The parish pastor knows what Jesus knew in his ministry, if in no other way, than in the experience of a sudden silence of an animated conversation as one appears in the room, as well as in the later discovery of a parishoner's unasked question or unexpressed concern.
"You'd better watch your language, Ralph, the minister's here," is a common kind of acknowledgement in a pastoral situation.
In Mark, ch. 9, the disciples do not ask the "why" question out of fear. As I see this account, I don't believe that the disciples were afraid of being read the riot act by Jesus, but I think that their fear might rather stem from the fear of the answer itself, an answer already known to them: the call of discipleship to walk the way of the cross.
This answer known in the heart hasn't stopped followers of Jesus from arguments about their greatness overagainst the other, both within the movement and outside of it. When we see an answer that we don't like or find convenient for our lives, we turn to something quite the opposite, especially when it comes to suffering and when it comes to good news.
This (admittedly odd) kind of coupling occurs in this day's gospel. Suffering is not acceptable to us and we look for a kind of religion that can give us an innoculation against it, even for an hour a week; or, we medicate ourselves (figuratively or literally) during the week with lives spent in self interest and comfort.
Secondly, we humans throw up barriers against any good news with fear and suspicion. In the face of the Gospel for example, we can't believe that God could forgive that greatest sin, that guilt that we allow into our lives to define us or control us. The disciples knew that their conversation about who was the greatest flew directly in the face of Jesus' leading and authority. Jesus' interruption brought them to silence, the silence of what life under the law (Lutheranly speaking) brings them: to embarrassment, shame, and even condemnation. I suspect that in that silence was a rebuke beyond any yelling that Jesus did to Peter. (see last week's Gospel.)
Jesus speaks the gracious Word of God to them in interrupting a child's life long enough to be an example in a story. "Welcome the child," says Jesus "and, just so, welcome the One Who Sent Me. The child that Jesus seeks is not the recipient of sentimental emotion and gratuitous charity. The child of which Jesus is speaking is the child who is without power or influence in the world's ways. The child of which Jesus speaks is not the innocent child of our cultural mythology, but the complicated kid of real life, capable of extraordinary compassion and persistent cruelty.
The child of which Jesus speaks is not a completed work, but one who is growing and changing; seeing possibility and hope, yet unsure if these will be fulfilled in the way ahead.
There is no doubt that to "welcome one such child" is to welcome the stranger, and in Jesus' terms, so to welcome His Father. At the same time, the child that we need to welcome to the arms of Jesus and the Good News he proclaims is ourselves. Incomplete and uncertain, yet exercising illusory control over our lives and the lives of those around us, we look to the Lord who gave Himself on the cross for the life of the world. From the cross and in the new life of His resurrection, we receive "the power to become children of God," (Jn. 1.14) and a vision of completeness and wholeness that is boundless and eternal through Christ's forgiveness of our sins. In Christ's promise, made known to us in proclamation by Word and Sacrament, our integrity is restored, dignity is bestowed, and courage is renewed. But above all, the promise opens our very selves to the things of God and the Holy Spirit restores communication lines. There is no further need for silence in shame. Instead, we rise in the primal language of the Christian, thanksgiving Eucharist, singing and chanting of God's wonderous deeds
Friday, September 18, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Lectionary 24b - The Cross Before / not far behind
"Thy rod and staff my comfort still; the cross before to guide me." - Henry Baker (19th c.)
"(W)here God's Word is preached accepted, or believed, and bears fruit, there the holy and precious cross will also not be far behind." - Martin Luther (Large Catechism, 1529)
Peter's confession of Jesus as Messiah bears a direct relationship to Jesus' charge to crowd and disciples in Mark, ch. 8. The call for one to "take up his/her cross and follow" is the result of the confessing of Jesus as Messiah.
Jesus recognizes the two ways that a person, even a Messiah-type, can lose their lives. We can lose by our natural inclination as sponges of self-pleasure, self-centeredness, and self-hegemony, or we can lose through the courageous act of faith that trusts alone in the saving power of God's kingdom, renouncing the world's bid for ultimate evaluation of our lives. The first "loss" is doomed by its emptiness and insatiability; the second "loss" is doomed by the world's need to be in charge and in full use of its ultimate weapon, death.
Peter is annoyed at Jesus' plan to choose the second path of loss. There goes his chance for glory in the public sphere out of his job as messianic chief of staff. There goes the Mediterranean villa upon his retirement. Here comes the all-to-ordinary way of human life, a life of struggle with the people and beliefs that he has taken on, a life lived and a death endured as the Messiah he follows takes on himself the world's death-based economy.
Should we trust Jesus as Messiah, as God's godness in human form, and not our attempts to make ourselves the god of our own lives, we turn our lives over to the holy cross that stands with forgiveness and love overagainst the world's program of self-justification and violence. From the confession, "you are the Messiah," to the "losing of ones life for the sake of the gospel" is a very short time or space indeed! Gospel Word and Sacramental meal are necessities for negotiating this messianic path of carrying Jesus' cross through death into life.
"(W)here God's Word is preached accepted, or believed, and bears fruit, there the holy and precious cross will also not be far behind." - Martin Luther (Large Catechism, 1529)
Peter's confession of Jesus as Messiah bears a direct relationship to Jesus' charge to crowd and disciples in Mark, ch. 8. The call for one to "take up his/her cross and follow" is the result of the confessing of Jesus as Messiah.
Jesus recognizes the two ways that a person, even a Messiah-type, can lose their lives. We can lose by our natural inclination as sponges of self-pleasure, self-centeredness, and self-hegemony, or we can lose through the courageous act of faith that trusts alone in the saving power of God's kingdom, renouncing the world's bid for ultimate evaluation of our lives. The first "loss" is doomed by its emptiness and insatiability; the second "loss" is doomed by the world's need to be in charge and in full use of its ultimate weapon, death.
Peter is annoyed at Jesus' plan to choose the second path of loss. There goes his chance for glory in the public sphere out of his job as messianic chief of staff. There goes the Mediterranean villa upon his retirement. Here comes the all-to-ordinary way of human life, a life of struggle with the people and beliefs that he has taken on, a life lived and a death endured as the Messiah he follows takes on himself the world's death-based economy.
Should we trust Jesus as Messiah, as God's godness in human form, and not our attempts to make ourselves the god of our own lives, we turn our lives over to the holy cross that stands with forgiveness and love overagainst the world's program of self-justification and violence. From the confession, "you are the Messiah," to the "losing of ones life for the sake of the gospel" is a very short time or space indeed! Gospel Word and Sacramental meal are necessities for negotiating this messianic path of carrying Jesus' cross through death into life.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Lectionary 23B paradoxology
Chased from his home region by a needy, misunderstanding crowd of followers, Jesus turns his face toward the land of the faithless to find faith. Mark ch. 7 has Jesus come to a house in the region of Tyre and, in spite of his attempt to "escape (the) notice" (v. 24c) of those seeking healing, is approached by a woman asking that a demon be taken away from her daughter. Subsequently, Jesus visits another region of infidels, there to receive and heal a man who could not hear nor speak; a man therefore, living in the very condition of faithlessness itself.
Jesus meets a woman of an alien race, a man unable to hear or speak and bestows upon both the salvation that is faith. The woman is doggedly determined to claim her place before God. The man closed off from God and others is opened to both by the word of Jesus.
Healing and salvation seem so far away from us. We are closed off from hope. The oppressed so remain. The blind continue to see nothing. The bowed-down further crushed. We appeal to rulers and pundits to tell us of a salvation produced in self-deluded imaginations and imposed by totalitarian methods.
Faith in the God of Jesus Christ bestows on us the gift of place and voice. We stand before Him, eating the crumbs that are the completeness of all that we seek and desire. Our ears are opened to hear his Word, our tongues released to give voice to the praises of the God "as long as (we) live."
Apart from the paradoxological change that brings sight to the blind, justice to the oppressed, and a lifting of the bowed-down, these texts bring us a Jesus who brings into the people of God a woman excluded as a member of an infidelic race and gives voice to a man - and the witnesses of his encounter with Jesus - a desire for zealous proclamation, even after they are "ordered" to keep quiet.
There is an elephant in the room of our self-deceiving desires for easy solutions and cheap fixes that masquerade as our hopes and dreams. Think of a Jesus who would discard us for flimsy human reasons and discover a Jesus who unconditionally draws us to Himself in faith and indiscrimately places the power of His love and forgiveness in our midst. Think of Jesus who tells people to shutup after the experience of his healing and know a Jesus who gives us a message of faith in the midst of this dry and chaotic time. Let water spout up in the midst of the wilderness. Let streams appear in the desert. Let the sand become a pool, in the thirsty ground let springs spew forth.
Astounding, (counter-intuitive?), certainly evoking paradoxological praise. Dead and buried in baptism's drowning waters, we are made alive by the new life of Christ. Crumbs to the unworthy dogs become the feast of heaven made present in the hellish situations of today. Given the voice of praise, we have the radical confidence that the programs of rulers and propagandists are not the definers of our lives, but rather our paradoxology expressed in a confident faith in God.
Jesus meets a woman of an alien race, a man unable to hear or speak and bestows upon both the salvation that is faith. The woman is doggedly determined to claim her place before God. The man closed off from God and others is opened to both by the word of Jesus.
Healing and salvation seem so far away from us. We are closed off from hope. The oppressed so remain. The blind continue to see nothing. The bowed-down further crushed. We appeal to rulers and pundits to tell us of a salvation produced in self-deluded imaginations and imposed by totalitarian methods.
Faith in the God of Jesus Christ bestows on us the gift of place and voice. We stand before Him, eating the crumbs that are the completeness of all that we seek and desire. Our ears are opened to hear his Word, our tongues released to give voice to the praises of the God "as long as (we) live."
Apart from the paradoxological change that brings sight to the blind, justice to the oppressed, and a lifting of the bowed-down, these texts bring us a Jesus who brings into the people of God a woman excluded as a member of an infidelic race and gives voice to a man - and the witnesses of his encounter with Jesus - a desire for zealous proclamation, even after they are "ordered" to keep quiet.
There is an elephant in the room of our self-deceiving desires for easy solutions and cheap fixes that masquerade as our hopes and dreams. Think of a Jesus who would discard us for flimsy human reasons and discover a Jesus who unconditionally draws us to Himself in faith and indiscrimately places the power of His love and forgiveness in our midst. Think of Jesus who tells people to shutup after the experience of his healing and know a Jesus who gives us a message of faith in the midst of this dry and chaotic time. Let water spout up in the midst of the wilderness. Let streams appear in the desert. Let the sand become a pool, in the thirsty ground let springs spew forth.
Astounding, (counter-intuitive?), certainly evoking paradoxological praise. Dead and buried in baptism's drowning waters, we are made alive by the new life of Christ. Crumbs to the unworthy dogs become the feast of heaven made present in the hellish situations of today. Given the voice of praise, we have the radical confidence that the programs of rulers and propagandists are not the definers of our lives, but rather our paradoxology expressed in a confident faith in God.
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