6 Ways Churches do Ministry like We are Dying Anyways… (or how keeping everyone happy is killing us)

February 12, 2015 The Rev. Erik Parker 10 Comments

When I talk to colleagues and church members it doesn’t take long to hear stories of congregations and churches fighting over the details of ministry: the style of worship, the number of staff to hire, the colour of the carpet, the need to have a Sunday School (even in churches with few or no kids).

Most of the fighting is about opinion and preference rather than issues of substance. Churches are great at having disagreements over the details and turning the details into insurmountable differences. A good friend of mine (also a pastor) has often said, “Church politics are so vicious because the stakes are so low.”

Church leadership, church boards, staff and pastors wring their hands and tying themselves in knots trying to keep churches happy. I know pastors who run around 7 days a week working themselves to death trying to be everywhere, do everything and make sure everyone gets what they want from church. It is almost comical that so many of us consider this “ministry.”

As I was writing my sermon for last Sunday, it occurred to me that a ministry focused on making people comfortable and happy is doomed. In fact, it sounds eerily like palliative care.

The amount of palliative care ministry that many congregations are doing is incredible.

Now to be clear, true palliative care for those facing the end of life, particularly with illness is very important work – holy work even. However, when the regular ministry of the church starts to look like the holy work of making people comfortable as they face the end of life, we have a problem.

Here are some examples:

1. Trying to keep everyone happy.

Hospitals generally try to treat illnesses and make people better. Schools try to teach and form students. But the only institution that I can think of, whose chief goal is keeping people comfortable, is a hospice or palliative care institution. Churches and Pastors whose primary aim is keeping people happy are basically doing palliative care.

2. Focusing exclusively on people already here.

Churches have become really good at focusing on insiders. Churches worry about what their members will think about new initiatives or programs. They are concerned about losing even a single discontent member and are constantly searching for any hint of displeasure among the rank and file. Churches like this worry about new people showing up and upsetting the established, delicate balance. Palliative care is about focusing on those in the program, not about seeking new patients.

3. Avoiding conflict at all costs.

When there is only a limited amount of time left, why ruin it by fighting? Avoiding conflict is rooted in the hopes that problems will just go away if we ignore them. And the reality ism in palliative care most problems do just go away eventually – you know, that whole death thing. Death is a great problem solver. When churches simply brush conflict under the carpet, they are hoping it will just go away. And yet, the only way conflict goes away in churches is if all those involved die… and even then it can linger.

4. Being comfortable.

Comfort is a big concern for those in palliative care. It is also a big concern in churches. Many churches want members, visitors, seekers, basically anyone who enters to feel comfortable. They say things like, “people shouldn’t have to work to understand what is happening.” “It should feel like you are in the comfort of your own home.” “Church should be casual and welcoming – make people feel comfortable in their own skin.” Last time I checked, comfort was not really on high on Jesus’ priorities. I don’t recall him ever praising anyone saying, “Your faith has made you comfortable.”

5. Everything becomes about preference.

Churches worry a lot of about people liking things. We fight over getting our own way when it comes to worship, programs, facilities, planning. How we worship, the bibles we read, the food we eat, the chairs we sit in, the paint colour on the wall all becomes a matter of preference. Pastors and leadership can start to worry whether they have provided the right mix of preferences for members. We become like a nurse asking if a patient wants more pillows or blankets, chicken or beef for dinner.

6. We talk a lot about decline and dying.

Maybe the biggest resemblance to palliative care is when churches begin talking a lot about decline and dying. Now, I am not saying we should avoid identifying trends and history. But unlike someone with a terminal illness, it takes a certain amount of hubris (conscious or unconscious) to think we are finally the ones who will kill all our churches. But more importantly, churches are not terminal patients. Imagine someone who gets to a certain age, starts getting a few grey hairs or wrinkles, maybe has some aches and pains, and then starts talking all the time about dying imminently. It seems absurd. Because it is absurd. Yet this is what so many churches are doing whenever they meet to discuss and plan their future.

As I said before, true palliative care and palliative care institutions do important work. They provide care and dignity to people who are facing their last days. Please don’t take what I am saying to be a condemnation of that work, but rather a lens through which to see how we as pastors, leaders and church folk are approaching ministry.

When our ministry as churches and congregations takes on the character of palliative care, we have lost the plot. We become insular groups of people, looking after our own and worst of all, waiting to die (even if we don’t know it).

But the thing is, God doesn’t do palliative care. As far as I can remember, Jesus never helps people die in the gospels. God is about Life. New Life. Abundant life. Life where there should only be death. God doesn’t make us comfortable as we die. God makes us uncomfortable so that we can live.

And I would like to say that I don’t have answers for how to turn self-centred ministry to our dying selves into life-giving God-focused ministry…

But I do know.

We all know.

Stop talking about how we are dying all the time. Or at least recognize that our dying is only a part of God’s alive making.
Turn our focuses outward, stop worrying so much about people who are in the pews already and think about ministry to those who are not in the pews… yet.
Conversation. Dialogue. Talking. Communicating. We need to talk less about the things we like or don’t like about church (maybe forget talking about them at all), and begin talking about what ministry is happening. Talk about what God is doing in our lives and in our communities.
Do the hard work of living as a community, instead of dying. Living is uncomfortable, it is conflictual, it makes some unhappy at times, and requires us to live with uncertainty about what is coming next.

Ministry that looks like palliative care is killing us. Or least it us letting us as pastors, churches, and Christian hasten our journey towards communal, institutional death.

And worst/best thing is, we aren’t terminal.

Has ministry become like Palliative care in your context? Should we be focused on making people comfortable? Share in the comments, or one the Facebook Page: The Millennial Pastor or on Twitter: @ParkerErik

Sermon

Jesus has not come to make us happy

February 8, 2015 The Rev. Erik Parker 8 Comments

Mark 1:29-39

…When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” He answered, “Let us go on to the neighbouring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” … (Read the whole passage here).

Sermon

For the past 3 weeks, we have been setting the stage with Mark’s gospel. Setting the stage for what starts next week. Next week Jesus will go up the mountain of Transfiguration, with Peter, James and John. He will change before their eyes into dazzling white and God will instruct the disciples to listen to him. And then Jesus will go down into the valley of Lent, down into the wilderness of temptation, down the road to Jerusalem and his journey won’t end until he heads up that second mountain, the mountain of Golgotha, the mountain that ends in a cross.

But today we are still laying the ground work. Jesus has been preaching in synagogues, exorcizing demons and today we glimpse Jesus’ healing ministry. Jesus leaves the synagogue of Capernaum and goes to the house of Simon Peter and Andrew. There Simon’s month-in-law is sick and in a bed. Jesus takes pity on the poor woman and heals her… and in an almost comical moment, she gets up and starts serving her guests.

And then everything gets crazy. The whole town hears that Jesus the healer is there, and they all come clamouring for healing. Everyone with a cough or cold, with a limp or back pain, with short sightedness or epileptic seizures, they are all hoping to have their illnesses cured.

Jesus starts the work of helping the needy masses, and yet we get the sense that this is not what Jesus is interested in. He isn’t playing doctor happily, and by early morning, he sneaks away to get some quiet and space. Jesus must have been wondering where all these people were when he was preaching in the synagogue.

And this is the dilemma that Jesus faces all the way through Mark’s gospel, the problem that Jesus faces all the way to the cross. When Jesus is healing people and exorcizing demons, the crowds flock to see him. But when he preaches the Kingdom of God coming near, people get upset. The authorities feel threatened. When Jesus brings his message to the people, the people get uncomfortable and begin to turn on him. They like it when they are getting something from Jesus, but when Jesus proclaims and declares change and transformation on their end, they back away and get upset. It is all well and good to be healed of a chronic condition, but suggest that the way the world works might change and people get antsy.

As Jesus spends the night healing in frustration, we can see a problem that still exists among people of faith today. God is easy to for us to seek out when we need something. When we need help, healing, comfort, God seems like an easy ask. When are in trouble, or have problems for which there seems to be no easy solution, we turn to God with relative ease.

As people of faith, it is all too easy for the ways we experience God to become about us. God becomes something we expect to be doing something for us. When life throws us those curve balls we turn to God to heal our hurts and pains, to solve our broken relationships and strained families. But even in our day to day, week to week, Sunday to Sunday relationship with God we can start to expect God to be doing something for us. We like to experience God on our terms. As people in the pews our terms might include the right music, entertaining sermons, 60 minute services, comforting bible readings and prayers, cushy seats. As pastors we like to deliver God on our terms, with liturgies planned to our liking, in bible texts that make the points we like to make, in prayers and hymns chosen to fit our themes.

When we don’t stop to think about it, it is easy to fall into the pattern of expecting that God is all about satisfying us, that we come to God waiting to be filled up, entertained, healed, set right and made comfortable.

But that is not what Jesus has come to do. Even still, as he spends all night attending to the masses as they demand to be healed, Jesus can only take so much. Jesus declares,

Let us go on to the neighbouring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.

That is what I came out to do.

Not to spend his time healing and exorcizing demons. But preaching the message.

Jesus has come to preach the message that Kingdom of God has come near, and that is not what the people are clamouring for. The people want their problems solved, they want comfort and healing, the want to be free from demons and evil spirits, they want things to go back to normal, things to be easy, things to be better. And what is the matter with Jesus? Why couldn’t he just stay a couple extra days, or a week and heal everyone? Is that to much to ask?

The issue that we discover today is this convergence of what the people want and what Jesus has come to do. The people want their symptoms treated, and Jesus wants to address the root of the problem.

It is far too easy for us to make God and faith and church about us. It is easy for us to come to God clamouring for healing and comfort, clamouring for God to approve of us and our ways of being in the world.

And that is not to say that Jesus is not the great healer, or that God doesn’t love us deeply just as we are. But God has bigger plans for us than comfortable pews and our favourite music. Jesus does so much more than make our fevers go away, or relieve us of our back pain.

Jesus has a message to preach. “The Kingdom of God has come near.”

And Jesus’ message cuts right to root of our issues. Jesus has come to deal with the source of our hurts and pains, of our griefs and sorrows. Jesus has come to address the reasons we put ourselves first, others second and God last.

Jesus has come to deal with sin and death. To deal with our sin, with our death. Jesus came come to meet sin and death by coming near. By coming near and joining with us in our sin, by taking on our death. And Jesus comes near to show us that sin and death are not the end. We are not here to be on palliative care, to only be comforted and relieved of our pain. Because that is what relieving us of our hurts and pains is. Because that is what comfortable faith is. Palliative care.

But Jesus has come to do the hard work of saving us. Saving us from ourselves, our self-centred, self-interested, deathly ways. And that is what Jesus has come to do.

That is what Jesus is doing.

Saving us from ourselves.

Amen.

Sermon, Theology & Culture

What have you to do with us Jesus?

February 1, 2015 The Rev. Erik Parker 1 Comment

Mark 1:21-28

… a man with an unclean spirit, 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.” But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!”… (Read the whole passage here.)

Sermon

Today, we pick up in Mark’s gospel where we left off last week. Jesus has preached his first sermon, “The Kingdom of God has come near” and called Simon and Andrew, James and John to be disciples.

Now the group of them head to Capernaum, which becomes the home-base for Jesus’ ministry. It is the Sabbath, the day of worship, and they go to the synagogue. Jesus begins teaching, as was the right of any circumcised Jewish man. Usually, it was local scribes or rabbis who preached but sometimes travelling preachers like Jesus would come by to teach.

As Jesus begins, the congregation notices something different. Jesus is not teaching like the scribes. The scribes who were like walking encyclopedias of religious knowledge. The scribes were experts in the law, in the teachings and interpretations of the Jewish faith. The scribes didn’t innovate or interpret, they simply memorized what had been interpreted and written down by rabbis and other authorities long ago. New teaching was dangerous and probably heretical. It was important to stick to what they knew to be tried and true.

Yet, Jesus was preaching something new. Something different. Jesus was preaching from his own authority. Preaching like he had some special access to Moses, Elijah and the other prophets. Like he had special access to God.

While most people weren’t sure what to make of this Jesus guy, who he was or where his authority came from, one person did. Or rather an unclean spirit did. While regular humans don’t see who Jesus really is, the supernatural unclean spirit knows. And the spirit knows that Jesus is a threat to the established order. The spirit knows that Jesus has come to turn things upside down. The spirit knows the world that he and the people around him are stuck in is the past. The comfortable systems, traditions and ways of being that they are used to are over. Jesus is going wreck things.

The spirit is the one who speaks.

“What have you to do with us? I know who you are!”

The man with a spirit might just be a man with an unclean spirit. But for Mark the man might also represent the ways in which that community, that world, was possessed by tradition. Stuck in past. Unable to introduce any change that threatens the status quo.

Sound familiar?

Churches these days often struggle with this issue. We often long for things to be as they once were. We long to have Sunday schools with 100 kids every Sunday, and services that are standing room only. We long for offering plates to beoverflowing, we hope for more baptisms than funerals. We long for the past, or at least the way we remember things to be.

As a faith community or as individuals we can be possessed by our past. We can fear change, block anything new, strive to keep things the same. As the old joke goes,

How many Lutherans does it take to change a lightbulb?

Change!??! That lightbulb was good enough for my grandfather, so it is good enough for us.

When the unclean spirit names the threat that Jesus is not only to the good deal that the spirit has possessing some poor man, but also the threat that Jesus represents the whole world of the people of Capernaum and beyond, Jesus will have none of it.

“Be silent and come out of him!”

Jesus will not be deterred by the anxiety and fears, or the unwillingness of the spirit or people to let go. Jesus is preaching a new world, Jesus is calling the people around him into the future, into a new way of living. Jesus’ new teaching is astonishing, radical, unheard of. And it comes from a place that people don’t understand, but that the unclean spirit gets. The unclean spirit knows that the old ways, that the established approved way of doing things is safe, is comfortable, it is known. The spirit knows that people would so often rather be possessed by trying to maintain the past than face the unknown future.

Be Jesus knows that God is calling us into something new and unknown. And Jesus knows that we need to be exorcized of our fears and worries if we are going to see God’s future. Because we are often possessed by maintaining our past, by trying to recreate what we once were. We hold onto the traditions, systems, and ways to doing things that were good for our grandparents and so, we believe, are good enough for us.

Now don’t hear Jesus wrongly. Jesus is not saying that the past is wrong or bad. Jesus is not saying that God wasn’t active in the past, or that God wasn’t working through the ways we used to do things. Often when churches and individuals face change, letting go of what we once were is so hard because it feels like we are dishonouring our forebears. It feels like we are saying our parents and grandparents were wrong, that they weren’t being faithful.

That is not what Jesus is saying. Jesus knows that God has been present among the people, among us the whole time. Jesus isn’t exorcizing us of our past. Jesus is exorcizing us of our holding on, of our resistance to change, of our need for safety and comfort. Of our fears and anxieties.

It is not the past that keeps us from seeing God’s future, it is our efforts to keep things the same, to recreate what once was, what we once were. And Jesus’s new teaching is really about showing us that new world. Showing us God’s future. Showing that God is coming to, meeting us in the future. God knows we cannot go backwards.

And that is what is so radical to the people in the synagogue in capernaum, so radical for us today. God is not a God of the past, God is not about keeping things, keeping us the same. God is about resurrection, about turning death and forces that hold us back, into new and abundant life.

Let us pray,

O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Theology & Culture

Is Unfriending the Christian thing to do?

January 27, 2015 The Rev. Erik Parker 5 Comments

We have all heard the advice. “Don’t feed the trolls.”

And yet, many of us complain about the content that gets shared on our social media timelines. We have all followed or friended that third cousin, twice-removed who posts the most annoying content just to get a rise out of us. Or worse yet, he/she actually believes that nonsense. As social media evolves and changes, figuring out what to do about people we don’t actually want to hear from has created a new buzz activity in 2015.

Unfriending.

Last week, I heard an interesting interview on CBC Radio’s “The Current,” which made me think of my social media experience. The interview was about the Unfriending Movement in Germany. In our social media world, unfriending/unfollowing has new meaning. It used to be that ending a relationship meant “breaking up”, or just ceasing to spend time and energy on people who drained, annoyed, angered, or frustrated you. Now we can just click that button to unfriend or unfollow.

Jimmy Kimmel has even made a video giving us the rules for how to unfriend.

And sure, social media is full of people who post too much, post too inanely, post pictures of food too often, post too many selfies, live tweet things we don’t care about or post cryptic statuses inviting “concerned” friends to beg to know what is going on.

But the heart of the unfriend movement in Germany is about unfriending those who have a particular type of political view, particularly those who oppose the presence of Islamic immigrants in their country.

And that has made me think.

Is it a good idea to unfriend people who have different opinions and views than we do?

Social media is a place to interact with friends, both IRL ones and online ones. It is a place to see that cute kitten video that has gone viral today, or find out trending pop-culture news. It is increasingly becoming a place to share and read articles, blog posts, watch videos and obtain information. I was glued to Twitter during the shooting in Ottawa a few months ago… and I confess I muted the World Cup hashtag from earlier in 2014.

In the early internet, primitive social media, like chat rooms and message boards, use to be places to find in niche groups of like-minded, like-interested people. But as social media use becomes more ubiquitous, and it is the norm for people to be present on social media, it is now about connecting to diverse groups that cut across socio-economic and geographical/national boundaries.

Unfriending those with whom we disagree means we limit our exposure to different ideas and opinions. And yes, sometimes muting, blocking, unfollowing or unfriending that person who posts a lot of offensive content is necessary. It isn’t worth seeing their content clog up your feeds.

Yet, I think there is a caution in being too zealous about unfriending those who have different politics, faith practices/beliefs, or opinions than we do.

(Full disclosure: I regularly cull the list of people I follow on Twitter. Less often for Facebook, but I still unfriend on occasion. I also mute people on Twitter and unfollow people on Facebook.)

Do we really want to create social media worlds where we only interact with like minded people? Do we only want to hear others share content, ideas and opinions that confirm what we already think?

Unfriending may be the new buzz activity of 2015, and it may even become an effective social change movement. But our In-Real-Life worlds are not limited to only those who think and act the same as we do. Limiting our social media worlds (which are becoming more and more important social circles) to only like minded folk will limit our exposure to a diversity of ideas and opinions.

As a christian and a pastor, my thinking about the world and my understanding of my ecclesiological neighbours, my cultural and international neighbours has increased dramatically because of social media. It used to be that I only talked to Americans or other world citizens when I was travelling. It used to be that I only interacted with clergy from other faith traditions once a month, at best. It used to be that I lived in a pretty white, Canadian, Lutheran world. Now I read, talk and interact with people from all over the world and from all over the map of Christianity everyday.

And I am better for it.

As our social media behaviour becomes more and more integrated with everyday life, the temptation to mute, unfriend or block-out the diversity of the world might be high. We all have limited energy to spend these days. Yet, I seem to recall a guy we like to talk about in church, who often broke down barriers and took the time to seek out those who were different than he was. Those with whom he disagreed, those whom practised different religions, those who took time and energy to deal with.

What was his name again?

Oh yeah…

Jesus.

Does it mean that Jesus took the abuse and never called anyone out? Hardly, in fact Jesus fed the trolls on more than one occasion in order to make a point. But he knew where his limits where.

So in 2015, think twice about unfriending those who disagree with you… and then when you are quite sure you don’t need that drama in your life – click away!

But don’t unfriend just because people think differently than you do.

What do you think about unfriending? Do you block or mute people on social media because of their politics or opinions? Share in the comments, or one the Facebook Page: The Millennial Pastor or on Twitter: @ParkerErik

Sermon

‘Course Jesus isn’t safe. But he’s good.

January 25, 2015 The Rev. Erik Parker 2 Comments

It has been a while since my last post, but I am hoping to get back into posting after a few weeks of holidays. Welcome to 2015 on The Millennial Pastor. In the meantime, here is my sermon from today. See you around.

Mark1:14-20

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.”… (read the whole reading here).

Sermon

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe.

Today, we pick up the story just 14 verses into the Gospel of Mark. In the last two weeks we have heard the story of Jesus’ Baptism, and last week Jesus called Philip and Nathaniel. Today, he continues the call to Andrew and Simon, to James and John sons of Zebedee.

As this story comes 3 weeks after Epiphany, it seems to continue with the Epiphany theme. Epiphany tells the second half of the Christmas story. At Christmas, Christ is revealed to us as the child born in a manger – Christ revealed in flesh. On Epiphany Jesus is revealed to the Wisemen come to meet the Messiah born in Bethlehem – Christ revealed as the Son of God. Today, as Jesus calls these new disciples, he seems to be continuing his Epiphany journey, revealing himself as the Son of God.

But before Jesus calls these fishermen to follow him, he does something else interesting. He preaches his first sermon. The first words that Jesus speaks in the gospel of Mark are:

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

The Kingdom of God has come near.

That sounds simple enough to our modern Christian ear.

But for the Jews that Jesus was preaching to, it was radical. And it was radical because the Kingdom of God was something that didn’t feel near. God was NOT close by. God was far away. God was too righteous, too holy, too big and powerful, to come near to sinful human beings. That was the whole point of the temple of Jerusalem. God lived in the centre, in the holy of holies, and people needed to be purified in order to come near to, to access God. God was dangerous, unsafe. Being in the presence of God would make anyone of us drop dead. The annual tradition of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, was based on this idea. Some poor priest was send to the Ark of the Covenant at the centre of the temple to purify it of the sin of the people that had accumulated over the year. The priest was sent with a rope tied around his foot, in case he dropped dead being in God’s presence, so that his body could be pulled out.

This holy and righteous God was unsafe and dangerous, being near to God was not necessarily something to be sought out.

And yet Jesus comes preaching, “The Kingdom of God has come near.”

Jesus preaches a radical and dangerous message. One that upset the way the people understood their world, one that made their world unsafe. One with God near by.

“Is he a man?” asked Lucy.

“Aslan a man!” said Mr Beaver sternly. Certainly not. I tell you he is King of the wood and the son of the great emperor-beyond-the-sea. Don’t you know who is the King of the Beasts? Aslan is a lion – the Lion, the great lion.”

“ooh!” said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man. Is he – quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”

“That you will, dearie, and no mistake” said Mrs Beaver; “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe.”

Most of don’t worry about dropping dead when we come forward for communion, or when we walk behind the Altar. Yet, like the Ancient Hebrews, we too feel far away from God in our own way.

For the Ancient Hebrews, it was that God was too big, too righteous, too holy for human beings.

But for us, it is that we are too unrighteous, too small, too unholy for God.

As a pastor, one of the most common concerns that pastors hear from church people and non-church people alike is about not being good enough. We might not think that God is too good, but we often think we are too bad, too sinful, too flawed for God. So many of us sit in the pews and wonder if God would listen to our prayers. We wonder if God cares about someone like us and all the things we have done in our life. We believe that we have done things that are unforgiveable.

For many Lutherans, it is why we prefer pastors to pray, just incase God ignores a sinner like me. It part of why we hesitate to have communion more than 4 times a year, just incase it becomes corrupt by having regular contact with us. It is why we wait for children to be confirmed before they commune, in case they aren’t good enough.

But most of all, we worry that the selves we present to the world, the selves that we hide – our flaws and imperfections, our history and our baggage, the selves that cover up our shame and weakness… we worry that God sees our true selves. The naked, vulnerable, shameful versions of our selves.

And so while we might not be frightened of dropping dead in front of God, God is just as unsafe for us. For us it is not dropping dead, but dying of shame. Of being vulnerable and exposed in front of God.

This God. This God who is bringing the Kingdom near in a wild and untamed kind of way, is unsafe.

And still Jesus preaches his message.

“The Kingdom of God is near to you.”

And for the people of Ancient Israel, the wild, untamed, unsafe Jesus of Mark, declaring that the Kingdom is near is also declaring a world changing, life altering message. The Kingdom of God is near, not hidden away in the holy of holies of the temple. The King is near, the King who is too holy, too righteous for sinful humanity is coming near anyway. The King doesn’t care about holy or unholy, clean or unclean, this King wants to be with the people.

And so while the Kingdom coming near might have been unsafe, it might have resulted in death, it was also radical, transformational, it was incredible. The great king wanted to be near to humans, to you, to me. This is a King who cares about and is concerned with people. One who breaks the rules of clean and unclean, breaks the rules of lawful and unlawful, of righteous and unrighteous.

It is no wonder the disciples just drop their nets and follow. They were experiencing the presence of God like never before. Maybe they didn’t know in their heads just who Jesus really was, but in their hearts they must have been seized by nearness of God.

“Is he a man?” asked Lucy.

“ooh!” said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man. Is he – quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Course he isn’t safe.

But he’s good.

He’s the King, I tell you.

Here is the thing about being safe. It is safe to God stay in the holy of holies, to keep God at distance. And it is safe to keep God contained in neat and cozy Sunday morning church services.

But this morning, God isn’t safe.

Jesus is not preaching a safe sermon. Jesus is preaching a dangerous sermon.

The Kingdom of God has come near.

The Kingdom is near and we are left exposed, sins and all.

The Kingdom is near and God can see our shame and weakness.

The Kingdom is near and we cannot hide our true selves.

And so we come together, come to this place to meet the King who has come near to us. And we confess our sins, we reveal our need for love and forgiveness. We openly admit that we do not have life figured out, that we need God’s Word of eternal life. We declare that we are the hungry masses, that we need to fed by God’s body and blood.

And Jesus comes near to us.

Untamed, wild, unsafe, lion-like Jesus comes near.

And our lives, our worlds are changed.

Jesus comes near and changes us. Transforms us.

Jesus comes near and forgives us.

Jesus comes near and speaks a word of life to us.

Jesus comes near and feeds us with the Body of Christ.

Today, we hear Jesus’ first sermon. We hear Jesus revealed again and again to us. Revealed in flesh, revealed as the son of god, revealed as coming near. Today, we hear an unsafe sermon, one that threatens to knock us dead, or least to make us die of shame.

‘Course he isn’t safe.

But Jesus is Good.

Jesus is the King I tell you.

And this unsafe, untamed God might just make us die, but also shows us untamed and wild New Life.

Amen.