"Living on Fulfilled Time" (First Sunday in Lent)

Mark 1:9-15

9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11 And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." 12 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13 He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

              Time. I used to think time was a simple thing, something I even took for granted. Like the rest of you (I hope), I learned in school that time is measured in second, minutes, hours, days, etc. I learned 60 seconds make a minute; 60 minutes make an hour; 24 hours make a day; 365 (or technically, 365.25) days make a year. Time moves at a steady pace—or at least it seems that way to us; I mean, the second hand on my watch doesn’t move faster from one tick to the next. That was how most people understood time, until a German physicist in the early twentieth century came up with this theory about how time is actually a relative dimension of the fabric of the universe called spacetime, and time can be subject to the speed of an object or whether an object is caught in an extreme gravitational field (like a black hole). Now, don’t ask me how all this works, but Einstein’s theory of relativity has revolutionized the way we observe and understand the universe.

              Of course, Einstein isn’t the only one who theorized the relative nature of time. Why, I’ve heard it most of my life from folks older than me who couldn’t spell Einstein, much less understand his theory or relativity, and I’m pretty sure most of you have to. I’ve heard it from the parents of adult children as they recall the days when their kids were still small, days when they would run around with an untamable (and sometimes frustrating) energy: “They grow up too fast,” they say, “The days when they’re little seem to go by the fastest.” Do the younger years of our children really pass by quicker than their later years? I generally hear about the relative nature of time every year around December; inevitably, someone will say, “I swear, Christmas arrives faster every year!” But does Christmas arrive faster, or does it just seem to arrive more frequently as we experience more of them? I don’t know…I do know that time is a fickle thing, taking too long to pass when you’re waiting, passing too quickly when you’re trying to hold on, and never moving backwards. But what does it mean for time to be “fulfilled?”

              There’s an awful lot that goes on in these six verses before us this morning, in the five verses before Jesus shows up in Galilee preaching, “"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." For starters, Jesus is baptized by his cousin John in verse nine: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.” That’s it. Mark doesn’t give us the exchange between John and Jesus in the river, the whole, “Why are you coming to be baptized by me when I should be baptized by you?” conversation we get in Matthew’s version, and there’s no detailed account of who’s there like in Luke’s version. Mark has things to do; the second hand on Mark’s clock ticks with a quick, thunderous reminder that there are things to do, places to go, people to heal.

              That’s why we move on from the single-verse baptism to the direct proclamation from God in verses ten and eleven: “And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’" The sky rips open, the Spirit of God descends, and Jesus hears the voice of God affirming his divine sonship. You might think we’d stay in this space for a while, savor this miraculous moment, but no! It’s with hair still wet from the waters of the Jordan that Jesus is driven by the Spirit out into the wilderness. “He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” No detailed description of the exchange between Jesus and Satan in the wilderness, no remarks about turning stones to bread, no being shown the kingdoms of the world, not discussion about jumping off temples as in Matthew and Luke’s account—there’s just not that kind of time!

              Jesus has endured his temptation with Satan, survived the wilderness with all of its wild beasts, and had angels wait on him in the aftermath, but before he can mount his comeback narrative, before he emerges from the wilderness with a renewed sense of mission and a steadfast determination to do what God has called him to do, he gets the terrible news: “John was arrested.” His cousin and forerunner, the one who cleared the way, setting the example, going ahead of him, has been arrested. It’s only in the wake of the news of John’s arrest that Mark says, “Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.” It’s straight to the work, no time to visit John in prison, no time to take John’s one phone call, or drop by for his court date—the proclamation of God’s good news was the priority.

              It’s the nature of Jesus’ message that catches my attention this morning on the first Sunday in Lent: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." "The time is fulfilled…” all of that rushing, all of that hurrying through baptism, divine declaration, temptation, and arrest, and now the time is fulfilled? If it had been me, if I had been deciding when the time was fulfilled, it would have been in that single, glorious moment when the heavens opened up and the Spirit descended and the voice of God—that’s when I would have tapped on the glass, clapped my hands, whistled real loud, and said, “Alright folks, listen up! The time has come! Now is the time! The time is fulfilled!” That’s when to do it, when the very cosmos is responding to the arrival of God’s son, not after all the other stuff, especially not after temptations from Satan, wild beasts, and the arrest of the prophetic hype man. But I suppose that’s the reality of time, at least God’s reality of time: the fulfilled time of God’s kingdom doesn’t wait for the roses to bloom, it doesn’t spring up when things are going well or when the theatrics of the moment demand it. The fulfilled time of God’s kingdom is our time, happening in the midst of our ups and downs, our divine declaration AND our satanic temptations.

              And that’s the thing—God’s time is fulfilled even now! Let that sink in for a minute. When you’re “waiting on God,” when you’re trying to hold on to that fleeting feeling of closeness to Christ, when you’re wondering if things are working out in “God’s time,” remember that God’s time has been fulfilled. Jesus proclaimed the time of fulfilment for God’s kingdom after the transformative experience of his baptism, after the sky was torn in a moment of the Spirit’s transcendence, after being driven into the wilderness to deal with the devils that awaited him there, after the terrible news of his cousin’s arrest…the fulfilment of God’s kingdom, of God’s time, is after all of this, including all of this. Jesus didn’t push “pause” in the wilderness. He didn’t cut out the part about John’s arrest, nor did he elevate his experience in the waters of the Jordan. It’s all part of it, the ups and downs, the divine and the devious, the good news of liberation and the heartbreaking news of imprisonment—it’s all part of the fulfilment.

              Now, I suppose from here I could slip into the easy inclinations of those friends of mine who so glibly claim that “God is in control,” or that “God has a plan,” or “Things work out in God’s time…” I mean, those are somewhat easy, comforting notions, to believe that bad things happen to us when they do and good things happen when they do because God has somehow already laid out every detail, every moment of our lives right down to what cereal we’ll eat in the morning, but that’s not what I’m getting at. No, what I’m trying to tell you is that all of time—whether we measure it by the passing hands on the clock or by Einstein’s equations—belongs to God, and God’s kingdom finds it’s fullness in that time. Each and every second, minute, and hour—every moment—is pregnant with the possibility of the presence of God. I believe that why Jesus said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

The kingdom of God is close, at hand, a second away, and every once in a while, it’s so close that it slips in on us…if we’re looking for it. It can slip in unnoticed, like the way a baby smiles at a stranger from across the restaurant. It can sneak in, quietly breaking through the chaos and confusion of life, like the way a sunset on the drive home gives you an indescribable sense of peace after a horrible day. Most of the time, though, the kingdom of God is so close, the very fabric perhaps of spacetime, that it passes unnoticed, lost in the familiar, unseen in the mundane, hidden in plain sight, just beyond our consciousness as we’re distracted by what we think is important in this life. But it’s there. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is close at hand. All we have to do is reach out for it. All we have to do is stop and look for it. It may be right beside us, in the aching heart and troubled soul of our neighbor. It may be right behind us, in the stranger we’ve passed on the street, the one we’ve avoided making eye contact with, but that strange feeling won’t leave us alone, that feeling to turn around. It may be right in front of us in the work we do every day—the work we sometime cuss because it’s repetitive, hard, and the pay is terrible. It may be right in front of us in the time we spend, in the people who surround us, in the opportunities we have and the ones we must work for. The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, and it may be found in the grand, mystical experiences that click by but ever so often in our lives, or it may be found in the simple, less obvious things. Like a neighbor handing you a tray of bread and juice…who knows? Maybe you’ll catch a glimpse of God’s kingdom today. After all, the kingdom of God is at hand, and we’re living on fulfilled time. Amen.

"Unveiled" (Transfiguration Sunday)

2 Corinthians 4:3-6

3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus' sake. 6 For it is the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

              A few years before my grandma died, she had fallen and broken her hip. She got up in the middle of the night (as she was prone to do), walked through the door of her bedroom on her way to the kitchen to make a cup of instant coffee, when a motion-activated light my uncle installed flashed on, temporarily disorienting her and causing her to fall in the hallway. She had hip surgery and the subsequent weeks of rehabilitation required, which all took place in the nursing home in Enterprise. Now, my grandma had sworn to us if she ever wound up in the nursing home she’d kill us, and while she may not have technically been in the nursing home, she was inside the building, so whenever my dad and I came to visit her, as soon as she saw us coming down the hall, she’d start into to calling us names I cannot repeat in mixed company, let alone from a pulpit!

              Now, I don’t recall exactly how many weeks she was in rehab, but while she was there, my uncle (who lived with Grandma at the time) decided to change a few things around her house: push the kitchen table up against the wall, reorganize the bathroom, make a clear path in her bedroom from the bed to the door, and rearrange the furniture in the living room. While I think he had the best of intentions in doing all that he did, when we brought Grandma home, all the changes left her confused—I’d go so far as to say I don’t think she was ever quite right after that. She’d look around the living room from time to time while I was there, then look at me and say, “Chris-fer, I want to go home,” to which I’d say, “You crazy old lady, you are home!” But it all looked different to her; there were literally corners of rooms she hadn’t seen in years, patches of carpet that were a different color because they hadn’t been faded like the rest, even discolored rectangles on the wall where the same pictures had been hanging for decades. It was the same place, yet it was completely different, and all because a few things had been rearranged and exposed. For Grandma, the whole place had changed—relocated even—because a few things had been uncovered.

              You know, I can’t help but wonder sometimes, how this whole place, this whole world, might appear to change—relocate even—if we could just uncover a few things, how the world might look a bit different if we rearranged the furniture of our faith to expose the darkened corners a bit, how jarring it might be to discover how much we’ve worn a path around the objects, ideas, and concerns we’ve used to decorate our consciousness. I wonder…would the world be transformed by what it witnessed? Would we be transformed?

               Perhaps that’s why Paul was having to explain himself in this letter to the Corinthians: his preaching of the “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” had perhaps uncovered something within the believers at Corinth, something that had been ignored, glazed over, or contradicted by the so-called “super-apostles” and other preachers and philosophers who were attempting to woo the congregation there with other thoughts about life, faith, and the divine. Paul’s words before us clearly sound defensive: “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.” It’s as if he’s saying, “Oh yeah? If we’re wrong, it’s only to those who think they’re always right!” But what Paul is getting at is something much deeper, I think, something that touches on what just may be the biggest conundrum facing the contemporary Church (or perhaps the Church of any era).

              You see, Paul speaks about a “veiled gospel,” a gospel that can only be identified by its reduced appearance. While there’s definitely some connection with Moses and his veiled face in Exodus, guarding the people against the frightening transformation that had taken place in the presence of the glory of God, I think Paul’s words go farther, hinting at what just may be veiling the gospel in the eyes of many today. To tell the truth, it’s not any one particular issue (though there are many who would line up at the soapbox for their turn to plead their case for the singular cause of moral corruption in our present age), but I might be so bold as to say it can be summed up in the further words of our text from Paul: “For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus' sake. For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

              In other words, when we seek to proclaim the gospel, to unveil the truth of God in Christ Jesus to the world, we do not do it in a way that seeks to put ourselves first, to lift ourselves up as some shining example of pious righteousness. When we seek to “let light shine out of darkness” we do so while proclaiming ourselves servants—slaves in fact!—of others. Any other method, any other attempt at proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, will always present a veiled gospel.

              I can remember hearing a couple of, rather famous, televangelists one time talking about how they absolutely had to have a private plane whenever they traveled the world to preach (I won’t tell you their names but they rhyme with Kenneth Copeland and Jesse Duplantis). One of them said he had learned that lesson (the necessity of flying in his own, private plane) from Oral Roberts. He said, “Oral Roberts used to fly airliners…but it got to the place where it was agitating him…people coming up to him—he had become famous—wanting him to pray for them and all that…”[1] Imagine that! A famous preacher, and folks wanting him to pray for them! They went on to say how a private plane allowed them to do the Lord’s work better because it meant they’d be protected from being trapped in a commercial plane with all those  (in their words) “demons”—you know, all those people traveling to visit family, to go on mission trips, to attend conferences and business meetings, those “demons.” If we need to keep others at arm’s length in order to proclaim the good news of God in Christ Jesus to them, if we need sanitized, private, velvet-roped pulpits from which to preach, if we need to make sure that the real awful folks, the real dirty folks, the just plain real folks are kept out of our way, then at best we are preaching a veiled gospel.

              Of course, it’s not just the prosperity preachers who present a veiled gospel to the world. You see, Paul says, “we proclaim Jesus Christ…For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ means that there is, in fact, something different about our acts of benevolence, that we are more than just doers of good deeds seeking to earn a merit badge, a few good words said at our funeral, or an award named in our honor. Proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ means that our lives are lived in such a way that our actions, our words, are unmistakably grounded in who Christ is.

              On the wall in my office, there are a few, printed pictures hanging in cheap, plastic frames. To tell the truth, they’re mostly there to cover over the number of nail holes from multiple other frames that have been there over the years. In one of those frames, there is a picture of Clarence Jordan, with one of my favorite quotes of his: “The measure of a Christian is not in the height of his grasp but in the depth of his love.” Clarence embodied that quote. See, Clarence is growing in popularity among some younger folks these days, but in his lifetime he was all but despised, especially in his home state of Georgia, for preaching a gospel of acceptance and inclusion—most especially when it came to matters of race. Clarence, however, didn’t just preach that gospel: he lived it. What’s more, Clarence didn’t just live his life in quietness with the other folks at Koinonia (the interracial farming community he started in Americus, Georgia): he preached in whatever church would welcome him into the pulpit. Clarence didn’t just live his life, leaving the rest of the world to draw their own conclusions about his motives—he was unapologetically vocal about his allegiance and obedience to the calling of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and as such, I believe Clarence exemplified what’s missing from the veiled gospel of my friends on the more progressive and liberal side of Christianity: Clarence was not ashamed to say that he did what he did, he lived the way he lived, because he believed Jesus Christ was the Son of God and that Jesus meant what he said when he said, “You shall love the Lord your God…[and] your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."[2]

              Today, it seems as if we are stuck with two options as contemporary Christians, two veiled gospels in need of transfiguration, in need of having their furniture rearranged, in need of full revelation to “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” On the one hand, we can confess with our words that we are Christians—reciting creeds, signing faith statements, and quoting Bible verses at those we have determined are sinners worse than ourselves. This veiled gospel places us at the center, fooling us into believing that what matters most is our personal, cognitive agreement to some argument that will secure our seat in heaven. It veils the full-orbed truth of Christ’s gospel because as “we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord”  yet fail to proclaim “ourselves as [others’] slaves for Jesus' sake.”

              On the other hand, we are presented with a muted gospel, indistinguishable from the benevolent deeds of those donating their time and money for the tax benefit, a gospel veiled by the still self-seeking actions of philanthropists hoping to have a wing of their college named in their honor. Even this half-hearted gospel places us at the center, for we will all but hide Jesus from the spotlight, hoping instead to either pass it off without the embarrassment of faith to the ear of reason or to claim the work as our own along with the adoration and praise. It veils the full gospel of Christ because it flatly fails to "Let light shine out of darkness," by “giv[ing] the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

              Friends, I am becoming more and more convinced that what we truly need—what the contemporary Church needs—is an unveiled gospel, a gospel that rearranges the furniture and exposes the worn-out rugs of our faith, a gospel that puts action to our confessions and confessions to our actions, a gospel that demands more from us than pious attitudes with proof-text bumper-stickers and politically watered-down doctrine. We need an unveiled gospel that demands that our actions are undeniably driven by our faith in Christ and not by our need for attention or praise. We need to fully take hold of the whole gospel of Jesus, the selfless gospel that always puts Christ first and all other ahead of ourselves. For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as…slaves for Jesus' sake. Amen.

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[1] You can check out the video of this conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdH2DGSXjss (accessed 2.10.2018)

[2] Matthew 22:37-40

"Waiting on the Lord" (Fifth Sunday after Epiphany)

Isaiah 40:21-31

21 Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; 23 who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. 24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. 25 To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. 26 Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing. 27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God"? 28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. 29 He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. 30 Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; 31 but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

            The longer I live, the more I notice just how out of sorts life can get in the wake of pain, grief, sorrow—really just any general negativity. It seems as if the world around us completely stops spinning, as if we’ll never be able to get on with our lives, like there’s never going to be any sense of normalcy or happiness ever again. To some degree, this is normal: to be young and experience the sting of a first heartbreak, believing you’ll never find true love again and that all the joy in the world has been drowned in an ocean of your tears (or some sappy notion like that). It’s normal, to grieve the passing of a loved one—especially a tragic passing—for a time. For most of us, this feeling of being stuck, these feelings of futility and hopelessness, pass with time and the healing presence of others in our lives. There are those of us, however, for whom the days never seem to grow brighter, the world never seems to be set right, those of us for whom every day is just another periodic reminder of the darkness from which we cannot escape.

            Like the daughter—in her sixties now—who cannot let go of the grief that came with her mother’s death over fifteen years ago. The shadow of her despair lingers in the corners of her home, in the numerous shrines to her long-departed mother; it creeps its way into every conversation and every drag of a cigarette and every swig of water taken to wash down the pills. For her, the earth was thrown off its axis the day her mother died, and from that time on she’s wallowed in the dark shadows of that pain, never allowing the realities of life, death, and time to heal her heart.

            Then there’s the ex-husband, the one who didn’t see it coming. After twenty years and two kids, he came home to find a letter stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. Twenty years, and all he got was a letter, followed by a visit to the lawyer’s office. Twenty years, and all he got was an occasional drop in from the kids from whom he’d weasel the latest gossip. It’s been twenty years now, and he still keeps his ring in his pocket, her picture in his wallet, and he winces whenever the kids mention her new last name. For him, that day was the beginning of the end, the first day he began looking forward to his last.

            There are those people for whom there seems to be no escaping the tragedies of life and the repercussions that follow. Like those people, the ones who had believed they were God’s special people, a chosen nation, blessed and untouchable, they believed that theirs was a nation that would continue on in perpetuity, but then the Babylonians came. The king Nebuchadnezzar led his forces into the capital, exiled the elites, the leaders, the upper-crust, raided the riches of the temple, and left the rest to be divided among his own people who would intermarry with the remaining “chosen people.” In exile, these people of God began to despair, to believe that the world as they knew it—as they wanted it—was over. They were surrounded by the idols of a foreign people, surrounded by the visible signs that they had lost (and by extension, that their God had lost). They were reminded with each new day that they were not home, that they may never return home, and that in the grand scheme of geo-political power, they were little more than a pawn on the chessboard.  For so many of them, all that was left was to accept their fate, to slump into the belief that God was gone and with him went hope and the joy of the future they once envisioned.

            Into this supposed hopelessness, the prophet speaks these words: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.” While you’ve all been in exile, giving in to what you perceive as the inevitability of defeat and assimilation, have you forgotten what you’ve been told since you were little? Have you forgotten all those songs you sang in Sunday School? Have you forgotten about the very nature of your God? You’re worried about the power of princes, presidents, dictators, and emperors, yet God is so far above that! You don’t worship a God whose fate is determined by the outcome of wars fought by men, of laws passed by governments. Yours is a God who hangs the sky like it was a set of curtains in the guest room, spreads them out like a pup tent over the weekend. Yours is a God who by mere presence shows the reality of the way things are—that the people of the earth are like grasshoppers, their rulers come and go and are easily forgotten as their memories fade with the pages of history books. The prophet arrives to remind these exiled people that their God is beyond their present pain, that there is hope to be found in the very transcendent nature of God.

            I think the truth of that reality, of God’s transcendence, is one which we seem to lose over time, but not when things are going wrong. No, we seem to lose sight of God’s true transcendent nature when things are going well, when we’re getting everything we want, when our ducks are in a row, and everything is going according to plan. It’s in those times that we lose sight of the reality of God, because it’s in those times that we begin to take God for granted, that God is blessing all that we do, that God is pleased with everything we are. We buy into the inverted narrative of exile: if nothing is wrong, then everything must be right (and alright with God).

            Think with me for a moment about the exiles to whom the prophet is speaking in our text this morning. Now, were they exiled unfairly? Was the arrival of the Babylonians an accident of history, the inevitability of a world superpower consuming land, resources, and people on its way towards global dominance? Were they being picked on? No! The Babylonian captivity was (according to the prophets) a direct result of the people of Judah’s actions: their actions towards the poor, the strangers, the vulnerable among them, and their overall greed. As far as the people were concerned, before the Babylonians showed up, everything was fine, because the rich were getting richer and the poor were keeping their mouths shut. As far as they were concerned, they were fat and happy, so God must also be happy.

            We lose sight of God’s nature, of God’s calling on our lives when we don’t have to wait on God to set everything right. When life glides on effortlessly, when things are without complication or confusion, that’s when we begin to misunderstand God’s true nature, because it is in those seasons of our lives when we can so easily fall into believing that everything has God’s blessing on it. That’s really why we begin to doubt and question and fear when troubles come, because we’ve taken it for granted that everything else was blessed by God. It’s why the prophet says, Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God"? Why do you think your way is hidden from the Lord? Why do you think you have been disregarded by God? Because you’ve had to wait a little while in exile? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. It’s as if the prophet is saying, “Why are you suddenly concerned about being hidden from God? Why do you suddenly think God has disregarded you? Don’t you get it? God is above all this; God made all of this. Can you really understand God?”

            Then, there are these great poetic lines: He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted. Power to the faint? Strength to the powerless? Youths will faint and young will fall exhausted (I’m assuming “young” means something besides three years old here…)? That doesn’t make sense. Why would God grant power to those on the brink of passing out? Why would God grant strength to those without power? Why? Because those are the ones who need it, and they know it. You see, of course the youth with faint and be weary—they’ll eventually grow old, tired, exhausted. Of course those who are carrying on in their lives as if God has blessed every step they take and every decision they make will eventually run out of breath—we all do! But when the days come when youth has disappeared, when strength has gone, when power has faded, all that we’ll have left to do is wait, but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

            It turns out, that we really don’t get the nature of who God is until we have to wait for God, until we have to understand that everything we think is our own, everything we think we’ve earned, everything to which we believe we are entitled, is nothing more than junk on its way to dust. It turns out that we can really only find our strength when we realize we don’t have any in the first place, that we can only soar to the heights of this life when we realize such heights are on an entirely different plane from the one we use to measure success, that we can only walk and not faint when we realize we’re really too weak to stand on our own.

            When things are going great, we can give our religious obligation to God (show up to church, put a few dollars in the plate, say the blessing at the dinner table) and believe that everything we have and everything we do is blessed and approved by the Almighty. When things take a turn for the worse, we can wallow in self-pity, linger for too long in the dark shadows of our own needs for reassurance and security. We can go through this life believing that it’s in our hands or believing that every choice we make is somehow predestined in some intricate plan set before the foundations of the world and we’re just living it out in real-time. Or we can choose to believe that we worship a God who transcends our ways of thinking, a God who could quite possibly hang the sky like a curtain and pitch a tent with the stars, a God who does not come and go with the fleeting notions of religion, politics, or culture, a God who does not grow weary with the passing of time, a God who does grants strength to the powerless and help to the helpless, a God who does not run on our clock, by our rules, according to our expectations, a God worth waiting for. Amen.

"What is this?" (Fourth Sunday after Epiphany)

Mark 1:21-28

21 They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. 22 They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. 23 Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, 24 and he cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." 25 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent, and come out of him!" 26 And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. 27 They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, "What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him." 28 At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

(Opening omitted/improvised)

The man never set foot back in the church. He came looking for help, for liberation from the illness that clouded his mind, for love from those who claimed to love everybody, for acceptance from those who were really just as broken and messed up as he was. He just wanted someone to say that he wasn’t alone in his struggle, that there was something more powerful than the oppression of fear and rejection, yet all he got was more of the same—it just happened to come dressed in its Sunday best. He was looking for freedom from the chains of illness and loneliness, freedom from the so-called authorities of this world that tell us how to think and how to act, but instead he got a new dose, a new authority with cleverly disguised “God language.” And he wasn’t the first, and he won’t be the last (even if he exists in a world of my own creation).

Of course, it could have gone differently. It could have gone more like that meeting at Capernaum some two thousand years ago, where Jesus (fresh from his bout with Satan and the calling of his first disciples) was teaching in the synagogue there. The congregation, we’re told, was “astounded at his teaching,” when “Just then [in the middle of their service] there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit.” Now, nothing can really throw a wrench in the gears of a good service like some giant, obnoxious distraction, and I’m sure to many that were there in the synagogue at Capernaum, that’s exactly what this man was—a distraction. Not only that, but he had no right to be there! This man had an unclean spirit, whether that refers to a demonic possession (though the word “demon” does not appear in this text), a mental illness, or something else entirely is really irrelevant. This man is unclean, which means he is not supposed to be gathered with the others in the synagogue. Perhaps he had successfully kept this unclean spirit hidden from the others and Jesus’ authoritative teaching had forced his hand. Maybe he had snuck into the meeting that day just to test the new rabbi from Nazareth. Mark doesn’t give us a lot of details; we just know he appears and threatens to throw things off track.

The unclean spirit cries out through the man at Jesus: "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." But Jesus doesn’t roll up his sleeves and ball up his fists in preparation for a physical altercation. Jesus doesn’t begin a systematic utterance of incantations to expel the spirit. No, Jesus (in a matter-of-fact sort of way) rebukes the spirit and says, “’Be silent, and come out of him!’ And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.” Jesus showed his authority over the unclean spirit—over those things which are beyond our control and comprehension—and in doing so gave this unnamed man a new life. No longer was this man ruled by the authority of this unclean spirit, but now he has come face-to-face with the ultimate authority that rests in the Son of God.

That’s all we get about this man; there’s no follow-up. We never even get his name, but we are told in verses 27 and 28: “They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’ At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.” Jesus kicks off his public ministry with a bang! His fame begins to spread as those at Capernaum witnessed what Jesus had done to the man with the unclean spirit. It’s really a great testimony, isn’t it? A man who was once tormented by an unclean spirt, a man who was once under the influence of a false authority, a man who was once enslaved to a power outside of himself, a man who was once lost is now found. That’s the kind of story we can get behind. It’s the kind of story we like to share with others. It’s the kind of story we like to tell…but it’s not really the kind of story we want to live.

See, like those first witnesses at the synagogue in Capernaum, many of us are anxious to hear exciting teachings; we’re excited about telling these grand stories of how Jesus saved someone from an unclean spirit, a life of crime, fornication, drugs, evil, and sin. But when it gets down to it, and we have to be a part of that story…well…we kind of lose that excitement. There are those of us who find ourselves standing on the other side of a decision, the other side of baptism, and believe (whether we admit it or not) that we no longer need Jesus to save us, to exorcise those unclean spirits that pollute our lives and cloud our conscience. We would much rather witness that in the lives of others, of those we call unbelievers, sinners, reprobates, different. We’d rather watch it unfold in the lives of others, to watch as the love and forgiveness of Christ becomes real in their lives, all the while we withhold our own love and forgiveness from those who need it. We love to tell to the stories, but we’re not so anxious to live them.

We’re quick to point out the need for Jesus’ authority in the lives of others, but not so quick to confess that our lives aren’t always steered by the presence of Christ within ourselves. In other words, it seems to me that we are always ready and willing to call out the unclean spirits in others, to tell the stories of how someone else has been liberated from a sinful life we were fortunate not to lead, but when it comes to acknowledging that there are blind spots in our own lives, places where we have yet to allow Christ to take control...we’re not so ready to confess that. It’s as if we have some kind of diet, low-cal, fat-free faith: “all the salvation with none of the surrender.” Do we really believe that Jesus has the authority to be Lord of our lives—our entire lives? Do we really believe that Jesus still has the authority to forgive even our darkest, most secret sins? Do we really believe that Jesus has power over those things that are beyond our control and outside of our understanding? Do we really believe that Christ has that sort of authority, that sort of power? Sometimes I wonder…          

            I wonder sometimes if we still believe that Jesus has the power and authority to change this very world, our very lives in an instant, if we’re ready to confess that we still have places in our own hearts we have yet to fully give over to Christ’s authority and power. I wonder if we’re just a bunch of folks who want to tell others’ stories, to make Jesus famous by sharing stories of how he has changed those we believe needed to be changed. Or are we ready to confess that we are still in need of Christ’s love each and every day, that we need to let go of more of ourselves that it may be changed by more of Christ and his love?

What is this power that Jesus has? Is it the power to make the unclean clean? Is it the power to bring the addicted out of their darkness? Is it the power to turn the lives of nasty, unfit folks around? Is it the power to get folks into heaven? Of course it is! But it’s the same sort of power that can save good, clean church folks like you and me, with each new day we face. Amen.