Slinky Dog Leadership

 Here is my message from Sunday. The scripture was

Most of you are old enough, or perhaps I might say seasoned enough, to remember the Tylenol poisonings in 1982. Just a quick refresher, someone added cyanide to Tylenol pills in the Chicago area, which killed seven people. In the immediate aftermath there was much conversation about what to do. The FDA actually recommended to Johnson and Johnson that they only recall the pills in the Chicago area, and were opposed to a nationwide recall to try and keep the country from panicking. Members of the board wondered if perhaps it could be more targeted in order to keep the economic income down, and many predicted the end of Tylenol as a brand, and perhaps even the end of Johnson & Johnson. But instead of following that advice, the CEO, believing in the first line of their credo, “We believe our first responsibility is to the patients, doctors and nurses, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services.” And so, the CEO instead recalled Tylenol from around the country, as well as working with the media to issue emergency warnings, which then led to new safety standards for bottles, amongst other things. Their response is now studied for leadership principles in times of crisis.

I’ve been thinking about that example in this past week in comparing it against the way that Boeing has responded to their current crisis with the loss, basically, of a door during flight from one of their planes, on top of their crisis in losing two similar planes to crashes several years ago in which they tried to blame everyone but themselves. But this week the CEO of Boeing said that they supported the FAA’s decision to ground these models until they found out what went wrong. But, my thought was why did they need the FAA to take this action for them; why didn’t they ground the planes themselves and have the FAA agree with their decision? Leadership is hard, but sometimes we know the right decision and what to do, to be out front, even if we might have to pull others along with us, being proactive, which is what Johnson & Johnson did, versus being pushed to do the right thing, being reactive, which is what Boeing appears to be doing.

Temple Tossed

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Luke 2:41-52:

I remember one Christmas morning when I was young, although I don’t remember how old I was. We had just finished unwrapping our presents, but were still sitting at the base of our Christmas tree surrounded by the gifts and detritus that Christmas morning usually brings for small children, I turned to my mother and asked when Easter was.  My mother is here today and she can verify this.  The reason this question was important was because I knew the best part of Christmas was over. Having turkey was never my idea of a good time, and the next time when we would receive presents and candy was at Easter, and so I wanted to know how long I was going to have to wait.  Today’s scripture reading seems to be moving in that same direction that I was all those many years ago.  Today many people will take down their Christmas trees, guests will begin to go home, and Christmas music can no longer be heard on the radio. For many Christmas is still in the air and I’m sure that many of us will be going home for more Christmas leftovers.  After all, it was yesterday, and technically it’s only the second day of Christmas, but yet here we find ourselves reading and talking about a story not of Jesus as an infant, but instead as a young boy of 12.  Kids sure do grow up fast these days.

Now this might seem like a strange passage to read on the first Sunday after Christmas, and it is, although it is the assigned reading for today, but it’s also just a strange passage in general especially for Luke. That’s true first because this story makes no sense in relation to Luke’s birth narrative which precedes it.  After all, it is in Luke’s narrative that Mary is visited by an angel and told that the child she will carry is special, and Mary responds by giving us the magnificat, her beautiful poetic response.  It is in Luke’s gospel that John the Baptist, who has his own miraculous conception story, is a cousin of Jesus who leaps in his mother’s womb when his mother Elizabeth and Mary meet.  It is in Luke’s narrative that the shepherds are sent to Bethlehem by an angel and come to pay homage to the child in a manger, and we are told “Mary treasured all these things in her heart.”  And it is in Luke’s narrative that when Joseph and Mary present Jesus at the Temple shortly after his birth and make an offering for their first born son that Anna and Simeon both make claims about who Jesus is and what he means to Israel.  And yet if we just read today’s passage none of this seems to have taken place, or if it did then Mary and Joseph have totally forgotten about them after only twelve years, which seems very unlikely.  Mary even refers to Joseph as Jesus’ father. This story just simply doesn’t match up with what has come before it. 

Seed and Soil

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Mark 4:1-20:

In the synoptic gospels, which are Matthew, Mark and Luke, called that because they have the same synopses of Jesus’ life, there are around 30 parables. There are none found in John. And I say there are around 30, because there is great debate around what a parable is and isn’t. We tend to have a much narrower view of parables now than how they were understood in the first century, when they included not just the stories we are sort of familiar in thinking of being parables, but also included narratives, proverbs and other sayings or teachings that have a deeper religious significance then just a straightforward meaning. But, of the 30 or so parables, five to eight are found in Matthew, Mark and Luke, and while we might argue about significance, the parable we heard this morning, which has come to be known as the parable of the sower, might be the most important of those that we have multiple times. This is especially true for the gospel of Mark and for its understanding and overall story telling. 

Indeed, in her book, Sowing the Gospel, which can give you some indication of where this is going, New Testament scholar Mary Ann Tolbert says that the parable of the sower in particular, and matched with the parable of the wicked tenants found in chapter 12 of Mark, as well as also in Matthew and Luke, “present in concise, summary form the Gospel’s view of Jesus: He is the sower of the word and the heir of the vineyard. The first emphasizes his task and the second his identity; together they make up the gospel’s basic narrative.” (122) That is to say that these two parables orient us to not only what the gospel is about, and what Jesus’ message is about, but about how to identify the characters in the story and what is to be expected if we truly understand and follow Jesus’ message, although she argues that the Parable of the Sower is the more important of the two.

Don't Tell Anyone

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Mark 1:40-2:12:

In 1901 William Wrede, who was a German New Testament scholar, published a book which came to be known in English as The Messianic Secret. Although there was initial rejection of his theory, it later became prominent in Markan scholarship. What Wrede was trying to wrestle with in Mark was two problems: The first is that Jesus never claims that he is the messiah and the second is that Jesus has this strange habit in Mark of telling people not to tell others who he is, or what he is doing. Jesus does this with the disciples, with those he heals and others and with demons he encounters. And so what Wrede argued was that Mark created this story of Jesus hiding his identity by asking people to keep quiet about it in order to overcome the tension in the early church between their belief that Jesus was the messiah against Jesus never claiming he was the Messiah. And so he postulated the idea of the Messianic secret that Jesus knew he was the Messiah but didn’t say so in order to be able to do his work, and that the disciples knew it all along but didn’t say it until after the resurrection because Jesus told them not to. Now I think Wrede is correct about one thing, and that is that Mark probably made up Jesus telling everyone not to say anything, and before you freak out about that I’ll explain why in a moment, but he is wrong about the reason, and there is no messianic secret. And although Wrede’s theory has largely fallen out of favor, if you read commentaries you will still find people tying themselves into knots to try and explain why Jesus is trying to keep everything secret, and in my opinion not only don’t their ideas make any sense, they are missing the most obvious thing, and that’s about what Mark is trying to teach us about discipleship and the cost of discipleship and what proper discipleship looks like.

And so last week as we began this series on Mark, and we looked at the beginning verses I commented on the fact that we get an early example of the cost of discipleship demonstrated for us in John the Baptist. That Jesus’ ministry begins when John is arrested and that he will then later be executed by the state as well, just as Jesus does. And so we already can see what discipleship means before we even get into the story of Jesus. And then when Jesus does begin his ministry he too has a call to repentance, just as John did, although he does not yet talk about forgiveness, that comes in the passage we heard today, but he also says that the Kingdom of God has come near. And I said that Jesus will then begin to show what that Kingdom looks like, or what God’s will is for the world, and that begins with healing. Because the first healing story in today’s passage of the healing of the leper, which ends the first chapter, is actually the third healing story to take place in Mark. The first healing takes place in a synagogue where Jesus heals a man who we are told has an unclean spirit, that is he is possessed, but the demon knows who Jesus is, calling him “the Holy One of God.” and Jesus silences him and casts it out. They then make their way to the home of Simon Peter, where Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law, before he goes to a deserted place, remembering the importance of wilderness, which will come back in a moment, before then moving into the region of Galilee to preach and cast out demons, which is where he encounters the man with leprosy.

The Gospel

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Mark 1:1-14:

We get the English word gospel from the old English word gōdspel. Now spel means to report of to tell news, and so with the prefix it looks like it could mean to tell news about God. Except that the prefix actually isn’t god, but instead means good. And so gōdspel, just like gospel, means the good news, or proclaiming good news. And that is the message that starts the gospel of Mark, “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Now we could probably spend our whole time just unpacking that single line, but we’re not going to, except to say that the Greek word for good news there, is the word that the old English gōdspel was trying to capture and that is euangelion. In looking at that word, I’m sure you can see some antecedents of some English words, like evangelist and also angel, which is appropriate as those who bring good news. But it had broader meaning than that as well. It was the news that was brought, it was the person who brought the news and it was also the word used for a reward given to the person bringing the news. So we still have the expression don’t kill the messenger, which would sometimes happen, but the opposite of that was that a reward would be given to someone who brought good news. Same word. And so we have reference to this in several famous Greek works, including Homer and Plutarch and Cicero. And yet, it appears that Mark is doing something very different here with this word. Mark is saying is that this good news is not just about the message, but it’s about the messenger himself. That Jesus is not just the bringer of the good news, but the good news himself and that appears to be unique.

Now Paul, who is responsible for the earliest Christian writings that we have, had also used the term euangelion as good news, but he was primarily referencing to the death and resurrection of Jesus. And although Mark has been said to be a passion narrative with a long introduction, he appears to be the first to be making not just the connection that he is, but also possibly creating a new genre of literature, the gospel. There is lots of argument of whether that is what Mark is doing here, as he doesn’t actually call this work a gospel, and there is speculation of whether he was building off of other works already in existence that we no longer have access to. But, this is a different type of work than what we know existed at the time, such as the works about great men, thinking things like Plutarch’s Lives. Luke’s gospel is very similar to that type of work, but Mark is not. He is doing something different, and again that’s encapsulated in this opening line “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” 

Core Values: Growing Spiritually

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Mark 1:21-28 and Hebrews 5:11-6:4:

This week we had to submit our annual statistics to the annual conference, which includes reporting on our finances, but then also about worship attendance, and membership, and how many people are impacted by the ministries of the church, and baptisms and participation in Sunday school and other classes. That is they are asking me to report things that they can count to try and account for how we are making disciples. The problem is, none of the things we have to report really say anything about that ultimately. Because you could have a youth group of 50, but not have them coming into relationship with Jesus, and you could have a youth group of five that is making deep disciples. So which is better? Well off of straight statistics, the conference is going to be happier with the 50, than with the five, even though our goal is making disciples. Of course you could have the opposite as well, I am not saying that big is bad, but it’s a matter of what is actually happening in those groups, which is harder to define.

In 2004, Willow Creek Community Church, which is located outside of Chicago and is one of the largest churches in the country, did try and quantify their ability to make disciples and to deepen people in their spiritual journey. Willow Creek, which began in 1975, was one of the primary pushers of the idea of creating a seeker church to bring in unchurched people by removing all the things that people associated with being church. And so, in their own admission, they undertook this survey to really prove how successful they had been in fulfilling the great commission and making disciples of Christ. But, the survey showed the opposite. That while they were great at getting people through the door, they were not moving them past seeking into discipleship.

Mark: The Gospel Without An Ending

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Mark 16:1-8:

Have you ever been watching a movie and you get to the end, and then it just ends, there is not any conclusion, or there are loose strings left hanging out, and you’re like, wait, what? It can’t end like that. I need more, tell me what happens. That’s how some people have felt about the ending of the Gospel of Mark, because the gospel ends just as we heard it here. There is no resurrection appearance, there are no further stories as there are in Matthew, Luke and John. Our earliest and best manuscripts of Mark have the story ending with the line “and they ran away and told no one because they were scared.” That is the reason I have called Mark the gospel without a beginning, because it doesn’t give us a birth narrative of any form, and the gospel without an end, because it doesn’t end the way we think it should. Now, that led other later editors to add post-resurrection stories to Mark, as if it was incomplete, and it certainly seemed that way after the other gospels had been written. And so, if you are reading the Bible, at the end of verse 8 you will first come to a selection which is sub headed “the shorter ending of Mark” which is then followed immediately passages sub headed “The Longer ending of Mark.”

Those passages should also be found in brackets, with an accompanying footnote, which indicates that they are not considered original to the text, but that the translators are not removing them, simply letting us know of scriptural integrity issues. And in fact, we know from the writings of the church fathers back to the second century, that this was an issue, and some of our manuscripts even indicate that these passages originality are doubtful. But, the reason that they were added was because, in my opinion, they didn’t understand, the very nature of Mark’s gospel and so they thought it was lacking something. But when we understand what Mark is doing, and understand the story he tells, his ending is as brilliant as the rest of his gospel. But before we jump into that, we again need to take a step back to the other gospel passage we heard for today, which is the story of the transfiguration which is the traditional reading for this Sunday, which is the last Sunday before Lent. But more importantly for our purposes, it matches perfectly with the story I have been telling about Mark’s call to discipleship which concludes so well with Mark’s ending.

Mark: Little Apocalypse

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Mark 13:1-10, 12-13, 24-26, 32, 35-37:

If you are to email NASA with a scientific question, it is likely to be answered by Dr. David Morrison, who holds a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard, and that’s only important because I don’t think that Harvard gets enough attention for being a good school. But, according to Dr. Morrison, he spends a minimum of one hour every day answering people’s questions about the end of times, or at least the end of the world as we know it. We seem to be obsessed with this idea, but it’s not really anything new. We find similar things in the Hebrew scriptures, and the New Testament is full of discussion, as well as speculation within writings about when such things were going to happen. Clement, an early bishop of Rome, said the end would happen in the year 90. Hilary of Potiers said it would be in 365. His more famous student Martin of Tours said the year 400. The German emperor Otis III thought that an eclipse in 968 would be the harbinger, and Pope Innocent III said 1284. The Shakers said 1792, and Charles Wesley, the co-founder of Methodism preferred 1794, although he was already dead 6 years by that time. For Jehovah’s witnesses it was 1914, also1918, 1941 and 1975, to name just a few and for Hal Lindsey and Pat Robertson the end was coming in 1980, or 1982, 1985, 1988 and then 2007, and of course there have been many more failed predictions since then. And what do they all have in common? First, they were wrong, and second, according to Jesus, they never should have been making predictions at all, and in doing so were only serving as false prophet’s intent on leading people astray, and so we need to stop listening to such end of time mongers telling us they have insider knowledge, because Jesus says they are all wrong, and we’ll get back to that.

The selection of passages we heard from Mark today come from the 13^th chapter which is known as Mark’s Little Apocalypse. Now typically, when we hear the word apocalypse, we think it means talk about the end of the world, and so we talk about apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic movies, like Mad Max as an example. But the word itself has nothing to do with the end of times. instead it simply means an unveiling or revealing, so that some divine knowledge is being revealed. The apocalypse with which most of us are familiar, is of course the apocalypse of John, which is also known as Revelation, and is the only full-blown apocalypse we have in scripture. But we have other types of apocalyptic pieces found in the book of Daniel, which is the other best scriptural example, but also to be found in Joel and Isaiah and Amos and Zephaniah, who all talk about the end of time.

Mark: Pick Up Your Cross

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Mark 8:27-38:

Today marks the half way point in our series on the Gospel of Mark, and appropriately enough, today’s passage is also seen to represent the ½ way point in the gospel itself, and not just because Mark has 16 chapters, but more importantly because Peter’s confession, and what comes after marks a shift in emphasis for the entire story. The chapters leading up to this have been about the call to discipleship to prepare for what is to come, and then it shifts to be about the passion story, with the first passion prediction coming in the passage we just heard. It’s been said that Mark’s gospel is really a passion story, with a longer introduction, and if we look at the amount of time comprising the story, that is true because the three years of Jesus’ ministry are covered in ten chapters in Mark, and then the last week of Jesus’ life comprise the final eight chapters. So, the first chapters set up the passion story, just as the first three weeks have, hopefully established some groundwork for what is yet to come and the focus in Mark’s gospel on discipleship. And I know I keep saying that it’s about discipleship, and the cost of discipleship, and the fact that the disciples are set up as foils for what discipleship doesn’t look like, and yet I really haven’t proven that point yet, but today begins the start what where we will build on this theme over the next few weeks. But before we dig into that, we need to take a step back to what has happened immediately before Peter’s confession, because once again Mark has set us up for what to expect and how to interpret these stories by the stories that have come immediately before this passage.

The disciples have seen Jesus heal people, sometimes by casting out demons, and they have even seen him feed first five thousand and then four thousand people with only a few loaves and fish, and they have even received private instruction from Jesus, but they don’t get it. Immediately after the last feeding of the multitudes, Jesus warns the disciples to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, that is it only takes a little bit to corrupt the whole batch, but the disciples think he is talking to them about literal bread, and say they don’t have any bread, and Jesus does a palm plant and says “why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand?... Do you have eyes and fail to see? Do you have ears and fail to hear?... Do you not yet understand?” Then immediately after they encounter a blind man, and this is an unusual healing, first because we are not told that the man is made well because of his faith, or even the faith of those who brought him to Jesus, and secondly because this is a two-part healing. Jesus lays hands on him and then says, “Can you see anything?” and then man says, “I can see people, but they look like trees walking.” That is his seeing is not yet complete. Then Jesus lays hands on him again, and then we are told that the man sees everything clearly. They then made their way to Caesarea Philippi, an important change, which we’ll get to in a moment, and then Jesus asks the disciples the questions that will change the direction of the story. But how many questions does Jesus ask them? Two. First, he says, who do people say that I am? And they give him an answer. They don’t quite see clearly yet; their eyesight is not yet good. Then Jesus says, “But who do you say that I am?” and Peter says, presumably answering for all of them, “You are the messiah.”

Mark: Bearing and Giving Fruit

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Mark 12:1-12:

In 1^st century Palestine, everyone was connected to the soil in some way. While they might not be farmers themselves, more than likely they had family or friends who worked the soil, or perhaps they were the owners of the land. That is certainly not the case anymore, and so perhaps we might miss some of the understanding of the agricultural metaphors that are found throughout Jesus’ teachings, especially in the parables, but that are also found throughout scripture. Going all the way back to the second chapter of Genesis, in the second creation story, and yes there are two very different stories, we are told that “the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the East… out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.” That is God is a gardener. Later, the prophet Isaiah says that God, and this becomes important for today’s passage from Mark, had a vineyard on a very fertile hill, and God dug it and cleared it of stones and planted it with choice vines and built a watchtower in the midst of it. Now metaphorically we are supposed to know in Isaiah that the watchtower represents the Temple, and that the vineyard is Israel, and in this telling in Isaiah, this song of the vineyard is a judgment on Israel. Then, of course, we have a reworking of that story here in the Gospel of Mark, which is also told in Matthew and Luke, which has become known as the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, even though the word wicked is not every actually used in the parable.

Once again, a man, who we assign the role of God to, prepares a vineyard and does all the work to prepare it to make sure it brings about a bountiful harvest, then he leases out the land to tenants to work the fields. Some translations use the term vinedressers, instead of just tenants, indicating that this vineyard is not just being entrusted to anyone, but to people who are specialized in their fields. As we think about whom the judgment is made against, that, I think, can play an important role. But we have to remember that the tenants are not the ones who do all the work, much of the work, and the hardest work, has already been done for them. They are recipients of others work. Then the owner goes away. Now, one of the problems we sometimes have when looking at parables, or more probably allegories, and an allegory is where the characters in the story compare to people in reality, is to try and make them very literalistic. Jesus is not saying that God has left humanity to our own desires. Instead, Jesus is very deliberately setting this story up for the priests, scribes and elders whom Jesus is telling this story to, many of whom we know were absentee landlords. That is, they owned land that they did not toil on, but which produced money for them. They are the ones who send servants to collect their share of the harvest, and so in the way Jesus tells this story, the way he structures, it, Jesus flips the story around on them. They want to identify with the absentee landlord, and yet they also know that they are the tenants that Jesus is talking about.

Mark: Sowing the Seeds

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Mark 4:1-20:

Today we continue in our series in the Gospel of Mark by looking at what has become known as the Parable of the Sower, and what it says to us about us and about discipleship and the cost of discipleship. The parable is one of 8 parables that are found in all three of the synoptic gospels, that is Matthew, Mark and Luke, which compares to around 33 total parables found in those three. And I say around 33 because there are some arguments about whether some of the stories that some include as parables are actually parables or not. But, this is a significant parable, first because it is one that Jesus explains, or at least seeks to explain, and secondly because of the role it plays in telling the story of Jesus’ ministry. According to New Testament scholar Mary Ann Tolbert in her book Sowing the Gospels, which many consider one of the best books on the gospel of Mark, says of the Parable of the Sower and the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, which we will look at next week, that they “present in concise, summary form the Gospel’s view of Jesus: He is the sower of the word and the heir of the vineyard. The first emphasizes his task and the second his identity; together they make up the gospel’s basic narrative.” (122) That is to say that these two parables, although she argues that the Parable of the Sower is the more important of the two, orient us to not only what the gospel is about, and what Jesus’ message is about, but about how to identify the characters in the story and what is to be expected if we truly understand and follow Jesus’ message.

Now, what Jesus’ interpretation of this parable would seem to say is that he intentionally teaches in parables so that some people won’t understand anything about the teachings, but those who are in the know will know, and that as verse 34 later will tell us that Jesus explained everything in private to the disciples. Some of you, in having read some of the parables may agree with that in that you don’t understand what they are saying, although what I always say is that as soon as you think you have the parables figured out you need to go back and read them again because you’ve probably missed something. But that doesn’t match what we see in the actual teachings, because one of the things that we hear about in Mark about the disciples is that they didn’t understand either Jesus’ teachings or what they had just witnessed, because they just don’t get it, and as I said last week the disciples as used as foils for what true discipleship looks like, and so it turns out, counter to what we might expect as we think about the soil in this parable, the disciples, at least right now, are not the ones who yield an abundant harvest. But, although this translation says it’s a secret of the Kingdom that Jesus given to the disciples, an idea we’ll return too, a better translation is probably mystery, and can we ever truly ever understand a mystery? No, that’s why it’s a mystery. Additionally, where is the seed spread? Is it only spread on the good soil? No, it’s spread everywhere, and it doesn’t say that it’s different seed spread in different places. It’s all the same seed, so the efficacy of the growth has nothing to do with the sower or the seed, but with the soil, which is why some suggest that this shouldn’t be called the parable of the sower at all, but instead the parable of the soil.

Mark: The Baptism

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Mark 1:1-11:

Today we begin a new sermon series on the gospel Mark that will take us through the next six weeks, which is when Lent begins. We are doing this series for several reasons. The first is because in the lectionary, which are the recommended scripture readings for each Sunday of the year, it’s broken into 3 years, and the second year, which is what we are in now, uses Mark predominantly for the gospel reading. The second reason is that of the four gospels, Mark is my favorite, and we’ll get into the reasons for that, but I actually rarely preach from Mark. In the 4 ½ years here at Mesa View, I’ve had 9 messages from Mark, versus 49 and 44 messages from Matthew and Luke, respectively. I’ve preached a lot more from John than from Mark, and I’m not particularly a fan of John, and so for the next six weeks I, at least, get to indulge my interest in this gospel. But, I can add that Mark not being covered as much has historically been the tradition of the church, because it is much sparser than the other gospels, especially when compared to the other two synoptic gospels, which are Matthew and Luke, and these three are called synoptics because they have roughly the same synopses as each other, whereas John is just totally different in most ways. Additionally, Matthew and Luke have additional stories, such as the sermon on the mount, and others that have been popular within the tradition, and where they have the same stories Matthew and Luke tend to have fuller accounts than Mark does as well. That has led some to make a claim about Mark being too simple, and that he does not have the literary capabilities that the other gospel writers have, but that totally misses the absolute artistry that Mark displays when we pay attention to what he’s doing and let Mark tell his own story, rather than asking him to be like Matthew and Luke.

We have four gospels for a reason, and they all tell a different story, they have a different purpose for being. These days it’s harder to know that because we most often hear the gospels only in short sections, and rarely told against each other, and since they can sound the same, we think they are they same. So, let me just give one example to illustrate the point. Both Matthew and Luke give us the beatitudes, although Mark does not. In Luke we are told, “blessed are you who are poor, for yours in the Kingdom of God,” and Jesus preaches that message from a flat area, whereas in Matthew, as part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says “Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs in the Kingdom of God.” What is the difference between those? Matthew has spiritualized the message. It’s not about economic poverty, as it is for Luke, as well as being directly focused on the poor who are hearing the message, whereas Matthew is speaking about a generic group that’s out there. So, listen to what each gospel writer is telling and pay attention to their story, and for Mark, at the heart of his message is about the example and the cost of being a disciple. As we’ll see, in Mark’s gospel the disciples continually fail, they are sort of bumbling fools at times who never seem to get it, because they are being set up as foils against others, but more importantly against Christ as the ultimate example of discipleship and the cost of discipleship.

Songs of Thanksgiving

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 1:39-56:

If you were here last week for our incredible Christmas Cantata, for the scripture reading you also heard the passage known as the annunciation, in which Mary is told that she will give birth to a child and she is to name him Jesus. Additionally, we lit the third candle of Advent, the candle of joy. The other candles of Advent are purple, which represents royalty for Jesus, and the coming birth of the king, but also for repentance and suffering, which like Lent, are part of the season of Advent, although they are now greatly downplayed in importance. The pink of that third candle also comes from a Lenten practice, in which on the fourth Sunday of Lent, there was, and is, a pause from the theme of repentance surrounding Lent, and also the color purple, with a change to pink, or rose and it was a Sunday of rejoicing, a break from the penitential practices of the season. It is seen as a day of hope as we approach the darkness of holy week and then the celebration of Easter. Traditionally no one could be married during Lent, except on this day, it was a day of celebration. And so, when Advent came into being as a liturgical practice, it followed the time of Lent, and the third Sunday too was represented by pink, and the theme of joy, that no matter what is going on in our lives that we can have joy in the presence of God and in the expectation of the coming of Christ.

I think that idea is important as we think then about the stories of Elizabeth, whom we have been hearing about since the first Sunday of Advent with the announcement to Zechariah that she was to bear a son in her advanced age, and then with John the Baptist preparing the way for the coming of Jesus, and even in the annunciation, Mary is told that her cousin Elizabeth is with child. Now it’s not clear why Elizabeth plays such an important role at the beginning of Luke’s gospel, and he is the only one to mention her, and she disappears after the birth of John the Baptist. Perhaps it’s to emphasize that John is not as great as Jesus, after all he leaps in his mother’s womb in praise of Mary, not the other way around. And then, of course, John says that one who is greater than he is coming. Or perhaps Elizabeth is seen as playing the mothering role for the young Mary, as there is no mention at all of Mary’s family. But whatever the reason, Elizabeth clearly plays an important role in Mary’s life at this time, and her response to her pregnancy, and to Mary’s pregnancy, perhaps gives more indication to Mary of how she too should feel and approach the coming birth, as will then be seen in Mary’s song of praise, known as the Magnificat.

Know The Cost

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 14:25, 27-33:

Today we begin a new sermon series looking at John Wesley’s rules about money.  Wesley, who is the co-founder of the Methodist movement, put down some strong rules and expectations for those who chose to join the movement, including about simple economics, which we will hear more about over the course of the next four weeks. As people then began to live out those rules, they began to advance in economic possibilities and opportunities, moving out of the lower economic classes, and then Wesley faced an unexpected situation with members wanting to buy nice clothing and bigger houses and, heaven forbid, they even wanted to finance fancier churches. And so, Wesley responded in several ways, but one of them was in writing a sermon entitled “On the Use of Money”, of which we will also cover more, but in that sermon Wesley expounded on three rules when it comes to money which was first to gain all you can, which James Harnish, who wrote a book on this, changed to earn all you can, second was to save all you can, and then finally was to give all you can.

Now I know some of you are saying, O pastor John is talking about money, it must be stewardship time again, and the good news is that it is. But, this sermon series is not about how much you should give, as important as that is, but instead this is about your personal finances and making them better, or at least helping you understand them better, especially from a biblical perspective. Because the truth is, I could tell you that you need to be giving ten percent, or even 50 percent of your money, to the church and other causes, but if you don’t have even 1 percent to give because of other issues in your home economics, then it doesn’t matter what I say to you about what you should give because you can’t do it. But, if I can teach you some new skills, or maybe some new ways to think about our resources and how best to be a good steward of those resources then we enter a space where I can actually give you guidance about giving and how to invest your money for God’s Kingdom.

God's Call: Are You Serious?

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The texts were Mark 1:14-20 and Jonah 3:1-5, 10:

I like Jonah.  I like Jonah a lot, because Jonah is a lot like me, and I suspect that Jonah is a lot like some of you as well.  We really have two different call stories in the passages we heard this morning.  The first is the call story of the first disciples.  Jesus has heard that John the Baptist has just been arrested, which is the event which kicks off his ministry, and so he goes to Galilee and proclaims first a call for repentance, and then the reason, because the kingdom of God has come near.  And immediately, those are Mark’s words, a word he uses a lot in his gospel, Jesus goes to the Sea of Galilee and calls Peter and James and John and Simon to come and follow him, and they get up and go.  They leave their nets and their boats and their family behind, and they follow Jesus, immediately.  And then there is Jonah.

The passage we heard from Jonah is actually already in the middle of the story, that is why it says that the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time.  Now many of us are at least somewhat familiar with the story of Jonah, if for nothing else then being Jonah and the whale, although there is actually no whale in the story.  It’s a whale of a story, but there is no whale in the story.  But I want to remind us all of the Jonah story so that we can know what’s going on in the passage we heard and also to then compare and contrast it against the call story found in Mark.

Jonah is a prophet, and his story is found in the Hebrew Scriptures amongst the prophets, but the book is very different than other prophetic writings, because it isn’t a series of prophetic statements.  Instead it is a narrative about Jonah and his dealings with God, much more like what we are used to seeing in the Genesis stories, or in some of the later histories, like the stories found in kings or Samuel.  But Jonah is living in Israel when God calls him and tells him to go “at once” to Nineveh and cry out against their wickedness.  Now the city of Nineveh is said to be a great city, and a very large city, that it would take 3 days to walk across, which means that it’s about 60 miles in diameter.  Nineveh is also not a Jewish city as it’s located in modern day Iraq and is known as the city of Mosul.

Dropping Our Nets

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was Matthew 4:12-23:

Today we have a fish story to tell.  I’m sure that all of us have heard at least one fish story in our lives, and most of us have probably even told one or two ourselves, about the one that got away or about how big the fish, which the person hearing the story never saw, really was.  There’s a great scene in the movie Dave, in which Kevin Kline, who is pretending to be the president, has his arms in a machine which replicates his movements using enormous robot arms, and so he stretches his arms out and says “I once caught a fish this big,” and of course his fish story is amplified by the mechanical arms.  I wanted to show that clip this morning, but when I did a search for it on YouTube, I didn’t find it, although I did find out that there are apparently a lot of people named Dave who fish and have posted things on YouTube.

For some reason, fishing tends to bring out these stories, more than most other activities in which we engage.  That most famous of all authors, anonymous, once wrote “An answer to this question, is greatly what I wish; does fishing make men liars, or do only liars fish?”[1]  I’m going to be honest, I don’t like fishing.  No offense to those of you who do, but to me, fishing is about as exciting as watching paint dry.  But the Bible is full of fish stories, and today we have one of the most well known.  Of all of the fish stories we know, today’s is one of the biggest.  In fact, this passage, or at least the line about making the disciples “fishers of men”, is probable one of the most famous.

The passage begins, first with the announcement of John the Baptist’s arrest, which will lead to his execution and serves as an example, which will be played out again, of what discipleship looks like, the arrest leads to the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry in Galilee.  Next we are told that Jesus began to proclaim “Repent, for the kingdom of God has come near,” which is at the core of Jesus’ message, then we have the calling of the first disciples, followed by a summary of Jesus’ activities in proclaiming the reign of God which he will follow throughout the remainder of his ministry.