Holy Strength In Our Hearts

1 Cor. 1:3-9; Psalm 28:1-3, 6-9

            Do you enjoy watching movie villains?    There are legendary and obviously evil ones such as The Wicked Witch from the West, Darth Vader, and more recently, He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named-but-I’m-going-to-anyway, Lord Voldemort.     

            There are also legendary but a bit less obviously evil ones, characters you may reluctantly find yourself feeling sorry for or even relating to on some level.   I’m thinking about villains bent on revenge, like Khan from Star Trek, villains whose hearts have become cold and institutionalized like Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and villains who both horrify and oddly intrigue us like Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs.  

            And let’s not forget that there are those who are just plain super fun to watch.  These are usually the creepy but cartoonish ones.   Seven foot tall Richard Kiel as the villain named Jaws in James Bond’s The Spy Who Loved Me comes right to mind.  

            Of course, if you are more of reader, you’ll notice most really great movie villains also happen to have been born in books.        It’s then up casting directors to find just the right actor for the costume and make-up crews to bring to life.  

            When I read Psalm 28 earlier this week, one particular movie villain popped up in my mind like colorful cardboard rising from the center of a book.    This guy’s dark heart is not as easy to identify as, say, The Joker.    I know that many of you here likely have not seen or read about this character, while others of you know the name Seneca Crane quite well.   He’s a character from last year’s first movie adaptation of the popular book series, The Hunger Games.           Seneca Crane is not as obviously evil as his boss, President Snow, whose name rightly identifies him as one cold to the core human being.    But he’s evil in the way our Psalm today describes – he works for the sake of keeping order and peace among a certain society, but he’s the best at doing this because there is nothing but mischief in his heart.

            He’s not menacing looking.   His handsomeness and cool, sophisticated manner balance out his swirling inner darkness.   This said, Hollywood did a great job dressing and grooming the actor to look like what I believe he represents … since he wears black and red and has a thin beard with all sorts of horn curls.    They made him look like what our imaginations have been trained to picture is the Devil.   And he is every ounce as sinister because his job is designing gladiator, fight-to-an-awful-death games.   He does this as a form of entertainment, of reality-TV, for the powerful and elite people in his society.  More horrifying is who he and his government force to participate in these games -- tweens and teens, especially those who are most poverty-stricken, underprivileged, and hence supposedly “weaker” ones.  

            Seneca Crane is an evil mischief maker.    He comes across as acting for some greater cause, but his corrupt heart is really striving only to protect and build up his own reputation and status.   And as it often happens in the real world, his character ends up getting consumed by his own evil strategizing.

            Again, this villain popped into my mind as I read Psalm 28, especially verse 3, earlier this week.  This Psalm firmly reminds us to beware of this sort of person’s smooth but deeply mischievous talk and appearance.  And it warns us against becoming this sort of duplicitous person, for it only leads to brokenness within ourselves and with our good, loving God.  

            There was at least one wicked villain that the writer of this Psalm was struggling against.    So he or she (but most likely King David) cried out to God for holy strengthening and protection.   This cry arose from a place of deep trust within this faithful person’s heart … deep trust in God’s sovereignty, God’s unbreakable rule, over all the many ways of evil.   

            After crying out against those who are workers of evil, who have nothing but sinful mischief in their hearts, the Psalmist offers great praise with the words, “Blessed be the Lord, for he has heard the sound of my pleadings.” (v.6).   A newer translation of this verse, from The Message, has the Psalmist singing it this way – “God … heard me praying, proved he’s on my side … now I’m jumping for joy, and shouting and singing my thanks …”    

            The overwhelming Good News of this Psalm is that God listens to us and responds in holy ways that strengthen us when we need it most.   And it’s also good news to be reminded by this Psalm, as well as by most other the Psalms in our Bible, that sin is defined as trusting in and depending on yourself instead of God.   This mischief is part of every one of us.   It constantly tempts us to disregard the works of God.   It counts on us getting totally self-absorbed, so much so that our thoughts and actions fail to participate in the good and orderly ways that God wants for all of creation and humanity.  

            As the Psalmist seems to have felt, this mischief wants to drag us away and break us down so that we believe destruction and death are the ultimate reality.   When we let this mischief rule our hearts and minds, we can indeed end up like Seneca Crane … locked in an opulent room with only an elegant bowl set before us, stuck with no real choice but to eat the deadly nightlock berries it offers.

            We Christians always have a better choice.   With great trust, we can choose to give thanks for and be strengthened by the amazing grace that God has given to us in Jesus Christ.    Jesus knew the deep mischief within us all very well.  He spent forty days out in a wilderness fighting it off.   And near the end of His life on earth, He faithfully resisted as it tempted Him to turn away from God, to save just Himself, and to walk away from his divine destiny as the Lord and Savior of the world.    Jesus taught us by his own very powerful example never to let mischief rule our hearts.  In Him, we know to keep trusting in the good plans of God.   This trust is what leads to true peace.

            The apostle Paul spoke to this when he wrote a letter to some of the very first Christians.   We heard some of it in our first Bible reading today.  He preached that when we put our trust in the heart of our Lord, we are “enriched” and “strengthened” in speech and knowledge.  We are given every spiritual gift to keep us in faithful fellowship with God, all of humanity, and all of creation.    

            There are always going to be mischievous villains on screen and in our actual lives.   We need to be vigilant in asking God to help guard our hearts against sin.   God will do this for us, for God has already our hearts for good in Jesus Christ.   Our Lord is indeed our strength and our shield.  Amen. 

The Heartbeat of Hospitality

Deut. 10:12-22; Luke 10:38-42

 

            I’ve titled this sermon “The Heartbeat of Hospitality,” but I want to first tell you about the hoof-beat of hospitality.   Now, I’ve never traveled to the Holy Land.   If any of you have, perhaps you can verify that riding on donkeys is a great way to see and experience the paths of our faithful forbearers.   I can just imagine the thrill – uncomfortably seated as it might happen to be – of riding into Jerusalem just like Jesus did.    And given my favorite hobby, I’d be taking a lot of photos.   I’d be doing so with a great old Sony digital camera, not with my phone or tablet computer.   Yet if I did want to use something like an iPhone or iPad, one park that recreates life in ancient Galilee has come up with a high-tech way of extending hospitality to their guests.

            “Our village had 30 donkeys,” reports Menachem Goldberg, “and we’ve equipped the first five with wireless routers that are attached to the donkey’s body.  You take some pictures, you want to change your picture on Facebook – you can do it.”  

            There are many convenient places today that have wireless routers allowing you to directly access the internet.  They are usually called “hot spots.”   I rely on these hot spots when visiting favorite coffee shops as well as when I’m in our Community House.    But I never imagined there would be an “animal hotspot” in the Holy Land!  The donkey has been used as a working animal for thousands of years … now it can help bridge that past with immediate moments in the present.    In my mind, what most makes this hoof-beat hospitality noteworthy is that it’s a modern day way of facilitating storytelling while people are on pilgrimage to sacred places. 

            Stories about hospitality in the Holy Land abound in the Bible.   They provide instruction for the faithful hospitality we are called to live into.    They teach us how to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and soul, and how to love our neighbors as we ourselves want to be loved.    They connect us to faithful people from the past, and inspire us in the present to share our stories of receiving and offering holy hospitality.  Sharing them is a way of joyfully inspiring one another and future generations.     

            Our Christian faith community is a child of Judaism.   As such, we know that welcoming others, offering secure shelter, and sharing faith stories all fold together as a single moral imperative throughout the Old Testament.   We hear Moses preaching this very strongly through the Book of Deuteronomy.  He reminds us that the Hebrews lived as enslaved aliens in Egypt and then as exiles in the wilderness.   He reminds us that they were mightily dependent on God’s hospitality for daily sustenance and for any and all hope for the future.    God faithfully offered it, and, in turn, called on them to live out the holy example set before them.   One Christian writer sums it all up well by saying that “God’s people will be a people whose just hospitality flows from gratitude for God’s past care and from their own painful memories of refugee life.”[i]

            Being of faithful family relation, the moral imperative of hospitality continued on with the earliest generations of Christians.     And in those days, hospitality wasn’t just a polite option, something nice to do when possible.    It was very necessary for individual survival and for the growth of the Church.    

            The early Church wasn’t really any sort of secure institution … it was more of a persecuted minority movement meeting in people’s homes.   One high-ranking counselor to the Roman emperors justified actions against Christians by defining our faith as a “new and malicious superstition.”   Essentially, Christians were defined as bringers of evil on par with magicians and witches out to prey on ignorant people.    Awful persecution was built on that platform and grotesquely reinforced when Emperor Nero completely threw the blame on Christians when ten of the fourteen wards of the Roman Empire were destroyed by fire in 64.    

            So when we think of our holy call to offer hospitality, and the blessed freedom we have to do it, we need to deeply reflect on all this … on its heartbeat in our early faith history.   And we should also read, listen for and share the many more powerful examples that can be lifted up from more recent centuries and decades.   

            Central to it all is, of course, Jesus.   His example is the example.   And it is common to read in the Gospels how when He shared hospitality, telling transformations usually happened.   Most often, the guests become hosts and the hosts became guests.   Our story today about Mary and Martha offers us a good example.

            Mary and Martha were sisters and close friends of Jesus.   Their brother was Lazarus, who is a whole other story of holy hospitality to tell.    In this story from Luke 10, Jesus arrived one day at their home for a visit.  They, of course, welcomed this beloved, special guest.    It was undoubtedly a joy to host him.     But they went about this hosting in two different ways.  

            Martha, we are told, was busy with many tasks.  Given the culture of the day, we can assume she was carrying out the traditional hospitable duties of getting a meal and perhaps a guest room prepared.    She was serving.     Mary, on the other hand, we are told was sitting. Not lazing about, but sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening intently to his words.   Sounds like a simple act, right?  But in the culture of the day, sitting and listening to a rabbi was only something men were allowed to do.   Her doing so was culturally disreputable and she risked shame being brought upon her house.   Mary took this radical risk for a very good reason.  She boldly did so to receive the Word of God.  

            Jesus, the guest, became her host.  He did so because he did not force her to stop sitting and listening.    There isn’t even the slightest hint of that.   It was of utmost importance to our Lord that she was welcomed to receive His holy words.   Luke telling us of this is a way of voicing Jesus’ protest against “the rules and boundaries set by the culture in which he lived.”

            From underneath the weight of her to-do’s, Martha protested.   She had faithfully set out to serve Jesus, but could not understand why her sister just sat around so inhospitably.   But Jesus, the guest, also became a host to Martha.     He did so by way of a light reprimand.  Not a scolding or shaming one, just a firm reminder not to get so distracted that she failed to rest and receive the one thing she most needed in her life and home – the Word of God. 

            As a composite, Mary and Martha represent one model disciple.[ii]    They represent intentionally listening to and actively serving the Word of God in Jesus Christ.  This is the heartbeat of hospitality.  It is the rhythm of righteous living. 

            When and where and how often do you intentionally put busyness and distractions aside in order to really listen to Jesus?   Have you had times of hosting Jesus – by way of listening to His Word and going out to serve Him – when you felt suddenly like His guest? 

            I know that for me, there have been many times when this has happened through conversations with our guests from the Interfaith Hospitality Network.   When sitting and attentively listening, there will be something said that feels like deep holy truth.   Often times, it will be something that resonates with my own personal experiences, something that inspires me to feel like we aren’t really strangers and aren’t just host and guest.    And I’ve often heard affirmations of God’s gracious, abiding love alive in the midst of tough times before I’ve had a chance to even think it. 

            In one of the essays in an excellent book titled Practicing Our Faith, I read that “when it is most fully realized, hospitality not only welcomes strangers; it also recognizes their holiness.  It sees in the stranger a person dear to and made in the image of God, someone bearing distinctive gifts that only he or she can bring.”    Just imagine how transformed for the better our lives and our world would be if we actually recognized holiness every time we came in contact with one another, with family members, with coworkers, with classmates, with store clerks, and, really, with everyone we interact with every single day. 

            The same essay also recognizes that while we know that we should offer hospitality, we are also often afraid to … which is why it’s so important to offer it together through community structures.  The author writes, “In the face of overwhelming human need for shelter and care, and in the face of our own fear of strangers, we need to develop ways of supporting one another in the practice of hospitality.”[iii]

            I thank God for all the ways FPC does this so well through our many mission efforts.   We are faithful at being and helping bring about hotspots for holy hospitality!    It’s rooted in our intently listening to and actively serving God’s Word.   No matter how busy and distracted we get.   I hope we’ll all realize again and again that our giving and our hosting can inspire us to receive and be the guest of the “Lord and lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial.”   And let’s even thank God that even if the need for hospitality isn’t exactly life threatening, such as when riding on the back of donkey in the Holy Land and wanting to upload a photo to Facebook, communities will come up with ways to offer it and to share the Greatest Story Ever Told.     Amen.

---

[i] Ana Maria Peneda, Practicing Our Faith, p. 33

[ii] New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary on Luke 10:38-42

[iii] Ana Maria Peneda, Practicing Our Faith, pp. 34-35

That Day, This Day

1 Peter 4:8-11, Joshua 24:1-2; 14-18

Our Old Testament reading today proclaims some widely known words.    They are words often found in stitch-work items, on plastic and on stone wall plaques, on pewter plates and on ceramic mugs, on walls clocks and on crosses, and such.   And I remember how over twenty years ago they were also found in my ear.   What I mean is that every time I called a particular friend’s home and got the family answering machine, I’d hear a recording of my buddy’s mom preaching them right over the phone.  Unsuspecting callers would be put on notice and have to think very carefully about their reason for calling.    I still chuckle thinking about the reaction of telemarketers hearing that.

We find the familiar words at the end of verse 15 -- “As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”    Do you own anything with these biblical words on it?   This phrase is a wonderful, firm declaration of faithful allegiance.  It carries great authority whenever it is read or heard.    Whether it lives on a pillow in someone’s home, is painted on stone to greet folks at the front door, or tattoos a caller’s ear over an answering machine, it declares that the family making this Scripture known serves the God of the Bible above all else.  

Serving God above all else.   I believe we all know this isn’t exactly easy.  

It’s the right righteous sentiment, but any glancing review of the Ten Commandments or Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount reminds us all that we fall short in our service.  Sin constantly trips up our most faithful intentions and declarations.   It’s one thing to obey the command not to murder; it’s quite something else to obey the commands for always keeping the Sabbath, for never coveting something belonging to a neighbor, and for never ever worshipping a false god.   And it can be awfully tough to feel blessed when you’ve been insulted or flat out persecuted because of your faith in Jesus.     So I have to confess, when I see Joshua 24:15 staring at me in a home (including my own), I then look to see if there is a disclaimer about sin in the fine print.   

Well, rooting ourselves deeper in Scripture, as we ought, let’s review who originally said this well-known verse.  There’s nothing mysterious about it, about who got quoted for the record.   It’s in the Book of Joshua.   So, yes, we can conclude it was Joshua ben Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim and thus a descendent of Joseph and his amazing Technicolor dream coat.   He’s better known as the man who “spent the first eighty years of his days in training to be a leader marked by the life and skills of his mentor, Moses.”   This military man so deeply devoted to worshipping the presence of God was Moses’ protégé, groomed to be next in line for leadership of the Hebrew nation.   Recall that this succession happened when Moses’ died without ever seeing the Promised Land.  The epic journey into God’s land -- then known as Canaan -- happened on Joshua’s watch and is recalled in the first half of the book that bears his name.   

The well-known verse we are considering this morning, however, happens at the very end of that book … after many bloody conquests and after the division of the people into tribes across the land.    Verse 15 is a perfect sound-bite from his farewell speech to the nation of over 2 million people.    I’m not sure how they all heard this message, but I’m certain it wasn’t over an answering machine!   Actually, it was delivered only to the elders and chief priests whom he had convened.  

Now if you’d lived forty years in Egypt, forty years in the wilderness, and twenty-five years as leader of the Hebrew nation and had famous last words to say, what you have said?   I trust you’d have stressed the same big points as did the 110 year old Joshua.   Since God had been present with them in Egypt, miraculously delivered them from that evil oppression, patiently companioned them through the wilderness, and gifted them with the successful conquest of a whole new land … they were by no means to ever question God’s covenantal promises and never to turn away from their loyal, constant trust in the Lord.

Having reminded them of God’s commitment, he then asked his people to renew their commitment to God.    He did so knowing full well that though they were in possession of their new land, the surviving original Canaanites and their false gods were having a bad influence on many of the people.    I reviewed just a partial list of these great many false gods that were in the mix of the Israelites new life.    Each had a single power and purpose over such things as the weather, fertility, plagues, healings, and there was even one to help folks out with their dancing.   I think that last one must have been active in America during the 1970’s!   

The serious temptation for the Israelites – one that apparently a great many sinfully succumbed too -- was to fall into the habit of praying to these false gods for the particulars they wanted and needed out of life.   Instead, of course, of faithfully petitioning the one, great, trustworthy, absolutely ever present God who had never failed them and who continued to call them to faithful loyalty and service.  

So Joshua commanded the nation to choose loving and serving their God this day and every day.   And he wasn’t referencing only his immediate family and home address in the famous verse.   He meant the whole House of God the people were blessed to live in and to serve.    He reminded them that their God was not just some localized spirit, but the Lord of all heaven and earth.   

As for me and my house, as for you and your homes, as for all of us who declare Christ as the chief cornerstone of God’s great house built upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles (Ephesians 2:20) … how are we doing with fending off false gods in the mix of our daily lives here in our nation?  How are we fairing in our fidelity and daily service to the one, great, absolutely ever present, promise-keeping God of All?    

       
One of the toughest false gods that I believe likes to sidle up to us all is the god of fear.   I don’t mean the emotion.  I mean the fear that has lording power over our lives; terrorizing power to paralyze our trust that our promise-keeping God is with us through every facet of human experience and most especially in times of great crisis.    I mean the fear that can unstitch and smash our most faithful declarations and decorations of Joshua 24:15.  
     
Eleven years ago to this very morning, I found myself preaching to some 900 people about our need to never ever forsake our historic, faithful trust in God’s good, abiding, promise-keeping, delivering-from-evil presence.   I did so over the course of two worship services at a large suburban church on the outskirts of Norristown, PA, where I was the associate pastor filling in as head of staff and preacher during that critical time in our nation and our world’s history.    In the aftermath of the evil terrorist attacks of 9/11, I recall feeling as though the false god of fear had tried to mock my every attempt to share some kind of reassuring holy word to so many frightened, hurting, angry people.    I don’t quite recall exactly what Scripture I relied on other than it was a Psalm.   I certainly won’t quite go so far as to say I felt like Moses or Joshua or Jesus speaking to our faithful and national identity at such a critical juncture in history, but it sure was the most formative preaching moment of my life up to that point.  
       
The Promised Land that has been gifted to us is salvation from sin and pure eternal peace in Jesus Christ.    On the morning eleven years ago, I prayed hard for the Holy Spirit to use the words of my mouth and the mediations of my heart to help everyone listening trust that we were still in the Promised Land … despite the soul-shocking, heart-wrenching, waiting-for-the-other-evil-shoe-to-drop feeling in all of our hearts and homes.  
        
 I found that that day, and that week, and for many weeks afterwards, there was a blessed outpouring of resolve among Americans to love and serve our neighbors as ourselves.   People of all faiths.  Do you recall how powerful, how beautiful that was?   And there were many Presbyterians and other Christians that continued to fill church pews for a long while.   I think maybe everyone owned a t-shirt at that time that read, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”    But then it seems a lot of those t-shirts got lost in the laundry.    Sadly, there has been a steady decline in church attendance that continues today.   With the passage of time, there seems to be less urgency about needing to be convened as God’s people every week.    Yet even when it’s not right on our doorstep, there is never a day or week when evil is any less horrendous in this world than it was eleven years ago and on other infamous days in national history before that.   

Joshua’s famous last words remind us of the deep purpose of being the people of God gathered in worship.   It’s for pledging our allegiance.  This is when we praise our promise-keeping God of the past, present and future.   This is when we reject false, narrow purpose gods.   This is when, through prayer and praise and hearing God’s word, we reaffirm our deep trust in the truth that God is with us through and in all.    This is where we recommit ourselves to faithful service since we have been so greatly blessed with the Promised Land in Jesus Christ.    We must keep gathering … because as for us and our house, for our corner of God’s great house where many rooms have been prepared for us … we will serve the LORD!  Amen!

             

 

Straightened Out, Opened Up and Empowered Onward

Isaiah 49:1-7; Mark 7:24-37

 

            A week or so ago I found myself engaged in a longer than expected conversation with a colleague.  This happens a lot!    I had stopped by this person’s office to just quickly pick up a book.   But this colleague was kind enough to pause and ask how my family transitions are going.    I shared just a few words about being busy and about the blessings and growing edges of being a newly blended family.   Something in my brief reply opened the conversation further.    My colleague decided to share a little bit about the past and present complexities of their own family life.    This included mentioning how life-changing it was during teenage years to have attended Alateen, the 12-step program for teens living with alcoholism in their family.   

            This was not a colleague I knew much about at all, and, really, I had just stopped by to quickly pick up a book.   But the Spirit was clearly breathing through the conversation.  So I found myself sharing right back how life-changing it was for me to have attended Ala-teen meetings at my local Presbyterian church starting in 10^th grade.    This fueled a few moments of faithful discussion about the support we found in that group and about the slogans used in recovery.   Slogans such as “Let Go and Let God” and “You Can’t Cure It, Didn’t Cause It, and Can’t Control It” – helped us to straighten out the chaos in our lives and propel us onward toward a healthier, faithful way of being family in this world.   

            The Spirit’s breath was refreshing.    That unexpected conversation about common ground during troubling teenage years was something I happened to really need on that particular busy day.    It helped me to remember how very significant the spiritual and emotional process is when we allow others to help us deal with our most gaping emotional wounds, our potentially damaging defenses, our unhealthily isolating tendencies.    Opening ourselves up to others can help inaugurate great healing in mind and soul.    And you know what else it can do?   When the opportunity arises -- be it a planned conversation or an unexpected one -- it can inspire us to help others straighten out, open up, and be empowered onward.

            Who is the one person in all of history that we wouldn’t think ever needed to be straightened out, opened up and empowered?    Jesus, right?    The Son of God.  The Savior.  The One born to straighten out the sin of this world and open us all to God’s eternal, unconditional love.  

            Yet did you read and hear our lesson from Mark very carefully?   Did you pick-up on Jesus’ unkind remark and how it got rejected so He could be corrected?  So he could be reminded and empowered about his true purpose as the Messiah of the whole world?

            She wasn’t a dog.    She was a loving, brave and otherwise totally scared mom of very sick little girl.     Yet even though she humbly and reverently bowed at His feet, Jesus had called her a dog.  Her daughter too.  

            Now I’m a dog lover, especially these days since Dinah our family dog has fully moved in.   Dog doesn’t sound offensive to my ears, and probably not to yours either.   But back in the day and place when and where this encounter with Jesus took place, it was a very derogatory term.  There weren’t any adorable domesticated pet dogs in first century Palestine.  There were only wild, scavenging, unclean dogs.   Somehow it came to be that this word was used prejudicially, especially it seems by Jews against non-Jews.  No matter how we many times we re-read it and perhaps want to edit it out,  Mark is telling us that Jesus had initially let this woman and her daughter know they were not worth his time, not an ounce of his healing power because they were filthy foreigners.   God’s chosen children, Israel, were his priority.    He didn’t use sticks or stones, but those words had to have hurt.

            Have you ever reached out to someone you believed could help you or a loved one but found your plea being gut-wrenchingly and rudely rejected?   I fear how many people through the ages have had this happen from the mouth of someone trusted to be a representative of God.  

            We could spend a lot of time analyzing Jesus’ intentions in responding this way.   Lots of Bible-studying folks have opinions in print.    But suffice it to say for today that I believe this was a fully human moment for the Son of God.   It was a moment that represented our sinful brokenness as brothers and sisters, the very reality God took on human flesh to experience and overcome.   In order to overcome, Jesus had to go through.    In this case, His full humanness needed a prompt on his way to being the Savior of the world, a firm reminder of the universal, all-inclusive nature of God’s redeeming love.

            The dog comment was his initial reply.  So I find it’s really even more important to spend time reading and re-reading this Gentile woman’s faithful words and actions.   She knew who Jesus was.  She knew of and it seems had come to believe in his healing power.   And she knew well her status as a disregarded outsider to His people.   And though she approached Him with great humility to beg for her daughter’s healing and was bluntly rejected, she did not give up.  She did not let prejudice overcome the power of her faithful plea.  

            In words that seemed to have surprised Jesus, she acknowledged the derogatory dog comment and then turned it into a prophetic word.   Even the dogs under the table, she proclaimed, eat the children’s crumbs.    If the full humanness of Jesus had indeed somehow lost sight of the fact that all children of God are worth receiving his healing power, this brave woman rang a big reminder bell.    It was the ring of truth that returned him to the straight path proclaimed of Him by the prophet Isaiah, who spoke for God saying it is “too light a thing” to just serve Israel -- the Messiah’s purpose is to be a light to all nations so that salvation can reach the ends of the earth (Isaiah 6).

            Upon hearing it, Jesus didn’t just have second thoughts about the exclusionary words He’d just said.  Instead, “His vision and vocation” got “radically reoriented.”  His power was not diminished by that difficult exchange, as in when someone feels ashamed for having said something totally inappropriate.   His power was instead expanded by it …  it was straightened out, opened up and empowered onward toward his Messianic purpose as he granted the healing that was this woman’s heart’s desire. [i]

            Mark’s Gospel punctuates this lesson learned by next telling us of another healing granted by Jesus.    This time, it was a deaf man with a speech impediment.    He was possibly also a Gentile.   We are told that he was brought before Jesus by way of friends begging for Jesus’ healing touch.  

            What makes Mark’s placement of this healing request right after the previous one so potent is that we, the readers, had basically just met another deaf man with a speech impediment.   Jesus had initially been unable to hear a precious child of God pleading for her daughter’s life.  His initial speech in reply had been impeded by prejudice.   But through her faithful plea, he’d then been opened up to the greater, inclusive truth He was born to live and die and live again for.   

            So Mark immediately tells us the big, positive impact that first encounter had on our Lord.    Without making any public showing of what he’d been reminded about, he privately helped to re-create the man’s ability to hear and to speak.     He did so by mixing spit from his mouth with dirt on the ground, a holy method of re-creating that hints for us to remember the first human was formed by God breathing upon dust.   And then the Son of God (who himself had just been helped to open up) sighed, looked up at heaven, and as if talking to himself, to God the Father and to the man before him all at the same time declared “Be Opened!”

            In both of these healing stories, we mustn’t fail to notice how intercession played a very important role in the holy healing process.   The sick daughter and the physically impaired man were not able to communicate directly to Jesus and ask for restoration.    This happened only after the faithful intentions and actions of loved ones and friends.    We have this faithful responsibility.  We have this duty to help bring healing to other people’s lives, to help open them up to God’s restorative power.   And getting back to what I shared at the opening of my words today, we are particularly inspired to do so when we have personally experienced this opening and empowering in our hearts and minds.   

            In just a few minutes, we will share in the sacrament of our Lord’s Supper together.  May we do so reflecting on the Good News proclaimed in today’s passage from Mark … the Good News that we can reach out to Jesus in personal plea for ourselves and in intercession for others, fully trusting that His healing love and saving grace extends to and includes all God’s children.   Amen.  

           

           

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[i] Dawn Ottoni Wilhelm, Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 4 commentary on Mark 7

Don't Forget What You Look Like!

 

Psalm 106:1-5; James 1:17-27

 

            We all spend time staring at our self-reflection in mirrors.   I find this to be especially true for me after one of my wonderful children has pointed out, yet again, that I have some eye-gunk going on or gray hairs heralding my aging process!  But I trust most of us do some mirror gazing at least once a day. 

            So we examine whatever part of our physical appearance is calling or being called to our attention.   We examine our hair style and what’s happened to it throughout the course of a day and the course of a life.  The eighties were poofier years even for me!  We consider the marks and creases of our complexion.  We measure how much confidence the show of our teeth might give us.  We review the new styles or stuck with styles and shifting fits of our clothing.  

            Through all the year’s we undertaken this sort of personal inventory of our physical appearance, we’ve been companioned by our inner voice.   This is the voice of our self-esteem evaluating our identity.  It narrate how we are feeling about ourselves at any given moment and counsels us on what to do to improve ourselves according to certain standards that we deeply value or feel pressured to value.    So when I’m told about the eye gunk or gray hairs, my inner voice whispers, “Don’t you feel unclean?  Aren’t you embarrassed?  Go wash your face!”    Mirror gazing is also self-esteem gathering.

            There are precious moments when what we see reflected back at us inspires us to feel positive and secure about ourselves.    These are moments when we feel worthy of being liked and loved.   In this world where being judged and angling for competitive edge seems to always be in play, such positive self-reflection inspires us to feel confident and content, open to whatever purposes and plans life invites us to. 

            But then there are the other moments, which I feel and fear are much more frequent for many of us.   These are the moments I believe we’ve all had throughout our years when in varying degrees we judge ourselves to the point of self-ridicule and social exclusion.    Our world feels closed in instead of wide open.    Our self-esteem can only summon us to go back to bed and hide under cover, hoping for a dream about being a special guest on some personal makeover show.    We feel as though life really is a constant competition to win favor, friends, love, and status … and we are losing.    Our sin-struck selves can’t cope with aging, with anxieties, with moral and spiritual expectations, and with mortal inevitabilities.   

            So mirror gazing can have a positive and negative impact on your psychological and social well-being and your sense of purpose in the world.   Now, I have a deeper question for you to consider.  How does it influence the way you see and understand your identity as a Christian?  Does standing and starting at your self-reflection help or hinder your ability to understand and securely accept God’s unconditional love for you?   Does it help or hinder your sense of place and purpose as Jesus’ follower and friend ministering to this sin-sick world?   Does your mirror ever invite you to moral and spiritual self-reflection, to consider how confident you are that in God’s grace others just might see the face of Christ in the world through you?    

            The Book of James has a clear, strongly worded, and possibly uncomfortable answer to this deeper question about whether or not we should be standing around staring at ourselves in the mirror as a means of evaluating our Christian identity.    

            It is widely concluded that James -- the voice we hear mingled with our own when we read and hear this text -- was the brother of Jesus and the pastor of the first generation church in Jerusalem.    His words therefore had a particularly great deal of authority to those baptized in Christ he was addressing.     And the style of his writing – the strength of his preaching voice -- suggests James knew his clout.   It is continuously and unapologetically direct, very energetic in tone, and preaches wisdom with a similar weightiness as the Old Testament book of Proverbs.   

             There sure seems to have been a big problem facing James’ faith community.  Too many professing believers seem to have been stuck standing and staring at themselves.  Too many had succumbed to being self-absorbed, suckered into the predominant self-improvement philosophies of the prevailing pagan culture they lived in.    With the focus narrowly on their own faces instead of being the broad face of Christ in world, spiritual apathy and immoral behavior had lots of room to grow.   

            James unapologetically speaks out against this sinfully myopic mirror gazing.   He is clear that our identity in Christ is not to be primarily measured by gazing at ourselves and keeping our faith as some private, self-improvement tool.    We have to see and identify ourselves at all times reflected in a much broader view than what is provided in a single mirror’s closed frame.   We have to see ourselves actively living out our faith in all the wide-open spaces of this world that God is unceasingly loving and redeeming in Christ.    

            James proclaims that anyone who hears what Jesus preached but doesn’t go out into the world to do it is like someone who forgets what they look like, who they truly are, the moment they step away from their self-reflection.    They deceive themselves.  They become very vulnerable to sordid thoughts and behaviors and the “rank growth of wickedness.”     But every believer who hears the voice of Jesus and goes into this sin-reflecting world as a doer for the sake of the liberty He offers will be blessed and be a blessing.    They, we, will be “first fruits” representing all creatures before God.   

            As I mentioned, the Book of James is considered to be wisdom literature, but this does not mean it is esoteric.  I love that is it is bluntly practical and able to be embraced by everyone.  It clearly communicates that everything good that happens in our lives and in this world is a gift from God, whose goodness is unchanging and forever flowing.     It empowers us to keep ourselves constantly open to receiving and re-gifting this.   It reminds us that our faithful willingness to do so gets shut down when we become sinfully self-absorbed, too focused on what we feel we must do to satisfy worldly expectations about our appearance, our security and status and such.    Living in a closed system of the self leads to such folly as rash reactions and speech … whereas being openly, outwardly focused on love of our neighbors can enable us to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.   

            Being doers of the Word is never a solitary affair.   It is always sustained through faithful community, where we receive with faithful meekness God’s “endless bestowal of gifts” and “infinitely renewable resources.”[i]    To quote Jon Foreman, one of my very favorite singer-songwriters, this is how we experience our place in God’s “economy of mercy.”    

            We don’t walk away and forget who we are as Christians when we consistently gather together for worship, for mission work, for faithful fellowship and Bible study.     But neither should we forget and allow our loved ones to forget our identity and calling in Christ when we are not engaged in specifically church-related events.   God’s constant goodness and reconciling purpose is at work everywhere, all the time, and by holy grace is revealed through our faithful understanding in action “in our homes, places of work or volunteering, our schools and communities and more”[ii] … in all the open spaces beyond the closed frames of our mirrors.    Amen.

 

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[i] New Interpreter’s Bible commentary on James

 

[ii] David Lose, www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=614