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.

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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.

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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. 

Sermon — September 22, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Sometimes we talk about our spiritual lives as a kind of quest, an adventure toward an unknown destination in the hope of finding treasure along the way. We seek enlightenment. We look for meaning. We talk about finding God in the sunset, or in the woods, or finding God in other people.

And life is a quest, a voyage into the unknown. The world is a complicated and strange place, and let’s face it: You can show up to church every week, you can try to spend some time in meditation or in prayer, you can talk a walk through nature or through the city as often as you like, but you never know quite when or where you’re going to encounter God.

Except, here’s the thing: Jesus tells us exactly when and where to find him. It’s just that when we do, it sometimes doesn’t quite feel how we expect.

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So, the New Testament and I have been on close personal terms for a while now, and I can think of four different places where Jesus tells us where we can find him when we go looking.

First and foremost, he says that we can find him in the Eucharist, in the bread and wine that we receive, after he hear him say, yet again, “This is my Body,” and “This is my Blood.” However physically or spiritually you want to interpret that, the Church has always believed and the experience of individual Christians has often confirmed that we encounter God in a unique way in this communion meal; that this is not only a symbol or a reminder of Christ’s life, but a place in which he truly does become present. So, place one: bread and wine.

Place number two, Jesus tells the disciples that “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Matthew 18:20) And we tend to extrapolate from there—where two or three or thirty-tree or three-hundred-and-three are gathered in Jesus’ name, there Jesus is among them. So when we come here, on Sundays; or when a smaller group gathers on Thursday mornings for our Bible study, or Thursday evenings for Centering Prayer; whether it’s the choir rehearsing or the Garden Committee pruning or the children of the church stampeding around, wherever two or three are gathered in his name, Jesus is there.

Third: Jesus tells us that we find him in people who are hungry and thirsty, sick or in prison or in need of clothes. He tells us that whenever we feed someone who is hungry, we feed him; whenever we clothe someone who lacks clothing, we clothe him; whenever we visit someone who is sick or in prison we’re visiting him. And after listing each of these specific cases, he states the general principle: “Truly I tell you,” he says, “just as you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:31-40)

These three are the ones we tend to repeat in the Church. The high church folks will tell you about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The low church folks will tell you about finding Jesus in a small group gathered for prayer. The social justice wing of the church has started whole ministries on the basis of this last quotation from Matthew 25. Heck, just this week one Episcopal Church out in Oregon just won a $400,000 lawsuit against their city, which tried to shut down their ministry to people who are homeless and hungry, because a federal judge agreed that feeding people who are hungry is a religious act.

But we don’t often talk explicitly about the fourth place Jesus tells us we will meet him in this world, the one that he tells us about in the Gospel reading today.

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The disciples are arguing with one another about who is the greatest. They have, as usual, completely missed the point. They’ve forgotten the reminder that if they want to follow him, they should take up the cross. They still think they’re going to find greatness in this world; that following the way of the cross on which Jesus will die will somehow lead to glory.

So he tells them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all, and servant of all.” And then he takes a “little child” and he “puts it among them,” and he says: “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” (Mark 9:37) And that’s the fourth place you can find Jesus, according to him. Not only when you receive communion or gather in his name; not only when you feed the hungry, or visit the sick; but even when you welcome a child in Jesus’ name, you’ll find Jesus there.

You might draw a connection to Jesus’ message about what true greatness is. You might even draw a connection to words we heard just before it, from James. The disciples are full of the wisdom of this world. They have “bitter envy and selfish ambition” in their hearts. They are, as James says, “boastful”; their arrogance will lead to “disorder and wickedness of every kind.” (James 3:14-16)

But then Jesus shows them a child. And on the one hand, the ideals of childhood seems to match so much of what James has to say. It’s the children of the world, Jesus might seem to say, the innocent, pure, humble children of the world, who are the model for the adults; it’s not the leader who’s the most arrogant or brash who is the greatest, but the one who is the most child-like.

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On the other hand: Have you ever met a child?

I love children. I really do. I love my child, I love the children of this church. Taking children seriously, listening to their hopes and their concerns, is as much a part of my job as listening to the rest of you. And really, it can be pretty fun.

But I have never yet met a child who is “peaceable” and “willing to yield,” “full of mercy” and “without a trace of hypocrisy.” Sometimes it feels like half the day is taken up with “coveting something” that they “cannot obtain,” and that’s not to mention the inevitable “disorder… of every kind.” Not to mention, if Jesus’ issue is that the disciples are standing around arguing about who’s the best, then I don’t think being more like children is going to solve the problem.

Only: That isn’t what he says.

He doesn’t tell the disciples that if they want to become great, they should become more like children. He tells them that if they want to become great, they need to be willing to care for children. He tells them that they need to get down off their pedestals and welcome a child. They need to give up their pretensions to theological perfection and get their hands dirty instead, sometimes very literally.

Caring for children doesn’t always feel like a spiritual practice. It doesn’t tend to replenish and refresh us in the kind of way we’re looking for when we say we’re seeking God. There are moments of awe and wonder, of course, and plenty of fun, but “welcoming children,” in Jesus’ name or not, is exhausting work. Jesus tells us that when we do welcome children, we will encounter God there. But it doesn’t always feel like we’re encountering God. Sometimes it just feels very loud.

But of course: That’s true for those other three places, too. We don’t always feel God where we know we meet God. It’s a rare person who comes to communion every week and experiences a deep sense of spiritual fulfillment. We feel this way sometimes, but less often than we hope or need.

Wherever two or three are gathered in his name, Jesus may well be there. But churches are made of people—that’s the problem—and they are as full of rudeness and bad behavior as any other collection of people is. Many, many people burn out on the church, not because of any big trauma or abuse, but because of a thousand small frustrations that lead them to wash their hands of it all.

It’s easy to romanticize the act of feeding people who are hungry, or visiting people who are in prison; even visiting someone who’s sick isn’t always so pleasant. People act like people do, and even more so when they’re going through a hard time.

And yet, Jesus tells us that we will find him there. This is what it means to do what he said last week: to take up our crosses and follow him. This is what it means to be great in the kingdom of God, to roll up your sleeves and serve. To do something that might not feel like you’ve arrived at an enlightened state; but to do something to care for someone whom society considers “the least” of its concern. And to remember that even if you don’t feel God in that moment, Jesus is right there.