Sermon — October 13, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

So, I have a confession to make, although you’ve probably realized by now. I am a bit of know-it-all. Whatever the subject, whatever the topic, I have always yearned to be the smartest kid in the class.

I remember one day in seventh-grade biology class when there was a quiz that I was rushing through as fast as I could because I wanted to be the first one to hand it in. And I brought it up to the teacher, and I remember he just looked at me, and he looked at the paper, and he said, “Are you sure you’re done? You’ve got some time. Go check it over and come back.” He knew what was up. I didn’t just want to know it all. I wanted to look like I knew it all. And while he wasn’t going to dock me points for showing off, he was going to send me back to my chair, with that quiz still in my hand, because there were no bonus point for finishing a thirty-minute quiz in ten.

I’m not bitter about it. That would be crazy, right? …But I’m reminded of this story when I think about how Jesus responds when he’s confronted on the road with a question from this rich young man.

Jesus is heading out for the day, and a man runs up to him, and falls down on his knees—this doesn’t often happen to me, thank God—and says, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10:18) Now, you might think that this is exactly the sort of question that Jesus is there to answer. You might think that religion is about how to get to heaven, and so on, and so you might think that Jesus will have something to say. Jesus is a wise and thoughtful teacher, after all. If there’s something we need to know, some wisdom from on high, surely he can give it to us.

What Jesus says instead is a little strange. “Good Teacher,” the man calls Jesus, and Jesus replies, first: “Why do you call me good?” And then, “You know the commandments” already, he lists them off. They aren’t hard to learn. Murder, adultery, theft, perjury, fraud; dishonoring your parents. You call me “Good Teacher,” Jesus says, but no one is good but God, and I have nothing to teach you but things you already know. There’s no secret knowledge you need; just go do it.

And the man says, “Well yeah, I mean, I’ve done all those things.” But he seems to want something more. And Jesus looks at him, and loves him, and says, “Okay, then… there’s just one thing that you lack: it’s to give up everything you have.” “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor…. Then come, follow me.” (Mark 10:21)

And the man is shocked, and goes away grieving, for he has many possessions. (10:22)

It’s easy to misinterpret these words, in one direction or the other. On the one hand, there’s a long tradition of interpretations that try to explain them away. My favorite example of this is the claim, which some of you may have heard, that there was a gate in the wall of Jerusalem called “The Eye of the Needle.” It was a narrow gate, the story goes, too small for a camel to walk through loaded up with all its goods. But if you unloaded all that baggage off the camel’s back, and if the camel got down on its knees, it could just squeeze through.

Now, this is the kind of thing that preachers crave: the historical tidbit or missing piece of context that makes it all make sense. If this is true, then it gives a different tone to what Jesus says. The wealthy can get into heaven, Jesus would be saying, if they unload themselves of their attachment to their wealth, and get down on their knees, and enter through the gate. (And, conveniently, then you can carry the baggage through and load it back onto the camel and be on your way, unchanged but for a moment of humility.)

There’s just one problem with this illuminating fact: it’s entirely made up. While it would be nice if it were true, there is in fact absolutely no evidence that there ever was such a gate. It’s a neat story, but it’s too neat; it seems almost perfectly designed to let us off the hook, without having to engage with what Jesus really says.

Of course, it’s possible to over-interpret what Jesus says in the other direction, too; you might understand his words as too general a rule. You might, for example, extract from this story the general principle “it’s as impossible for the rich to go to heaven as it is for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle,” and the general commandment, “go, sell what you have, and give the money to the poor.” And if you don’t consider yourself rich, then this can come with a certain kind of satisfaction. I may not have much in this life, you might think, but at least God likes me, unlike those people over there.

But of course, every one of us “has many possessions” in some sense, by comparison with our ancestors, or with other people in other places in the world. Some of us have significant wealth, others don’t, yet almost every one of us has, in her pocket, technology that would astound even the 1990s versions of ourselves, and that’s not to mention things like refrigeration and indoor plumbing that would astound our ancestors. Every one of us is rich, if only relatively so.

But even more than that, the story here matters. Jesus doesn’t deliver these words as universal truths. He tells the disciples, in private, that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. But this is a specific case of the truly general rule: “How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!” (10:24) He doesn’t address a crowd with a speech, “All of you who are wealthy, you must sell what you own and give the money to the poor.” He answers a specific man, when pressed, with a specific invitation.

And the specifics of the story make a difference, for me. The man comes running up to Jesus, wanting to be the best. It’s a public question: He wants to be seen handing in his quiz. He asks, “Good Teacher, what must I do?” And Jesus deflects. No one’s good, but here’s what God has given you to do. “Oh yeah yeah yeah!” the man seems to say, I know that no one’s good, but I’m good. I’ve done all those things you said! What else do I have to do? And Jesus looks at him, and loves him, and asks him to give up what he’s holding onto most dearly.

Peter and the disciples misunderstand. “But Jesus,” they say, “we’ve left everything we have.” (10:28) Are we good? At least we’re better than him, right? As usual, they’re missing the point. There’s nothing they can do, no action they can take, that can achieve the kind of self-justification they’re looking for. Whether it’s the rich young man who keeps all the commandments or the poor old disciples who’ve given up everything to follow Jesus, there is nothing they can do, nothing any of us can do, to become worthy of God’s love.

And yet God loves us, and God loves them—God loves you—nevertheless.

Every one of us, in one way or another, has something in common with that man out on the road: “Yeah, yeah! I’ve done everything right! Now would you validate me please? In front of everyone?” Every one of us is in some way like those disciples later on, who say, “Okay, Jesus, but—We’re not like that other guy, right? We’re doing things right?” I’m rich, but I’m not that rich? Or, thank God, for once, I’m poor? Some of you might even be like me, wanting to be the one to hand in the quiz first, because that must mean we’re worth something, right?

And Jesus looks at us, and loves us, and challenges us to give that up.

“For we do not have,” as the Letter to the Hebrews writes, “a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” We have a Savior who comes down among us, and is like us. We have a God who knows what it is to be us, who can empathize with our every weakness and lend us another ounce of strength, who walks alongside us so that we can “approach the throne of grace with boldness,” so that we may “receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:15-16)

Sermon — October 8, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Jesus’ words this week are hard for many people, for many different reasons. I don’t know how many of you listening right now have been divorced, and whether that was a good thing in your life or a hard one, or more likely, both. I don’t know how many of you are the children of parents who were divorced, or have seen your own children or siblings or friends go through divorce, and had those very different experiences of the disruption of family. I don’t know how many of you have known people who probably should be divorced, but aren’t, and have had to deal with that. I do know roughly how many of you grew up in church traditions that explicitly forbid divorce, and I suspect you’ve seen endure people abusive relationships as a result. Whatever the case may be, I don’t think it’s an easy topic for anyone—in a hundred different ways, Jesus’ words about divorce are hard to hear, and that’s because divorce is hard.

Sometimes it’s helpful to say a word about our own church’s position on things like this, for anyone listening who doesn’t know. Unsurprisingly, I think it’s a pretty good one. It’s actually enshrined in our church’s canon law that when someone comes to a member of the clergy because their marriage is in distress, the first duty of that priest is “to protect and promote the physical and emotional safety of those involved and only then… to labor that the parties may be reconciled.” (Constitution and Canons I.19.1) In cases of abuse or pain, physical or emotional, our first duty is to protect the person in front of us from harm. If and only if it’s safe for both people to remain in that marriage, then we try to honor their marriage vows by working toward reconciliation, trying to help repair that relationship. And yet sometimes, a marriage comes to an end; and yes, we will celebrate and bless second marriages after divorce. (And I’ll say for myself, as the child of two parents who divorced and later each re-married—I’m very glad that that’s the case.)

And this is, I hope you’ll agree, a reasonable and a nuanced attitude. There’s just one problem. Our attitude may be quite nuanced on this topic. But Jesus’ attitude? Maybe a bit less so.

So I want to take a second look at what Jesus has to say to us this morning, and I want to put in the context of three different things: in the context of the story itself, what’s happening in Jesus’ life when he says these words; in the context of first-century Judaism, the conversation that’s going on around Jesus relative to which he’s taking a position; and in the context of the whole long story of the Bible, the story of God and God’s creation. And then, if possible, we’ll bring it back to the present day.

So first: What’s happening in the Gospel when Jesus says these things? You might recall from a few weeks ago that Jesus is on the road from Galilee in the north, where he’s been teaching and healing, down toward Jerusalem in the south, where he’s predicted several times that he will suffer and die. He’s just arrived in Judea, the region around Jerusalem, and crowds have gathered again. We’ve arrived in the third quarter of Mark’s gospel: we had his ministry in Galilee and his journey to Judea; now his brief ministry in Judea, followed by his arrest, and trial, and death. The focus of the story has turned from Jesus’ life toward his death. And it’s now that “some Pharisees [come], and to test him they ask, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’” (Mark 10:2)

It matters who’s asking the question, and when. It matters why they’re asking. This handful of Pharisees aren’t asking about divorce because they’re really curious, because they want to learn from Jesus. They’re not asking about a concrete case. They’re asking about the general rule, in the abstract, because they want to test him. They want to trip him up, to undermine him, to find some reason to accuse him of a gaffe. Jesus has a bit of a reputation for playing fast and loose with laws and customs ranging from what to do on the Sabbath to whether you’re required to ritually purify your hands before you eat. And others have tried to trip him up before, to make him look too liberal in a sense. But that’s not what Jesus does this time. He replies, “What does Moses say?” In other words, “What’s in the Torah? What’s in the Law?” (Mark 10:3) And when they answer—Moses allows a man to divorce his wife—Jesus doesn’t do what they expect. He doesn’t loosen the requirements of the law. He strengthens it, and their attempt to accuse him of abandoning the law God gave to Moses falls flat.

The Pharisees’ answer to Jesus’ question is right. Moses did “allow a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce” his wife. (Mark 10:3) This isn’t an old-fashioned or gender-exclusive translation, by the way. The Torah allows a man to divorce his wife; not vice versa. We have historical evidence of a few women, aristocrats or wealthy merchants, who divorced their husbands; but these were cases of prominent women whose power allowed them to flaunt the Law, not follow it. The legal debate among religious scholars in Jesus’ day wasn’t about whether a man could divorce his wife, as the Pharisees asked—it was all about “when,” as in it was allowed. Rabbinic tradition records a disagreement, for example, between the “House of Shammai,” one of two rabbinic schools of thought, who taught that “a man should divorce his wife only” for reasons of “unchastity, since it is said,” and here they quote a verse from Deuteronomy, “‘Because he has found in her indecency in anything.’” But the House of Hillel, the other school, reply, “No,” he can divorce her “even if she spoiled his dish, since it is said, ‘Because he has found in her indecency in anything.’” (Mishnah Gittin 9:10) Infamously, a century later Rabbi Akiba would add: “Even if he found another more beautiful than she.” (This opinion did not win the debate, by the way.)

This is what Jesus means by “hardness of heart.” (Mark 10:5)

This was roughly the scope of the debate: analyzing the particular words from the Law of Moses that authorize divorce, and trying to parse out exactly the circumstances.

Jesus rejects that approach, in this case. He stops parsing the particular words of the law, and tries to put it in a much broader perspective. He re-tells the story of creation itself, the first moment of the first relationship between two human beings, that day in the Garden of Eden when God first says, “It is not good that Adam should be alone.” (Gen. 2:18) This is how things were before they ate the fruit. This is how things ere before the Fall. And this, Jesus says, is the way things ought to be. “Therefore those whom God has joined together let no one put asunder.”

Jesus is confronted on the road, on the way to his destruction, by people who want to force him into a gaffe, and he says—This is not the way the world was supposed to be. Jesus grows up listening to debates over exactly when a man can send his wife away, and Jesus says—This is not the way the world once was. And he seems to offer them a dream: Maybe one day the world won’t be this way. And he turns away from all-too-adult things to lift up the faith of children.

So where does that leave us?

It leaves us with the conclusion that this is not the way the world is supposed to be; and yet this is the way the world is. This isn’t the way that marriage is supposed to be; and yet it’s the way that it is. The end of any relationship, marriage or not, is inevitably a mess, whether you are one of the partners in it, or a child of it, or simply a friend or family member watching things fall apart.

And yet God is always with us in the mess. That’s who Jesus is. Jesus embodies God’s willingness to enter into a world in which things are not the way that they should be, not to destroy it or to punish it but to share the load that human beings carry, without compassion and care. And Jesus embodies as well the way in which God can bring forth new things of beauty from places of sadness and loss. There is no easy answer or simple rule that can handle the messiness of human life. More often than not, there is only the least bad choice. But the God who was born and died and rose again for us is still with us, working in and through the hardest parts of our lives, bearing our sorrows and transforming us, in the end, into something new.

Sermon — September 29, 2024

Michael Fenn, Seminarian

Lectionary Readings

Admittedly, there are many paths a sermon on this gospel reading could take. Off the dome there are four different, very intense, moments that could each be their own sermon. There is the stranger performing exorcisms, there is the drowning oneself, there is the cutting off of various limbs, and the business about salt and fire. When this is the case in preaching, I actually find it helpful to “zoom out” and get a better sense of how we got to such an intense place.

Intrepid observers may have already realized that today’s gospel actually picks up right where last week’s left off. John’s piece of dialogue picks up right after Jesus’ remark about welcoming the children from last week. Which is not actually that easy to catch if you are not paying close attention to the verse numbers–our reading starts with what is arguably an interruption of a longer speech from Jesus. This seems particularly true because his speech that spans last week’s and this week’s readings appears in the Gospel of Matthew without John’s interruption about the exorcist. 

Here I will say that throughout my Biblical studies, I have developed a favorite group of characters. The disciples of Jesus across all the gospels are by far my favorite characters. For many reasons, but one stands head and shoulders above the rest: they are almost constantly wrong. In so many instances, at least one disciple is misunderstanding, misinterpreting, or acting out of turn in the gospels.

We have a prime example of this in John’s interruption in today’s reading. To me, it appears almost comical for John to stop Jesus in the middle of this speech about welcoming children, not overlooking them, and helping them in their faith. To tell him about something that probably could have just waited until after he was done. 

Not only is John acting out of turn in his interruption of Jesus, but his acting out of turn is compounded by what he interrupts to tell Jesus. The disciples have stopped a strange man from performing excorsisms in the name of Jesus. To which Jesus informs them that they have actually missed the point entirely. Stopping someone in doing good works is not a part of the plan– and creating both a divide (the man is not one of us) and a hierarchy (we get to decide who gets to do what), is also not part of the plan. 

Getting back to Jesus’s speech, after that annoying interruption (or introduction, depending on how you look at it). We get to the good stuff where Jesus gets to finish his speech with the millstone, the drowning, the limb cutting, and the salt and fire business. Welcome the children, do not cause them to stumble, do not let yourselves stumble, and be at peace with one another. All easy enough, cut and dry. 

But what does stumbling actually mean? And really, why keep the interruption in this Gospel when they got rid of it in Matthew? There are, in fact, about seven other times in the gospel of Mark where demons are cast out, and such a remark would have been more natural. The gospel writers could have taken this into account when writing it down, made a minor editorial choice to make things flow better. 

I suspect that the interruption is not, actually, an interruption in the end. The actions of John, I would say, are a pretty clear cut example of “causing one to stumble”, in the way that he stops the man from performing exorcisms, which is a good deed (it is also important to bear in mind that exorcisms in the ancient world were life-restoring acts, not the “Emily Rose” situations we might think of today). Also, I think John’s actions are even what it means to “stumble” for oneself. In stopping this man from performing his exorcisms, John has set himself up as someone with the power to decide what should happen, and who should get to do it–and he has created an exclusive group of Christ followers. 

To return to my question–to stumble, then, is not to do something “bad” or something that is against a “law”–though maybe those are included, and I would not say Jesus wants us to do bad things. Rather, stumbling seems to have a few different definitions depending on the person and situation: to stumble might be to be stopped in your faith, or to create division in the community, or to think so highly of yourself as to stop someone else in their faith. 

The aftereffects of stumbling should not be taken lightly either. And I suspect the warning from Jesus is so grave not because God looks for our self mutilation or our pain, but because these kinds of things are so easy to fall into–or to stumble into, to use a different phrasing.  By thinking highly of ourselves, and by creating divisions where there should be unity, and by creating hierarchy– we reject the need for our togetherness. We reject the command that Jesus gives at the end of this week’s gospel lesson: to have peace among ourselves. I think the warning is stark because the presumption that we are right, that we know better; the pride that we should be able to handle things ourselves; and the assumption that we should tell that strange guy to stop doing exorcisms, are all such incredibly easy things to do. 

As Christians, it seems that this story would call us to get off of whatever high horse we may be on, and to stay off it. It is a call to seek out a way to end divisions, to include those who we might otherwise exclude, and to rid ourselves of the assumptions that we are the ones who know best. One example that comes to mind as a huge church nerd, is the fact that the Episcopal Church and Methodist Church have finally decided that unity is more important than our own sense of self importance. This past summer, the United Methodist Church voted to enter into full communion with the Episcopal Church, our vote to affirm this is expected the next time we convene. What this does, in short terms, is recognizes the validity of the other denomination, and allows adherents of both denominations to work together without fear of reprisal from their respective denominational authorities. 

As people, the call of this story would seem to be into a sense of unity and togetherness; to think that we actually do want the stranger performing exorcisms to keep doing exactly that; to think that we actually should not endeavor to do our lives, work, and ministry by ourselves or in our exclusive groups. This is echoed in our readings outside the Gospel for today. God’s solution when Moses complains about the burdens of leadership, and the hardship of the desert, is not to give Moses more power; nor is it to tell Moses to “buck up”. God’s solution and God’s involvement in the life of Moses is to give him more people to do the good work with him. In James’s letter, he does not tell the people to anoint themselves, or to pray for themselves, or to help themselves out of their own sinful ways. The solution James understands for the problems of his community is the unity of people in their faith. 

My friends it seems that stumbling is not such an easy act to define, and is clearly seen only in what seems to be an interruption. When we exclude those who are doing good work–we stumble; when we think ourselves to proud to include the exorcist we do not know–we stumble, when we overlook the children and little ones in our midst–we stumble; when we act out of our own sense of importance and impede others–we stumble. The solution is never to divide and exclude, nor to assume that we will make it on our own (without the exorcist, without the additional prophets, without each other). God’s solution to Moses is togetheness, and God’s desire in Mark is for unity. Nowhere is the final blessing we hear in our services more needed than in these moments of stumbling–be swift to love and make haste to be kind: to the strange exorcist be swift to love, to the little ones who beleive in Jesus be kind, and “have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another”. In the name of the one who loved us first.