PeacePastor

Monday, February 19, 2024

Sermon for the First Sunday of Lent, Feb. 18, 2024

Sermon for SMHP, Year B, Lent I, Feb. 18, 2024

Mark 1:9-15

⁹In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. ¹¹And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” ¹²And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. ¹³He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

I want to start with a little mathematics exercise. Pretty simple one.

This is a listing from a Gospel Parallel. A Gospel Parallel lists different stories and where they can be found in the four gospels. Or often in the three synoptic gospels, which share a lot of stories.

The three synoptics share the story of the temptation of Jesus, and the gospel lesson for the first Sunday in Lent is always the temptation story from the gospel of the year.

So last year, we hear the story from Matthew. How many verses in Matthew’s telling of the temptation story? [11]

And next year, we’ll hear it from Luke. How many verses in Luke’s telling of the story? [13]

Okay. And how many verses in the version we just heard from Mark? [2]

Some of us are visual. Most of us, statistically. So here’s Matthew’s version.

And here’s Luke’s. Same font, same size, for comparison’s sake.

And here’s Mark’s telling of the whole story of the Temptation of Jesus.

¹²And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. ¹³He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Matthew and Luke spend a dozen verses, describing in detail the various temptations which the devil puts before Jesus. Here’s Luke’s version again, so you can see it.

After forty days of fasting, the devil offers Jesus bread. Then he offers all of the kingdoms of the world. And then he tempts Jesus to tempt God, by throwing himself off of the pinnacle of the temple.

Matthew and Luke describe these temptations…in some detail. And Mark has this: “¹³He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan;”

Really, the temptation story in Mark is three words: “tempted by Satan.”

So what happened? Mark wrote first. How did a story Mark tells in three words become a full blown drama about bread and power and danger?

The short answer is Q, which is the hypothetical source document for Luke and Matthew that scholars believe accounts for things like the birth narrative of Jesus, the Sermons on the Mount and Plain, and other stuff that is in Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark. John is a whole other story that we don’t need to get into today.

“Q” is an unsatisfying answer, though, and it doesn’t do for a sermon, which is supposed to help us understand what we can learn from a two thousand year old text that is helpful today. February 18, 2024. Four days after a city celebration turned into a window into the pain in our nation’s soul.

Mark left temptation to the imagination, but I bet we could name the greatest temptations before us today. We know, don’t we, how the devil comes to tempt us today. The devil was working overtime this week, and it was all on display at Union Station, before our city and the world.

Here’s a few:

The temptation to equate intoxication with celebration.

The temptation to solve a disagreement with violence.

And I bet we’ve all had to face one of the biggest temptations out there, in the aftermath of the fifty-eighth mass shooting in this country in 2024, and that is the temptation to wish someone else would just fix this problem.

“Someone…needs to fix this.” “This is terrible.” [wring hands]

Mark, with his annoyingly compact style, manages to call that last temptation what it is: A Failure of Discipleship. This lesson is the whole Christian life, in seven verses.

Here it is:

1. Baptism [first slide]. Baptism makes us Christians. Adds us to the community of the faithful. Washes us clean. So now we’re good, right?

2. [second slide] Here’s the most important word in the lesson. The most important word in this Gospel-slash Discipleship Manual: And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. Blow out that little candle, Jesus, because it is ON. THIS is the baptized life. Wrestling with the devil, on behalf of all of humanity. And maybe you’re thinking now, “Wait, that’s not what I signed up for!” Yeah, sorry. No take-backs. Get baptized, dance with the devil. Alongside a lot of other people who are also dancing with the devil, and who will join you on Sunday morning talking and singing about it.

3. [third slide] And the devil is just the beginning. You gotta get past the devil to start your discipleship journey. Which is a journey of doing what? Proclaiming the Good news of God.

This is it. The whole of discipleship: get baptized; fight the devil and win; start proclaiming the good news of God.

Simple?

Not at all.

It’s a cyclical journey. We only need to do step one once, but steps two and three repeat, over and over. We’re spending some time thinking about the dark places in our lives this Lent, and those may be places where you’re still wrestling with the devil (and to be clear, when I say “the devil,” I mean the forces that defy God and lead us away from Jesus. Not this dude.

Sometimes that wrestling is a necessary step to get where we need to go. And always, always, we need to think carefully about how we’re talking about darkness. We’ll talk more about this throughout this season.

Today I just want to leave you with this. It’s been a rough week, for our city and for many of us personally. In a time of fear and inexplicable violence, we hold fast to the three things Mark has laid before us this morning:

1. We are God’s beloved, baptized children.

2. Holding to the promises of our baptism, there is no devil who can defeat us.

3. Because we know this, we are bound by those promises to share the good news of God with others.

Amen

Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday, Feb. 11, 2024

Sermon for SMHP, Year B, Transfiguration, Feb. 11, 2024

Mark 9:2-10

²Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, ³and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. ⁴And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.

⁵Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” ⁶He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.

⁷Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice,

“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” ⁸Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

⁹As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. ¹⁰So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.

My undergraduate degree and my first graduate work were in English Literature. I have a certificate in teaching college composition. I really thought that was what I was going to do: teach English to college students.

God derailed those plans, as God is wont to do.

I’m grateful for the skills I learned, though, and I use them every week in pouring over a set of texts so that I can talk about one or more of them with you. The preacher skill set is a little different from the English teacher skill set, and I try hard not to turn sermons into literature lessons. Sacred texts are more than artistic endeavors; they’re meant to show us God and connect us to Jesus and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit.

But this text. This Transfiguration Text. Is as literary and dramatic as they come.

It reads like a play, or maybe a screenplay.

Time: “Six days later.”

Enter, from below stage: Jesus, Peter, James, and John.

“Action!” The four enter a clearing on the peak of the mountain. Jesus is transformed and begins to glow.

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And…Peter speaks.

There’s so much here we could talk about. So many literary lenses we could read this story through.

The plotlines. The parallels to the baptism of Jesus. The mountaintop as a symbol of the thin places between the spirit world and the human world—Moses on Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus praying to God before his arrest at the Mount of Olives just outside Jerusalem, and his ascension—all happen on mountains.

But I want to talk about character. Characters “are the key element that drives any story.” In order to understand this transfiguration of Jesus story, we have to think carefully about who is there, and why.

Okay, so who. How many characters are there?

Seven: Jesus, Peter, James and John (the Sons of Thunder), Elijah, Moses, and “voice from cloud.” Biblical criticism says don’t read into the text what isn’t there, but literary criticism is more forgiving, so the voice from the cloud is God, even if it doesn’t say “God.”

Seven characters. Three human—and this being Mark, they are very human. Peter has a very human response to the transfiguration, and we can laugh at him if we want, but we might respond similarly.

Three human characters, one Jesus—there’s only one Jesus—Elijah and Moses who are…spirits? Immortal? The story is pretty light on detail, once you get past Mark’s fascination with how white Jesus’ clothes were.

Elijah and Moses are there for a little literary device called “exposition.”

Exposition is how a writer gets across important matters pertaining to the story. It comes in a lot of ways. When a show opens with an establishing shot of the Golden Gate Bridge—that’s exposition. It tells us we’re in San Francisco. Flashbacks are exposition. Moses and Elijah provide some rather unusual exposition. Moses is there to call to mind that earlier mountaintop story about how God appeared to Moses and gave him the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments.

He represents The Law, in other words.

Elijah is there to represent The Prophets, as the greatest of them all. Together they are symbols of The Law and the Prophets, a holistic phrase that is meant to call to mind what was, for Jews like Jesus and his disciples, all of scripture. The Hebrew Bible.

The voice from the cloud is also there for exposition, but if you tell God I said that, I will deny it, since exposition is not a very lofty role. The voice of God is also there to call to mind the earlier story of Jesus’ baptism, in which the voice makes the same statement. Both times, God reveals Jesus as the beloved Son of God, and that is why the season of Epiphany—or Season after Epiphany—begins with the first story and ends with the last.

There is one important difference between the holy voice’s words of revelation in the two stories, though, and now we return to talking about characters.

Anybody catch the difference?

To whom is the voice of God speaking at Jesus’ baptism? [Jesus]

And to whom is the voice of God speaking in this story? [The disciples]

At his baptism—adult baptism, full immersion—God spoke to Jesus. It was sort of a commencement speech, reminding Jesus that he is God’s beloved child, and he will do pleasing work on God’s behalf in the world.

Up on the mountain, God doesn’t need to tell Jesus he’s special. He’s figured it out. We’ve just read through Mark, Chapter One over the last month and a half—Jesus seems pretty clear about his mission, right?

Now, the disciples…

Right before this story, Mark tells the story of Peter’s confession, in which Jesus is asking the disciples who they think he is, and Peter replies, “You are the Messiah.” Yay! Brownie points for Peter.

But you might remember that Peter’s Confession is always followed by a “passion prediction,” in which Jesus describes how this whole thing is going to end on earth. What does Peter do then? He rebukes Jesus, which is the Wrong Answer.

And then we have the Transfiguration story, in which Jesus lights up like a very classy Christmas tree—only white lights—and Peter says, “Cool, let’s set up some tents.”

It may seem like the disciples are just there for comic relief, but I assure you, they have a very important role in this divine drama. In fact, the most important verse in this lesson might be the first one.

²Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves.

This is an obvious parallel, as we’ve already noted, to the time Moses went up Mount Sinai to get the ten commandments.

Anybody remember what the people did, when Moses was up on the mountain longer than they expected him to be? [they made a golden idol and worshipped it]

The people, left to themselves with their leader gone, went super fickle and decided a cow was now their God. And that kind of pattern repeats itself for generations. The people love God when they feel connected to God, and when they can’t quite figure out what God’s up to, they drift, and start pretending other things are God, or that God is not our gracious and merciful Creator, but rather a judgmental tyrant who only likes, well, us. Maybe you can imagine this happening.

Jesus went up on the mountain to have an audience with the divine fully knowing what happened at the bottom of Mount Sinai, so he took with him Peter and James and John. Because in Jesus, God was doing a new thing—shifting the point of view to collapse the distance between the Creator and the Created.

Jesus brought them up the mountain, and God spoke directly to them and I can’t overemphasize what a radical shift this is. No longer would God be mediated to the people by givers-of-laws and prophets. We would have access to God through the person of Jesus Christ.

This is the point of incarnation. Of Emmanuel. God with us. God for us. God walking with us talking with us leading us into a way of love and mercy that is rooted in direct experience of God’s presence. Jesus taking us with him as he proclaims the gospel and heals in the name of God, and then going to the last mountain—the Mount of Olive—for us.

He was arrested on that mountain and he returned to that mountain to ascend to the Father and both times he was surrounded by his disciples, because we—“disciples” includes us—are no longer spectators in the divine drama.

We are characters.

That is what incarnation does. It makes God’s story, the Gospel story, our story. Jesus didn’t come to do magic tricks to make disconnected people worship God. Jesus came to show us that a life of love and mercy and healing of broken places was the life that God made…for us.

Jesus took with him Peter and James and John. So that God could speak directly to them. And when they came down that mountain, they were carrying the presence of God in their bodies. And ever since then, disciples of Jesus do the same—bear incarnation for a world in need of good news.

Jesus took with him Peter and James and John. When you leave here today, you will enact that same drama in reverse: you will carry with you the body of Jesus and the presence of God, wherever you go. Because you are a character in this story.

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, Feb. 4, 2024

Sermon for SMHP, Year B, Epiphany + 5, Feb. 4, 2024

Mark 1:29-39

²⁹As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.³⁰Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once.³¹He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

³²That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons.³³And the whole city was gathered around the door.³⁴And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.³⁵In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.³⁶And Simon and his companions hunted for him.³⁷When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.”³⁸He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.”³⁹And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

Hang on to your Insert—you’re going to need it again in a minute. As we have been these weeks in Epiphany, we’re going to stick closely to the text before us. The longer I spend in the pulpit, the more convinced I am that Mark, chapter one, is essential reading for Christians.

It’s sort of a How To manual. In this chapter we’ve had healings, casting out of demons, proclamation of the gospel message, and Jesus withdrawing to a deserted place by himself to pray.

Oh wait, that’s not the chapter, that’s just this morning’s lesson. I sometimes feel like Ferris Bueller reading through this chapter. It definitely feels like Mark is in the middle of things, so we are in the middle of things. And those things happen fast. Twenty-nine verses into this gospel, and it seems as though we’ve been on the road with Jesus for months.

So much is happening, and it’s happening right now. Mark’s favorite word is “immediately.” In Greek euthus. Mark uses this word 42 times, which is about 50% more than all of the other gospel writers…put together. Which is impressive, since this is the shortest and sparest of the gospel narratives. It’s also the first, written at a time when both Christians and Jews were under attack from the Roman Empire and its increasingly tyrannical leaders.

There is an urgency in this gospel that I think we would do well to recover. The gospel is under attack, and while the gospel will be just fine, the church is taking a beating. Before this is all over, the church will follow Jesus all the way to the end, where it will die in ignominy and be reborn in glory. In some places, and I believe this is one of them, that shift is happening already, as old models of heavy, top-down leadership disappear, and our ministry gets lighter and more nimble.

Like Jesus, in the first chapter of Mark. Confident in the work, and working the plan.

Jesus knows what he’s doing. That might sound like an odd statement, but believe me, there’s lots of speculation. He’s doing the things and he knows he’s doing the things, and yes, he fully understands what the things are. People who wonder whether he really understands the magnitude of the task he has undertaken have not read, or not read carefully, Mark 1:38.

We have read it. Let’s read it again. Get your Insert, or look up front. For context, which Mark helpfully provides—where are we? Still in Capernaum. Just left the synagogue where last week’s lesson took place. They leave the synagogue, go to Simon Peter’s house, which he shares with his brother and presumably his wife and in laws, or at least his mother-in-law. Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law, and then a bunch of other people, and casts out a bunch of demons, who aren’t allowed to talk to Jesus because they know him—I’m glossing over all of this but it’s all Super Super important because Mark, Chapter One is Super Super important.

Verse 35, Jesus takes a little prayer retreat, verse 36, the disciples hunt him down to tell him—Verse 37—that “everybody” is looking for him, and we come to Verse 38. Read it with me:

³⁸He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.”

Chapter One of Mark is so important, not because it has something really literary, like the Sermon on the Mount, or the Magnificat. And not because it contains a memorable story like the nativity or the cleansing of the table. And not because it has a really memorable teaching, like the parable of the Prodigal Son or the separation of the sheep and the goats.

No, Chapter One just describes the Ordinary work of Jesus. ALL of it. In one chapter, we see the entire earthly ministry of Jesus, which is encapsulated in the next verse. Read 39 with me:

³⁹And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

The ministry of Jesus Christ is about two things. Proclamation. And healing. I know I harp on this a lot and while some of you are hearing it for the first time, others are thinking “yes, Pastor Donna, we know.”

I harp on it, because there seems to be some confusion out there in the world about what Jesus came to do, and what ministry he left for us to do. And this is kind of the heart of discipleship.

Jesus came to do two things:

1. Proclaim the gospel, the good news of God’s love.

2. And heal. In Mark, that healing looks like good old fashioned “making people well, as with Simon’s mother-in-law, and it looks like casting out demons, which is also a thing we hear more about in Mark than in other gospels.

Up to the time that he was executed by the authorities for proclaiming the wrong things and healing the wrong people…on the wrong days, the whole ministry of Jesus centers in those two actions, which we have seen over and over as we’ve been working our way through Chapter One.

There are a few other things that happen to him at the beginning of the chapter—he’s baptized and then tempted by that crafty old devil, but there’s only one other thing that Jesus does in this chapter…and it’s connected with the house they’re in—or whose house it is.

He calls disciples. He’s baptized…he’s tempted by the devil…he calls some disciples, and then he takes those disciples around their home territory showing them the work he’s calling them to do.

What’s the work?

Proclamation and healing.

Proclamation and healing is the ministry of Jesus Christ. It is, therefore, the ministry of the disciples of Jesus Christ, who have accepted a call to be On the Jesus Way.

Here’s why it is vital that we understand this and why I harp on it incessantly. These have not been the central tasks of The Church for a while now. That is why I say that we may have to lay down our life in order to take it up again. Hopefully we can do that without actually dying, but we cannot do that unless we reclaim the commitment to proclamation and healing.

I’m going to get a letter in the mail any day now, inviting me to fill out my “parochial report.” Know what it’s going to ask about?

How many people?

How much money?

There will be a couple of questions about outreach ministry, which can mean healing ministries with which we are feeding, clothing, and advocating for our neighbors in need.

But there won’t be much I can write down on that report about the work of proclamation and healing that happens here. Because the church has struggled to find a way to count that work, and I mean that in two senses—we can’t count it—1, 2, 3—and we haven’t figured out how much it counts as the central work of ministry.

And hear me out here: That is fine.

Think about what we’ve read in Mark, Chapter One, this treatise about Jesus’ ministry and what discipleship should look like—this Christianity 101.

How much of it was about building churches?

Gosh, Pastor Donna, do you think the church is not important? Well, if it isn’t, I’ve kinda wasted my life.

Where the church is engaged in the work of healing (in its broadest sense) and proclamation of a message of hope and peace and love—it is the most important institution in the world. And where it has lost sight of the clearcut call we received from Jesus Christ, it is a danger to itself and others.

People of God, we cannot save the institutional church. Nobody asked us to, first of all. And it’s not a primary task for disciples, despite what the parochial report suggests. There is exactly nothing in Mark One about building and maintaining institutions.

We proclaim good news of God’s love, which is for all people. We seek out and bring in those who have been cast to the margins, and we help them heal when necessarily. We advocate for the poor, the differently abled, and those in prison. And we gather here once again to be strengthened for that work.

And when do we do this work? Immediately.

Because when do people need us to do it? Immediately.

May God, our creator, graciously grant you the strength to join Jesus in the Way of proclamation and healing, so that our world may know hope. And peace. Amen

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Jan. 28, 2024

Sermon for SMHP, Year B, Epiphany + 4, Jan. 28, 2024

Mark 1:21-28

²¹They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. ²²They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. ²³Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, ²⁴and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” ²⁵But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” ²⁶And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. ²⁷They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” ²⁸At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

In 1936, a little girl was born in Chicago and named Judith. Judith was raised by her grandmother and decided at a young age that she wanted to go to Africa to serve the poor. Money was tight, though, so she joined a convent, taking the name Berta in honor of her grandmother. In 1958, Sister Berta was sent to serve at Our Lady of Angels School, where a fire had just claimed the lives of 92 children. There she learned to work with traumatized children, and met her partner in life and ministry, Sister Corita Bussanmas. The two of them started an afterschool program for youth and made a name for themselves by getting inner city gang kids to play softball and renting them motorcycles.

In 1968, Sister Corita was assigned a teaching position in Kansas City, and they both came to St. Vincent de Paul School, at 31^st and Flora. You’ve seen it if you’ve driven down Paseo Blvd. just north of Linwood. While at St. Vincent’s, they continued to establish themselves as a force to be reckoned with. They started a daycare center in the convent living room to support working parents. When the diocese tried to close St. Vincent’s, because all of its white families were leaving in droves for the suburbs, Berta and Corita fought for the school and for their families. Eventually, they created Operation Breakthrough as a separate nonprofit, and it quickly grew into a treasure of Kansas City, lifting up hundreds of families every year with childcare, medical and dental treatment, clothing, food, training, and more.

Things are pretty scary right now. Wouldn’t you like to see Jesus and know that he is handling things? Here’s all you need to do: go out the front door of this church, turn left, and head north eight blocks until you see the signs for Operation Breakthrough. You can’t miss it [5 slides]. It’s on both sides of the street now, in the old JC Penney building on the east side, now called Berta’s Place and an old warehouse that was once a Jones Store on the west side. The west side space is called Corita’s Place and it’s a Maker Space [3 slides], with a dozen different areas for kids to explore. Next door is the Ignition Space, for kids 14 and older to explore.

And actually, you don’t even have to go that far north. Operation Breakthrough runs the early childhood center across the street at DeLaSalle which enables DeLaSalle students to stay in school, and other parents to have access to quality daycare so that they can work during the day.

If you want to see Jesus, get to know some of those families. If you really want to see Jesus doing his best work, find those folks at the moment when they start to lose hope. When they just can’t figure out how they’re going to get to their ten dollar an hour job, and who is going to watch their kids, since ten dollars an hour doesn’t pay for daycare. Look in their eyes, and you will find Jesus looking back at you. If you step into that moment and find a way to serve, you will not only see Jesus…you will be Jesus.

I know many of you have had the privilege of those incarnational moments, in a courtroom, pounding nails for someone who needs a home, handing food to someone who might otherwise go hungry that day. Or maybe you’ve been the hungry one—your body or your spirit desperate to be fed. The moment when the world is made right again, even if it’s just for one person, that is a holy, precious moment, an instant when the curtain between this life and the next becomes thin and we catch the smallest glimpse of God. As Christians we count our lives in those moments.

Jesus is most reliably found in the presence of those who hunger after those holy moments. Sister Berta. Sister Corita. Travis Kelce—yeah, I said it—who built his foundation because he didn’t want to leave behind the people he met growing up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

Sometimes those holy moments happen in church. A lot of church people think they mostly happen in church, but I don’t believe you are those people. This is where we are nourished and prepared to meet those holy moments, but holy moments—the times when we get a peek at God—those usually require us to get out of here and encounter our neighbors…you know, like Jesus does.

For Sister Berta and Sister Corita, doing truly incarnational ministry—seeing Jesus and being Jesus—meant taking a step away from church hierarchy and its bean-counting way of assessing ministry. Yes, I said that too.

And that said, Operation Breakthrough is a 100% Jesus-facing ministry. In that complex up at 31^st and Troost, the veil between us and God drops down multiple times a day. The work of Operation Breakthrough is made possible by dozens of churches and hundreds of church folk, along with mosques and synagogues, and sangas and others. They just had to take a step away from the wider religious institutional structure, which is probably where we’re all headed. Because that structure doesn’t always make room for the kind of earth-shattering, bow breaking, world flipping work that Jesus came to do.

And it pretty much never has. It seems like every time Jesus went into a synagogue, something surprising or disturbing or cataclysmic happened. Of course, you probably remember what happened when he went to his hometown synagogue in Nazareth. If not, quick synopsis: it didn’t go well. He read from the scroll of Isaiah and that went fine. But when he talked about how his ministry would be best received by those far away, his neighbors decided he should get far away right away.

We meet Jesus in the synagogue this morning, but not his home congregation. This synagogue is in Capernaum. Not far away, but not Nazareth. Oh wait, we have a map. So here is the Galilee, Time of Jesus. Here is Capernaum. And here is Nazareth. Just enough distance to make Jesus not a “home town boy.”

And still, the people who hear him teach are astounded by him. He taught with authority, not like the scribes. That is such a first century burn, it could sneak right by. “Authority” sounds nice, right? “I give you ‘authority’ over these things…”

When you live in a time of intricate hierarchies and systems of power, “speaking with authority” means one of two things:

1. Someone in power has bestowed authority upon you. You “speak with authority” because those in power have given you authority.

2. You have not been given authority by those in power, but you talk like you have. You are “borrowing your authority from the future,” as my friend Jeff Johnson told the ELCA Human Sexuality Task Force back in 2003. Jeff is a bishop now, so he seems to have been right on that.

When you speak with authority from outside the halls of power, those inside the halls don’t like it.

Abiding Peace spoke with authority when they ordained a lesbian pastor back in 2000, years before that Task Force finished their work and the system caught up.

We were “censured and admonished.” That’s fancy church speak for having your hand slapped.

Last night we saw a wonderful performance of Bayard Rustin, the Man Behind The Dream. It was all about Bayard Rustin, who “borrowed authority from the future” as many of us have done, and lived as a proud black, gay man and organized the 1963 March on Washington at which Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a rather famous speech.

Bayard Rustin spoke with authority. It pushed him out of the spotlight because even the Civil Rights Movement wasn’t ready for a gay hero.

Dr. King spoke with authority. It cost him his life, probably because he strayed into criticism of the Military Industrial Complex.

Sister Berta Sailer and Sister Corita Bussanmas spoke with authority. And it did not please those who thought that the crumbs that fell from their tables were enough for poor families in Kansas City.

There were many, many people in city and state government, and in the child welfare system, who quietly walked the other way when they saw Sister Berta and Sister Corita coming. Those folks don’t like nuns who speak with authority.

Sister Berta had this saying on little slips of paper, and she would hand them out, just so people knew what they were in for. In half a century of ministry with some of the poorest people in greater Kansas City, the Sisters looked the demonic in the eye often. And the demons saw them coming.

They always do.

Jesus went to the synagogue in Capernaum. He taught in surprising fashion. People weren’t quite sure what to make of him. But the demons knew exactly who he was.

²³Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, ²⁴and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”

²⁵But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!”

At the risk of sounding alarmist, a risk I’m willing to take, we are at a Capernaum Moment. There is a true evil in our nation and across our world. The demons are at the door. You can’t miss them—they have hats. They seek the authority to make hate into public policy. Years from now, our great grandchildren will ask how we responded to this moment.

And we will tell them—or someone will tell them, that we looked their hate in the eye and told it to be silent and go away.

And it didn’t always go well. Sometimes we encountered resistance. Simple statements, like “black lives matter,” and “me too,” can stir up demons these days.

But we will keep saying them. We will keep fighting. We will keep standing when others are willing to sit it out. We stand with Berta, who died this week, leaving this legacy, an impact that is frankly immeasurable.

We stand with Martin, and Bayard, and Dorothy Day and all those who looked demons in the eye and told them to shut up and go away.

We’re that church. The church of Jesus Christ, who brought down the mighty and cast out the demons.

We’re that church. We borrow our authority from the future, when hope is restored and peace will reign.

We’re that church. When they see us coming, I hope people say, “Oh crap, they’re up.”

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany, Jan. 21, 2024

Sermon for SMHP, Year B, Epiphany + 3, Jan. 21, 2024

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, ²“Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” ³So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. ⁴Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

⁵And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.

⁶When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. ⁷Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. ⁸Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. ⁹Who knows? God may relent and God’s mind may be changed; God may turn from this fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”

¹⁰When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God turned away from the calamity that God had promised to bring upon them; and God did not do it.

Mark 1:14-20

¹⁴Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, ¹⁵and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” ¹⁶As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. ¹⁷And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” ¹⁸And immediately they left their nets and followed him. ¹⁹As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. ²⁰Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

What’s this gospel lesson about? [call of the disciples]

It’s a call story, right? Almost all of it is about the call of two sets of brothers—Simon and Andrew, and James and John. But as the lesson opens, there is an important detail that we can’t just glide by.

It’s going to happen a lot this year. As we go through this year of emphasis on Mark’s gospel, we’ll want to read carefully. Mark drops vital details in little dependent clauses—details that take the other gospel writers whole paragraphs. There are a couple of those nuggets in the first line of today’s lesson. We’re told that Jesus “came to Galilee,” which is one of Mark’s signature geographical grounding details. Mark likes us to know where we are.

And before that there is a little phrase—a little dependent clause—that contains an incredible detail that must be held in tension with the rest of the lesson, and--since they are paired by the wisdom of the lectionary folks--with the Jonah lesson as well.

“Now, after John was arrested…”

This is a call story. This is the story of how Jesus went down to the lakeshore and got him some disciples. Called them and immediately they left their boats and joined Jesus in fishing for people. ‘Cuz this is Mark and things happen fast!

Call story. I’m supposed to talk about how you should also drop your nets and go out fishing for people.

It’s a call story…

…that begins with four words about something completely different. With the inclusion of those four words, the call of Jesus—“repent and believe the good news”—is anchored by its time and place. The time is somewhere around 26 CE, and the place is the tetrarchy of Herod Antipas. None of that is given, but it is the text underneath the text that is “after John was arrested.” The gospel writers, all of them, are clever about including the historical context in their opening narratives. These are, ultimately, political stories, as much as so many church folks want to believe there is a world in which you don’t “preach politics.”

The gospel is political. The gospels are political. Sorry, church folks.

Remember how Luke opens the story of Jesus’ birth? In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. ²This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.

Luke starts with the politics of the whole Roman Empire—its leadership structure, its unfair system of taxation.

John starts with politics of the church, with Jesus driving the moneychangers out of the temple in Chapter Two of that gospel, followed by the visit of Nicodemus the Pharisee under cover of darkness.

And Matthew, like Mark, starts with Herod. Only in Matthew it’s Herod the Great, who goes on a murderous rampage to prevent being usurped by a baby.

Politics.

In Mark, the initial, grounding conflict is with the son of Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, who has arrested John the Baptist.

Anybody remember why? [He was publicly decrying Herod Antipas—son of Herod the Great—for divorcing his wife and marrying his sister-in-law Herodias.]

John was undermining Herod. Rulers don’t like that. Scripture is full of stories of our heroes of the faith finding themselves on the wrong side of the kings and tetrarchs and Pharoahs of their time.

What I like about the Jonah story is that it subverts those standard narratives. God calls the prophet, Jonah, to go to Nineveh and tell them exactly what we hear Jesus announce in our gospel text: “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.”

At first, Jonah refused to go. Because he hated Nineveh. Nineveh was the capital of the evil Assyrian Empire, and Jonah didn’t want to go there and certainly didn’t want to take a chance on them repenting and returning to God’s good graces. But finally, after quite the fish story, Jonah went to Nineveh to tell them that God was coming to smite them. Then he figured he’d withdraw to a nearby ziggurat, pop some popcorn, and watch the balls of fire come down from the sky. Good times.

But that’s not what happened, is it? No, “When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.” Then he ordered a fast and a time of prayer.

That dude’s no Herod. And Jonah’s no Jesus or John, because his response to the Word of God flowing out of him and bearing fruit in the King of Nineveh and his people is to get really mad and ask God to kill him, since God wouldn’t smite the Ninevites.

It doesn’t seem, at first glance, that this story is related to Mark’s story of the call of all the fishing bros down at the Sea of Galilee. What ties them together is a rather surprising and occasionally subversive way of understanding power.

Who actually has power in the Jonah story? God, of course. God is going to wipe Nineveh off the face of the earth for their sinfulness. God’s prophet Jonah gets to make that threat, which gives him some power. And finally, the king finds his power—not where kings usually find it, in lording over everyone else, but in recognizing that God has the ultimate power, and then showing obedience to the word of God. All of the people find their power in obedience to God, which is why Jonah, who is exemplary in his disobedience for a prophet, winds up sitting under a bush pouting as the story comes to an end.

The disciples also find power in obedience to the call of Jesus. It takes a while, and you will notice that they struggle a lot to be faithful to the call, and the Word. But ultimately, they become powerful prophets in their own right, because they stand on the solid rock of God’s word.

God’s word of truth.

God’s word of justice.

God’s word of mercy.

God’s word is a rock for us all…and we’re gonna need it. Because we are heading into a political season that is going to test our values and our patience and maybe even our faith. And as people who are answering the call of Jesus—which we are, right?—we don’t actually get to say, “Oh, I don’t do politics”…and then, what, go sit under a bush?

There will be lots of people talking about faith in Jesus Christ over the next nine and a half months. Some of them will be Jonahs—people who twist God’s word into a call for hate and destruction. Some of them will not.

Your task as a disciple is to make sure you know the difference, and that you yourself are standing on, and standing for the Word of God. There will come a time in these coming months—let’s call it a Nineveh moment—when you will be called to defend the Word. To preach mercy in the face of vengeance. To preach love in the face of hate. To preach peace in the face of violence. Or to stand with someone else who is defending it. Plan now for how you will respond.

I pray that you will respond. That you will recognize the moment to speak up and speak out for the Way of Jesus. God’s story, our story, is embedded within a political reality that we cannot ignore. We are called to live honestly and faithfully within that reality, but always, always, to hold to the word of God. The word needs our faithfulness and we need the word.