January 29, 2006

Deuteronomy 18: 15-20 + 1 Corinthians 7:32-35 + Mark 1:21-28

There is grave risk here. There is already evidence of it.

An assembly that stands, sits, or kneels in silence while a few others lift their voices in song reveals the hold that this risk has in this place.

It is odd that spoken words are louder here than words sung.

These are not lullabies we sing to induce sleep.

These are victory songs of praise and shouts of thanksgiving.

It is strange that somehow many pull back in silence

leaving a few to timidly pick up the prayer we sing.

This is the risk.

If there is an attitude that promotes watching,

then it is going to be an issue with this gospel today as well.

Imagine the scene it presents, and wonder where you fit into it.

There are three positions with which to enter this Gospel:

as Jesus

as one possessed

or as a member of the crowd, the spectators, who just stood around in curiosity with little faith that would allow them to know who was in their midst.

The Church, God, and this whole world for that matter

have little need for any spectators.

We were not called into life by a creator/God to stand around and look.

This life is not a game that finds us in the stands watching, cheering, and applauding winners and losers.

Those of us who have not hardened our hearts

must hear the voice of God in this sacred text spoken to us,

not as though we overheard it said to someone else at another time.

And so, the third option of standing in this story as part of the crowd

is not an option.

Now this is the first miracle in the gospel of Mark,

and it is not about power, it is about identity and relationship.

All authority comes from one’s relationship with God, and that is what will unfold in the later verses of this Gospel,

the mystery of the relationship between Jesus and the Father.

The more Jesus asks, looks, sounds, and is identified with God,

the more authority he has.

He has given us that authority, that relationship; and so it is possible to stand in this story in the place of Jesus

and consider just how it is we respond to evil, and what we do in the face of it.

Stand and watch?

Look the other way?

Call for someone to DO something?

I would propose to you this weekend that Mark is suggesting that people of faith

who recognize who Jesus is and have entered into a relationship with him can do something about evil.

Yet, what about the other position in the story…….

If pressed, many of us could name our personal demons.

We are all possessed in some way.

Yet, it is easier to see ourselves as part of the crowd,

but again, I proposed that this is not an option.

If we can sit with this gospel and acknowledge our demons,

Jesus will say again: “Come out!”

“Come out, all those life destroying habits.

“Come out, all wishful thinking of “If I only had… or “I should have….”

“Come out, short temper and impatience.

“Come out, all you worries about the future or things you cannot change.

“Come out, the drive to keep up with those who seem to have more than me.

“Come out, everything that keeps me from being myself.”

The man in this story has no name, because he is us.

He is one of many, nothing unusual.

Pay attention to how Jesus reacts – both for the sake of courage and for the sake of instruction on how to behave in the face of evil.

He is not shocked nor frightened nor appalled.

He does not turn away in disgust nor throw up his hands in resignation.

He does not judge the man nor condemn him, no name calling here.

To those of us willing to face our demons, this is hopeful.

Jesus faces the darkest side of any human being,

knowing that this is not the true self of that person,

and that the dark side need not control.

There is good news here for us, and a lesson on how to live with authority;

but it is wasted on spectators.

January 8, 2006

Isaiah 60:1-6 + Ephesians 3:203,5-6 + Matthew 2;1-12

It struck me early this week that this Gospel story and the one we shall proclaim next week from John raise a question we have all asked in our lives more often than just once.

Next week, Jesus will turn toward some people who are following him.

He will look at them and ask the question:

“What are you looking for?”

It is a question Matthew raises too with these travelers who are so far from home.

What could they have been looking for?

What are any of us looking for?

I would suggest that getting to that question and its answer

is what shapes most of our lives.

Those “wise men” of Matthew’s Gospel

may have been wise about politics, astrology, and travel,

but at the point in their lives when they made that journey,

they were not very wise about the ways of God.

They went looking, looking for a king,

so naturally they went to the palace

in the capital city, Jerusalem.

If they were looking for power, they found it.

If they were looking for corruption, they found it.

Lies, deceit, betrayal, intrigue – all the stuff that goes with power:

they found it all.

But perhaps once there,

they realized that this was not what they were looking for.

All that power, wealth, and influence did not really get them anywhere.

It certainly did not get them where they really needed to be with their gifts.

Herod did not need their gold, their incense, nor their myrrh.

So, they moved on to look elsewhere – to look in an unlikely place,

a nearly forgotten little place hardly the destination of anyone in the “fast lane.”

Had there been a tourist industry in those days,

I doubt that Bethlehem would have been thought of as the place to be seen.

I does not seem to have had much by way of accommodations at least!

But not until they realized that Jerusalem and all it stood for was not where they belonged, they journey, their quest would have continue.

What were they looking for?

They seem to have found it in Bethlehem,

because they left their gifts with someone helpless and want,

and they went home avoiding Jerusalem.

All of us looking for something in this life might ponder this story

a little more carefully with this thought.

What we are looking for and where look for it says a lot about us

and a lot about the purpose of our lives.

Where we look for peace;

where we look for love;

where we look for happiness,

even to the point of where we look for someone

with whom to spend the rest of our lives.

I just can’t imagine how we will find peace at the Pentegon or a battle field.

I don’t think we will find love in good looks, a good figure.

I don’t think we will find happiness in the Mall.

nor someone to love and cherish us all our days in a bar.

What you are looking for, asks Jesus to those who follow him.

We can learn a lot about that from these wise men.

January 1, 2006 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Numbers 6:22-27 + Galatians 4:4-7 + Luke 2:16-21

…….”they made known the message” and they returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told them.”

These words and this behavior described by Luke fail to capture our imaginations since CNN and FOX News have taken over the role announcing significant events. But at the time of Luke’s writing, great and news-worthy events were announced in public places and concluded with words of praise for the monarch, or God, or the official issuing the news. The task was an honorable one performed by great orators or celebrated poets. We have a fragment of that history in our national tradition of having a celebrated poet read at an Inauguration. People my age may well remember the stirring image of Robert Frost standing on the steps of the Capital at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. I was young then. Somehow I find myself not so sure the tradition has continued since then with such class; but perhaps my own memory or imagination has not been so powerfully stirred.

None the less, this is exactly what is going on here in Luke’s second chapter. He wants to capture our imagination by having these shepherds assume the honorable role of being the first to announce important news concluding, as always, with acknowledgment and praise for the source of the news. The point of course, is that it is Shepherds. Our cultural equivalent might be maids, janitors, or garbage workers: in other words, someone doing work that no one else wants to do. Or even perhaps prison inmates, since shepherds were often people who lived outside the law trespassing and poaching off the grass and water of others. By specifying that these were the first to see, report, and then glorify God for the birth of Jesus, Luke was, in dramatic effect, declaring that Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled: “The lowly shall have the good news proclaimed to them.”

This detail and implications of it are a problem for us, because we are anything but lowly and shepherd-like. The consequence is that we are left to be spectators and remove ourselves from this divine activity, since this news has little to offer us. We have very little need, and no one ought to call us poor in this country or in this city. For shepherd-like people this news comes with comfort and brings hope. For us, it brings challenge and questions and an opportunity to look again at ourselves and recognize the poverty of our lives in the midst of our riches.

When we assemble here with each other week after week, we cannot afford to stand back and look nor be comfortable as spectators in the divine work of salvation and redemption. The Gospel we proclaim in this place is not for entertainment which is why we do not produce pageants. It is the stirring, powerful, effective Word of God.

It speaks to us in our poverty.

It speaks to us in our helplessness.

It speaks to us in our fear and our sadness.

It speaks to people who cover their interior poverty with pretence and power.

It speaks to people who hide the pain of their loneliness with drugs and excesses of every kind.

It speaks to people whose shame burdens them with anger and resentment.

It speaks to people whose lack of forgiveness fills them with revenge.

It speaks to people whose own self doubt and fear leaves them intolerant and impatient.

We are impoverished.

We lack the gift of peace because we have too little lived faith.

We would rather trust in guns, power and force.

We lack the gift of Joy because we have too little hope.

So we fill our days with trivial stuff that breaks and wears out in a season.

We lack the gift of Trust because we do not keep our promises,

and we quit in the face of sacrifice.

We lack the gift of Love

because we think it’s about feeling good, looking good, and all about us.

Yet, once we see our poverty, the news from these shepherds is more than a nice story to tell at Christmas time.

It becomes an option for change, a hope for peace, a cause of Joy, a reason to trust, and the source of Love.

In her own poverty, helplessness, and fear, Mary heard many things said of her son and heard all of what he said. It never says she understood them.

It simply says she kept them in her heart and pondered them.

But by never dismissing them as impractical, impossible, or simply “theoretical”,

she remained full of grace, and in the end came to understand what she held and treasured and reflected on in her heart.

Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it. (Luke 11:28)