Sermons

Sermons by Pastor Dave

“Getting What We Bargained For…�
Mark 11:1-11

All the world loves a parade, it seems…all the world, that is, except for Will Rogers. “Parades should be classified as a nuisance,� says Will. “They stop more work, inconvenience more people…stop more traffic…cause more accidents…entail more expense and cause I don’t even remember the other hundred misdemeanors.�
Fortunately, Will’s attitude didn’t catch on, because I suppose McGehee, Arkansas, still holds its annual Christmas parade (rain or shine), where everyone and their cousin gets to dress up in costume and ride the trailor filled with hay. Of course, the trailor’s pulled by the big tractor donated by the John Deere dealorship.
I remember at some point in my childhood being dressed in a sheet (I think as a wiseman) complete with crepe paper crown (king?), sitting atop the hay in a driving rain, and the slogan on the back of the trailor read: “Nothing Runs Like a Deere!�
Pretty small potatoes as parades go…and I think you could say the same about that Palm Sunday parade long ago. Most scholars agree that the time-setting is near Passover and that the place is just outside Jerusalem, and yes…there was a parade. For a long time, we believed that the parade was grand, involving thousands and much hoopla and fanfare centered around Jesus’ triumphant entry into the Holy City. But now the evidence is that something much different than this occurred on that day.
For openers, the sort of grand entrance that we’ve imagined or rather that the tradition collectively imagined…that sort of entrance would be totally foreign to the life that Jesus had heretofore lived. He had always shied away from calling attention to himself or from doing things that seemed self important.
If the truth be known, Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem probably looked more like the one we had here this morning with the children. It was simple and spontaneous, and those who gathered along the roadside were not rich or famous for the most part. There probably were a lot of children present, as they ran toward him spreading their palm branches in his path. So…yes, there was a parade! Our God is coming…the question before us this morning is: Are we ready to receive him? Are we ready to receive this Jesus into our lives? “Hosannah! Welcome Jesus!� …. Do you mean it?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a brave Russian intellectual who suffered terribly under the communists. The big event of the Seventies was his defection to the West. Here was the man who dared hold his head up and condemn the Communists…to speak the truth. We took this suffering refugee of Communism into our hearts the day he set foot on U.S. soil. And soon after arriving, he received an invitation to the holy hall of letters, Harvard, to address the free world. The day came…all the players were in place in their academic finery and Solzhenitsyn rises to speak, and he said: “that while he worried about the souls of Communists, he feared just as much for the fate of capitalists.� He told us that if we didn’t change our ways, we were headed for a ‘warm place’ along with General Motors and Disney World. And we decided we liked Solzhenitsyn better in the Soviet Union.
Remember, the question for the morning is: Are you ready for this Jesus character to arrive in your life? Do you know what he’s like?
Every year at Duke University, there’s this grand gathering of alumnae and faculty, politicians and muckedy mucks of one sort or another. They call it Founders’ Day, and it’s held in Duke’s grand, gothic cathedral, misnamed Duke Chapel. The faithful gather, a prayer is prayed over them, and someone important gives the Founders’ Day oration. A few years ago, Reynolds Price was asked to give the address. Now, you may not know who Price is…he’s a novelist and a professor of creative writing at Duke, and for the past few years, he’s been confined to a wheelchair after a cancer crippled him. Since his illness, Price has become a Christian….a radical Christian. He really invited Jesus to get down off that donkey and come into his life. He volunteers at the local shelter and he holds nothing back.
On this particular Founders’ Day, the President of the University introduced him, calling him one of Duke’s finest products, one of their most distinguished members of the faculty, a great novelist. Someone wheeled him to the podium in his fir trimmed Oxford robe, and he looked for all the world as harmless as could be, but then he began to speak. He told those gathered that the Duke students of the fifties were ten times better than those of the current generation. He said that the Duke faculty were guilty of not requiring more of students…he talked about the glassed-over eyes and uninspired discussions in his classes, and he said he longed to hear a conversation on the Duke bus more enlightening than: “What a great party it was last night!�
It wasn’t exactly what the faithful had expected. A friend of mine who was there told me the dean’s face turned so red you could roast hot dogs on it. At the end of the speech, there was polite applause, as they wheeled him off never to be asked to speak again.
The point is…similarly, with this Jesus character…before we invite him in…we need to be sure we understand who he is. Things seem different with him than before. In the past, when we’d hear stories about Jesus…they were always stories of things he’d said and done out in the countryside and in little backwater towns of Galilee.
He never seemed important …walking wherever he goes, just like the rest of us and besides, look who’s always around him…I mean the likes of those lepors and sick people following wherever he goes. I hear he even talks to prostitutes in public!
But now, something’s different…now he’s coming to the Holy City. What’s up with that? And, why is he riding that donkey? Does he think he’s better than the rest of us? I even hear people talking about the coming kingdom of our ancestor, David, but if Jesus were a real king, he’d have a different ride…wouldn’t he? more regal attendants than those children laying branches in his path. Wouldn’t he?
And if the parade is confusing to us, what happens after the parade is a downright shock!
Jesus strides into the sanctuary disrupting the service with shouting and waving his arms…then he goes out into the narthex and turns over some tables …(check it out…it’s all there in the llth chapter of Mark) Then, he goes down to the front door and blocks our way so we can’t bring our merchandise inside…and then he calls us robbers and this place a den for robbers! And if someone could tell me what he meant by that story of the wicked tenants, I’ll die a happy man! We’re not like those guys! Are we?
As a favor to the children, we went with them to the parade. We even encouraged them to lay the palm branches in his path. We roll out the red carpet and shout “Hosanna!� and now there’s this talk about him being a King, but I have to tell you: the kingdom we talked about at the parade the other day…I don’t think that’s the kingdom he has in mind.
So…I tell you what…Let’s call this Palm Sunday because of that little old parade we had. I hear that later this week there’s going to be a trial down at the courthouse. Do you think the judge is going to really do anything to Jesus, or do you think he’ll leave it up to us?
-If he does leave it up to us, let me ask you this: What do you plan to do with him? For real, what are you going to do?

AMEN

Resurrected to the Ordinary
Mark 16:1-8

If you’re a visitor here today, or if you’re here today and haven’t been here for a while, I’d like to tell you that what you see here today is typical for this church, an ordinary Sunday. But I would be lying. This is not one of our typical Sundays. It’s Easter! Therefore, we have some extra special music…our choir has worked up a special musical piece or two. It’s Easter, and it’s quite out of the ordinary for us.
But of course, what could be more OUT of the ordinary than Easter? Jesus has been crucified, dead and buried for three days, and early this morning, he came out of the tomb! What could be more extraordinary than that?
What IS ordinary and even typical…is death! In the ordinary world, THAT is the only world we know…the world where we make our homes…the place where everything that lives, dies! Life, as we know it, is transitory…fleeting. We are (according to the ash cross made on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday) …we are finite. We have our physical limits.
St. Augustine says that our lives are like when a man is sick and near death, and his friends look over at him in his sickbed and say: “He’s dying…he won’t get over this.�
The same could be said of us on the first day of our lives. Someone looking over into our crib, could shake his head and say: “He’s dying, he won’t get over this.�
Anything that lives, dies. It’s the way we’re wired. This is the ordinary fact of life. But Easter is NOT ordinary!
And yet, in today’s scripture, when the women come out to the tomb, they’re met by a strange person dressed in white, and to their amazement, they’re told that Jesus is not there. The message is that he has risen, and the women are clearly startled by this extraordinary news.
But there’s more…more than I only recently noticed. The angel says that Jesus rose…that he’s not there…that he has “Gone on ahead of you to Galilee.�
Do you know where Galilee is? Well…it’s nowhere special. It’s where Nazareth is, the hometown of Jesus. You recall perhaps that when someone was told that Jesus was the Messiah, that person cynically asked: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?�
Why would the risen Christ, the very first thing, just hours after being raised from the dead, move out toward Galilee? Maybe the first thing he wanted to do was to go back to his roots. Maybe he wanted to avoid the crowds or the Roman soldiers stationed in Jerusalem. We don’t know. All we know is that he first went out to Galilee.
He certainly didn’t go because he was trying to avoid the Roman soldiers. What had he to fear from them now?
And why mention the name of the place at all? There’s nothing special about Galilee. Maybe that in itself is special. The extraordinarily raised-from-the-dead Christ returns to the ordinary Galilee, and once he’s raised…he does some rather ordinary things. The gospels depict Jesus, raised from the dead, eating breakfast on the beach with his disciples, joining them for a meal behind closed doors.
In John’s version of this story, the disciples look into the tomb to find that the grave clothes of Jesus have been folded—neat and folded. Don’t you find it odd that the first thing he did after being raised by God from the dead, is to tidy up his tomb? Like some thoughtful houseguest, he’s risen and neatly folded all of his grave-clothes! The first thing done by the risen Christ is a bit of ‘ordinary’ housekeeping!
Does it seem strange to speak of Easter—something so unexpected and extraordinary—as ordinary? It does for me too, but I can’t help thinking that in these gospel details, a claim is being made. That claim is that Easter has something to do with the ordinary. The risen Christ is raised, but he’s raised into this world, our world…where everything that lives, dies; where every day those whom we love are leaving us…departing the scene, and so are we!
This is a world where death seems to be so powerful. Those of you who’ve gone through grief could probably testify that when someone dies, your grief is most intense in the ordinary little things in life. You go down to breakfast and suddenly become aware that a seat at the table is vacant. You see something funny on television and say to yourself: “I’ll have to tell him/her about this.� I can’t tell you how many times I’ve moved toward the phone to call my dad, only to suddenly realize it would be quite an expensive call.
It’s in the ordinary, little ways that you miss them the most!
Most of life is ordinary, very mundane…typical. This is where we make our home. I remember someone saying to me that her friends used to call her on rainy, dreary, days thinking she needed cheering up over the loss of her son. But she said “that’s not the way it is for me.� The worst days are the bright sunny days, days which are most typical, the days where she spends most of her life, for it is on those days that she realizes that her beloved son is no longer there. “Those days hurt the most,� she said.
And I think the gospel writers are going to some lengths to demonstrate that Jesus was raised and entered those days…those ordinary days of our lives. The gospels show the disciples all going back to work. After all, Easter, “The first day of the week,� was the Jewish workday. At the beginning of the work week… after the rest-time of the Sabbath, they go back to what they were doing in their daily lives. Everything was getting back to normal now, after the events of the past violent weekend. And the risen Christ was raised on THAT day, that ordinary, ‘beginning-of-the-work-week’ day.
I hope you enjoy and participate in the beautiful music and liturgy this morning. Our church does look extraordinarily beautiful. But remember this: one reason we are filled with such joy is that our God did not leave us caught in this web of death and decay. Our God was raised into the ordinariness of life. Now, everything has been redeemed! Death does not have the last word. The resurrection is breaking out everywhere.
If you’d had a chance to know my father, you’d know that he was never at a loss for words, even if he didn’t know the words to use (story of ‘so forth and so on’). But the last couple of days of his life in the hospital, he couldn’t speak because he needed all the air he could muster just to breathe. My sister, brother, mom and a host of others were gathered in his room near the end, and suddenly it was clear to us that he was trying to communicate, as he motioned for me to get a glass of water. I went over to the sink and filled a glass with water and brought it to my dad, but he wouldn’t drink it. He motioned as if to say to me, ‘you drink it.’ I took a sip, then my dad made a motion for me to pass it on to my brother, and then we caught on and so, he in turn gave it to our sister, then to mom and the others. It was clear that he was serving communion to us all.
And then, we knew that neither death, nor life, nor powers, nor principalities, nor anything else in all creation could separate any of us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And the resurrection became, in that hospital room, a most wonderful ordinary event. Thanks be to God.

AMEN

The God for All Times
Mark 1:4-11

“I admire Jesus,� the man explained to me. “I particularly admire his teachings…and his noble example. But, I’m offended by the notion that we should WORSHIP him. That seems a bit excessive. As I look at Jesus’ humanity, I see nothing but excellence, and that’s ENOUGH for me.�

Was there ever a life lived like that of Jesus? His noble teachings, his excellent example? We can admire him, follow him, attempt to fashion our lives after his great example, but WHY do we need to WORSHIP him as God? Is that excessive? Even a little bit?

It is at least interesting how different generations manage to come up with their own particular slant or view of Jesus down through the ages. There’s Jesus the moral example…Jesus the great ethical teacher. Some have seen him primarily as a worker of miracles while others say those events were merely magic. I suppose there’s some truth to the claim that every age has tended to remake Jesus in its own image.

I remember in my time during seminary, Liberation Theology depicted Jesus as a revolutionary while Feminist Theology saw him as the liberator of women. I think the predominate image of Jesus for most people in our time is Jesus the Friend. Jesus is the kind, empathetic, non-judgmental friend who soothes, comforts, and rarely condemns or judges. “What a friend we have in Jesus,� we love to sing. Our age wants a Jesus to whom we can get close, an accessible savior.

I read a book recently (All Is Forgiven) that examines sermons on the prodigal son preached in Baptist and Presbyterian churches. The author found that the language of secular, psychological therapy is much more common in these sermons than is the language of the Bible. Liberal or conservative Christian, it makes little difference, for most of the presenters have substituted psychotherapeutic babble for theological language. And, the Jesus who INHABITS these sermons is always the Jesus who affirms, blesses, supports, cares and welcomes…RARELY is he the Jesus who CALLS or demands.

The Jesus depicted in many contemporary sermons is a Jesus well suited to the religious yearnings of affluent, reasonably well situated people. After all, people who are reasonably healthy, happy enough, relatively affluent and secure don’t really need a savior who makes changes, disturbs, and disrupts! SO…we get a savior who often blesses, affirms, and embraces us just as we are.

But, WHAT about those who are in the majority of the world’s people? The “wretched of the earth,� who clustered around Jesus? What about THEM?

When your children are well housed, well fed, well futured, your mind doesn’t automatically RUSH to the idea that you/they need a savior. After all, you already HAVE about everything that this world can give. In this scenario, you don’t need MUCH of a god, for you’ve become LIKE a god unto yourself. So…most of us modern people don’t GET much of a god. Our “god� is our good friend, the one who brings out the best in us (for down deep, we believe that we are really basically good), the one who always affirms and blesses, (for we don’t believe that we are capable of much evil); our god is the one who GIVES us what our hearts desire, for in a consumeristic economy, it’s only natural that God becomes just another “lifestyle choice,� just one more technique for getting what we want.

But…if you’re like me, there are times, moments in a doctor’s office or between 3 a.m. and dawn, when our world begins to crack, when there’s a hint that we may not be as omnipotent, as capable and competent at managing life as we suppose.
I know a person whose life was well fixed. She and her husband had a good marriage, worked a prosperous farm, had three good kids. At forty-one, he lurched forward at the breakfast table and died. Suddenly, her world cracked. She had an unpayable mortgage, an unmanageable farm, an unmanageable family.

She told me: “When, for the first time in my life, I was forced, by life, to reach out for help, to address the One who laid the foundations of the world, who set the planets in motion, and brought all into being, there was no one there! I discovered that I had a pet god…god on a leash, but I needed more.�

Fortunately, she kept reaching out and eventually she opened herself to not only the God who cares but also the God who’s able to help.

As one of my teachers loved to say: “If it won’t play in a cancer ward or a shoddy nursing home for the elderly, then whatever it is, it’s not the gospel!�

You see, our need is greater than the need for a little nudge each Sunday…or for better therapy…or a more positive outlook on life. We need God. We need to know that the one who hung the stars and set the planets in their orbits …THAT God is there for us. We need One who not only cares, but One who also helps!

That day, as John conducted another of his baptismal services in the muddy Jordan, and a young Galilean came sputtering up out of the water, Mark says: “He saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending….� Mark doesn’t say that everyone else saw it. Doesn’t even say that John the Baptist saw it. But, JESUS saw it. That baptismal day was the inauguration day of his ministry.

That day the heavens were ripped open, and now—in Jesus—NOTHING stands between us and the very throne of God.

Mark’s Jesus comes to us with power, as the voice from heaven proclaims to Jesus: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.�

Reading between the lines, we believe that Mark’s church is a church in crisis, a church persecuted for their
discipleship. Mark knows that in extremis…at the end of our rope…when the chips are down, anyone less than the Son…the Beloved…will not do.

Who is this One who cares and helps? Who is this? I think THAT’S what Mark means for us to ask at the end of this story.

In a book called “Habits of the Heart,� we’re introduced to a woman named Sheila who when asked about God, replies: “I consider myself religious, but I don’t go to church. I believe that God is inside me, my own little voice.� And, THEREIN lies our problem. We’re in the grip of “Sheilaism,� a new religion in which God is reduced to “my own little voice.�

Jesus comes up out of the muddy Jordan dripping wet, and he heas God’s voice telling him he’s the Beloved. Has someone called you here today?

Whose voice do YOU hear this morning?
AMEN