Resurrection: Imprisonment

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Acts 16:25-34. To see the testimony given, please visit our Youtube page and view the video.

There was a post on Facebook this week, which is the modern source for all good wisdom, but woman posted that she was driving behind someone who had a sign in their back window that said they were learning to drive a stick, and asked for patience in allowing them to make mistakes. For those who have driven a stick, you might remember how difficult it was to get right when you started. So, she said she was very patient in being stuck behind them, but them wondered if she would have been as patient if they sign hadn’t been there. The answer was for her, as it probably is for most of us, no. But, it reminded her that if everyone wore a sign saying what we are dealing with and asking for patience, that we would probably be more patient with everyone around us, and they with us as well. I have thought that same thing as I have been working through this series on resurrection stories as I hear, and you hear, the stories people have to tell, and remember that other people in the congregation, and in our lives are dealing with exactly the same thing, we just don’t know that’s happening. We all need to be a little more patient with each other.

But what we didn’t hear is that just before today’s passage, and what leads to Paul and Silas ending up in prison is actually a lack of patience on Paul’s part. As they enter the city of Philippi, a slave girl runs up and announces them as slaves of the most high God who proclaim the way of salvation. Now this slave girl is also a fortune teller, and apparently a pretty good one because we are told that she makes her owners lots of money. After following Paul and Silas around for a few days continuing to cry out who they were, we are told that Paul was very much annoyed, and turned to her and cast out the spirit that gave her the ability to tell fortunes. Now we might wonder why Paul was more concerned that she was possessed than that she was a possession, but that’s an issue for another day. But the girl’s owners get upset that she is now no longer able to make them money, and so bring Paul and Silas to the magistrates for disturbing the peace and trying to overturn Roman customs. The magistrates them have them flogged and thrown into prison, and the prison guard is ordered to keep them securely. Now I need three volunteers to help me for a moment. Two of you are going to be prison guards, and your job is to keep them secured, not to let them get out of prison… now who is imprisoned in this story? It turns out that you don’t need to be behind bars to be imprisoned, that we can live in prisons of our own creation, or creations that others would like to put us in. And so that is part of our story for today as we hear the stories of some being caught in prison….

Resurrection: Mental Illness

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Mark 5:1-20. To see the testimony given, please visit our Youtube page.

Last week in the parable of the prodigal son, the son goes off to a gentile area where he does his dissolute living, which means it’s a land of impurity, and just to emphasize this fact, we are told that he ends up tending to pigs, which is one of the ultimate humiliations for any Jew because it means that they will remain ceremonially or religiously unclean all the time. That plays an important role then in the son’s restoration into the father’s house. Today’s passage is also about ritual impurity, but more importantly about Jesus’ reaction to it. Jesus has crossed the sea of Galilee into gentile territory. On the way there, a storm strikes the sea and the disciples are terrified, but Jesus is sleeping through it, until they wake him up and Jesus calms the storm, which amazes everyone because not only is Jesus able to overcome the forces of nature, but more importantly water was seen as a sign of chaos, and so Jesus’ calming the storm is the first sign of what he is able to overcome. Just as the miracles of healing the woman with the issue of blood and raising Jairus’ daughter immediately after today’s miracle are also crucial for showing his power and dealing with things that were said to be unclean.

So, he goes to the area around the town of Gerasene where he immediately encounters the man known as the Gerasene demoniac. But, Mark also wants us to be very clear about this man in relation to rules of Judaism. So, he is in a gentile land, unclean, he lives among the tombs, which is pointed out three different times, unclean, and he lives near pigs, unclean. But, the man is not only surrounded by uncleanness, he is also said to be possessed by demons, which means he is “utterly and completely alienated by God.” Everything tells us that this is not the person anyone who is religious is going to come near, nor can he approach God. He is as far from God as you can possibly get. He is also separated from society itself, which is why he lives not in the town, but in the graveyard outside of town. The best modern analogy is that the man is like a homeless man we might encounter who is walking down the street ranting and raving, perhaps not even saying words that make any sense, the man who makes us want to cross the street, or maybe even go to another street because we’re not sure what to do and we’re not sure what he will do. And neither did the people because they had tried to contain him with chains, which was to keep him from hurting himself, as we are told that he is hurting himself, and so finally it seems they had just given up. There was nothing they could do to contain or control him. He is the one that no one wants to talk about, that we wish would just go away, and is clearly separated from God.

Resurrection: Adiction

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 15:11-24. To hear the testimony, please go to our Youtube page to see the video.

Today we begin a new sermon series entitled resurrections stories, looking for times in scripture in which people have been changed, but also hearing stories of resurrection from within our own congregation when possible, and so I thought it perhaps appropriate to begin with a story of resurrection of the son who was died but is now alive. The Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the most famous parables that Jesus told, and is one, like the Good Samaritan, that has even crossed over into the secular world as people talk about prodigal sons, or daughters. But the first thing we might look at is whether that is even an appropriate title as it seems to make the story about the younger son, rather than also being about the father or the older brother, whose side of the story we left out in our reading this morning. Not something we are going to answer today, but I invite you to think about that and what changing the title might mean as we interpret this story. But, what we do need to know is the context of what is happening when Jesus tells this parable. At the beginning of chapter 15, we are told “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus]. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” (15:1-2) so that tells us about whom Jesus is focusing on, and who the parables that follow are told to and about.  And then begins with the parables of the lost coin and the lost sheep, where the owners go out and seek to find the lost item and then celebrate for having recovered the one who was lost but is now found, and Jesus says so too is it for those in heaven who rejoice at the one who repents.

And then he begins the parable of the prodigal son, and we know something is wrong right from the start because of the demand made by the younger son, which is to receive his part of his inheritance. What he is basically saying to his father with this request is “I wish you were dead.” It’s clear that this request is not only unusual, but also disrespectful. In fact, a literal translation is of the father’s response is that he divided his life between them. This is the first of many broken relationships that are represented in this story. But for whatever reason, the father gives into his son’s demands, and the son takes what he receives, cashes it all in and then goes off to another land, a gentile land as it turns out, and squanders his money in dissolute living. It’s not clear what this means here, and perhaps it’s intentionally vague. Later, we will hear from the older brother who objects to his father treating his brother so well, that he has squandered the money on prostitutes, although its not clear how the brother would know this information. But the Greek word used here for dissolute living, is used three other times in the New Testament. One time it is related to drunkenness, the second is to rebelliousness and the third is to debauchery, which is a great word because it sounds dirty but you’re not really sure what’s going on. But whatever it is the son is doing, it’s not good, and he wastes all his money at it, and then a famine strikes the land, which only makes his situation worse. To try and survive, the son then finds himself having to work with pigs, which, according to Jewish laws, is an abomination in the eyes of God, although for some reason when Christians talk about abominations this one is left off the list. He is so hungry that he finds himself wanting to eat what the pigs are eating, and unlike his request to his father, no one will give him any assistance, but it reminds us that in dissolute living, we end up doing things that we never imagined we would do.

The Greatest Joke God Ever Told

Here is my sermon for Easter. The text was Mark 16:1-8a:

Three men died and are at the pearly gates of heaven. St. Peter tells them that they can enter the gates if they can answer one simple question. St. Peter asks the first man, "What is Easter?" He replies, "Oh, that's easy! It's the holiday in November when everyone gets together, eats turkey, and are thankful..." St. Peter shakes his head, and proceeds to ask the second man the same question, "What is Easter?"  The second one replies, "Easter is the holiday in December when we put up a nice tree, texchange presents, and celebrate the birth of Jesus." St. Peter looks at the second man, again shakes his head in disgust, and then peers over his glasses at the third man and asks, "What is Easter?" The third man smiles confidently and looks St. Peter in the eyes, "I know what Easter is. Easter is the Christian holiday that coincides with the Jewish celebration of Passover. Jesus was crucified on a cross and then buried in a nearby cave which was sealed off by a large boulder." St. Peter smiles broadly with delight.  Then the man continues, "Every year the boulder is moved aside so that Jesus can come out...and, if he sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter."

The account of Easter that we get in the gospel of Mark is rather brief. When we get to the end, we might think that someone is playing a trick, an April Fool’s joke on us, because we know there is supposed to be more, and we might even ask, “Hey what happened to the ending?” If you look in your Bibles, you will find two different endings after the passages we just heard, with a heading of either the shorter or longer ending. But our earliest and best manuscripts don’t actually have those endings. Instead they end with the women fleeing from the tomb in fear and not telling anyone. Those endings were added later because editors thought that there needed to be more, just as there is in the other gospels. I mean after all, the women did eventually tell someone, and we know that because we are sitting here this morning, and for the first time since 1956 celebrating Easter on April Fool’s Day.