It was about five years ago now, when I received what would
turn out to be the most fateful phone-call of my life, though I hardly knew it
at the time. Our long time friends Michael
and Michelle Rogers knew of a particular Lutheran Church – Eastside Community
Lutheran I believe was its name (you may have heard of it) – and this Lutheran
Church was in need of a preacher for a particular Sunday. It was late summer and a Wednesday when I was
put in touch with now Pastor Emeritus Horner those many years ago and he told
me he was going to be out of town fulfilling his duties in the air force
reserve. We chatted, we got along pretty
well, and we agreed that I would preach on that particular Sunday. Boy, did I have no idea what I was signing up
for.
Having a few preaching classes
under my belt by that point, I prepared the only way I knew how. I looked up the text in the lectionary, read
my books, prepared my sermon, and showed up as rehearsed as a man halfway
through seminary could be on that particular Sunday. Upon entering the door, however, I was
greeted by a stern looking gentleman with black horn rimmed glasses. He greeted me in a strangely gruff manner,
introducing himself as Pastor Richard Hodges, and quite soon afterward he began
speaking in a curious language, uttering strange esoteric sayings like “Call to
Worship”, “Prayers of the Day”, and most horrifically “Which do you want to
take?” My mind now like an office where
the copier had just exploded, I tried to find a very polite way to say that
Pastor Don had only requested that I do the Sermon that day and as I was not
given a bulletin I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking on any more than that. That’s what I wanted to say, what actually
came out was closer to “Sure, I can take half the service.”
I remember Pastor Hodges smiling;
it was a wry sort smile, the same smile you see that swimming teachers get when
they wait to see if their students will do the backstroke or simply sink
unceremoniously to the bottom of the pool.
A bulletin magically appeared in my hand and suddenly I found myself thrust
into the sanctuary and strangely pining for one of Dr. Gurtner’s Greek
exams. I’m not sure what I did for most
of that service, I’m sure I spoke once or twice; Deer caught in the headlights
don’t retain a lot of knowledge about the oncoming truck after all, BUT I do
remember that when the time came to read the gospel actually nobody told me I
had to bring my own copy of it to the pulpit.
The gospel hymn was sung, the congregation rose expectantly, and I had absolutely
nothing in front of me. Searching around
frantically I found this large white book with the words Holy Bible written in
Golden Filligris, and it was as if a chorus of angels had erupted in the
background. I plopped that large book on
the podium, its echoes reverberating through the church for several minutes as
I searched for Matthew’s text, turning pages back and forth, because that’s
just so encouraging for you guys in the pews, right. I located the text at last, read it, had you
all sit down, and now, completely flummoxed gave I think the most mediocre
sermon I had ever given. The good news,
however, the one bright spot in the entire affair was that I found out that no
one turned on the microphone on, so thankfully very few of you actually heard
it.
And so, feeling like a cat caught
in a constantly flushing toilet, I left the service that day feeling like I
failed some very nice people, but, at the very least I felt we could all take some
solace in the fact that I’d never be asked back here again. For those of you wondering whether or not
your heavenly Father has a mirthful sense of irony, I ask you to please wonder
no longer. But that is the life of
faith, yes it is messy and humbling in every sense of that word, but it is also
grace-filled and never dull. It is a
life where things may seem bad at the time, but as it turns out, those events
are really just good news in the waiting.
Such is the nature of our God, who turns bad to good and dries every
single tear, taking what is broken in our lives and turning Bad News into the
best thing we’ve heard all day.
Indeed, if I could sum up our
gospel lesson in only a few words those are exactly the words I would pick, for
today our gospel is chock full of the joys of terrible news. Mark starts us off by telling us Jesus and
his disciples are passing through Galilee, that section in upper Judea that
might be considered their home base. But
Jesus is doing something strange here: he is making his disciples pass through
secretly…whatever is going to happen Jesus does not want the general public to
know about it just yet, and Mark doesn’t keep us in suspense. The text says Jesus is passing through
secretly “for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, ‘The Son of Man is
to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after
being killed, he will rise again."
Well, Gee. Why wouldn’t you want other people hearing
that? Betrayal, Death, and Rising Again? Sure, that makes sense. But that isn’t all. If you think this would seem strange to us,
imagine what it would have sounded like to his disciples. Imagine being a fisher or a farmhand, a man
or woman from a poor simple family gleaning whatever meager living you and your
family could from a desert by the sea.
It is in the process of this daily business, however, that suddenly something remarkable
happens! A rabbi, not traditionally
schooled mind you, but a rabbi nonetheless, comes into your vicinity and the
things this man says! The wonders you
see him do! And after performing these
incredible feats and teaching your own Scriptures to you in ways that you never
even dreamed , this rabbi approaches you and asks you to be his disciple! He wants to train you to be a rabbi just like
him! That’s what happens when a Jewish
Rabbi comes up to somebody and says “follow me”. They’re training people to be the next
generation of teachers. This man, this
Jesus, He sees in you the ability to teach and to lead! Of course you accept!
Now, we all have our romantic ideas
about when the first disciples were called.
We typically picture them simply hearing the call of Jesus and having
something very deep trigger inside of them, so deep in fact that they simply
drop whatever it is that they they were doing and they go. And to
a great extent I want to affirm that. I
do believe that when Jesus’ disciples were called, just as when we are called,
something deep within us moves in phenomenal ways, ways that are more felt and
experienced than can be truly understood.
But discipling us humans is nothing if not messy, and while a goodly
part of us answers that heavenly call earnestly, we bring along with us no
small amount of earthly baggage. So it
would have been for the disciples. While
I have no doubt that something spiritually magnificent happened in those
moments, the reality is in first century Judea accepting the call to be a
rabbi’s disciple is about entering into agreement to not only serve a rabbi, a
place of honor in itself, but you would in
turn also be taught how to be rabbi. At
the end of that relationship, you become entitled to a rabbi’s lifestyle, a
rabbi’s income, and a rabbi’s status amidst a very religious Jewish community –
and for the sons and daughters of farmhands and fishmongers that would look
very attractive. Accepting the call to
be a rabbi’s disciple was not a completely
altruistic act, and it is precisely those self-interests that get the disciples
into trouble.
So you see, when your rabbi, the rabbi
whom one of your number, Peter, has
called the Messiah, and whom you just saw on a mountaintop transfigured while
talking to Moses and Elijah, when he takes you through your hometown secretly
so he can tell you, “Yup, I’m going to be killed, isn’t that wonderful?” it’s
going to be enough to give you pause.
It’s going to give you pause because, no, it is not wonderful news… in
fact it’s the most horrible news imaginable, Jesus. I love you Jesus, and I’m not ditching you
because of this (and to their credit they don’t), but I entered into this
relationship for a very specific reason: it was a means for me to move up in
the world. There is no honor in being
the old student of a condemned rabbi. Moreover…
you have claimed to be Messiah, a king, and failed contenders for the crown are
not only executed, but their supporters are usually killed too. If you are handed over and killed I’ll be
lucky if the only thing that happens to me is I return to the family business
to be ridiculed for the rest of my life.
So no, this is terrible news. And
what’s this business about rising three days later. I’ve seen you do some pretty amazing things
Jesus, but I’m kinda sure you’re not going to be able to do them when you’re dead.
The disciples are rightly confused
by this teaching, and would be very much afraid, but what do they do in
response to it? The text says that the
disciples do what any other red-blooded human being would do when handed a
teaching by the long awaited Savior of the world – they ignore it. They change the subject, move on to something
else, do anything really EXCEPT actually ask your teacher to explain what he
means by that statement because if you do
you might just find out he’s being serious.
That the stress and worry over their master’s death, and indeed what
that death might mean for them. The fact that it is causing them serious problems is
obvious. The disciples begin arguing
amongst each other, and moreso, in light of their own possible upcoming shame;
it is no surprise what they are arguing about: namely who among them is the
greatest. Amidst a ship that the captain
has said he plans on plowing into the rocks, the disciples begin arguing who is
the most worthy of their number, who among them is most able to survive the
coming social storm and its fallout.
Jesus sees this, however, and upon
reaching Capernaum he asks them nonchalantly what it was that they were
fighting over. The disciples, of course,
don’t want to answer him. Having fought amongst each other, turning on
one another like jackals over a fate Jesus never said was their own, well I’d
be ashamed, too. Jesus sees that they
don’t want to answer him. I picture the disciples’ heads turned down and unable
to even look their master in the eye, and so he calls the twelve to him. He sits them down, knowing very well what
this kerfuffle was about, and decides to solve the problem by giving them even
more bad news. In their hopes of honor,
in their wishes to be something great amongst their peers he tells them to be
the greatest; they actually need to be the least. In fact he says that not only do they need to
be least among their brethren, they must be diakonos – a waiter of tables and a
filler of errands for all. To bring home
his point, he then brings among them a child, a person who goes back and forth
performing menial tasks for others all the time and without complaint, a person
of no social status –children were considered things and property until they
came of age - and yet at the same time a person too busy trying to make the
people he loves happy to really care.
So you see much like my first time
preaching here, what should seem simple enough upon first glance turns out to
be a lot more involved than you’d expect. Indeed, the more we delve into our lesson and try
to put into practice the more we find out just how bad at it we are going to
be. But if we take away anything from
this passage it is that the best news is often misunderstood to be bad news,
and what can seem like hardship at first can in the end become a blessing
beyond our wildest dreams. The disciples
wanted only to move up in their own small little worlds, to be a respected
rabbi much like those who visited them in their own places of worship, and yet
what Jesus gave them was so much more.
They came in wanting to be teachers and Jesus made them into apostles,
leaders of a fledgling movement that would cross ethnic, racial, and class
barriers to become the largest religion in the world. While Jesus telling them about his death
seemed to at first to be bad news, in truth it was gospel, for by Jesus’
sacrificial death the world was reconciled back to God in ways before that no
faithful Jew would even dare to dream.
And while the disciples did not respond to that news especially well,
Jesus stayed with them and addressed their deepest concerns, giving them still a
better way. He said, “You joined me
because you wanted to be leaders of a religious community, and oh, believe me
you will be, but let me show you how you do that. You, my disciples, are to lead by serving and
you are to gain honor by insisting that you have none. Do not play this world’s game. You fight amongst each other hoping for a
position other than the bottom, and in doing so you only sabotage
yourselves. Perhaps, you would say you
are the best among your siblings because you are the brightest, but in saying
you should be valued for your intelligence you are in fact devaluing all the
other gifts God gave you. Why say that
you only have value because you are smart?
Perhaps you would say you are the best because you are the most
pure? Why are you setting yourself up to
lose? If you are only to be valued for
your abstinence, what will happen to you when someone comes along that abstains
better than you do? Do not play this
world’s game of conditional love, the game that says you only have value
if… You are each of you God’s children
and are adored beyond measure and loved unconditionally. You lose that when you fight amongst one
another and insist that others have to be less than you. THAT, my dear friends, is how you lose at
life. If you need an example of how to
live you need only look to the children among you. They serve without question, love others and
seek only to be loved in return. Be like
them, and you will find you will be blessed in far greater measure.
And so you see, ladies and
gentlemen, friends, what at first seemed like bad news really wasn’t. In fact, the more we look at it; it really
was the best news. As we all know, the
world has it games. It seeks its victims
in a mad scheme, pushing people into the dirt in hopes it never winds up there
itself. We’ve borne the brunt of that in
this congregation, haven’t we? But today
we turn a new page, a new page that by God’s grace still has all our favorite
characters in it. In that page is the
story of a congregation who weathered the worst for the gospel, who knew well
the selfish games of the world and wanted no part of it. Let us continue that, let us resolve in this
new page to carry forward those old values of love, service, and humility. Let us follow our Lord’s teaching, to be as
those too busy loving and serving others to care at all what the world concocts
in its silly futility. I say to you
friends, Rejoice! We have been through
what is bad; it is now time to watch God turn it into what is best. Amen!
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