomfortable.

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” And he said to them, “truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.” Jesus looking at us and nodding toward Jerusalem says, “so…. here we go. While the church wishes Jesus was still just talking to Peter and the gospel could remain a safe and sanitized academic exercise (from the neck up).

Just in case the reader misses the subtle broadening of the conversation beyond just the disciples, and therefore misses the notion that Jesus’ teaching here is no longer a matter of just “them” and then misses the move that Jesus takes it beyond what one thinks to how one lives, about the whole self, just in case you missed all that, Jesus drops a little shame into the equation. The followers of Jesus being ashamed of him and his word. The Son of Man being ashamed of his followers when he comes into God’s glory. There can’t be much that digs at the heart of being human more than “shame”. The only thing worse than experiencing someone’s anger and wrath is being on the wrong side of their disappointment and shame. Shame used as verb, “shaming” has been elevated to an art form that reflects humanity’s dark side. Shame. Shame has garnered a certain popularity these days. A Ted Talk on shame now as 4.5 million views. Shame works on a person, eats at a person, it erodes the self. If sinfulness is at the top of the list of what defines the human condition, shame can’t be far beyond. So when you’re working on shame, dealing with shame, coping with shame, you’re working right at the center of your being.

So forgive me if I don’t interpret the word from Jesus here as a threat to a backsliding, under-performing, wayward Christian who then has to sit in the corner of eternity’s classroom with a ‘dunce cap” on holding a sign that says “slacker”. No. Neither do I take Jesus to being setting a low bar for the gospel here, a sort of “as long as you don’t embarrass me or cause be to be ashamed of you” approach to faith. Christ’s call to follow him is way beyond shame. My takeaway is that with the reference to shame, Jesus is announcing that the prospect of taking up one’s cross and following him has implications that ought to reverberate all the way to the core of your being, to the core of what it means to be human. Not just for the life of the mind, but for all of life. The gospel reaches to the most tender places of what it means to be human and what it means for God to be God and what it means for our relationship; humanity and God. It is Jesus, looking at us and nodding toward Jerusalem and saying, “whoever is in…..has to be ALL in….your whole self…bring it all.” The thickest part of the shortest gospel is Jesus call to discipleship; his call for you to follow, to follow with your whole life.

An article in the Washington Post on Tuesday was entitled “How a consumer driven culture threatens to destroy pastors”. Colleagues and friends were filling my mail box with the link. Lauren McFeaters tweeted it out this week. The article cites a recent study that names the percentage of pastors overwhelmed, who work too much, who worry for their family’s financial security, who feel like they can’t keep up. It also included numbers about more personal struggles of loneliness, depression, struggles in marriage. As I read and thought about it, it occurred to me that another study and another article could easily be written about “how a consumer driven culture threatens to destroy teachers, or accountants, or doctors, or spouses who are home raising their kids, or “fill in the blank”. Within the article the author makes a solid theological point, however. A model for church life and faith that is consumer based and consumer driven, a “come to us because we will worship better, lead it all, have all the programs you need, innovate, teach your children, care for you, and make it all convenient at the same time: is bound to fail and is antithetical to the teaching of Jesus.

Or as Jesus puts it, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” Andrew Fosters Conner, a Presbyterian pastor down at Brown Memorial Church in Baltimore puts it this way in response to Jesus call to discipleship: Jesus makes it clear that “you should be prepared to give everything for the sake of God—nothing’s off limits. Everything is required. I can’t stand that about Jesus. It makes building a church in our times really hard. ‘Come to our church and we’ll call on you to give everything that you have for Jesus—money, time, work, relationships, life— all for Jesus. ‘Do we have programs?  Yeah, we have programs—it’s called, take up your cross. That’s the program.!’”

How about an article entitled “How Jesus with his call to discipleship threatens to destroy a consumer culture?” (#Mark8). How Jesus and his call to discipleship threatens a consumer driven, what’s in it for me, you can never have enough money, perfectionist, win at all cost, demonize the other, shaming is an art form, voting for what serves me best, charity begins at home, lack of trust, bitterness on the loose, fear the stranger, money is power, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, the poor are losers, and I have to be right all the time culture.

Jesus call to discipleship, his invitation to follow, it is for all of you. All of you. Your whole life. Which means when it comes to the world we live in, the culture that surrounds us, and the faith to which we have been called it will not, shall not, cannot be easy. When Jesus is calling to you, pointing to his own cross, and saying, “this is we’re it’s all headed, why don’t you come along?” Uncomfortable doesn’t begin to describe it.

© 2015, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

David A. Davis
James 1:17-27
August 30, 2015

A long time ago I was meeting with a couple to plan their wedding. They were a bit older and it wasn’t their first marriage. They were very clear on their intentions for the ceremony and expressed some firm opinions. “It’s just going to us and our children” she said. “No flowers, no processing, no photographer, none of that.” They told me if they could all fit, they just assume get married there in my office instead of the sanctuary. Too big. Too formal. “Now for the service” he said, “you won’t have to preach or anything. I just want you to read from James.” And he handed me a list of verses, all from James. He smiled at me and said, “I know there’s not much Jesus in James, but there’s a whole lot of gospel.”

Just this summer I sat with a family to plan a memorial service. As we came to the specifics about remembrances and music and scripture, they had come prepared and had all the choices ready. As for scripture, one of the readings was from James. The rationale, the explanation for the James choice as it related to the family member who had died, as one of them put it, “Well, she wasn’t all that religious but she lived a life of service. She lived the gospel.”

James at a wedding. James at a funeral. James at a whole lot of places in between. With no sermon required (except today!)

“Do not be deceived, my beloved. Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, come down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of God’s own purpose, God gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we could become a kind of first fruits of God’s creatures.”

James at a baptism. The community of faith gathered not just here at the fount but gathered at the edge of God’s flowing river of promise. Celebrating life and birth and rebirth. As we dip again and again into the life-giving and life-sustaining waters of God’s grace. It is a sacramental pause of gratitude. Yes, this morning for Abrianna. Thanks be to God. But for all of us. To remember your baptism, to sense that mark, to know you have been sealed in God’s love, it is before all else, an act of gratitude to God. “I’ve been baptized”! It’s a synonym for “thanks be to God!” Here according to James, to be one of God’s first fruits, to be first among all that God created, it is to live a life defined by gratitude and generosity. Every generous act of giving, every perfect gift it comes from above and multiplies through the first fruits of those born by the word of truth. A baptismal prayer for Abrianna, for all the baptized, that God would be made known in the world through the gratitude and generosity of your life.

“You must understand this, my beloved; let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.” Quick to listen. Slow to speak. Slow to anger. James for a presidential election. James, not just for candidates, and pundits but for you and me. James for times like now when the decibel level of the rhetoric in the public square includes such hatred and disdain for the other, when there is such a sordidness to the way people talk about those who they disagree with, when what should be a robust debate about complex international policies and a treaty is reduced to name calling and questioning someone’s heritage, when the presidential election is still more than year away and the absence of civility will continue to tramp on any hope for the common good, as “trickle down” becomes less of an economic descriptor and more of an apt phrase for the nastiness that can so infect and spread among people, not just those who act out in horrible ways, not just in those who make the news, but in people just like us.

James, no not just for politics and the world out there. It’s not that easy. Only a few weeks ago I was standing at a site in Northern Israel, in the Golan Heights, not far from Lebanon and Syria. It is the site that tradition names as Caesarea Philippi; that location described in the gospels where Jesus asked the disciples “who do people say that the Son of Man is?” and “Who do you say that I am?’ There are also springs there coming out of Mt. Hermon that flow into the Jordan River and there is archeological evidence of pagan worship. It’s a multi-faith site and on the day we were there it was very crowded with Christians, and Jews, and Muslims. There was a group of big strapping in shape college kids from the U.S. traveling with the Fellowship of Christian athletes. There were several groups of Jewish college kids from the U.S. traveling with Israel’s birthright program. A few groups of Muslim families were picnicking along the water.

As I was waited my turn next to some steps that led up to one of the informational signs in front of some ruins, another college group from the U.S. was walking by. A few young men from that group stopped right next to me, sort of fell out of line from their group and they were arguing. I mean they were really arguing. It was about something their trip leader had said just moments before as he taught from scripture. It had to do with the gospels and the Apostle Paul and the inerrancy of scripture. One of the guys was really revved up and they were going at it for all to hear. I took my turn in front of the sign, worked my way around to a dozen more or so around the site and when I came back to those same steps, they were still there arguing in full voice about scripture.

It was not lost, the irony. Those college kids may never get back there again, there in front of God and Christians and Jews and Muslims, at the site where Jesus asked the disciples “Who do you say that I am”, all those guys could do was argue. You would be happy to know, as my kids are always happy to know, I didn’t say anything. Though, in hindsight, maybe I could have said, “guys, guys…James.” James for the church. Quick to listen. Slow to speak. Slow to anger. For your anger does not produce the righteousness of God.

“Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act – they will be blessed in their doing.”

James for dropping a child off at college. James for starting life together on a campus. James for a new school year. Doers of the word. Not forgetting. Persevering. Blessed in the doing. It sort of sounds like a version of parent launching a child and saying, “Remember who you are.” Or the saintly grandmother rocking a child and whispering “now you, you never forget where you belong.” Or the preacher standing before her congregation week after week just before giving the benediction, “Remember who you are, whose you are, and to whom you belong.” Not a hearer who forgets but a doer who acts.

It won’t be a surprise to you but in my job I don’t travel all that much. When I do travel I often find myself thinking about the challenges and for those who travel all the time. Yes, I watch with envy as everyone else gets on the plane and I am in group 72. But then I remind myself how wearing it all must be, all the travel. Part of the misery, part of it that I never hear any one talk about is the tyranny and oppression and insult of the hotel room mirrors. They are big and they are everywhere. No one has mirrors like that at home because it is like looking at yourself first thing in the morning on a high definition screen. Those mirrors scrape at your confidence and sense of self, bit by bit. If it is only you and a mirror, maybe its better to forget!

When it comes to being a faithful doer of the word, if left to yourself, I’m not sure a mirror and the law of liberty is enough. Any confidence in doing, in living the faith, it so easy droops and sags and dries up. Philosophers write about how you can’t really have a sense of self without a sense of the other. You can see a part of me that I cannot see. My sense of self is not fully complete and you help me to see all of me and I help you to see all of you. One philosopher calls it “the surplus of seeing”. The “whole of me” requires a surplus of seeing. In other words, a mirror is not enough. Or in terms of the life of faith, for doers of the word, a mirror and a bible is not enough. There has to be this surplus of seeing, there has to be others. Doers of the word, it requires that sense of others. That’s why doers of the word go to church. Not because their all that religious but because it is a way to see., to more fully see, to better know your whole self as child of God. The congregation, the community, the body of Christ is the mirror. Or as Tara Woodard Lehman put it in an essay on the Huffington Post, “I go to church because I have a really bad memory…I forget who I am and who God is.” By the grace of God, we’re not called to look in the mirror by ourselves.

One of the occupational hazards of ministry is that when you meet people anytime, anywhere, there is an almost compulsive need to share all that they think is wrong with religion, with the church, with the congregation they just left, with clergy. Folks forget that their aren’t many who understand the underbelly of church life better than pastors. Instead of just listening and nodding my head, maybe next time I ought to pull out a mirror. The people of God will always need prophets, saints, and martyrs who teach, challenge, and lead us. Those names recorded in scripture and in history. But along this journey of faith to which we have been called, when I look in the mirror, when my sense of self is complete with a surplus of seeing, what I see around me in the reflection is a sea of faces whose names are known only to me, and some of them to you, the faces of those who have been and are and will be blessed in their…doing.

“If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

Oh, yes. No sermon required.

© 2015, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
Contact the church to obtain reprint permission.

Luke 9:10-13a
Rev. Dr. Robert Dykstra
July 19, 2015

“To be ashamed of oneself is to be in a state of total conviction,” writes British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips (Equals, New York: Basic Books, 2002, p. 94). While religious communities often press their members for states of greater conviction, the experience of achieving total conviction in shame might give us pause in this.

The conviction in shame involves the total self, even one’s body self; it floods the self, raises one’s blood pressure, flushes the skin, makes us want to avert our eyes, hide our face, sink into the floor, imprisoned in humiliation and self-loathing. Total conviction may not be all it’s cracked up to be, not exactly a goal the religiously predisposed may want to pursue. We get a little nervous, and rightly so, when we see someone acting out of total conviction, religious or otherwise, in the news these days, and more often than not, I’m pretty sure, such acting out stems from an accumulation of personal or communal shame.

Perhaps we religious types, inclined to states of greater conviction, are more susceptible to shame than others, but everyone knows shame, everyone has felt it. Your earliest memories of childhood are ones likely infused with shame (Note to self: Why wouldn’t my kindergarten teacher allow me to choose the color of finger paint I preferred? I still don’t get it). Shame is sticky that way. It’s hard to peel it off once you get wrapped up in it. Effective shame-removal products or strategies are hard to come by, few and far between, though we keep searching them out: whether by losing ourselves in shopping, in electronic screens, in addictions of every flavor, maybe in writing sermons, even running for President in Donald Trump’s case – all of these incapable of ridding us of shame’s dreadful effects.

The experience of shame threatens our sense of hope for the future, my colleague Donald Capps suggests, threatens our sense that the future holds something worth looking forward to. Shame experiences always come unexpected; they surprise us, catch us off-guard and make painfully clear, Capps observes, “that what [we] wanted [to happen] did not happen, in spite of the fact that [we] fully expected [it] to.” Thus in shame we discover that not just our hopes but that we ourselves were misguided, “that we have been,” Capps says, “the victims of self-illusion” (Donald Capps, Agents of Hope: A Pastoral Psychology, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995, p. 123). Shame is the devastating conviction that our hopes were in vain, our expectations, our very selves deluded and untrustworthy.

Someone ran into our car while it was parked on the seminary campus last week. When I mentioned to the guy at the repair shop that whoever did it hadn’t left a note, he replied, “No one ever leaves a note anymore.” I felt a minor twinge of shame, I think it was, that I didn’t know this, that my expectations, my hopes for the world (or, at least, for the seminary community) were deluded. While sometimes the total conviction of shame washes over us in a big way, in a tsunami-like wave, as for the entire nation in the September 11 attacks, even little micro-threats to hope–learning that people don’t leave notes anymore–can add up over time.

And increasing doubts about a hoped-for future translate into increasing anxiety–less future means more anxiety–another familiar state of total conviction.

*******

All kinds of people, apparently thousands of them in our text today, a set-up for the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, are flocking to Jesus–and “flocking” may be the best way to put it, given that we are told in the Gospel of Mark’s version of these events that Jesus had compassion on seeing them “because they were like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34). An accumulation over time of little microbot attacks of personal shame, maybe accompanied by tsunami-like waves of national shame at being an occupied territory, diminishing hopes, their anxiety about the future, and ways these experiences of mind and soul had come negatively to impact the health even of their physical bodies: something like all of this propels them by the thousands to Jesus, as though they sense in him some alternative means of freeing themselves from the stickiness of shame and anxiety, from their states of total conviction.

  *******

In his book Why Teach? In Defense of a Real Education, Mark Edmundson, a literature professor at the University of Virginia, comments on the frenetic activities of his undergraduate students, who jet around the globe to accumulate exotic experiences, a lifestyle pace he attributes to anxiety in the wake of the “near-American Apocalypse” of September 11. “No one,” he says, believes that the whole [American] edifice is likely to topple down around us soon. But everyone now lives with the knowledge that today, tomorrow, next week, we can suffer an event that will change everything drastically . . . . Tomorrow the deck may be shuffled and recut by the devil’s hand. So what shall we do now?

The answer of Edmundson’s students, it strikes him, appears to be: Live, live, before the bombs go off in San Francisco or the water goes vile in New York . . . . On that bad day there will be, at the very least, the start of a comprehensive closing down. There will be no more free travel, no more easy money, and much less loose talk. . . . There’s a humane hunger to my students’ hustle for more life–but I think it’s possible that down below bubbles a fear. Do it now, for later may be too late. (Edmundson, Why Teach? In Defense of a Real Education, New York: Bloomsbury, 2013, pp. 34-35)

The Times reported a few weeks ago that university counseling centers are seeing sharp increases in the number of students seeking help–a 15% rise last year at the University of Central Florida, as one example, where supply closets are being converted into therapist’s offices. “Anxiety has surpassed depression as the most common mental health diagnosis among college students,” The Times notes, though depression is holding its own just fine (Jan Hoffman, “Anxious Students Strain College Mental Health Centers,” New York Times, May 27, 2015). These developments are mirrored by students in the seminary across the street, as no doubt at the schoolhouse in this church’s back lot. Who says young people today are incapable of conviction? And it’s not as if they and the rest of us don’t have reason to be anxious. They do, and we are. No one, besides the occasional terrorist, leaves a note anymore.

 *******

 Jesus had compassion for them, these anxious throngs, Mark writes, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus welcomed them, is the way Luke puts it, even though Jesus had hoped for a time to get away from it all, to get away from those very crowds. “On their return [from the mission of the twelve] the apostles told Jesus all they had done. He took them with him and withdrew privately to a city called Bethsaida. When the crowds found out about it, they followed him; and he welcomed them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured.”

Jesus’ disciples have just been promoted here to “apostles,” meaning “the sent ones,” on returning from their first solo mission trip, which appears to have gone very well. They’re excited, eager to tell him all about it, the youth group just back from Montreat, from backpacking in British Columbia. And Jesus wants to hear about it. He is the kind of leader who cares to hear about what they’ve seen and accomplished, who wants to listen to them, who takes pride in them and their gifts.

To do this, to give them and their holy exploits full attention, he proposes to take them on a retreat, wants to get away. Like men in a bar after the big game or like superhero fans at Comic-Con, he wants to hear all about it, wants a play-by-play, a blow-by-blow, a frame-by-frame, wants to know how it all went down. A small act of kindness, a teacher who pulls them aside, who gives them space, who attends with interest, who wants to know.

But you remember that saying about our best-laid plans? The retreat comes crashing to a halt even before it begins when the crowds get wind of it and rush to get there before him, these sheep without a shepherd, so great their weariness and need. Jesus responds to this interruption not in the way I would likely respond, not by rolling his eyes but by rolling up his sleeves, not by wondering why a guy can’t catch a break but instead by digging down deep and catching a second wind.

“He had compassion for them,” Mark writes; “He welcomed them,” Luke says, “and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured,” the exact same things, it’s worth pointing out, that he instructed his disciples to do as he sent them on the mission of the twelve: welcoming the anxious, speaking of the kingdom of God, healing those who need to be cured is what he wanted his followers to do, too. And on their return they couldn’t wait to tell him that they actually did, that they actually could.

This compassion, this welcome, this empathy, this grace when we least expect it, is the only remedy of which I’m aware for our states of total conviction, for our hopelessness, anxiety, and shame: a face that shines upon us in our moment of vulnerability and need.

It’s something that can be taught, something that can be learned. Jesus wants to teach us how.

******* 

Two days after the murders of nine parishioners at a Bible study at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston last month, family members of the victims lined up in a courtroom to confront the man who killed their loved ones. Again and again in this instance the message they delivered to Dylann Roof was the completely unexpected “Forgive You”: “‘You took something very precious away from me,’ said Nadine Collier, daughter of 70-year-old Ethel Lance, her voice rising in anguish. ‘I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul’” (Nikita Stewart and Richard Pérez-Peña, “In Charleston, Raw Emotion at Hearing Suspect in Church Shooting,” New York Times, June 19, 2015). Over and over again compassion and welcome when least expected, and we who were watching in awe and disbelief wondered if the world was about to turn.

Then just two days after that, on a Sunday when I expected that church’s doors to be bolted shut, maybe forever (“They may have to tear down the church,” I’d thought, “like Newtown’s elementary school, and we would understand if they did”), Emmanuel’s faithful instead flung them wide and poured through by the hundreds, nearly two thousand, filling every pew, overflowing even into the basement room where the shootings occurred four days before, and into the public square, with the rest of us watching those faithful dig down deep to discover a second wind of compassion and welcome as the only possible antidote for our terrible states of total conviction. And the world was about to turn.

*******

In an essay entitled “The Importance of Individuals,” published in 1897, William James (James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosphy, New York: Dover Publications, 1956, p. 261), America’s first and arguably still greatest psychologist, makes a case for the importance of our having heroes whom we strive to emulate, but also therefore for the necessity of choosing wisely just who our heroes will be. It matters, it makes a concrete difference in terms of what we value and how we order our lives, what heroes we choose. He writes, “What animal, domestic or wild, will call it a matter of no moment that scarce a word of sympathy with brutes should have survived from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth?”

I understand all too well how naive it seems to suggest, as I am trying to suggest, that compassion and welcome could ever suffice in response to the devastating shame and increasing anxiety we experience in this era of near-American apocalypse. How could empathy and grace ever be enough to counter our terrible states, our terrorist states, of total conviction?

But if our hero is Jesus of Nazareth, of whom “scarce a word of sympathy with brutes should have survived,” if Jesus is Lord, then compassion and welcome is our secret superhero power, then empathy and grace the remedy entrusted to us.

*******

A former seminary student of mine is the son of a tall-steeple Baptist minister from a southern state. The student was open about being a gay man on our campus at a time not long ago when such candor was not common. He had come out to his conservative parents as a teenager many years earlier. Learning of his sexual orientation was not something they had wanted to hear from him. In the initial aftermath of his revelation, both sides maintained radio silence concerning his sexuality. Eventually, however, Tim decided to make a point of bringing up his orientation, to his parents’ discomfort, each time he went home for holidays or school breaks. He refused to allow them to ignore this important part of who he was.

His parents remained entrenched in their opposition long past his graduation from the seminary and for years into his first professional position as a non-ordained but openly gay youth minister in a working-class Presbyterian congregation, itself not entirely supportive of gay rights, in urban New England. Meanwhile, he began the process of preparing for a day when he might be allowed to be ordained as an “out” gay minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

That day finally arrived, as Presbyterians voted in 2012 to allow for the ordination of gay and lesbian persons. Tim asked his minister father not only to attend his ordination but, if he were willing, to offer the customary scriptural “charge” to the newly ordained minister. To his surprise, his father agreed. Likewise, though such an ordination strained the belief system of the little congregation with which Tim had been working, parishioners nonetheless rallied in their historic role and witness in hosting the ceremony.

A year or so after the fact, I received an email from Tim telling of his ordination service. He said, “My father gave the charge, which was truly an amazing moment. For me, it would have been enough if he had simply read the phone book, but he gave a beautiful charge and thanked the church for ‘being there for our son when our family was not.’ Not an accolade the [Presbyterian] church often receives,” Tim said, “but there were a lot of tears” (personal correspondence, May 6, 2013; see Robert C. Dykstra, “Zombie Alleluias: Learning to Live in the Space Between Worlds,” Pastoral Psychology, 63:5/6, December 2014, pp. 611-624).

Compassion and welcome when we least expect it, the only sure remedy for our anxiety and shame, and the world is about to turn.

*******

When Jesus saw the crowds, “he welcomed them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured.” That’s it. That’s all. That’s enough. That’s who Jesus is. That’s what he does. That’s what he taught his disciples to do, what I’m wagering he wants us to do. A face to shine upon us, we sheep without a shepherd; our faces to shine upon others’, our modest superpower antidote for anxiety and shame.

© 2015, Property of Rev. Dr. Robert Dykstra
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March 15, 2015
Mark 6:35-44

Youth Preachers: Alex Martin, Lily Olsen, Nikhil Pulimood

 

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© 2015, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
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Romans 8:12-17
Dr. Mark Edwards
May 31, 2015

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I John 5:1-6
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis
May 10, 2015

             Part of one’s education, at any level really, is learning how to take notes. Some teachers ask students to turn in their notes as a way to both monitor a student’s diligence and provide some coaching about how to be efficient and effective in the art of taking notes. I had some good teachers early on and I became a pretty good note taker in high school. So much so that many friends and classmates started asking to see my notes. Now, in a moment of confession and acknowledging my less than Christian behavior, I will tell you that my awful handwriting today is a result of intentionally making my handwriting unintelligible so folks would stop asking to see my notes!

So I’m a pretty good note taker. But everyone now then one comes upon a teacher, a professor, a lecturer whose style, organization, presentation, and communication of content makes note taking really difficult; almost impossible. There were one or two back in the 80’s at Princeton Seminary but its too risky for me to name names. I will tell you, however, that the most difficult professor to annotate in college was Robert Coles. He was a professor of psychiatry teaching an undergraduate course entitled “The Literature of Christian Reflection.” We read some incredible stuff: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day, Simone Weil, Flannery O,Conner. Professor Coles would come into the lecture hall all rumpled wearing a sweater with holes in the elbows and just start to talk about the reading, the author, the context. Eventually, as a listener, you put your pen down, sit back and take it all in. Not because the lectures weren’t helpful. They were actually remarkable and memorable. Rather than taking notes and dissecting point by point, you had to sort of live into the moment and hang on to, file away, a takeaway or two. Some of those takeaways, I still carry 35 years later. Robert Coles and “The Literature of Christian Reflection.”

When you get into the heart of the Epistle of I John, you sort have to put your pen down, stop taking notes, lean back, and look for the takeaways. Unlike the linear, rhetorical argument style of the Apostle Paul, I John, it’s less an argument to follow and more of a sermon to take in. Lots of repetition, layers of meaning, circling back again and again to theme. I John, it comes with the sense that it is more pleasing to listen to than to read. It’s just hard to diagram it all. Just here in the few verses of the fifth chapter that I offered for your hearing; belief in Jesus Christ, born of God, love of God, love the parent love the child, obeying God’s commandments, conquering the world, victory over the world, believing Jesus is the Son of God, Jesus Christ made known in water and the blood. The Spirt is truth. Amid the swirl of familiar terms and themes, the reader tries to follow the thread, jot down the notes, connect the dots, keep up with the preacher, all the while wanting to interrupt the unrelenting pace of the material with a clarifying, even halting question. “Excuse me!”

Take “conquering and victory” for instance. “Conquering and victory” here in I John. You remember Paul uses the term “conquerors”. The memorable concluding verses to Romans 8: “In all things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” More than conquerors. And victory. There’s victory all through the scripture in the narratives of the Old Testament. But also in Psalm 98: “O sing to the Lord a new song, for the Lord has done marvelous things. God’s right hand and God’s holy arm have gotten him victory. The Lord has made known his victory….All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.” And again with the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 15. You won’t forget Paul on victory: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where O death is your victory? Where O death is your sting? The sting of death is sin, the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! Victory. Conquering. In the witness of scripture “conquering and victory” belongs to God and the work of Jesus Christ.

So when the preacher in I John drops some victory language in the sermon, the listener knows what to expect. “And this is the victory that conquers the world” Yes, preacher, bring it on. Here we go! “This is the victory that conquers… that conquers the world….our faith. This is the victory that conquers the world, our faith” Woe, woe, woe! And all the pens in the room drop, and the hands go up? Excuse me? Our faith. Our faith conquers the world? My faith conquers the world? That’s not where I thought you were going? Because if it is up to my faith, our faith, the world is going to win every time. And by the way, I John preacher, have you looked around lately?

A sharp pencil approach, it doesn’t work so well with I John. Sit back and listen for the takeaway. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey God’s commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey God’s commandments. And God’s commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes Jesus is the Son of God? This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth.”

How about this takeaway: The Spirit is at work in those claimed by the saving grace of Jesus Christ calling us to a life of faithfulness and commitment best defined by love. That love has been revealed to us first and foremost in the life, suffering, and death of Jesus. When the followers of Jesus live in obedience, ordained by the water of his baptism and forever drawn to the blood of his selfless love, God’s love works to overcome the world. How about this takeway? The victory of our obedience furthers the work of God’s love in the world. Not just a takeaway but a promise from God about God’s love works.

This week I was in Atlanta with a peer group of pastors I meet with regularly. We went to the Civil Rights Museum one morning with what seemed like every third grader in the metro Atlanta area. Walking through the history of civil rights in this spring of 2015 surrounded by crowds of elementary school students of all races, talk about living into the moment? At one point several of us were standing in front of the surround sound film clips of “The March on Washington”. You couldn’t miss the faith leaders there in the front alongside Dr. King. And of course at one point the film showed the crowd, with interlocking arms, all singing. The volume on the presentation turned up at that point. I looked around at my colleagues, four or five of us standing with all these kids who came up to our waist. The pastors, we were all singing along. Some of the kids, they heard us and were looking up and giggling at us. My faith leader colleagues, they couldn’t take their eyes off the march. The kids didn’t know what do think of us, but we kept singing along with those in the film. You know what we were singing….”We Shall Overcome”. “Whoever is born of God overcomes the world.” I John.

Many of the children were moving through the museum with clipboards and an assignment page. You know how it works. They were assigned particular people to find in the various exhibits. At one point as I stood before a wall of leaders, pictures, dates, and names, a little girl stood next to me looking way up at this mountain of people. “Can I help you find someone?” “Yes” she said. “I’m looking for Ruby Bridges.” Well, the first person to tell me about Ruby Bridges was Robert Coles in my freshman year of college in a course entitled “The Literature of Christian Reflection.” I leaned over to give a hint, “let’s look for the picture of a girl who was even younger than you.” Ruby Bridges was the first African American girl to integrate a school in New Orleans in 1960. She was in kindergarten and had to be escorted by her mother and law enforcement officers every day to school.

One of those days her teacher, Mrs. Henry, thought she saw Ruby talking to the crowds along the sidewalk who were shouting mean and horrible things to her. The teacher asked Ruby about it. “I wasn’t talking to them, Mrs. Henry. I was praying for them. Usually I prayed in the car on the way to school, but that day I’d forgotten until I was in the crowd. Please be with me, I’d asked God, and be with those people too. Forgive them because they don’t know what they’re doing.” The 3^rd grader and I, we found Ruby Bridges on the wall in Atlanta on Monday. When she read about her, she was reading about one little girl’s faith overcoming the world.

Later that night one of our colleagues told of remarkable conversation with a church member last week, The member is pretty sick and has been battling for a long time. During the conversation, the member told the pastor about difficult but important conversations with children and grandchildren. The member said “I wouldn’t be able to have those conversation if it hadn’t been for your visit to me the last time I was in the hospital.” The pastor wasn’t following and didn’t know what the member meant. “When you prayed with me that day, something happened. A peace came over me like I have never felt. God’s love poured out on me. Your prayer. It made me a believer. My faith was like it was brand new. My life changed right then and I am no longer afraid.”

Overcoming the world. It takes all shapes and sizes. And it happens all the time.

That’s how God’s love works. That’s God’s promise.

© 2015, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
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