Tag Archives: Mark

covid-19, Sermon, Theology & Culture

Being Salted with Fire

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GOSPEL: Mark 9:38-50
38John said to [Jesus,] “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” 39But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. 40Whoever is not against us is for us. 41For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.

49“For everyone will be salted with fire. 50Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

Today, we continue through the gospel of Mark, delving deeper and deeper into the question of what it means to follow Messiah, to be a disciple, to figure out our place in the world. As we head into these homestretch weeks of this long season of green, we will continue to be confronted with the difficult questions of faith and the difficult questions of our human condition. 

And as we face these questions, Mark is revealing a vision of how God is breaking open our world to make room for the Kingdom. Slowly but surely, we are being invited into this mission that Jesus is on in Mark – the Mission of bringing the Kingdom of God near to those who need it. 

One of the things about Jesus in the Gospel of Mark is that he gets a little cranky. Jesus has been cranky off and on during the past few weeks. Yet, last week he showed surprising restraint and patience with his struggling disciples. But this week he more than makes up for it, by ranting in frustration about the inability of his disciples to get out of their own way. 

Today, we continue from were we left off last week, when Jesus had sat down his disciples to unpack their struggles. They had been arguing about who is the greatest among them because the didn’t know where they fit in their world. Jesus had picked up a baby and holding the baby in his arms, told them the first must be last and the last must be first; that Kingdom of God was for the least of these. 

Still in that moment, gathered around, baby in arms, the disciple John interrupts his teacher.

“Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

Rather than letting Jesus’ message sink in – the message that in the Kingdom of God there is no order or rank or hierarchy, there is only belonging – John cannot let go of his insecurities. John is thinking that if the group cannot be measured by rank, then at least they can figure who is inside the group and who is outside. It is almost as if John needs to be able to quantify his worth and place this group. He cannot trust that God knows. 

Even still, John’s question reveals a particularly deep insecurity. He is upset that there are people out there casting out demons in Jesus’ name because the disciples had struggled to do the very same thing. Jesus had sent them out, but when the disciples had retuned they were unable to do the deeds of power. Now, here were some people doing the thing that the disciples could not do and they weren’t even a part of the group. 

John is revealing the thing that keeps the disciples from ever really getting what Jesus is up to – their insecurities about their role as Jesus’ followers. 

It is an insecurity that still pops up for us – the thing inside of us that cannot rejoice in the successes, talents and abilities of others, but instead seeks to tear down those who seem to threaten our place and position. On the sports team, dance group or musical ensemble, it is person who cannot abide the talent and ability of teammate.  In the workplace, it is the one who undermines the capability and productivity of a co-worker. In the church, it is the leader who shoots down every new idea before it is given a chance. In a family it is the jealous sibling, spouse, parent or child, who resents a loved one for the gifts they show, rather than rejoicing. 

This insecurity is almost certainly at the heart of most divisions and conflict we endure in our world. It is why political campaigns start out positive but go negative when another seems to poll better. It is why internet debates turn so rancid so quickly, when argument and reasons cannot sway opinion, people quickly turn to attacks and insults. It is why expert opinion no longer holds the water it once did, because so many of us think we should be experts on everything and get our backs up when it feels like someone or something is suggesting we might not know as much as we think we do. 

It is an insecurity rooted in the deepest part of our humanity, in the sinful self who just cannot let go of our own needs to feel adequate and needed and capable at all costs, even the denigration of our neighbour. 

And this insecurity is why Jesus erupts into his angriest rant to date:

42“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.”

And on Jesus rants, declaring that if one part of our bodies cause us to sin, they should be cut off and thrown away. For some reason, preachers and other church folk have heard this rant from Jesus as some kind of formula or prescription for dealing with sin – a tough love approach to community conflict. But certainly it is not that. It is Jesus losing his cool with disciples who just cannot get out of their own way – disciples who cannot see that good ministry happening in Jesus’ name does not need their approval or sanction. 

But what is perhaps the most striking about Jesus’ angry rant is not the vivid imagery of being tossed into the ocean with a rock tied around one’s neck, nor cutting off hands, feet or pulling out eyes that cause sin. It is that Jesus is still holding the baby, that little one, the least of these. 

As Jesus has gathered his struggling disciples, who just need to know how they fit into their new world, as he tries to give them a symbol of their equality before God. As he reminds that God has room and a makes a place for even a helpless baby – a person with little value or import in that world – Jesus is frustrated that the disciples cannot let go of their insecurities. They cannot get past their fears and trust what has been promised and given to them by God. 

But then… before going too far, Jesus reels himself back in. And though it may sound cryptic, Jesus comes back to the point:

  49“For everyone will be salted with fire. 50Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

Ancient salt and fire were central elements of daily life. Salt was used for money (or salary), for roads, to preserving food, for making brine for forging metal. And it worked along with fire to make things pure and safe. But ancient salt was also impure and needed to be carefully maintain and used. Fire and salt worked together in so many areas of ancient life. 

Jesus is using this image of salt and fire – obscure to us, but common to the disciples – to remind them again of their role in the mission of the Messiah. The Messiah who realized that God’s grace was give for all people by the Syrophoenecian woman. The Messiah who is on the road to crucifixion AND resurrection, no natter Peter’s objections. The Messiah is not concerned about first and last, but about gathering up all God’s people. This Messiah reminds the disciples to be at peace – God is making them worthy!

It is no accident that at the lowest of the lows, hiding away in the upper room after the crucifixion of Jesus, that the risen Christ appears to his followers saying “Peace be with you.”

And it is no accident that this is God’s message for us too. 

Even as we feel like our hands and feet and eyes have been cut off, even as feel as though our saltiness is fading away… Jesus’ promise to us that that God is transforming us for the Kingdom. 

Despite our inability to get out of our own ways. Despite our tendency to hang on to our insecurities. Despite feeling unworthy of the mission of the Gospel. 

Jesus is salting us with fire. God is making us ready for Kingdom. 

Yes, that might mean that some of our baggage needs to be dropped. Yes that might feel like parts of ourselves are being cut off. Discipleship is not easy. Being transformed by God sometimes takes us to uncomfortable places and out future is less certain than it ever was. 

But it is exactly in these times of change and crisis, that the work of transformation takes place. This is exactly where God is doing God work. Here with insecure people who are certain we aren’t good enough, who want to know if and where we belong. 

And yet, God is salting us with fire, removing our imperfections, making holy, and preparing us for the mission of the Kingdom. 

covid-19, Sermon, Theology & Culture

Who is this greatest? There are only sinners, like us.

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GOSPEL: Mark 9:30-37
35He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” 36Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, 37“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

Sermon

As we round into the final weeks of this long season of green, on our way to the end of the Church year and Advent, we continue to hear Jesus interact with his disciples. Last week, Jesus asked them who they thought he was. It was a moment of revelation followed by rebuke. Peter declared that Jesus was the Messiah but then turned around and lost the plot, getting upset with Jesus for following the path set out for the Messiah, the path of suffering and death. 

This week, following this key revelation, as they are traveling between towns, the disciples begin to bicker about who among them is the greatest. It sounds childish considering who they are following and the teaching about what it means to take up their cross that Jesus had just given. Arguing about who is the greatest feels like it is something that belongs on the playground, a conversation for children….

And yet, it is an argument that drives so much of our world these days. Only about a month ago three billionaires raced to see who could be the first private citizen to fly to space. As we speak, Canada is in the midst of a Federal election with the leaders’ debate was last week, where every question was a nuanced version of ‘who is the greatest?” And of course, our society is full of controversy over COVID-19 public health measures, including vaccine requirements. My home province of Alberta tried to win the race to be the greatest in declaring the pandemic over in July, only to now be looking at a total healthcare system collapse over increasing numbers of COVID-19 cases. 

So this argument that the disciples are having might seem immature, but it is certainly not an unusual one. Maybe it is worth considering just what is really going on. 

As Jesus continues to preach and teach, he has been speaking more and more about what is the come for the Messiah – more and more about his impending suffering and death. And the disciples have started to put it all in the context of understanding Jesus to be the Messiah – just as Peter confessed last week. 

Yet, the disciples still don’t understand what this all means for them. Before, when they were fishermen and tax collectors, they know their place in the world and their place in their communities. In their extremely ordered Hebrew society, they knew their rank and station.

Yet now, as Jesus has called them out of those known places and into this unknown position of being his followers, followers of the prophesied Messiah, they are struggling to know who they are and where they fit. The place of the Messiah in the world comes predicted and described, but where Messiah’s number 2 through 12 followers fit might not be clear. 

So they do what human beings so naturally do, they try to sort out where they fit and who they are, within the context of their community. They try the best they can to answer that deep question within all of us that asks who we are and how to we fit into the world around us. 

But also like us, they go about it in toxic and self-destructive ways. They try to order their community by rank, putting themselves on top and those around them below. It comes from the same place that the question that the serpent posed to Eve came from, the question about knowing her place in the garden. 

This question is one that continues to plague us today, this desire to know where we fit and who we are. And even though it can feel like the kind of question that children ask or argue about – think “my dad is stronger than your dad” – it is is one what drives so much of our world. 

It is a question subtly asked in car commercials, suggesting that a new car would improve our station in life. It is one baked into the marketplace and corporate world, constantly demanding more productivity, more profit, more loyalty. It is part and parcel with every political move and decision, and at the heart of every political campaign. It often shows up in churches when we look at and wonder about the neighbour congregation down the street and how they are doing. 

And in the midst of crisis, as we are now, it shows up as we try to figure out what to do and how to proceed. And when opinions differ, especially when agreeing to disagree isn’t possible but instead decisions have life and death consequences, we can be guilty of posturing according to our position rather than searching for the course of action that it is best for all. 

Trying to sort this all out, trying to understand where we fit – or more specifically “Where do I fit?” is something deeply imbedded in how we understand ourselves. We need to know where we stand and where we fit into the world around us, no matter how destructive the search for the answer can become. 

When Jesus hears the childish argument of his disciples, we might expect the grumpy Jesus who called the needy but persistent Syrophoenician woman a dog two weeks ago or the angry Jesus who rebuked Peter. 

But instead Jesus stops and calls his disciples to gather around and asks “What were you arguing about on the way?”. When none of them has an answer, Jesus has them sit down with him. You can imagine that Jesus sees beyond the childish argument, and instead sees disciples who are struggling to understand their place in the world. Disciples who need reassurance rather than competition, disciples who need to be reminded that they belong. 

“Whoever wants to be first must be last and servant of all.” he declares.

Then Jesus brings in a little child and puts it among them. But not just any child, but greek suggests that Jesus has brought an infant into their midst. Children in this world were considered to be blessings but also people for whom you didn’t get too strongly attached, lest they didn’t survive childhood. Children’ weren’t considered full persons until grown. 

So with this baby in his arms, Jesus holds one who is considered to be the least of all in that world. And Jesus says that whomever welcomes this one, who is the least and lowest in world, welcomes him. 

Jesus is chipping away at the disciples need to establish an order, their need to know where they fit by creating ranks and status among themselves. Jesus is using the tangible example of this baby as the means of showing his disciples what it means to belong to the Kingdom of God. There is no rank, first and last have no meaning. Belonging is what matters. God welcomes them, they belong to the Kingdom. They are children of God, servants to one another, members of the Body of Christ. 

The question about who is the greatest doesn’t apply here, instead who do you belong to is what matters. And with God, all belong in the Kingdom. 

It is a message that almost does’t compute in our hyper competitive world. Defining ourselves by who is on the top feels like the only way to understand ourselves. But God gives us a different understanding, an understanding based on belonging and not on rank. 

It is a part of our understanding of who we are that has been challenged by this pandemic. Our sense of “we” or community has been shaken. We have had for more opportunity than we really need as individuals to contemplate our individual identity.

Yet, God reminds us again and again, there is no greatest among us. 

There are only sinners to whom God gives grace, mercy and absolution. 

There are only suffering people for whom God promises healing and reconciliation

There are only the lost, least and forgotten, whom God welcomes into the Body of Christ. 

There are only the unwashed, whom God makes clean in the waters of Baptism. 

There are only the hungry and starving, whom God feeds at the table of the Lord. 

There are only disciples, whom God sends out to heal a world in need. 

In confession, in the Word, in praise and prayer, in baptism and the Lord’s Supper, God reminds us again and again of not who, but whose we are – we belong to God. There is no greatest and there is not least, but instead there is a place for all in the Body of Christ – all belong to God. 

covid-19, Sermon, Theology & Culture

Even our small lives don’t get in way of God’s big picture

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GOSPEL: Mark 8:27-38
31Then 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. 32He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33But 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.”

This week, I sat down to watch the movie Worth. The story dramatizes the real life story of Ken Feinberg, the lawyer who was tasked to run the 9/11 victim compensation fund. In the opening scene, Ken lectures a law school class about the value of a human life. “What is a life worth” he asks? Certainly the question of what is the value of a human life is interesting to think about. But the real impact of the movie was to bring me back to my own memories of September 11th, 2001. Even on this 20th anniversary of 9/11, most of us can instantly remember where we were and what we were doing when the news that planes had hit the two towers.

There are a handful of such events that ground our lives, that we can instantly remember where we were and what we were doing when they are brought up. Victory in Europe Day in 1945. The assassination of JFK in 1963.  9/11… these moments are etched in our memories because they changed our world forever.

And now many of us remember the middle week of March 2020. When the first cases were announced in Manitoba, when the shutdowns were enacted and our whole world changed. 

In more normal times, we can be guilty of just going about our lives without too much attention paid to the larger things going on in the world. The business of what to make for supper, when to water the garden, remembering to change the furnace filter and pay the water bill, of being on time for work, of making time for coffee with friends, of caring for family and making time for rest… we can be pre-occupied with all the things of living life day to day. But those moments when the picture stops us in our tracks often stick out in our memories, they even have the power to shape and form us into new and different people. Still most of the time, the big picture isn’t forefront in our minds. 

Today, when Jesus takes a moment to ask his disciples who people say that he is, he is very much addressing this conflict within us of letting the small everyday things of life overtake the big picture. 

Jesus and the disciples are in Caesarea Phillipi, which is not just relevant because of its place on the map. Jesus and his disciples have left Hebrew territory, and are in gentile lands. They have stepped outside of the chaos, into a place where they are mostly unknown, where they can find a moment’s rest from the crowds and religious authorities. 

And it is here that Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”

Being good disciples who know the faith of Israel, they provide answers that cover all the bases. John the Baptist, Elijah, a prophet… all examples of roles within the Israelite religious understanding. 

But Jesus takes it a step further, “Who do you say that I am?”

In a moment of insight, Peter gets it, “You are the Messiah.”

And with that revelation, Jesus takes the opportunity to unpack just what this all means. He reminds his disciples that the Messiah must undergo what the prophet Isaiah wrote about – the Suffering Servant. Rejection, persecution, suffering and death. 

And all of a sudden Peter’s bubble pops. The insight he brought forward just moments earlier is gone, and he pulls Jesus aside. He begins to rebuke his teacher and master for talking this way. Jesus does not like this shift from Peter, and gives a rebuke of his own, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things, but human things.”

Just as we heard last week when Jesus called the Syrophoenician woman a dog, Jesus can lash out when tired and frustrated. Here again, Jesus’ rebuke of Peter might be less of a condemnation of Peter’s flub and more a frustrated teacher annoyed by one of the students interrupting the lesson because he is missing the point. 

As we hear the story again, it is easy to think that we would never be as foolish as Peter to tell Jesus what to do at the precisely the wrong moment. But Peter is not special in his misunderstanding. Peter is simply wanting to preserve the relative comfort that he has found as a follower of Jesus. He has found purpose and importance, found a mentor and teacher that he wants to follow. Jesus dying will mess that all up.

Just like Peter, it is very easy for us to let our lives – our thoughts, our desires, our plans – fill the world. It is easy to come to church and to hear of God’s plan for the salvation of creation and then only a few minutes later be more concerned with what lunch will be. It is easy to let the busyness of our lives fill the world and push God aside. 

And even in mid pandemic, when our busy lives have been made smaller, we probably haven’t made more room for God and faith… instead our smallness has still managed to fill our world. Peter is sidetracked by the thought of the suffering and death of his teacher and master. And we are guilty of letting the slog of just getting from one day to the next push God out of our attention. 

Our fears about work, family, friends, and community push God out. 

Our keeping up with news updates, or trying to ignore the news at all costs push God out.

Our navigating a world that we both miss and that is more dangerous push God out. 

Our attention to politics, economics, social justice, reconciliation, climate justice and more push God out.  

All of it pushes God out of our thoughts and attention.

Yet even when Peter pulls an irritated Jesus aside to rebuke him,… Jesus still finds a way to re-orient Peter’s hangs up. 

You can imagine the group standing in a circle as Jesus speaks. At first when Peter identifies Jesus the Messiah, everything within the circle, within the group feels right. But then Jesus starts talking about how the Messiah must suffer and die. Peter must have felt like the world outside the circle starting to close in, dark shadows forming around the group making everything feel dangerous and overwhelming. When Peter cannot take it anymore, he pulls Jesus aside, making his circle of safety even smaller. Peter is trying desperately to hold on to what is good and comfortable, to his life following this popular teacher and preacher… not following a Messiah toward suffering and death. 

But then Jesus turns from Peter, back to the disciples. Jesus opens up Peter’s little circle. Jesus pushes back the dark shadows and scary outside world. Jesus opens himself up everything around him.

The Messiah, the Son of Man, has not come to create a small comfortable circle of disciples, but to save the whole world. Jesus has come to bring the whole world back into the grace and mercy of God. 

Peter’s smallness and details won’t push Jesus away. Instead the opposite happens, Peter’s life becomes part of the story of God in the world.  

In fact it isn’t just Peter, nbut the story of the Messiah, the suffering and death of Messiah gathers all of our busyness – all of our concerns that fill the world, or our small day to days that take all our attention – and Messiah folds us and our lives into the story of God. We might try to push God to the margins, but faith will let go of us. 

From the beginning, Jesus has reminds his disciples that the work they are doing and that this path that they are following are a part of God’s promises salvation. The way of the cross is about saving the world. And that way of cross the transforms us to the core.  

It isn’t just that God is saving our troubled world, but God is changing us along the way. All of our busy, small, inward looking selves… all the thing that occupy and distract us from faith, that cause to forget God…  God is folding and working them into the story of salvation, the story of grace and mercy given for all.

Peter’s desire to keep things they way they are, to keep his friend safe…. And our focus on getting through each day, living in a topsy turvey pandemic world… these things are now a part of God’s story. God story gathers us all up, no matter how much our lives try to fill up the world. 

The Messiah is on the way of the cross. The way of suffering, rejection and death. But also the way of resurrection and new life. 

And the Messiah is bringing us along… even when we cannot see it, even when it feels like the details of life gets in the way…. Jesus brings us in. Jesus take up his cross and carries us too… carries us to empty tombs, to resurrection and into New Life. 

covid-19, Sermon, Theology & Culture

Preparing the Way – There is No Answer in Waiting

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Mark 1:1-8
The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
“See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way;
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”
(Read the whole passage)

It has been a while hasn’t it. 

Many of you know that back on November 2nd, I was diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy. I am still recovering, as the nerve in the right side of my face continues to be inflamed and refuses to send the the signals to my face muscles to do their job. 

So I have been on sick leave for a few weeks. Still sending emails and sharing worship, but this week I am trying a little more. Including a sermon. 

When you last heard from me, it was on All Saints Sunday. Now, we are into the second week of Advent. We have started a new church year which brings with it a new gospel to focus on. This is the year of Mark. 

As we begin making our way through Mark’s gospel this church year, it stands in contrast to the other gospels. Unlike the start of Matthew or Luke, Mark’s telling of the incarnation – of Jesus coming into the world – is a little different than what we might expect. 

“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” 

There are no angels, pregnant virgins, shepherds or mangers. There’s no Christmas pageant using Mark’s account. No shepherds in bathrobes awkwardly delivering Mark’s dialogue. 

Mark gets straight to the point. Yet, there is a lot being said in the economy of Mark’s words. 

The good news starts now. The good news starts with this one named Jesus. And this one named Jesus is the son of God. 

Then to explain that statement about the good news and Jesus, Mark quotes from the prophet Isaiah. But Mark expects a lot of his readers, and when he quotes from Isaiah, he expects that the first line is enough for us to fill in the rest and get the picture. Fortunately for those of who haven’t memorized the 66 chapters of the book of Isaiah, we read the passage that Mark quotes just a few moments ago. 

“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to her, that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins” (Isaiah 40:1-2)

This passage from Isaiah comes at key moment for the people of Israel. The first 39 chapters told of the story of the exile into the Babylon, when the religious and royal class of Israel was forcibly removed from their home and sent to live in Babylon for generations. 

Yet we come into the story precisely a the moment that everything changes. The exile has ended, and Isaiah pleads with God to be gentle with God’s weary people. They have endured a lot and need the time to recover. And now begins the story of the return of God’s people to their homeland. God is no longer the wrathful God who has angrily sent the exiles away because of their sins, rather God is now the gentle saviour redeeming the tired and weary people of Israel. The exiles’ experience of God is completely transformed from this moment onwards. 

And Mark quotes Isaiah expecting that we know this story well, the story of exile and return from exile. Even more so Mark expects that we will see that he is connecting Jesus to this important moment when everything changes for the Israelites. 

Mark is saying, “Hey remember that moment when God changed everything by bringing the exiles home? Well, this Jesus is changing everything too.”

And then Mark takes another left turn, keeping us on our toes only a few lines into the story, by introducing us to John the Baptist. 

John, the rough around the edges desert preacher and prophet, who is attracting crowds and gaining the popularity of the people while drawing the ire of those in charge. John is quite the character dressed in camel hair, eating giant desert insects and preaching from a river. 

But perhaps most jarring of all in this short passage of Mark’s, is that John is quite the opposite to Isaiah. If Isaiah is pleading to God for comfort, compassion, and tenderness for God’s weary people, John is warning of the swift kick in the pants to come if they don’t repent. 

So is anyone confused by all this stuff in Mark? Good, that is the point. 

Not unlike the Israelites, we might know a little something about being tired… about being weary… we might know about longing and waiting for God… for Messiah to show up, to transform our lives. It is exhausting trying to keep the faith and have hope for the future.

More so than just about any Advent that we have lived through, we understand the waiting of the people of Israel. We know what is it to live under the thumb of a power that we are powerless against. We know what it is to hope for salvation, so live day to day until something changes, until a new world comes about, one that we simply do not know when it will arrive. 

The ways in which we labour, strive, suffering and struggle these days is not a short list. Whether we are suffering lonliness, anticipating a much reduced Christmas than ever imagined. Whether it is the threat of loss of business, jobs, income and offering. 

Whether it is stressed out health care-workers, teachers, front-line workers, parents and children. 

Whether it is families serparated by quarantines and restrictions, distances that cannot be travelled or public health orders that cannot be broken. 

Whether it is those suffering from COVID-19, contracting the illness and its hard to endue symptoms. 

Whether is families who are grieving as dozens die each day across our province. 

Take your pick. 

The list of burdens and suffering is long. It’s no wonder we feel weary. It’s no wonder we wait for God to show up in our lives and in the lives of our family, friends and neighbours. 

Here’s the thing about Advent: when waiting for Messiah becomes about things deeper than opening the little doors on advent calendars and collecting our chocolate treat, or counting the days until Christmas, it raises questions. Questions about where this Messiah that we are waiting for is in our world. Where Messiah is in our lives.

We long for the God of Isaiah to come and show us weary people some compassion and tenderness. 

We know that we need the Messiah of John the Baptist to come and give us swift kick the pants to keeps from atrophy. 

But it’s the waiting… the waiting is what we cannot abide. 

Because waiting has no answers until it is over. 

This is what John and Isaiah have in common. They are both speaking to the waiting of God’s people. Whether they are proclaiming a tender God who brings comfort or a powerful God who comes preaching repentance… they both are speaking to people who wait. To exiles whose waiting in exile is about to end, to Israelites waiting under oppression for Messiah. 

To 21st century Christians waiting for God in the midst of pandemic lockdowns. 

The promise is and has always been that Messiah is coming soon. 

As Isaiah says: 

‘Prepare the way of the Lord,

    make his paths straight.

Every valley shall be filled,

    and every mountain and hill shall be made low,

and the crooked shall be made straight,

    and the rough ways made smooth;

and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

Take you pick of burdens that cause us to wait, 

valleys or hills and mountains, 

crooked paths and rough ways, 

Messiah is coming for all it. 

For people who need the tender compassion of God, 

for people who need the swift kick in the pants. 

For people who carry the burdens of work and communities, 

Of sepearated families

Of caregivers living through hell

Of families grieving through unimaginable loss

Messiah is coming for all of that too. 

And yes, not knowing when Messiah is coming, and having to wait is the hardest part of all. 

Having live in Advent not just for 4 weeks this year but 40 weeks with no end in sight, with its questions about where God is in our world and in our lives is not easy. We want to know, how, where, when. 

But the only answer is a promise, a promise that we hear every Advent again and again.

Messiah is coming.

Messiah is coming for a world in need. 

Messiah is coming for people of faith who hate waiting 

Messiah is coming for  you and for me. 

Messiah is coming… 

Soon. 

Amen.

Theology & Culture

An Unlikely Coronation

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This sermon was co-written with my partner, The Rev. Courtenay Reedman Parker (Twitter @ReedmanParker). It is her family with the collection of royals plates and spoons.

John 18:33-37

Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

A couple of weeks ago my mother was visiting from BC. And while she was here she had us watching the documentary series “The Royal House of Windsor” on Netflix. One thing you should know about my, mostly British family, is our fascination with the royals. As far back as I can remember the royals were a thing. A big thing. Growing up, there were books of Prince Charles and Princess Diana that I would thumb through, mostly to look at the magnificent gowns and jewels the princess wore. There were plates and spoons with the faces of her royal majesty the queen among others who adorned my grandparents living room wall. My grandfather even researched how the queen takes her tea so he could perfect the methodology – in my family we truly believed that the queen could, in fact, drop by at anytime and visit. So best be prepared.

Throughout my childhood my understanding of what it meant to be royalty was rooted in these picture perfect images from glossy pages, or screened onto bone china. To be honest, the idea that these were real people, with real problems, didn’t sink in until August 31, 1997, the night Diana, Princess of Wales died in a car accident in France. A week later I watched Prince William and Prince Harry – both the same ages as my younger brother and I – walk behind their mother’s casket. They looked so very human and normal, and powerless, and average.

To be a member of a royal family means to be set apart – there are protocols and procedures, customs and traditions, expectations and entitlements that are reserved for a small group of people. This becomes clearest when watching the archival footage of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953. The pomp and circumstance. The regalia. The grandeur. The diamonds! This is how many of us perceive the royals. All glammed up for their royal tours or grand parties and celebrations. Many of the criticisms over the years has been how removed the royals are far removed from day life… from us.

So when we come to this festival day, Christ the King or the Reign of Christ, when we lift Jesus up as our king, as we recall not the kingdoms we create for ourselves, but the kingdom God creates for all of creation, we might anticipate the same kind of pomp and circumstance. The same grandeur. Maybe not the diamonds…

Our Old Testament reading from the book of Daniel as well as our Psalm are coronation readings, they conjure up familiar images of what it means to be royal: “dominion, and glory and kingship” (Daniel 7:14), and “robed in majesty” (Psalm 93:1). And to be honest, it is strange that in this year of Mark, that we would be presented with such images. Mark, who spends the majority of his gospel avoiding talking about Jesus’ kingship. Jesus’ identity is kept secret for the better part of Mark’s gospel. Which is maybe why, on this last day of the church year, of the year of Mark, we don’t hear from Mark’s gospel but instead from John. We find ourselves with Jesus before Pontius Pilate who asks him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” This is, of course, a loaded question.

Because in the Ancient Near East, the king was the Messiah. They ruled under a theocracy in which the king had the ultimate authority and power, and ruled from the top down. It was the king, and the king alone, who had the power and authority to keep everything and everyone safe and rescue them from harm or danger.

But Jesus doesn’t look or act like a king. Pilate is in the power position, and he knows it.

“My kingdom,” Jesus tells Pilate, “is not from this world”. In other words, what you think and expect of kings and kingdoms is nothing like what I have come to do, or who I have come to be.

Jesus comes into the world and completely redefines what it means to be royalty. And from the very beginning – especially as told through Mark’s gospel that we have heard throughout this last church year – Jesus has been pushing and prodding us to think differently about the kingdom of God. Jesus has been pushing and prodding us to understand God and God’s reign differently than what we think or expect.

There is part of us that like the idea of a royal who is far off, doing royal things with royal people. And it’s easy to depict Jesus as a king – crown him with many crowns, lift high the cross – the hymns we sing, the stained glass windows we commission.

But this is not the Jesus we encounter in the gospels. Certainly not in Mark. Jesus’ king-ship, his reign is one that was played down. Jesus himself who walked alongside the disciples teaching, healing, eating… time and time again we encounter a Jesus who keeps showing up in spite of people not knowing who he is – his own disciples not getting it again, and again, and again. And likely because of this not getting it, Jesus, in Mark’s gospel, is kind of a grump. We’re not any more comfortable with grumpy Jesus than we are with a king who looks and acts nothing like how royalty is expected to look and act. Even when artists depict Jesus on a cross it is often with a regal air, and when its Jesus walking down the road with his disciples, there is the suggestion of a king walking through the royal garden with courtiers. No one is commissioning a stained-glass window of a mug-shot Jesus, or Jesus covered in road grime and old clothes wandering the countryside with a bunch of ne’er-do-wells.

And yet – this is our king. Jesus comes to us not with pomp and circumstance, but in the most unlikely of coronations. Through the humblest of beginnings, in a manger to an unwed mother. The kingdom of God isn’t behind royal gates that remain locked to those outside. The reign of Christ is not filled with protocol and procedure, but rather the dismantling of the very things that keep us from hearing and seeing and experiencing God’s love and mercy in our lives. Jesus spent his life walking with and talking with the opposite types of people that any king would be expected to hang around. Jesus’ rule, Jesus’ reign, is so far from what royalty would look like. Instead, all of the examples we have of Jesus’ reign, of what God’s kingdom looks like, are in the ordinary.

And so today, as Christ the King Sunday with readings of royal coronations follows a year of Mark downplaying the kingly side of Jesus, we are left two sides of Jesus seemingly at odds with one another.

But as these two images blend together, Jesus is showing us a Kingdom of Heaven that is breaking into our everyday, mundane and earthly existence. Jesus is showing us a King of all creation who is walking along side us fashioning, forming and shaping us for the kingdom.

And all of a sudden, Christ the King and the Kingdom begin poking and prodding through the veil… and Jesus shows us that the Kingdom has been all around us the whole time.

The Kingdom of God breaking through in words of mercy and forgiveness

The Kingdom of God being glimpsed in the words of eternal life spoken in our midst.

The Kingdom of God revealed in the peace and reconciliation shared between friends and neighbours.

The Kingdom of God that tears open the the boundary between heaven and earth allowing the body of Christ of all times and places to worship as one.

And all along Jesus has been shaping and transforming us for life in this kingdom, in this kingdom that Jesus has been bringing near to us the entire time.

In our world that still looks for royalty to live up to regal expectations, to hold fast to customs and traditions, protocols and procedures, we celebrate the reign of the One who looks nothing like what the world expects. Who holds fast to the rule of love, who encounters us in bread and wine at the table, in the water and word at the font, in reconciliation with family and friends, freedom through forgiveness of sin to life eternal.

On this Christ the King Sunday, we are reminded that Jesus is never the King that we expect, nor the One that we deserve, but always, always the One that we need.