“Whoever is not against us is for us”
Proper 21, Year B
September 20, 2009

What does it mean to be Grace Church? What does it mean to be the body of Christ that meets in this place? Those are questions I’ve already asked you from this pulpit before. They are questions I will continue to ask. My hope is that you have begun to ask them of yourself, that you have begun thinking and talking about them. They help us explore what our role in this community is. But they also explore what it means to be community and how to be community.

These are not easy questions for any one or for any congregation, but they are particularly difficult given Grace’s past. They would be difficult even if we didn’t have the history of conflict that we do, for in the twenty-first century, the question of community is at once more pressing than ever before. Community building is more difficult, even though technology seems to have made it easier to communicate.
Community and communication go hand in hand, one can’t create bonds across the aisle, across the generations, across cultural and linguistic divides without communicating clearly and carefully. Yet almost everything in our culture makes such communication more difficult. Our political discourse has devolved into shouting matches, people trying to score points rather than listening, and that carries over into the rest of our culture. Dialog is devalued in favor of making and scoring points.

And then there is the decline of face-to-face communities. Some of you have heard me tell this story before, but it’s a good one, so it bears repeating. As most of you know, I spent most of the last fifteen years teaching in liberal arts colleges as well as serving in ministry. Over that time a vast chasm opened up between my experience, my cultural values and those of the students I was teaching. Of course, that was inevitable. The students got younger every year. But the depth of that chasm came home to me one day in the classroom. As class ended that day, I noticed that as students began to leave the room, not one of the fifteen or twenty was talking to another student. Instead, they had all put in their Ipod buds, pulled out their cellphones, or continued sitting, checking their email. They had abandoned face-to-face community and communication for the virtual variety.

The most obvious reason for such behavior is that my students, even though they were at a small liberal arts college, preferred nurturing community with friends and family who were separated from them by a few hundred feet or hundreds of miles, rather than do the hard work of talking to someone who sat in the desk next to them. Most of us are tempted by such virtual communities. We have facebook pages with dozens, hundreds, sometimes, thousands of friends. We know what those friends are doing from minute to minute, thanks to the status postings. But what is the quality of those relationships?

Of course, it’s easy for someone like me to complain about social networking. I’m over fifty and the realities of the lives of younger people, even people in their thirties, elude me. I don’t text, I can barely see the numbers on a cellphone let alone try to use my thumbs to write messages with it. But it’s not just that. There are now virtual religious communities, apparently. In a way, it’s an extension of the televangelist phenomenon of the seventies and eighties. People related more deeply to the tv-star preacher than to their local church. Now, the relationship is with a virtual community, that may or may not involve real people.
Above and beyond that, here at Grace we worship as a community on Sunday morning, by and large in three distinct and separate congregations. Each week we have visitors who may or may not return, other people who come here seeking connection. But for the most part, we are community on Sunday morning. Some few of us may have relationships that are deeper than that; some of us have known one another for years, decades even, and so there is something of a core, or perhaps cores, webs of relationships. But on the outer boundaries of those webs, there are many others, who are tied to us by the slenderest of threads. With all of these obstacles, how do we create and nurture community?

We should take some small comfort in the fact that early Christian communities described in the New Testament struggled to create and maintain community. Paul’s letters are vivid evidence of the intense conflict that roiled early Christianity, but that conflict is also reflected elsewhere, even in the gospels.

The author of the letter of James urged his community to take care of its weaker members, the ill as well as those who might have strayed from the path. The image of community he depicts is one in which members pray for one another especially for the sick. But the ties that bind them are so strong that they also confess their sins to one another.

In the reading from the Gospel of Mark, we have a pot pourri of sayings, that seem somewhat disjointed. But what unites these disparate sayings is a concern for community. The first odd, saying of Jesus is in response to a rather strange event. An exorcist, who was not a disciple, was casting out demons by invoking the power of Jesus Christ. When the disciples complained rather bitterly, Jesus replied, “whoever is not against us is for us.” Now, what’s odd about this is that just earlier in Mark, the disciples had tried to cast out a demon and were unable to do so. The puzzle is what all this has to do with discipleship, but it would seem to me that Jesus is treating discipleship in rather expansive fashion, “whoever is not against us, is for us.

Then come the central teachings about community. As did the writer of James, Mark wants his readers to recognize the importance of maintaining the community, and the dangers that conflict within the community present. It is not just outsiders who are threats. For Mark, writing around the time of the great Jewish rebellion against Rome that culminated with the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple, the Christian community faced severe, mortal threats from outside.

But there were also threats from within: “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.” The rest of the sayings ought to be read in light of that. It is not that one should pluck one’s eye out, or cut off one’s foot. What might a community, the body of Christ look like if all of us took seriously our responsibilities toward each other?

It is an exciting time at Grace Church. We have weathered a difficult period and come through. We have survived. But being the body of Christ is more than about keeping the doors open and the electricity on. It is about reaching out to others. Among congregational development literature there is an image that has become something of an old saw—the phrase goes “from maintenance to mission.”

In the weeks I’ve been at Grace Church I have come to learn a great deal about those people who have kept things going for the last decade, the last two or three decades. They’ve done incredible work. But they are tired and ready to pass the torch and the responsibilities on to the rest of us, to younger generations, with new energy and new ideas. In a few minutes, one of those torches will pass quite literally, as we install new leadership for the ECW, the Episcopal Church Women. But that’s only one organization, one area in which new leadership needs to come forward.

To take on those responsibilities, to live into our mission, we all need to roll up our sleeves, bend our knees, get to work, and to pray. We need to do the hard work to build community and the hard work of reaching out and extending that community beyond our doors, beyond the worship service which we find most comfortable, and comforting. The gospel for today concludes with a message that continues to resonate, “have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

“Good Advice, Bad Advice, No Advice”

Proper 20, Year B

September 20, 2009

It’s tempting for many to view scripture as a rule book, a how-to guide, with advice on how one ought to live one’s life. Of course, even for those most committed to such a view of scripture, there is much in scripture that they would and do ignore. For others of us, scripture is little more than a relic of a long-gone age, ill-adapted and irrelevant to contemporary culture. Perhaps many, or most of you, had that reaction while you were listening to this morning’s reading from Proverbs. Not only is it irrelevant, it seems at times downright dangerous.

Now, I could have taken the easy way out and used the alternative reading for today. In fact, there are two alternative readings, and either would be less jarring to contemporary listeners. But you may as well know now that I am not one to avoid a difficult text, or a difficult issue, simply because there’s an easier way. No, I like a challenge, and today we all are challenged by this image of the ideal wife.

Well, I’m not going to preach on that trope. And I will refrain from making any jokes about wives, ideal or otherwise. Rather, I would like to step back and take a look for a few minutes at where we’ve been in scripture these past few weeks, and where we are going. This September, we’ve been reading from the Book of Proverbs, and shortly we will shift from there to another book, the Book of Job for our lessons from the Hebrew Bible. Scholars put these two books, along with Ecclesiastes, and some apocryphal texts into a category called Wisdom literature. Wisdom is more than a genre or type of literature. It is also a world view.

What sets Wisdom literature apart from the rest of the Hebrew Bible is the approach its authors take. They are not interested in the Mighty Acts of God, salvation history. They are not interested in the exodus, or covenant, or even the law given by God at Sinai. Instead, they look closely at themselves, at the world around them, and try to derive principles for living from their analysis of human life. In Proverbs, this can be a very optimistic a very cheery look at life. Do this and you will be rewarded. The rules are clear, straightforward, and relatively simple to follow. As we will see when we begin reading from the Book of Job, there is another, rather pessimistic side to Wisdom literature.

Wisdom literature doesn’t downplay the importance of God. Rather, it assumes that one can see God in the workings of creation, human society, and in the mind. Earlier in Proverbs, in Chapter 8, there is the beautiful and famous, hymn to wisdom. It begins, «The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago… when he established the heavens I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep… I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always. It is significant, especially given the way our text talks about the ideal wife, that in both Hebrew and Greek, the word for wisdom is a feminine noun, in Greek, sophia.

When early Christians began to reflect on their experience of Jesus Christ, one of the important images they used was that of wisdom. So in the first verses of the Gospel of John, we have the famous hymn to the logos, the word, or reason.

We may not like the particular advice that Proverbs provides us with today, but we need to remember that it is conditioned by its historical and cultural context. The advice was probably the sort of common-sense advice that in an earlier age, but there is an important lesson for us to remember. The underlying notion that the universe as created by God is reasonable and its laws and ways can be understood rationally is a lesson that needs to be relearned time again. For the authors of wisdom literature, especially an author like that of Proverbs, or Ben Sirach, whom we hear occasionally in the lectionary cycle, natural law is subject to reason, to wisdom, and thus ultimately to God.

But there’s a tendency in the Christian tradition to downplay reason, to claim that human reason and wisdom are no match for God, that our reason will fail in the attempt. Often, supporters of such views will quote the words Jesus says in today’s gospel, “whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” But that’s a misreading of this saying. There are several ways in which this has been reinterpreted. In Matthew’s gospel, for example, the parallel saying is transformed into the statement that “unless you become like a child, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” So when we hear Mark’s version, we tend to interpret it in light of Matthew.

There’s more to it, however. The Aramaic word that presumably underlies this saying, the language Jesus spoke, the same word is used for child and servant. So by drawing his disciples’ attention to a child, he is making the same point he made when he used the image of a servant. Thus we come back to the central point of this section. In today’s gospel, we have the second passion prediction by Jesus. Last week we heard the first, and in a few weeks, we will hear a third. Mark has shaped these into a very tight narrative pattern. Three times Jesus predicts that he will go to Jerusalem, will suffer and die, and be raised from the dead.

After each of these, the disciples make clear that they don’t understand what he is talking about. Last week, it was Peter. This week, Jesus embarrasses them by asking them what they had been discussing. Each time, Mark then follows it up with Jesus saying something about discipleship. Last week, it was “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” This week, an equally difficult saying, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

I have to confess that this section of the Gospel of Mark among my favorites. It is also one of the most important sections. When I used to teach Bible, we would spend a day on these three chapters. When we came to the end of the gospel that we heard last week, That verse I just read to you, I would read it aloud to my students, most of whom were fairly conservative Christians, and ask them what they thought Jesus was telling them to do.

They would look confused for a moment, a common response to my questions, and then invariably, someone would try to explain. Well, Jesus is telling us that in order to be saved…” I would stop them right there and point out, that the saying goes, “whoever would save their life… will lose it. With these two sayings we are at the heart of one of his central teachings in the gospels.

Scholars often call it “reversal” or turning things upside-down. When Jesus teaches about discipleship or about the nature of the kingdom, the reign of God, he emphasized that what matters in the reign of God is a completely different value system than that which operates in our daily lives. What do we hold most dear? What is most important to us? Our life? Our family? Our health? Our wealth? Eternal Life? Whatever that is, the reign of God, according to Jesus, turns that value on its head. Whoever would be first will be last, the last will be first. Whoever will gain his life will lose it. Whoever would be greatest will be the least.

Hard as that may be for us to hear, and it is hard, because it challenges almost everything we hold dear—status, position, wealth, power, if you really think about what Jesus is saying, he is challenging even those things that we would do, those things we would give up for the kingdom. He is challenging even our deepest religious values. Whoever would save his life will lose it.

Proverbs would give us advice about human life. There are self-help gurus with infomercials, and how-to books who offer us the same. Oprah and Dr. Phil are ready with easy steps for happiness, and wealth, and weight loss. Jesus offers us none of those things. There is no twelve-step path for discipleship or for realizing the reign of God. Instead, Jesus confronts us with a call and a challenge: Whoever wants to be first must be last and servant of all. That’s not a recipe for success, survival, or recovery. That is the mindset of a disciple who walks with Jesus to the very end.