Sabbath Day Thoughts

“Birds, Lilies, and the Kingdom”

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — Matthew 6:25-34

Are you worried?  If you are, you’re not alone.  Let’s face it.  These are worrisome times.

We are feeling worried about COVID-19.  The Franklin County Health Department says that we have thirty-nine cases of COVID in Harrietstown this morning and fifty-six in Tupper Lake.  Those are our highest numbers of the pandemic.  While most of us are fully vaccinated and not at risk for severe illness, we worry about our senior seniors and friends with immune system compromises who face greater risk.  We have concern for our kids who are still getting shots in arms.  We think how tough this must be for our healthcare professionals—the hospital staff, nurses, and doctors who have spent the past twenty months on the front lines.

We’re also feeling a worried resignation that we’ll be dealing with the new coronavirus for a long time.  Worldwide in the past week, cases have increased in 72 countries, with twice as many new cases reported here in the states in the past 28 days.  In fact, the only two countries in the world that did not report new cases last week were the Vatican and Oceania—that’s a small cluster of south Pacific Islands.  We don’t like what the experts have to say.  Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, warns that COVID-19 won’t go away.  It will simply become one of many viruses that cause infections, and there will always be a baseline number of cases, hospitalizations, and even deaths.

Related to the pandemic, we are feeling stressed about economics.  The US consumer price index has surged 6.2 percent from a year ago in October.  That’s the highest rise in thirty-one years.  US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last Sunday that quashing COVID-19 is key to lowering inflation.  If we can get a handle on this acute phase of the epidemic, then the surge in the price of commodities, like crude oil, should abate in the second half of 2022.  But in the meantime, we are feeling the spike in prices at the grocery store and the gas pump.  We may have also noticed a phenomenon that has been named “skimpflation.”  Businesses can’t keep enough employees to deliver the experiences and customer service that we previously enjoyed, and so we are paying more for less.  Service is slower at restaurants.  Airline flights are being cancelled.  Businesses have cut hours.  To complicate matters, COVID has created supply chain issues.  Santa might give us a raincheck this year as imported goods don’t make it to store shelves or we balk at the exorbitant price of the latest gift fads.  Am I making you feel worried in writing about this?

As Jesus shared today’s words from the Sermon on the Mount, his friends and followers had worries of their own.  Many people in the Galilee were subsistence farmers, always one crop failure or drought away from hunger.  Some of Jesus’ friends were fishermen.  The fish in the Sea of Galilee belonged to Caesar, but you could pay a pretty shekel for a license to cast your nets and earn your living.  That licensing fee was substantial—the cost of about a third of your catch.  A night when your nets were empty wasn’t just a waste of time, it was a threat to your livelihood.   First century financial failure didn’t land you in bankruptcy court.  It led to debt slavery, consigning yourself or your family to a period of conscripted labor.  That sounds worrisome to me.

Jesus and his friends also contended with the constant anxiety of foreign occupation.  Client kings, like Herod, were appointed to rule locally in the emperor’s stead, and they typically did so by living large at the expense of the people.  Every major city in the land garrisoned Roman soldiers.  The Pax Romana (Peace of Roma) was secured with an iron fist, and the law was swift and harsh in responding to civil disobedience.  Jesus and his followers lived with the terror of crucifixion and public execution.

Beyond the poverty and the politics, there were religious problems.  Even the Chief Priest in the Jerusalem Temple was a Roman appointee.  Factions like the Pharisees and Sadducees divided communities with competing understandings of the Torah.  It doesn’t take a Bible scholar to see that these factions were lining up in opposition to Jesus.  Already, his cousin John had been arrested in an effort to silence his prophetic voice.  Already Jesus was anticipating his journey to Jerusalem and the rejection that would await him there.  They may not have faced COVID-19, but Jesus and his friends had plenty to worry about.

Jesus’ words in our reading from Matthew 6 are a response to those worries.  “Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?”  Jesus called his listeners attention away from their worries.  He invited them to instead attend to the present moment: the birds of the air and the flowers of the field.  He pointed to pelicans skimming above the surface of the sea and to storks spirally slowly up from nests in the marshes.  Jesus gestured to fields of anemones, bright blooms bobbing in the breeze that swept across the hills.

In the gift of the moment, Jesus called his listeners to remember their place in God’s good creation.  The empire might be Caesar’s, but the world and all that is in it belonged to God.  God, who brought the world into being, continued to care and provide for the birds of the air, the flowers of the field, and those worried first-century Israelites.  Jesus reminded his friends that beyond Caesar’s empire there was a holy Kingdom all around them, like a treasure hidden in a field or a pearl of great price.  Long after Caesar’s empire would crumble, God’s Kingdom would prevail.  It was to this eternal and unstoppable Kingdom that they belonged.

I like to imagine that as the crowd that followed Jesus listened to his words and attended to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, they felt better.  Those worried furrows in their brows lost their crease.  They took some nice deep breaths.  Their hearts began to beat a little slower and their blood pressure fell.  As they saw God at work in creation with beauty and power, something shifted within them.  They remembered the eternal Kingdom that they served and the Holy One, who had brought them into being and would one day welcome them home.  Heads nodded in agreement.  An occasional “Amen” broke forth from grateful lips.  Everyone went home that day feeling a little less worried and lot more thankful.

We, too, might feel less worried and more thankful if we took Jesus’ words to heart.  I’d like to help us do just that. 

First, we can make some time in the coming days to attend to the birds of the air, the flowers of the field, and the goodness of God’s creation.  Stretch your legs with a favorite neighborhood stroll.  Take to the trail.  Park your car at Lake Colby and watch the sun set.  Watch the rolling flight of the pileated woodpecker.  Let the Grey Jays on the Bloomingdale Bog eat from your hand.  Ponder the blooms on your Thanksgiving cactus.  As we attend to God’s presence and providence at work everywhere all the time, we can trust that God is at work in and for us.  We can know that God is with us, even in the dark valley of pandemic.  God’s Kingdom always prevails.

Next, we can spend some intentional time with the Lord this week.  Carve out ten minutes to sit with God in silence.  You can begin by reading today’s gospel reading.  Then, do some holy listening.  In the quiet of the moment, you can count on your worries to rise up and greet you, as they often do when we actually sit still.  Instead of allowing your cares to hijack your quiet time, hand them off to God.  Use your imagination to put them in Jesus’ hands.  He promises to take our burdens and give us rest.  Take some deep breaths in that quiet space, and remember that God, who has worked in the past, will work again in your future.

Finally, once we are reoriented and centered in God, it’s time to get busy in service to that holy Kingdom that calls for our ultimate allegiance.  Lace up your sneakers and run to raise money for neighbors in need with the Saranac Lake Turkey Trot.  Find a nice, sturdy cardboard box for your Reverse Advent Calendar, adding a canned or dry good daily in December to benefit the Food Pantry.  Serve the church in this Advent season by sharing your dramatic or musical talents to help me with a pre-recorded Christmas Program for the children and those feeling a little childlike.

I suspect that as folks travel for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, our COVID numbers won’t improve.  We’ll still be wearing masks and minding our social distance.  We’ll pay more than we should for that Christmas gift for someone special.  When we get a gander at the price, we’ll trade our Christmas roast beef and Yorkshire pudding for ham or turkey.  And yet, I have hope that in the coming weeks we may also feel less worried.  We’ll consider the birds of the air, the balsam in the forest, and the billion stars in the Adirondack night sky.  We’ll remember who we are and Whom we belong to.  Thanks be to God. 

Resources

Steven P. Eason. “Pastoral Perspective on Matthew 6:24-34” in Feasting on the Word, Year A, vol. 3. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011.

Richard Beaton. “Commentary on Matthew 6:24-34” in Preaching This Week, May 25, 2008.  Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/eighth-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-matthew-624-34-2

Emerson Powery. “Commentary on Matthew 6:24-34” in Preaching This Week, Feb. 27, 2011.  Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/eighth-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-matthew-624-34

Data Team, Lisa Charlotte Muth. “The coronavirus pandemic is far from over” in Deutsche Welle: Science, Nov. 19, 2021.  Accessed online at The coronavirus pandemic is far from over | Science | In-depth reporting on science and technology | DW | 19.11.2021

Christine D’Antonio. “Pittsburgh doctor on pandemic: ‘We will be living with this virus, there is no covid zero’” in WPXI-TV News, November 14, 2021.  Accessed online at Pittsburgh doctor on pandemic: ‘We will be living with this virus, there is no covid zero’ – WPXI

Shep Hyken. “The Great Resignation Leads to Skimpflation” in Forbes Magazine, Nov 14, 2021.  Accessed online at https://www.forbes.com/sites/shephyken/2021/11/14/the-great-resignation-leads-to-skimpflation/?sh=6d93bf5d6c2b

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Unfailing

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Sabbath Day Thoughts – 1 Kings 17:7-15

He toddled after me.  Bare feet kicked pebbles and stirred small storms of dust.  He was practicing his words.  “Deshe,” he said, handing over a tuft of dry grass, brittle with drought.  I added the grass to my basket. 

“Giza etz?” he said tentatively, holding up a stick, just the right size for kindling.  Into the basket it went. 

“Perach.” He smiled shyly, extending a tiny wilted bouquet of chamomile, clenched in his small fist. 

Such a good boy!  So generous!  I tucked the flowers behind my ear and scooped him up, holding him next to my heart.  I could feel his little ribs beneath his robe and see the delicate throb of a vein, pulsing at his temple.

It hadn’t always been like this.  My husband, like his father and his father’s father, had gone to sea.  We Phoenicians are a seafaring people, weaving a vast web of trade that spans the Great Sea from Sidon to Cyrene, Rome, Malta, and beyond.  We pluck fish from the ocean depths, harvest rare pearls from the Gulf of Arabia, and hew great ships from the cedars of Lebanon.  For men, it is an adventurous but dangerous life, always at the mercy of wind and wave.  For women, it brings loneliness.  Always the siren call of the water pulls our men back.  Always, there is the waiting.

They said my husband was killed by a lightning strike.  First the rigging caught, then the weathered decking.  When the fire reached the amphorae of olive oil in the hull, it launched a ball of fire into the sky, worthy of the Great Lighthouse of Alexandria.  I don’t know if he drowned or if he burned, but I do know the tight cage of fear that had held my heart ever since.

Our son was weeks old.  There was no patriarch to take us in, no kindly kinsman to offer protection.  In Zarephath, my neighbors made the sign of the evil eye behind my back, worried that my misfortune would rub off on them.  The large amphorae of flour, oil, and salt fish that my husband had left behind slowly emptied, despite every economy.  I had grown slight with hunger and my milk had eventually failed.

I was collecting wood for a final fire, a last loaf to be baked, a little oil to be poured out.  My child, perched on my hip, looked at me with enormous eyes set in wan cheeks that had once been chubby.  As my eyes filled with tears, he demanded to be put down, little arms pushing and legs kicking.  With both feet on the ground, he stretched up a hand for me to hold. 

“Ezra, Ama!” (Help, Mama!) he said.  He tugged on my hand, pulling me homeward.  Help?  Whose help?

We saw him outside the city gate.  He looked like he had been sleeping rough for a long time.  His tunic was rumpled, the armpits stained with rings of sweat.  His beard was enormous and wild.  Bits of straw clung to his shaggy hair.  He held a long, sturdy, wooden staff, the sign of a patriarch or a . . .

“Navi!” (prophet), my little boy said.  His hands clapped with delight and chuckles swelled his small, empty belly.

Hearing my child, the prophet turned with a sharp look, taking in our skinny forms.  “Shalom!” he greeted us, “Please, could I trouble you for some water?”

All the wadis had gone dry with drought, but within the walls of Zarephath, our deep well remained true.  It was a simple thing to fulfill his request, but as I nodded and turned to do so, he stopped me.

“And please, a little bread with that?  Surely, you have a little something to share with Yahweh’s messenger.”

I thought of the handful of flour and trickle of oil at the bottom of my jars, and the fear that clenched my heart held even tighter.  Of all the people in Zarephath to ask for help, why choose us?  Our poverty was obvious. 

“Lechem?” (bread), my son said, pointing to the prophet.

I sighed.  “You do not know what you ask, my friend.  My cupboard is bare.  We are headed home to eat our final few morsels and call it quits.”

But the prophet wouldn’t take my no for an answer.  “Please!” he insisted, sounding both compassionate and authoritative, “Don’t be afraid.  Make me a small loaf, bring it here; then, bake for yourself and the boy.  Yahweh will bless you!”

It made no sense.  Why would I ever consider such a thing at the expense of my child?  Yet, my son seemed to have reached a different conclusion.

“Lechem, Ama!  Lechem!” (Bread, Mama!  Bread!).  He stomped his feet, pointed at the prophet, and pulled me toward home.

It was against my better judgment.  I stirred the coals from last night’s fire.  I fed it with tufts of grass, which caught with a soft chuff.  I carefully added our sticks and watched as tongues of flame leapt up.  I scooped out most of the last of our meal, mixed it with water, and kneaded it into a smooth cake.  I stretched it thin, rubbed it with the last of the oil and slapped it onto the baking stone, now so hot that it sizzled beneath the oiled dough.  The fragrance of baking bread made our stomachs roar as the little loaf puffed and turned golden.  With skilled fingers, I plucked an edge and flipped it over, revealing a well-browned bottom.

“What am I doing?” I asked my son.  His cheeks had pinked with the fire’s warmth.

“Lechem, Ama!  Lechem!” he repeated, pointing back to the city gate.

I wrapped the loaf in a cloth and slipped it into my basket.  I filled a cup with water and stood swaying in the doorway, basket in one hand, cup in the other.  “Stay or go?” I wondered.  My son made the decision for me, stomping off on his short legs to the city gate where the prophet waited.  I followed, questioning my every step.

I don’t know what I was expecting.  A choir of angels?  The peal of thunder?  A heavenly affirmation?  What I got when we found the prophet, waiting outside the gate, was a thank you.  “Now, go and do the same thing for yourself,” the prophet instructed.  He dismissed us with a nod, said his blessing, and began to devour his loaf with grimy hands.

I picked up my boy, balancing him on my hip as I walked slowly home.  I had heard that Yahweh, the great God of Israel, is a generous god with unfailing love for the lost and the poor.  Yet here we were, the widow, the orphan, and a stranger, clinging to life by our fingernails, preparing to eat our last bread before returning to our ancestors.  Maybe my neighbors were right.  Maybe the gods Baal and Asherah had cursed me.  Maybe I deserved what was surely coming in the days ahead.

By now, we were home.  I set my child down and pushed the door open.  He walked over to the great flour jar, taller than he was, and patted it with both hands.  “Lechem, Ama?  Lechem?”  He sounded hopeful.

“Yes, my love, bread.” I answered.  I tied an apron on and pushed back my sleeves.  I crossed the floor and pried the heavy clay top off the amphora. 

Below, my son was stamping his feet.  “Lechem, lechem, lechem!”

I was so shocked by what I saw within that I dropped the clay top.  It hit the hard earthen floor with a dull thud and split in two.  There, within the amphora, finely milled flour rose all the way to the top.  I plunged my hands in, and felt the silky dryness slipping through my fingers.

My son had moved to the oil jar.  Again, he placed his palms on the rounded sides.  He patted with his small hands and sang in a tattoo rhythm, “Shemen zayit!  Shemen zayit!” (Olive oil! Olive oil!).

I pried off the top and gasped.  The oil jar was filled to the brim, the first pressing, fragrant, clear, and golden green.  A few bubbles rose to the top and rested on the surface, as if freshly filled.  My boy was laughing now, spinning with childish delight until he plopped down onto his bottom with a breathless thud.

I sat down next to my son, dizzy with hunger and mystery.  Perhaps Baal and Asherah had cursed me.  But Yahweh, the holy and almighty One of Israel, had blessed me.  In an instant, the certainty of our death had changed to the promise of life.  My heart felt funny, felt wild and free, felt like the cage that had bound it since the death of my husband had been sprung.  I put my hands to my head to stop the world from spinning.  As my son crawled into my lap, I laughed and cried until I felt empty and filled with a peace that I had not known since my husband’s death.

Perhaps it was the generosity of Yahweh that made me do it.  When God is so good, how can you keep it to yourself?  I picked up my son and went back to the city gate where we found the prophet dozing in the sun.  Crumbs from my little loaf dotted his beard.  A smear of oil had been wiped on the front of his tunic. 

I put down my boy and he nudged the prophet’s sandal with his little bare foot.  “Navi?”  I asked.

He opened an expectant eye.  “Call me Elijah.”

“Elijah, my son and I would like you to stay with us.  Will you come?”  The boy smiled.  He reached out one hand to the prophet and with the other pointed home.

The prophet rose and brushed the crumbs from his beard.  He balanced his staff against the city wall then reached down to pick up my son, who settled comfortably into his arms.  The Prophet Elijah smiled, “We thought you would never ask.”

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Dust on the Bible

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Sabbath Day Thoughts

My church has a tradition of sharing testimonies on Reformation Sunday. It’s always a memorable and inspiring service. I don’t have a sermon to share with you today, but it seems only fitting on this day to ponder the privilege of reading scripture and invite us to a new way of engaging the Word.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

– Psalm 119:105

Jesus answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

– Matthew 4:4

“Taste (V & VI)”

– Christopher Smart, 1770

“O take the book from off the shelf,

And con it meekly on thy knees;

Best panegyric on itself,

And self-avouch’d to teach and please.

Respect, adore it heart and mind,

How greatly sweet, how sweetly grand,

Who reads the most, is most refin’d,

And polish’d by the Master’s hand.”

When was the last time you read your Bible?  As Presbyterians, we believe the Bible is an important part of knowing God, but few of us have a regular practice of scripture reading. 

We probably have some reasons for that.  We may remember the antiquated language of the old King James translation, so we have a hard time finding meaning in all the Thees and Thous.  We may feel that we don’t have time.  Bible reading is on our “To Do” list, but it seems to always get bumped to the next day.  For many of us, the cultural world of the Ancient Near East, as depicted in scripture, seems alien and confusing.  We feel we need a Bible scholar to unravel the meaning for us.  A few of us just want a Bible buddy, a fellow reader to keep us motivated.  Does any of this ring true for you?

A great irony of our reluctance to engage scripture is that it is vital to our faith tradition.  Churches born in the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century fought for the ability to translate the Bible into the common language of the people.  Armies waged war to read and interpret scripture in worship.  People gave their lives so that we might even have home Bibles for family reading.  Some of you, who were raised in Reformed or Presbyterian homes, may have childhood memories of family Bible reading on the Sabbath day.  Many of us have inherited family Bibles that are well worn because they were well read.  So how, in the words of the Hank Williams, Sr. country music standard, do we “get the dust off the Bible”?

I’d like to get us started by introducing a simple, reflective approach to Bible reading that taps into our natural gifts for imagination.    Begin with a Psalm or Bible story.  You could use one of the weekly lections that we print in the bulletin.  A good starter reading could be the parable of the “Lost Sheep,” Luke 15:3-7:

“3 Then Jesus told them this parable: 4 “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders 6 and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”

Allow about twenty minutes for your reflection.  Take a moment to quiet your mind and set aside distractions.  

Begin by reading the scripture slowly to yourself.  Notice the cast of characters (the shepherd, the sheep, the flock, and the neighbors).  Which character calls for your attention? 

Read the passage again slowly.  Now, imagine yourself as that character; put yourself in the story.  What do you see (smell, taste, hear, touch)?  How do you feel?  How do you relate to the other characters?  Allow the story to unfold in your imagination. 

Next, slowly read the passage a third time.  Consider, “How does this reading speak to me?  What does it tell me about myself and about God?”  You may want to capture your new awareness by keeping a journal to record your thoughts.  You could even get creative and draw a picture or write a poem. 

To complete your Bible reading, take a moment to thank God in prayer for your new awareness.

Like most things, developing a habit of scripture reading takes commitment, practice, and support. Make a daily date with your Bible and put it on your calendar.    Try setting a goal of reading each day for a month.  You’ll soon find that you are looking forward to those quiet moments with the “Holy Word.”  And just in case you need some moral support, reach out to your resident Bible scholar – that’s me!

“Dust on the Bible”

— Written by Johnny and Walter Bailes

I went into a home one day just to see some friends of mine
Of all their books and magazines, not a Bible could I find
I asked them for the Bible when they brought it, what a shame
For the dust was covered o’er it, not a fingerprint was plain

Dust on the Bible, dust on the Holy Word
The words of all the prophets and the sayings of our Lord
Of all the other books you’ll find, there’s none salvation holds
Get the dust off the Bible and redeem your poor soul

Oh, you can read your magazines of love and tragic things
But not one word of Bible verse, not a scripture do you know
When it is the very truth and it’s contents good for you
But it’s dust is covered o’er it
And it’s sure to doom your poor soul

Oh, if you have a friend you’d like to help along life’s way
Just tell him that the Good Book shows a mortal how to pray
The best advice to give him that will make his burdens light
Is to dust the family bible, trade the wrong way for the right

Blind

/ reverendjoannwhite / 1 Comment

Sabbath Day Thoughts – Mark 10:46-52

The girl was so wild that they kept her in a cage.  She bit and scratched, screamed and spit.  They didn’t know what was wrong with her, but the Tewksbury State Poorhouse was the end of the line for the orphaned and the indigent.  There was no place else to send her.  She was eight-years-old.  Her mother had died of tuberculosis.  Her father, overwhelmed and unable to cope, had surrendered her and younger brother Jimmie to the state.  Jimmie had died within months of their arrival at Tewksbury.

If it hadn’t been for the kindness of an elderly maid, Annie might have stayed in the cage.  Seeing the little girl so cruelly confined, the older woman felt compassion.  It didn’t seem right that a child should live like that, even if she was disturbed.  The maid baked a little cake.  She left it outside the cage, just within Annie’s reach.  The suspicious child devoured the cake and a bond was forged between the little girl and the old woman.

With the calming influence of the maid, doctors examined Annie.  They learned that she suffered from trachoma, an eye disease that had left her almost totally blind.  All at once, Annie’s behavior made sense.  She was a terrified, grieving eight-year-old, unable to cope with the death of her mother, the abandonment of her father, and the loss of her brother.  The doctors treated Annie’s trachoma and operated on her eyes, restoring some of her vision.

We don’t know how Bartimaeus lost his vision.  Perhaps it was gradual, the world dissolving bit by bit into shadows and darkness.  Perhaps it was all at once – a blow to the head or a workplace accident that robbed him instantly of his sight.  We don’t know how long Bartimaeus had sat roadside, earning his living in the only way left to a first century blind man: wrapped in his cloak and begging, depending upon the kindness of neighbors who might share a few alms.

We do know that Bartimaeus had heard of Jesus.  Maybe, one day a leper had come through the Jericho gates, boasting of the healing he had known at the hands of the Lord.  Perhaps disciples, who had once followed John the Baptist, had hurried past Bartimaeus on their way to Galilee, whispering that the Messiah had come at last.  One day, news had come to Bartimaeus that Jesus had healed a blind man in Bethsaida.  Jesus had spat into his hands, rubbed the blind man’s eyes, prayed powerfully, and the man had then seen everything clearly.

As the Passover drew near, a rumor came to Bartimaeus from pilgrims traveling down the Jordan Valley.  Jesus was coming to Jericho.  Jesus and his followers were going up to Jerusalem for the Passover.  From his seat on the Jericho Road, Bartimaeus, who had long ago given up hope, began to imagine that his life could change if only Jesus would pass by.

We tend not to see them until they trouble us.  Dressed all in black with big boots and a leather jacket, she shouts obscenities into her phone non-stop while her dog poops on our front lawn. 

In Kinney Drug—or was that Stewarts, he stands in front of us in his grimy jeans with a mask pulled down below his nose.  We look at our watch while he buys about a billion lottery tickets and some smokes. 

She hasn’t left her house in years.  Her son brings her the essentials and Meals-on-Wheels makes weekday deliveries.  I hear she has cats—lots.  Sometimes you see her scowling from the porch, turning away when you say, “Hi.”

He squats in a doorway with unkempt hair and a wild beard.  He’s always having an argument in a garbled voice with someone who isn’t there.  They’re everywhere.

She might have been legally blind, but Annie could see that the Tewksbury State Poorhouse was a one-way ticket to a life of poverty and misery.  Occasionally, children left.  Those who showed promising intelligence were sent away to school, but Annie was legally blind.  Where was the promise in that?  When the State Board of Charities sent a commission to investigate the awful conditions of the poorhouse, Annie saw her chance.  She told the commission that she wanted to go to school.

As an illiterate fourteen-year-old, Annie was sent to the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston.  There Annie found that her struggles would be greater than her visual impairment.  Institutionalized from the age of eight, Annie lacked social skills, table manners, and appropriate hygiene.  She alienated her fellow students, and her quick temper put her at odds with her teachers.  Despite her difficulties, Annie was tremendously bright and hard working.  She put her prodigious gifts to work and excelled.  Six years later in 1887, Annie took top honors as valedictorian upon graduation from the Perkins Institute.

When Jesus and his friends passed Bartimaeus on the Jericho Road, the blind man knew that this was his big shot.  Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, and odds were good that he wasn’t coming back.  If healing was going to happen, it had to be now.  So, Bartimaeus began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!  Hey, you!  Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 

Bartimaeus made the biggest scene imaginable.  It was embarrassing.  The neighbors told him to pipe down, but the more they told him to stop, the more he yelled.  Folks began to look away.  They turned to one another and shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders as if to say, “Can you believe this, guy?”  If the neighbors had had their way, Jesus wouldn’t have stopped.  Instead, the good people of Jericho would have cheered Jesus on and sent him up to the Holy City where meaningful and important things were surely waiting.

We don’t know if it was the “Hey, you!” or the “Son of David” or the “Have mercy on me,” but I’m sure everyone was surprised when Jesus stopped.  As Jesus called Bartimaeus over, the neighbors, who had been so anxious to silence Bartimaeus, had a change of heart.  Suddenly, they were all help and smiles.  “He’s calling you!  ‘Atta boy!  Get up there!”  For his part, the blind man was so confident of his impending healing that he leapt up and left behind the tools of his trade.  His cloak and begging bowl were forgotten on the roadside.

One day, we suddenly knew we were blind.  We were volunteering at the Food Pantry when she came in with her dog in a stroller.  We cried when we heard that her folks had put her out and her dog was sick and she couldn’t afford the vet bills. 

One day, we had a flat tire and he pulled over to help us.  He got out of his rusted-out pick-up, followed by the miasma of cigarette smoke and unwashed hair.  While he helped change the tire, he told us how his grandparents raised him after his Dad ran out, and he never really learned to read, and he does odd jobs to make ends meet, and that’s ok.

One day, we saw the police and paramedics go in after the ambulance arrived without any siren.  Later, we saw the stretcher come out with its quiet, shrouded contents.  The EMTs talked to the cops while the cats cried piteously.  Last spring, the house sold, but they say it was a nightmare to clean out.

One day, we read an article in the paper about mental illness. and we realized how impossible it is to find decent care for big-time disorders in the North Country.  Folks just flail until they become a danger to themselves and others and the police get involved, which may get them off the streets for a couple of weeks, but healing never happens.

One day, we opened our eyes.  One day, we knew that we had been blind to the hidden world of need all around us.

The head of the Perkins School helped Annie find a job after graduation.  The Keller family of Tuscumbia, Alabama had written, looking for a governess who could help with their daughter Helen.  A high fever at the age of eighteen months had robbed Helen of both vision and hearing.  Helen was every bit as wild as Annie herself had once been.  No one knew how reach the child, how to help her communicate with the outside world.  Annie Sullivan went to Tuscumbia.  With patience and persistence, she taught Helen Keller.  Most of us may remember the powerful scene in the award-winning play and film The Miracle Worker when Annie signed “water” into Helen’s left hand while holding Helen’s right hand beneath the bright, wet flow gushing from a hand pump.  Suddenly, a light turned on and Helen Keller, who would never see, finally saw what Annie was doing, and the world opened up for her.

We don’t know how Bartimaeus’ eyesight returned.  It could have taken a few minutes, like a darkened theatre that slowly brightens as the audience rises to leave.  It could have come back all at once—a bright, mind-blowing flash of sun and sky, landscape and people.  It could have started with a bright point of light that grew until the whole world was illuminated like a kaleidoscope shining all about.  Afterward, Bartimaeus, who was no longer blind, saw everything clearly.  So clearly in fact, that when Jesus told him to “go,” he knew he had to come.  He knew he had to follow Jesus, even if suffering and death awaited them in Jerusalem.

Maybe someday we’ll see what Jesus saw all those years ago on the Jericho Road.  Maybe someday we’ll know what Annie Sullivan knew when she walked into the Keller home in Tuscumbia, Alabama.  A hidden world of need is all around us—all the time.  We can be blind, or we can choose to make a healing difference.  Can we see? Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us.  Amen.

Resources

Jarvis, Cynthia. “Pastoral Perspective on Mark 10:46-52” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Galloway, Lincoln E. “Homiletical Perspective on Mark 10:46-52” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

–. “The Story of Helen Keller & Anne Sullivan” in The Helen Keller Society.  Accessed online at http://helenkeller.org.za/HK1/index.php/about-us/the-miracle-and-miracle-worker

Biography.com editors. “Anne Sullivan Biography” in Biography, April 2, 2014.  Accessed online at https://www.biography.com/activist/anne-sullivan

See the source image
Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke in The Miracle Worker (1962) from Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Image accessed online at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056241/mediaviewer/rm4062820864/

“Servant Leaders”

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Sabbath Day Thoughts – Mark 10:35-45

When the economy cratered in 2008, the St. Louis-based manufacturing and consulting company Barry-Wehmiller took a big financial hit.  For CEO Bob Chapman it was clear that employee cuts were inevitable, but instead of sending out pink slips, Chapman made a surprising announcement.  He implemented alternating furloughs of four-weeks unpaid leave for all.  Chapman told his workers, “We must all suffer a little instead of letting people go.”  Chapman participated in the rolling furloughs, foregoing wages alongside his employees until the crisis was averted.

When Cheryl Bachelder became CEO of Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen in 2007, the fast-food franchise was struggling.  Popeye’s, which had started 45 years before as a grab-and-go fried chicken joint in the suburbs of New Orleans, had dwindling franchises and falling revenues.  Instead of cutting the bottom line, Bachelder implemented a new leadership model.  Bacheleder cast the vision for what Popeye’s could do: serve excellent chicken to families on the go for a reasonable price in more locations.  Then she set out to help her workers succeed with better pay, benefits, and training.  Bachelder transformed Popeye’s from just another fast-food mill to a business culture where everybody won.

In March 2020 as the world ground to a halt amid the exploding COVID-19 pandemic, the airline industry was in big trouble.  Governments issued lock-down orders, travel plans were cancelled, and we all sheltered in place.  The CEO of Delta Airlines Ed Bastian took drastic steps.  Bastian led his company through the crisis by announcing that he would take a 100% pay cut, going without his $900,000 salary for the next six months.

Bob Chapman, Cheryl Bachelder, and Ed Bastian are advocates of servant leadership, a model for business management first theorized by Robert Greenleaf in 1970.  Greenleaf cast the vision for management that shares power and puts the needs of workers first, so that they can reach their greatest potential.  According to Greenleaf, servant leadership creates businesses where employees are growing as people.  They feel healthier, wiser, freer, and more autonomous.  Those workers are also more likely to become servant leaders themselves.  Beyond the walls of the corporation, these companies make a difference for good, benefitting the least privileged and most at-risk people of the community.  Greenleaf dreamed of a world where servant leaders would create businesses that showed the way for others to follow while making a helping, healing difference for communities.

Our gospel lesson reminds us that, long before Robert Greenleaf cast his vision, Jesus was a servant leader.  He hoped that his disciples would follow him on that path.  Jesus’s words, “whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all,” were spoken as he neared the end of his journey from Galilee to Jerusalem for that final Passover.  Just before today’s reading begins, Jesus had warned his friends.  For the third time, he told them that he would soon be betrayed, arrested, condemned, and executed.

Even though they had heard this message three times, the disciples didn’t understand.  James and John had figured out that glory would not await them in the holy city, so they hatched a new plan.  They would convince Jesus to honor them in the Kingdom to come with places of greatest honor at his left and right.  The fact that the other disciples got so angry at the Sons of Zebedee tells us that they probably had their own visions of grandeur.  How dare James and John assert their right to be elevated above the rest of them!

In stark contrast to those visions of glory, Jesus called his friends to be servants and slaves.  A servant, diakonos, waited on others, whether serving food or completing helpful tasks.  A slave, doulos, simply did whatever he or she was told, acting at the direction of their master.  This was not what the disciples wanted to hear.

Jesus’s model of servant leadership was an extraordinary departure from business-as-usual in the Ancient Near East.  Think about it.  Caesar was a self-proclaimed God.  Petty rulers like King Herod lived in luxury at the expense of the people whom they were appointed to rule.  In stark contrast to Caesar and Herod, Jesus was the prime example of servant leadership.  Jesus allowed his core value of agape, self-giving love, to guide him.  That love called him to a life of service—helping, healing, caring, speaking truth to power, and ultimately giving his life for the salvation of us all.  Long before Robert Greenleaf tried to sell the business world on servant leadership, Jesus was blazing the trail and hoping that his followers would go and do likewise.

Back in 1970 when Greenleaf published his first essay on his new model of leadership, he had plenty of critics.  Those naysayers insisted that leaders would only be respected if they were firmly authoritative—that often translated to white men with graduate degrees from prestigious schools and years of experience at the helm of Fortune 500 companies.  Greenleaf’s critics also said that if you make your workers your priority, then they will walk over you.  They would indulge themselves with those opportunities, perks, and benefits, but they wouldn’t put their shoulder to the wheel.  The skeptics proclaimed that companies who embraced this radical theory of leader-as-servant would never make money.

Yet time has told a different story.  When Bob Chapman became CEO of Barry-Wehmiller in 1975 at the age of thirty, the ninety-year-old company had $20 million in revenue.  Their technology was outdated.  Their financial position was weak.  Today Barry-Wehmiller has survived that 2008 recession and continued to grow.  They now have 12,000 employees and a net worth of $3 billion.  Beyond that impressive bottom line, the company sees its unique measure of success as the way they touch the lives of others.  In addition to his work as CEO, Bob Chapman and his wife operate a foundation which teaches the principles of servant leadership for free to communities in need.

At Popeye’s, Cheryl Bachelder found that when she began to focus on changing the company’s culture to a servant-based model, things began to change for the better.  As franchise owners and employees benefitted, the chain began to grow.  Sales increased by 45%.  Stock price climbed from $13-a-share to $61-a-share.  Better yet, when surveyed, franchise owners, employees, and customers all said that they were happier.  In 2017 when Tim Horton’s acquired Popeye’s, that grab-and-go chicken joint had grown to 2,600 locations worth $1.8 billion.

Although COVID-19 remains an ongoing concern, thanks to the delta-variant, things are looking up at Delta Airlines.  Unlike their competitors, Delta has weathered the COVID crisis without resorting to furloughs.  In an interview last month, CEO Ed Bastian said that flights are full and Delta is hopeful and optimistic.  After losing $9 billion in 2020, Delta turned a profit last quarter and is on track to do the same this quarter.  Delta was the first airline to volunteer to help with the evacuation of Afghanistan.  With more than two dozen flights out of Kabul, they airlifted 3,000 refugees from the crumbling nation.  When praised for his leadership, Bastian brushes aside the compliments, saying, “It’s all about the people.”

Of course, after Jesus, the best example of the power of servant leadership is found in the disciples, the ones who really didn’t get it when Jesus told them three times that whoever wishes to be greatest of all must be servant of all.  Ten of the disciples would follow Jesus in losing their lives for the sake of the gospel.  As they reached out to the world with the good news of God’s amazing love, the disciples died untimely deaths in pursuit of Jesus’ mission and in service to God’s Kingdom.  They were crucified, put to the sword, stabbed, clubbed, stoned, and burned.  Even John, the only disciple to live to old age, suffered—driven out of Israel and forced to live in exile on the other side of the Mediterranean.  Despite the high cost of servanthood, by the time John died, the gospel had spread exponentially.  House churches spanned the Roman Empire, from North Africa to Syria to Spain.  Everywhere people were affirming that God is love and Jesus is Lord.

Those servant churches would grow.  Within four centuries, Christianity, which began as a persecuted sect of Judaism, was granted status as an official religion on the Roman Empire.  Today there are 2.5 billion Christians worldwide, about a third of the world’s population.  Nowadays, the fastest growing churches in the world are in places like Iran, China, and North Korea, where servants of the gospel take great risks to share the good news that Jesus, who was slave of all, loved us so much that he died for our sins.

I suspect that there would be more thriving churches if we worried less about number of members and the size of endowments and we thought more about servant leadership.  It is in putting love into action, it is in choosing to serve others, it is in saying “yes” to Jesus’s humble purpose, that greatness is found and growth comes.  May it be just as true for us as it is for those titans of industry.  May it be just as true for us as it was for Jesus and the early church.  Amen.

Resources:

Thompson, James J. “Theological Perspective on Mark 10:35-45” in Feasting on the Word, year B, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Black, C. Clifton. “Exegetical Perspective on Mark 10:35-45” in Feasting on the Word, year B, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009.

Tait, Brian. “Traditional Leadership vs. Servant Leadership” in Forbes Magazine, March 11, 2020. Accessed online at forbes.com.

Liden, Wayne, Menser, and Hu. “Servant Leadership: Validation of a Short Form of the SL-28,” in The Leadership Quarterly, 26(2), January 2015.  Accessed online at researchgate.net.

Greenelaf, Robert K. “What Is Servant Leadership?” in The Center for Servant Leadership.  Accessed online at Greenleaf.org.

–. “Leaders Eat Last” an interview with Simon Sinek on CBS Mornings, January 7, 2014.  Accessed online at cbsnews,org.

Gibbons, Mike. “Servant Leadership Examples & Characteristics” in People Managing People Magazine, 2020.  Accessed online at peoplemanagingpeople.com.

Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet 1852-6 Ford Madox Brown 1821-1893 Presented by subscribers 1893 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N01394

Possessed

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Sabbath Day Thoughts: “Possessed” Mark 10:17-31

Americans don’t like to talk about money.  In May, Business Insider Magazine conducted a poll of 2,130 people to determine the topics they were most likely to discuss with friends.  Last on the list was money, outranked by current events, family, health, sex, relationships, and politics.

Rachel Sherman, a sociologist with the New School, reports that how we feel about discussing money may be determined by how much we have.  Affluent Americans say they are circumspect about money because they don’t want their lower-wage-earning friends to feel bad.  Middle income Americans tend to shy away from the topic of money because they may be economically fragile—the cost of their kid’s college education, a surge in healthcare expenses, or an unexpected big-ticket home repair can leave them reeling with more month than money.  Working class Americans are much more transparent about money.  They freely discuss the challenges or even impossibilities of supporting a family on minimum wage work.  They swap ideas about how they stretch their dollars and cut corners.

Kimberly Chong, an anthropology lecturer at University College, London, teaches that at the heart of the taboo on money talk is a cultural belief that money is associated with personal worth.  Social status, power, and respect are tied to our paychecks and our bank accounts.  It’s like that bumper sticker, “The boy, who dies with the most toys, wins.”  That sort of thinking is uncomfortable in a democracy where we affirm the equality of all citizens, even as we acknowledge the reality of income inequality and the concentration of wealth.

We don’t like to talk about money, if we can help it.  We really don’t like talking about it in church.  Perhaps my calling our attention to the topic has got you feeling uncomfortable—or wishing that I would change the subject.

Jesus didn’t have any trouble talking about money.  He talked about it a lot.  Indeed, the only topic that Jesus talked about more than money was the Kingdom of God.  If you counted, you would see that eleven of Jesus’ thirty-nine parables are about money.  Today’s reading from Mark’s gospel speaks frankly about the tension that can exist between our understanding of earthly riches and Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God.

As Jesus and his friends were departing on a missionary journey, a rich man stopped them and asked the Lord an urgent question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  In Jesus’ day, eternal life was just another way of saying the Kingdom of God.  Jesus sounded impatient as he counted off the requirements of the Torah: no murder, no adultery, no stealing, no lying, no fraud, be sure to honor your parents.  Perhaps feeling relieved, the man was quick to share that he was all about that sort of righteous living.

Mark gives us a window into Jesus’ feelings.  The Lord, seeing the rich man and hearing of his obedience, loved the man.  Jesus saw that it was this man’s heartfelt desire to love God and love his neighbor as himself.  This man had disciple written all over him.  And so, Jesus extended to him the same invitation he had made to Levi the tax collector and Peter, Andrew, James, and John, the fishermen: “Follow me.”

When the rich man heard the cost of discipleship, he balked.  The thought of selling his property, and parting with the proceeds made his heart skip a beat, tied his stomach in knots, and sent his mind scampering down rabbit trails of worry and fear.  The rich man went away grieving.  The Greek word that describes how the man felt is stugnasas.  It means shocked, surprised, and in sorrow.  The man had a crisis of character.  He turned away from Jesus, unable to accept what the Lord asked of him.

It’s a story that is hard to hear and perhaps harder to understand.  Even the disciples struggled with what Jesus had to say about the rich man and camels passing through needles’ eyes.  In the ancient near east, wealth was seen as a blessing from God.  From the point of view of the disciples, this rich man was one of God’s beloved ones.  How else could he have amassed that land, those homes, those belongings, those slaves?  It didn’t make sense to the twelve.  If the rich man wasn’t first in line at the pearly gates, then who could be saved?

Over the centuries, Bible scholars and preachers have grappled with how best to interpret this tough story, a story that questions our relationship with God and money.  The monastic tradition has long looked to this passage as a proof text for vows of voluntary poverty.  Postulants of the Franciscan, Claretians, and other religious orders take vows of poverty upon entrance, renouncing their worldly possessions.  What they own becomes the community’s and is used or disposed of for the benefit of all.

In the Reformation of the sixteenth century, our spiritual ancestor John Calvin taught that the rich man’s problem was more than money.  The rich man wanted to know what he must “do” to inherit eternal life.  For Calvin, that smacked of works’ righteousness, as if we earn our way into God’s Kingdom by accruing God’s particular favor with good deeds.  Eternal life, Calvin taught, is God’s freely given gift for all who place their trust in Jesus.  We cannot earn our way into heaven, but God’s grace makes the impossible possible for us.

During stewardship season, generations of preachers have used this story to invite us to be generous givers.  The rich man makes us question what we truly value.  Is it Jesus and a life spent in his company, or is it our money and the things that we possess?  In our love for Jesus, we are inspired, maybe not to sell all that we have, but to hold our possessions loosely.  We prayerfully consider how our abundance may be used in Jesus’ purpose.  We live generously as a blessing to church and community.

I think those are all valid and responsible ways of preaching about the rich man.  Some are called to a life of voluntary poverty and radical sharing.  Heaven is ours only by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.  We are, indeed, blessed to be a blessing to our church and others.  Ultimately, all we have and all we are belongs to God, whether we are rich men and women, or middle-class families, or the working poor who live so creatively on so little.

But the story of the rich man goes deeper than all that.  Jesus calls us to question the core assumptions and the cultural beliefs about money that possess our society.  Jesus contradicts the premise that our personal worth is tied to our net worth.  That assumption prompts us to value some people over others.  It’s a short leap from there to what the disciples presumed: that the rich man’s wealth was a sign of God’s special favor.

But that wasn’t how Jesus saw the world.  Jesus loved the rich man.  Yet, Jesus also loved those low-status, vulnerable children whom he hugged and blessed.  Jesus loved those disciples, who struggled to understand his teaching.  That abundant and overflowing love of Jesus was a reflection of God’s love.  After all, God so loved the world that God sent the beloved son to die for us.

At the close of today’s reading, Jesus told his friends that those core cultural beliefs that we hold about personal worth and net worth don’t apply in the Kingdom of God.  There, many who are first will be last and the last will be first.  Jesus invited his friends—Jesus invites us—to let go of our false assumptions.  We are called to envision a world where the penniless Haitian migrant at the southern border is as loved by God as the billionaire businessman.  It’s a world where the illiterate day laborer is of equal value to the university professor.  It’s a world where the residents of Edgewood House, and others who are reliant upon the social safety net, are every bit as valued and beloved as those who are enjoying a leaf-peeping getaway at The Point this weekend.  That’s some radical stuff, Jesus.

If we accept what Jesus has to say, it will change how we see not only our neighbors but also our possessions.  If our personal worth isn’t incumbent upon the size of our paychecks or our 401Ks or our brokerage accounts, then it gets easier to live generously and share freely.  Our abundance becomes a way to shape a world where all may know that they are the beloved by our limitlessly loving God.  That’s an invitation to discipleship that can make us feel stugnasas—shocked, surprised, or in sorrow.  Or, Jesus’s invitation just might grant us a foretaste of the Kingdom to come and the life eternal.  Jesus says, “Follow me.” How will we respond?

Resources

Black, C. Clifton.  “Exegetical Perspective on Mark 10:17-31” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.

Loudenback, Tanza. “A Survey of 2,000 Americans Found . . .” in Insider: Business Magazine.  Accessed online at businessinsider.com.

Menendez-Atun͂a,Luis. “Commentary on Mark 10:17-31” in Preaching This Week, Oct. 10, 2021.  Accessed online at workingpreacher.org.

Pinsker, Joe. “Why So Many Americans Don’t Talk about Money” in The Atlantic, March 2, 2020.  Accessed online at theatlantic.com.

Thompson, James J. “Theological Perspective on Mark 10:17-31” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.

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When Dreams Die

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — Mark 10:2-16 “When Dreams Die”

The COVID-19 pandemic has been hard on our health—and hard on our marriages.  As employers furloughed workers or businesses went virtual, couples found themselves spending more time together and lots of it.  That round-the-clock intimacy has been complicated by other factors. Lay offs and job loss have meant less income and greater economic pressure.  Social distance has stretched the limits of our family and friend support network.  If you have kids, closed schools and quarantined daycares created impossible challenges of childcare, homeschooling, and distance learning.

Studies show that during the first seven to eight months of the pandemic, the divorce rate surged.  That spring, a survey of 1,277 couples found that 29.9% of them said they were in serious trouble and headed for divorce.  Ken Jewell, a New Yok City divorce lawyer, related that when his office reopened after the shut-down in June 2020, he saw a 48% jump in requests for counsel.  A further dark consequence of the COVID crisis has been an increase in domestic violence and substance abuse.  Apostles’ House in Newark, a shelter for women and children, reports that their beds have been full throughout the pandemic.

Beyond the social science and the statistics, we all know couples whose marriages have become fraught, embattled, or failed over the past year and a half.  Young couples with children, middle-aged empty-nesters, and even retired folks with years of marriage under their belts are calling it quits.  There is a lot of heart-ache out there.  Weddings are among the most hopeful and joyous moments in our lives.  When those dreams die, they take a piece of us with them.

The Pharisees put Jesus to the test with a question about divorce, “Tell us, rabbi, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”  The fact that the Pharisees knew by heart what the Torah had to say about divorce reveals that there was a larger controversy brewing.  Deuteronomy 24 instructs that a man my write a certificate of divorce if his wife commits an “erwat dabar”—an indecent thing.  The two great rabbinic traditions of Jesus’ day disagreed about what an indecent thing might be.  The Hillel School taught that it was up to the husband’s discretion.  A poorly cooked meal, childlessness, failure to observe the Torah, sexual immorality, or inability to complete household tasks, all could be grounds for divorce.  The Shammai School allowed men to divorce wives for only one reason: serious infidelity.  The Pharisees anticipated that Jesus’ response, one way or the other, would make him enemies.

It is likely that Jesus’ answer offended everyone.  It certainly left the disciples scratching their heads and asking more questions.  Instead of weighing in on what indecent thing would be grounds for divorce, Jesus called his listeners to re-think their understanding of marriage.  Jesus turned to the creation stories of Genesis in which humanity is created male and female in God’s image.  Something sacred is stamped upon each of us, and we are given to one another in the covenant of marriage.  Two become one with God at the center of the relationship.  In that union, we find a wholeness and completeness that was part of God’s plan right from the start.  “What God has joined together,” Jesus teaches, “Let no one separate.”

Behind Jesus’ words lies a deep pastoral concern for women.  According to Jewish law, a woman had no right to divorce her husband on any ground.  It is hard for us to understand, but in first century Israel, women were a little like sexual property.  Young women passed from a father’s household to a husband’s household in an arranged agreement that had monetary and social benefit for the father.  The husband had every legal right to dismiss the wife at his discretion, like bad goods that failed to live up to their anticipated benefit.  The impact of divorce upon a woman could be catastrophic.  She might be able to return to her kinfolk.  If not, she had no safety net—no alimony, no property rights, no home, no right to even parent her own children.  She depended on the charity of neighbors or was forced to beg or resort to prostitution. 

Jesus’s teaching about divorce contradicted this prevailing notion of women as property.  Indeed, Jesus’s suggestion that women could divorce husbands would have sounded deeply shocking and offensive to the Pharisees.  Jesus invited his listeners to see women as beings created in God’s image, whose equal footing was essential to wholeness in marriage.  Marriage—this shared sacred identity and need for wholeness—was at the heart of God’s best hope for humanity.  Jesus’s words were—and still are—a radical, counter-cultural, deeply truthful lesson.

Despite God’s original intent and Jesus’ provocative teaching, divorce persists.  Presbyterians have been debating it since the Westminster Assembly of the Divines met in 1647.  They allowed for divorce by husbands or wives in cases of adultery and willful desertion.  The aggrieved party could later remarry “as if the offending party were dead.”  Our denomination’s current stance on divorce is best expressed in a 1981 revision of the Westminster Confession.  We acknowledge God’s holy intent for marriage, yet we also recognize the frailty and sin of humankind, “The weakness of one or both partners may lead to the gross and persistent denial of the marriage vows so that the marriage dies at the heart and becomes intolerable.”  When dreams die, separation and divorce may become acceptable and permissible.  That same guidance applies to traditional unions and to our refined definition of marriage, adopted in 2014, between “two people.”

Beyond the words of scripture, the teaching of Jesus, and the guidance of the church, is the uniquely painful reality of divorce.  It feels like something dies at the heart. On the day in 2004 when I accepted this church’s call to serve as your pastor, I stood in the pulpit and shared that I was divorced.  A brief, early marriage to my college boyfriend had come to a sad end, more than a decade earlier.  My ex-husband’s adultery and “willful desertion” might have ticked all the boxes for the Westminster Assembly of the Divines, but it didn’t make me feel any better.  I had felt profound grief, shame, rejection, and a visceral pain that told me that part of my heart was dying.  I know that many of you in your own experience have felt the same, whether you have been through divorce or experienced the end of a long-time committed relationship, whether you are children of divorced parents or your adult children have suffered through divorce.

That collective pain of divorce is so great that it is tempting to not preach about it at all.  Jesus, we hear your beautiful vision of marriage that is sacred and deeply reverent with God at the very heart of it.  We freely acknowledge that there would be a whole lot less divorce, and many more happy marriages, if those relationships were entered into in the spirit of your teaching.  But Adam and Eve have left the garden.  We live in a frail and fallen world where we regularly disappoint you and one another.  Lord, have mercy upon us. 

It’s significant that Jesus followed his tough teaching on divorce with the blessing of children, those most vulnerable and lowest status members of the Hebrew household.  Although the disciples wished to turn the children away as a waste of Jesus’s time, the Lord welcomed them and blessed them.  Jesus welcomed the children, the outsider, the vulnerable, the rejected, the leper, the Pharisee, the low-status-second-class citizen.  It’s safe to presume that Jesus welcomed the divorced.  It’s safe to say that Jesus continues to welcome those who are divorced.  The grace of Jesus Christ is always sufficient for us.  Thanks be to God.

The most recent studies of marriage have shown that as the pandemic has continued, the divorce rate has levelled and begun to decline.  Some of the reasons for that may not be good.  The economic strain of the pandemic may have forced couples to remain together.  The lack of childcare has put plans for separation on hold.  Closed courts and a backlog of cases may be causing a temporary lull.  Five states that make divorce rates public are showing a drop in the number of couples rushing to the courts.  A recent survey of 2,429 couples found that 17% of those questioned now say that their marriage has been strengthened by the pandemic.  They began to communicate better.  More time together deepened their appreciation for one another.  They spent time with the kids, exercised together, cooked together, and cultivated new shared hobbies.  Their feelings changed for the better.  Perhaps they began to glimpse in their spouses that sacred image that each of us bears.  Perhaps they are now finding in one another that wholeness and completeness that God originally planned.

Resources:

Mallozzi, Vincent. “Divorce Rates Are Now Dropping: Here Are Some Reasons Why” in The New York Times, March 24, 101`.  Accessed online at nytimes.com.

Staniunas, David. “Marriage, Divorce, and Mariners” in Presbyterian Historical Society Newsletter, June 26, 2014. Accessed online at pcusa.org.

Wall, Robert W. “Divorce” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 2. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

Meyers, Ched. Binding the Strongman. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988.

Vitalis Hoffman, Mark G. “Commentary on Mark 10:2-16” in Preaching This Week, Oct. 4, 2015.  Accessed online at workingpreacher.com.

Ruge-Jones, Philip. “Commentary on Mark 10:2-16” in Preaching This Week, Oct. 7, 2018.  Accessed online at workingpreacher.com.

Thompson, James J. “Theological Perspective on Mark 10:2-16” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.

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A New Earth

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Sabbath Day Thoughts: “A New Earth” Isaiah 65:17-25

When it comes to climate change, the Adirondacks may not be at the top of our list of regions most impacted by our warming earth.

We are more likely to think of island nations like the Maldives, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean that rises only 2.4 meters above sea level at its high point.  As sea level rises with the melting of glaciers and polar ice caps, the Maldives are in peril.  In 2015, the charismatic young President of the Maldives drew world attention to his nation’s plight by holding his first cabinet meeting underwater.  According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), by 2010, sea levels will potentially rise 100 centimeters, covering almost the entire nation.

When it comes to climate change, we think of polar bears, the poster-child for the impact of global warming on our animal species.  Climate projections anticipate that, before mid-century, we could have a nearly ice-free Arctic in the summer.  Polar bears rely heavily on sea ice for traveling, hunting, mating, resting, and in some areas, for dens where cubs are birthed and nurtured.  Studies have linked the demise of sea ice with a 40% decline in the number of polar bears in northeast Alaska and Canada.  Will the bears survive a warming Arctic?

In the lower forty-eight states, we tend to think of the south when it comes to the impact of global warming.  Our warmer, wetter world has caused a surge in powerful tropical storms that have pounded the Gulf states and beyond.  Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana in August, second only to Hurricane Katrina as the most damaging and intense hurricane to hit the U.S., with maximum winds of 150 mph.  As Ida moved north, so did its destructive power.  The storm caused catastrophic flooding across northeastern states.  Ida caused $50.1 billion in damages.  In the storm’s aftermath, 95 Americans had been killed—33 deaths in Louisiana and 9 more across the southland, 30 in New Jersey, 18 in New York, and 5 in Pennsylvania.

Island nations sinking into the sea, polar bears threatened with extinction, massive storms inflicting heavy property damage and loss of life.  This is often the face of climate change on the evening news.  Yet we might be surprised to learn that the Adirondacks are being profoundly affected by our warming world.

Researchers at SUNY Plattsburgh report that the Adirondacks are warming at a rate that is twice as fast as the rest of the planet.  The global average temperature has increased 1.8 degrees over the past 30 years, but in Lake Placid, that increase has doubled to 3.6 degrees.  That means that our fall is longer than it once was.  Our spring comes earlier.  We have more winter warm-ups.  Ask anyone who grew up in Saranac Lake and they will tell you that winter isn’t what it used to be.

The Adirondacks sit at the southern edge of the great boreal forest that stretches north across Canada to the Arctic.  As our weather warms, that boreal forest will creep north as native plants and trees can’t take the relative heat.  It’s already happening.  It’s already having a big impact on our wild creatures.  The National Audubon Society reports that we are seeing a dramatic decline in our northern boreal birds, like gray jays, Bicknell’s thrush, spruce grouse, and the black-backed woodpecker.  We are also seeing a decline in fish.  Brook trout, lake trout, salmon, and round whitefish all need cold water to thrive.  An EPA report anticipates that brook trout fishing could disappear from the Adirondacks by the year 2100.  As the Adirondacks continue to warm, the animals of the boreal forest will migrate north in search of habitat.  Can we imagine the park without moose, bobcats, fishers, pine martens, and loons?  Unless there is collective action to limit the amount of carbon in our atmosphere, that will be the Adirondack Park that we leave to our children and grandchildren.  It’s a sobering possibility.

In our scripture lesson, the Prophet Isaiah shares God’s promise of a new heaven and a new earth.  The people who first heard Isaiah’s prophecy were likewise living with the impact of their actions upon the good land that God had entrusted to their care.  The Israelites had returned home from decades of captivity in Babylon.  Their land, which had once flowed with milk and honey, had been devastated by foreign invasion and decades of war.  When the Babylonian army had rolled across Israel, they had destroyed everything in their path.  Every fortified city from Dan in the north to Beersheba in the south had been conquered and flattened.  Jerusalem was hardly recognizable: its protective walls breached and pulled down, its homes in ruins, its Temple burned to the ground.  The reality was so overwhelming, that people didn’t know where to begin.  That may be how we feel about the reality of climate change.

In the midst of the people’s despair, God spoke a vision of hope.  God, who had created heaven and earth, would create again, a new world of harmony and abundance.  God’s word to the Prophet Isaiah is a sweet and joyous promise of long life, rebuilt homes, fruitful vineyards, simple abundance, and good health.  God anticipates a healed relationship between humanity and the holy: before we even begin to pray, God will hear and respond.  God anticipates a healed relationship between humanity and all creatures, great and small.  All will dwell peaceably, free from harm and the threat of destruction.  Isiah’s promise is so sweet, that we hear it and we want it for ourselves.  We want it for the generations to come.

It’s a promise that reveals God’s best hope for us.  Indeed, in the Book of Revelation, John of Patmos described God’s coming Kingdom as Isaiah did, as a new heaven and a new earth, a new Jerusalem in right relationship with God.  Humanity gets things so wrong.  The ancient Israelites bring death to the land by exploiting its bounty, oppressing one another, and waging endless wars in pursuit of wealth and national greatness.  We, with our unbridled consumption and short-sighted pursuit of prosperity, pump the atmosphere full of greenhouse gases that trap ultraviolet rays and turn up the heat.  Our world is suffering.  Creation is groaning.  And in the middle of the mess that we have made, God dares to dream that things can be different.  There can be a fresh start, a new earth.

What might it look like for us to claim Isaiah’s vision, to begin living in ways that give us a foretaste of the coming Kingdom that God will one day bring to completion?  Jerry Jenkins, the leading expert on climate change in the Adirondacks, says that we can personally start to mitigate climate change with simple thrift.  Don’t buy new stuff: reduce, re-use, recycle.

We can make changes at home.  If we dial back the thermostat by two degrees, we can not only reduce our household carbon emissions, but also save as much as 5% on our heating bill.  We can turn off un-needed lights.  We can replace energy-wasting lightbulbs with high-quality LED bulbs that last a long time, consume less electricity, and save lots of money, year in and year out.  We can use native plants in our flower gardens to attract pollinators, like bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.

We can change our habits.  We can bring our own re-useable bottle or mug wherever we go.  We can drive less—plan our trips into town, walk to nearby destinations, or ride our bikes instead of hopping in the car.  We can cut down on food waste by eating leftovers.  We can eat less meat—those concentrated animal feeding operations, where cattle and pork are warehoused in close proximity and force-fed, are massive emitters of methane, a greenhouse gas.

If we are in a position to make big ticket investments, we can consider purchasing a hybrid car.  We could add a solar array to our homes to begin moving off the grid.  We could invest in a renewable heat source.  Burn wood pellets.  Go geo-thermal. 

These are simple steps that each of us can embrace.  You can give them a try, even if you deny the truth of climate science.  What’s to lose?  These simple actions are good for us, good for the planet, and they save money.  Who doesn’t want to save money?

William Janeway of the Adirondack Council envisions a day when the Adirondack Park will be “energy neutral.”  We’ll preserve our wild beauty and ecological integrity.  We’ll be a world-class natural resource and a premier tourism destination.  We’ll be a model for the world to see of a “climate-smart, public-private conservation landscape.”  The stakes are huge.  Our failure to take action could have dire consequences for our children and grandchildren.  Jerry Jenkins cautions that if we do not slow the course of human-caused climate change, “We may be the last generation to see the big bogs and the boreal creatures.”  Would our children ever forgive us?

May we find in Isaiah’s vision of the new heaven and the new earth the holy will to make a better future for our park and our planet.

Resources

–. “Peril and Promise” on Mountain Lakes Journal, May 21, 2019.

Craig, Gewndolyn. “Adirondacks Affected by Warming Climate in a Number of Ways” in The Post Start, October 13, 2018.  Accessed online at www.poststar.com.

Foderaro, Lisa. “Savoring Bogs and Moss, Fearing They’ll Vanish as the Adirondacks Warm” in The New York Times, Dec. 11, 2011.  Accessed online at www.nytimes.com

Kerlin, Kat. “18 Simple Things You Can Do about Climate Change” in UC Davis: Science and Health. January 8, 2019.  Accessed online at www.climatechange.ucdavis.edu

Mann, Brian. “Effects of Climate Change on the Adirondacks” on North Country Public Radio, Feb. 25, 2019.  Accessed online at www.ncpr.org

Rivera, Nelson. “Homiletical Perspective on Isaiah 65:17-25” in Feasting on the Word, Year C, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.

Johns, Mary Eleanor. “Pastoral Perspective on Isaiah 65:17-25” in Feasting on the Word, Year C, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.

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The Hard Road

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Sabbath Day Thoughts–Mark 9:30-37

Who is the greatest?

If we are talking about nations, we might argue that the greatest country has the strongest economy – a chicken in every pot, a job for every worker, abundance beyond imagining.  Or, it could be the land with the most powerful military: expertly trained troops, cutting edge technology, firepower that inspires shock and awe.  Or, it could be the nation with the best quality of life – top healthcare, best schools, least poverty, and earliest retirement.

When it comes to the workplace, we might feel that greatness is found in the biggest paycheck.  Or, it could come down to responsibility—the number of employees we supervise or sites that we manage.  Greatness is associated with climbing the corporate ladder.  We have an inherent sense of workplace hierarchy from the tech billionaire firing rockets into space to the immigrant janitor, emptying the trash after hours.

Our understanding of greatness takes shape from an early age.  Consider our schools.  Greatness is acknowledged in brainy students who earn academic laurels, like National Honor Society, valedictorian, and salutatorian.  Greatness is heralded on the athletic field, where our natural prowess for speed, agility, or teamwork is rewarded.  Some students think that greatness is found in popularity—kids with the coolest circle of friends, best clothes, prettiest faces, and nicest homes are often most admired.

What do we believe makes for greatness?

In our reading from Mark’s gospel, the disciples were challenged to rethink their understanding of greatness.  Jesus and his friends were walking a long way, apart from the crowds.  The Lord used this quiet time to share a second prediction of the betrayal, suffering, and death that would befall him.  Given Jesus’ bleak prophecy, we might expect the disciples to discuss how they could best support, protect, and encourage their friend Jesus.  Or perhaps they would ponder how best to continue Jesus’ message and mission, if the worst should happen.  They could have talked about care for mother Mary, help for the struggling crowds, or healing for all those sick people who depended upon Jesus’ compassion.

But at the day’s end, as they settled into Peter’s home in Capernaum, we learn that the disciples spent the day arguing.  When confronted by Jesus, the twelve grudgingly admitted that they had been squabbling among themselves about who was the greatest. Peter thought he was the best because he had walked on water—at least for a little while.  Andrew thought he might be best because he was a natural evangelist, bringing Philip and Nathaniel and even Peter to the Lord.  James said he was the greatest because he was a natural leader whom others respected.  Judas thought he should take top honors for best managing the money.  On the road that day, there must have been the sort of heated, trash-talking debate that we hear in the locker room or on the line of scrimmage, in the board room or on the playground.

Scientists believe that the desire for status is a fundamental human motive.  A 2015 study by researchers at the University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business found that status is something that all people crave and covet—even if we don’t realize it.  We may not want wealth or a fancy home or an impressive job title, but we all desire respect, some voluntary deference from others, and social value – to know that we matter in the lives of other people.  Status is universally important because it influences how people think and behave.  It can even effect how we feel.  Indeed, when we perceive that our status among peers, work, or community is low, we suffer.  Low status impacts our health, making us more prone to depression, anxiety, and cardiovascular disease.

In the first century world of the Roman Empire, Caesar was the greatest.  Members of the imperial family and the Roman senate, as well as those who enjoyed their patronage, had high status.  Roman citizens had higher status and greater legal protections than residents of vassal nations, like Israel.  At the bottom of the social ladder were menial slaves and children.  Within Greco-Roman society, unwanted children could be abandoned at birth at the discretion of their father.  Even within Hebrew society, children had no status apart from the Beth Ab, the house of the father, the patriarch.  Outside the protective order of the Beth Ab, a child was completely vulnerable.  That’s why the Torah is littered with commands to care for orphans.

When we consider that first century world, we begin to imagine how shocking and offensive Jesus’ rebuke to the disciples would have been.  First, Jesus says that the greatest of all must be servant of all.  The servant of all was the lowest status slave in a household.  They were typically the youngest slave with the most menial of duties: foot washing, sanitation, caring for animals.  The servant of all didn’t eat until every other slave in the household had been served—by them.  Only then could they eat from the leftovers.  Next, Jesus—a high status rabbi who typically would not have been concerned with children at all—Jesus took a toddler and placed the child in their midst.  This child would have been the lowest status, most vulnerable, and dependent person in the home.  Jesus gave the child a hug and told the twelve that this was who he was.  This was whom they should emulate and welcome.  Can we imagine the shocked silence in that room?

It’s a tough teaching that flies in the face of our fundamental human desire for status.  It’s hard to even think of a comparable metaphor in today’s world.  Perhaps, Jesus would call us to be like migrant farm workers, spending long hours in backbreaking labor for low wages to feed America.  Perhaps Jesus would call us to be like the vulnerable children caught up in the foster care system without a permanent home or consistent guardian or a legal voice in decisions that profoundly affect our lives.  Whatever our notions about status may be, Jesus wants to turn them upside down.  Jesus wants to thoroughly reorient us.

Karoline Lewis, who teaches at Luther Seminary in Minneapolis, teaches that we begin to understand what Jesus is trying to say when we consider what God has done.  The immortal, omniscient, inscrutable, unknowable great God of the multiverse chose to be mortal, to know the finitude and the frailty of flesh.  That downward path continued as Jesus—God made flesh—concerned himself with the least of these, the low-status people of his time.  He sought the lost sheep of Israel, forgave sinners, touched those who were unclean, welcomed scoundrels, taught women, and healed Gentile outsiders.  It got worse: betrayal, prison, a kangaroo court, torture, public humiliation, and a brutal excruciating death that was reserved for the lowest status residents of the empire.  God gave us the ultimate object lesson in downward mobility.  Think about it.

It is a hard and holy road.  It makes no sense whatsoever until we affirm what those earliest Christians knew about Jesus, knew about God.  God is love.  God is agape, the choice to love others and act always in their best interest, without counting the personal cost.  Agape is the choice to love whether or not the object of our love is lovable or worthy.  It is a choice to love, regardless of status.  Agape prompted God to become flesh in Jesus.  In agape, Jesus poured out his life with kindness and caring, healing and justice.  In agape, Jesus chose the cross for the redemption of status-seeking disciples like Peter, Andrew, and James, for status-seeking disciples like us.

In today’s tough teaching, Jesus dares to hope that there will be others to follow him on that hard road of downward mobility.  He opens a window on a world that can be ours, a world where greatness is found in love that serves, honors, and sacrifices.  Jesus challenges us to envision a world where we are willing to be weak, vulnerable, and humble for others’ sake.  It is a world where our innate desire for status is subverted, where the greatest among us are not the folks with political power, the biggest bank accounts, or the most followers on social media.  The greatest of all love the most.  It is world where we can all be great.

As I finish up my message, I’d like to invite you to imagine the world that Jesus would have us make, where greatness is found in vulnerability and self-giving love.  In Jesus’s world, the Olympic games honor those who care the most.  The gold medals this summer went out to all the nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, and caregivers who have been on the frontlines of the COVID crisis.  In Jesus’s world, the billionaires aren’t firing rockets into space; instead, they are vying to ensure that the world’s children have safe clean drinking water, enough food, and an education.  In Jesus’s world, reality television doesn’t pit contestants against one another for survival on a desert island.  Rather, competitors go toe-to-toe to see who can be kindest, who can do the most good, who can make the biggest positive difference in their hometown.  In Jesus’s world, every child is honored and everyone has status, not because they are intelligent, athletic, or popular, but because they are children of a God who loves them enough to die for them.

It’s a good world.  It’s the greatest.  Let’s go forth to make it so.  Amen.

Resources:

Lewis, Karoline.  “The Greatest” in Preaching This Week, Sept. 17, 2018.  Accessed online at workingpreacher.com.

Lose, David. “A Different Kind of Greatness” in Dear Partner in Preaching, Sept. 2018.  Accessed online at http://www.davidlose.net/

Moore-Keish, Martha L. “Theological Perspective on Mark 9:30-37” in Feasting on the Word, Louisville: Westminister John Knox Press, 2009.

Ringe, Sharon H. “Exegetical Perspective on Mark 9:30-37” in Feasting on the Word, Louisville: Westminister John Knox Press, 2009.

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A Bigger Mission

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — Mark 7:24-37

Every day we encounter them, folks who are outsiders to the Christian community.

Melissa has never been a church member.  Although her parents were both raised in mainline congregations, they never got involved with the church as adults.  They never had Melissa or her brothers baptized or confirmed.  Melissa has good memories of attending church as a child on special occasions with her grandparents, especially those wonderful Christmas Eve services.  Sometimes, Melissa thinks she could really use that beauty and belonging in her life, but she doesn’t know how that would happen.  Her grandparents have been gone for years.  Sunday morning services feel like a foreign language, and the one time she did go, she sat by herself in the back.  It feels a whole lot safer to stay home and have a second cup of coffee.

Ben and Mary haven’t attended church since their youngest son aged up and out of the Youth Group.  They had felt it was important for their children to experience the moral and ethical teachings of Christianity, and so for years they had made the effort to come to church.  They sat in the sanctuary while the kids trooped off after the Children’s Time to Sunday School.  Ben and Mary never truly intended to drop out of church.  Each week they promised one another that this would be the Sunday they would be back.  A week turned into a month.  Then, it was a year.  Then, it just got too embarrassing because they had been gone for so long.  Now they think of church as something that had been part of their lives “back then.”  It’s just too much bother to reconnect.

Betty attended church weekly for decades.  Every week, she sat in the same pew, used the same hymnal, and passed the peace with the same people.  All that tradition had to change when Betty sold her house, which had gotten to be too much to manage after her husband died.  Betty’s new home is a fifteen-minute drive from church.  After she had a series of fender benders, the kids persuaded her to give up the car.  As a result, Betty’s Sunday morning trips to church came to an end.  Betty likes the online services, but it’s not the same.  She misses worship; she misses her church family.

Every day we encounter them, those folks who, for whatever reasons, are now outside the Christian community.  We exchange awkward “Hellos.” We make small talk about the weather.  We share superficial news of family.  Then, we go our way, feeling relieved it’s over but also a little sad.

Our reading from Mark’s gospel told two stories of outsiders to the covenant community.  It began with that woman and her demon-possessed daughter.  The Bible scholars like to tell us all the reasons why this woman and her child would not be welcomed by Jesus and his friends.  First of all, she was a Gentile of the worst sort: a Syrophoenician who worshipped the storm god Baal.  These were not lost sheep of Israel.  These were foreign Jezebels.  This woman didn’t have the courtesy to follow the traditional practice of sending a male family member to make the request for healing help.  A first-century rabbi would never accept a private audience with a woman who was not a family member, especially a Gentile Syrophoenician one.

All Jesus wanted was a little peace and quiet after his dust up with the Pharisees and scribes, but as soon as this woman heard that Jesus was in the neighborhood, she was knocking on the door with her inappropriate request.  We know that Jesus didn’t like it because he called the woman and her child dogs—ask any woman and she will tell you that there is absolutely nothing nice about being called a dog, no matter who says it.  Most of us would tuck our tails and walk away, but that tenacious woman refused to give up.  Her witty repartee about even dogs deserving a few crumbs—and her bold faith that Jesus could heal her daughter, if he only would—stopped Jesus as he began to shut the door.  “Hmm,” he thought.  “Maybe it isn’t just about the lost sheep of Israel.  Maybe God’s love can be bigger than that.  Maybe even outsiders like the Syrophoenician woman and her daughter could have a place within the new covenant community that is taking shape around me”.  One thing is for certain, Jesus changed his mind.  The demon was gone and the girl was cured, sight unseen.

The second healing story serves as an exclamation point to this notion of a bigger mission.  Jesus was again in Gentile territory, again facing inappropriate demands to heal someone who was beyond the literal and spiritual borders of Israel.  This time, there was no harsh refusal, no need for witty repartee.  On the contrary, Jesus worked hard for the man’s healing: laying on hands, applying spittle, touching his tongue, and praying, “Ephphatha!”  Be opened!  Jesus’ healing work was so thorough that the no longer impaired man and his friends couldn’t stop sharing the good news of what Jesus had done, despite Jesus’ request that they keep it on the down low.  The news of this new openness must have spread like wildfire throughout the Gentile cities of the Decapolis.

These beautiful stories of healing and the command to “Be opened” speak to us.  Often when we hear them preached, we are reminded that Jesus invites us to reach beyond traditional boundaries.  We are meant to share God’s love, healing, and mercy with folks who are stereotypically outsiders to the mainstream of society—or at least to mainline churches.  Be opened!  Minister to those who are incarcerated.  Reach out to the refugee and the migrant.  Welcome neighbors whose lifestyles or loves have been made to feel like they don’t belong amid the assembly of the faithful.  Indeed, I believe that Jesus calls us to that radical openness which we affirm every Sunday when I share our statement of mission and state that, “All are welcome here.”  God’s love is always larger and more inclusive than we can begin to imagine.  Jesus expects that those who follow him will “Be opened” even when that is not easy or comfortable.

This time through the lectionary cycle, I have also been thinking about those other outsiders, the ones we encounter every day.  They may be spiritually hungry seekers, like Melissa.  They have never known what it is like to have a church family.  They don’t know that Jesus loves them.  The very thought of attending a church on their own feels risky and lonely, like being a stranger in a strange land.

Those everyday outsiders may have once had a place in the assembly of the faithful.  But then an empty nest, or a big promotion, or retirement got them out of the church habit.  They have slipped away from our Sunday mornings and our potlucks.  For a number of years, they made an obligatory appearance on Christmas Eve.  One day, we sadly realized that they aren’t church people any more.

Those everyday outsiders may even have once been insiders like Betty.  Then, a big move, a growing disability, the death of a spouse, or the onset of dementia brought an end to their deep engagement with the congregation.  We miss them, but we don’t always do anything about that.  We trust that the deacons and the pastor will handle it.

There are everyday outsiders everywhere, and the advent of the pandemic has made it that much easier to allow folks to continue to be outsiders.  We tell ourselves that if people really want to worship, they can now do so online.  We don’t even consider inviting them to church because who wants to worship in the Great Hall anyway?  It becomes awfully easy to hide behind our masks in the grocery store.  We may encounter those everyday outsiders everywhere, but those awkward moments of encounter pass.  We shrug it off, at least until the next time.

“Ephphatha!”  Be opened, Jesus says to us this morning.  It’s a prayer.  It’s a plea.  It’s a calling to take personal responsibility.  Those everyday outsiders, their mothers aren’t going to come knocking at the church door, demanding an audience with Jesus.  Those everyday outsiders, their neighbors aren’t going to intercede for them.  It’s up to us to care, to reach out, to speak, to make a way for connection, to be the love of Christ for those who feel that, somehow, they are on the outside.

Jesus, put your fingers in our ears.  Jesus, give us a little of that holy spittle.  Jesus, touch our tongues.  Open our hearts to those who are on the outside looking in, lonely, alienated, and uncertain about what they are truly looking for.  In a world that is desperate for God’s mercy, healing, and love, the gap between insider and outsider is ours to bridge. 

Resources:

Ashton, Loye Bradley. “Theological Perspective on Mark 7:24-37” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminister John Knox Press, 2009.

Howe, Amy C. “Pastoral Perspective on Mark 7:24-37” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminister John Knox Press, 2009.

Wilhelm, Dawn Ottoni. “Homiletical Perspective on Mark 7:24-37” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 4. Louisville: Westminister John Knox Press, 2009.

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