Tell

Sermon for Year B, Proper 18

By The Rev. Torey Lightcap

Saint Thomas Episcopal Church

September 16, 2012

Mark 8:27-38

“Tell”

Peter confesses that Jesus alone is Lord –

  Not Cesar, not any of the Greek gods the Romans worshipped,

    Especially there at Cesarea Philippi where so much blood was spilled, …

    No one but Jesus –

Jesus is Lord and God, Christ and Messiah. No other competition prevails.

We’d like to think we know precisely what he means when he tells Jesus

  “You are the Messiah,”

  But we can’t. We can’t know it with absolute precision.

As usual, it’s sort of convoluted by history.

What we can say, from our vantage point in history,

  Is that his pointing to Jesus and acclaiming him Messiah

  Was, for Mark, one of the central moments of his gospel.

It was a moment preceded by a miracle of loaves and fishes

 And followed by the Transfiguration of Jesus on a mountain –

    A moment that, for the readers and hearers of Mark,

    Would have taken the words of the confession of Peter, still hanging fresh in the air,

      And made them undeniably concrete.

Ask Peter who Jesus is. He’s ready with an answer.

‘Course, Peter’s also truly human: and he’ll bungle that response soon enough

  By letting his ego get in the way and tripping over his own words;

  And later, he’ll deny his confession outright, but for now, it’s enough.

It’s an admission of the stark truth.

Back in June of this year, my colleague Jim Naughton

  Posted an article titled “A dumb question I’ve been meaning to ask”[1]

  To the web site that I help out on a little, the Episcopal Café.

Jim has a way of saying things that,

  Once you’ve heard him say them,

  You smack your head and wonder why you hadn’t thought of it yourself.

A former baseball reporter, he writes in snappy sentences that clear out the fog.

So. Here’s what Jim wrote:

“I have had [a] question on my mind for a few weeks

  That I have only recently decided is worth asking.

“Is it important that we speak compellingly about Jesus?

“The answer might seem obvious.

  Of course, as a Christian church, we need to speak compellingly about Jesus.

“And yet, I don't hear that many preachers – even good ones –

    Speaking compellingly about Jesus.

  I don't know of many dioceses in which Episcopalians

    Are being taught to speak compellingly about Jesus,

    And even when people say that we need to preach the Gospel,

    I experience this as a call to spread certain values,

      Rather than as an invitation to figure out what Jesus was up to.

Jim went on to write, “I am not an evangelical.

  And I understand … contemporary seekers

    Might not immediately be interested

    In a set of … propositions.

  I am aware that the Bible has been used as a club

    Against minorities and marginalized people of all kinds.

  Still, if we aren’t offering people a deep and abiding encounter with Jesus,

    Then I don’t understand what we are up to as a church.

  To my ears, we don’t sound like a church

    That takes this encounter as its reason for existing.

  But perhaps I am wrong about our purpose, or am not listening to the right people.”

Jim kicked up quite the discussion with that item,

  And he left that one statement kicking around in me, consciously and unconsciously,

  All the way up into the pulpit this morning so I could share it with you:

  “[I]f we aren’t offering people a deep and abiding encounter with Jesus,” he wrote,

    “Then I don’t understand what we are up to as a church.”

I want, this morning, to expand on this line of thought.

First of all, I want to assume that it is absolutely crucial

  To “speak compellingly” about Jesus, to “figure out what he was up to,”

  And to “offer a deep and abiding encounter with him.”

I also need to further assume that this is not just the job of Members of the Clergy,

  But rather, the clear responsibility of each and every baptized person in the room.

I want to assume that because if I can’t assume that,

    Then I should assume instead that I am, perhaps, just in the wrong building,

  Or some strange club with a lot of rituals and symbols

    That talks about Jesus because it’s required

    But has no need to do so compellingly, with full throat and heart and mind and soul.

If I can’t assume that Peter’s confession is true

  And that I should be confessing it with my own lips and in my own life,

    Then I should really just do everyone a favor and go back to bed.

There is, though, this one small problem,

  Which is simply this: We don’t talk about Jesus. We no longer confess.

We like to attribute the phrase

  “Preach the Gospel at all times, and if necessary use words” to St. Francis.

In reality, we don’t know who said it, and it’s just as well.

It’s a nice thought on its face, but really –

  Aren’t we using words to communicate everything these days?

So the St. Francis bit should be a big winner with people who don’t talk

  And/or who read minds, but as for the rest of us, …

I don’t know; if we took it on its face, I could see the profit.

But I’m not sure we do; seems to me this little nugget

  Is a way to avoid talking about what we believe, talking about Jesus.

Again, in the ‘70s we got this great term, “Lifestyle evangelism,”

  Today the evangelistic method-of-choice practiced by 100 million Christians.

This is also evangelism for psychics and mind-readers,

  Where it’s claimed that it’s more effective to just live a simple and good life

    Than it is to actually talk about Jesus

  Because it’s harder to live a righteous existence than it is to go around preaching.

A hundred million Christians.

And again, if we took it on its face, it would be easy to go there.

By these numbers, if it really worked, the world would be all for Jesus by now.

But again, it seems to have proved not so much an evangelistic tool for Christ

  As it has a set of rationale for why we don’t have to talk about him.

We may say that we place Christ at the center of all things,

  But by and large, when you break it down, the rhetoric today mostly is about being nice,

    Or offering good programs, or beautiful music, or transcendent architecture,

      Or something that sounds like church but isn’t specifically

        About the transformation we experience when we place ourselves

        In the hands of the living God,

          Who in our faith narrative we know most intimately as Jesus Christ.

We don’t do it, and why? Why not?

I think I might have some ideas.

Because it’s hard.

Because Midwesterners don’t like to focus too much on themselves

  When they talk to other people.

Because it’s “woo-woo” religion – you can say “God” some, but not “Jesus” a lot.

Because it crosses too many social barriers.

Because it wrongly assumes other people will be comfortable

  With us disclosing more about ourselves than they may want to know.

Because “Jesus Christ” as a concept is weighed down and brimming

   With waaay too many political and religious associations

    That we may not want to be lumped in with.

Because The Episcopal Church is for socially conscious people

  With standing and obligation in the community,

  Who can’t afford to be sullied by too much religion.

Because the last time someone said “Let me tell you about Jesus,”

  He was wearing a sandwich board and ringing a bell and waving a Bible

  And going on about the End of Time

    And why you were going to get the short end of the deal,

      And who wants to be associated with that?

…

Does that begin to touch on some of it?

And…

Please know that a person who wears a black shirt and clerical collar

  And a cross around his neck

    Is in no way immune from this kind of thinking.

Why else should I be able to pinpoint it?

I can assure you, I didn’t do focus group testing to come up with that list!

Brothers and sisters, I shake in my boots every time I talk with a stranger about Jesus:

  I don’t know whether they’re going to up and fly away,

  And I don’t have enough charm and wit to keep things going on my own.

I just know that I trust God to carry me through every conversation,

  And I never have to be anything more or less than who I am.

Underneath all the societal baggage is the sure knowledge

  That I am always a child of God.

So I don’t have to fake a second of it.

Plus, from deep within, I have a clear sense steering me, and I bet you do, too,

  That the Jesus I have come to know and confess

  Is not the Messiah of exclusivity or one-party politics

      Or hatred or hell or thoughtlessness, …

    But is the Messiah of peace, shalom, justice, healing,

      The Messiah of the Kingdom of God, come on earth as it is in heaven.

That the Messiah I confess broke bread with sinners and outcasts,

  And taught us all to pray,

  And calls us each and every one to do the same for one another.

If you were baptised in The Episcopal Church, there is a question that was asked of you

  On the very day you were baptised.

If you were not old enough to answer at the time,

  It was answered by someone else for you,

  But then later the decision was given back to you to make for yourself.

I was not baptised in the Episcopal tradition, but when I was confirmed

  I took that question on for myself anyway in the words of The Baptismal Covenant.[2]

If you have never heard of or read about The Baptismal Covenant,

  You can still hear this question right now and take it into yourself.

That question, plain and strong, is this:

  The minister asks,

    “Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?”

And the person to whom the question is directed responds,

    “I will, with God’s help.”

Now, there’s a clear question, and a clear answer,

  That will cut through the clutter.

We didn’t just get baptised long ago and far away;

  We didn’t just promise to do things that were expedient or convenient for ourselves:

  We all promised God that we would possess the confessing tongue of Saint Peter.

So it is that we find this somewhat harsh light shining on us today –

  This deep, dark part of ourselves we weren’t sure we would have to explore

     When we came through the door.

Big questions:

  If we talk about Jesus, and how and when and where.

Whether we’re willing to be accountable for promises we have made.

Dear friends, if God is active and moving in our lives,

  Then let’s give thanks for it.

Let us confess with our lips and our lives

  Without apology or hesitation

    That we are loved beyond reason by God the Father,

    Enlivened by the power of God the Spirit,

    And deeply embraced in our humanity by God the Son:

      Yes, even Jesus Christ, who is our Lord.

[1] http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/theology/a_dumb_question_i_have_been_me.html

[2] http://www.bcponline.org/Baptism/holybaptism.html

Clean

Sermon for Year B, Proper 17

By The Rev. Torey Lightcap

Saint Thomas Episcopal Church

September 9, 2012 (8 a.m.)

Mark 7:24-37

“Clean”

It’s easy to remember that Jesus was a Jew.

For some odd reason, though, it’s also easy to forget that he was a Jew

  Who regularly and intentionally crossed boundary lines

  In order to touch and teach, heal and feed.

There’s no getting past this.

He was well acquainted with the laws and restrictions of his culture and his religion –

  The things that set him, as a Jew, apart, from the rest of his society –

  And he openly, freely disobeyed them.

Rules and laws and guidelines are made to be observed

  Because they help keep order: they keep us alive, keep society going forward,

    Keep things from breaking down or getting out of hand.

But in another sense – a larger sense – rules and laws and guidelines

  Can often become the object of their own worship.

Those who make them can forget why they’re making them

  Because sometimes our noses get too close to the page,

    And we see the letter of the law, but we risk forgetting why it exists in the first place.

In Jesus Christ, God reaches out to us:

  God reaches out to us, beyond the body of law, with a word of undeniable grace.

That word is simple and plain: I love you, God says, I will never abandon you,

  And I want you to be just as merciful to others as I have been to you.

Merciful, indeed.

Mark points out that the woman in the first episode is Gentile,

  Which is simply a word that means “Greek,”

  Or in other words, not a Jew. This is a cause for caution.

It’s supposed to be outside Jesus’ orbit to really even have a conversation with her,

  Because doing so risks making him “unclean,”

  Which by itself presents all kinds of problems for him,

    Not the least of which is that he won’t be able to participate in religious life.

That’s bad enough.

But the Gentile woman has a Gentile daughter who, we’re told,

  Is possessed by a spirit that is “unclean”!

Added to that, all this is happening in the thoroughly Gentile town of Tyre,

  Which was despised by Jews.

Healing an unclean spirit from a Gentile girl with a Gentile mother in a Gentile town.

How far outside the law can Jesus go to show mercy?

How far outside our established norms and rules are we supposed to go to show mercy?

God, in Jesus, takes it to the absolute extreme.

Before consenting to heal the woman’s daughter,

  Jesus has a conversation that reveals a common expression from that time.

Jews of his day, apparently, referred to Gentiles as dogs;

  It was simply a term of slander – thoughtless, racist language.

Yet remarkably she seizes on the term because despite what our translation says,

  He never uses the word “dogs”:

  He says “puppies,” which softens the idea.

“Why give food to puppies?” he asks playfully.

Well, she responds, giving as good as she gets,

  Puppies do eat the crumbs that fall from kids’ plates.

And the mercy of God is extended to her without regard for her station in life.

If this weren’t enough, Jesus leaves that place,

  Taking a circuitous route still deeper into Gentile territory, and ends up in the Decapolis,

  A group of ten cities on the eastern edge of the Roman frontier

  Known for their distinctly, thoroughly Greek culture.

It was well known that they had birthed

  Greek scholars, Greek poets, Greek jurists over the years.

It’s not hard to imagine some fairly sharp hostility between the cities of the Decapolis

  And their Jewish neighbors in the west, and their nomadic neighbors to the north.

Everywhere Jesus wandered in these loosely affiliated cities,

  He must have seen evidence of Greek culture:

    Architecture, sculpture, Roman tombs, monuments, avenues, fountains, theaters,

    And temple after temple where sacrifices were offered to the pantheon of gods.

The non-Jewishness of it all must have been completely visible –

  A finger in the eye of Jesus and his followers.

I’ll bet they must have tread pretty lightly,

  Yet, at least in some of them, with a feeling of disgust.

Who in this place would possibly deserve to be healed?

Well, as it turns out, a man with no hearing makes a good candidate.

Obviously another Gentile – another threat of becoming unclean.

You might imagine that touching the man, as Jesus does, was forbidden,

  And everything after that was just beyond the pale.

Just beyond the pale.

Scholars tell us that the spit applied to the tonuge,

  And Jesus touching the man in this way,

    Would have been considered just as defiling as touching bodily excrement.

Wow. By now the people in the crowds following Jesus must be asking themselves,

  Is there any law remaining we can think of that he hasn’t violated?

  Any rule left in the books he hasn’t broken?

I doubt most of us hearing this today are terribly shocked by this news.

We already know Jesus to have been something of a rebel.

It simply remains to us to think about how we might respond.

First of all, Jesus is on a mission of showing mercy to people:

  The blessing and joy and life of God, wrapped up in acts of mercy and kindness.

Those of us who call ourselves Christians had better be prepared to lose the label

  Unless we too can learn to go out of our own way and be called out of ourselves

  In order to show mercy and kindness to others.

Second, this mission of mercy is specifically extended and given to people

  Who are very much unlike Jesus:

  They aren’t Jews, they live in places he’s not supposed to go,

    In conditions that create major discomfort,

    And they have problems he isn’t necessarily even required to care about.

He could live his whole life in their absence and be just fine,

  Yet he cares enough about them,

    Although he hasn’t even met them, to go to wherever they are:

    To show the power of God, yes,

      But to show it people who themselves had every right to pass him by.

He crosses boundaries left and right; he crosses them and crosses them,

  Taking their residue to the next place and to the next place,

  Enfolding them in a message of mercy and healing

    That isn’t just some pie-in-the-sky scenario,

    But is real, and Godly, and very much in simple human terms, on a human scale:

      A daughter restored to sanity and a deaf man who can hear.

Third, when they are healed, they praise God!

They may return to their appointed daily rounds,

  But it is with words of thanksgiving on their lips – doxology and love

  To a God who does all things well,

    Or, as the Greek text tells us, Makes all things beautiful.

It is not the pantheon of gods in the cities –

  Gods who demand selfish sacrifices of wine and grain and oil –

  But it is a God who demands a harvest of mercy,

    A God who shows us, through Jesus, that rules about who is unclean

    Ultimately pale in comparison to rules about who receives mercy and kindness.

See! Whoever they are, whatever they’ve been through, whatever situation they’re in,

  They rise and walk and are whole.

Long before Jesus, the prophet Hosea wrote in the voice of God,

  “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

And it is in following these words of advice from scripture

  That Jesus shows his followers what true worship really looks like.

Beginning of the End?

I've had a generous handful of conversations of late with folks who think the end of all civilization is nigh. And I don't mean in that comical, sandwich-board sort of way where the guy stands out on the corner and rings a bell; no, I mean in that full-throated, last-refuge-of-a-scoundrel sort of way. There is a profound and deepening anxiety welling forth, and we do well to pay attention.

By and large, the people crowing about said irreversible finality aren't the types who are easily dismissed for their inherent flakiness. They don't generally truck in doomsday scenes. They don't fall easily off their posts or flap in the doctrinal winds.

The whole thing gives me uneasy pause, even as I pray for steady words of counsel to grant.

Without a doubt, it's hip to be hopeless. The Obama Thing was so 2008, and with nearly three months under our belt in 2009, we find the bottomless economic debacle of the moment a bizarre kind of counterbalance: so that positive aspirations are positively outre. Maybe it's just the collective theater of imagination, Jung's constancy of the subconscious, sitting on the chest of Hope and poking at his throat.

(I guess I'm not hip, then, as I have long tended to view my own situation as a daily exercise in pragmatic and constructive problem-solving. Even when things may have seemed particularly hopeless, faith and patience have generally won the day.)

Would that it were not so, but some of this appears to be rooted in the year 2012, and of the endless speculation that's already running us up to then. And if we find ourselves in it now, it's surely going to get worse -- er, more intense, over the next three years.

Between now and then, look for end-of-the-world scenarios to garner increasing exposure. Our friends at Columbia Pictures have located the anxiety taproot and are assembling a snappy-looking film called "2012" whose trailer features a Buddhist monastery at the top of the world getting cold-cocked by a wall of water. I know, It's probably only a big-budget, high-effects disaster film like The Day After Tomorrow. But Hollywood can anticipate and package paranoia in prescient ways.

Probably the most responsible Christian response for the moment is to get well grounded in the best-known authorship studies of the apocalyptic literature, even while boning up on the 2012 hubub. We need to have a faithful, generous, and scholarly context laid forth for those of us who don't use things like Revelation and Daniel to scare the beJesus into people. Rationality doesn't win in the face of immediate panic. It takes time to build.

In any event, if you're in ministry, you should expect inquiries.

Joaquin and the Scapegoat Impulse

We love scapegoats - any place, thing, idea, or person we can hang our sins upon and say, There! Look well, and witness both sin and sinner.

We do this, of course, because it's human behavior: built in, hard-wired, inscribed on the collective DNA. Nothing we can do will ever adequately scrub it out. Sin is not local, not "in here"; it is forever at arm's length, in the heart of the other. Rene Girard:

The creature that excited fury is abruptly replaced by another, chosen only because it is vulnerable and close at hand.

"The creature that excited fury." Usually, that's us.

Joaquin Phoenix is the latest in the long pantheon of celebrities to stumble publicly and suffer the mantle of Recent Scapegoat. Some have speculated that he's busily pulling off a stunt with his brother-in-law, Casey Affleck, who's filming the spectacle, and that at some point the gag will be revealed for what it is - a one-man kayfabe in the vein of Andy Kaufman and Jim Lawler.

I hope that's true, because the alternative looks pretty brutal. I've seen the Letterman clips a few times now. My sense is that the photogs and TMZ'ers are sharpening their longest knives as we speak.

Christian compassion cannot end with celebrities just because we think they're out of touch with reality, or because we're jealous of them. They are, after all, people, and God requires mercy and compassion - longsuffering compassion and companioning.

Not to say that Hollywood doesn't excel at creating alternate realities, and not that people aren't complicit in their own undoing; or that showing compassion requires us to substitute one reality for another. If Mr. Phoenix is really in a state of need (either that or he's one of the better actors of his day, and is shortly to pull aside the veil of this conceit), then he certainly helped himself along the way, and in that he's no role model.

But godly compassion requires that we not laugh when we see another in pain. (Again, unless he's joking, in which case we all get a chuckle later on, but it'll be guilt-laced laughter.) We don't pile on or idly gossip.

Bottom line: This man is our brother, and to make him a scapegoat is to take the cheap way out.

We have not so learned Christ.

Have We Been Properly Introduced?

Hi.

The better part of my life has been spent in classrooms and study sessions, group conversations and teacher conferences. In short, I'm a lifelong learner who has found himself (both vocationally and avocationally) standing at the intersection of religion and culture.

That's what this is about -- except without all the manifestos and dissertations.