Beautiful Freedom

Video is here.

Mark 8:31-38

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

What would you be willing to do, to get your way? Would you lie? Some would. Would you file lawsuits? Some would. Would you go on social media to take down people who you think are in keeping you from getting your way? Some would. Would you be willing to use violence, even lethal violence? Again, we have witnessed such things in our country recently. Some people are willing to bring down our whole democracy to get their way. 

I have spoken previously about the fact that those who did some of these things, cloaked them in supposed religious respectability by public signs and symbols of Christianity. Texts like the one before us from the Gospel according to Mark show just how absurd that is.  

But let us not begin by being smugly superior to those people. The truth is that no one enjoys it when our hopes, our dreams, our goals, or even our trivial plans are stymied. We don’t even like being the second car at the red light. We certainly don’t like it when someone cuts in the line we are waiting in. 

In each of us is a dark side; a self that wants to assert itself, in competition with other selves. The difference between us and the Capitol insurrectionists may be more of degree, than kind, though the degree be huge. We will be considering those issues today as we look at the text from Mark.

The Russian author Dostoevsky wrote a novel entitled “Notes from the Underground.” I thought of that title as I was reflecting on this text from Mark’s gospel. In many ways, Mark’s gospel is written from the underground. 

Many scholars believe that Mark wrote in the tumultuous days leading up to or perhaps even during the Jewish revolt against Rome that ended in 70 CE.  

So, when Mark was telling the story of Jesus in those days, he was both recording what he had been told about Jesus and applying the meaning of Jesus’ message to his community.  So his gospel was like “Notes from the Underground” – something written to people in a tough situation in dangerous times.  

Mark’s Community’s Context

What would it have been like to be in Mark’s community? It would have meant trouble. In the early years, Christians in Palestine were mostly Jewish and thought of themselves as Jews who believed in Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah. 

But the closer they got to a Jewish revolution, the more dangerous it was to be a Jewish person in the Roman Empire. Their situation was made even more dangerous because the central message of Jesus was about a kingdom – and it wasn’t the kingdom of Caesar or Rome, it was the kingdom of God — dangerous words.  

The Romans were not reluctant to crucify people who were suspected of treason. They believed in group punishment. They believed in making public examples out of insurgents. They believed that the more brutal they were, the less likely it was that there would be organized opposition. 

So they crucified people publicly, in huge numbers. They crucified them naked, which was meant to shame them. It was meant as a deterrent.

To make it even worse, they normally let the bodies remain on the crosses long after death – not even giving a chance for a decent burial.  

This is difficult to hear, but I think it is absolutely necessary to be reminded of what it must have been like to hear someone say, as in this story Jesus said:

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

That would have been a startling and sobering, even horrifying thought. 

Hearing it in Our Context

But we do not live in revolutionary times. We do not fear dying a violent death. We are not being targeted by the authorities. We are not living in the underground. So how do we read these texts from those days? How do they speak to us, in our context? Do we need “notes from the underground” anymore?

I believe we do need Mark’s version of Jesus’ message today – in fact, that it is crucial for us, in ways that are as deep and challenging for us as they were for Mark’s community.  

If we step back from the specifics of the context — the revolutionary times — and look into the deep meaning, we will see that we too need to hear this call in our context. Jesus’ words call us to consider our response – and it is a serious and sobering call. But it is not just that; I believe it is a deeply liberating call as well.

Life and Survival

Let us start by reflecting a bit about life. If we humans want anything, it is to survive. The survival instinct is hardwired into our brains. It is tenacious. When life is threatened, people can endure extreme suffering in the effort to survive. 

I have been to the Nazi death camps in Auschwitz and Birkenau, and I have read the accounts of survivors like Viktor Frankl of what they were subjected to; millions died. But not without valiant efforts to survive.  

So when someone says, “this is worth risking your life for” they are saying something that goes to our core human motivations and instincts.  

Jesus: an Inescapable Truth

When Jesus said, 

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” 

he was aware that he was asking people to look deeply into their hearts and reflect on what their lives meant. Jesus is teaching an inescapably true principle:

“For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

The very effort to protect your life will lead to losing it. The act of losing your life for the highest possible good will save it.  

The problem we all face is that our lives, no matter what we do, are impermanent. John McQuiston, in his book “Always We Begin Again” said it as well as I have ever heard it:

“… in the vast reaches and endless memory of the universe, our most profound idea is the merest fantasy; our greatest triumphs and our [smallest] actions are as lasting as footprints in sand.”  

Always We Begin Again

We all know that. Is that a sad, depressing, ugly thought? Or is it the kind of truth that makes us free? Our lives are not our own to keep indefinitely. We will all lose our lives as we know them now, in this plane of existence.  

How Should We Live?

So, how should we then live? The alternative seems to be either a lifestyle of desperately clutching and protecting this fragile life; trying to deny and forestall the inevitable end, or taking up the cross, by relinquishing the idea that life is all about the self and its insatiable desires and needs. 

In other words, the alternative is either a self-focused life or a life oriented to the highest possible good; a non-self-oriented life.  

The fact that life is impermanent as footprints in the sand does not make it meaningless or insignificant. Just the opposite. It means that every moment is unrepeatable and important. Everything matters. Again from McQuiston:

“Everything we think, everything we do, everything we feel, is cast in time forever. Every moment that we live is irreplaceable, therefore each moment is hallowed.”

Always We Begin Again

In every moment we can choose to live for ourselves or to lose ourselves for the sake of the highest good. I believe that is what Jesus means when he says “for my sake and the sake of the gospel.”  

The gospel is the announcement that the kingdom of God is here, now, present, among us, and within us, calling us to a life in God, which of course, calls us to a life oriented to the highest possible good. The kind of life that Jesus demonstrated.

We could put it this way: losing life, by denying the self and its vain quest for security and the avoidance of all suffering, in other words, denying the ego of its pretensions and self-focus, is actually the way to find our true selves. 

Our truest selves are who we are in God: beloved, blessed, and treasured. In the words of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, we are we are “immortal diamonds.” Quoted in Rohr, Richard. Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self . Wiley.

Jesus said, 

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

The selfish self does not like to be denied. The voice of the ego that we all hear every day, that voice that narrates our lives to ourselves, making judgments about whether things suit us or not, whether things are as we want them to be or not, pleasing to us or not, good or bad concerning ourselves, that voice is relentless and insistent.  

 That voice is the ego-self, calling us to concern ourselves with ourselves — even when it is the voice of condemnation and judgment. That ego voice carries our shame. It tells us how we have failed already, and predicts our future failures.

Ego manifests itself in anger, in jealousy, in contempt, in un-forgiveness, in despising, and even in neglect of the needs of others. It is toxic to relationships and toxic to our souls.

Meditation and Ego

If there is to be any freedom from the soul-killing self, that ego-self must be denied; it must take up its cross and die. This is why the practice of regular meditation or contemplative prayer is so crucial. I know of no other spiritual practice that is more effective in turning down the ego voice than meditation.  

In meditation, we learn that our thoughts are not ourselves. Some of our thoughts are just random – we have no idea where they come from. We can let them go. In meditation, we learn to become centered and still. 

Meditation requires non-judgmental awareness of the present moment — whatever it is, so it teaches us to become non-judgmental in every aspect of life. 

Just like physical exercise, the hardest part of meditation is the start: sitting down and saying, “For the next 20 minutes I will be silent.” So the practice itself demands a kind of self-denial. But the results are amazingly helpful.  

There is beautiful freedom here. To be free from the constant need to justify ourselves and defend ourselves is true freedom. To be free of the anxiety that one day I will be completely forgotten is to know that this moment matters. 

To be free to relinquish the vain attempt to “gain the whole world” is to be free from the prospect of ending up with the world in exchange for the soul.  

To live a life oriented to the highest possible good, a life lived not for the self, but for others, life in which our highest quest is that God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven, is to live as a full and free human. 

It is the life lived for peace and reconciliation, for goodness and courage; the life lived for justice, the life of wisdom, the life of generosity and compassion. It is the Jesus way of living. It is to live in God.  

Jesus-Inspired Gospel-Shaped Hope

Sermon for Feb. 21, 2021, Lent 1B

Video is here.

Genesis 9:8–17

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him,  “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you,  and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.  I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”  God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations:  I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.  When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds,  I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.  When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”  God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.” 

Mark 1:9-25

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 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.”

And the Spirit immediately drove him 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.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

In one of the daily emails I receive from theologian and activist Matthew Fox there was one of the most disturbing pictures I have ever seen. It was a photo of the lynching of a black man. I have seen pictures of lynchings before; we all have. 

I have seen pictures of lynchings attended by crowds of white people. But this picture horrified me in a new way. In attendance, within five or six feet from the hanging body was a white family. They were all well dressed, as if to go to dinner. 

One of the children, maybe eight or ten years old, was standing in front of her father, looking at the victim, and smiling. Other children, younger ones, looked on with fascination. 

The victim at that time was Rubin Stacy. The lynching was done in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on July 19, 1935. There were no hoods or hiding; it was not nighttime, because no one feared reprisals. It was a family spectacle, children welcome. That was Florida in 1935.

We just read the Hebrew Bible story of the concluding scene of the account of the great flood. Noah and his family, along with the animals on the arc, were the sole survivors. 

The reason given in the Bible for that genocidal flood, the author explains, was that when God looked at the wickedness of all the humans on the earth, besides Noah, the only conclusion God could draw was that:

“every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” .

(Gen. 6:5)

“Only evil continually”. From the mythology of ancient Mesopotamia to the reality of twentieth-century Florida, that conclusion seems consistent.

Learning in Black History Month

Netflix has been streaming videos relevant to Black History Month, and we have been watching a number of them. We watched the series on Malcolm X. 

I have learned things I didn’t know before.  I was too young at the time to understand much of what was happening or what it meant. I had no idea why someone would use an X instead of his family name.  

Malcolm explained that his birth certificate displayed not his family name, but the name of the owners who had enslaved his ancestors. Their African family name had been stripped away and lost to history. 

Those slave owners considered themselves good Christian people. Is it any wonder that Malcolm would eventually find a way out of a life of vice and crime by heeding the teachings of Elijah Mohamed and the Nation of Islam? 

There, he was told that Black was beautiful; that his people could be respected, even be noble. He never experienced respect from the white community. He did experience the firebombing of his home, constant death threats, and eventually a public execution.  That was New York, 1965.  

The Black Church and Civil Rights

We have also watched the PBS series on the crucial role of the Black Church in the civil rights movement. In the Black Church people heard a strong counterpoint to the story told by many white Christians. 

They spoke and sang of a God of liberation who set the Hebrew slaves free from bondage. They preached a gospel of good news to the oppressed. The same God who had concluded that the thoughts in the hearts of humans were “only evil continually” wanted to start over with people. 

Selma, Alabama

After the flood subsided, God even put away his weapons. He discarded his arrows and hung his bow in the sky, pointing away from the earth as a reminder. This was a God who could make all things new.  

In the black church, they preached and sang about Jesus who, like them, was cruelly mistreated by the people in power, but who entrusted himself to God. God suffered as they suffered, and suffered when they suffered, never forsaking them. 

Dr. King preached that Jesus’ weapon against violence was love. He turned the other cheek as a form of nonviolent resistance. Instead of demonizing his oppressors, Dr. King taught that only love could conquer hate. Only light could drive out darkness. He taught that out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope could be quarried.  

That hope was based on the faith that God could and would do a new thing, even in America, even in the places where lynchings and firebombing went unpunished.  Even in places where it seemed that all of the thoughts in the hearts of the people were “only evil continually.” That faith was based on Dr. King’s understanding of the message and means of Jesus.

Jesus-Inspired Hope

We just read the beginning of the story of Jesus from Mark’s gospel. Without the fanfare of angels, shepherds, wise men, or even a virgin birth, Mark simply presents Jesus as an adult.  

In three rapid-fire events, Mark tells us everything he thinks we need to know. In just 130 words, we learn that Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, tempted in the wilderness, and began proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom in Galilee. 

Why are those three events all we need to know to understand the Jesus-shaped hope we have? First, Jesus’ baptism: as he came up out of the water, Jesus had a visionary experience. He saw the Spirit descend upon him. He heard a voice that named him God’s beloved child. 

From this, we understand that in our baptisms we too have the Spirit of God empowering us. We too have been named as God’s beloved children. This is the source of our lives of faith, and nothing can change it. God has named and claimed us. Gods’ Spirit is upon us. Our true family is the family of God. 

Wilderness, Beasts, and Angels

But the Spirit that came on Jesus is not like a passive and harmless silent dove. The Spirit, Mark tells us “drove” Jesus into the wilderness. He needed to learn something only wilderness could teach him. 

In this eerie vision, Mark tells us that Jesus was out there with “the wild beasts.” What could that mean but that wilderness is dangerous? The dangerous temptation of wilderness is to despair. There are no road signs in the wilderness. There are no roads to have signs for. Wilderness is not knowing the way you should go, but knowing that your life is at stake. 

Wilderness is Florida in 1935. It is Selma, Alabama in 1965, before the Voting Rights Act. Wilderness is a time in which everyone can see cell phone videos of the deaths of black men at the hands of the police. Wilderness is a time of global pandemic before we get the vaccines. Wilderness is the church facing an unknown future in a rapidly changing world.

 But that is not the only thing true about wilderness. Mark says Jesus experienced the angels waiting on him, serving him.  What can that mean but that despite the lack of certainty, despite the danger, he was cared for, upheld, ministered to by God? 

This is what Dr. King learned. This is what we must learn, if we are to have hope: that God has not abandoned us, even in the wilderness of uncertainty. God was not absent from Florida or Selma or Ferguson or Minneapolis. God is actively present in the pandemic. And God is with God’s church, even in the midst of great change. God’s empowering Spirit is present, encouraging us and luring us toward the next right thing, giving us gospel-shaped hope.

The Good News

With those lessons learned from his baptism and from his wilderness experience, Jesus is ready to proclaim the good news that the kingdom of God has arrived. It is good news to the poor. It is good news to the oppressed. 

The kingdom of God means that the kingdoms of this earth, whether they be racist, discriminatory, unjust, or oppressive will not have the last word. Pharaoh cannot keep the Hebrew children in chains forever. The floodwaters will subside. God can do something new. There is a rainbow reminder. 

As Dr. King said, a rock of hope can be quarried from the mountain of despair. The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Love can conquer hate; light can drive out the darkness.  

As we watched the videos of the black church in America we learned something else. After the impressive achievements of the 1960s and 70’s the church that inspired Dr. King and so many others with the gospel of liberation began to send a different message. The church struggled with the role of women as equals. It struggled to find a message of liberation to the LGBTQ community. As a result, it lost its prophetic voice for many young people.  

The lesson for us is clear: the church must never take her eyes off the inclusive message of the kingdom. The church that proclaims all of us as people named by God, as beloved, cannot make some of its people feel that X is their real family name. The church that has the power to withstand wilderness must not drive anyone into exile or despair.  

In fact, the opposite must be the case.  The church, the “beloved community” must open its arms to everyone.  We are the place of refuge, of welcome, of healing, and of loving community to everyone who has been wounded by the beasts in the world’s wildernesses.  

We may not know what the future holds, but we know we will be upheld in the future, as long as we remain faithful, as long as we, in the Reformed church, keep reforming, as long as we keep listening, as long as we keep repenting, because the kingdom of God is at hand. That is indeed good news. That is Jesus-inspired gospel-shaped hope. 

The Dream and The Vision

Sermon for Feb. 14, 2021, Transfiguration Sunday

Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR.

Video is here.

Mark 9:2-9

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

In his speech on August 28, 1963, at the famous “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. announced to the thousands there, and to the entire nation, “I have a dream.” 

Dr. King’s dream was his vision of a world as it could be, as it should be, and as it must be. It was a dream because it was far from the world as it was, and in many ways, still is. His dream was of a world in which people would 

“not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” 

In that dream world, there would be no such thing as endangering yourself because you were “driving while black” or looking at your cell phone in your back yard while black, or walking down the sidewalk wearing a hoodie while black.  

Five years later, on April 3, 1968, the day before he was assassinated, Dr. King spoke of another vision. Dr. King referenced the biblical story of Moses, who was at the end of his life when he went up to the mountain on the wilderness side and looked out over the Jordan River into the Promised Land. It was land that he would never set foot on. Invoking that moment in the story, Dr. King said, 

“I’ve been to the mountaintop.… [God has] allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.”

In the Bible’s story, the journey through the wilderness into the promised land took longer than one generation. So it was with Dr. King. Like Moses, he did not get there with his people. 

The vision he saw of a land of equal opportunity has not yet been fully achieved. The effects of the legacy of slavery in America that started in 1619 are still being felt in our nation. 

Here in Arkansas, a bill was just proposed that would have banned the use of public school funds to teach the 1619 Project in Arkansas schools. It failed to make it out of committee. But the fact that such a bill was introduced at all shows that the legacy continues. The dream has not yet become a reality. The vision awaits full realization.

Telling a Vision Story

It is fitting that Transfiguration Sunday should fall in February, the month in which we celebrate black history and remember Dr. King’s vision. The Transfiguration story is also about a vision. 

Mark’s gospel, which came first, does not explicitly call it a visionary experience, but when Matthew re-tells it, he does. 

Last week we noticed that Jesus and the early disciples practiced mysticism. We noted that visions are accepted as part of mystical experience. 

Jesus had several that have been recorded: the vision of the Spirit descending on him at his baptism, the vision of “the Satan” tempting him in the wilderness, and here, another vision in which he is transfigured before his disciples.  

Why would you tell a story in the form of a visionary experience? Why would you do what Dr. King did: set forth your agenda as a dream? Because you want people to see what is possible, even though it has not yet been achieved. You want people to imagine a specific future. You want, not just to give people hope, but to have a clear picture of the shape that hope could take in the future.  

There is another reason. You present your agenda in the form of a dream because you do not want your people to have the wrong destination in mind. 

Dr. King’s dream was of a time when black people in America would never be guilty of being black, but that everyone, blacks included, would be innocent until proven guilty by a just and impartial legal system. 

In other words, he made that dream clear because he did not want them to dream of a different future: a race war or a reversal of racial superiority, as some in his day were advocating. The dream form lets you show the future you want, and take off the table the option of other futures. 

Those same goals of setting out the right future and, at the same time, removing the wrong future in a dream story is evident here in Mark’s gospel. In the vision, Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus. That alone is a dream-way of asserting the importance of Jesus for the Christian community. 

There was no equal in Israel to the figure of Moses who, as the story goes, spoke to God face to face and received the Torah, the Instruction, the Law from God. 

Similarly, there was no prophet in Israel greater than Elijah who confronted the false prophets of Baal at the risk of his life, and who spoke truth to the wicked king Ahab. 

So this vision asserts that Jesus is at least as important for the Christian community as the Lawgiver and the Prophets have been to Israel. The three are together on the mountain.

But then, the voice from the cloud singles out Jesus as most significant, saying, 

“This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” 

The message is clear. The right dream is of a world in which Jesus is listened to. The vision of a world as it could be, and should be, is a world in which Jesus’ words and teachings set the agenda. 

The dream is that people would embrace Jesus’ vision: that the good news is that “the kingdom of God is at hand,” “among you” and “within you,” as he taught.  

But there is a possible misinterpretation of this vision that could cause it all to go wrong. This is where Peter’s part comes in. In this story, he is the mouthpiece for the wrong dream; the wrong future, the wrong way to understand Jesus in relation to Moses and Elijah. The wrong way for the Christian community to value him.  

Peter says, 

“Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 

The word “dwellings” sounds like he was suggesting putting up private homes. The word is literally “tents.” Not camping tents, but the portable tent shrines you could set up in which to venerate a religious object. 

In other words, Peter is voicing the idea that the best way to remember Jesus in the Christian community is by adoration; veneration; worship.  

The Irony of Honor

There is a great irony involved in giving someone honor. Women, for example, in some conservative communities, are highly honored, at least verbally. On occasions like Mother’s Day, they are told how special they are. They are put up on a feminine pedestal of virtue and praised for their contributions to the family, the church, and service projects. 

But in those same communities, women working outside the home is frowned upon, and the topics of equal pay and glass ceilings never come up. Women are honored, but they are out of power. They are on a pedestal in those communities, but they are not permitted at the table when decisions are made. Women cannot be ordained. They cannot teach men.

The same irony has existed in many church communities concerning Jesus. Jesus is revered, worshipped, pictured in stained glass, and celebrated in song. But his teachings about non-violence, his insistence on practicing forgiveness, and his laser-focus on the needs of the marginalized, the poor, the sick, and the outcasts are seldom preached. 

He is honored, as if he were in a shrine on a mountain but not listened to.  

So Peter’s idea of what the Christian community should do to honor Jesus is wrong. Mark makes sure we get the point, saying 

“He (Peter) did not know what to say, for they were terrified.” 

He was speaking nonsense.

The right future state to dream of, the correct way to honor Jesus in this community, is to do exactly what the voice from the cloud said to do: 

“listen to him.” 

Listen: Jesus is the one who said, 

“Blessed are the poor.” 

Are we listening in our nation? How are the poor doing in our country? Why is the obscene gap between rich and poor growing exponentially?  

Jesus also said 

“blessed are the meek” 
“the peacemakers.”
 “love your enemies.” 
 “those who live by the sword die by the sword.” 

Is he being listened to? Consider this: 

“A survey released Thursday by the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) found that …nearly 40 percent of [the people in one party] think political violence is justifiable and could be necessary. Those…respondents justifying violence said they agreed with the statement: “If elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions.” 

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/aei-poll-40-percent-republicans-conservatives-political-violence.html

And that was their opinion even after the events of January 6. We have a long way to go, but the vision, the dream of a world reconciled is one that we are committed to. That was Dr. King’s vision; that was Jesus’ vision.

The Burden of Buildings 

There is one more implication of this Transfiguration story and Peter’s mistake that we need to think about. Peter’s idea was to build places of worship. 

Jesus’ response was to ignore that suggestion. Rather, he took them back down the mountain, where people were suffering, to serve them. 

We, in the church in these days, need to give careful consideration to the nature of our mission and the role of our buildings.  

Over the years, we have built large churches, beautiful worship spaces, educational spaces, and spaces for fellowship. In the past, when we were a larger community, these spaces were filled and facilitated our mission. Now, however, we are a smaller community. 

The spaces stand vacant much of the time, even when we are not in a pandemic. The buildings are aging. The upkeep is expensive. Utilities are costly. We must keep asking the question of the relationship of the buildings to our mission.  

We are people whose desire is to “listen to” Jesus. Our vision is Jesus’ vision. Our dream is, as Jesus prayed, that God’s kingdom would come; that 

“God’s will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.” 

How much and of what sort of a building do we need, for us to accomplish that mission? Let us recall that the church existed for 300 years as a house movement without other buildings. 

That was then; this is now; a lot has changed. And a lot is changing still; the future will be different from the past and the present. 

The question before us is how will we be able to accomplish our mission as the church of Jesus-followers who “listen to him”? 

Will we need to unburden ourselves of buildings that have outlived their usefulness? 

We all need to pray for discernment: which is another way of saying, we need to keep listening to him.  

In the meantime, we will keep focusing on the dream. We will keep the vision before our eyes. We will trust that, as Dr. King said,

“the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” 

We will keep going into all the world and proclaiming the gospel — letting people know that

“the kingdom of God is at hand” — “baptizing them and teaching them to observe all of [Jesus’] teachings,”

confident that he is

“with us to the end of the age.” 

De-Mystifying Mysticism

Sermon for Feb. 7, 2021. Epiphany 5B

Video is here

Mark 1:29-39

As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

In our Monday Morning Seeker’s class, we were listening to a talk delivered by New Testament scholar, the late Marcus Borg, in which he asked the question: how was it that nearly all of us who were raised in the Chruch never learned important aspects of Jesus’ teaching? 

For example, we never learned in Sunday school that Jesus taught non-violence, and that for the first three hundred years, Christians were pacifists? They believed that following Jesus was incompatible with killing people, even in war. That is one illustration of something that we were never taught.

Missing Jesus’ Mysticism

Here is another: Why were we never made aware of the extent of mysticism practiced by Jesus and early Christians? Even though we read texts in which Jesus and others had powerful visionary experiences, like at Jesus’ baptism, the period of temptations in the wilderness, and the transfiguration, we are not taught to recognize them as the vision experiences of people who practiced mysticism.  

In today’s text, Jesus goes off to spend pre-dawn hours in prayer, and even though the gospels tell us that this was a common practice for Jesus, we were not taught to recognize that practice as mysticism. 

It is odd that although Jesus called his disciples to “follow” him, meaning learn from and imitate him, we were not taught to be mystics. We were not brought up to have a regular meditation practice. 

In fact, in the Reformed tradition, to pass Confirmation class you had to learn the answers to a catechism, like Heidelberg or Westminster. We have been down this road so long that today, many people are even put off by the word “mysticism,” as if it belongs to New Age people or to Eastern religions.  

This is really a pity. It is like growing up in a family that never served vegetables. We have missed something vital to spiritual health and transformation.  

Three Types of Spirituality

According to one author who has studied spirituality deeply for many years, there are three types of spiritual experience (Shinzen Young). First, there is the Spirituality of Thought. This is centered around concepts, belief systems, and creeds.  

The spirituality of thought is word-centered. This is what the catechisms teach. This is also characteristic of fundamentalisms in many religions Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and others. Thought spirituality is not wrong, it is just woefully incomplete.

Next, there is the spirituality of feeling. This is the spirituality of devotion, piety, the heart; feeling of awe and mystery, and love for God. Devotion goes beyond the spirituality of thoughts. It involves us at a deeper, emotional level. But there is more.

Beyond the spirituality of thoughts and feelings is the spirituality of mysticism.  Mystical spirituality is characterized by non-discursive prayer, the prayer of silence, or what we call meditation. 

Even though our Reformed tradition has not paid much attention to the spirituality of mysticism, nevertheless it was a part of the practice of Jesus, and has always existed throughout church history. It shows up in things like the 14th-century book of instructions called “The Cloud of Unknowing” and in the 16th-century classic, St. Theresa of Avila’s  “The Interior Castle.”  

The Interior Castle Metaphor

In The Interior Castle Theresa spoke of the spiritual life as a series of stages, similar to the three levels of spirituality we have been discussing.  

She used the metaphor of a Castle made of Crystal. The Castle is the soul. It has seven rooms (she calls them “mansions”) leading from the cold, dim external rooms to the center where God dwells in light and magnificence, awaiting our journey to meet him/her. 

Our souls are the castle we are in. This is how she develops the metaphor:  She says 

“there are many ways of ‘being in’ a place. Many souls remain in the outer court of the castle, which is the place occupied by the guards. [These people] are not interested in entering further, and have no idea what there is in that wonderful place, or who dwells in it, or even how many rooms it has.”  

People content to stay in the outer court of the castle, she says, have they grown accustomed to living with “the reptiles and other creatures” to be found there, which is astonishingly sad, given that we are all “so richly endowed as to have the power of holding converse with none other than God Himself, (Herself).” 

How do you make progress from the outer courts to the inner experience of God? She says,

“the door of entry into this castle is prayer and meditation.”  

St. Teresa of Avila; Peers, E. Allison. Interior Castle (p. 18). Wilder Publications. Kindle Edition. 

We could say that the outer mansions are occupied by the people who only practice the spirituality of thought. The inner rooms leading to God require the spirituality of feeling and the spirituality of mysticism.  

The Patterns to Follow

The story we read from the Gospel of Mark shows a similar progression. I believe that Mark wrote his gospel, in part, to show us the life of Jesus as a pattern for us to follow. 

This story falls naturally into three movements, each of which answers a question that followers of Jesus need to understand. First, what is the pattern of discipleship? What does it look like to be a follower of Jesus? 

Second, what is the pattern of ministry; why do we do what we do as followers of Jesus? 

Third, what is the pattern of spirituality that sustains ministry?

In the story, Peter’s mother-in-law is sick, and Jesus heals her. When we begin to follow Jesus we come as unhealthy people in need of healing. We come as broken people. We come as people who have wounds and scars, and the Jesus-path is healing. 

Understanding that we are children of a loving God is healing. Practicing forgiveness is healing. Community is healing. Spirituality is healing.

The pattern this story shows us is that when we start getting well, we naturally do what Peter’s mother-in-law did: we find ways to get up and serve. Everybody has service they can perform that the community needs. 

Surprisingly, in a patriarchal society that is used to undervaluing them, even women can get healthy and find significant ways to serve. The pattern of discipleship for everyone is healing, followed by serving.

The next scene in the story answers the second question: what is the pattern of ministry? It seems odd to our Western minds: Jesus casts out demons. Today, we are prepared to hear about vaccinations and medical treatments, but not so much about demons. 

But there is a point here that should not be missed. We can think of demons as metaphors for the power of evil which can be overwhelming and oppressive. We can think of the oppressive forces of racism, sexism, bigotry, poverty, and discrimination, for example. 

After overcoming the evil forces that are oppressing people, after casting out their demons, as the story goes, Jesus does not allow them to speak. Why not? For Jesus, it is not about getting famous. 

The pattern of ministry that Jesus shows us is that the point is the healing, not the fame. Jesus is not in it to get more likes on his page or subscribers to his channel. The point is to help people escape the evil that has been dominating their lives; the point is not to get his own name up in lights. The pattern of ministry is to keep the focus on the healing, not the fame.

The final scene answers the third question: what kind of spirituality sustains ministry?  Mark’s gospel tells us, 

“In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” 

The pattern of spirituality that sustains ministry is mysticism.  Prayer, or we would call it, meditation, is communion with the Source. There is no such thing as sustainable service without the renewing, restoring strength that comes from mystical practice. Why? There are several reasons.  First, because, in meditation, we learn to put our own ego in its place.  

Mysticism and Ego

The ego, that voice in our heads that is so self-conscious and so self-concerned, and is always sending us messages. It asks us “How am I doing? Are people liking me? Am I getting credit? Is my side winning? Did I get the last word? Am I being respected, admired, appreciated?”  

The ego is always on the lookout for threats. The ego is ready to get offended at the slightest whiff of insult.  

But the voice of the ego does not have to be believed. It does not even have to be listened to. In the mystical practice of meditation, we learn to let go of those ego-centered thoughts. They no longer have power over us. We can learn to laugh at their pretensions. It is utterly amazing the amount of calm that this can bring to our otherwise chaotic lives.  

This is so crucial; there are groups that organize themselves for service — to address poverty or hunger, to address human rights or to promote great social causes, or to fight climate change, but they can become toxic. If the people in the group, no matter how high-minded the goals are, do not know how to deal with their own egos, they can poison the entire enterprise. Sustainable service needs the spirituality of mysticism. 

Mysticism and Mindfulness

There is more. When we practice mysticism, when we meditate, we become more mindfully aware of the presence of the Divine in us, and all around us. We become more aware of the Divine Presence in other people. We start to see them as icons of God, as Genesis says — that is what it means to be made “in the image and likeness of God” — we are living, walkings icons of God’s presence. 

Of course, this leads us to love people more, to forgive people more easily, to work for their healing and wholeness, for their liberation from oppression, and for their place in the beloved community. 

We grow in compassion and we grow in our passion to see justice done; to establish equity so that no one is undervalued or harmed.  

The Invitation to Mysticism

It is possible to keep religion on the level of the spirituality of thought. It is possible to stay in the dim, cold outer rooms of the crystal castle with the guards and the reptiles, but who would want that? Especially when so much more is available?  

It is possible to be content with the spirituality of feeling, because awe and wonder are at the heart of experiencing God. But there is still so much more on offer. 

When we, like Jesus, practice the spirituality of mysticism, we grow closer and closer to the inner mansions of the castle where God’s love and warmth radiate with grace and goodness. Who would want anything less?